The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century

Extract

The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century. By Sheri Berman. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. 238p. $65.00 cloth, $23.99 paper.

Sheri Berman has written an engaging book about the origins, development, and deployment of social democracy in Europe since the late nineteenth century. The central argument is that social democracy, as one of several movements that challenged liberalism and orthodox Marxism, ultimately prevailed over competitors. In Berman's view, the triumphant social democratic reconciliation of capitalism and democracy in post–World War II Europe cannot be understood as simply a muscular form of embedded liberalism; social democracy is a distinct ideology that undergirds a system of political control of capitalism and communitarian policies and institutions.