At first glance, Sherri Berman’s attempt at an “ideational” analysis of interwar European social democracy and the determinants of success or failure in achieving hegemony seems very promising. I sympathize strongly with her feeling that state-centric and institutional theories on the one hand and “class coalition” theories on the other have something missing (although it’s possible to conclude that Berman ends up reproducing from a slightly different point of view much of the conventional class coalition analysis).On closer inspection, though, it seems to me that Berman’s analysis is so riddled with methodological flaws and lacunae that the ultimate value is questionable.The most important is that the comparative project is dramatically ill-conceived. Germany and Sweden were similar in that they had social-democratic parties with very extensive or potentially extensive electoral support, and in being latecomers to the game of extending their influence in the Third World (Sweden never quite became a colonialist competitor and Germany didn’t get very far), but not in much else.Germany’s status as a potential major power, its defeat in World War I and the harsh conditions imposed at Versailles (which were far harsher in the minds of the Germans than in reality, but …) are completely different from Sweden’s case, the existence of a large revolutionary (or “revolutionary”) left (the KPD) and, most important and intimately related to both Germany’s military power and its defeat, the rise of Nazism completely confounds the comparison.Perhaps one can make the case that the strategies of Sweden’s SAP can be analyzed in an essentially self-contained way (I don’t know enough about the case; since the interwar failures of German social democracy dramatically affected the entire subsequent history of the world and the successes of Swedish social democracy only affected Sweden, I’ve retained rather more interest in the former), but in the case of Germany this is impossible.
The rise of the NSDAP, affected as it was by mistakes made by the SPD, is also an independent phenomenon. The KPD, its analysis of the SPD as “social-fascists,” and its repudiation (until it was too late) of a Popular Front strategy is again a critical and partially independent phenomenon. Trying to connect the ideas of the SPD with its political strategies and thus with success or failure with only the most notional attention to these two other major players is, frankly, fatuous. I don’t see the point.Or, to be more charitable, I can only see this as a reflexive application of a certain notion of sociological method – “use comparisons to elucidate causes” – when far more useful tools were at hand and ready for use.Next, although the ideational analysis is an excellent idea, it is carried out in a half-baked manner. The dogmatic economic determinist Marxism and the Kautskyan travesty of “scientific socialism” and its effect both on the position of “theorists” like Kautsky and Hilferding and on their lack of political vision is at least developed enough that one can guess at how it worked. But there is no discussion of the ideology of the Swedish SAP in relation to that of the German SDP, beyond saying that Marx and Engels’ being German made Marxism more important to the SDP. What role did Marxism play in the SAP, was there the split between revolutionary Marxism and “parliamentary cretinism,” and if so, how did they end up not seriously affecting the SAP’s decisions?Even more striking, rigid dogmatic Marxism is easily determined to be the primary source of the SDP’s political mistakes or tendency to be simply out of touch with pressing concerns, but nothing is said about how a nominally Marxist party nominally dedicated to the creation of a workers’ state became not just an implementer of standard economic doctrines but also of authoritarian, conservative (though “centrist”) German nationalism.How did a Marxist party start using the standard elitist doctrines of having to protect the nation from the “crazies on the left and the right?”",1]
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The rise of the NSDAP, affected as it was by mistakes made by the SPD, is also an independent phenomenon. The KPD, its analysis of the SPD as “social-fascists,” and its repudiation (until it was too late) of a Popular Front strategy is again a critical and partially independent phenomenon. Trying to connect the ideas of the SPD with its political strategies and thus with success or failure with only the most notional attention to these two other major players is, frankly, fatuous. I don’t see the point.Or, to be more charitable, I can only see this as a reflexive application of a certain notion of sociological method – “use comparisons to elucidate causes” – when far more useful tools were at hand and ready for use.Next, although the ideational analysis is an excellent idea, it is carried out in a half-baked manner. The dogmatic economic determinist Marxism and the Kautskyan travesty of “scientific socialism” and its effect both on the position of “theorists” like Kautsky and Hilferding and on their lack of political vision is at least developed enough that one can guess at how it worked. But there is no discussion of the ideology of the Swedish SAP in relation to that of the German SDP, beyond saying that Marx and Engels’ being German made Marxism more important to the SDP. What role did Marxism play in the SAP, was there the split between revolutionary Marxism and “parliamentary cretinism,” and if so, how did they end up not seriously affecting the SAP’s decisions?Even more striking, rigid dogmatic Marxism is easily determined to be the primary source of the SDP’s political mistakes or tendency to be simply out of touch with pressing concerns, but nothing is said about how a nominally Marxist party nominally dedicated to the creation of a workers’ state became not just an implementer of standard economic doctrines but also of authoritarian, conservative (though “centrist”) German nationalism.How did a Marxist party start using the standard elitist doctrines of having to protect the nation from the “crazies on the left and the right?”
Within one page, Berman refers to the SPD’s tendency (in dismissing the threat of the Nazis) to talk about Bruning as an exemplar of the “truly dangerous” German fascist tendencies and mentions that they used their at the time massive parliamentary clout to support him as chancellor. What ideas went into that kind of strategy? Those choices are of the essence in understanding the SPD’s failure and its final decision to back Hindenburg as a bulwark against the Nazis only to see him turn around and appoint Hitler as chancellor.Finally, in setting an ideational against an institutional analysis, one is compelled at least to pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of institutional analyses. It amazes me that there is essentially no reference to Robert Michels in the entire book. Not only is “Political Parties” a major foundational work in sociology, most of its 400 pages are devoted to the German SDP. Surely it is necessary to try to tease out the contributions made by the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” as played out in the SDP from those made by Kautskyism if one truly wishes to understand the political paralysis and ineptness of the SDP?All in all, it seems to me that it would have been a much better book if it eliminated the Swedish case (except for occasional mention as an example) and actually really did focus in depth on the ideas of the SDP and their effects.",0]
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Within one page, Berman refers to the SPD’s tendency (in dismissing the threat of the Nazis) to talk about Bruning as an exemplar of the “truly dangerous” German fascist tendencies and mentions that they used their at the time massive parliamentary clout to support him as chancellor. What ideas went into that kind of strategy? Those choices are of the essence in understanding the SPD’s failure and its final decision to back Hindenburg as a bulwark against the Nazis only to see him turn around and appoint Hitler as chancellor.Finally, in setting an ideational against an institutional analysis, one is compelled at least to pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of institutional analyses. It amazes me that there is essentially no reference to Robert Michels in the entire book. Not only is “Political Parties” a major foundational work in sociology, most of its 400 pages are devoted to the German SDP. Surely it is necessary to try to tease out the contributions made by the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” as played out in the SDP from those made by Kautskyism if one truly wishes to understand the political paralysis and ineptness of the SDP?All in all, it seems to me that it would have been a much better book if it eliminated the Swedish case (except for occasional mention as an example) and actually really did focus in depth on the ideas of the SDP and their effects.
