Crisis, ideas, and class: A fresh look at British Labour, French socialists, and German social democrats during the neoliberal wave of accumulation

This article traces the fortunes and misfortunes of social democracy in Britain, France, and Germany during the neoliberal age. The first part of the article offers a short discussion and critique of self-reflections offered by leading social democratic intellectuals when the age of social democracy ended. These reflections laid the ideational groundwork for the later adoption of neoliberalism. They also offer a common framework that allows the comparison of the ways this adoption unfolded in country-specific institutions and political traditions of Britain, France, and Germany. The next two sections follow social democrats in these three countries through the neoliberal upswing from the early 1980s until the end of the New Economy boom in 2001, and then through the downturn aggravated by the Great Recession and Euro-crisis from 2008 to 2010 and lasting until today. The article concludes with some considerations about possible left futures within or beyond social democratic parties. Theoretically, the article draws on Rosa Luxemburg to explain the Keynesian and neoliberal waves of accumulation and on E.P. Thompson to explain the making, institutionalization, and unmaking of working classes. These economic and social analyses combined deliver the background for social democratic fortunes and misfortunes explained in this article.