THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIALISM

For socialists the most puzzling feature of the post-World War I period has always been why the labor movement could not capitalize on its greatly strengthened position by making decisive headway toward a socialized economy. Yet, in retrospect one must recognize that this “failure” was not too surprising at all. While the goal of a socialist economy may at times have served an important rhetorical role for some social democratic parties, it remained largely irrelevant for the conduct of practical economic policies. During prosperous times, there seemed to be no reason to risk a socialist experiment, and, during periods of crises, it seemed unwise to further upset the complex machinery of the developed Western European economies. The political logic of a movement that wanted to improve the economic and social plight of its followers, yet could only see massive economic dislocations in the transition to a socialist economy, instead suggested a program of reformism within the framework of a market economy.

At the end of the war, social democracy was unable to give any concrete content to Marx's contention that the liberation of labor was the precondition for the liberation of society – specifically that public ownership of the means of production would benefit everyone. Germany was the only country in Western Europe in which a socialist revolution might have been politically feasible immediately after the collapse of the Wilhelmine Empire.