Radicalism or Reformism? Socialist Parties before World War I Gary Marks Heather A. D. Mbaye University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill University of West Georgia VU Amsterdam Hyung Min Kim Inha University This article builds on social movement theory to explain ideological variation among socialist, social democratic, and labor parties across 18 countries in the early twentieth century. We propose a causal argument connecting (1) the political emergence of the bourgeoisie and its middle-class allies to (2) the political space for labor unions and working-class parties, which (3) provided a setting for internal pressures and external opportunities that shaped socialist party ideology. Combining quantitative analysis and case studies, we find that the timing of civil liberties and the strength of socialist links with labor unions were decisive for reformism or radicalism. Refining Lipset’s prior analysis, we qualify his claim that male suffrage provides a key to socialist orientation. hanges in class and political relations in all industrial societies. Unlike the “Cwithin industrially developedDelivered societies, by Ingentacenter/periphery to : and religious cleavages arising much like the shifts in left-wing politicsUniversity in the of North Carolina Tue, 18 Aug 2009from 20:55:06 nation-state formation and the United States and Europe, may be analyzed Reformation, the class cleavage characterizes all within the framework of an ‘apolitical’ industrial societies. In this article, we ask why Marxism—that is, by accepting the proposition that conflict varied so decisively prior to World that technological advances and the distribu- War I: Why were some socialist parties radical tion of economic classes determine the politi- and others reformist? cal and cultural superstructures, but without Socialist, social democratic, and labor parties assuming that socialism will succeed capital- formed across Europe, North America, and ism” (Lipset 2001:77). Australasia in the decades prior to World War The ideological development of socialist par- I. All appealed to manual workers as their core ties resembles a natural experiment and has rel- constituency. All began with, or adopted, polit- evance for social scientists beyond its ical programs demanding male suffrage (later, substantive importance. As Lipset and Rokkan universal suffrage), civil rights, economic equal- (1967) recognized in their classic account of ity, and a decisive role for the state in the econ- party structure, the conflict between workers and omy. Yet the goals pursued by socialist parties employers has framed the sociology of politics varied widely. Some parties, such as the Russian Bolsheviks, Finnish socialists, and Spanish socialists, had revolutionary platforms demand- Direct correspondence to Gary Marks at ing the dissolution of the existing capitalist sys- [email protected]. We wish to thank Carles Boix, tem, the expropriation of private property, and François Nielsen, John Stephens, and the compara- an immediate transition to socialism. Other tive politics working group at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for comments on earlier ver- socialist or labor parties, such as the British sions of this article, and Liesbet Hooghe for ideas and Labour party, the Danish socialists, and the inspiration. Stefano Bartolini and Bernhard Swiss socialists, were reformist, campaigning Ebbinghaus generously shared data. for welfare reforms, an eight-hour workday, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2009, VOL. 74 (August:615–635) 616—–AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW and more working-class representation in the and labor unions—constituted a powerful pres- legislature. sure for socialist radicalism or reformism. From a social movement perspective, this study explores how three features of a system THEORIZING REFORMISM OR of institutionalized politics—repression, suf- RADICALISM frage, and civil liberties—affect movement strat- egy. Since Tilly’s landmark study (1978), social An astonishing variety of factors have been movement theorists have explored how state hypothesized to affect socialist party orientation. repression shapes social movements and their These include economic variables bearing on the repertoires (McAdam 1996; Tarrow 1996). structure and consciousness of the working Subsequent research has focused on variation in class, such as the standard of living, the degree the process of repression: Is repression brutal or of industrial concentration, the character of the soft, generalized or selective, legal or illegal, division of labor and the work process, and the preemptive or reactive, rigid or flexible, pro- level, pace, and timing of industrialization. The fessional or improvised (della Porta and Reiter literature also points to social variables shaping 1998; McPhail and McCarthy 2005)? This arti- working-class attitudes, such as the status sys- cle disaggregates repression into three sub- tem, social mobility, the spatial nexus of work stantive mechanisms—denial of civil liberties, and home, the development of compulsory edu- denial of the right to organize in the labor mar- cation, and the ethnic, religious, and linguistic ket, and denial of political citizenship—on the composition of the working class. Finally, there grounds that different kinds of political access are political variables influencing both working- have different consequences for movement strat- class attitudes and socialist party ideology, such egy. as the timing of male suffrage, state repression, The topic of radicalism or reformism has cross-class coalitions, the degree to which a been taken up by political sociologistsDelivered from the by Ingentastate is to decentralized, : the role of intellectuals, and the type, coverage, and timing of welfare time of Karl Marx, and while we buildUniversity on their of North Carolina provisions. ideas throughout this article, the Tue,explanation 18 Aug 2009 20:55:06 Studies have approached this diversity of we offer differs from previous ones in three plausible causes in two ways. The first details respects. First, we evaluate the research hypothe- comparisons across a few cases to understand ses quantitatively as well as qualitatively. One the interaction of multiple factors. By observ- reason why there has been negligible systematic ing change in even a single country, researchers testing in this field is that we lack objective can present evidence about how, for example, measures, and so our first step is to estimate the introduction of male suffrage affects social- socialist ideology and the political context that ist leaders’ political orientations. Causal infer- confronted socialist parties.1 Second, we reject ence is difficult, however, given the large the notion that participation in elections damp- number of possible influences and the limited ened the revolutionary ardor of socialist parties variation of relevant conditions across a small and we qualify Lipset’s claim that political cit- number of cases. izenship provides a key to socialist orientation. The second approach, which we use here, Basic civil liberties (freedom of association and compares a larger set of cases. Although it sac- freedom of the press) are prior to, and apparently rifices descriptive specificity, the larger sample more decisive than, citizenship. Finally, the size allows for greater rigor. The number of explanation we propose goes beyond the wide- independent cases at our disposal—37 cases ly-held view that socialist ideology is a response drawn from 18 countries—is still not large to the structure of political alternatives. Instead, enough to control the range of influences list- we claim that the structure of the labor move- ed above. We therefore focus on two sets of ment—in particular, links between the party causally proximate variables. First, what polit- ical opportunities were available to socialist parties within their respective political systems? 1 Bartolini (2000) is a major exception, and we Could workers vote? What channels were open draw on his data to measure union–party links (see for workers to organize and express their also Schakel 2004). demands? Second, what was the structure of RADICALISM OR REFORMISM?—–617 the labor movement and what pressures could the House of Commons: “Let us have textile labor unions exert on socialist parties to reform, workers in Parliament just as we already have rather than abolish, the system of wage labor? miners there. As soon as a dozen branches of The political channels available to socialist industry are represented class consciousness parties and the structure of the labor movement will arise of itself ” (Lapides 1986:165). resulted from explicable patterns of economic, Others argued that male suffrage would weak- social, and political development. The ability of en demands for the wholesale rejection of cap- the bourgeoisie and its middle-class allies to italist society. Lenin claimed that German Social mount an effective challenge to the hegemony Democracy could benefit from the fact that of the monarchy and its agrarian allies appears “the bourgeois-democratic revolution was still to have been crucial. Political liberalism pro- incomplete” and that, conversely, American moted the interests of the propertied middle socialism was weak because it existed in a classes, but by limiting absolutism it had two “firmly established democratic system .|.|. which unintended consequences: it extended a mini- confronted the proletariat with purely socialist mal, although contested, domain of freedom of tasks” (Lenin [1907]