[.ca] One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left ... (ISBN 1565844866)

Outstanding narrative of Western European socialism.:
The author peforms an admirable job of condensing 100 years of Western European socialist history into a readable narrative. He describes the conditions that led to the triumph and then the fall of socialist movements in Europe. The author fails in his attempts at refuting the intellectual attacks on socialism levied by Mises, Hayek, and others, dismissing them as reactionary hacks rather than addressing the validity of their arguements. As socialism becomes even more untenable in a global economy, the author's work reads like an epitaph for a dead ideology advanced by a dying political movement.

Empirical History at its best:
Communism was an invention of Lenin. It was based on the notion of a small conspiratorial political party seizing power and achieving radical social transformation often flying in the face of popular will. Socialism was an invention of the Bernstien, Bebel and others. It involved the achievement of a democratic franchise, the use of trade unions to achieve worker rights and state intervention to achieve social equality. This book is a history of West European socialism in the twentieth century. After the war socialism or the mixed economy was accepted by even conservative and centre parties. From the 1950's to the early 80's the doctrines of John Meynard Keynes and a belief that the state should intervene to iron out the problems of the free enterprise state dominated government. From the 1970's to the 1990's things began to change. In retrospect the basis of the consensus over how to manage the economies in the 50's and 60's was not based on a successful economic doctrine but on a long boom. The oil crisis led to stagflation a phenomena thought impossible by Keynsians. By the late 1970's all governments began to jettison what had been central aspects of economic certainty. The fist to go was the governmental responsibility for demand management and the maintenance of full employment. By the end of the 1990's most governments had dismantled exchange controls and were allowing the free movement of capital in and out of their countries. Public utilities were being sold off and more and more traditional areas of government were being handled by contracting out. This book is a history of the rise, decline and fall of socialism in Europe. The author appears to be a committed socialist but the book is dispassionate and objective. It contains thousands of facts and figures including voting trends, taxation rates and material on economic performance. It is a serious analytical analysis of a hundred years of practical pragmatic politics. As such it might lack the populist flair of some more stringent ideological tracts but is a fascinating account of real history. It would seem that despite the current ascendancy of "Economic Rationalism" the old polices had positive outcomes. Most European countries have less poverty than the United States a country that has always been resistant to liberal ideas. Further European countries appear to have better working education and health systems. Further some of the core policies of Bernstien such as a free and open franchise and the importance of education have become firmly established by all segments of society. This book will not doubt become a classic and should be read by all interested in either history or politics.