Socialist Parties before World War I

in class and political relationswithin industrially developed societies, much like the shifts in left-wing politics in the United States and Europe, may be analyzed within the framework of an ‘apolitical’ Marxism—that is, by accepting the proposition that technological advances and the distribu-tion of economic classes determine the politi-cal and cultural superstructures, but without assuming that socialism will succeed capital-ism ” (Lipset 2001:77). The ideological development of socialist par-ties resembles a natural experiment and has rel-evance for social scientists beyond its substantive importance. As Lipset and Rokkan (1967) recognized in their classic account of party structure, the conflict between workers and employers has framed the sociology of politics in all industrial societies. Unlike the center/periphery and religious cleavages arising from nation-state formation and the Reformation, the class cleavage characterizes all industrial societies. In this article, we ask why that conflict varied so decisively prior to World War I: Why were some socialist parties radical and others reformist? Socialist, social democratic, and labor parties formed across Europe, North America, and Australasia in the decades prior to World War I. All appealed to manual workers as their core constituency. All began with, or adopted, polit-ical programs demanding male suffrage (later, universal suffrage), civil rights, economic equal-ity, and a decisive role for the state in the econ-omy. Yet the goals pursued by socialist parties varied widely. Some parties, such as the Russian Bolsheviks, Finnish socialists, and Spanish socialists, had revolutionary platforms demand-ing the dissolution of the existing capitalist sys-tem, the expropriation of private property, and an immediate transition to socialism. Other socialist or labor parties, such as the British Labour party, the Danish socialists, and the Swiss socialists, were reformist, campaigning for welfare reforms, an eight-hour workday, Radicalism or Reformism