March 13, 2016

But #Revolution sounds sexier

From Post War: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt:

Nevertheless, within the general post-war European consensus there was a distinctive vision, that of the Social Democrats. Social Democracy had always been a hybrid; indeed, this was just what was held against it by enemies of the Right and Left alike. A practice in lifelong search of its theory, Social Democracy was the outcome of an insight vouchsafed to a generation of European socialists early in the twentieth century: that radial social revolution in the heartlands of modern Europe -- as prophesied and planned by the socialist visionaries of the nineteenth century -- lay in the past, not the future. As a solution to the injustice and inefficiency of industrial capitalism, the nineteenth-century paradigm of violent urban upheaval was not only undesirable and unlikely to meet its goals; it was also redundant. Genuine improvements to the condition of all classes could be obtained in incremental and peaceful ways.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home