Socialism’s Heirs

This book traces the development of the German left since 1945, concentrating on what was West Germany. The main difficulty of democratic socialism in Germany, the authors argue, is the success of a welfarist version of capitalist democracy in the Federal Republic. A socialist reconstruction of German society was impossible, but a very large measure of social decency and political democratization were institutionalized. That was largely the work of a Social Democratic party that has recently stumbled over its own triumphs. The projects with which it set the agenda of German society during its years in power (1969-1982) are either out of date or no longer exclusively its own. Much of the German right accepts the welfare state, and the pra...