Gary DORRIEN, Social Democracy in the Making: Political and Religious Roots of European Socialism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 578. $37.50hb. ISBN: 978-0-300-24499-1 Reviewed by John V. APCZYNSKI, professor emeritus, Saint Bonaventure University, 14778.  

After nearly a quarter century of the dominance of neo-liberal economic globalism, Western governments are facing popular forms of resentment by the majority of those poorly served by this trajectory.  This has afforded many political leaders an opportunity to prey on this discontent by promoting reactionary policies which, ironically, tend to strengthen the power of entrenched classes in spite of the rhetoric often used to beguile those it purports to serve.  Understanding the political-economic dynamic of our current situation and proposing alternatives to it are necessary conditions for clarity.  Gary Dorrien contributes to such a needed clarification by offering a historical interpretation of the movements for social democracy in Europe from the 19th through the first half of the 20th centuries. 

Dorrien claims that the varieties of social democratic movements achieved significant, albeit often unacknowledged, progress in the face of the dominant ideologies of unbridled capitalism in England and Germany.  He weaves his narrative beginning with 19th century British socialist thinking, often inspired by both dissenting and established religious sentiment.  This movement was essentially pragmatic and searching, open to a variety of positions, even allowing a refuge for Marx.  Dorrien traces the careers and developments of several figures, Robert Owen, F.D. Maurice, Charles Kingsley, Stewart Headlam, and Henry Gorge, among many others, leading eventually to the Fabian Society.

He turns next to German socialist movements, which tended to be more theoretical because of the influence of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.  Dorrien is very helpful in presenting how Marx shifted and backtracked as he developed his critique of capitalism and proposals for a socialist society, including his brief view regarding the “dictatorship of the proletariat” which became so fateful under Lenin.  He also discusses the debates between Karl Kautsky, who developed “orthodox” Marxism, and Eduard Bernstein who proposed a more democratic version.

In the aftermath of the First World War, Dorrien presents the development of German political theology, beginning with Herman Kutter and Leonhard Ragaz who began a movement for religious socialism.  They inspired Karl Barth, which led to his break from the dominant 19th century liberal theology in which he was trained, including his commitment to socialist causes.  But the theologically conservative tendency in German seminaries allowed those like Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Althaus to accommodate Lutheran orthodoxy in its path to becoming subservient to Nazi ideology.  While Barth would have no quarter with such thinking, eventually it required him to relocate to Switzerland and adopt a stance that “transcended” politics.  Paul Tillich, who was born within a very traditional Prussian family, advanced to a stellar academic career in Germany and became a committed socialist who put socialism at the center of his thinking in the 1920s and 1930s.  He was aghast at the rise of Hitler, and could not believe that he would be fired from his university position until after it happened.  Once reluctantly located to the United States, Tillich pragmatically avoided political matters, something for which Dorrien faults him as a failure to continue the struggle for justice.

British socialism was distinct in Europe insofar as it was ethical, pragmatic, not terribly ideological, open to religious reflection, and friendly to labor.  Thus it avoided the revolutionary turmoil of continental socialist parties in the aftermath of the Great War.  The ground was prepared for the distinctive British form of socialism through guidance from the religious leadership and thinking of William Temple and R.H. Tawney, and the socialist thinker G. D. H. Cole, who eventually assumed the prestigious Chichele Chair at Oxford and championed a version of democratic socialism throughout his career.  Once Labour was swept into power in 1945, it enacted nearly all of its domestic policies within a few years, so that its platform for the 1949 elections was difficult to prepare.

By the middle of the last century, various forms of social democracy were triumphant throughout much of Europe.  Mixed economies, without government control of industrial capital, were able to achieve socialist goals of more equitable distribution of wealth.  Soviet Russia shattered the example of socialist democracy in central Europe so that the way forward in Germany was to cooperate with the capitalist, victorious United States.  This led to the “miracle on the Rhine”
where Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic Union party claimed that free enterprise and shrewd government planning led to the renewal of prosperity.  After the construction of the Berlin Wall by Soviet Russia, Willy Brandt became the leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SDP).  He upheld a mixed economy and supported the codetermination movement attracting both workers and middle class professionals.  German socialists stopped promising to abolish capitalism by supporting socialist values through progressively transforming capitalism.

Dorrien has produced a masterful survey of the socialist movement and its religious elements in Europe up to the middle of the last century.  My survey here hints at its breadth, but not its depth.  He has supported his narrative by marshaling an abundance of material from primary sources including correspondence, essays, and pamphlets in addition to books.  I wish he had included more from the Catholic tradition.  He does mention Bishop von Ketteler’s work on behalf of unions and its eventual vindication by Rerum Novarum in 1891 and Cardinal Manning’s mediation of the London dock strike of 1889, but without his customary depth of analysis.  I suspect that the reactionary anti-modernist stance of the Vatican blunted its political and social impact, so that Dorrien judged that it did not contribute significantly to the overall story of socialist thought.  He hints in his preface that he may take up the question of socialism in the United States.  If so, I hope he might take up the work of Ryan’s Program of Social Reconstruction from early last century to Economic Justice for All.  (As a disciple of Michael Harrington, I am sure he is familiar with this heritage.)  In addition to his contribution to the history of social theory, Dorrien’s work provides instances of theological gems.  For example, a major breakthrough of Karl Barth’s theology is the recovery of the notion of revelation as the encounter with God, not some propositional content.  This is a major innovation for 20th century western theology.  Dorrien argues that the source of this insight is derived from the teachings of Hermann via Hegel and Schleiermacher.  Barth never acknowledged the source of this insight in liberal theology.

Socialism is an elusive term in our present context.  Gary Dorrien attempts to make the case through its historical development in Europe that it is best understood as an ethical passion for social justice within a democratic community.  This study contributes to such a clarification, and should be consulted by all those who wish to understand this movement.