Democratic Socialism
Kramer, Stephen Philip
In Brief Democratic Socialism: The Mass left in Advanced Industrial Societies, Edited by Bogden Denitch. Al-lanheld, Osmun and Co., $26, 180 pp. The Mitterrand victory has renewed scholarly...
...Some articles are good, like Nancy Lieber's terse, analytical account of French socialist foreign policy, others are jargon-laden or banal...
...One might even question the fundamental assumption of the book, that there is such a thing as Eurosocialism...
...Granted that French socialism is full of vitality, but is the same true of Scandinavia, Italy, Belgium...
...For the moment, it's only ex Gallia lux...
...it can be avoided by careful delineation of the subject and planning the articles around certain predetermined questions...
...The title of "The Modernizing Role at the Working-Class Parties in Southern Europe" is deceptive...
...The study as a whole is less than the sum of its parts...
...STEVEN PHILIP KRAMER...
...The problem is chronic to edited works but not insuperable...
...Some Obstacles in Building a Mass Socialist Left in the United States" does not cut the Gordian knot...
...The Mitterrand victory has renewed scholarly interest in the study of the democratic left in Europe, and corresponds happily with the publication of this book of essays devoted to an examination of recent developments in socialism, both thematically and in specific countries...
...English socialism seems committed to self-destruction...
...the article actually concentrates on the role of intellectuals in the Italian Communist Party "Party, Class, and State: A Leninist and a Non-Leninist View" compares the approaches of Lenin and, as non-Leninist, Eugene Debs...
...the individual articles, often interesting, do not present an integrated and coherent picture, nor are they aimed at the same kind of audience...
Vol. 109 • February 1982 • No. 3
