Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century. New York: New Press, 1997. xxv + 965 pp. $39.95 cloth.

Abstract

Toward the very end of his opus magnum, Sassoon cites the French philosopher Alain: “When I am asked whether the division between Left and Right still has any meaning, the first thought which comes to my mind is that the person who asks the question is not on the Left” (776). Sassoon never asks that question, and it shows throughout the text. He unabashedly states that after one hundred years of socialism, many reforms have been obtained but wage earners “have not increased their control over their conditions of work at a pace remotely comparable to the expansion of political democracy, the increase in material prosperity, the extension in social welfare, or the advance in science and technology” (758). Almost everyone still has to give up most basic rights when entering their place of employment. Likewise, in this postmodern age of the retreat from class as a category of analysis, Sassoon criticizes converts to identity politics, who assert that frequently re- and decomposing groups of people are “ephemerally constructed through discourse” (649), with such brief but unmistakable rejoinders as: “Classes were not disappearing; they were changing” (658). Sassoon's thoughts on neoliberalism and globalization may be gauged by his succinct comment that the most recent “unleashing of market forces as a solution to mass unemployment” should be regarded as “a monument to human folly” (456).