| Popis: |
This chapter investigates the defeat of the European Left’s struggle for a ‘social Europe’ in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It first exposes how, despite some achievements, the European Community (EC) social concern of the early 1970s faded away with the 1974–5 economic recession, the restrictive turn of several governments, and Schmidt replacing Brandt in West Germany. Second, it turns to the failed ‘Eurocorporatist’ attempt to define a new EC-level social compromise. Third, it retraces the unions’ forgotten efforts to take to the streets their demands for an alternative macroeconomic European strategy and for a European reduction of working time. Fourth, it exposes the defeat of the struggle for a democratization of the economy through greater workers’ control of multinational companies. Finally, it shows how the French government’s 1983 decision to abandon its socialist programme in order to remain in the EMS marked the final blow to the European Left’s struggle for a redistributive, planning-oriented, and regulatory ‘worker’s Europe’. |
