There Were Alternatives

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the European Left’s attempt to formulate a coordinated response to the crisis between the two oil shocks (1973–9). It argues that the crisis, which accelerated the breakdown of the postwar compromise, pushed the European Left to formulate new proposals for an alternative macro-economic European strategy that went beyond Keynesian welfare capitalism and constituted a possible alternative to the rising neoliberal doctrine. At a time when the European Left dominated the European Community, this was no point of detail. The chapter first looks at the leftward turn that characterized European social democracy from the late 1960s, which climaxed a few years later with the adoption of alternative economic strategies by several parties; it then investigates how socialist economists tried to promote a coordinated alternative European strategy at the transnational level; and goes on to assess socialist parties’ and trade unions’ efforts to adopt common European programmes that went beyond ‘Euro-Keynesianism’.