Social democracy in a post-industrial society: The Social Democratic Party of Germany, the New Left, and the decline of laborite politics

This thesis examines the sociological and ideological impact of the "New Left" on the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) between the mid-1960s and 1994. Building on the theories of Ronald Inglehart and Herbert Kitschelt, the dissertation analyzes the transformation of the SPD from a predominantly blue-collar party with close links to the labor movement into a predominantly "new-middle-class" (i.e., professional and white-collar) "liberal-centrist" party that combines a considerable degree of New-Left "post-materialism" (Inglehart) or "left-libertarianism" (Kitschelt) with a strong dose of free-market-oriented neoliberalism and a much-reduced but still significant element of "Old-Left" welfare-statism. The thesis seeks to resolve the apparent paradox between the rise to power within the Social Democratic Party of radically anti-capitalist New-Left ideas and individuals, on the one hand, and the SPD's continuing evolution from a relatively socialist party into a relatively free-market-oriented, pro-business party, on the other hand. The main argument is that, over the long term, the overwhelmingly new-middle-class and highly-educated New Left had the unintentional effect of accelerating and facilitating the SPD's ongoing abandonment of socialist policies and ideology by pushing the party farther away from its laborite and proletarian roots.