ABSTRACT
As people's parties, socialist parties can no longer be socialist, if that term implies a commitment to putting an end to capitalism and to creating a classless society. Socialist parties have become people's parties not only organizationally and electorally but also ideologically. The more socialist parties become people's parties, the less they function as separate workers' subcultures, which they had once created through numerous workers' organizations. Such organizations had been a response to workers' exclusion from the larger society and are no longer needed when workers become integrated in that society and intermingle with non-workers. Pity disappeared and discomfort turned into fear and resentment when workers organized and threatened the established order by demanding an end to their poverty and exclusion. Having started out as parties representing the poor and the excluded and pledged to end their poverty and exclusion, social democratic parties have fulfilled these pledges—and have thereby destroyed their erstwhile constituency.
