The Crisis of Belgian Social Democracy

Abstract

The year 1965 will undoubtedly be counted among the most disastrous in the long history of Belgian Social Democracy. It brought to the Belgian Socialist Party an unprecedented electoral defeat (the magnitude of which we will discuss later); and it was a defeat that occurred on the chosen ground of Social-Democracy. For an electoral disaster, unlike an unsuccessful strike, represents complete political limbo, since the electoral returns constitute the beginning and the end of orthodox social-democratic philosophy.