Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe

Martin Conway, Camilo Erlichman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009370837
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Social justice has returned to the heart of political debate in present-day Europe. But what does it mean in different national histories and political regimes, and how has this changed over time? This book provides the first historical account of the evolution of notions of social justice across Europe since the late nineteenth century. Written by an international team of leading historians, the book analyses the often-divergent ways in which political movements, state institutions, intellectual groups, and social organisations have understood and sought to achieve social justice. Conceived as an emphatically European analysis covering both the eastern and western halves of the continent, Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe demonstrates that no political movement ever held exclusive ownership of the meaning of social justice. Conversely, its definition has always been strongly contested, between those who would define it in terms of equality of conditions, or of opportunity; the security provided by state authority, or the freedom of personal initiative; the individual rights of a liberal order, or the social solidarities of class, nation, confession, or Volk.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Social Justice: A Historical Introduction
• 2 Social Justice within a Market Society: The Debate in Western Europe from the End of the Nineteenth Century
• 3 Catholic Conceptions of Social Justice from 1891 to Pope Francis
• 4 Social Justice through Taxation?: Taxing the Rich in Belgium in the 1920s
• 5 A Fascist Social Justice?: Hierarchy, Order, and Equity in Southern European Corporatism
• 6 Social Justice in Authoritarian Central Europe: Czechoslovakia under Nazism and Communism
• 7 Social Justice in a Socialist Society: Understandings of Social Justice and Social Policy in Hungary after 1945
• 8 Immigrants and Social Justice in Western Europe since the 1960s
• 9 Reimagining Peace through Social Justice in Mid- to Late Twentieth-Century Europe
• 10 Social Justice or Sexual Justice?: Social Justice and the Problem of Women in Twentieth-Century Europe
• 11 Equity Rules: Social Justice on the Ruins of Socialism
• 12 Bridging the Void: Social Justice in the History of the European Union
• 13 Postscript
• Index