Ideas of social policy in the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party between the world wars: the controversy between Evžen Štern and Jiří Pleskot
Abstract
The article deals with the idea of social policy in the interwar Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party on the example of two significant personalities (Evžen Štern, Jiří Pleskot). The author relies on the less well-known assumption of power-resources approach, that the welfare state as an extension of social policy represents for social democrats a first step towards the socialism.
The basic question of the study is, whether social democrats really did understood social policy as an instrument or part of transition from capitalism to socialism in this period. The author concludes that such idea was present in the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, but not all intraparty streams shared it and it was not expressed in the official programmatic documents.