This chapter focuses on the theories of Ernst Fraenkel, one of the most important Socialist intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1950s, the German left transformed from a class-based party of international neutrality into a broad-tent party of Cold War conviction. This shift by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) has its roots in intellectual projects in the Weimar period. No one represents this continuity better than Fraenkel, a member of a unique intellectual school that sought to fuse Socialist and bourgeois theories of law, politics, and democracy. In this line of thought, it was incumbent on Socialists and middle-class liberals to join together in building a new kind of democratic regime, premised on equal respect for individual rights and social welfare. According to Fraenkel, the SPD had to renounce its belief that only the nationalization of the economy would bring about “true” democratic equality. Instead, Socialists had to embrace democratic visions that centered on individual rights, reach out to the middle class, and focus on welfare programs. In Fraenkel's mind, the true threat to this progressive vision was not the middle classes and industrialists, as many Socialists claimed, but ultimately communism.
Comparing Swedish Foundations: A Carefully Negotiated Space of Existence