Peter Mair began his posthumous 2011 book Ruling the Void with a blunt declaration: “the age of party democracy has passed.” While the party form had obviously not disappeared, Mair argued that the traditional parties were no longer capable of organizing and sustaining democratic politics as we have known it.

For a long time, Mair’s bleak prognosis appeared accurate. During the neoliberal era, parties across the advanced capitalist world became increasingly detached from their traditional social bases. Distinctions between parties of the Left and Right were blurred as they coalesced around a common neoliberal agenda. Party members drifted from the ranks, voters stayed home from the polls, and elections became the domain of spin doctors, PR consultants, and media moguls. If you wanted a picture of the future, it was the image of Silvio Berlusconi grinning horribly, forever.

The Left invented the mass party, and the Left has suffered the most from its decline. Once mighty socialist and communist parties have collapsed in country after country, and Germany’s SPD — the original mass party of the Left — could be next on the list. Its collapse would be a truly historic event marking the end of an epoch reaching back to the earliest days of the socialist movement.