This book by Steffen Mau, Professor of Macrosociology at Humboldt-University of Berlin, is the first in a new series Palgrave Provocations (editors John Holmwood and Sue Scott). It is a Palgrave Pivot – short-form monographs of 25,000 to 50,000 words, allowing more space to develop an argument and present data than in a conventional journal article. Given the hardback price, the audience is likely to be primarily professional social scientists and students. Pivots aim to incorporate recent findings and deal with topical issues. Certainly this applies to Mau's book, especially the last two chapters: he presents a comprehensive review of the literature on social and policy trends, includes up to date evidence and references, and addresses current political and economic questions.

The central argument is that ‘while the European social model has not been fundamentally forsaken and there has been no unambiguous triumph of neo-liberal politics, the model has been challenged, aggressively attacked and indeed transformed by neo-liberalism’ (p. vii). There have been changes to social rights, a growth in inequality, restructuring of the welfare state, liberalization of labour markets, deregulation of financial markets, outsourcing of public services, dismantling of corporatism, the rise of the consumer and experience of financial crises. Everyone now seems to bow the knee to the market, accepting the superiority of private provision and claiming the value of competition in fostering innovation. So far so familiar. What Mau wants to explain is why these ideas and policies were accepted, especially by the middle classes – ‘core beneficiaries of the welfare state’ (p. viii). The answer lies, it seems, in the pursuit of self-interest, investment opportunities in privatized industries and housing, affluence, mass consumption and the moral corruption of material prosperity, all encouraging individualism and retreat from collectivism. But critical also was the way in which the reshaping of social provision via neo-liberal social policies, as in pensions, taxation, education and housing, altered social relations and their associated norms and values, especially influencing attitudes to state intervention and redistribution. Again so far so familiar, although Mau makes a valuable contribution in cogently setting out this crucial sociological observation and showing the processes through which change came about – important clarification, especially perhaps for younger generations who have grown up in marketized societies and never known anything different.

However just as neo-liberalism had become accepted – and social democratic parties had adjusted their programmes [‘we are all Thatcherites now’, Third Way projects, quasi-market proposals] – problems erupted: rising inequality, increasing insecurity, stagnation of incomes, excesses of the super-rich, collapsing middle, unemployment, social unrest, increases in suicide rates, state and household indebtedness and new austerity policies.

More books and articles are now being devoted to mapping inequality and pointing out social injustice (Dorling, Reference Dorling2010). Class has been rediscovered (Savage, Reference Savage2015). While immensely valuable, such facts and exhortations will not in themselves prompt a change in direction towards more stable, just and humane societies. Mau's sociological analysis shows why, by stressing the importance of social relations and experiences in shaping attitudes which will not be altered simply by calls for more altruism.

In the final two chapters ‘Economic Problems and Political Dilemmas’ and ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel?’ Mau engages with this question. His conclusion is pessimistic. While market failure is evident, alternatives appealing to the majority are lacking. There is no possibility of a simple swing of the pendulum back to a reformed social democracy. Challenge to neo-liberalism is difficult because of the hegemony of financialization and transnational corporations, and the ‘lack of a popular basis of support for redistribution and reregulation’ (p. 100). The middle classes’ ‘ties to and interests in the market are such that it seems inconceivable that one could simply turn back the clock’ (ibid). The middle classes may now be more sceptical about the promises of neo-liberalism but ‘they are not done with the market’ (p. 101). The collapse of collective identities and stable group ties has gone too far. Deep changes in the welfare state cannot be easily undone. Attitudes to the state have fundamentally altered.

This is a well-argued thesis supported by much sociological evidence. One can take issue with some elements. A central tenet is the concept of the middle classes. Mau's equivocation about who or what these are is indicated in the book's title – referring initially to ‘the majority class’ and then in the sub-title to ‘European middle classes’. Mainly he uses the term as a statistical construct, referring to middle-income groups but with associated social characteristics relating to skills, occupation, education, culture and values. At other times, his interpretation seems strongly influenced by his own German location. Mau accepts the differences between social democratic corporatist societies and liberal or southern European societies. But this is not really good enough: the variations are critical. This links also to his attempt to generalize across European societies. While accepting the point that in a short book it is not possible to deal thoroughly with varieties of welfare states, the construct seems to be stretched too far and certainly breaks down now post-2008, when social and economic conditions in say Greece, Spain, Germany, Poland, Sweden or UK are very different.

Central to Mau's argument is the nature of contemporary politics. This he sees as having been strongly influenced by attempts to woo the ‘median voter’. Competition between two broad parties/coalitions, one liberal-conservative and the other social democratic, may have characterized previous decades but it is ceasing to function well, with decreasing party attachment and rise of minority parties a common phenomenon across Europe.

With polarization and rising authoritarian populism, the challenge today is how to revive ideas and programmes of social democracy, in Britain and Europe, and make these appealing to the majority of voters, perhaps the bottom 70%. But support for neo-liberalism may well continue, reluctantly and unhappily, driven largely by fear, especially fear of the consequences of radical change (as argued by Costas Lapavitsas (Reference Lapavitsas2015) in his account of why the Greeks finally voted to stay in the euro). Mau's cold analysis is a useful corrective to overly optimistic and naïve polemics but it leaves open the question of whether neo-liberalism is itself sustainable, how it might collapse and what might replace it.