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Wikipedia - Social Democracy
The history of social democracy stretches back to the 19th-century labour movement. It is a left-wing political ideology that advocates for a peaceful democratic evolution from laissez-faire or crony capitalism towards social capitalism sometimes also referred to as a social market economy. Social democracy opposes the full centralization of an economy as proposed by socialists, like democratic socialists, which are sometimes mislabeled as social democrats. The main difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is that democratic socialism is a political philosophy within socialism, advocating an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, using established political processes, as opposed to the revolutionary socialist approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism. On the other hand, social democracy seeks to improve the lives of people living within a free and democratic society, by having a well regulated market economy. In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then-current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternative path to socialism or a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. Social democrats promoted Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state while placing less emphasis on the goal of replacing the capitalist system (factor markets, private property, and wage labour) with a qualitatively different socialist economic system. Along with communism, social democracy became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s.
While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, social democracy is distinguished from some modern forms of democratic socialism for seeking to humanize capitalism and create the conditions for it to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian, and solidaristic outcomes. It is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, eliminating oppression of underprivileged groups, and eradicating poverty, as well as support for universally accessible public services like child care, education, elderly care, health care, and workers' compensation. It has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions, being supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers and measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination, or social ownership, for employees and stakeholders.
The Third Way, which ostensibly aims to fuse liberal economics with social democratic welfare policies, is an ideology that developed in the 1990s and is sometimes associated with social democratic parties; some analysts have characterized the Third Way as part of the neoliberal movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
What is Democratic Socialism? - Democratic Socialists of America
How Are Socialism and Communism Different?
Under communism, there is no such thing as private property. All property is communally owned, and each person receives a portion based on what they need. A strong central government—the state—controls all aspects of economic production, and provides citizens with their basic necessities, including food, housing, medical care and education.
By contrast, under socialism, individuals can still own property. But industrial production, or the chief means of generating wealth, is communally owned and managed by a democratically elected government.
Another key difference between socialism and communism is the means of achieving them. In communism, a violent revolution in which the workers rise up against the middle and upper classes is seen as an inevitable part of achieving a pure communist state. Socialism is a less rigid, more flexible ideology. Its adherents seek change and reform, but insist on making these changes through democratic processes within the existing social and political structure, not overthrowing that structure.
The Theory of Social Democracy - Thomas Meyer
The former restricts the scope of democracy and fundamental rights to the political sphere, and defines the self-regulating market and unregulated private property as the institutional counterparts of democracy in the economic and social sphere. Social democracy, by contrast, insists that democracy and its associated charter of rights must be extended into the social and economic spheres as well. Specifically, the social order must meet higher standards of democracy by allowing for well-regulated participation, a legal claim to social security, a distribution of wealth and income that takes justice into account, and a democratic state, the regulative and distributive policies of which accord with all of these values. One could also distinguish liberal from social democracy by emphasizing the former's commitment to economic liberalism, as ordinary language usage suggests. However, in the present theory the conceptual triad of liberal, libertarian, and social democracy will be employed consistently in line with the previous definitions...
The main principles of the theory construct their normative and democratic foundations exclusively on the United Nations Covenants on Human Rights (1966), which are a valid component of international law, having been ratified by 148 countries representing all cultural regions and levels of development. That document links civil, political, social, cultural, and economic rights, all formulated in culturally neutral terms, and employed so that they expressly acknowledge the different levels of development attained by diverse countries.
The UN Charter of Rights owes its origins to a distinct line of argument that enjoys a universal, culture-transcendent appeal. In terms of the logic of its validation, this argument is stronger than the covenants, because it provides solid reasons for the universal validity of fundamental rights. But in terms of the politics of validation it is weaker than they are, because it cannot bind dissenters. ...The goal will be twofold: to clarify the content and meaning of rights by placing them in a broader context, and to justify their claim to universal validity through reasoning that does not depend on their status as part of positive law. Apropos of these normative foundations, the theory of social democracy will also try to ascertain the implications universal rights might have for democratic theory and politics as well as social policy. But even here, the core of the project remains empirical. Its most pressing concern is to clarify the prerequisites and consequences of fundamental rights thus anchored in international law for specific areas of social action in the world as we know it or reasonably expect it to become.
Beginning from normative principles, the theory analyzes the set of institutional, cultural, and organizational strategies best suited to give basic rights concrete meaning in everyday life...
...what kinds of institutions, forums, policies, participatory channels, and rights does a democracy have to create, in order to secure the universal fundamental rights of all its citizens against the structural risks inherent in modern economic and social life? There are many compelling reasons to ground social democracy on universal basic rights, not least their status as a relatively non-arbitrary set of assumptions. Rather than building on unavoidably controversial theories of society and justice, our approach begins from normative principles that have been almost universally incorporated into positive law and enjoy widespread support in the theory of democracy as well...
The Legacy & Aims of Political Liberalism
Since the Enlightenment the theory of liberal democracy has provided a virtually unchallenged source of legitimation for most regimes, at least in Europe. By the nineteenth century it became apparent that liberalism had the potential to become more democratic both legally and institutionally. Eventually, the only norms capable of legitimizing political authority in modern societies were those derived from liberal political thought: universal human and civil rights; the rule of law; political power checked by constitutions; and popular sovereignty expressed as majority rule. To be sure, these norms have often been ignored in prac-tice. Nevertheless, with the exception of a few fundamentalist ideologies rooted in identity politics, their claim to universal validity is rarely challenged. In the wake of the collapse of its last great historical nemesis, Marxism-Leninism, the doctrine of political legitimacy implicit in liberalism has swept the field. In the post-metaphysical phase of modernity it has proven to be the only durable foundation of political authority and social order capable of mustering universal consent. Consequently, any modern democratic theory that stakes a claim to universal validity has to remain within its confines...
... The theoretical tradition of political liberalism eventually split into libertarian and social wings, mainly due to differences over the way that the fundamental rights of personal freedom and private property ought to be ranked and balanced, and how the very notion of freedom should be defined...
The Theory of Social Democracy
Thomas Meyer with Lewis P. Hinchman
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Theory+of+Social+Democracy-p-9780745641126
Viking Economics - How the Scandinavians Got it Right
– and how we can, too
Though it is written for a US audience, George Lakey’s new book has much to offer progressive activists in the UK concerned about the ongoing imposition of austerity measures and the political settlement that will come out of Brexit.
According to Lakey, the economies of the descendants of the Vikings ‘have a sixty-year track record of delivering increased freedom and equality’ – a political reality he believes is within reaching distance for the US. A visiting professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College in the United States and Peace News regular, Lakey bases his thesis on a wealth of academic studies, interviews with experts and personal experience – he married a Norwegian, lived in Norway for a year in 1959 and has returned many times since.
Viking Economics is essential reading, providing ideas and inspiration for how the UK Left can maximise its power, moving forward to kick out the emboldened Tory government, boost Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral chances and win a progressive ‘People’s Brexit’.
At the turn of the twentieth century the Nordic countries had very high levels of inequality and poverty, with many people emigrating to the US and elsewhere. However, as Lakey notes above, today the Nordic countries have been transformed, consistently topping international measures for human development and well-being. Focusing on Norway but also covering Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, Lakey highlights how the relatively high-tax ‘Nordics’ have achieved close to full, largely well-paid employment, universal healthcare, free higher education, a healthy work/life balance, and generous welfare states, while significantly reducing poverty and building modern and efficient infrastructure.
Lakey does a good job of highlighting how this differs from the neoliberal, business-friendly US and UK, citing Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson’s seminal work The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better to explain how high inequality has a detrimental effect on a range of social factors, from trust among the population to levels of crime.
How the Norwegians and other Nordics achieved all this comprises the heart of the book, with Lakey telling a fascinating history of struggle that is largely unknown to progressive activists in the UK.
Following the fight to gain union recognition in the 1880s, the infant union movement set up its own party, the Norwegian Labour Party, and national trade union. Influenced by the advanced labour movements in the US, a vibrant leftist political culture emerged, with supportive middle-class intellectuals setting up Mot Dag in 1921, arguably the most influential periodical in Scandinavia at the time. After the Great Crash of 1929, strike activity – including a general strike – significantly increased despite harsh repression from the government and employers, with the defence minister Vidkun Quisling sending in the army to quell a strike in the town of Skien. During this period, labour increased its representation in parliament until it eventually became the dominant party. ‘Norwegians created a small, visionary social movement that grew, engaged in struggle, attracted allies, and won’, Lakey summarises. Victory led to a fundamental power shift in the country, forcing a political settlement that led to the ‘Nordic Model’ being established in the 1930s.
Norwegians created a small, visionary social movement that grew, engaged in struggle, attracted allies, and won.
More recently, noting how the defeat of organised labour during the Miners’ Strike in 1980s Britain allowed Thatcherism to run rampant, Lakey compares it to the industrial struggle that occurred at the same time in Denmark. With a centre-right government seeking to impose austerity measures, the Danish unions went on the offensive, pushing for a pay increase, shorter working week and more taxes on corporations. When the government tried to impose its will and ban strike action, workers gathered outside parliament and wildcat strikes erupted around the country. The government was forced to compromise, and their neoliberal agenda was largely shelved.
In short, it was union-led, nonviolent struggle that led to the transformation of Norway and the other Nordics. And, importantly, with electoral channels often blocked, it was extra-parliamentary direct action that was the initial engine of change. Furthermore, Lakey is keen to highlight the fact that the social democratic consensus that has largely held firm in Nordic politics for decades is itself the product of ‘harsh polarisation and open struggle’ in the first half of the twentieth century. Only later, he notes, ‘did most Norwegians who resisted change realise that the change actually was a big improvement on the bad old days’.
At the end of October, as one effect of the grassroots uprising in Iceland since the financial crisis, the Icelandic radical Pirate Party tripled its vote and its representation in parliament (the ‘Althing’) gaining 10 seats. Also, Iceland now has almost as many female as male MPs (48 percent to 52 percent), the highest female representation in an elected national parliament anywhere, ever. The Pirates won fewer seats than some observers had expected earlier in the year, but as PN went to press, it looked like the party might take seats in government. The party’s candidates in the general election are shown here in an official photo. The Pirates believe in direct democracy and online democracy, privacy for the individual and transparency for the powerful. Photo: Pirate Party
Using an accessible Q&A format, in the final section Lakey addresses questions and criticisms about applying the Nordic Model to the US. It’s directed at people in the US but, like his thesis on what lies behind Norway’s political transformation, his answers and strategising generalise to the UK and our contemporary political strife.
He believes activists need to remember their own nation’s long history of people-powered change – from the civil rights movement to social security, LGBT rights and beyond. Moreover, he maintains it is important for movements to remember the well-known adage ‘The best defence is a good offence’.
For example, he criticises the post-financial-crash campaigns in the US for trying to protect previous gains instead of going on the offensive as people in the US did after the 1929 crash. With the US oligarchic electoral system rigged against progressive change, Lakey argues that people taking to the streets in large numbers could create the political space for real change, pointing to how people-power brought Iceland back from the brink after its 2008 crash. Finally he argues for the importance of a strong vision for a new society, ‘to project the contours of what a political economy could look like’ – of which his book is the perfect example.
Accessible and hopeful, Viking Economics is essential reading, providing ideas and inspiration for how the UK Left can maximise its power, moving forward to kick out the emboldened Tory government, boost Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral chances and win a progressive ‘People’s Brexit’. ‘Change requires hard work’, Lakey notes at the end. Or as the freed slave Frederick Douglass once said ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.’
George Lakey, Viking Economics: how the Scandinavians
got it right – and how we can, too. Melville House,
2016; 287pp; £19.99.
https://peacenews.info/node/8573/viking-economics-how-scandinavians-got-it-right-%E2%80%93-and-how-we-can-too
How to Make America More Like Scandinavia
by Clare Foran
What the United States can learn from protest and political organizing in the Nordic countries.
Liberals in the United States wistfully regard Scandinavia as a kind of social utopia, while conservatives denounce it as a socialist state where government overreach is ubiquitous. Yet across the political spectrum, Americans believe it would be impossible to adopt the Nordic model.
That’s the starting point for Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got it Right—and How We Can, Too, a new book from George Lakey, a former Eugene M. Lang visiting professor for issues of social change at Swarthmore College. Lakey, however, rejects that premise, arguing instead that Americans can adapt the Nordic model to fit the United States, reducing the wealth gap and improving the quality of life for all Americans as a result.
There are limitations to attempts to compare the United States with Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland—the four countries with Viking ancestry that the book focuses on. The United States is far larger than each of those countries, to say nothing of cultural, demographic and political differences. Life in Nordic countries is not always idyllic, either. While Nordic nations consistently rank among countries with the highest quality of life, they are not immune to anti-immigrant and authoritarian political impulses.
Lakey acknowledges the challenge of comparison and notes that the Nordic way is not a panacea. Nevertheless, he believes that Americans have much to learn from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland. In particular, he argues that Americans can draw lessons from the success that Nordic citizens have had in bringing about economic and social change by making demands on their government through political protest. A transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity and length, appears below.
Foran: What myths do you think Americans hold about the Nordic countries?
Lakey: A lot of people mistakenly believe that the countries with Viking ancestry—Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland—have always had the high standard of living that they do today. That’s not the case, and people don’t realize what it took to create the kind of society we see today in each of these countries.
A century ago, the economic elite ran each of those countries. There was the pretense of democracy, but it was always the decisions of economic elites that carried the day. There was poverty and a lack of empowerment of the people. The change that came about in the Nordic countries so that they eventually moved to an economic model where there was less of a wealth gap, and better quality of life, came about after everyday people made demands on their governments to change.
The 1 percent may occupy state power, but when the majority of the country stands up in opposition to the 1 percent, they can make the country ungovernable. That’s what happened in Nordic countries, and that’s what opened up the political space in which they could build an economic model that far outperforms the economic model of the United States.
Foran: Do you think it’s detrimental from an American perspective to be unaware of that history?
Lakey: Yes, absolutely. If we think that the Nordic model has always existed in the way we think of it today, then it starts to seem like something that’s totally unique to those countries that can’t be replicated in any way. That belief can become immobilizing.
Foran: You make a distinction between the power of voting and the power of protest and mass mobilization of people. Can you talk about the distinction?
Lakey: In the Nordic countries, people first created popular movements that used direct-action tactics like strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations. They also built movement infrastructure, like co-ops and study circles. As these movements gained momentum, they led to the creation of political parties that were controlled by the movements and represented the movements in parliament. In that way, politicians were accountable to the people.
That’s entirely different from what we have in the U.S. with the Democratic Party, for example, where the party is not really accountable to anyone except the economic elite. Today, the U.S. also has low voter participation compared with the Nordics. The path they took—building powerful grassroots movements that then control the politicians who represent them, might help us achieve the degree of democracy that they enjoy.
Foran: Do you think there are culturally rooted ideals about individualism as opposed to collectivism that are different in the U.S. and Nordic countries that make it difficult for Americans to organize political movements?
Lakey: Well, each culture brings assets and liabilities to the challenge of creating a real democracy, and that means that movement building in the U.S. will look different sometimes from what it looks like in Nordic countries.
One advantage that people have in the Nordic countries—in terms of organizing around demands—is they speak the language of interests without apology. They understand that individuals and groups have interests and there are circumstances where it makes sense for people to work together toward a common goal, because it’s in their collective interest to do so.
On the other hand, the ability of Nordic individuals to join together to pursue their interests doesn’t diminish their individuality. The transparency of the process promotes the common good, since they understand that without the enhancement of the common good, individuals lose.
Foran: What about other limitations in comparing the United States and Nordic countries. For example, the U.S. has a history of racial disparity and discrimination. How does that make comparisons difficult?
Lakey: Racism is of course a reality in the Nordic countries—but it’s not the same as the U.S. legacy of having had a substantial part of your country holding slaves and having enslavement as an institution, legal and real. That continues to be an enormous burden for the United States and makes it difficult to forge the kind of national coalitions and broad movements that are necessary to set things right.
On the other hand, our vision for what we can achieve decades down the road can benefit from the inheritance of racial diversity we have in our country. There are any number of Nordic people who envy the kind of richness of cultural and racial diversity that we have here in the United States.
Currently, we are in a period where we are seeing a new civil-rights movement in the United States. Black Lives Matter is one expression of that. The movement we see now is far more likely to approach economic justice and racial justice as intertwined, so that bodes well and is one example of movement building in the U.S.
Foran: I also want to talk about immigration. In the U.S. presidential election, immigration has been an extremely contentious issue, particularly on the Republican side. There has been anti-immigrant backlash in Nordic countries as well. What do you think we can take away from that?
Lakey: There has certainly been a Nordic struggle with xenophobia. The reality is that wherever there is a white settlement in the world, there’s racism, and wherever nationalism exists, there will be some xenophobia. In recent decades, the four countries have opened to more immigration—Sweden has accepted the highest number per capita of refugees from the Middle East of any country in Europe.
This naturally generates backlash, including Islamophobia. The advantage the Nordics have over the U.S., however, is that their economic model reduces the insecurity that fuels pushback and assures the newcomers maximum possible opportunity to integrate into the country and add to the talents and skills that strengthen already robust economies. Equality isn’t just an ideal. It is a pragmatic economic advantage.
Foran: Are there examples of mistakes that Nordic countries have made that could be as instructive for the U.S. as their successes?
Lakey: Well, Iceland’s 2008 economic collapse is an instructive example. Iceland became a basket case after the financial crisis that arrived in the wake of deregulation. Some people regarded it as a failed state. After the collapse, people took to the streets in protest, and backed by a people’s movement, Icelanders brought down the previous government that had been careless and installed a new government. In the wake of the crisis, Iceland seized major banks rather than bailing them out, and the government ultimately put the country on a path to economic recovery that was far quicker than what we have seen in the U.S.
Foran: There has been a lot of talk about political movements and protest in the context of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. What do you think is the most effective way to channel the energy inspired by that campaign so it doesn’t dissipate? What do you think would squander that enthusiasm?
Lakey: The best thing for Sanders supporters to do would be to focus their energy on direct-action campaigns aimed at achieving specific policy goals. So, for example, if Sanders supporters took the goal of free higher education and turned that into a direct-action national campaign that protesters were willing to go to jail for, that would be a more effective way of achieving that goal than even getting Sanders elected to the presidency. Sanders in the Oval Office wouldn’t be able to get anything done with the current Congress, whereas with a direct-action pressure campaign, there is a better chance of actually getting something like free higher education or Medicare for all accomplished.
The biggest mistake that supporters of Bernie Sanders could make would be if they were to say, “Well let’s go back to the Democratic Party and contest for power within the party.” That’s a losing proposition. The party cannot be changed from within, it needs to be held accountable from the outside.
Foran: What about the idea that to achieve change, you need to exert pressure from inside the political structure as well as from the outside. Don’t you think that both are needed?
Lakey: When the Democratic Party sees that an externally driven campaign is growing and growing, eventually people within the party will change their policy to accommodate that. That’s what happened with the civil-rights movement. The federal government couldn’t have cared less about the civil-rights movement until the movement grew in power and influence to the point where, to maintain their own credibility, the Democratic Party had to modify its position on civil rights.
We don’t need to attempt to organize Democrats to play the inside game or attempt to become part of that inside game. Elected officials will do that on their own so as not to alienate their base, so long as there is enough pressure from the outside. The question is where the control and the initiative come from. If the control is outside the Democratic Party with an independent initiative, then it will be in the interest of the Democrats to change their position to accommodate that as long as the pressure is strong enough.
Foran: What about Sanders himself? How do you think he can be effective in achieving the goals he has outlined during his campaign?
Lakey: The best way for him to increase his influence would be to choose an issue that he has advocated for in his campaign, and work to advocate for that, and support the grassroots organizing that springs up to work toward the same goal. He won’t be able to achieve his goals—for example, something like Medicare for all—as a senator by staying within the usual legislative means. I also don’t think he should try to be the leader of any grassroots movement, but he can still play an important role. As a senator, he has a highly visible platform that he can use to broadcast and amplify grassroots agitation in support of policy change.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/nordic-countries-united-states/490847/
Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
