I read an article yesterday that asked what Labour is for. Then I had a conversation in the evening where the question of whether anyone in Labour knew what it was for was discussed. The astonishing thing is both can be asked. And it is not as if this is a question that is unique to the particular structure of Labour in the UK: social democracy is in trouble across Europe, odd exceptions apart.
So what is social democracy for? This isn't an attempt at a conclusive response. But it represents some ideas that seem relevant to me. I restricted myself to five big themes. I am sure there are plenty of others.
Social democracy suggest that people are at the heart of our society, economy and democracy. The interests of people as a whole have to come first in the structuring of each of those.
Social democracy promotes a responsible management of the economy, respecting the environment, taking into account the externalities that markets cannot price, encouraging private enterprise where (as it often is) it is the most suitable form of economic organisation to deliver goods and services and intervening to prevent monopoly, exploitation and other market failure, including no supply at all when supply is essential for the well being of society.
Social democracy upholds the right of a person to be themselves, only intervening if necessary to protect others. In doing so it respects differences and permits diversity whilst encouraging the recognition of the mutuality that always exists when people live in communities.
Social democracy ensures that can partake in society by providing universal access to essential services such as education and healthcare and by redistributing income and wealth until all have at least sufficient to partake.
Social democracy is about recognising that we can only prosper when others do as well. It is as a result internationalist in outlook, generous in its spirit of cooperation and willing to partner whenever possible because strength comes from mutual wellbeing.
In this case what is social democracy for? It is, I would suggest, for defending the values on which our society has been built.
Thoughts?
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Current thinking in social democracy is that the economic response is built around neo liberal management of the economy. This is where social democrats have to make a paradigm change if we are to promote democracy and the social economic needs of the 99%.
Some will say you would need to write a book to expand each of your points in order to fully define social democracy, but I’d say you have captured the essence extremely well (Occam’s Razor).
The book might be needed to expand on the policies required to implement social democracy, but there be dragons!
Richard’s book, The Courageous state, covered a lot of the ground
Thanks Ian, I was just thinking about the plethora of theories on the topic. I’ve read Joy of Tax and don’t expect dragons in any of Richard’s publications.
I have a nasty feeling that destroying social democracy may be what this brexit rubbish is about. I thought protecting the Queen’s pwace was the first duty of thepolice force.After all that is their oath of service. Wouldnt an organisation like ‘civil defence’ be a useful addition to the range of Emergency Services(then perhaps the Army could stay an army instead of being used for flood duties)? I 3would hope that the police will never be used as Mounted Cavalry or shock troops again, against the people they are supposed to protect
A term conspicuous by its absence from your list is freedom (although it is implied in several of your points). For a long time the political right in many countries has claimed that ideal for itself by setting it opposed to the government regulation and intervention that are necessarily part of social democratic government. This ignores the fact that lack of regulation only means freedom for those able to claim it – for instance freedom of travel is little good to me if my physical disability, lack of job security or simply lack of money mean I can’t go anywhere. Freedom of business is worth much less to me if failure means not just a setback but starvation. Because freedom is such an important ideal for many, it would be worth addressing it explicitly.
Therefore I would like to add to your list:
Social democracy aims to increase the personal freedom of all members of society by establishing a level playing field in the economy and society as a whole, where necessary by counteracting existing power structures, to allow everyone to fully benefit from the rights and opportunities available to them.
I like that
Thanks
This is good, Richard, as it addresses most of the fundamental issues which compose the ‘What are we here for?’/‘What is a good life?’ analysis. People not ‘things’ are most important, long term stewardship of society is important, some things are best provided by the state rather than markets, personal safety and integrity is the start-point for rights and obligations, humans function as a communal tribe not isolated islands of existence.
By stating and understanding these points I would suggest you are more than halfway to explaining why social democracy is under such awful pressure across our continent now; the social conditions which social democracy has delivered have been worsening for more and more people for a generation. What we are seeing now is those people and more beginning to rebel against any political and economic institutions that social democracy has built because they perceive that those institutions have been in control while their lives have worsened. They blame them.
You may argue they are flailing wildly and missing some targets and I’d agree, you may argue that their understanding is flawed and I’d agree and you may argue that this lashing-out is irrational and counter-productive, destruction and anger undirected to where the sources of the damage actually occur. And I’d agree with that. I voted ‘Remain’, I voted against the Tories consistently and I would have held my nose in the ‘States and voted Shillary even though it was obvious Sanders would have won at a canter. And each time I lost because I failed to understand that the blind, inchoate rage I was seeing all around me could not be diverted or harnessed or calmed by rational explanations and detailed economic analyses.
Successive attempts by (mostly) well-meaning people on the political Left and progressives of all kinds have failed to produce the utopia they were aiming for because of the fundamental misunderstanding that imposing institutions and systems from ‘on high’ are doomed unless you take the majority along with you. ‘They’ll thank us eventually’ has failed as a social and political guiding belief.
From the U.N. to N.A.T.O., from the W.T.O. to the I.M.F, from the EU to global financial institutions, from universities to local education, from local government to the police, with the honourable exception of the core N.H.S., the paternalistic institutions created before and after the Second World war have failed to create in a majority of the population an understanding, a comprehension, of their benefits and raison d’etre. They have also begun to fail to deliver their promise to everyone not just the 1% of a better life than their parents.
As a result they are misunderstood and lack the support of significant sub-sections of the populations on whose behalf they were created. This is a crying shame but has now, I believe, gone past the point at which sanity is retrievable from the chaos. For this reason alone, a retrenchment of our society back to a state in which it rests upon the understandings that the majority hold is in progress. Regrettable but ultimately a failure to care enough about everyone else by genuinely uplifting their life chances rather than just appearing to do so.
So now we must learn that lesson.
You, I and many others need now to accept that ‘we’ have failed in this regard; we failed to ensure that the social democratic ideals and concepts we value so highly actually delivered to the majority a better lifestyle and broader opportunities for their lives rather than the opposite. You may argue ‘we’ are not in control but we are; we swing elections and have done so for thirty years, we ARE the intellectual discussion, we decide the zeitgeist because we are informed and care and are active in our society while most others are not any of these things. And we have failed to bring the majority of the population along with us. We have allowed the neoliberal and authoritarian to gain control and do what they want, which is destruction and alienation not social cohesion.
We have reached the end of the era of ‘They’ll thank us in the end’ because they haven’t and it’s the end, the page is turning.
Interesting
But you actually say nothing at all
So what’s the message?
I think its a mistake
So now we must learn the lesson and build from the bottom up, taking the majority along with us every step of the way, to reverse the current worsening course of our lives and aim it towards making sure each successive generation has a better set of life chances than their parents. Measured by the principles you started to set out at the very beginning.
Ok
Understood now
It can be put more simply. Two forces exist in life – to be mindful of the needs of others and not. Lethal viruses represent the latter and human beings the most complex organism on planet Earth so far to represent the former in the sense that we cooperate to eliminate threats like lethal viruses wherever we can. When it comes to economic well-being, however, the complexity of the subject creates confusion. A social democratic party worth its salt would recognise this and make the education of its electorate an on-going and fundamental part of its existence. No social democratic party appears to to do this. This is negligence on a massive scale suggesting very strongly they have been infiltrated by Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal ideology becoming empty husks.
I think AllanW’s lengthy piece is basically a diversionary tactic. His aim is to promote the right wing and neoliberalism.
Hi Richard,
You say
“Social democracy promotes a responsible management of the economy, respecting the environment, taking into account the externalities that markets cannot price, encouraging private enterprise where (as it often is) it is the most suitable form of economic organisation to deliver goods and services and intervening to prevent monopoly, exploitation and other market failure, including no supply at all when supply is essential for the well being of society.”
We are all agreed presumably that the market is a force for good. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched but as Peter from Norwich says, those freedoms are often only available to the already free.
On the theme of responsible management of the economy, we are dealing not with systems or idealogies but with human beings of course who are subject to human weakness. We all witnessed the greed and irresponsibility of some,who contributed in large measure ot he financial crisis of 2008.
To what extent you feel the laiisez faire economics of the self-regulating markets in last decades contributed to the idea that greed is acceptable and how could social democracy specifically address this?
Grace
I am remiss: I have somehow lost this comment in the system. I apologise
I like your last question. It is the existential issue that is at the heart of the current political malaise.
Greed is the issue. Social democracy, which should be the politics of countervailing power, was the answer
And it should be so again
Can it be? I sincerely hope so. But that is dependent upon social democrats understanding a different economic creed
Will they? I am not sure.
A Social democracy in my view should be a system that equalises the rights and responsibilities, accountabilities and obligations of the various peoples who exist within it to each other.
No-one should be at disadvantage or advantage under or over another because of economic status.
Some may think my prescription is from La La Land (not the movie). But to me it is based on humanitarian principles and natural justice.
Money is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is an abstract concept – created by man and it determines too much in our life. It needs to be controlled by us and we need to be controlled by it much less – if at all. A true social democracy in my view mitigates the propensity for money to ‘talk’.
The one word that I don’t see in these principles is “fair”. I think it key part of social democracy is that individuals should broadly feel that there is fairness in the way they are treated by society.
In many ways what the EU has tried to do in a fumbling sort of way all these years is to provide frameworks that are fairer to many groups that have little capacity to influence how things are arranged in a capitalist society. Consumer protection, environmental standards and constraints on exploiting workers come to mind.
I fear that Christine Bergin might be right by worrying that Brexit might be away of destroying what the EU has achieved to improve social democracy. There is a piece about that here: http://outsidethebubble.net/2016/12/08/brexit-opportunity-for-the-biggest-right-wing-power-grab-for-a-generation/
Sometimes it seems to me that Social Democracy is basically just the old African concept of ‘I am because you are’ in new clothes.
And on what it is for, Dan Jarvis has an interesting piece in the ‘New Statesman’
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/03/reuniting-and-renewing-kingdom-britain-beyond-brexit
Whilst it does include quite a bit of conventional guff like “put people at the heart of decision-making” and talk about deficits, tax and spend rather than spend and tax, it does include this line “a civic capitalism that serves the public interest.”
“Civic capitalism” is a good, easy to sell idea and is something that proper social democracy should be good at creating.
I prefer social capitalism
But a friend of mine then suggested knocking capital out of the middle
Good joke, but I think there are people who wouldn’t think they’d want social anything (least of all socialism) who still think that capitalism isn’t working as it should and would accept ‘civic capitalism’ as an improvement.
Moderate left politicians like Ed Miliband and Bernie Sanders describe themselves as “socialist”, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. That said, I don’t have any particular problem with “social democracy” or “social capitalism” either. Perhaps “progressive democracy” is a good alternative (although in Ireland the Progressive Democrats are a libertarian party – I think Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes is a member…)
That kills that one then!
And I fear socialist is alienating
It seems to me that the (a?) fundamental characteristic or component of Social Democracy is summed up in the phrase
“The free development of each is thr precondition for the free development of all.”
However, the author would probably/almost certainly have disavowed the label “Social Democrat”, given that the author was Karl Marx, and the quotation comes from The Communist Manifesto.
Despite that, the phrase constitutes a yardstick by which to measure a society, for if any member of a society is not free to develop fully, then no one is truly free, given that that freedom rests upon the “unfreedom” of others.
Where Socialism has gone wrong, infecting Social Democracy in the process, is to believe almost “religiously” (it’s been rightly said that Marx believed in “God”, but for him ” God” was history) in “the inevitable forces of history”, that would triumph “automatically “.
The Right have always recognised that – correctly – as tosh, and have worked, and schemed, and plotted, and cheated (eg Republican gerrymandering, that allowed them to capture Congress on a minority vote), and set up influential think tanks, and captured the media, and poured £&$ billions of “dark money” into the MUX, where the Left naively trusted to “the forces of history’!
Is it any wonder the other side run rings round them, and slam the ball into the goal with sickening regularity, while the Left is in a huddle, arguing procedure, or complaining to the referee, or appealing to the crowd, but not doing the one thing needful – playing the game to the “real” rules, meaning the ones that will convince the fans?
No, it’s no surprise any longer, Andrew. And I for one am sick of our side losing. So I’m working in the real world to do the things that will lead to a better life for all not just a few.
It’s about constraining the power of big money, and using state levers for the common good.
In principle, that’s it.
And of course we now know that it really is true that Socilaism makes Capitalism work but that is an idea that is generally pretty difficult to sell.
Trouble is, Richard, that most Labour leaders, from Blair to Corbyn, including David Owen’s Limehouse crew (remember them, including the sainted Polly Toynbee) could and have subscribed to the principles you outlined above. Even most professed socialists, other than the Trot fringe groups, are in fact social democrats when it comes down to it, advocating a mixed economy with managed capitalism rather than comprehensive state ownership.
The difficulty is that they offer quite different policies to achieve these aims. For Blair, New Labour offered a ‘third way’ which accepted marketization or outsourcing of public services, balanced budgets, globalist economics, unfettered financial institutions along with some mitigation of the effects of these policies on working people. Most Labour MPs, including ex-VC of Progress, Dan Jarvis, still go down this same road in varying degrees.
Our first task is to either persuade these people that what they offer is wrong and a perversion of social democracy – and you are in the vanguard of this attempt – or to get rid of them, which I suspect is what Momentum is really all about. It’s not really the principles that are the problem, it’s the people and their mindset. I hate the term paradigm shift, but the bad outcome of Brexit may well bring it about, just as Trump’s version of fascism is mobilising resistance in the USA. But the way people are reacting in Europe, we may end up with reruns of the Spanish Civil War.
I am pleased a broad spectrum could subscribe
That was my hope
That’s the way necessary coalitions are built
Yet, for all that guff, you are not too keen on the social democracy of the Brexit vote…
I am proud that people in the UK have seen their way through the liberal/corporate spin and rejected the EU con – the pretense that the EU is an entity when it is being constantly expanded to suit transnational corporations, always incorporating cheaper and cheaper labour countries, and all conveniently subject to the wonderful sounding ‘free movement’.
The European Court of Justice has affirmed this in its judgements (ie Viking/Laval/Ruffert/Luxemburg cases)- that corporations can legally maximise these structures to move cheap labour around the EU and pay home country wage levels in higher wage countries, as well as moving work across borders to cheap labour countries as with the Finnish ferries.
So – well done UK voters for seeing through the crap.
Now we need to make sure that a Tory government, aided and abetted by those who try to call themselves ‘the Left’ but are actually either stupid or a plant – don’t extend the same abuse to an independent UK.
Only problem with your analysis is that most of the expansion of the EU into “cheap labour countries” was encouraged, if not championed, by the UK, against reservations of other EU leading countries (Germany and France). The UK even chose to ignore movement restrictions placed on 2004 entrants (so-called A10 countries including Hungary, Poland, Slovakia et al.) when other member states chose to limit this, and Germany and France chose to veto Schengen admittance for Romania and Bulgaria, over corruption concerns. Meanwhile, the UK (under Home Secretary Theresa May) chose not to impose travel restrictions on these countries.
Free movement of “cheap labour” has caused problems, it’s true. But try to blame the correct institutions for that, rather than being blinded by “faux patriotic” blathering from the far right!
Er – there is a difference between what UK governments, working for the City of London, have promoted and what people have voted for with Brexit.
Sure – there is a substantial line up of hard core Tories intending using it for =for more of what the UK has been pursuing, but unhindered by any moderating forces in the EU, AND expecting to continue their cheap labour access.
It’s up to us to push things in our direction. Unfortunately the vocal ‘Left’ doesn’t seem ready for it.