Social Democracy

The early broadcast era and our current platform era bear some striking resemblances, but one parallel looms large: In the 1940s, we lost a key battle to build a potentially liberating and wondrous medium—and we are on the cusp of doing so again. Then as now, commercial operators defined the terms by which we could use our core communication and information infrastructures. While reaping tremendous profits from the public airwaves, a few corporate firms became the sole providers for much of the nation’s media.

Andrei Znamenski argues that socialism arose out of activities of secularized apocalyptic sects, the Enlightenment tradition, and dislocations produced by the Industrial Revolution. He examines how, by the 1850s, Marx and Engels made the socialist creed “scientific” by linking it to “history laws” and inventing the proletariat—the “chosen people” that were to redeem the world from oppression. Focusing on the fractions between social democracy and communism, Znamenski explores why, historically, socialism became associated with social engineering and centralized planning. He explains the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and its role in fostering the cultural left that came to privilege race and identity over class. Exploring the global retreat of the left in the 1980s–1990s and the “great neoliberalism scare,” Znamenski also analyzes the subsequent renaissance of socialism in wake of the 2007–2008 crisis

The central idea of Rawls’s theory of justice is the idea of democratic society as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens. The moral powers of democratic citizens are the ca-pacities presupposed by this idea. Rawls identifies two such powers, the capacity for a concep-tion of the good and the capacity for a sense of justice. I argue that the idea of democratic citi-zenship presupposes also a third moral power: the capacity for working. Since the basic rights are the rights necessary for the development and exercise of the moral powers of citizenship; and since the capacity for working is such a moral power; and since access to work, education, and healthcare are necessary for the development and exercise of the capacity for working; access to work, education, and healthcare are basic rights.

El triunfo de Gabriel Boric en las últimas elecciones presidenciales de Chile marcó el fin de un ciclo. Por primera vez desde el fin de la dictadura de Pinochet, el país será gobernado por alguien que no viene del tronco de la ya difunta Concertación ni de los partidos de la derecha tradicional. Por el contrario, el presidente electo se formó políticamente en el alero de movimientos universitarios de orientación autonomista, críticos del proceso de renovación socialista que comenzó durante la dictadura, y se hizo un nombre de relevancia nacional en las masivas marchas estudiantiles de 2011; muy lejos de la recatada distancia que el Partido Socialista estableció entre sus dirigencias y los movimientos sociales desde el triunfo de Patricio Aylwin en 1990.

Today, Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) is mainly remembered for his polemics against the young Bolshevik regime or as the ‘renegade’ in Lenin’s The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918), which pillories him for his wavering stance in opposing World War I and his (later) outright hostility to the Russian Revolution of October 1917. Kautsky’s authority as a Marxist theoretician was seriously called into question ever since Lenin’s polemic. During the Cold War in particular, a consensus emerged which suggested that Kautsky’s views of democracy, organisation and revolutionary change had little or nothing to do with the political practice of Russian Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Recently, however, several studies have challenged this consensus. They highlight the profound impact which Kautsky had on the development of Russian Bolshevism and make the case that – prior to his renegacy in 1914 – thinkers such as Lenin and Trotsky viewed Kautsky as the legitimate intellectual heir of Marx and Engels. This article introduces an autobiographical essay written by Kautsky in 1924 and calls for closer engagement with his oeuvre as a whole.

In general, histories of the Russian Revolution do not touch upon events in the Baltic provinces of the empire in any detail. Only the apparently exceptionally large number of Latvians who supported the Bolsheviks in the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly (72%) is mentioned. This paper argues with Ronald G. Suny's typologization of imperial ethnic groups according to their relationship to ‘class’ and ‘nationalism’ in order to qualify the latter's conclusion that the Latvians in 1917 turned towards Bolshevism whereas the Estonians moved towards nationalism. In fact, closer investigation proves that the difference was not so clear cut. There was certainly much sympathy for social revolution in the littoral as a whole, as had been proven in the elections in late 1917, but there was no sympathy for class war. The emergence of a nationally oriented Estonian and Latvian social democracy ultimately covered the gap between ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘nationalists’ and paved the way to the foundation of nation‐states. Thus in both cases, this article argues, ‘class’ and ‘nationalism’ reinforced each other, rather than operating as antagonistic categories.

O objetivo principal deste artigo é discutir os elementos distópicos e utópicos presentes nas séries televisivas escritas ou produzidas por David Simon, como The Wire e Show me a Hero, com especial atenção à análise de The Plot Against America, adaptação recente realizada por David Simon e Ed Burns do romance homônimo de Philip Roth, que narra uma “história alternativa” em que os Estados Unidos elegem Charles Lindbergh como presidente e aliam-se às forças do Eixo na Segundo Guerra Mundial. Em primeiro lugar, estabelecemos a centralidade do conceito de distopia no debate político contemporâneo a partir da eleição de Donald Trump em 2016. Identificamos que o termo desponta subliminarmente no discurso de vitória da vice-presidenta eleita, Kamala Harris, representando a tendência apontada por Jill Lepore de reforço da polarização política. Em seguida, examinamos a discussão em torno do conceito de distopia, o que nos ajudará a fazer um levantamento, nas demais séries de David Simon, também de seus elementos utópicos, cujos limites temáticos e formais revelam-se exemplares de uma classe política alinhada ao Partido Democrata. Argumentamos que Simon se apoia em uma utopia do trabalho, da socialdemocracia e da família, e que cada um desses elementos se conjuga tanto às convenções do formato do seriado televisivo dramático contemporâneo quanto às transformações políticas do período pós-fordista e neoliberal a partir do final dos anos 1970.

R.H. Tawney (1880-1962) was arguably the most influential thinker on the British Left from the First World War down at least to the publication of Crosland’s The Future of Socialism in 1956, and interest in his work revived from the 1980s. His influence rested primarily on three works: The Acquisitive Society, Equality, and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism . But Tawney was not just an academic scribbler. He largely wrote the key Labour party document, Labour and the Nation, in 1928 (which was the major basis of Labour’s election campaign in 1929), and much of For Socialism and Peace, (1934) a key party document of the 1930s and so both directly and indirectly helped shape the public language and understanding of Labour.
Tawney’s influence has been acknowledged by all shades of Labour thinking on the economy, from Gaitskell to Benn. To some extent this breadth of appeal followed from Tawney’s Christian-based, ethical stance which generated a powerful egalitarian rhetoric appealing to all those who thought of themselves as socialists. Yet this appeal was also paradoxical, for unlike the great majority of British socialists, at least down to the 1950s, he did not regard nationalisation as the defining feature of socialism. Indeed, he observes scathingly ‘the idea of some Socialists that private property in land or capital is necessarily mischievous is a piece of scholastic pedantry as absurd as that of those Conservatives who would invest all property with some kind of mysterious sanctity.’ Rather, his ethical starting-point led him to argue that the key issues for socialists were not ones of ownership, but of conduct and motive. In an important sense Tawney was a pioneer of British Third Way thinking, as a believer in the mixed-economy, one combining private and public ownership.

Tawney’s scepticism about the British socialist concern, indeed obsession, with ownership meant that he can clearly be placed in the lineage of the Third Way, which has been characterised by rejection of public ownership as a key feature of a desirable society. From this starting point Tawney was able to take seriously issues of corporate organisation (or what would now be called corporate governance) in a way that marks him out as an innovative and unusual figure. The issue of corporate governance is conducive to Third Way thinking because it escapes the dichotomous opposition between public and private ownership, focusing instead on accountability and power within the company. This in turn lends itself to consideration of how the conditions of social justice can be improved, and the public interest secured, within a mixed economy. This strand in his thinking is explored in detail below. On the other hand, his ethical stance, and central emphasis on motive in the analysis of economic life, also poses serious problems, especially in dealing with market relations. The nature of engagement with the market is of fundamental importance to Third Way thinking, and Tawney’s approach is problematic in this respect. This theme is taken up in the second half of the paper.

El concepto de la función social del derecho es un tema de debate
que tuvo centralidad en el Congreso Internacional de Filosofía del Derecho celebrado en Madrid en el año 1973. Varios autores han trabajo la temática, la que reconocieron como relevante al momento de enfrentarse a problemas sobre la interpretación y aplicación correcta del derecho.
En este artículo haremos un recorrido por los trabajos de Joseph
Raz, Norberto Bobbio y Carlos María Cárcova.

The failure of ‘progressivism’ to gain traction in the current political landscape can be diagnosed in many ways. The diagnosis pursued here, partly in response to a set of recent debates, is that social democracy and neoliberalism have been artificially divided by the spectre of Marxism. But now that Marxism is no longer a serious geopolitical force (though it remains quite potent in academia), the time is ripe for the two ‘centre-left’ movements to come together by recovering their common Fabian heritage, which stresses the value of social experimentation.

Is social justice possible within capitalist societies? Or should progressives and egalitarians be looking for viable alternatives to free-market capitalism? John Rawls, one of the most influential political philosophers of the last century, advanced the view that social justice is indeed impossible within the constraints of the capitalist welfare state. Rawls believed that familiar capitalist societies in which a small minority holds a massively disproportionate share of wealth could not possibly be just. Instead, he argued that justice requires a different form of socioeconomic organization, one in which human and nonhuman capital is dispersed widely. He called it a "property-owning democracy".

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond presents the first extended treatment of Rawls' important ideas about the practical implementation of his theory of justice. Contributors to this volume approach Rawls' idea from a number of perspectives: its philosophical foundations, institutional implications, and possible connections to the future of left-of-center politics. Readings shed new light on a variety of topics, including the inequality of current wealth distribution in advanced capitalist societies; ways of funding a system of universal asset holdings; novel democratic forms of ownership; the link between asset ownership and human capital; and many others. Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond offers thought-provoking insights into the concept of social justice in the 21st-century world.

On Nov 5, 2014, Australians witnessed arguably the only great piece of oratory delivered 'down under' for a generation: Noel Pearson's eulogy for former Labour Prime MInister, Gough Whitlam.  This paper, written for a wider audience (and now lengthened to consider dispositio, Feb 2019), uses some rhetorical tools borrowed from the Romans "Gough" admired (as Pearson notes) in order to analyse the delivery, ethos, pathos, argument and style of this extraordinary speech.

Am 1. September 1948 trat der Parlamentarische Rat in Bonn zusammen, um die Verfassung eines westdeutschen Teilstaates auszuarbeiten. Die feierliche Unterzeichnung des Grundgesetzes, dem Resultat dieser Beratungen, erfolgte bereits am 23. Mai 1949. Während der relativ kurzen Beratungszeit kam es zu teils intensiven Auseinandersetzungen über die zukünftige Gestaltung Deutschlands und zu einer Positionierung Konrad Adenauers, die in ihrer Öffentlichkeitswirkung von der SPD nicht rechtzeitig erkannt wurde. Die Arbeit zeigt die ambivalente Politik der SPD während dieser Grundgesetzberatungen 1948/1949 auf und analysiert sie vor dem Hintergrund der Niederlage bei der ersten Bundestagswahl 1949. Anhand des Umgangs der SPD-Führung mit dem Parlamentarischen Rat, der inhaltlichen Arbeit der Fraktion im Rat sowie formaler Entscheidungen den Rat betreffend, lassen sich grundlegende politische Weichenstellungen aufzeigen. Diese waren, so wird deutlich, wenige Monate später mit ausschlaggebend für die Wahlniederlage der SPD bei der ersten Bundestagswahl.

El debate de las izquierdas antes de 1917. Revolución Industrial y mundo obrero.
Rasgos generales.
Los socialistas románticos: utopistas, filántropos y activistas.
La propuesta dialéctica de Karl Marx (1818-1883).
Las disputas entre anarquistas y marxistas.
La vía británica: del cartismo a los fabianos.
El pensamiento socialista tras la muerte de Marx.
El gran debate revisionista:  Bernstein / Lenin / Rosa Luxemburgo.

Michael Freeden’s work on the history of British liberal thought has famously highlighted the ideological links between liberals and socialists in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although Freeden’s account has much to commend it, this chapter suggests that his focus on the influence of British liberalism on socialists should be balanced by an appreciation of the corresponding influence of British socialism on liberals. To make this case, the chapter examines the attitudes of new liberal intellectuals to the social ownership and control of industry. It investigates the ideas about social ownership found in the writings of J. A. Hobson and L. T. Hobhouse before the First World War; it musters evidence of left-liberal enthusiasm for industrial democracy in the years following 1918; and it outlines the serious consideration given to socialist planning by William Beveridge, the apparent epitome of a centrist liberal, in the 1930s and 1940s.

La literatura de la imaginación, al contrario de lo que creería el crítico literario Harold Bloom, comprendía la unidad inseparable, como en el caso de la personalidad de Lincoln, de la conciencia estética y moral, permitiendo que la ética literaria y la experiencia estética de las 'Perspectivas democráticas' resultaran afines. Las 'Perspectivas democráticas' de Whitman representan a la perfección el significado de la escritura como un acto de independencia que refleja indistintamente tanto al individuo como a la sociedad, en una clara muestra de fe en la democracia. El valor democrático de las páginas de Whitman es emancipador para el lector. Se trata, en conclusión, de una experiencia estética afín a la ética literaria que ha fundado una nación, los Estados Unidos de América.

This book argues that 'social democratic criminology' is an important critical perspective which is essential for the analysis of crime and criminal justice and crucial for humane and e ective policy. The end of World War II resulted in 30 years of strategies to create a more peaceful international order. In domestic policy, all Western countries followed agendas informed by a social democratic sensibility. Social Democratic Criminology argues that the social democratic consensus has been pulled apart since the late 1960s, by the hegemony of neoliberalism: a resuscitation of nineteenth-century free market economics. There is now a gathering storm of apocalyptic dangers from climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and other existential threats. This book shows that the neoliberal revolution of the rich pushed aside social democratic values and policies regarding crime and security and replaced them with tougher 'law and order' approaches. The initial consequence was a tsunami of crime in all senses. Smarter security techniques did succeed in abating this for a while, but the decade of austerity in the wake of the 2008 fi nancial crisis has seen growing violent and serious crime. Social Democratic Criminology charts the history of social democracy, discusses the variety of confl icting ways in which it has been interpreted, and identifi es its core uniting concepts and infl uence on criminology in the twentieth century. It analyses the decline of social democratic criminology and the sustained intellectual and political attacks it has endured. The concluding chapter looks at the prospects for reviving social democratic criminology, itself dependent on the prospects for a rebirth of the broader social democratic movement. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, cultural studies, politics, history, social policy, and all those interested in social democracy and its importance for society.

De communautaire spanningen binnen de Belgische Werkliedenpartij liepen voor de Eerste Wereldoorlog hoger op dan tot nu toe aangenomen werd. Niet alleen zorgde de taalkwestie voor onenigheid, maar Vlamingen en Franstaligen bleken zich te identificeren met andere vaderlanden: de Franstaligen met België, de Vlamingen met Vlaanderen. De Vlaamse socialisten hadden tot de Eerste Wereldoorlog zelfs anti-Belgische trekken omdat zij de Belgische Omwenteling verwierpen als een ongelukkige broodopstand, die door de katholieken misbruikt was om zich van Nederland af te scheuren. De achterliggende gedachte was zelfs dat België een kunstmatige creatie was. Hun Franstalige kameraden eigenden zich 1830 nadrukkelijk toe als een nationale revolutie, die door de burgerij aan de arbeiders ontstolen was. Zij profileerden zich als ‘volbloed’ Belgen, met dien verstande dat verschillende Waalse socialisten al vanaf 1909 de wallingantische toer opgingen.
Kortom, de partijeenheid binnen de BWP is sterk overschat. Er is terecht op gewezen dat socialistische politici in de eerste plaats binnen het Belgische politieke kader dachten. Maar daar de conclusie aan verbinden dat ze allen aan hetzelfde vaderland verknocht waren, is fout. Deze onderschatting van de communautaire verschillen binnen de partij is ten eerste te wijten aan het selectieve geheugenverlies van de meeste socialistische voormannen na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. De zware aanvaringen tussen Vlamingen en Walen pasten niet in het succesverhaal dat de partij na 1918 schreef. Ten tweede heeft de Vlaamse beweging in de loop van de 20ste eeuw een monopolie verworven op het keurmerk van het 'Goede Vlamingschap'. Door zichzelf op te werpen als de voorhoede van de hele natie, is de Vlaamse beweging erin geslaagd haar tegenstanders af te schilderen niet alleen als vijanden van de flaminganten, maar van heel Vlaanderen. De uitvallen van de Vlaamse socialisten naar de Vlaamse beweging zijn dan ook vaak geïnterpreteerd als zovele bewijzen voor hun 'anti-Vlaamse' houding. Uit dit boek blijkt echter dat hun anti-flamingantisme vóór 1914 niet tot een afwijzing van Vlaanderen leidde, noch tot een toenadering tot het Belgische vaderland. Daarvoor waren er te veel tegenstrijdige factoren in het spel, waarvan de belangrijkste factor vanaf de eeuwwisseling de zware communautaire crisis in de partij was. De Gentse socialisten voelden de verwijten van hun Waalse kameraden aan het duistere Vlaanderen immers aan als een onterechte kritiek op hun propaganda-arbeid. Een kritiek die des te harder aankwam omdat hun voorhoederol in 'Arm Vlaanderen' een van de centrale mythen van hun zelfbeeld was.

First Reichspräsident Friedrich Ebert, Weimar’s “only solid political constant,” steered the post-revolutionary Republic into calmer waters during his incumbency 1918-1924. This essay investigates whether Ebert achieved his personal aims of creating a sustainable democratic state and political and social unity. It concludes that Ebert ultimately failed to instil a profound commitment to democracy in the general public and Weimar’s various social and political groups. This text was originally published as the author’s Extended Essay as part of the IB Diploma.

Αν και είναι κοινώς πια παραδεκτό ότι τα κοινωνικά κινήματα αποτελούν κατεξοχήν φορείς της κοινωνίας πολιτών και ως τέτοιοι παρεμβαίνουν πολύ συχνά και ποικιλοτρόπως στην πολιτική διαδικασία, η συστηματική μελέτη της σχέσης κινημάτων και πολιτικής στην Ελλάδα δεν έχει προχωρήσει πολύ, ως απόρροια ίσως της κυρίαρχης στην ελληνική βιβλιογραφία θεώρησης του δίπολου «υπερτροφικό κράτος-αδύναμη κοινωνία πολιτών».  Η έξαρση ωστόσο του κινηματικού φαινομένου τα τελευταία χρόνια έχει προσελκύσει και στην Ελλάδα το ενδιαφέρον μελετητών/τριών από διάφορες ακαδημαϊκές πειθαρχίες, οι οποίοι/ες όμως σπανίως διαλέγονται με την πολύ αναπτυγμένη διεθνώς εξειδικευμένη βιβλιογραφία για τα κοινωνικά κινήματα και τη συλλογική δράση. Το παρόν κεφάλαιο επιχειρεί να καλύψει αυτό ακριβώς το κενό-της εξέτασης της σύγχρονης ελληνικής πολιτικής υπό το πρίσμα και τις μεθοδολογικές παραδοχές της σύγχρονης κινηματικής βιβλιογραφίας. Ως ειδική μάλιστα εστία επιλέγουμε την πολύ κρίσιμη σχέση ανάμεσα στα πολιτικά κόμματα και τα κοινωνικά κινήματα σε διάφορες χρονικές περιόδους της Γ΄ Ελληνικής Δημοκρατίας. Από την κομματικοποίηση των κοινωνικών κινημάτων μέχρι το φαινόμενο των λεγόμενων «κινηματικών κομμάτων» (social movement parties) και από το ΠΑΣΟΚ της δεκαετίας του 1970 μέχρι τον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ στην Ελλάδα της κρίσης, η διαλεκτική κόμματος/κινήματος είναι καταλυτική για την ανάγνωση της παθογένειας ή/και της δυναμικής ενός πολιτικού συστήματος.

The Australian Labor Party has long been an enigma for socialists. On the one hand it is a party which was formed by and is still strongly influenced by the trade unions and obtains its votes predominantly from workers. Yet the whole experience of Labor in government, at both state and federal level, over the last few decades confirms that the ALP is just as committed to maintaining the rule of capital as the Liberals, and just as committed to the politics of neo-liberalism. Nonetheless despite all the betrayals and compromises, despite the outright attacks ALP governments have launched on workers, the majority of workers still, albeit grudgingly, look to Labor as their party.
How are socialists to understand and orient to this phenomenon of Laborism?

This book provides a systematic outline of New Labour's ideas and policies. The authors show how the Party s economic and social policies are more neo–liberal and conservative than ever before. To counter accusations that New Labour is Old Labour updated or Thatcherism mark II, they explain how Labour has gone beyond social democracy and is shaped by Thatcherism, yet different from it.

New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism shows how the New Labour Party has looked to the USA, Europe, Australasia and East Asia for inspiration. It outlines the path of modernization which led to the Blair revolution. Driver and Martell explain the role of big ideas such as communitarianism, globalization and stakeholding. And they provide a full introduction to and interpretation of New Labour's policies on the economy, welfare and constitutional reform.

Students and general readers will find this an accessible introduction to New Labour ideology and policy. Experts will find a new interpretation, which breaks with other perspectives on Labour under Blair.