Considerations on Social Democracy in the United States

Abstract

European social and political observers have often regarded the economic achievements of the United States, and the apparent fluidity of its social order, with envy. In complementary fashion, the American Left (with politics ranging from the liberal wing of the Democratic party leftward) has rather consistently aspired to make American politics receptive to the proposals and practices of European social democrats. Yet, if considerations of social democracy, as movement and as program, are inherently difficult in the European context, confusions abound when assessments are made of the relevance and meaning of social democracy in the United States. In part this difficulty is conceptual and linguistic. Much as Europeans have frequently overestimated the open qualities of American society, so Americans have tended to confuse social democracy with socialism. Socialism refers to an outcome, which negates the basic features of capitalist productive and social relations associated with the private control of capital and the extraction of a surplus from labor by capital. Accordingly, the social command of capital and the democratization of production relations have been at the core of the various analytical and political approaches to socialism. Social democracy, by contrast, refers to a substantive historical process of modifying and reshaping market patterns, which for many-but by no means all--of its adherents promises an end to capitalism in the distant and dimly seen future. Social democracy in Western Europe has thus been a strategy of reform intended to make capitalism more tolerable and less ruthless. But even understood this way, social democracy is not a neatly selfcontained term. The roots of social democratic policies, as opposed to social democratic movements, are diverse. They are to be found, of course, in the pronouncements and practices of socialist and Marxist parties, unions, and intellectuals, but hardly there alone. Precursors of social democracy also include political liberalism, utopian socialism, and nonconformist Christianity. In nineteenth century England, for example, those pressing for the expansion of state activities to intervene in the market included a disparate group of labor leaders, clergymen, Tory members of parliament, small squires, and philan