Democratic Unity Research Articles

Strange Attractors: How Individualists Connect to Form Democratic Unity

Strange Attractors: How Individualists Connect to Form Democratic Unity

Comparative Social Policy and Political Conflict in Advanced Welfare States: Denmark and Sweden

There has developed an abundant literature on the social and political determinants of social policies, but few have addressed the question of how state policies, once implemented, affect the system of stratification in civil society. This article examines the political consequences of social policy in Denmark and Sweden, countries in which a social democratic labor movement has predominated for decades. Superficially, these two highly developed welfare states appear very similar. Yet the political and social contexts in which their social policies have evolved differ substantially. I shall demonstrate the argument that the traditional welfare state approach may be conducive to a new and powerful political conflict, which directly questions the legitimacy of the welfare state itself, unless government is successful in subordinating private capitalist growth to effective public regulation. In Denmark, where social democratic governments have failed to match welfare state growth with more control of private capital, social policy has tended to undermine the political unity of the working class. Consequently, the Social Democratic Party has been weakened. Social welfare programs, in effect, have helped create new forms of stratification within the working class. In Sweden, social democratic governments have been quite successful in shifting a decisive degree of power over the private market to the state. This has helped avert a crisis of the welfare state, and has also been an important condition for continued social democratic hegemony and working-class unity. I conclude that social reform politics tend to be problematic from the point of view of the future power of social democratic movements.

President Roosevelt and United Democracy

IN his ‘fireside talk’ on December 29, President Roosevelt reached the highest point he has yet attained in his career as statesman and a great leader of democracy. No less than the successes of allied arms in the field, it holds out a promise of ultimate victory and marks a substantial stage in progress towards a ‘new order’ of democratic unity. As he had elected national security rather than war as his topic, his statement was addressed primarily to the people of the United States; but in order that he should place the situation as it affects their country fairly and squarely before them, he was bound by the logic of present realities to show how the forces of aggression embodied in the Axis Powers form a threat to the Americas as a whole, and in aiming at a world domination were bent upon the destruction everywhere of that freedom which is of the essence of democracy. By the cogent argument of the facts of recent history in the action of “a gang of outlaws” against weaker neighbouring peoples, and the inevitable consequences which would follow their success in Europe, he showed that American civilization and American independence “had never before, since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock,"been in such danger.

International Democratic Unity

A DECLARATION of Union offered by the British Government was handed to the French Government by His Majesty's Ambassador on June 16. It is not necessary to reproduce here the complete Declaration, though a few phrases may well be emphasized.