Social democracy
Ideology · 20th century onward, Western Europe · Politics, stage 2: Map the ideologies
Social democracy accepts a market economy and parliamentary government, and seeks to correct market outcomes through taxation, public services and the regulation of employment. It took shape when socialist parties chose the ballot over revolution, and its characteristic institutions are the welfare state, publicly funded health care and education, and collective bargaining. Its advocates present it as the arrangement that delivers meaningful freedom to ordinary people while keeping the productivity and pluralism of markets. Critics to its left hold that it stabilises capitalism rather than replacing it and leaves the underlying distribution of ownership untouched; critics to its right hold that its levels of tax and transfer weaken incentives and that its programmes are hard to sustain as populations age. Mill is listed here as an ancestor rather than an adherent: the tradition postdates him, but his later writing accepted a large role for cooperative ownership and for public action on distribution.
What it claims
- Markets are productive, but their outcomes require political correction.
- Socialist ends should be pursued through elections and existing constitutional institutions.
- A universal welfare state is the practical form of equal citizenship.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Social democracy Wikipedia
- Socialism Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySection on the varieties of socialism places the reformist wing against the revolutionary one.
- Welfare state Wikipedia
