On Social Democracy and the Kibbutz

...Social democracy has regressed in some places while gaining ground in others (including some of the former communist countries...

...Such achievements are few in the history of social experiments...

...Between the 1920s and the 1960s, a public sphere with a certain sense of intimacy was created in Israel...

...As long as we remember that the end should not justify the means, we may have a possible starting point: neither the value of freedom nor the values of equality and justice should become idols...

...The kibbutz, for example, was born from a dream and an aspiration to improve human nature within a generation or two by changing its social circumstances...

...Well, there is no arithmetic in the world by which thirty working and productive age cohorts will manage to support and pamper (in addition to themselves) another forty to fifty cohorts who either have not yet begun to be productive or have already finished their shift and gone to relax...

...Furthermore, social democracy's achievements have, in some parts, come to be taken for granted, like a pair of comfortable slippers...

...The tide of abundance in the affluent society does not rise in every house—maybe not even in most...

...And in this, too, liberalism and social democracy are similar...

...Moreover, the rise of enclaves of wealth occurs in a world in which more than half of humanity is impoverished and without hope...

...In contrast to various "redemptive" movements, the social democrats had no vision of an apocalypse that would usher in "the end of history" and the beginning of an everlasting reign of happiness...

...Don't dare to engineer society and refurbish humanity, lest you bring gulags upon us...

...In some parts of the world, the third path seems to be the return to the kinds of religion that exhort their adherents to accept their material poverty and renounce the pleasures of this world (which is, after all, a "mere corridor...

...The differential is the force that drives them apart...

...More than one ideological movement has promised humanity great happiness in the future, to be attained by sacrifice in the present...

...every person is "our problem," even if he or she is a troublemaker and a burden...

...The value of human equality must be based on the equal right of human beings to be different from one another, without allowing the differences to become a source of privilege...

...And who, if not poor immigrants from the third world, will do all the "unskilled" work...

...The cheerful belief that reforming society will bring with it an improvement in human nature has been proven false...

...In the controversy regarding the goodness or the dangers of human nature, it might be best, if for no reason other than caution's sake, to support the pessimists: humans are sometimes dan42- DISSENT Social Democracy ti the Kibbutz gerous to each other, whether motivated by lust for money and power or draped in the mantle of patriotism, whether motivated by religious zeal, chauvinist ecstasy, or ideological devotion...

...Renewal of the neighborhood fabric, coffee breaks at the local cafe, spontaneous meetings with neighbors, all create a possibility for revitalization of the acquaintance community—the village within the metropolis...

...An Empathetic Society The kibbutz erred badly when it tried to actualize the values of equality and solidarity through regulations diminishing the uniqueness of the individual...

...These certainties have disintegrated in recent times, and the foundations of the world of millions of people have been shaken...

...Not only should we work to prevent, by means of education and cautious legislation, the concentration of the wealth of nations in fewer and fewer hands, we ought to spread the wealth over the entire social grid...

...The principles of democratic socialism are inherently "lukewarm" and evolutionary...

...And yet we can find places, here and there, where a new routine has begun to evolve...

...Neither the desire to generate economic prosperity through unrestrained competition nor the aspiration to protect the weak from every consequence of ruthless competitiveness should become a rite that subsumes all of life...

...Regulate without infringing on individual freedom...

...and our baser instincts will disappear...

...The integral is what holds couples, friends, partners, or a kibbutz together...

...Gordon, an early utopian Zionist thinker, speculated that if the oppressed really wanted to liberate themselves, their problem would have been resolved long ago...

...How can we intervene without suppressing...

...But if it has succeeded, why does it carry an air of diminution...

...The real problem, said Gordon, was that, often, the dream of the oppressed was to oppress others and the goal of the exploited was to exploit their fellows...

...Will it spring up in other places, in a different incarnation...

...The differential vector reminds us time and again that we prey on each other, that we are blank walls to our comrades, or that we are bothers to each other...

...Nonetheless, there is something unprecedented about our century...

...In any event, it is doubtful whether it will preserve its ambience of a compound and a common yard...

...Even today, there are large segments of humanity for whom these certainties still exist...

...All of these are the responsibility of the "grownup world," parents and state—or more precisely, the parents demand that the state assume most of the responsibility...

...Society, therefore, ought to keep its interference at a minimum...

...Differential and Integral Social democracy can reinvigorate itself if it looks for inspiration to the kibbutz at its best— an acquaintance community in which people relate to one another in circles of respect and shame...

...and after death they would go to a sphere in whose existence they believed wholeheartedly...

...he would do what his father did and she would do what her mother did, or close to it...

...But the change in circumstances was sometimes achieved by social pressure that was meant to SUMMER • 1997...

...It seems unlikely that people will dance an ecstatic hora or sing around a campfire into the night...

...Human beings may, under certain conditions, display a certain amount of spontaneous solidarity between themselves— they will be open to voluntary sharing and will channel their competitive instincts in nonmaterialistic directions...

...Rather, they investigated what they could do during the course of today so that when evening falls, our lives would be a little better than they were yesterday and the day before...

...What you have done wrong or badly will bring shame upon you...

...Up to a point, the kibbutz was able to maintain an ongoing sense of mutual responsibility between people who were not related by blood or marriage, and were not subordinate to any higher or external authority...

...One is entitled, too, perhaps, to wander around the world for a carefree year or two...

...Perhaps this was also due to a unique historic situation—the euphoria of the birth of a nation—that created a feverishness and a degree of intellectual and emotional intensity...

...A liberal would have posed the opposite question at the same time: What can and should your government do for you?, whereas the social democrat would ask: What are you willing to do, together with your fellows, for the common good of all of you...

...The democratic socialist movement has almost always been distant from both burning hatred and ecstatic enthusiasm...

...What renewal requires is an effort to integrate communitarian ideas into a liberal worldview...

...In the long run, democratic socialism was more successful than other movements because its perception of human nature was more subtle and complex...

...Or is human nature inherently evil, and "if not for fear of the law, humanity will devour his fellow man," as the Jewish sages said...

...Both liberalism and democratic socialism are exceptions because they do not offer an interpretation for every phenomenon and do not pretend to have total prescriptions for every sphere of life...

...And again, the state must stand and wait for you thirty years later at the next bend in the road, to hand you a warm robe and slippers, because now you are tired and you deserve to stretch your legs in a pensioner's armchair while the state cares, supplies, cures, entertains, and pampers you a little...

...They didn't preach salvation at all and contented themselves with reform and repair...

...The Village Within the Metropolis In a world where most people are moving in the direction of urbanization, professionalization, estrangement between neighbors, and the separation of work and family life, it would seem almost absurd to hope for a renewal of the old "circles of respect and shame...

...We will be able to reopen channels of communication with other people who are not our supervisors or subordinates and to recreate relationships that are not merely hierarchical, collegial, or competitive...

...How can we guide without trampling...

...There is an alternative to the dichotomy of paradise and inferno that enables us to reconcile imperfect liberty with imperfect social justice...

...They aimed to give a significance to every phenomenon, a purpose for every deed, to tie everything together in the flow of history...

...They don't scatter sparks of radical fury and they are far from the intoxicating barricades of fashionably revolutionary ideas...

...If we approach history in terms of the degree of change caused by historical events in people's daily lives—in the kitchen and the bedroom, in work and play—we find that in the last hundred or hundred and fifty years there have been more changes than in any earlier period: a "resident" of the third century B.C.E...

...our character will improve...

...The welfare state did not turn its citizens into brothers and sisters...

...We must seek a balance...

...Instead of the familiar anthill of production halls and office cages, a person will be able to take a break from the workroom at home over a cup of coffee or lunch with family or neighbors at the local cafe, at a nearby club, or at the corner restaurant...

...A host of human obligations that the tired commuter has transferred to the welfare state might be re-established in the intimate community of neighbors...

...On the face of things, at least, it seems that the conservative's recognition of the selfishness that characterizes human nature is an argument in favor of the social democrat's conclusion that we need to restrain the power struggles between individuals...

...The kibbutz is a potential source of inspiration for future social reformers who can try to avoid its shortcomings...

...Liberals can teach us that the restraints themselves must be limited and kept strongly in check...

...These true believers reject the "hedonistic and materialistic miasma of the West," and are contemptuous of the "world of modernity...

...The workers of the world have not united...

...More and more students study in front of a computer screen in their room instead of a blackboard in a classroom...

...The value of solidarity is based on the premise that "no man is an island— every man is part of a continent...

...How can we refine our instincts for competition and achievement without stifling them...

...In a kibbutz at its best, rather than spending most of your time among strangers and superficial acquaintances, in and out of work, you are among people whose respect you seek...

...At night we return home to rest and relax or go out for an evening's entertainment among strangers...

...To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous call, "I have a dream," one could say that one of the reasons for the decline of social democracy is that it has left nothing to dream about...

...Paradoxically, there may be a certain similarity between such a communist atmosphere and the spirit that imbues capitalist countries: the "other" is essentially no more than my client, supplier, adversary, or at best, a (temporary) partner based on mutual interest...

...Encourage and protect without expanding bureaucracy...

...The controversy reveals a certain disagreement about human nature: Is it inherently good...

...Will it be a continuation of existing kibbutzim...

...Most of the popular ideologies that developed in the nineteenth century sought to produce comprehensive compensation for the loss of these "intimate certainties" and to provide us with guidance about how to behave and what to prefer in every possible personal situation...

...In the kibbutz, no person's problem is "his problem...

...Western society is increasingly becoming a limited liability endeavor...

...The invitation to identify with a revolution whose heroes are the "working class," the "oppressed victims of colonialism," ecological balance, or the sexually oppressed, is far more colorful and electrifying than a sensibility directed toward the elderly or the unemployed, the person in need of an income supplement or the chronically ill...

...No longer will social services, education, crime, or local environmental issues be the responsibility solely of some faraway member of parliament or the police or anonymous "authorities...

...They have always charted a hard road leading ultimately to some promised land, always de40 • DISSENT Social Democracy 8 the Kibbutz manding that you first endure "forty years in the desert" before you—or your descendants— reach fulfillment of the vision...

...It is hard to imagine what the kibbutz will look like a few years from now...

...If the need for the "other" as fellow still exists or has begun to reawaken, then there is a future for social democracy and maybe for the idea of the kibbutz as well...

...When left to its own devices, will things work out for the best...

...There were certainly elements of power craving, party discipline, conformism, hypocrisy, and a measure of empty rhetoric mixed into the integral: the failures and shortcomings of Israeli labor and of the kibbutz movement are now common knowledge...

...We also ought to ask ourselves, if everyone deserves a higher education, comprehensive specialization, a diploma or two—what will all these diplomaed experts do in a job market that needs only some of them...

...By going to sleep, you exposed a certain weakness: anybody worth his salt didn't leave in the middle—and this "middle" was almost ceaseless...

...transplanted to the fifteenth century, would adjust more easily than anyone from any previous century transported to our age, and not only because of the technological revolution...

...It allowed for a wider range of human inclinations, as well as for human freedom—at least as a postulate— and for inherent imperfectibility...

...Perhaps the only way to preserve a dream intact is to never try to fulfill it...

...And is there yet a fourth path...

...And yet its promise to its citizens (or its children) is becoming more and more difficult to maintain: "Vote for me and I will increase your benefits...

...Socialist education did not succeed in uprooting the baser instincts of selfishness, competitiveness, violence, and envy from the hearts of its students...

...The child holds the sanction of the screaming baby, including the right to use the infantile argument, "Then how come they can...

...Some of the achievements of the welfare state have been gradually incorporated into capitalism so that many people have forgotten the movement that fostered them: trade unions, the right to strike, free universal education, public health services, and the minimum wage...

...The controversy between conservatives and world reformers is sometimes sketched as a conflict between freedom and justice: certain conservatives, together with some liberals, view the urge for social justice as a threat to individual freedom: don't kill the mockingbird...

...Virtually all health, pension, and unemployment compensation laws are the fruit of democratic socialist efforts...

...Other ideologies that sought to make revolutionary changes in the social order not only suffered utter defeat but were defiled by the blood of their adherents as well as their opponents...

...The value of sharing does not mean self-effacement, because without a sense of self you have nothing to share with your comrade...

...Such community offers opportunities for the involvement of parents in their children's education—parents will be able to drop in at school to see how their daughter is or to spend a little time at the kindergarten to read their son a story...

...In contrast to various radical forces, the social democrats never felt the need to depict some diabolical antagonist, whose destruction would herald world redemption...

...Socialism responds by saying that the ideal of freedom is sometimes an alibi for the right of the strong to prey on the weak...

...All of this in an age of rising life expectancy in the affluent countries...

...Moreover, the kibbutz was not a marginalized village enclave cut off from the twentieth century—it was very close to the pulse of the era...

...In many parts of our world, real personal relationships have survived only within the nuclear family...

...We leave our homes in the morning, some of us to join the endless centipede of private cars crawling along the road, and some of us to be herded among strangers in crowded trains and buses...

...And all of this means that childhood is extended almost to age thirty, and until then the state has to support you—directly or indirectly through assistance and subsidies to your parents, because you are still preparing for life...

...The world beyond the family has become a battlefield, a rating contest, or a wasteland...

...The Talmud tell us, "And if a man should see that his desire overcomes him, let him go to a place of strangers . . . ." Namely, to people whose personal respect is not important to him and whose ridicule or anger do not shame him...

...45 Social Democracy S the Kibbutz stifle volcanic middle-class appetites...

...It might have been wiser to compromise a bit with these appetites...

...They would live in the place where they were born or around the corner...

...Actually, most of us are probably more like peninsulas...

...The outstanding difference between them is found in liberalism's focus on questions of liberties and civil rights, and the nature of the desired contract between the individual and state institutions, while democratic socialism also sought a gradual—and necessarily imperfect— way to establish justice...

...The social democrats did not strive to "destroy the old world down to its foundations," but rather to moderate and modify several social inclinations and some social institutions...

...And precisely because of its good intentions, it has accustomed great numbers of people to view it as a sort of surrogate parent, fair and responsible but impersonal and always busy...

...This is perhaps one of the sources of crisis in the social democratic welfare states, including the wealthiest among them: there is nowhere to take from in order to give to citizens what they "deserve," which is undefined and, in principle, limitless...

...suddenly transported to the third century C.E., or a "resident" of the fifth century C.E...

...Ask what you can do for your country," his words echoed with ideologies of which Kennedy himself had no part...

...But we must never attempt to satisfy that thirst at the expense of another human thirst, just as deep, for privacy, individuality, and a measure of solitude...

...We find conservatives who believe that the egotism intrinsic in every individual organizes millions of selfish pursuits into an orchestrated, prosperous public arena, through a natural mechanism of balance...

...An expanding range of personal choices has created a need for some sort of "handbook" that will teach us how and what to choose, or will relieve us of the burden of independent choice and the loneliness inherent in making choices...

...Socialists, for their part, tend to be cheerfully optimistic in their view of human nature yet, lo and behold, they preach social planning and restraint of power from above...

...Will it still be called "kibbutz...

...The world of the wealthy gallops along its path, secure in its banal view of human nature, maintaining that a full stomach hungers only for luxuries, delicacies, and amusement...

...One can gather neighbors together to take action Similarly, we will not SUMMER • 1997 • 43 Social Democracy 8 the Kibbutz be forced to send our sick and elderly to institutions out of sight and out of mind...

...But perhaps we ought to remind ourselves that these movements were not solely a failure or a disgrace: despite the hypocrisy, the self-righteousness, the phrasemaking, and the conformity, the codes of equality and struggle against injustice were deep and genuine...

...This bureaucracy is, to be sure, utterly different from the cruel and degenerated bureaucracy of the communist dictatorships: the social democratic bureaucracy is restrained and...

...More than once, kibbutzniks made the mistake of trying to preserve rules and regulations when solidarity was weakening under the press of their petty prohibitions...

...Maybe this is due to the fundamentally practical temperament of social democracy...

...We frequently see the administration and the citizen in the welfare state in confrontation, like a recalcitrant child and an uncooperative parent...

...But democratic socialism didn't have a "final destination" or a "promised land...

...When John F. Kennedy called upon his fellow Americans to ask "not what your country can do for you...

...Perhaps the kibbutz will be reinvented in other countries...

...According to the "entitlement ethic," one is entitled to an education, including secondary, post-secondary, a B.A.—and why not an M.A...

...It breeds gurus, mullahs and ayatollahs, "Moral Majorities," false messiahs, and purveyors of all sorts of ecstasies who will respond to the need for an intimate society that moderates the competitive urge: the spiritual need for solidarity and for circles of respect and shame...

...Rather than people who preserve their rights by tilling out forms, we can become partners in our own lives...

...If this trend, a result of the computer revolution, is truly changing living habits on a significant scale, then there may be a real chance for a renaissance of small neighborly communities— in suburbs, in neighborhoods, in apartment buildings...

...In this respect, the Israeli labor movement and the kibbutz at its best have done better than the western European or Scandinavian welfare states...

...This controversy contains a latent paradox: conservatives are more often than not skeptical and even pessimistic about human nature...

...By drawing upon the resources of humor, relativism, patience, and the ability to live with the paradoxes of human nature, the idea of fellowship may be reclaimed...

...In the social democracies, a polite indifference toward the "other" sometimes developed: we are all attached to the same teats and we all suckle from them, and as long as you stay away from my teat, you're welcome to yours...

...There is always a tragic-comic gap between dreamers and their dreams: the dreams are lofty and the dreamers plagued by contradictions, and therefore the fulfillment of all dreams is doomed to be partial and flawed...

...The kibbutz experience proves, if only on a "laboratory" scale, that those who view humanity as a species of predators are not entirely correct...

...What you have done well will bring you respect and even admiration...

...The socioeconomic temper that is so popular today is essentially a differential temper—catch as catch can—that perceives selfishness and unrestrained competitiveness as virtues...

...In order to provide continuous stimulation for this appetite, a huge industry has developed and created a pornography of consumption: a fetishism of status symbols shining in rainbow colors, stockings woven with a transcendent glow, digestive pills illuminated by apocalyptic gospel, revolutionary cleaning fluids that leave a heavenly glare, futuristic toilets that flush in the dawn of a messianic age...

...We will be able to care for them, up to a point, in the framework of the neighborhood...

...A.D...

...Even triumph cannot sweeten the waning of the adrenaline that surges at the time of the battle...

...And this ethos has quickly degenerated into a kind of constant sourness: "I am deprived," "Others get more than I do," or "They got before I did...

...Indeed, in this dramatic century of ours, democratic socialism is the least dramatic ideology, the least theatrical of all: without uniforms and parades, almost devoid of symbols, and with almost no heroes or martyrs...

...No Man Is an Island' We can renew or rebuild a social integral only on the basis of a sensitivity to wrongdoing and a thirst for justice joined to an awareness of our need for one another...

...Both socialism and capitalism are depicted by various disciples of sundry sects as manifestations of western decadence...

...It has not happened...

...The ageold certainties have not vanished all at once but have waned—at first in small enclaves, and afterward in ever-widening areas—at varying rates, according to "local time...

...Yet they maintain that it is best to minimize the intervention of society and government in the power struggles between individuals and groups...

...Heaven help the society in which the differential is stronger than the integral...

...Like liberalism (but in total contrast to some other trends on the left and right), social democracy never presumed to replace the institution of the family or to reshape it according to ideological needs, or to position the family in a context wider or more "important" than itself...

...The codes upon which the integral of the kibbutz (and the Israeli labor movement more generally) were based were codes of sensitivity to injustice...

...The mistake may have been in assuming that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," that we are all essentially economic creatures: give us a degree of material security and we will immediately feel a sense of general satisfaction...

...The state has become mother, the administration father, and the role of both parents is to meet all of the needs of the citizen who has grown accustomed to viewing himself or herself as a perpetual minor...

...The bitter lesson that the social democrats learned, when they realized that improved living conditions and an enlightened society do not guarantee the creation of an improved and enlightened human being, should strengthen our awareness of the need for society to regulate and to limit the hunting grounds of lust and selfishness—to protect the weak and the needy...

...Or argue, discuss, vote, and argue again until dawn...

...And the parent is in a state of constant self-justification, mumbling that what cannot be granted today will undoubtedly be given tomorrow . . . or the SUMMER • 1997 • 41 Social Democracy II the Kibbutz day after...

...Rather than profit, or professional recognition, or envy of your material achievements, you look to them for personal affirmation...

...Translated from the Hebrew by MAGGIE BARTURA 46 • DISSENT...

...Kibbutz children did not become a new species of benevolent human beings...

...The intimacy between individuals was sometimes overburdened by an intense mutual affinity that jumbled together closeness, tension, cooperation, gossip, 44 • DISSENT Social Democracy S the Kibbutz mutual responsibility, intellectual conformism, and fruitful controversy...

...But most important, it has almost no pretensions of reshaping the culture...

...Perhaps the prime treasure that they set out to hunt for has not yet been found: once upon a time there was a hope at the heart of democratic socialist theory that a society that reduced the gap between rich and poor, and legislated mutual responsibility—a sort of "extended-family ethos"—would eventually engender spontaneous solidarity among its members...

...The Parent Promises It Tomorrow, The Child Wants It Right Now Not all of the dreams of the social democrats have been fulfilled...

...We must not allow the aspiration toward equality to become an aspiration toward uniformity or an attempt to make all of us similar to one another...

...Between the socialists and the conservatives there are various liberalisms that view human beings as rational, individualistic, indeed motivated by self-interest, but not necessarily as beasts of prey...

...SUMMER • 1997 • 39 Social Democracy S the Kibbutz So That When Evening Falls Our Lives Will Be a Little Better Because every age is the most significant one for its "residents," there is no point in ascribing special importance to the twentieth century...

...In the current view of many, poverty is the problem of the poor, illness is the problem of the sick and their families...

...And this is a thirst that the communist regime and the capitalist reality, and even the bureaucratic welfare state, cannot satisfy...

...In its successes, the welfare state has created an ethos of entitlement, of "I am deserving"—regardless of my efforts or accomplishments...

...We spend most of our waking hours surrounded by strangers or by superficial acquaintances, bound by ties of professional hierarchy or competition...

...Surely this horn of plenty is doomed to run dry one day, because where will the plenty come from...

...Once we forgo the imaginary paradise in which an enlightened society begets morally elevated individuals, we need not fall straight into a Darwinian inferno...

...An impulse of mechanical and even aggressive equality has gained widespread legitimacy in the social democracies...

...Under the communist regimes, a reality was created in which individuals were enemies— what is good for you is almost always bad for me and what is good for me almost certainly won't do you any good...

...one is entitled to a period of apprenticeship and specialization...

...When the homely certainties disappear, a thirst is created that ideologies seek to quench— a thirst for guidance, meaning, and a sense of purpose...

...This view maintains that individual liberty, including rights of property, needs only minimal restraint and even that ought to be anchored in a sensible contract between citizens and their government...

...Something like "habit becomes second nature," an end to alienation and to "dog eat dog...

...In every society, no matter how small, and even within the family, there are two contradictory forces at work: an integral vector and a differential vector...

...Ironically, the great achievements of social democracy have almost caused it, in some places, to pass gently away...

...In this respect, the disciples of the social democratic welfare state have sustained an ongoing disappointment...

...In strengthening these not overly large circles of neighbors who know one another, as well as a civic society crisscrossed by a weave of voluntary organizations, support groups, and study groups, we will create the preconditions for a culture of respect and shame...

...Moreover, it is the nature of dreams realized and promises kept to leave, in their very realization, an aftertaste of disappointment...

...well-meaning...

...Maybe now, at the threshold of the twentyfirst century, the idea of kibbutz is more timely than ever before...

...More and more people work from home...

...Society without a dimension of empathy becomes fertile ground for all sorts of sects and cults...

...This may generate a new and more mature kind of social democracy, based on the active involvement of every individual...

...Maybe not as subtle and complex as it might have been, but certainly less simplistic than those of some of its adversaries...

...It accorded a fair amount of importance to the present and was thus, perhaps, the most prosaic of world-reforming movements...

...An empathetic society does not require the individual to sacrifice himself or herself for others nor does it seek to blur the boundaries between me and the next person...

...There are, of course, different religious forces as well: Catholic socialism, the liberation theology movement in Latin America, Jewish streams that exhibit social and moral sensitivity...

...People talked to one another day and night in those years...

...From the dawn of civilization until the threshold of this century, urban and rural men and women could depend, from childhood, on three unshakable certainties: where they would live, what they would do, and what would happen to them after they died...

...And yet, there doesn't seem to be any other social structure that has succeeded, over the course of at least three or four generations, in offering nonritualistic satisfaction to the yearning for fellowship...

...Positions like these are the most obvious common denominator among Islamic extremism, Russian Slavophilic mysticism, Jewish messianic nationalism and insularity, some forms of Christianity, and, perhaps, the fanatical fringes of the Green movements...

...Perhaps it is not unthinkable to base the conclusions of social democracy on the cautiously pessimistic "conservative" assumption about human nature...

...If this kind of legislation were presented these days under the banner of democratic socialism in the United States, for example, it would be rejected out of hand...

...And the rich are pushed by the hype of the pornography of consumption to work past their human limits in order to earn more than they need so that they can purchase things they don't really want so as to impress strangers they don't care about...

...Despite the fact that no nineteenth-century social vision has achieved more success (and with less bloodshed) than the idea of the welfare state promoted by democratic socialism, we hardly ever encounter social democratic enthusiasm...

...The welfare state, in its most celebrated examples in Scandinavia, has become enmeshed in a net of impersonal bureaucracy...

...There is a chance that the kibbutz will last, or reappear, because it fills one of the oldest and most persistent human needs: the need for solidarity, the thirst for fellowship...

...Social democracy does not usually arouse the kinds of passion that communism or capitalism or religious renewal movements seem to inspire...

...Democratic socialism may have faded precisely because its ideas and accomplishments have become so self-evident that many people do not perceive it as an ideological stream but rather as a temperate climate—part of the standard contract between the individual and society and between the individual and an enlightened government...

...and a Ph.D...