Thoughts of a Social Democrat

...Although it is true that in the nineteenth century most intellectuals ranging from socialists to liberals like John Stuart Mill condemned the consuming culture of capitalism (R...

...This must not deter us from attacking with passion all those real and pressing injustices associated with the maldistribution of power and income that can be eradicated...

...In key social services, where democratic capitalism presupposes inequality produced by the market, social democracy presupposes equality guaranteed by the state...

...The latter are those in which the majority of goods and services—as in capitalism—are produced by a market mechanism but where government and workers' associations ensure that many services and some goods are taken for both production and allocation purposes either substantially or totally out of the market...

...Does it presuppose that entrepreneurial personalities cannot by definition be good citizens in a socialist state...

...In addition, compensatory direct legal action in the domain of market-produced goods and services is also needed to ensure effective equality in terms of access to work for women, the poor, and a great many minorities...

...My second point concerns the assertion that in social democracies such as Sweden the public sector simply produces the amenities needed in a capitalist economy, not those of a socialist society...

...The same leadership should make it clear that in a socialist society an element of personal gain will continue to play a vital role in economic activity...

...H. Tawney's "acquisitive society" and C.B...

...They were not, however, critical of all aspects of capitalism...

...What is now needed is a further modification in which this attribute is both curtailed and rechanneled but not totally repressed...

...However, along with the development of modern capitalism and its leading ideological supporters—the middle class—was the simultaneous growth in the West of a large industrial working class, which produced not only its own solidarity-based union movement but also democracy itself...

...It has been less obvious but equally true in the state-owned enterprises in Western democracies...

...I remain convinced that sustained social democratic leadership can persuade majorities to modify their behavior...

...Just as philosophy or ideology played a key role in the first transition, so too it must now...

...This is true, in part, because they are platonic absolutes ever exceeding our grasp...

...Power, however, can be radically democratized without abolishing the deed of ownership...

...Via the democratic state, major changes have been made in society...

...I believe this attitude accounts for much of his economic problem and his restrictive approach to human rights...

...I don't agree...

...This has been done not simply to ensure that certain amenities would be available...

...This has been obvious in the undemocratic Soviet tradition...

...I think of obvious but important matters such as wages, work conditions, and retraining programs...

...In the evolution from medieval society, the making of profit shifted at a certain point from being a marginal and negatively regarded aspect of society to being pervasive...

...In advanced welfare states they have used their democratic power to modify or transform everything about the capitalist economy but what some see as its essence: the unleashing of "greed" (the medieval world) or "profit maximization" (the modern description) to produce a superabundance of goods and services...

...As Orwell understood, working families desire at any stage in history what many of their "betters" take for granted but claim to find morally offensive...

...With its elements of human rights, equality, democratic power, and, yes, degrees of materialism, it is good and defensible...

...Although much drudgery has been removed by having machines do what was once done by humans and by increased worker participation at the work site, not only have some new forms of drudgery been introduced, but also, no matter how much the workplace is democratized, some drudgery will inevitably remain in any real society...

...Moral incentives" as the driving force in an economy have never been sufficient to produce beyond the subsistence level...

...Let me put it a different way...

...Majoritarian support for tough measures to protect the environment, redress the concerns of indigenous people, yes, even favor trains over cars—all in degrees of emphasis, not as an absolute, is evidence of this...

...All such curtailment of management's prerogatives and restrictions on the role of the market have produced a major expansion in the capacity of working families to shape their own destinies...

...It will have imperfections...

...Socialism, like democracy, constitutes both a kind of realizable society different from capitalism and as a set of guiding principles...

...There will, however, always be socialists as well as other in such societies who will decry such complacency and boredom and look for ways of making things more engaged and exciting...

...Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of capitalism, historic and modern, has been the relentless drive of capital or profit to sustain and exceed itself ad infinitum...

...Apart from the United States, this idea has had widespread WINTER • 1991 • 83 A View From Canada support in almost every society, capitalist or otherwise, from antiquity to the present...

...This transition was accompanied by a parallel development in Christian theology...

...And can human beings flourish in the development 84 • DISSENT A View From Canada of their capacities and talents while living at a subsistence level...

...When theologians ceased condemning the pursuit of profit as a sin and started to describe such market activity as a normal and, within limits, an acceptable mode of behavior, capitalist relations had finally triumphed...

...Rejecting a heaven after death, most of us have taken our stand to do our best in applying its norms to the here and now...

...There are capitalist market economies and there are socialist market economies...

...I think not...

...Some have argued that social democratic welfare states have not removed the necessity for performing unwelcome work, which would be a socialist principle...

...Nor should we fail to see that, in some parts of the world, capitalist market societies have already been transformed...

...It seems to me this claim presupposes that a market economy and socialism are mutually exclusive...

...Socialism can emerge in the twenty-first century, not from the ashes of this century's abomination known as Leninism, but as the incremental outgrowth of the social democracy we now see in Northern Europe and elsewhere...

...The same workers and their leaders not only helped to create the world's first democratic societies as a result of often violent struggle but in changing the operation of capitalist market economies, social democratic parties and governments have gone well beyond what was deemed to have been possible not only by Marx but by Keynes...

...These positive changes have added to the range of democratic freedoms they have also achieved in the civil domain...

...Governments in any socialist state should ensure that all citizens have equal access to medical service, education throughout life, child care, clean streets, attractive parks, healthy forests, mountains and lakes for recreation...

...It seems to me time for socialist intellectuals finally to accept the desire for personal economic benefit as a given element in all human nature but dominant in some only...

...Maybe Sweden is even now sufficiently different to be called "socialist...

...And while the appropriate means for implementation will vary from country to country as determined by working people themselves and in accord with their own national traditions, there can be no doubt that for reform to be socialist in nature this is the 82 • DISSENT A View From Canada direction for the future...

...This is in marked contrast to non–social democratic societies like the United States, where social programs on unequal quality are set up for targeted groups who are perceived to have failed "to succeed" in the system...

...In this paper I suggest that these assumptions, old and now recycled, are wrong...

...The power and legitimacy of democratic political institutions in welfare states have been used to ensure that certain nonmarketable values and benefits not only survive but thrive in a society and economy that is otherwise market-driven...

...The majority in such societies are less alienated...

...These include tough regulations on the environment, affirmative action programs, mandatory paid vacations, and universal health, education, and child-care programs...

...By accepting in modified form the significant role of personal gain or profit in creating goods and services, they have not, I believe, simply preserved capitalism but have made it something quite different...

...This too constitutes a direct restriction of traditional capitalist market forces and traditional management's power to decide...

...Private ownership of the means of production was and is alienating in capitalist society to the degree that it entails undemocratic power over other people's lives...

...It is clear that the next general line of the expansion of the capacity for men and women to control their own destinies—required by both socialism and democracy—should include an effective say, direct or indirect through delegation, in the remaining key prerogative of management: control of major new investment decisions...

...The majoritarian "followers" often run ahead of their government in demonstrating the continuing relevance of non—consumption-oriented values even in marketdriven societies...

...There have been in most such discussions the unstated but related assumptions that all market systems must be capitalist and that socialism by definition excludes the presence of the morality of profit making...

...I think the answer to both questions is no...

...Yes, at a given time some socialist nations will be predominantly "pragmatic" and "comfortminded" but nonetheless socialist because of this...

...It is true that in the early days of socialism it was believed by a number of theorists, though not by many workers, that all forms of disagreeable labor could eventually be dispensed with, given the immense potential of higher, state-guided productivity...

...The contrary proposition—that socialism must entail the elimination of desire for personal economic gain—is unsustainable, either as an empirical description or in its milder form, as a desirable goal...

...Just as the historical shift from the medieval period to its capitalist successor resulted in the retention of certain values and practices of the former, so, too, is the historical transformation of capitalism resulting in the retention of certain of its values and practices in a society that is otherwise quite different...

...they do have more freedom...

...About this, I would make two points...

...Does a socialist society presuppose we must all like the personal qualities in all other citizens...

...A variety of options for such workers' participation is now available both in theory and practice...

...Liberty, equality, and community are, after all, highly desirable but ultimately unrealizable goals...

...Indeed, "state" ownership has usually meant that workers have been as effectively removed from decision-making powers as they ever were in traditional capitalist economies...

...But we must stop expecting more of socialism than it can ever deliver and more than its working-class base ever expected...

...The mass-based socialist parties that were created to serve these ends were, of course, critical of capitalism...

...Workers, historic and modern, have welcomed the opportunity for access to goods that once were not available or were available only to those with much greater wealth...

...Linked economically with profit, it can be harnessed to achieve socialist goals...

...The transition from the medieval to the capitalist period entailed a change in society from one in which the human propensity for self-benefit in the form of profit was condemned and repressed to one in which it was exalted...

...Ever since, bourgeois life has constituted both a kind of economic activity and a certain kind of culture, a good part of whose ideology has been devoted to giving moral legitimacy to capitalism...

...Workers in Sweden and other welfare states, through their unions and their governments, have already seriously transformed these powers to a considerable extent...

...q WINTER • 1991 • 85...

...A defining characteristic of capitalism is the classical set of unilateral legal powers of the owners or managers of large enterprises...

...Finally, in order to avoid the philistinism of a life completely shaped by market forces, governments ought to play a major but indirect role in the financing of the arts...

...Rather, there has been a conscious effort by social democratic governments and by governments subject to social democratic pressure to ensure that a range of goods and services is universally available to its citizen qua citizens, that is, on the basis of equality grounded on equal entitlement, not on the unequal basis of the market...

...We now understand there are human sources of boredom and even profound unhappiness that no form of society can eradicate...

...Why believe they ever will...

...Macpherson's "possessive individualism" are brilliant twentieth-century examples), this has not been true of the working class, including those who constitute the main body of the socialist movement, either in the past or today...

...To miss the differences and to neglect the similarities is to fail utterly to understand social democracy and the prospects of its future for human liberty...

...Just as there are gradations in the development of democracy that entitle us to say some countries are more democratic than others, so too are there gradations in socialism that entitle us to say some nations are more socialist than others...

...In using its democratic power in the workplace and in civil society, the social democratic movement has made a qualitative improvement in so many aspects of life that contemporary welfare states are much more advanced with regard to human liberty in all its dimensions than is the United States with its democratic capitalism...

...It is true also because any real socialist society will have within it conflicting claims of equal moral legitimacy that cannot be simultaneously addressed: more money for child care or schools or the environment or for investment...

...The democratic state should be used to ensure equal non–market-based access to the above list (as a rule, when restrictions in number are needed, for example, for access to skiing or for other recreational purposes, the price mechanism should not be used...

...Fidel Castro's deeply entrenched "medieval" morality lies behind his antipathy to personal economic gain in any form...

...However, as with the idea of democracy itself, any "real" socialism will always be improvable...

...However convenient these assumptions have been for Eastern communists and Western conservatives in their ideological wars, the sad fact is that they have shifted the discussion away from a fuller understanding of the profound changes in practice and thought that have taken place in major parts of Western society since the Russian revolution...

...However, since the 1950s at least, the "withering away of all drudgery" has been seen by most socialists as the intellectual equivalent of the "withering away of the state," that is, there is no good reason based on empirical knowledge in either sociology or economics to believe it is possible...