2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The DNC establishment is going to escort Bernie to NH SOS on Thursday to get his name on the ballot. [View all]VanillaRhapsody
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Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, redistribution of income and wealth, and a commitment to representative democracy.[1][2][3] Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater egalitarian, democratic and solidaristic outcomes, and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Western and Northern Europe - particularly in the Nordic countries - during the latter half of the 20th century.[4][5][6]
Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated a peaceful, evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes, in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with Orthodox Marxism.[7] However, in the post-war era, contemporary social democracy separated from the socialist movement altogether, instead emerging as a distinct political identity that advocated reforming rather than replacing capitalism.[8] In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership; as a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state, while abandoning their prior goal of abolishing the capitalist system and substituting it with a qualitatively different socialist economic system.[9][10][11]
Modern social democracy is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed to curb inequality, poverty, and the oppression of underprivileged groups,[12] including support for universally-accessible public services like education, health care, workers' compensation, child care and care for the elderly.[
Democratic socialism is a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy (usually multi-party representative democracy) with social ownership of the means of production. Although sometimes used synonymously with "socialism", the adjective "democratic" is sometimes added to distinguish itself from other models of socialism which democratic socialists perceive to be undemocratic.[1]
Democratic socialism is usually distinguished from both the Soviet model of a centralized economy and social democracy.[2] A distinction is also made between democratic socialism and social democracy in that the former is committed to systemic transformation of the economy while the latter is not.[3] However, "democratic socialism" is sometimes improperly used as a synonym for social democracy, where "social democracy" usually refers to support for political democracy, regulation of the capitalist economy, and a welfare state.[4]
Democratic socialism rejects the social democratic view of reform through state intervention within capitalism, seeing capitalism as inherently incompatible with the democratic values of freedom, equality, and solidarity. Democratic socialists believe that the economic contradictions inherent to capitalism can only be solved by transitioning from capitalism to socialism, by superseding private property with some form of social ownership, with any attempt to address the economic contradictions of capitalism through reforms only being likely to generate more problems elsewhere in the capitalist economy.[5][6]