What Is Social Democracy?

You know, whenever I talk about politics or current affairs, I inevitably get the question of what school of political thought best correlates to my own views. I’m constantly asked about my thoughts on capitalism, socialism, anarchism, and the like, and I’ve had way more debates on different schools of political thought than I’d care to admit. So, for today’s article, I thought I’d go into detail on the political ideology that most closely aligns with my own: social democracy.

Before I do, however, I felt it was necessary to start off by explaining not what social democracy is, but what social democracy isn’t. First of all, social democracy is not socialism, nor can the policies of ostensibly socialist countries like the Soviet Union, China, or Venezuela be accurately described as social-democratic. Contrary to popular belief, social democracy is also not the same thing as democratic socialism, although the two are often used interchangeably.

OK, so now that we’re all on the same page, let’s begin. Social democracy can best be described as a political and economic system that incorporates some aspects of socialism into a capitalist framework. This is the main thing that differentiates it from democratic socialism, which by definition requires an overthrowing of a capitalist framework. Social-democratic countries strive to keep market economic structures intact while also incorporating things like a strong social safety net and universal social programs like healthcare, education, and housing paid for through tax dollars. This serves to create a society with equality of opportunity, one of the end goals of social democracy, in which people’s basic needs are off the table and the harder you work, the further you go.

The origins of social democracy originate in revolutionary France of the 1840s, and specifically with the writings of philosopher Maximilien Robespierre, one of the founding fathers of social democracy. His ideas were synthesized by Ferdinand Lassalle, the founder of the first major social-democratic party, the General German Worker’s Association (ADAV), as well as of the International Workingmen’s Association. Now, it’s really important to stress here that Lassalle was not in any way, shape, or form, a Marxist or communist. He disagreed with socialists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on the idea that the state must be abolished in order to create an egalitarian society, and believed that it could and must be used by the working class as a framework in which they would implement their reforms.

This brings me to a really important point: Marx and Engels despised Lassalle, and everything he stood for. When they were invited to the first meeting of the International Workingmen’s Association, Marx and Lassalle had a very public and very ugly disagreement about the issue of reformist socialism, and the role of the state, as the latter was a strong proponent of universal male suffrage. Lassalle tried to bury the hatchet repeatedly, but Marx and Engels, as well as their followers, refused and publically denounced Lassalle at every opportunity. When Lassalle came up with his theory of social democracy in the ADAV’s newsletter, Der Sozialdemokrat, Engels wrote: “But what a title: Sozialdemokrat! […] Why do they not call the thing simply The Proletarian.” Even though Lassalle maintained in contact with Marx and Engels, they never hid their distaste for social democracy, basically seeing Lassalle as a fraud not truly committed to the cause. In fact, Marx wrote an entire essay entitled Critique of the Gotha Program in part to publicly denounce Lassalle’s view of the world.

Now, in the United States, social democracy is most closely associated with the policies of the New Deal and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but it actually predates Roosevelt by decades. Historians believe it was Herbert Croly, and specifically his book The Promise of American Life, published in 1909, which laid the groundwork for American social democracy and was later used as a framework for the New Deal by Roosevelt. Croly also wrote the book Progressive Democracy, which laid out theories of how social-democratic change could take place, and he founded the magazine The New Republic, which remains the go-to publication for progressives in the United States.

So now that we’ve established what social democracy is and what it isn’t, let’s talk about what a social-democratic country actually looks like. Social democracy is usually known colloquially as “the Nordic model” so, as the name suggests, we can look at Scandinavian and Northern European countries for guidance. The defining characteristic of social democracy in Scandinavia is high rates of unionization, with 91.8 percent of Icelanders and 67 percent of Swedes being union members. Because of this, collective bargaining is so incredibly prevalent that the minimum wage in Iceland is approximately $20 an hour compared to $7.25 in the U.S., and Swedish unions have become so strong that they have outgrown the need for a national minimum wage because wages are determined by negotiations between national unions and employees. In fact, these unions are so strong that the average yearly wage in Sweden is almost $4,000 more than in America.

Next, let’s look at healthcare, another cornerstone of social-democratic countries. One aspect of social democracies is that they all have universal healthcare, guaranteed to them through a single-payer healthcare system, which I’ve written about in great detail before. According to the World Health Organization, Nordic healthcare systems are ranked as some of the best in the world, with Norway ranking as #11, Finland as #15, and Sweden as #23. Where is the U.S. in these rankings? Well…we’re number 37, ranking below the likes of Morocco, Costa Rica, and Saudi Arabia, and just barely ahead of Slovenia.

Now, let’s look at public education. According to the Human Development Report in 2016, which looks at the best public education systems in the world, the United States ranks at number eight which, to be fair, is actually pretty good. Now, if we look a little further up on the list, Iceland ranks as the seventh best public education system in the world, Norway ranks as the fourth best, and Denmark ranks as the second best. Why is this the case? In these countries, education is seen as a fundamental right, which is why public education is fully funded through tax money and private education is also partially funded by government voucher programs to help parents pay for school for their children. And yes, as you might have guessed, education is guaranteed to all from pre-K until they graduate college.

And finally, to finish out our analysis with the most important indicator of them all: upward social mobility. In other words, how likely is it that someone from a given country that was born poor will reach the middle or upper classes. The Global Social Mobility report conducted by the World Economic Forum did a comprehensive ranking of the countries where you have the highest chance of entering the middle class and they concluded that not only do Scandinavian social democracies have the highest rate of social mobility, there is not a single country in the top five that is not a Scandinavian social democracy. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland dominate the ranking, leaving the United States in the dust, as well as in the illustrious company of countries like Czechia and Estonia.

There’s a reason so many countries have adopted a social-democratic model, and it’s because when you leave politics aside and objectively look at the data, social democracies objectively perform better than any other economic or political system. They have managed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the most successful countries in the world when it comes to social development, healthcare, education, and economic opportunity. That’s why you see countries all over the world adopting aspects of social democracy, including France, Canada, Uruguay, and the United Kingdom. It may be hard for people in America to realize this because of the insular bubble most of us live in, but I think there’s a lot we can learn from social democracies in order to truly help us live the American Dream, with a little bit of Scandinavia sprinkled in for good measure.