What, if anything, can be usefully salvaged from the socialist tradition, now that communism lies in final disgrace? Paul Starr argued in these pages last fall that four developments -- the implosion of communism, the collapse of efforts to reform communism from within, the failure of socialism in the Third World, and the shift of European socialists toward liberal policies -- should persuade American liberals that socialism ought not to be part of our vision of an ideal society.
What follows is less a rejoinder than a brief for social democracy, as a tradition that loathed communism and may yet enrich liberalism. Social democracy, for at least a century, has been the domesticated form of socialism -- a vaccine made of benign cultures that can inoculate against the ravages of both communism and laissez faire.
Social democracy, certainly, is no mechanical third way. As a worldview, it accepts private ownership and parliamentary democracy, yet retains a broadly egalitarian ethic and keeps a weather eye on the nastier tendencies of capitalism. Social democracy does not propose to supplant capitalism, but to tame it. So, in a sense, does liberalism -- but the differences are telling.
Like liberalism, social democracy belongs to the tradition of a limited state based on political rights and civil and social liberties; it has no sympathy for either command planning or command politics. In our century, social democrats have also been among the most resistant to dictatorship and the most inventive in demanding that if the state is to be an engine of progress, governments must be both accountable and competent. Social democracy resists extreme inequality but does not advocate absolute equality. Yet social democracy does go somewhat beyond liberalism as generally understood. And it does reflect some constructive influence of democratic socialism, particularly in its insistence that capitalism be understood as a system. It is this virtue that most distinguishes social democracy from liberalism, yet also makes it an important ally of liberalism.
