Social Democracy: A Path Forward in a Challenging Time
This website presents a shortened version of the book Social Democracy: Flickering Candle or Blazing Sun. You can obtain a free print copy of the entire book here: REQUEST BOOK
We live today in a harshly divided world. Disillusion and despair are commonplace responses, although at the same time we may believe that not all is lost. The prospect of reconciliation and collaboration across the differences that hold us apart remains alive.
In writing this book I’ve been influenced by the story of my own family in Europe, but also inspired by the insights and the courage of social democrats such as Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein in Germany, and Adelheid Popp and Friedrich Adler in Austria. The aim here is to imagine the world as they experienced it, and to engage with their debate about political strategy — a disagreement that proved so consequential in shaping the course of history, and that continues to vex progressive activism today.
This exploration seems to me relevant to what we are currently experiencing in the United States. The election defeat of 2024 in the United States occasioned much soul-searching and essential debate within left-liberal ranks. The challenge before us now is to bring people of different backgrounds and persuasions together. Doing so will help us form common purpose and move toward an economy that works for everyone and an environmentally sustainable world.
“Social democracy” names a progressive political movement that was born in Europe and then embraced elsewhere, including the United States during the “New Deal” when Roosevelt was President. Social democracy means democratic self–determination: everyone having a real voice in their workplaces, communities, and society.
Is social democracy a reachable aim today? The problems that the world faces—among them, economic poverty and despair, climate change, disease, racism, war, a population risen above 8 billion and an international refugee crisis—will not be solved, to be sure, by unfettered capitalism that, at the expense of every other value, continues to pile up wealth for the one percent. Will we be able to agree upon and follow a path to equitable, transformative solutions? In the United States, to take just one example, we will need an ideological convergence that hasn’t been seen in this country since the 1930s. This book looks into internal conflicts that have played a role in shipwrecking social democratic purpose in the past, in the hope that this this exploration will cast light on our current predicament.
— Raymond Barglow