social democracy

Forging a New Frontline in the War Against Neoliberalism

If there is a founding document of social democracy it is Eduard Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism. Written in 1899, it taught the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) that capitalism had permanently stabilised; that socialism would be achieved through parliament – not the industrial class struggle – and that the working class of the 20th century would be neither culturally homogeneous nor spontaneously socialist.

Former Greek Finance Minister: Universal Basic Income Is Now A Necessity

(Photo: Russell Shaw Higgs/Creative Commons)
Published in partnership with acTVism.
In this video, former finance minister of Greece, professor of economics, author, and founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), Yanis Varoufakis, argues why the Basic Income is a necessity today. His arguments take into account a macro socio-economic, psychological, philosophical and moral perspective. In addition to the speech, Varoufakis addresses a wide range of questions from the public.

Scandinavia on the Skids: The Failure of Social Democracy

I first met Denmark’s last truly Social Democratic Prime Minister, Anker Joergensen, in his state office, unannounced, in late 1980.
Grethe and I had just been married. We had met the year before in Los Angeles where I had been a “participatory journalist”, and activist for social/racial/gender equality and against the Vietnam War. I wanted to start a new life with Grethe in her peaceful, social democratic land.

Technocracy vs. Humanism (Then and Now)

In his recent book Harvard and the Unabomber, Alston Chase describes how Theodore Kaczynski, a 16-year-old Harvard student in 1958, suffered traumatizing abuse as an unwitting test-subject in a CIA-connected psychology experiment designed to manipulate human behavior under intensive isolation and harsh interrogation (and also ultimately: LSD and torture).  This humiliating, formative experience, Chase argues, shaped Kaczynski’s dislike for the techno-scientific manipulation and control of human beings.  But Chase also maintains that the Harvard Gen Ed.