Social democracy

Social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, social democracy has taken the form of democratic socialism, a robust welfare state, policies promoting social justice, market regulation, and a more equitable distribution of income.

Social democracy maintains a commitment to representative and participatory democracy. Common aims include curbing inequality, eliminating the oppression of underprivileged groups, eradicating poverty, and upholding universally accessible public services such as child care, education, elderly care, health care, and workers' compensation. Economically, it supports income redistribution and regulating the economy in the public interest.

Social democracy has a strong, long-standing connection with trade unions and the broader labour movement. It is supportive of measures to foster greater democratic decision-making in the economic sphere, including collective bargaining and co-determination rights for workers.

The history of social democracy stretches back to the 19th-century labour movement. Originally a catch-all term for socialists of varying tendencies, after the Russian Revolution, it came to refer to reformist socialists who were strategically opposed to revolution as well as the authoritarianism of the Soviet model, nonetheless the eventual abolition of capitalism was still being upheld as an important end goal during this time. However, by the 1990s social democrats had embraced mixed economies with a predominance of private property and promoted the regulation of capitalism over its replacement with a qualitatively different socialist economic system. Since that time, social democracy has been associated with Keynesian economics, the Nordic model, and welfare states.

Social democracy has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism. Amongst social democrats, attitudes towards socialism vary: some retain socialism as a long-term goal, with social democracy being a political and economic democracy supporting a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach towards achieving socialism. Others view it as an ethical ideal to guide reforms within capitalism. One way modern social democracy can be distinguished from democratic socialism is that social democracy aims to strike a balance by advocating for a mixed market economy where capitalism is regulated to address inequalities through social welfare programs and supports private ownership with a strong emphasis on a well-regulated market. In contrast, democratic socialism places greater emphasis on abolishing private property ownership in favor of full economic democracy by means of cooperative, decentralized, or centralized planning systems. Nevertheless, the distinction remains blurred in colloquial settings, and the two terms are commonly used synonymously.

The Third Way is an offshoot of social democracy which aims to fuse economic liberalism with social democratic economic policies and center-left social policies. It is a reconceptualization of social democracy developed in the 1990s and is embraced by some social democratic parties; some analysts have characterized the Third Way as part of the neoliberal movement.

Social democracy is defined as one of many socialist traditions. As an international political movement and ideology, it aims to achieve socialism through gradual and democratic means. This definition goes back to the influence of both the reformist socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle and the internationalist revolutionary socialism advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Social democracy has undergone various major forms throughout its history. In the 19th century, it encompassed various non-revolutionary and revolutionary currents of socialism, excluding anarchism. In one of the first scholarly works on European socialism written for an American audience, Richard T. Ely's 1883 book French and German Socialism in Modern Times, social democrats were characterized as "the extreme wing of the socialists" who were "inclined to lay so much stress on equality of enjoyment, regardless of the value of one's labor, that they might, perhaps, more properly be called communists". In the early 20th century, social democracy came to refer to support for a process of developing society through existing political structures and opposition to revolutionary means, which are often associated with Marxism. Thus whereas in the 19th century, social democracy could be described as "organized Marxism", it became "organized reformism" by the 20th century.

In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are sometimes seen as synonyms, while they are distinguished in journalistic use. Under this democratic socialist definition, social democracy is an ideology seeking to gradually build an alternative socialist economy through the institutions of liberal democracy. Starting in the post-war period, social democracy was defined as a policy regime advocating the reformation of capitalism to align it with the ethical ideals of social justice.