Dilemmas of Social Democracy

What used to be sorrowfully regarded as the “English disease” can now be diagnosed more precisely as the ailing of social democracy. Some of the symptoms may appear peculiarly British but what I will call “the Social Democratic Dilemma,” and will later define, is of relevance to all advanced industrial and democratic societies.

Since the war, no matter who has been in office in Britain, social democracy has been in power. That is to say, the essential terms of the postwar settlement (the settlement of the class war, it seemed at the time, itself an extension and consolidation of the “fairer deal” that was necessary to unite the nation in war) have been upheld until recently by all governments: The ideological rhetoric of the parties at election times belied the fact that in office neither sought to vary significantly the bargain that had been struck between the managed post-Keynesian welfare state and the sectional interest groups that had ...