Social Democracy & Its Critics: The Case of England

An American living in England after a while begins to notice certain events and institutions, trivial or profound, that seem to add up to a distinctive social pattern.

• In American suburbs and even in many cities today the center of communal, group, and family life is the bowling alley complex: hub of a multibillion-dollar industry that offers among its by-products food (fast and slow) and drink, equipment and machinery, clothing and other accessories, and associated or subordinate forms of entertainment (e.g., dancing, ice skating). In England that center is still the simple pub.

• In England refrigerators are very small (an American visitor in an English kitchen can easily miss seeing the fridge altogether) and so ar...