Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Storm, Servaas
• Das, Debarshi
• Basu, Deepankar

Titel

The economics and politics of social democracy: A reconsideration

Ist Teil von

• Conflict, Demand and Economic Development, 2021, p.119-141

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Social democracy faces a fundamental dilemma: short-term practical relevance requires it to accept, at least partly, the very socio-economic conditions which it purports to change in the longer run. In the early 1990s, Amit Bhaduri analysed social democracy’s attempts to navigate this dilemma by means of ‘a nationalization of consumption’ and Keynesian demand management. Bhaduri’s essay was written before the rise of New (‘Third Way’) Labour and before the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–08. This chapter provides an ‘update’, arguing that New Labour’s attempt to rescue ‘welfare capitalism’ entailed a new solution to the dilemma facing social democracy based on an expansion of employment, i.e. an all-out emphasis on “jobs, jobs, jobs”. The flip-side (or social cost) of the emphasis on job growth has been a stagnation of productivity growth – which, in turn, has put the ‘welfare state’ under increasing pressure of fiscal austerity. The popular discontent and rise of ‘populist’ political parties is closely related to the failure of New Labour to navigate social democracy’s dilemma.