Social Democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology that considers itself to be a form of reformist democratic socialism. It advocates for a peaceful, evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism. It promotes extending democratic decision-making beyond political democracy to include economic democracy to guarantee employees and other economic stakeholders sufficient rights of co-determination. Common social democratic policies include advocacy of universal social rights to attain universally-accessible public services such as: education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services including child care and care for the elderly. Social democracy is connected with the trade union labour movement and supports collective bargaining rights for workers. Most social democratic parties are affiliated with the Socialist International.

Social democracy was developed by revisionist Marxist Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein rejected many major tenets promoted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that he viewed as inaccurate or obsolete, such as rejecting The Communist Manifesto for being based on what he perceived as false assumptions. Bernstein and his supporters opposed classical and orthodox Marxisms' support of revolution and class conflict, claiming that socialism could be achieved through evolutionary means via representative democracy and cooperation between people regardless of class. He commended Marx's and Engels' later works which advocated that socialism should be achieved through parliamentary democratic means wherever possible. Bernstein claimed that a mixed economy of public, cooperative and private enterprise would be necessary for a long period of time before private enterprises would evolve of their own accord into cooperative enterprise.

Non-Marxist adherents to social democracy arose, including the Fabians in Britain. Social democracy was influenced by the development of liberal socialism that began in the 1920s that fused liberal and socialist ideals while rejecting both Marxism and state socialism; Third Way social democrats have utilized liberal socialist stances as a basis of their views. Such views were inspired by Bernstein's description of socialism as being an "organized liberalism", that completely rejected Marx's hostility to liberalism. By the post-World War II period, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to Marxism.

Critics of contemporary social democracy such as Jonas Hinnfors argue that when social democracy abandoned Marxism it also abandoned socialism and has become in effect a liberal capitalist movement. Those who believe that social democracy abandoned socialism contend that it did so in the 1930s by endorsing Keynesian welfare capitalism. Socialist political theorist Michael Harrington argues that social democracy historically supported Keynesianism as part of a "social democratic compromise" between capitalism and socialism. This compromise created welfare states which Harrington contends that, although it did not allow for the immediate creation of socialism, it "recognized noncapitalist, and even anticapitalist, principles of human need over and above the imperatives of profit". More recently, social democrats in favour of the Third Way have been accused of having endorsed capitalism, including by anti-Third Way social democrats who have accused Third Way proponents such as Anthony Giddens of being anti-social democratic and anti-socialist in practice.