The underlying dilemma of social democracy in the twenty-first century is that neoliberalism has failed while a coherent alternative has yet to be fully developed and embraced by most social democratic parties.
The Golden Age was marked by very strong economic growth and by close to full employment, resulting in steadily rising real wages and the expansion of the fiscal base needed to finance the growing welfare state.
By the inter-war period, social democracy had emerged in Canada as a more or less coherent ideological and political force.
Social democracy was not only about the welfare state and public services and expanding social rights, but also about regulated capitalism, economic democracy, or even transcendence of capitalism as an economic system.
Through the pandemic, mounting disasters induced by the climate crisis, and the as epicenter of Canada’s housing affordability crisis, BC held on to a progressive government among the provinces to lead through these crises.
By decommodifying health services, pensions, the right to unions, and other social services, they showed that with political will in these aspects of life the power of the market could be and should be broken if real democracy is to be achieved.
Canadian social democrats, simply put, need to re-embrace the value in challenging private property’s dominance over the state.
Creating the social partnership that is the core of social democracy—in the Nordic model, anyway—is a provincial undertaking which can greatly benefit from a strong federal ally.
Social democratic visions of a “democratized” economy have too often paid scant attention to the enduring role and impact of European racism, imperialism, nationalism, and colonialism in modern capitalism and in social democratic reforms.
