Andrew Jackson is senior policy adviser at the Broadbent Institute, and the author of The Fire and the Ashes: Rekindling Democratic Socialism, available from BTL Books.
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.
Despite the gloomy outlook for the future of journalism, it is still quite possible to access news and opinion independent of social media.
Ordinary Canadians will certainly feel the heat from the price of housing when monetary policy adds fuel to the fire while their pay cheques freeze.
Why are mainstream economists so keen on costing out the value of nature, climate-induced disasters, and planetary survival? These are central questions Adrienne Buller asks in a well-argued and highly relevant critique of “green capitalism” and its attempts at putting a price on planetary survival.
Within the context of capitalist orthodoxy, there are no good options; only bad choices which will lead to a recession, rising unemployment and deepening poverty and inequality.
In his new book, Escaping Dystopia: Rebuilding a Public Domain, McMaster University Professor Stephen McBride argues that we can escape dystopia by pointing to the contemporary relevance of democratic socialism, embedded in a close analysis of the multiple overlapping crises of neoliberalism.
