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.
In today’s apparently well-performing capitalist economy, working-class ordinary Canadians aren’t feeling like they live in a “Good Society” and acutely feel these economic pressures.
Professor Nancy Fraser argues that the political arena is important because it is here that collective regulatory powers are exercised.
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.
A new report from the Broadbent Institute examines how the financialization of the grocery retail industry has raised prices while shrinking pay cheques.
Since the mid-2000s, the hegemonic neoliberal order has itself entered crisis, driven above all as a political reaction.
Mark Carney does not deny the need for government supervision and regulation to balance corporate capitalism with broader social goals. But his faith in socially responsible capitalism is excessive.
