Rewind twenty five or thirty years and we would find an argument raging about the difference between social democracy and democratic socialism. This was perhaps before the former found its voice in our modern economy and was at a time when the real idea of socialism still enjoyed credence in mainstream politics. We now know that there is a difference. Social democrats are not socialists participating in the democratic system; they do not believe in state ownership of the means of production, command economies or even the true idea of provision from the cradle to the grave. Social democrats are essentially capitalists but have a true conviction about the role of the state intervening or interfering for better or ill but most fervently to provide social provision. And across Europe, our societies are indeed fairer for their efforts; our quality of life the envy of the world. Social democrats are big on the ‘social’ side of their moniker. But ‘democrat’, that’s another story.

Writing in Social Europe Journal in the Spring of 2009, Martin Schulz, the leader of the Social Democratic grouping in the European Parliament, made the following contradictory argument.

Europe is governed by centre-right governments and it is badly governed. 19 out of 27 heads of governments are from the centre-right and send conservative and neoliberal commissioners to Brussels….  Europe’s citizens rightly demand that the EU should not only consider the interests of the economy but strengthen social rights and foster active employment. We – the European social democrats – therefore focus on a Social Europe and putting people first…. The EU will regain the trust of its citizens and create enthusiasm for the European project if it reveals again its social side.

One cannot hold the simultaneous view that the people of Europe have elected 19 centre-right governments but what they really want is centre-left policies. What Schulz means is not that Europe’s citizens are demanding this social change but that this is what is good for them.

The problem is that social democrats come across as thinking they know what’s best for people. ‘We do know what’s best,’ was the response recently of one prominent social democrat. And there is some justification in this claim. One only has to look across the Atlantic to President Obama’s struggles to pass healthcare reform in opposition from millions of people for whom it would be a real improvement in their quality of life. We see it in Europe too, with the unelected Commission, pushing forward a political agenda amid a serious democratic deficit.

This is not democracy and it is instructive that so-called ‘social democrats’ do not fight as hard for the principle of democracy as they do for their cherished social provision. Indeed, as the Schulz quotation above is testament, they often deride the decisions of the ballot box; unable or unwilling to accept that if this is what the majority want, then it should form public policy.