debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
There has been much talk about the crisis of social democracy and the shortcomings of the progressive agenda as the key explanation. Without disputing the priority of designing the right programme, I’d like to stress another important factor: the collapse of communities. Our societies are increasingly fragmented. Once large-scale communities make place for smaller groups [...]
In the wake of the pan-European search for a new social democratic vision, the discussion about social democratic basic values and their meaning for today’s politics has taken centre stage again. What are social democratic basic values and have social democratic parties betrayed them in government? Or, even worse, have they been lost altogether? If [...]
We have entered an age of fear. Insecurity is once again an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Insecurity born of terrorism, but also, and more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, [...]
The basic demands of the French Revolution – Liberty, Egality and Fraternity – are also the basic values of German Social Democracy: Freedom, Justice and Solidarity. “Freedom” here is not used in the narrower liberal sense of formal freedom under the law or the free-for-all of economic markets, but rather means the concrete legal, social, [...]
What matters to a society is less what it owns than what it is and how it uses its possessions. It is civilized in so far as its conduct is guided by a just appreciation of spiritual ends, in so far as it uses its material resources to promote the dignity and refinement of the [...]
As part of the Basic Values Debate, jointly organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Social Europe Journal, we talked to Axelle Lemaire, the PS candidate for the North of Europe constituency, about social democratic values in France and Europe. The conversation was recorded at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung London Office on 16th March 2012.
I was in a meeting with a group of Labour MPs and individuals from various think tanks. We were listening to one of the UK’s best known economists. The country, he said, is in the worst recession since the 1870s. The historical trajectory of steadily rising living standards over the last one hundred and fifty [...]
Social justice, equality, solidarity, freedom or sustainability; all these words are present in socialist discourses throughout Spain, from the smallest local federation to the highest level of government. Some of these values were enunciated in the times of Pablo Iglesias, the PSOE founder, and were modulated and completed over the last decades. They have now [...]
As part of the Basic Values Debate jointly organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Social Europe Journal we talked to Dr Jon Cruddas MP about social democratic values in the UK and Europe. The conversation was recorded in the House of Commons on 12th March 2012.
Professor Julian Nida-Ruemelin explains the contemporary use of social democratic basic values. This talk was recorded at the PES Convention (a panel organised by FEPS) in Brussels in late 2011. This post is part of the ‘Basic Values Debate’ jointly organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Social Europe Journal.
European politics has been in crisis mode for the last few years. The mostly conservative governments of Europe’s nation states have been pushing a policy agenda that has not only been ineffective in addressing the European Union’s fundamental political and economic problems; even worse, their policies are threatening cohesion and solidarity amongst member states – [...]
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