Labour’s ethical roots (Wright, 1996: x). We must retain, he argues, the values and
principles underlying democratic socialism but apply them entirely afresh to the
modern world (Blair, 1992: 3).
The values of democratic socialism are ‘social justice, the equal worth of each
citizen, equality of opportunity, community’. Socialism is, if you will, social–ism
(Blair, 1994: 4). In the 50th anniversary lecture of the 1945 Labour victory, Blair
described socialism as ‘the political heir of radical liberalism’ (1995: 8). He saw the
New Liberals as social democrats, and he defines socialism as a form of politics
through which to fight poverty, prejudice and unemployment, and to create the
conditions in which to build one nation – tolerant, fair, enterprising and inclusive.
Socialists have to be both moralists and empiricists. They need, on the one hand,
to be concerned with values, but at the same time they must address themselves to
a world as it is and not as we would like it to be (Blair, 1995: 12–13).International social democrats
These notions have been internationally endorsed. The German SPD has sternly
repudiated communism, and in its Bad Godesberg Resolution of 1959 – described
by Berki as ‘one of the boldest, most impressive “liberal” party manifestoes ever
written’ – it argues for competition where possible, planning ‘as far as it is necessary’.
It follows what the Swedish social democrats have called a ‘matter-of-fact conception
of man’ (Berki, 1974: 98–9).
These comments capture the dilemma. Berki suggests that in a way social
democracy can be characterised as ‘utopian socialism minus utopian expectations’
since it does not believe that ideals like justice, goodwill, brotherliness and
compassion could be ‘unreservedly realised’ (1974: 101). Is social democracy so
pragmatic and flexible that it cannot be called socialism at all?Socialism and the USA
Commentators have often wondered why socialism has never really taken root in
the United States. Factors that deserve emphasis are the following:- Although the US certainly had a war of independence against the British, those
who supported the British were generally driven out, and so the American
republics had little class structure, certainly among freeborn men. - A high degree of mobility meant that free men acquired private property so that
a cultural ethos of individualism rather than collectivism prevailed. - Even after the Civil War when class divisions became stark realities, emancipatory
movements championed the rights of the small ‘man’ rather than an oppressed
class, and trade unions often supported free enterprise in a way that Europeans
found astonishing. - Roosevelt’s New Deal, although seen by its enemies as ‘socialist’ in character,
embraced a social or new liberalism that never really challenged the capitalist
nature of the economy.
228 Part 2 Classical ideologies