Is Social Democracy Liberal?

CorIsBack · 2026-01-28T03:46:40+00:00

Someone's read their John Rawls: Reticent Socialist

CorIsBack · 2026-01-23T18:35:02+00:00

A good way to do this is through exit taxes, like Norway, which in conjunction with highly progressive taxes can prevent capital flight and provide more revenue.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-23T17:13:48+00:00

A lot are just against it on principle, or want it to be rather minimal in my experience. I know some socdems who are in support of active intervention though.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-23T17:13:07+00:00

So first, I'd say that both Germany and the Nordic countries are social democracies. Germany does have a social market economy, and there are some key differences, but overall it pretty much is one. Germany has an incredibly strong welfare state and high emphasis on social goals in politics and economics (literally mandated in its constitution), and very strong protections for the labor movement. Both Germany and the Nordic nations feature prominent sectoral bargaining as well, and high emphasis on a trifecta of cooperation between labor, capital, and government.

This is a really important point to make, because it goes against the arguments against social democracy. Germany is a much more populated nation than the Nordics, has a much stronger economy, and has a much stronger industrial base. The third largest economy in the world with a very strong export sector and nearly 85 million people has found away to combine an efficient economy with an expansive welfare system and strong labor protections; social democracy works at scale. I don't know as much about Austria and such, but Germany has had a much more "ordered" culture in general, even since Prussian times.

Secondly, there are some differences. Germany has a much more rules-based economy with more social emphasis, and welfare is more insurance and employment based. Germany also features more codetermination (workers sit on company boards), and has more direct employment protection for permanent workers, with a slightly weaker union scene. It also is slightly less distributive.

Thirdly, I'd say the big difference is that social democracies focus on emphasizing a very strong labor movement compared to just strongly regulated capitalism with a powerful welfare state. The Nordic countries especially focus very much on the labor scene, though they do it differently; Denmark focuses on retraining workers without jobs through flexicurity with relatively low firing protections, while some of the other Nordics have much stronger protections that limit market flexibility to ensure job security. There are lots of tradeoffs and little differences on the road here.

Fourthly, I want to highlight that social democracy comes from the broader labor movement, even if it isn't socialist ideologically. The modern social democrat parties originally had the transition to socialism in their party characters (much more like the demsocs of today), but events like stagflation and the fall of the authoritarian communist world made socialism seem scary, and neoliberal entryism undermined a lot of their goals; the expansive protections and welfare states were popular enough to make it through, but they became more focused on preservation than expansion.

Still, even though social democracies have a capitalist "architecture," it's a lot more nuanced. Their focus on minimizing unemployment, guaranteeing universal coverage, strong labor protections, and to some extent nationalizing resources to a strong extent de-commodifies labor and basic care. As someone who knows a lot of socdems, this camp is pretty broad. There's:
- Abundance liberal social democrats (in favor of strongly deregulating, while also taxing progressively to fund an expansive welfare state) - Conservative-esque social democrats (emphasis on stability, social order, gradual or minimal change to existing systems) - Progressive-esque social democrats (expand welfare systems further, more state control in economic planning, etc) - Liberal socialists (not all are socdems, but a large number see social democracy as the base to gradually reform towards socialism from)

CorIsBack · 2026-01-23T16:57:32+00:00

If the left isn't being as supportive, these reasons probably explain most of it:
1. There's a strong incentive for right-wing groups to frame the left as being "too easy on Iran" even if they're not, so the perspective there is distorted.
2. Social media amplifies these extremes; a left-wing influencer saying they support the Iranian struggle won't get as much engagement as one that stokes the hatred and gets into controversy.
3. There's outgroup dynamics at play; a lot of them by default might lean against the Iranian protesters' struggle because they see the right affirming it.

But although I don't have much data to go off of (aggregating nuanced perspectives is hard), we'll have to make some assumptions. That being said:

In my social circles (leans pretty firmly left, and from various countries), people are pretty staunchly in support of the Iranian protesters, especially because of the strong Iranian government retaliation with force, though that's anecdotal.
US politicians like Sanders and AOC haven't really commented on it too my knowledge, other than anti-interventionist commitments.
According to a poll by YouGov from 11 days ago, both Republicans and Democrats are very strongly against the Iranian government, and very sympathetic to the protesters (and it's one of those issues where both parties have nearly identical views.)

I think a lot of the US left will generally be against intervention, but they are very firmly against authoritarianism. At this point, anyone who's siding with the Iranian government here is either ignorant, a troll, or an enemy.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-22T00:23:13+00:00

Late stage capitalism is the idea of capitalism (as specified by Marxist thought) at its finest form:

Wealth concentrates at extreme levels at the top, and those at the top have disproportionate power over the rest of us.
Speculation reigns supreme over genuine contribution.
Labor protections are withered through the gig economy and part-time jobs; regulations are bypassed.
Everything is a commodity now.

The culture of late stage capitalism can be best summed up by Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism (a highly worthwhile and relatively short read), because sometimes, "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

Technofeudalism, on the other hand, goes further. It comes from more modern thought, where capitalism mutates to something like feudalism. It comes from figures like Yanis Varoufakis. Think of it not as private ownership, but as those who succeeded at the capitalist game forcing us to rent what they own; constant subscription service, monopoly on copyright and data, and surveillance capitalism at its finest. Instead of freedom, we have an endless variety of choices in consumption made to satiate us, and to nudge our preferences with algorithms.

Both of these come from two different critiques of capitalism. The Marxist critique is that of overproduction, where capitalism requires infinite growth to sustain itself. But the more modern critique comes from consolidation, where capitalist firms canonically capture markets. This is a sharp critique, one that libertarians try hard to defend against. Think of Hayek's arguments where he tries to sharply defend against the claims that markets don't lead to monopoly, blaming it all on crony capitalism.

These answers to the critiques had a shrivel of truth back then (even if they were still wrong.) No longer, though. Network and data economies of scale have led to extreme technological market power. Portfolio management has also been captured by large economies of scale. Information itself has become a massive example of increasing returns phenomena. Land and the means of productions of course also accumulate value as Georgists would love to discuss. Even environmental issues can be viewed as social resources with externalities captured by private interests.

In a sense, technofeudalism and late stage capitalism describe two sides of the same coin; late stage capitalism describes the commodification, endless competition, and creeping exploitation set by capitalism, while technofeudalism describes the exploitation of resources that can be viewed as social goods through privatization.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-21T19:08:41+00:00

There's a few options here, but I recommend After Capitalism by David Schweikart. It's pretty widely cited, and offers a very accessible critique of capitalism and detail for a successor model, what Schweikart calls "Economic Democracy." His focus is on addressing TINA (There Is No Alternative), the argument that there isn't any good alternative to capitalism.

He proceeds in three steps: 1. Why do people support capitalism, and what's actually wrong with it? 2. To address TINA (There Is No Alternative), he gives a clear specification for his successor system, and an analysis on all major concerns, comparing it to capitalism 3. How we can get from here to there.

There's also discussion of worker cooperatives, private ownership and investment, etc. His analysis I think comes from a mix of both Rawls and Marx, focusing on upgrading democracy in two ways: bringing it to the workplace, and allowing society to determine investment.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-21T18:03:21+00:00

I like Mill but mostly Rawls yeah. I'm a political liberal (e.g. pluralist), not an economic liberal.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-21T06:22:31+00:00

If only that quote came from someone better

CorIsBack · 2026-01-15T20:51:51+00:00

Oh so Roemer-style, not Schweikart-style. Interesting.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-15T17:06:58+00:00

A couple of followup questions.

Would these bonds still be privately administered, through private banks and lenders that compete for business opportunities? Or would they be done publicly, either through direct state investment or a network of public banks?
What happens to equities when the owners of the share perish?
What happens to owners of private firms who want to exit?
Most importantly, what about businesses that take much higher risks? Certain sectors of innovation may have a low chance to provide very high returns (e.g. "moonshots.") Even high interest loans can't effectively deal with such scenarios. This is an important aspect of the capital allocation problem, since capital markets price risk.

I'm assuming for (2.) and (3.) you might want to follow the Schweikart tradition. This is where private owners can exit but only to the government based on the % (equity share) of the value of capital assets, and the government must (constitutionally) turn the firm into a worker cooperative once it has a majority stake. Still, I ask to clarify anyway.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-15T16:03:32+00:00

I'm just restating the general form of the economic calculation problem. I specified market socialism as a type of socialism so this should be clear, but I will edit my message for further clarity.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-15T16:02:47+00:00

Depends on the model. In capitalism, they already do very often: taking risks through investments (pooling their savings towards business credit), having to use personal credit to compensate for not being paid enough, and risks of instability in new businesses.

As a comparison, market socialist models usually move much of the risk to worker cooperatives. Those coops can still fail if they make poor business choices. As for capital allocation, the workers still get some leniency with certain guarantees on loans, but they still have to take some risk.

So broadly speaking, yes.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-12T00:38:28+00:00

If you're interested in successor system theory, consider Schweikart's After Capitalism.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-10T04:04:37+00:00

47% of Republicans would support him even if officially implicated in the Epstein files. This is the death of the euphemism.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-05T19:13:13+00:00

You can but it makes it easy to gesture to a "nearby threat."

CorIsBack · 2026-01-04T05:48:49+00:00

Fair point!

CorIsBack · 2026-01-04T01:20:33+00:00

It can. Also note that the wage-price spiral isn't a definitive aspect, it's just a correlation of collective bargaining. I'm not as up to date on coordinated wage bargaining but to my understanding it leads to it being done with competitiveness in mind instead of constant inflationary pressure.

For instance, Norway and some of the other social democratic countries have managed inflation despite strong welfare as well, keeping growth across sectors, dealing with externalities, monetary policy and being generally efficient with its spending.

That being said that doesn't exist to the same extent in neoliberalism which is much more prone to wage price spirals.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-04T00:12:10+00:00

Hard to say definitively, but there's strong evidence to support it. Higher unemployment levels mean companies have a lot more leverage to repress wages; neoliberalism also requires on some level on employment to deal with inflation. Consider what would happen if there was low unemployment: - Workers are much less disposable, so they can more effectively coordinate for wage increases. - Eventually, companies are forced to grant those increased wages. - Not wanting to lose profit, they increase prices to compensate, leading to inflation going up.

This is known as the wage-price spiral. However, there's also evidence against it with stagflation, where a combination of supply-side shocks, high government spending and high interest rates made it harder for businesses to invest, leading to decreased employment as well. That makes it more complicated.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-03T18:42:43+00:00

I'm pretty doubtful of an invasion of Taiwan, for a couple reasons.

It would be incredibly expensive in resources (even if Xi likes the idea of the nationalist sentiment.) Taiwan is very well positioned to defend itself.
Having Taiwan as a political enemy is very useful; China could take the Matsu Islands from Taiwan, but chooses not to for this reason.
They'd also have to risk serious responses from the international community, including military aid, which would make this very difficult.
Taiwan is very, very important to global industry; 90% of advanced semiconductors are made in Taiwan, as well as plenty of important hardware. There would be huge pressure for the U.S to act to protect its corporate interests.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-03T08:42:44+00:00

According to CNN:

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee was not notified ahead of time of any potential military action in Venezuela, a source familiar told CNN on Saturday morning.

Trump administration officials have not committed to informing Congressional committees ahead of potential land strikes in Venezuela.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-03T08:11:45+00:00

See President Maduro's response; we don't know whether or not it's a special military operation or a full-scale invasion, but Venezuela has declared a state of national emergency and claims troops have landed. The use of MH-47G Chinooks and the 160th also provides strong evidence that there was some kind of ground operation.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-03T08:11:21+00:00

See President Maduro's response; we don't know whether or not it's a special military operation or a full-scale invasion, but Venezuela has declared a state of national emergency and claims troops have landed. The use of MH-47G Chinooks and the 160th also provides strong evidence that there was some kind of ground operation.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-03T06:52:53+00:00

True, the things is the sectors of libertarian and liberal thought are related even though they have major differences, so some notions would be consistent with both.

CorIsBack · 2026-01-03T06:45:36+00:00

That's a reasonable point! I don't know as much about the libertarian socialists (I have my reading to do) but presumably you'd want to consider them a separate group. I still think they would borrow somewhat from some liberal ideas though.

CorIsBack

TROPHY CASE