Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy

I've drifted a bit with the tides of fashion, I must admit. In the 1970s and 1980s it was more common to see environmental issues in combination with nuclear weapons as requiring a drastically changed model of governance. Then Reagan became president and the world did not end, but rather the Soviet Union collapsed and embraced the western (American) model. The Internet proved anew the power of technology to change the world. Since the year 2000, however, the flaws in the American model have become more obvious once again.

While recognizing the seriousness of the flaws, people like Kevin Drum are not convinced that there is a viable alternative other than social democracy / mixed capitalism. Democratic Socialism is becoming popular, but Kevin's reaction is:

plenty of other rich countries have tried socialism before, and eventually they’ve all given up because it doesn’t work as well as social democracy or some other form of mixed capitalism.

[ I Still Have One Question About Democratic Socialism ]

He makes a decent point as far as he goes, but doesn't really address the direction of our current mixed economies. I find it helpful to look at socialism as a direction, as opposed to a single economic model. Yes, various implementations of socialism have failed (e.g. Communism), but in general we've been successful in moving to greater government involvement in the economy via services such as Medicare, Social Security, public education and infrastructure, and government regulation of private businesses. 

In the long run, we may or not need to put the brakes on government management of society. But that is not the issue that most of us see as pressing in the near future. Rather, it is excessive financialization and the impacts of technology on society and the environment that are more urgent. These point to the need for more government management of the economy, whatever you want to call it.  Social democracy sounds like more of the same.  Democratic socialism conjures visions of Venezuela.  Nevertheless, both are valid descriptions of the direction we want to move in.

ADDENDUM:  Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not "Human Nature".  This excellent piece by Naomi Klein contrasts the conventional wisdom -- We're doomed -- must as well enjoy ourselves while we can. -- with an alternative such as Democratic Socialism where we stop partying and try to create a sustainable society.  Klein's article is a review of Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change, by Nathaniel Rich (son of Frank Rich, prominent columnist in NY Magazine and for many years in NY Times).

the piece is spectacularly wrong in its central thesis... “All the facts were known, and nothing stood in our way. Nothing, that is, except ourselves.”
Yep, you and me. Not, according to Rich, the fossil fuel companies who sat in on every major policy meeting described in the piece. (Imagine tobacco executives being repeatedly invited by the U.S. government to come up with policies to ban smoking. When those meetings failed to yield anything substantive, would we conclude that the reason is that humans just want to die? Might we perhaps determine instead that the political system is corrupt and busted?)...

All of these flaws have been well covered, so I won’t rehash them here. My focus is the central premise of the piece: that the end of the 1980s presented conditions that “could not have been more favorable” to bold climate action. On the contrary, one could scarcely imagine a more inopportune moment in human evolution for our species to come face to face with the hard truth that the conveniences of modern consumer capitalism were steadily eroding the habitability of the planet. Why? Because the late ’80s was the absolute zenith of the neoliberal crusade, a moment of peak ideological ascendency for the economic and social project that deliberately set out to vilify collective action in the name of liberating “free markets” in every aspect of life. Yet Rich makes no mention of this parallel upheaval in economic and political thought...

It was this convergence of historical trends — the emergence of a global architecture that was supposed to tackle climate change and the emergence of a much more powerful global architecture to liberate capital from all constraints — that derailed the momentum Rich rightly identifies. Because, as he notes repeatedly, meeting the challenge of climate change would have required imposing stiff regulations on polluters while investing in the public sphere to transform how we power our lives, live in cities, and move ourselves around.
All of this was possible in the ’80s and ’90s (it still is today) — but it would have demanded a head-on battle with the project of neoliberalism, which at that very time was waging war on the very idea of the public sphere (“There is no such thing as society,” Thatcher told us). Meanwhile, the free trade deals being signed in this period were busily making many sensible climate initiatives — like subsidizing and offering preferential treatment to local green industry and refusing many polluting projects like fracking and oil pipelines — illegal under international trade law.

I wrote a 500-page book about this collision between capitalism and the planet, and I won’t rehash the details here...

And the good news — and, yes, there is some — is that today, unlike in 1989, a young and growing movement of green democratic socialists is advancing in the United States with precisely that vision. And that represents more than just an electoral alternative — it’s our one and only planetary lifeline...

But simply blaming capitalism isn’t enough. It is absolutely true that the drive for endless growth and profits stands squarely opposed to the imperative for a rapid transition off fossil fuels. It is absolutely true that the global unleashing of the unbound form of capitalism known as neoliberalism in the ’80s and ’90s has been the single greatest contributor to a disastrous global emission spike in recent decades, as well as the single greatest obstacle to science-based climate action ever since governments began meeting to talk (and talk and talk) about lowering emissions. And it remains the biggest obstacle today, even in countries that market themselves as climate leaders, like Canada and France.
But we have to be honest that autocratic industrial socialism has also been a disaster for the environment, as evidenced most dramatically by the fact that carbon emissions briefly plummeted when the economies of the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. And as I wrote in “This Changes Everything,” Venezuela’s petro-populism has continued this toxic tradition into the present day, with disastrous results.
Let’s acknowledge this fact, while also pointing out that countries with a strong democratic socialist tradition — like Denmark, Sweden, and Uruguay — have some of the most visionary environmental policies in the world. From this we can conclude that socialism isn’t necessarily ecological, but that a new form of democratic eco-socialism, with the humility to learn from Indigenous teachings about the duties to future generations and the interconnection of all of life, appears to be humanity’s best shot at collective survival...

These candidates, whether or not they identify as democratic socialist, are rejecting the neoliberal centrism of the establishment Democratic Party, with its tepid “market-based solutions” to the ecological crisis, as well as Donald Trump’s all-out war on nature. And they are also presenting a concrete alternative to the undemocratic extractivist socialists of both the past and present. Perhaps most importantly, this new generation of leaders isn’t interested in scapegoating “humanity” for the greed and corruption of a tiny elite. It seeks instead to help humanity — particularly its most systematically unheard and uncounted members — to find their collective voice and power so they can stand up to that elite.
We aren’t losing earth — but the earth is getting so hot so fast that it is on a trajectory to lose a great many of us. In the nick of time, a new political path to safety is presenting itself. This is no moment to bemoan our lost decades. It’s the moment to get the hell on that path.

Good comments on Klein article at https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/08/links-8-4-18.html:

Saying “human nature is to blame for problem X not being solved” is to say that no one should be held accountable for their actions.
If Exxon and other companies knew two generations ago that the use of their products would result in global warming, and then covered up this knowledge, it wasn’t “human nature” that was to blame, it was their greed.
To say that this greed is the whole of human nature is a deliberate falsehood. It is human nature to want to protect one’s children. It is human nature to not want the place where you live to be ruined by climate change, or oil well leaks, or pipeline explosions. Naomi Campbell  Klein is correct to point this out. 

ANOTHER ADDENDUM:  My post at https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/08/trickle-down-economics-is-working-about-as-well-as-usual/#comment-4024228493 :

I've had some good discussions already on this thread. My conclusion is as follows:

There is broad agreement from the 2 wings of the left that we need more and better democracy, and more and better government management of the economy. The 2 wings see these options as social democracy and democratic socialism.

However the difference between the 2 wings is not as trivial as it might first appear. One group sees a need to get back on track -- i.e. to return to the USA policies of the 40s and 50s, and / or the policies of other democratic nations such as Japan, France, Germany, etc. The other wing sees the need to go beyond that, as we got to where we are now from where we were before, while problems such as climate change have only gotten worse in the meantime. I'm in the 2nd camp these days, but that is just an opinion and could be wrong, There is not much hard evidence to prove either wing correct, as I see it.

So we've got 2 wings, and both are for the most part legitimate and fact based. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. What labels should we attach to these 2 wings? To pretend that there is no difference is not helpful. Neither wing should be given a pejorative label, as both viewpoints are reasonable. Here are a couple of options:

1. Liberal -- believe in emphasizing tolerance and freedom, while helping those in need.
2. Progressive -- believe in fundamental changes to deal with environmental, equality, and related issues.

OR

1. Neo-liberal: Believe in enhancing the liberal model which abolished slavery, provided New Deal programs, and reduced discrimination based upon race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
2. Democratic socialist: Believe in abolishing the stranglehold that the rich capitalists have on society, by getting the government to take over many functions previously reserved for rich capitalists.

My personal favorite at the moment is:

1. Social democrats: Want to strengthen the government role in society, while preserving and enhancing democratic laws and institutions.
2. Democratic socialists: Want to replace capitalism with a more communitarian society, while preserving and enhancing democratic laws and institutions.

It seems that these two views are similar enough that the 2 wings should be able to agree for the purpose of most general elections, while divergent enough to allow constructive debate regarding existential issues for humanity.

Post Script to Addendum:  Bernie actually took a social democratic line (advocating policies closer to social democratic nations such as the Nordic countries) in 2016 and was opposed by the more conservative wing of the Democratic party. I take this as a practical reaction as opposed to a more fundamental political philosophy.  Clinton tried to move to the left of Bernie in several areas (guns, race relations) and did not vigorously defend the capitalist status quo.

YET ANOTHER ADDENDUM:  Scott Alexander's review of Albion's Seed summarizes Puritan New England as follows:

In some ways the Puritans seem to have taken the classic dystopian bargain – give up all freedom and individuality and art, and you can have a perfect society without crime or violence or inequality. Fischer ends each of his chapters with a discussion of how the society thought of liberty, and the Puritans unsurprisingly thought of liberty as “ordered liberty” – the freedom of everything to tend to its correct place and stay there. They thought of it as a freedom from disruption – apparently FDR stole some of his “freedom from fear” stuff from early Puritan documents.

Puritan New England was a communitarian experiment.