(Table of Contents)

III Re-building the Commonwealth

Alongside a concentration of wealth in the economic sphere, there has been a growing oligarchical tendency in our politics. This has produced a popular reaction with varied political expressions.

The weakening of our civic culture that began in political polarization over the so-called "social issues" of the late 1960s contributed substantially to the tax revolt of the late 197s. This tax revolt has often been ascribed to an eruption of greed and callousness among middle class tax-payers. While such impulses played a part, it would be foolish to overlook the decisive contribution that popular disaffection from liberal government made of this opinion shift.

Taxes, as Justice Holmes observed, are "the price we pay for civilization." But Americans have learned that they can pay high taxes and not get much civilization in return. By the late 1970s -- the time of Proposition 13 in California and Proposition 2 1/2 in Massachusetts -- many taxpayers came to believe that what government was doing with their tax money did not adequately serve their interests or their values. The so-called selfishness explosion followed a dismaying shift in public perceptions of the mission and spirit of government. Willingness to pay taxes is closely linked to perceptions about the objectives and efficiency of government. To re-cast the tax debate, government must become respected again for what it does. At present, tax rates are comparatively low in the United States. If government can be made to perform in ways that win voter confidence, the public will probably be willing to pay higher taxes, if that proves necessary. The strong support given Ross Perot in the 1992 election is in some ways evidence of public concern for competence and efficiency in government. But popular disaffection from liberal government goes beyond the issue of competence to the question of arrogance -- government imposing decisions that are extremely unpopular and whose results lead to unintended consequences. The forced busing programs of the 1970s caused "white flight" to the suburbs leaving urban school systems without the broad political constituency they had previously enjoyed. We see the results today with calls for vouchers for private schools that would further undermine urban public education.

The tax revolts of the 70s and 80s; the Silber insurgency in Massachusetts in 1990; the showing made by unconventional primary candidates like Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown and Pat Buchanan; and the vast Perot protest movement of 1992 all had common links. People had grown tired of seeing their taxes spent on programs they did not support, while basic government services were neglected. They were disgusted by the influence of narrow special interest lobbies, short-sighted policies, and pork barrel legislation.

The House Banking scandal and the recent outcry against the employment of illegal aliens in the households of prominent public figures are symbols of a widespread perception that government officials have exempted themselves from the rules that most of us must live by. The Perot phenomenon also reflects a sense that the country's patrimony has been squandered by politicians concerned only with re-election. Our political campaigns are seen by many as fundraising exercises dominated by flush and powerful interest groups, incumbents who regard voters as consumers of their self-promoting publicity, and a superficial, sensationalist and sometimes biased media.

We are heartened, therefore, that the 1992 general election campaign was the most democratic one in a generation. The voters, the citizens, quite spontaneously forced the candidates and the political parties to discuss the matters that they really cared about. The campaign disclosed a widespread sense of anomie, a feeling that the country had lost its way, that the government, both the President and the Congress, had grown isolated from the people. This spontaneous reaction to the candidates and the campaign has put campaign reform at the top of the political agenda.

Campaign reform is part of the solution, but the problem may go deeper. The recent development of direct, unmediated candidate appearances is a positive one. Television broadcasters should be required to set aside larger amounts of time for political debates and public call-in shows, and much lower limits should be set for financial contributions to political candidates and campaigns. Our citizens must become participants in -- not just consumers of -- our political campaigns. This can only be accomplished through a grass-roots citizens' movement.

Only when there is a vigorous democratic politics and culture at the grass-roots level is it appropriate to treat democratic government as an appropriate instrument for limiting or guiding the operations of the market. We must recognize that state power can readily become bureaucratic, misdirected or even coercive when it is not held to account by the continuous, active and informed participation of citizens in public life. Such participation can best be achieved by political and social movements that share the social democratic ethic.

Government and the Market

The relationship of politics and the economy -- especially democratic politics and the economy -- is another area that needs to be opened to new debate. Today it may be possible to discuss this matter free from the grotesque distortions associated with the Cold War. These led many to see communism as merely one extreme along a continuum of government "intervention." Thus, if federal spending as a share of the U.S. economy reached 23%, then it was asserted that the United States had gone nearly a quarter of the way toward becoming a country like Romania. Or, President Bush could make the preposterous campaign charge that Clinton's program for public investment was the economics "of Warsaw, Prague and Moscow."

This libertarian view is a flip-side of the view that saw the regimes of Eastern Europe as 'people's democracies." Both evade the classic question about regimes: who governs, and for whose sake? Are governing authorities chosen democratically, accountable to their people, or are they an elite sustained by ideology and terror? A confusion between socialism" imposed from on high and a social democracy that grows up from below was zealously fostered by the communists, and cheerfully accepted on the Right.

The founders of social democracy and the millions who flocked to their banners understood the intimate connection between socialism and democracy. It was Bolshevism and those following in its ideological footsteps (including, more recently, some among our New Left) who sought to drive the two asunder. Now the collapse of Leninism and the end of the Cold War offers an opportunity to rebuild a democratic left, and to resume debate about proper relationships among government, the market and civil society.

Social democracy asserts that the government is justified in using its constitutional powers "to promote the general welfare" by pursuing programs that can bring economic benefit to the community-at-large when the market fails to do so. Social democrats differ from advocates of laissez-faire in our conviction that the public good may be served by government sponsorship or even government administration of major social and economic undertakings. American conservatives (or classical liberals) see government as the protector of freedom, but define freedom negatively: freedom especially from government interference.

But social democrats, while recognizing the vital importance of negative freedoms or liberties, also contend that society must have a capacity to exercise what can be called positive freedom: the freedom to undertake common action, and to employ democratic government as its instrument. Those who do not see beyond the welfare state are satisfied merely to redistribute the product of our economy to those marginalized by the market system. But social democrats also seek ways to empower and productively to employ those left out by the market. A society that finds productive work for such citizens will not only generate more assets, but may also engender a work ethic that will discourage the abuse of its redistributive benefits.

Americans have used government to pursue common purposes -- positive freedom -- from the time of the Louisiana Purchase to the development of our aerospace industry. But we no longer have a firm grasp of the principles and the ethos that are essential to the success of such public projects, and they have become increasingly vulnerable to attack and mismanagement.

Today's economy inevitably engages government and politics at many points; the issue is not whether the state will be involved in economic decisions, but how. Social democrats believe that such engagement must serve the interests of the broad public, not a powerful few. We must be as wary of "socialism for the rich" as we are of a socially irresponsible capitalism.

It is now obvious to nearly everyone that modern government and the market live in symbiosis -- that where one is weak or inadequate, the other will eventually decay. Democratic government everywhere rests on the market economy. On the other hand, private business also draws great benefit from laws, courts, regulatory agencies, public works, schools and many other instruments of government.

Today we hear many innovative proposals for decentralizing public administration, for making the delivery of government services more responsive to the recipients, and for using market mechanisms to improve health care, education and the environment. Social democrats are open to all these ideas, and hopeful that they can be made to work. The question of whether the government should operate, regulate or contract public services is not a question of principle: it is a matter of efficiency. But great care must be taken that private operation of public services not become simply a pretext for diminishing wages, benefits, or working conditions.

In some areas, the government has an indispensable regulatory role. To take one example, unless the government steps in to regulate the health care industry, one sector of the private economy will continue to gouge all the others. To take another, by requiring certain standards of occupational health and safety, government prevents private business, driven by competition, from jeopardizing the well-being of its workforce. Finally, by vigorously enforcing the National Labor Relations Act, government balances the market so that trade unions can be equal to the task of both representing the interests of workers and of strengthening their industries.

Public investment in productive activities is a more complicated matter than regulation. Here are a few tentative guidelines for consideration:

1. Such activities must serve the common good. If, for example, the government finances research and development, and if that R&D leads to profits, then the public should get a return commensurate with its risk and outlays.
2. There should be unequivocal evidence that the private sector cannot amass the capital needed for a socially useful investment, and that private interest is not using the government as a low-cost bank -- a common form of socialism for the rich.
3. Tax policy should stimulate productive investment in the United States. Any redistributive objective should not undermine incentives to create businesses or to invest productively.
4. Great care should be taken to ensure that government investment or protection afforded to any domestic enterprise is necessary for the public interest, and is not taken to provide unfair competitive advantage to one domestic company or industry to the detriment of others.

Intermediate Institutions

If government plays a distinct and indispensable role in modern social and economic affairs, so too does civil society, with its array of intermediate institutions. Such institutions are the well-springs of democratic society. They embrace family, congregation, school or university, private club, professional organization, trade union, neighborhood or housing association, and local civic groups.

There are strong arguments for giving such intermediate bodies a larger part in our social services, which currently are largely government-administered. Recent Catholic teaching argues cogently for "subsidiarity" -- that each social purpose should first be engaged by the institution that stands closest to the problem -- i.e., family, congregation, community group or union. Many cooperative economic activities can and should be carried out by mutual agreement between private corporations, voluntary associations, and local governments. The appropriate role of government is, in the main, to stimulate and regulate private institutions -- not to supplant them.

We recognize that tensions will naturally arise if one seeks to expand public sector activism on the one hand, and to bolster civil society on the other. It is possible that the public provision of certain social services can at times undermine voluntary organizations, private social relations and the web of community. However, as Leszek Kolakowski has argued, it is not unusual for social democrats to promote some values that may in certain circumstances come into competition with one another. Indeed, we see it as our role to foster constructive compromises between values and goals that sometimes conflict: between, for example, economic growth and environmentalism; between majority rights and minority rights; and, indeed, between government activism and civil society.

Equality and Opportunity

What values should guide government engagement in economic affairs? Americans continue to differ from Europeans in favoring equality of opportunity over what is called equality of condition. The open and dynamic society made possible by a commitment to opportunity ultimately creates more wealth, more freedom and even more social equality than can be achieved otherwise. But social democrats also recognize that limits must be placed on inequalities of condition. Equality of opportunity demands a measure of equality of condition; entrenched wealth breeds privilege and unjust power.

Social democrats oppose disparities of wealth so vast that they undermine our common citizenship and, sometimes, even our common humanity. But we also reject the mechanical leveling of a politics of envy. We acknowledge and celebrate individual differences, and understand that matching such differences in abilities and vocations to the ever-changing needs and tastes of society requires a marketplace -- and that this marketplace will work only if based on significant material incentives. When complemented and regulated by sensible government policies, the market is the most effective means for moving goods and services efficiently among producers and consumers.

"Free enterprise," however, is often championed by those who exhibit little diligence or enterprise in acquiring their assets. A thriving democratic society must encourage genuine entrepreneurship and must firmly guarantee the rewards of imagination, effort and risk. Far from stifling such qualities, social democracy would open them to a wider public. Social democracy simply observes that those who amass private wealth could not gain or keep it without the assistance and protection of the whole society. It is just, therefore, for the public to set limits upon the exercise of such wealth,

and to insist that its owners meet their obligations to the wider community.

Equality: Lifting Up, Not Pulling Down

Social Democrats do not believe economic equality is simply or even primarily a matter of leveling down incomes and wealth. Although we believe there must be limits to the extremes of wealth and poverty, we focus not on limits, but on broadening the life possibilities of every individual.

Economic equality requires not only a fair distribution of wealth; it also requires that every citizen who can should contribute to the creation and stewardship of wealth. Individuals cannot become full citizens of the economy unless they can contribute to the best of their abilities; this requires that they develop the skills and habits that the modern economy requires.

Social democrats therefore support economic polices which strive for full employment. We favor restructuring the present welfare system so that it too encourages full employment. The system we seek must not simply be a safety net for those who fall; it must also provide ladders to climb: education, training, and supportive services, as well as positive incentives for those physically and mentally able to escape the welfare trap by taking part in the productive economy.

A social democratic movement sees its constituents not as one-dimensional consumers, who merely demand "more, and always more." We also see them as potential producers, who have the untapped potential to create more. We seek ways of empowering low income people to take part in productive economic activity; for us, the movement toward greater economic equality is not so much a matter of bringing down the rich as it is a matter of raising up the poor through education and training, by helping them gain a greater voice in civic and economic affairs, and by assuring them a decent measure of personal and economic security.

Industrial Democracy

The widening disparity of incomes in America today is closely connected to the weakened bargaining position of American workers and the quiet assault that has been mounted against the organizations that represent working people. The erosion of the middle class has in no small measure resulted from substantial changes in the rules and practices that once governed labor/management relations in the United States.

The rights of workers to form unions and to bargain collectively are no longer, as a practical matter, upheld in the United States. Thousands of workers are fired each year merely for engaging in union activities nominally protected by law. Due process is being denied to those who petition for union representation elections. In clear contradiction of the basic principles of collective bargaining, striking workers are increasingly being replaced by non-union workers.

Today collective bargaining and democratic trade unionism are increasingly giving way to what corporate publicists call "human resources management." In this new system, workers are treated politely, and may in particular situations even be well paid. But they lose their economic citizenship, their job and personal security, their sense of being part of a common effort, their desire to improve their product -- and sometimes even their will to improve themselves.

Such developments are jeopardizing our country's potential to pull together to compete effectively in the international marketplace. Rash union demands have rarely priced American products out of international markets; in most instances, that has happened through short-sighted management, or shortages of skills and technological backwardness that cannot be blamed on the workers.

Our European competitors have proved the advantages of union/management cooperation. In the United States, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union helps small manufacturers to acquire new technology, develop financing, and build up a skilled, reliable work force. The International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen has developed programs through which workers accept responsibilities for the health of their industry through joint labor/management investments in research, development and advertising. Building trades unions have also developed apprenticeship programs that raised productivity in the construction industry. The success of union/management cooperation at the Saturn auto production plant has been widely acclaimed. These examples of cooperation illustrate the social democratic approach to strengthening economic productivity and growth -- a far more democratic and effective "supply-side" strategy than reliance on tax cuts to titillate the appetites of the rich.

Trade Unionism Today

We are members or allies of the labor movement not only because we share its economic purposes, but also because trade unions are indispensable organs of democracy in a capitalist society. The labor movement is the most democratic mass institution in America. It is the only mass institution that unites people across ethnic and gender boundaries, encompasses large numbers of low income citizens and gives them voice. Because it is a democratic institution, the labor movement is in a constant process of debate and self-improvement; constructive criticism and proposals for renewal are evidence of loyalty and support.

But constructive criticism is altogether different from the anti-union animus that prevails on the Right and in some regions of the New Left. The notion that unions are an obstacle to social progress has even gained ground recently among some liberals. For example, a recently-published volume of essays for the Clinton Administration produced by The Progressive Policy Institute, Mandate for Change, offers innovative policies for lifetime learning and retraining that will be very attractive to working people, and also contains valuable proposals for reforming health care, education, environmental policies, and public administration. But the book conspicuously overlooks labor unions -- even in its discussion of existing apprenticeship programs, an area where unions have been particularly effective.

One essay does emphasize that, in the newer systems of production, "workers ... must apply problem solving ability and judgment to govern the system." But if workers are expected to use their judgment, how will they be protected if they make mistakes? Workplace democracy without representation defies common sense. Will workers make suggestions implicitly critical of management if they have no legal protection against reprisals?

The authors of Mandate for Change also stress that global processes are driving American companies and workers into more intense international competition. But, as Americans compete internationally, conflict between workers and employers over wages and benefits could grow sharper. The authors call for "cooperation." But how will workers' interests be secured in the new "cooperation"? Who will represent them in matters of law and policy, such as health and safety? Profit-sharing is fine, but how will anyone know if management has cooked the books?

A "partnership" where one side has all the power is spurious. What we need is a new compact between management and labor. Unions should allow compensation to in some degree reflect profitability (e.g. profit- or gain-sharing as a percent of annual wages), and support a work ethic that rejects featherbedding, absenteeism, and drug and alcohol abuse. In return, management should recognize unions as genuine partners by conceding union recognition in new and unorganized plants, sharing financial and strategic data, disciplining abusive managers, and extending family leave and other corporate privileges to workers.

By the same token, unions should acknowledge that their members' futures are linked to the company and the industry that employs them. Unions should be prepared to bargain collectively on work rules that allow management to deploy the work force more flexibly in exchange for an equitable share of the gains that are realized. The new bargaining strategy of the United Steelworkers, which offers workplace cooperation in return for job security, is an illustration of what may be possible.) Both sides must be willing to use new techniques, including conflict resolution processes, that narrow the areas of conflict and allow for mediation and arbitration of differences.

The key to a new compact is a relationship of mutual trust and more balanced power among government, labor and industry. One of our great competitive disadvantages in today's global economy is the enormous hostility of the American system to organized labor. Instead of having the option of making a positive contribution as unions in Europe have, American unions must devote their main efforts to fighting for their lives. Mutual trust would free unions to alter their traditional positions without the fear that compromises will be used to undermine their very existence.

What management fails to realize is that its own archaic and paternalistic organization of work has often pushed labor into a preoccupation with work rules and defensive postures. If modernized operations characterized by flat management and activist production teams are ever to take off, management will not only need to grant the voice and representation unions have been asking for, but will also need union backing to make these new practices work.

We do not share the views of those social democrats in Europe and elsewhere who contend that the Clinton election provides evidence that social democrats must detach themselves from labor in order to woo the new middle classes. On the contrary, we see the Clinton victory as evidence that a new kind of alliance between the middle class and the labor movement is possible.

If new Clinton-style progressives want to keep families together, see children educated, reduce government transfer payments, and raise the standards of the unskilled, they must recognize that they will have to involve large numbers of people in their reform process. They will have to acknowledge that some of the groups they consider "special interests" rest upon broad constituencies of members and voters. Eventually they will have to make alliances with one or several of the popular constituency groups that many of them now hold in a measure of disdain.

The Trade Quandary

Social democracy has always recognized that, in general, trade benefits the popular classes. It brings otherwise remote goods within reach; it lowers prices; it raises quality; it creates demand for the products of labor, and thus generates jobs. More broadly, it breaks down cultural and ethnic barriers and unites people nationally and globally.

But social democrats have also recognized that the rules of the marketplace tend to favor the privileged. Thus, those who invest abroad today gain protection against unfair practices like expropriation, "dumping" and the violation of intellectual property rights. That kind of protection is properly considered part and parcel of "free trade." But if workers seek to ensure freedom of association, decent wages, or environmental and health standards, they are deemed "protectionist."

What lobbyists for "free trade" claim as their idealistic yearning for a world without barriers to the flow of capital and goods is sometimes little more than a stratagem for circumventing labor, social and environmental standards adopted through democratic processes. If these rules are too onerous -- and some may be -- they should be revoked or amended by democratic consent.

Our currently one-sided trade policies encourage countries to compete by offering their own citizens as a source of cheap labor. Paradoxically, however, such practices may end up hurting the very businesses that promote them. Global enterprise must relearn Henry Ford's lesson: poor workers can't buy cars.

But, most importantly, a global economy based on exploitation of low wage labor threatens democracy itself. It is now well established that democracy's hopes of success rest in large measure on how much it can improve the well-being of its citizens. Yet living standards are falling in many places as countries scramble to restructure themselves for participation in the global economy. This is because the economic reform process is often driven by international bank and investor interests, and so little concern is shown for the "social dimension." There is very little participation in economic reform schemes by working people themselves. How many more coup attempts (like that in Venezuela) must occur, how many bizarre election outcomes (such as that of Lithuania) must we see, before policy makers awaken to the grave threats their characteristically elitist reform schemes pose to democracy itself?

The solution to these growing threats is not the creation of new trade barriers, but rather a linkage between market access and worker rights and labor standards. To cite a stark -- but real -- example, the products of Chinese prison labor should not be allowed to undercut products made by free and fairly compensated workers (who are also global consumers). Trade negotiators should regard violations of workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively as unfair trade practices. To be effective, sanctions must be real. The global economy needs to move toward a regime something like that envisioned in the National Labor Relations Act in the United States -- a system that allows workers all over the world to bargain collectively. The struggle for international worker rights is democracy's next frontier, and will be crucial to the development of a truly global economy.

Renewing the Social Contract

Severe economic problems underlie many of America's social ills -- the decay of the inner cities, distressed families, growing racial and ethnic problems, and resentment toward expensive government programs. But interrelated with these social and economic woes is a deeper and more difficult crisis -- a breakdown in the social contract, the idea that citizenship is an obligation and an opportunity, not just an entitlement.

While the vast majority of Americans -- from all walks of life -- have continued to "work hard and play by the rules," over the last several decades, they have witnessed a rapid degeneration in the nation's common standards of decency. During the 1980s, an "I'll get mine" ethos helped to turn Wall Street exploiters and ruthless drug runners into neo-mythic heroes. Our television screens were filled with news reports about corporate looting, savings and loan swindles, unethical (and often illegal) stock manipulations, street crime, drug abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, neglected children, horror and violence. As taxpayers, workers, parents and citizens, we all pay a terrible price for this behavior.

To some extent, the upper and middle classes have been able to insulate themselves from the consequences of this breakdown. Those who are highly skilled can leave the shells of gutted companies and find profitable employment elsewhere. Those with private resources can move to safer communities, using private schools, private nannies, private police forces and private drug rehabilitation centers, when necessary, to help their children. The last 20 years has seen a vast exodus of the affluent from the common life of America. The poor and working classes have not been so fortunate. They find themselves trapped in dying and dangerous neighborhoods, dependent on increasingly ineffectual government programs for any hope of reprieve.

As these problems have weakened the social fabric, so have they ravaged our public institutions, along with our faith in them. Public education, public safety, public housing, public health, public welfare and public works -- all are regarded as problems, in and of themselves, not as solutions to seemingly intractable social ills. Those who have been able to remove themselves from the worst effects of greed, graft and lawlessness have grown less and less willing to pay taxes to support public services. Those who have been left behind grow increasingly desperate to hold on to what little help these government programs offer.

Extremists of the New Left and New Right have joined to exploit this crisis, inflicting additional damage on what might be called the American "commonwealth." Some on the far Right preached the righteousness of selfishness, condemning victims for their plight, declaring that a citizens' only social obligation was to himself, perpetuating stereotypes and exacerbating economic, religious and racial divisions. Some on the far Left played the same role in reverse, declaring that even criminals and cheats are "victims" of society, extolling the virtues of rebellion and anti-social behavior, denying that American society is capable of good, and even proclaiming that the idea of a common democratic polity is a myth. The recurrent enthusiasms for figures such as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan are testament to the power of such messages.

The fact is that despite its difficult history, the United States is the most successful example of democratic, multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-ethnic coexistence -- and has enormous relevance to the many regions of the contemporary world currently riven by ethnic and religious conflicts. But here at home the idea that a diverse people can share a common American identity is under fire. Counterpoised to the earlier myth of a completely unitary culture -- the "melting pot" -- is a new mythology based on ethnic chauvinism, which sometimes calls itself "multicultural," though it is anything but that.

Instead of focusing on the role of the individual in a just society, we are called upon to contend with competing and conflicting claims of group rights and group grievances. But if there is no common society -- and no common benefit from improvements in the way it functions toward its members -- then there is no reason to pay attention to each other's problems, much less support programs for their solution.

Social democrats want to see a renewal of the social compact, a revival of the idea of our common citizenship, and a broadening of the public sphere. It is only by virtue of our shared responsibility that we can act to secure our rights or to create a climate of general opportunity. The recent presidential election campaign was a great step forward in this respect. Not only did voter turnout increase, but the content of the campaign improved as voters insisted that candidates talk about real problems and real solutions. And Bill Clinton's appeal to a vision of a common civic identity, his repudiation of the idea that government itself is evil, and his equally clear rejection of the idea that bigger government is necessarily better were all major factors in his success. Americans are understandably hopeful about his calls for individual responsibility and a reinvention of government and new (and especially community-based) approaches to solving difficult problems.

But citizenship is more than voting once every two or four years, obeying the law, and paying our taxes. Especially in difficult times like these, we need broad-based, sensible, grassroots citizens' involvement. This movement must include those who are most beleaguered and besieged -- the inner-city and rural poor.

A Responsibility Divided

A popular movement of the kind we seek will mobilize the large majorities in low income communities who are the chief victims of crime and irresponsibility. Such a movement will challenge youth violence, drug abuse, family breakdown, ethnic and racial hatred, and indiscipline in the schools. Problems such as these were often excused as the fault of "the system" by the so-called "participatory democracy" experiments of the 1960s -- one reason why those efforts failed to gain genuine community support, and why today grassroots politics has become so difficult.

Neither the leniency our system of justice shows white collar criminals nor the abuses that police often commit against the poor and minorities can alter the fact that the law-abiding majorities in poor communities have become helpless prey to a small proportion of their neighbors. These real victims are often overlooked by "progressive" outsiders who are too eager to believe that criminals are mere victims of an unjust society.

The vast majority of the poor share the same aspirations and moral values as the rest of the country. if anything, the poor have had to work harder and live more frugally than the middle and upper classes; they are more closely tied to churches and other religious institutions; they have been the first to send their sons and daughters to war, and they have been more inclined to punish crime severely. While broken homes, unemployment, crime, drugs and teen pregnancy are debilitating for others in society, they are catastrophic for those who possess no private resources.

Because the poor pay the highest costs of crime and irresponsibility, they have the most to gain from the fight against these problems in their own neighborhoods. The legendary "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War is modest when measured against the "responsibility dividend" that long ago could have been won through significant reductions in crime, drug abuse, fraud, sexually transmitted disease, and abandoned families. A movement that truly empowers the poor can help achieve this change, and no popular campaign to broaden democracy in America can succeed unless it contests the pathologies that prey on our society.

Moral revival, as we know, was a primary theme of the Bush/Quayle "family values" presidential campaign. This campaign was rightly seen by most voters as a last-minute ploy to deflect criticism from Republican social and economic failures. Its aim was to divide Democrats rather than to solve real social problems. A sound social ethic cannot be restored by the smug and the privileged.

Some "neo-conservatives," however, were mistakenly convinced that country club Republicans and Wall Street speculators would be reliable allies in restoring sound civic and cultural values. We hope they will now reconsider, and join to build a popular movement for reviving those values, our economy and our sense of social justice. The defeat of the Republican values campaign was by no means a vindication of the irresponsibilities spawned by the "leftism" of the 1960s. If the Clinton Administration does not already realize it, it will soon discover that no government that fails to defend the public safety or insist upon basic civility will ever be entrusted by the public with larger responsibilities for social and economic development.

Civil Rights

Racial inequality remains America's most difficult social problem. The struggle for racial justice has been a central concern of American social democrats, from the time A. Philip Randolph founded The Messenger, to Bayard Rustin's organization of the 1963 March on Washington, until today.

Almost 30 years ago, in his acclaimed statement "From Protest to Politics," Bayard Rustin noted prophetically: BLOCKQUOTE "At issue, after all, is not 'civil rights,' strictly speaking, but social and economic conditions.... This matter of the economic role brings us to the greater problem -- the fact that we are moving into an era in which the natural functioning of the market does not by itself ensure for every man with will and ambition a place in the productive process.... [It used to be] possible to start at the bottom, as an unskilled or semi-skilled worker, and move up the ladder, acquiring new skills along the way.... Today ... we are in the midst of a technological revolution which is altering the fundamental structure of the labor force, destroying unskilled and semi-skilled jobs -- jobs in which Negroes are disproportionately concentrated."/BLOCKQUOTE

Black and brown America are ominously challenged by our changing economy. Years of segregation and hardship have confined many minority workers to the very rungs of the work force which are being sawn off by modernization. Poor schools and ghetto turmoil leave many young blacks and Hispanics ill-prepared for the jobs of the future. Demagogic racial and ethnic posturing breed anger and despair among minorities and cynicism among whites. As a result, a social democratic accent on the economic dimensions of racial injustice and opposition to divisive and separatist currents are finding renewed expression among black and Hispanic leaders.

Amid all that is needed, three things are most urgent:

1. Rigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. We must reaffirm that our national policy is to become a color-blind society in matters of housing, employment, education and public accommodations. Substantially increased funding for anti-discrimination work is needed.
2. Special efforts are required to engage black and Hispanic Americans in training and educational programs. (The Recruitment and Training Program, RTP, once managed by the A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund and the Workers Defense League, could be a model. Until it was wiped out by David Stockman in the early Reagan years, it trained and placed thousands of young minority workers in the skilled crafts.) While educational programs are of paramount importance, other social services that address problems of special severity in minority communities also need strengthening.
3. We must move away from racial quotas, set-asides and other practices that produce only token gains for (largely middle class) minorities while failing to improve the lives of those most in need. These strategies engender profound hostility among the wider population both toward the supposed beneficiaries of these practices and toward government itself.

As a matter of practice, affirmative action has frequently been misapplied. It should not be understood as requiring the hiring of minority or female workers according to pre-determined percentages. Such quota programs merely provide superficial gains, while doing nothing to foster the skills and work experience necessary for secure employment in today's fluid job market. Moreover, such quota programs are discriminatory and, because they pit low income groups against one another, are politically disastrous to the kinds of coalitions minorities need most.

True affirmative action involves recruiting, training, placing and sustaining members of minority groups, women, and low-income whites in steady jobs that have decent pay. It involves a continuous effort to help workers gain and keep skills and knowledge that will make them productive and competitive in a fast-paced, high-tech economy. It will require significant resources, and persistent, patient efforts. But the rewards both to employees and to our economy as a whole will be far greater than anything to be gained from quota gimmicks.

Social democrats will continue to insist upon full rights for minorities, women, gays and lesbians and any individuals who have been denied full equality under the law. As citizens, Americans need not approve of one another's lives (or, indeed, of one another), but all must continue to pursue the ideals of tolerance, non-discrimination and individual liberty.

A Viable Multi-Culturalism

Socialists and social democrats have often underestimated the importance of culture and ethnicity in modern life. Today we recognize that these forms of experience and sensibility have great significance. The cultures of new immigrants and minorities must be respected, and the cultures of large and long-established groups must not be given official dominance. Reforms are needed in our educational curricula and other areas of public life to give appropriate recognition to our cultural diversity, and to acknowledge the significance of all groups in American life.

In the earlier part of this century Americans developed the concept of cultural, religious and ethnic pluralism to enable immigrants from diverse cultures to retain their identities within a common civic, legal and political framework. While this two-tiered approach must be adapted to new conditions, it permits diversity while avoiding the balkanization and animosity that today afflict so many areas of the world, and, as we noted previously, are corroding our own civic culture.

American social democrats can contribute to our own society by supporting pluralism against both separatism and overbearing cultural homogenization. We can also benefit new democrats in other countries by helping them to understand and, if they wish, to borrow from this successful American experience.

A New Civic Culture

The new movement we envision will not simply petition government to do things for people; much of what needs to be done must be done by citizens themselves, through their own organizations.

The political and cultural conflicts of the last quarter century have done great damage to the institutions of the American commonwealth, and to the culture that sustains them. Our commonwealth includes not only government -- the public sector, narrowly defined -- but also such non-government institutions as universities and colleges, religious and charitable organizations, labor and professional groups, and institutions that serve culture and the arts.

A pitched battle has been fought in this realm over the last generation that crippled many of these institutions. Because such institutions serve broad social purposes, they have been prime targets for those seeking to impose one form or another of "politically correct' attitudes and conduct upon them. The result has been to entangle them in a welter of racial, ethnic, religious, and class conflicts.

The 1960s did not bring the expected "end of ideology," but the onset of fierce cultural wars. The bonds of our civility, tolerance and common purpose frayed. The politics of victimhood and group entitlement contested the politics of national purpose and responsibility. This era of ill feeling lingered long. But, as Paul Starr recently noted in The American Prospect (Fall, 1992),

BlockQuoteDemocratic leaders, and liberals more generally, now recognize that the path they took in the late 1960s -- or , more precisely, some turns on that path -- led them into the electoral wilderness. In both its public and private expressions, the ethic of expansive entitlements seemed to deny limits, whether in personal conduct or in government expenditure.... So now they must reassert, as an earlier generation of liberals once did, an ethic that emphasizes prudence and responsibility as much as rights. /BlockQuote

Democratic government and the free economy are not mere mechanisms; neither functions when the civic culture that sustains them becomes weak or divided. America must renew its civic spirit through far-reaching reforms.

Education

Those hit hardest by the new economic tides have been the uneducated and the unskilled. The median earnings of male workers aged 25-34 with a college degree rose by 7% from 1979 to 1989 compared to a 15% decline among workers of similar age who only held high school diplomas. This cannot be written off to Reagan-era policies alone. As economist Herbert Stein has noted, there has been a long-term "decline in the value of output of persons with little education, which fell greatly relative to the value of the output of more educated people."

Large numbers of our young are educationally unprepared both for democratic life and for the kinds of employment that will be available in the 21St Century. A vast array of social problems have been thrust upon America's schools. Even though spending on education has increased, it has not kept up with these pressures. The demands of world economic competition clearly require us to improve the educational capacities of our work force and our scientific and technical cadres.

But increased funding will achieve little without profound reforms in the mission, the incentive-structure, the administrative policies and the values that guide our schools. We need a set of common achievement standards to shape a rigorous agenda. We need schools with practical, modern and non-partisan curricula, with teachers who have time to prepare adequately for their classes, and students who respect their teachers and study hard. Students who continuously interfere with the education of others by behaving anti-socially need to be put in situations where they cannot inflict such damage, and where they will have the opportunity to change and achieve. All this will require the active cooperation of parents as well as students and teachers. The work of bringing these different elements together is one that a revived social democratic movement can help to undertake.

Civic Education

Our public schools are essential training grounds for tolerance, pluralism and democracy. Those who would dismantle the public school system by instituting a voucher system for use by privately-run schools are offering a desperate and dangerous remedy. We fear that such a course will yield a thin layer of elite institutions that overlies a hodge-podge of balkanized, politicized, and incompetently managed schools that in time will forfeit taxpayer support.

Another educational challenge is the need to deal fairly with our country's diverse religious and cultural traditions. It is clear that some elements in our population have been overlooked or misrepresented in our teaching curricula. This must be corrected, but not in ways that substitute one myth for another, or that disregard the many things that Americans have in common -- not least our civic culture.

Our schools are not teaching our own democratic traditions and values, nor much about the struggles for democracy around the world. A kind of political relativism has taken hold that underrates American values and institutions. We seek improved civic education in our schools, with special emphasis on the way American civic tradition unites us.

National Service

Young people who are aged 17 and have the equivalent of a high school education should perform at least one year of national service. Such service can be rendered through civic, religious, governmental, business, labor, humanitarian, or educational organizations, through the U.S. Armed Services, or through a new Democracy Corps to assist in politically undeveloped countries. Compensation should include payment at the minimum wage, and room and board.

Such service should be voluntary, but those who have completed it should be eligible for a substantial program of educational and other forms of career development benefits.

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