SOCIAL DEMOCRATS, USA
INTRODUCTION
Why America Needs a Social Democratic Movement is a valuable contribution to the discussion of the future of the American Left in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Clinton election, and America's entry into the global economy. Its stress on the central importance of democratic values and institutions, and on a reawakening of citizenship, has appeal for thinkers and activists from a wide range of backgrounds. We recommend it to all who are grappling with the political and intellectual challenges of this remarkable new moment in history.
Robert J. Alexander Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
Jervis Anderson Author, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical
Portrait
John Atlas President, National Housing Institute
Robert Cottrol Professor of Law, Rutgers University
Rita Freedman Executive Director, Social Democrats, USA
Suzanne Goldsmith Director of the Community Service Project,
The American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities
Charles V. Hamilton Professor, Columbia University
Robert Heilbroner Senior Lecturer in Economics, The New School
for Social Research
Norman Hill President, A Philip Randolph Institute
Rachelle Horowitz Political Director, American Federation of
Teachers
John T. Joyce President, Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen
Steven Kelman Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School
of Government, Harvard University
Israel Kugler Professor Emeritus in Social Science, City University
of New York
Paul Kurtz Professor Emeritus, SUNY Buffalo; Editor, Free Inquiry
Magazine
Robert S. Leiken Writer
Sam Leiken Consultant
Seymour Martin Lispet Professor of Public Policy, George Mason
University
President, American Sociological Association
Dimon Liu China Human Rights Foundation
Ray Marshall Professor, University of Texas; Former Secretary
of Labor
Jay Mazur President, International Ladies Garment Workers Union
Wilson Carey McWilliams Professor of Political Science, Rutgers
University
Louis Menashe Head, Department of Social Sciences, Polytechnic
University
Eusebio Mujal-Leon Associate Professor of Government, Georgetown
University
Walter Naegle Executive Director, Bayard Rustin Fund
Robert Pickus President, World Without War Council
Ronald Radosh Author
Herman Rebhan General Secretary, Retired, International Federation
of Metalworkers
Bert Seidman Vice President, Jewish Labor Committee
Philip Selznick Professor Emeritus of Law and Sociology,
University of California, Berkeley
Albert Shanker President, American Federation of Teachers
Fred Siegel Professor of History and Humanities, The Cooper
Union; Editor, The City Journal
Martin Sklar Professor of History, Bucknell University
Don Slaiman President, Social Democrats, USA
David Twersky Journalist
Lynn Williams President, United Steelworkers of America
(Titles for identification purposes only.)
A new era has come in like a flood tide. Suddenly those who built the Berlin Wall fear being put behind walls themselves; long-time opponents of "American imperialism" demand that the US Marines occupy Somalia; Reagan and McGovern Democrats have teamed up to elect a "New Democrat.
We ourselves stand between past and future: proud of our part in democracy's triumph, but still haunted by the disastrous shipwreck of communism. Social democrats saw early on that the false "socialism" of the Bolshevik Revolution would take its partisans onto the rocks. * What now, if anything, can be salvaged from the socialist idea?
Some contend that the collapse of Soviet communism means the end of social democracy as well. We believe that just the opposite is true. We now have an opportunity to advance ideas and values that for seventy five years have been burdened by a terrible lie. The collapse of our century's second totalitarian challenge has made the revival of a truly democratic left a practical possibility -- in America and the world. The end of the Cold War offers a possibility to advance concepts of democracy that in fact have deeply American roots, and are spreading from those roots throughout the globe.
The American role in democracy's new moment has been given additional impetus by the Clinton victory in our 1992 elections. President Clinton's campaign demonstrated public support for three basic missions: "putting people first" as we face deep technological change and the globalization of the economy; restoring the civic unity that underlies and protects America's diversity; and providing American assistance to the worldwide democratic revolution.
President Clinton is to be applauded for affirming these goals, but all his election does is open the way to fulfilling them. The reforms on the Clinton agenda can be achieved only by involving large numbers of people in a movement of democratic revival and reconstruction. This will demand new thinking and "re-inventions" at all levels, not only in government, but also the economic and cultural domains.
The 1992 Presidential election in the United States was a vote for active government and repudiation of the Bush Administration's passive and in some respects cynical domestic and foreign policies. We are even persuaded that Clinton's victory was a kind of endorsement of social democratic values. But while many in our society evidently share these values and ideas, there is no intellectual community to subject these views to thorough examination and debate, no organized network to transform them into practical policy, no broad political movement to support them against attacks from either the Right or the Left.
We hope that American social democrats can help to constitute such a community of thought and practical action, and that our work can contribute to a social democratic revival in other countries as well.
* The record reaches back to the 1919 Chicago Convention of the Socialist Party of the United States -- which repudiated the anti-democratic factions that eventually became the Communist Party, USA-- and to Eugene Victor Deb's rejection of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and his protests against Lenin's repression of opposition parties in Russia.
Copyright ©: 1995, SD, USA, Revised August 26, 1995