THE ＧＬＯＢＡＬＩＺＡＴＩＯＮ ＆ ＧＯVＥＲＮＡＮＣＥ ＰＲＯＪＥCＴ， ＨＯＫＫＡＩＤＯ ＵＮＩＶＥＲＳＩＴＹＷＯＲＫＩＮＧ ＰＡＰＥＲ ＳＥＲＩＥＳThe Triangles (and Circles) of Social Democracy
Ⅰ−０６

Tony Fitzpatrick, University of Nottingham＊ Paper for the Workshop Governance of Welfare for the 21st Century:

New Social Risks and Renewal of Social Democracy, 18-19 February 2005
＊ None of these papers should be cited without the author’s permission.

The Triangles (and Circles) of Social Democracy
The twentieth century experienced a battle between a range of ideologies. From aEuropean perspective the three main survivors of that battle are conservatism, social
democracy and feminism (allowing for the fact that these cover a wide range of ideas
and schools of thought). By the mid-1990s it looked as if the era of conservative
dominance was coming to an end, supplanted by social democratic parties armed (inpart at least) with a female-friendly agenda.
But while conservative parties often found themselves defeated and out of office,conservatism remained influential. This is partly because of the legacy of thoseparties, but also partly because social democracy has more principles and social
objectives to reconcile than conservatism, and tries to be more humane in pursuing astrategy of reconciliation.
Traditionally, social democracy has been concerned with individual freedom, social
equality and economic solidarity. There are many potential points of tension between
these three but let me outline the main ones.

Its main strategy of reconciliation was corporatist: giving workers freedom (voice andautonomy) though union representation, equality (through wages, welfare and social
insurance) in exchange for growth, and solidarity (through wage bargaining) in
exchange for productivity and industrial harmony. Whether or not such corporatismis still feasible the problem with it (from a social democratic point of view) was that it
collapsed citizenship and social membership into employment and so neglected nonemployment forms of activity, solidarity and social contribution.
Before looking at post-corporatist forms of reconciliation the point I am making isthat by being less concerned with social equality conservatism is able to effect areconciliation of its favoured principles much more easily. (Going to pass over what
this involves.) Yet this has not always been appreciated.

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In the 1970s some claimed that to abandon social equality was to invite a legitimation
crisis; more recently, that doing so undermines social cohesion and inclusion(trilemma debate). But in dealing with these potential problems conservatives areable to reach for solutions that have not lain within the purview of social democracy(at least not until recently). They have been able to privatise/individualise sources of
responsibility for social problems, adopt cruel-to-be-kind measures and punitive
policies for those unable or unwilling to play along. Given its commitment to social
liberalism, social democracy has been less willing to adopt such get-tough solutions.
The distinctiveness of the ‘new social democracy’ has been its willingness to do so, tobring together elements of the traditional left’s agenda along with that of the right.
New Labour’s principles now look like this.

Firstly, it has emphasised merit and the idea that people must be helped to help
themselves: a ‘hand-up, not a handout’. This is an individualistic doctrine where it is
the idea of aspiring to a better standard of living, for oneself and one’s family, whichis assumed to be people’s primary motivation. Secondly, however, this is not toimagine that New Labour has ignored the importance of social cohesion. It hasrepeatedly stressed the importance of social inclusion and integration into the norms

2and mainstream of society. However, although it has wanted to improve the positionof those at the bottom (assuming they can demonstrate they deserve such
improvement) this does not necessarily translate into social equality per se. New
Labour has been concerned with the height of the social floor but not necessarily withthe height of the social ceiling. Finally, then, without much of an egalitarianemphasis it has spoken more in terms of community and has associated community
with notions of desert, duty and reciprocity. By its motto that ‘rights imply
responsibilities’ New Labour argues that what you put into society must be broadly
proportionate to what you take out.
As such, these principles have given rise to some clearly identifiable strategies (going
to concentrate upon employment and social security):•

A sticks-and-carrots emphasis upon ‘labour market activation’. An ‘active’
welfare system is one that will help the ‘deserving’ (through Personal Advisers
assisting with job searches, for instance) but will clamp down on those who shirk
their social obligations. Receiving benefits for ‘doing nothing’ is no longer an
option and that to continue receiving benefits claimants must take accept one of
the following: subsidised employment, full-time education or training, a job in thevoluntary sector, work with an environmental taskforce. There are a range ofpenalties, i.e. having your benefit stopped, attached to non-compliance.
New Labour claims success in cracking down on benefit fraud but in the UK thisissue usually gets lost in a political and statistical fog.

•

Like its conservative predecessors it has rejected universalism as too wasteful andblunt an instrument and has preferred selectivist measures. Social insurance
benefits have therefore been allowed to wither.
Pensions reform saw not the re-indexing of the state pension to earnings but the
introduction of a means-tested Minimum Pension Guarantee. As a result of theobjection that this created a savings trap, for those whose incomes were just above
the entitlement threshold, the government introduced a means-tested pensions
credit above the level of the MIG.

•

New Labour has wanted to ‘make work pay’. It is aware that employment is not
per se the route out of social exclusion since wages may be low. Therefore, it has
sought to raise the floor below which wages cannot fall and to improve the system
of in-work transfers.
Minimum wage now stands at £4.85 per hour (for those aged 22 or more). TUC
wants £6 for all ages introduced in 2006.
Tax credits were introduced in 1999 and the various strands are now in the processof being integrated. 2003 saw the introduction of a Child Tax Credit and a
Working Tax Credit; in 2004 the Pensions Credit was introduced.

•

The government has repeatedly emphasised the importance of private provision.
As social insurance has declined so people have been encouraged (though not yet
compelled) to take out private forms of insurance (pensions again).

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•

Government has been receptive to the idea of the work-life balance, given its
commitment to women entering the labour market and to families. Because
British workers work the longest hours in Europe and stress is the greatest causeof absence from work. So far this has taken the form of improved parental leaveand encouraging employers to be flexible. More radical suggestions, e.g. for a‘part-time economy’ not really on the agenda.

•

New Labour also receptive to idea of limited ‘citizenship grants’. Child TrustFund running from January 2005. Children born after August 31, 2002 are eligible
for the new scheme where the government gives £500 to every poor child and£250 to better-off families to encourage the savings habit. This money can then be
added to by family, friends and later the child her/himself. Together with top-ups
made by the Government each child's nest egg will grow to an average of £3,000
to £4,000 by the time they are 18. A form of asset-based welfare and the role that
assets (financial stocks and resources ones) can play in improving individual andcollective wellbeing.
Idea of introducing universal citizen’s pension is also part of British political
discussions, though far from being adopted as government policy.

In short, the proposed advantae of the new social democracy over the old is (a) its
abandonment of strong equality (so putting less pressure on social expenditure andeconomic regulation) and (b) its attempt to maintain social cohesion by appealing to(i) traditional values and norms (e.g. that social participation means being in paid
work, so producing high levels of taxation to fund increased expenditure on ‘good’welfare [schools and hositals]), (ii) cracking down on forms of behaviour that threaten
or are feared may threaten social harmony (curfews, ASBOs, zero tolerance,
incarceration, anti-terrorism).
New Labour therefore believes that it can have social justice with economic
dynamism while avoiding a legitimation crisis – though with many other countries
UK politics suffering from deficits of trust and democracy.
The main problems with NSD are as follows.

4Merit + fairness. Genuine equality requires the removal of the structures that
distribute power, wealth and capital unevenly. To graft a few ‘meritocratic’ policies
onto a class society means that (1) existing structural inequalities are justified,because inequalities are now wrongly held to result from individual efforts, and (2)those at the social bottom are held responsible for their disadvantages because they
obviously did not make proper use of the opportunities provided for them.
Equality of opportunity is meaningless without some equalization of outcomes,
otherwise the former ossifies into the very system of undeserved advantage anddisadvantage that it is meant to correct. ‘Outcome equality’ requires not just social
protection but a substantial redistribution of material and cultural resources.
Merit + community. For instance, it is socially conservative. Existing hierarchies
treated as natural and desirable, because desired by those who gain the most fromthem. Two instances of this. First, market forms of independence are fetishised.
Second, treats dependency upon the state is treated as the main problem. This misses
other forms of dependency that may be equally damaging, e.g. upon the labour market
and upon the family.
Fairness + community. Once social justice brought together with pathologicalapproach then the socially excluded become a source of otherness who must attract
surveillance, disciplinary strategies etc. Risk of ghettoisation and alienisation of
public space.
What might the possible alternatives be? Are they desirable and can they address thesame social, economic & cultural developments NSD claim to successfully address?
One of those debates obviously concerns globalisation and some insist that
globalisation can be shaped according to social democratic principles and aims. Once
we have established that globalisation does not necessarily sound the death knell ofsocial democracy, even if it does make life harder for high-spending welfare states,
then we can imagine a social democratisation of global markets converging with theglobal-orientation of social democratic movements to produce a new form of politics
which makes room where it is wanted for egalitarian solutions to social problems.
However, a successful expansion of the geographical scope of social democracy
depends upon being clear about what kind of social democracy we want.
I want to distinguish between productivist and a post-productivist social democracy.
A succinct defence of the former is provided by Midgely and Tang (International
Journal of Social Welfare, 2001) when they contend that social democrats have tobeat conservatives at their own game by shaping capitalism so that (1) it generates
greater wealth and growth than under laissez faire regimes, but (2) without
abandoning the fair distributions which are essential to social democracy and appeal
to most people’s innate sense of decency and humanity. The history of social
democracy is therefore the history of productivist attempts to balance (1) and (2) in avariety of national, political and cultural contexts.
Productivism is not the same as productivity. It is the ideological fetishisation of
productivity growth where the latter takes on the quality of an end rather than a means.

5This is not to suggest that productivity becomes simply an end-in-itself since there aregoals that productivity and growth are always designed to serve: for social democrats
this goal involves fair distributions. However, by taking on the quality of an end thedrive for ever-greater productivity reconfigures these goals so that they, themselves,
are interpreted in terms of their contribution to GDP growth. Distributions are largely
regarded by social democratic parties as fair or unfair in relation to economic
contributions, hence the social democratic emphasis upon redistribution by andthrough employment. For productivity to serve deeper goals those goals must serve
the processes of productivity growth. So, productivism is the institutional, discursive
and psychological process by which social goals are subordinated to the domains of
productivity growth.
While its productivist appeals have enabled social democracy to become socially andpolitically embedded, they have also undermined its ability to recognise the potential
limits to productivism. To specify those limits I need to define two forms of value:emotional and ecological.
First, there is the kind of emotional value expressed in an ethic of care and for which
the much sought-after work-life balance is an obvious condition. Carework creates
economic (or exchange) value, in that it involves the performance of activity thatneither the capitalist market nor the state have either the inclination or the ability toremunerate in full, yet economic value is not its primary rationale. We do not havechildren in order to populate the future economy, or look after us in old age; we do
not care for elderly relatives in order to make a profit. Some care can and should be
performed as waged activity, and should be factored much more closely into socialand economic policies than at present, but most care will always remain informal,
performed for reasons of emotional belonging.
Second, there is the ecological value of the environment. Greens have long pointed
out that economic value depends upon and feeds off an environmental substructure.
The resources we mine and the ecosystem we pollute are the origins of economic
value yet economic orthodoxy still relates productivity to labour rather than to natural
resources. A much wider conception of social activity and participation is required,
one that sets the economic in an environmental context rather than the other way
around.
We therefore have two forms of value, emotional and environmental, that are related
to, but might be said to underpin, the economic value that remains central tocontemporary societies. The emotional and the environmental are not, therefore,
different forms of value but the strata upon which economic value is dependent andagainst which it must be measured.
For the sake of convenience let me place emotional and ecological value under thejoint heading of ‘reproduction’. Productivism is that which would subsume
reproduction within the sphere of production, insisting that the costs of pursuing everhigher levels of economic wealth can be incorporated within the existing political
economy, e.g. by insisting that carework and sustainability are job- and therefore
growth-friendly.

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Post-productivism is that which would subsume production within the spheres ofreproduction, insisting that those costs are beyond the capacity of the employment
society to fully recognise and absorb so that we must alter our conceptions of value
and so of affluence, growth and work. Post-productivism is therefore a doctrine of‘reproductivity’ whereby economic growth is justified if and only if it can bedemonstrated that the emotional and ecological sources of production are enhanced.
Reproductivity does not, then, deny the importance of productivity but subjects it to‘non-productivist’ criteria, e.g.. it points out that there are emotional limits to theextent to which working-time can be squeezed and ecological limits to reliance uponcheaper raw materials.
Concentrate on ecological case.
Evidence suggests that social democratic societies like Sweden are the Greenest. But
because of the stress upon international market competitiveness the emphasis has
been placed upon technological, end-of-the-pipe fixes, top-down managerialism rather
than grassroots democracy, a win-win philosophy that avoids the difficult questions oftrade-off and a legacy whereby Swedish industry has developed throughenvironmental exploitation. Environmental concerns have not been integrated into
the wider array of economic, social and welfare issues, unless to justify a ‘business as
usual’ approach.
Jamison and Baark find that Denmark’s record is better but that, even here,
environmental policies have not been integrated in the social lifeworld, such that they
are easily abandoned when they become too costly – a risk also noticeable in Finland.
In the Netherlands and Norway, the environment tends to be brought into thedecision-making picture only when it benefits, but does not challenge, economic
orthodoxy, e.g. job creation in the waste management industries.
So while the social democratic record is impressive its incompleteness may be due tothe limits of productivism rather than to defects in policy making that merely require
an administrative fix. If so, then there is a question mark over whether the solution to
the problems of productivism is yet more productivism. In terms of both caregiving
and sustainability, social democracies have arguably gone further than other countries
in incorporating reproductive values into their socioeconomic institutions and policies.
Yet they are bumping up against the limits of productivism because the dominance ofeconomic value makes it harder to achieve more than modest (though still welcome)forms of gender equality and sustainability. The Centre-Left may, therefore, face achoice between seeking a productivist future and a post-productivist one.
What might a post-productivist welfare system resemble?
Post-productivism might be formulated as a post-employment approach in which
multiple forms of valuable activity, both formal and informal, are identified andnurtured. What this implies is that economies cannot be based (as they are now) upon
the fiction that wages are or can be the dominant means through which the mass ofpeople generate and exchange value. If there is to be an expansion of informal
activity then non-waged equivalents have to be encouraged and, in fact, thoseequivalents are already available in the form of time.

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Bob Goodin supports a welfare society of resource autonomy, the resource in question
being available in two currencies: income and time. This means correcting
imbalances in the existing distribution of resources between employed andunemployed, men and women, affluent and non-affluent. Since the sine qua non ofthis approach is often taken to be the freeing up of time, so that it can be distributed
more equitably in conjunction with income and wealth, we should examine this at
more length.
Gender imbalances require a greater equilibrium between homelife and worklife and aredistribution of carework from women to men. But it is the broader divisions ofaffluence which present even more of a problem. Challenging the culture ofoverwork means encouraging many of those who are time rich and income poor toconverge upon those who are time poor and income rich, and vice versa. As always,
though, desire is unlikely to translate into social change unless government channels
preferences and actions in the appropriate direction.
Among other things this might suggest more imaginative employment policies. For
instance, employers might be obliged to replace wage increments with increments oftime above a stipulated level of the pay scale. The establishment of time banks andtime credit schemes could accompany the new fashion for Child Tax Funds and tax
credits. And informal exchange schemes have been proposed as a means of repairing
the defects produced by over-reliance upon formal labour markets.
Basic Income
One of the proposals often associated with a post-employment approach is that of a BI.
This is because it does not make income maintenance conditional upon labour market
activity and so could facilitate a more pluralist approach to social participation then iscurrently the case, e.g. an element of a political economy of care.
A Basic Income would be received by every man, women and child periodically(whether on a weekly, monthly or annual basis) as an unconditional right ofcitizenship, i.e. without reference to marital or employment status, employment
history or intention to seek employment. It would replace most of the benefits, tax
reliefs and tax allowances that currently exist, and could be age-related, e.g. with ahigher Basic Income for elderly people. Basic Income therefore represents analternative both to means-testing and to the social insurance principle.

8However, many complain about its unconditional nature.
Stuart White is one of these, says BI would permit free-riding and so violate thereciprocity of social interaction and cooperation. But while he rejects the proposal in
its unconditional form he enthuses for one of BI’s neighbours: a Basic Capital
Scheme (BCS). White therefore ends in support for a two-tier welfare system. The
main tier would be, as now, income-related and universal benefits linked to theperformance of productive contributions; the second tier would comprise two
accounts: a Life Account consisting of a BI that could be drawn without aparticipation test but which would be ‘time-limited’ to a specified number of years,
and a Participation Account consisting of a BCS for which a test of qualification
would be required but which could be used for a number of community-friendly
activities. The BCS therefore derives from an asset-based or endowment-based
version of egalitarianism.

Both of these strategies embody a post-employment approach in that they move awayfrom the emphasis upon paid work, but White’s continues to make paid work more
central than an unconditional BI. So much of the controversy revolves around theprinciple of conditionality. Two considerations.
A favourite objection to BI is that its introduction would sanction unproductive
behaviour and so lead to a new class of social drop-outs. A famous example derives
from Rawls’s response to the accusation that the difference principle (the idea thatsocial and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged) would permit the idle to claim as big a share of social
resources as the productive. By adding 16 daily hours of leisure time to his index ofprimary goods Rawls can therefore classify as a free rider the kind of person whochooses to spend their waking hours surfing off the Malibu beach compared to those
who work an 8 hour standard day. The difference principle is therefore a principle offair reciprocity.
The initial problem is that we are all free riders at some point or another and in somerespect or another. In the surfing example what happens if a wealthy businessman iswalking along the beach and stops to admire the surfer’s abilities? Should he offer a
fee to the surfer, or if he does not does this mean that the businessman is now the freerider? But for how long? Can the accusation of free riding be levelled at the surfer
again once the businessman has moved along? And what if a political theorist is
passing who decides she can get a journal article out of asking these questions? Is a9fee now owed to the surfer and the businessman on pain of the political theorist
becoming a free rider? In sum, how can we remove individual free riders when that
potentially includes all of us?
Or is it that we should remove a class of free riders, i.e. those who free ride on afrequent basis that is socially unacceptable? Here, the problem lies in coming to aconvincing consensus of what this class is and who belongs to it. Nancy Fraser
maintains that (most) men free ride on the unpaid labour of (most) women.
However, Rawls and White might contend that their aim is not to abolish the freerider but to reduce the opportunities for free riding in general. However, it may bethat a certain amount of mutual free riding is an ineliminable and even necessary partof tit-for-tat social cooperation, i.e. a form of back-scratching social exchange where
we occasionally turn a blind eye in return for others’ doing the same for us. Therefore,
it may be perfectly desirable to reduce the opportunities for free riding without having
to imagine that free riding must disappear in its entirety. The need to maintain social
interdependency does not necessarily require that we police and stamp down on eachand every possible example of free riding; independency may require identificationand valuation of those instances where (a) free riding contributes to interdependency
and/or (b) a politics obsessed with free riding is counter-productive.
Secondly, think of the following scenario. After being shipwrecked Alf and Betty are
lucky enough to find themselves on a beach with a large pool of fish and someuseable angling equipment left by the beach’s previous inhabitants. If Betty thencatches a large haul of fish does Alf, after lounging around all day, have the right toclaim an equal share on the grounds that the pool and the equipment are their joint
inheritances? White argues not on the grounds that it was Betty’s labour whichenabled the fish to be caught and Alf cannot claim an equal share of that since hechose to relax instead of working.
Is White correct to reject Alf’s claim? He is, as things stand. But what if Alf’s claim
is not for an equal share but for a minimal share of the fish on the grounds of common
ownership? Does he not have a prima facie case now? White can still argue that it
was Betty’s labour which enabled the resource to be converted into food but this all
depends upon where we decide to make the distinction between labour andinheritance. If the previous inhabitants left the equivalent of enough fish – caught,
prepared and ready to eat – to last two people on minimal rations for a lifetime, i.e.
the fish and not just the rod, then Alf’s claim again appears reasonable and Betty’s
labour is a personal choice (that Alf is not obliged to subsidise through a work test)
designed to yield more-than-minimal rations for her and her alone. In short, if there
are analogies where Alf’s claim can be rejected there are others where it cannot.
Take another example. What if Betty is over-fishing such that the pool barely hastime to replenish? If labour is all important then she can still claim to deserve the fish
she catches, regardless of the consequences, since her reward is proportional to theeffort she expended. Unfortunately it also means that if everyone else copied Betty
the use of resources would be unsustainable and the stock would be quickly exhausted.
Perhaps, then, Alf’s claim for a minimal share of the fish that Betty’s labour has
produced can be made on the grounds that his non-work is necessary in order toensure that Betty actions (her labour) are sustainable. In short, non-work may be a10

sign of laziness and lack of contribution, but it may not. The implication is that social
obligations do not always correspond to labour and that the meaning of work is andshould be contestable.
So my point is not to reject the concept of social obligations but to observe that ‘duty’and ‘reciprocity’ do not coincide as closely as White believes. There may be actions
that I should not reciprocate and it may be that I owe duties to those who cannot do so.
In the case of future generations, for example, it may be that the duties we owe to ourdescendants, as a kind of intergenerational interdependency, are actually stronger thanthose which are prompted by an ethic of reciprocity.
We therefore have 3 strategies (see figure):
1. NSD’s attempt to forge a ‘new productivism’ based upon merit, community andfairness, where employment is absolutely central but where new synergies areformed between workplace and needs of families.
2. A politics of post-productivist based upon equality and deliberative democracy(neither justified here), with a more pluralist attitude towards social contribution
and remuneration.
3. A compromise between the two (White’s approach).

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