page_title: Social democracy
section_title: Great Depression era and World War II (1929–1945)
hierarchical_section_title: Social democracy / History / Great Depression era and World War II (1929–1945)
caption_attribution_description: Founding meeting of the w:Cooperative Commonwealth Federation Party, 1932, w:Calgary, Alberta
context_page_description: Social democracy is a political, social and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and social-welfare provisions. Due to longstanding governance by social-democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in Northern and Western Europe, social democracy became associated with Keynesianism, the Nordic model, the social-liberal paradigm and welfare states within political circles in the late 20th century. It has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism as well as the reformist wing of democratic socialism.
context_section_description: The stock market crash of 1929 that began an economic crisis in the United States that globally spread and became the Great Depression profoundly affected economic policy-making. The collapse of the gold standard and the emergence of mass unemployment resulted in multiple governments recognizing the need for macroeconomic state intervention to reduce unemployment as well as economic intervention to stabilize prices, a proto-Keynesianism that John Maynard Keynes himself would soon publicly endorse. Multiple social-democratic parties declared the need for substantial investment in economic infrastructure projects to respond to unemployment and creating social control over currency flow. Furthermore, social-democratic parties declared that the Great Depression demonstrated the need for substantial macroeconomic planning by the state while their free market opponents staunchly opposed this. Attempts by social-democratic governments to achieve this were unsuccessful due to the ensuing political instability in their countries caused by the depression. The British Labour Party became internally split over said policies while Germany's SPD government did not have the time to implement such policies as Germany's politics degenerated into violent civil unrest pitting the left against the right in which the Nazi Party rose to power in January 1933 and violently dismantled parliamentary democracy for the next twelve years.
  Hjalmar Branting, leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) from its founding to his death in 1925, asserted: "I believe that one benefits the workers so much more by forcing through reforms which alleviate and strengthen their position, than by saying that only a revolution can help them". A major development for social democracy was the victory of several social-democratic parties in Scandinavia, particularly the SAP in the 1920 general election. Elected to a minority government, the SAP created a Socialization Committee that supported a mixed economy combining the best of private initiative with social ownership or control, supporting a substantial socialization "of all necessary natural resources, industrial enterprises, credit institutions, transportation and communication routes" that would be gradually transferred to the state. It permitted private ownership of the means of production outside of these areas.
  In 1922, Ramsay MacDonald returned to the leadership of the Labour Party after his brief tenure in the Independent Labour Party. In the 1924 general election, the Labour Party won a plurality of seats and was elected as a minority government, but required assistance from the Liberal Party to achieve a majority in parliament. Opponents of Labour falsely accused the party of Bolshevik sympathies. Prime minister MacDonald responded to these allegations by stressing the party's commitment to reformist gradualism and openly opposing the radical wing in the party. MacDonald emphasized that the Labour minority government's first and foremost commitment was to uphold democratic and responsible government over all other policies. MacDonald emphasized this because he knew that any attempt to pass major socialist legislation in a minority government would endanger the new government as it would be opposed and blocked by the Conservatives and the Liberals, who together held a majority of seats. Labour had risen to power in the aftermath of Britain's severe recession of 1921–1922.
  With the economy beginning to recover, British trade unions demanded that their wages be restored from the cuts they took in the recession. The trade unions soon became deeply dissatisfied with the MacDonald government and labour unrest and threat of strikes arose in transportation sector, including docks and railways. MacDonald viewed the situation as a crisis, consulting the unions in advance to warn them that his government would have to use strikebreakers if the situation continued. The anticipated clash between the government and the unions was averted, but the situation alienated the unions from the MacDonald government, wh
caption: CCF founding meeting in 1933
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