Dilemmas of Social Democracies

Joanna Swanger is assistant professor of border studies and resident director of the Border Studies Program at Earlham College. Howard Richards is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Peace & Global Justice Studies at Earlham College.

In this fascinating collection of studies of the obstacles to the realization of the deep principles of social democracy, cooperation, and sharing, the endless failures of well-meant programs of betterment are honestly faced. The key insight, reflecting movements in the human sciences generally, is to foreground the role of culture in the reproduction of the obstacles to the realization of a just world. There are no mechanisms of failure. Diagnosis is the first step to cure of pathologies, be they organic, moral, or social. In this book we have a thrilling beginning.

• Chapter 1 On Cooperation and SharingChapter 2 Making Invisible Causes VisibleChapter 3 The Drama of Spanish Socialism: Tragedy, Farce, or Conceptual Error? (Part 1)Chapter 4 The Drama of Spanish Socialism: Tragedy, Farce, or Conceptual Error? (Part 2)Chapter 5 A Modest Hypothesis Concerning Swedish Social DemocracyChapter 6 Sweden's Rehn-Meidner Model: Too Good to be True, or, The Stumbling Blocks of Freedom and PropertyChapter 7 The Revenge of the Iron Law of WagesChapter 8 Hjalmar Branting's UppfostranChapter 9 Karl Popper's Vienna, or, The Straitjacket of Mainstream Social ScienceChapter 10 Power and Principle in South AfricaChapter 11 Islam and Economic Rationality in IndonesiaChapter 12 The Stones that the Builders RejectedChapter 13 Middle-Class ValuesChapter 14 The Venezuela That Might Have BeenChapter 15 Social Democracy on a World Scale: The World Bank and the Logic of Love