Social Democratic Federation

The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture. Many of its early leading members had previously been active in the Manhood Suffrage League.

The SDF battled through defections of its right and left wings to other organizations during the first decade of the 20th Century before uniting with other radical groups to establish the Marxist British Socialist Party from 1911 until 1920 (not to be confused with the current Socialist Party of Great Britain founded in 1904, and the Socialist Party (England and Wales) founded in 1997).

Organizational history

Origins and early years

The British Marxist movement effectively began in 1880 when a businessman named Henry M. Hyndman read Karl Marx's magnum opus Capital in French translation while crossing to America. Upon his return to London, Hyndman sought out Marx, then an exile living not far from his home. Hyndman, who had run for parliament earlier that year, decided to start a new political organization which he called the Democratic Federation and in June called its foundation convention, consisting of an assortment of radical grouplets and individuals.

Social Democratic Federation (U.S., 1889)

The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was an American political party established as a result of a factional split in the Socialist Labor Party in 1889. Moving its headquarters through a succession of cities, the organization landed in Cleveland, Ohio, merging with the Social Democracy of America — forerunner of the Socialist Party of America — in the summer of 1897.

Organizational history

Background

Together with the Central Labor Union of New York and other organizations, the SLP had formed a United Labor Party to compete in elections in the city and state of New York. In 1886 it invited Henry George to be its candidate for mayor of New York. In the campaign that followed George won 67,000 votes, second place. The next year, however, George's followers took full control of the party, ousting the SLP at its convention in Syracuse in August 1887. The socialist and a faction of the CLU then organized the Progressive Labor party that September. The election results for that year showed the ULP with 72,000 and the PLP with 5,000 votes.

Social Democratic Federation (U.S.)

The Social Democratic Federation of the United States of America (SDF) was a political party in the United States, formed in 1936 by the so-called "Old Guard" faction of the Socialist Party of America. The SDF later merged again with the Socialist Party in 1957 to form the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation (SP-SDF).

History

Origins of the split

Social Democratic Federation leader Louis Waldman noted in his memoirs that while the official split of the Socialist Party that resulted in the creation of the Social Democratic Federation took place in 1936, "the crucial events occurred at the party's national convention in Detroit in 1934." It was at this national gathering that the ongoing factional war between a youthful "Militant" faction favoring aggressive advocacy of revolutionary tactics and joint action with the Communist Party won the day and pushed through a new Declaration of Principles, leading the SPA's right wing faction, known as the "Old Guard" to abandon the organization. Throughout the 1930s the Socialist Party had achieved moderate growth, it's paid membership returning to the 25,000 level and its candidate for President of the United States Norman Thomas polling nearly a million votes in the election of 1932.

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, measures for income redistribution, and a commitment to representative democracy. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater egalitarian, democratic and solidaristic outcomes; and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Western and Northern Europe—particularly the Nordic model in the Nordic countries—during the latter half of the 20th century.

Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated a peaceful, evolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism. In the post-war era in Western Europe, the example of the totalitarian Soviet Union, where the state controlled everything, was unappealing and socialists sought an alternative viable form of socialism that compromised between socialism and capitalism. In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state, while abandoning the prior goal of abolishing the capitalist system (private property, factor markets and wage labour) and substituting it for a qualitatively different socialist economic system.

Democratic Federation

Democratic Federation may refer to:

See also

Democratic Federation (Sardinia)

Democratic Federation (Italian: Federazione Democratica, FD) was a regionalist social-democratic political party in Sardinia, Italy.

It was launched in 1994 by members of the Italian Socialist Party, the Italian Democratic Socialist Party and the Italian Republican Party, after those parties were severely damaged by the Tangentopoli scandals. The leader of the new party was Antonello Cabras, a Socialist who had been President of Sardinia from 1991 to 1994. In the 1994 regional election FD won 5.2% of the vote and elected 4 regional deputies.

In 1998 the party and other groups merged with the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) to form the Democrats of the Left (DS), of which it became a regional faction. In the 1999 regional election, because of its political autonomy within the DS, FD presented an autonomous list and won 5.8% of the vote, electing 4 regional deputies.

Since 1996 FD has been represented in the Italian Parliament by Antonello Cabras and by Giovanni Murineddu. When the DS merged into the Democratic Party (PD) in 2007, Cabras was elected regional secretary of the party, defeating Renato Soru, President of the Region.