Where Now for European Social Democracy? - Policy Network

24WHERE NOW FOR EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?brief moment of a singular electoral decision. In its 140-year history,the SPD has experienced and survived enormous historical breaksin Germany. Charismatic personalities, or savvy reform projects andlegislative plans do not suffice to explain why this party has survivedfor so long and even remained young and attractive: through the daysof empire, to the Weimar Republic and National Socialism and againstthe lively antithesis of Communism. Even the visible eclipse of ourhistorical sister movement – the labour movement – which has beentaking place for decades, has not changed this.The SPD’s fountain of youth was and is the main theme in thesocial democratic story. Its central idea is ‘empowerment’, whichmeans nothing less than keeping people’s lives open. No one shouldbe constrained by family background, income, gender, religion orethnicity. And it has always been the task of social democratic policyto clear away the societal barriers that prevent this inherent opennessof life. Where hurdles obstruct this openness in the life course, socialdemocrats want to train the muscles of every individual to enablethem to jump over them. We want to achieve this particularly throughgood education and vocational training. Where the social barriers aretoo high for even the strongest muscles, we want to work together topull down these barriers.Therefore, freedom is not only a collective goal of socialdemocracy in building a democratic society – but also always a centralcategory for the blueprint of life of every individual. We want toensure life chances for all, from the outset, to take part in theopportunities of their society. In order to achieve that, a responsibilityfor communal life has to be a part of the right to individual freedom.For social democracy, freedom and autonomy on the one hand, andpublic welfare and social responsibility on the other, were always twosides of the same coin. The combination of these, along with thenotion of empowerment and of ‘another’ life for every individual in‘another’ society that developed from this were the regenerativesource of energy that has been the SPD’s driving force for more than140 years.