ABSTRACT
The language misleads: a century ago ‘social democracy’ denoted organized Marxism, whereas it has come to mean organized reformism. Inspired by the electoral need to distance itself from the heritage of Marxism, the tyranny of Soviet communism and the doctrine of public ownership, the socialists party declared that the basis of democratic socialism was to be found in ‘Christian ethics, humanism and classical philosophy’. The chapter focuses on social democracy, but it is useful first to get some general bearings. For what E. Bernstein was doing, and what social democracy became, was not an exercise in the revision of Marxism but the development of a different kind of ideology. Like Bernstein, E. Wigforss presented socialism not as the antagonist of liberalism but as its natural extension: ‘Social democracy has never denied, but on the contrary considered it an honour to have its roots in the same intellectual soil that nourished the old liberal ideas of freedom.
