The ideology of social scientists: A complex balance

Context:  Social democracy defined in the trinity of social values - Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, provides balance to shifting in our complex world and influences the ideological positions of social scientists.

Inherent conflicts between various social values: A Panoply of ideological positions.

• Liberty:
• Based on political freedom:
  • Libertarians focus on negative liberty: which relates to freedom from undue intervention or restrictions;
  • Democratic Socialists focus on positive liberty: which relates to freedom to do things that enhance one’s self-realisation and well-being;
  • Social democrats or Left Libertarian: want both negative and positive liberty.
• Based on economic freedom: Liberty on the economic scale has been divided into capitalism and communism
  • The paradox of the rise of China on the capitalist lines has left no other nation to be designated as a truly communist one.
  • While capitalism is under questioning due to its labour replacing development and combined with nationalism is threatening the global order.
• Equality:
  • Liberals are against state action to redress inequality as it will hurt liberty. E.g. Progressive taxation will limit the economic freedom of private enterprises.
  • Social democrats believe in a welfare state which is good for productivity and profits.
• Fraternity:
• Conflict with liberty:
  • Traditional patriarchal families: or kinship groups can be quite authoritarian in their treatment, particularly of younger and female members.
  • Community-grown identity fanatics: following populist demagogues are denigrating liberals who display more openness to ethnic minorities and immigrants.
• Conflict with equality: Liberals believe in the relative importance of ‘luck’ vs ‘effort’ in an individual’s doing financially well.
• Conflict in Social coordination mechanisms: between the State, the market and the local community
• Among Left: social democrats differ from socialists on the role of the market and private capital.
• Liberals consider state officials may be inept or corrupt: and the political accountability mechanisms are often much too weak to discipline them.
• Among Right: there are differences between market fundamentalists (favouring markets) and conservatives(fear the influence of the market on family ties).
• Among Communitarian: there are differences between libertarian anarchists and those who think the State may be necessary to guard against inequality and loss of liberty.

Conclusion: Social democracy often seems like an imperfect but acceptable compromise to deal with the conflicts in values, but it will have to confront obstacles like nationalism and capitalism.