Is social democracy viable in the era of identity politics?

After three years away from the classroom, I will return to teaching next semester with a course on democracy in Latin America at Johns Hopkins University. Teaching political science in the present moment is a challenge. As discussed by The Brazilian Report last year, democracy is under assault in Latin America and the rest of the world. Professors and students are anxious about the state of politics. To give my students something to be hopeful about, I decided to add discussions about social democracy to my syllabus. 

Social democracy emerged in the interwar and postwar periods as a response to the failure of orthodox Marxism in addressing the limitations of capitalist democracy. Sheri Berman’s The Primacy of Politics – Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century narrates the unfolding of social democracy as both an ideology and political movement in Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden.

At the end of the book, she discusses the roadblocks to implementing social democracy in today’s political systems – and one of them is identity politics. 

Ms. Berman explores the viability of social democracy in diverse societies. Her argument, which I describe below, highlights not only the...