Pedantry has a long involved post
up about learning a second language, extreme rightwing parties and social democracy:
Does social democracy – which appears to be succeeding quite well when you look at it globally and over the last 50 years instead of from an exclusively American perspective over the last two decades – entail a different kind of class structure? Is this sort of thing the wave of the future? Redistributing money and guaranteeing social services does not necessarily redistribute power and can easily reinforce the power of a class that does not need to rely on money explicitly.
Of course, this does not mean – as vulgar Hayekites might claim – that any sort of state intervention in economic affairs leads inevitably to tyranny. Capitalism was also an egalitarian movement by comparison to its predecessors, and it definitely reinforces the power of a particular class. There is nothing wrong in pointing out that rule by one class (or at least by its ideology) would likely be better in many ways than some other option. But, it does compel me to ask if advocating social democracy on the grounds that it undermines class society and promote equality as a whole isn’t a non-starter. It does make me wonder if the problem of poorly distributed social power isn’t as large a problem as poorly distributed access to resources.