This list was originally compiled by myself and Eldon Clingan for the (no longer extant) Massachusetts Social Democrats web site. I’ve reposted it here so it can continue to serve its original purpose of acting as a resource for anyone in North America (particularly in the United States) who wants to learn more about social democracy or connect with social democratic organizations in their area.
Note: This document is currently being overhauled to more broadly focus on the role of social democracy within the reformist socialist movement.
Foundational Texts:
The Working Man’s Programme: An Address (1884) by Ferdinand Lassalle (full text via the Internet Archive)
Evolutionary Socialism (1899) by Eduard Bernstein (full text via the Internet Archive)
Liberal Socialism (1930) by Carlo Rosselli
Books:
The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe (1998) by Sheri Berman
The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century (2006) by Sheri Berman
The Theory of Social Democracy (2007) by Thomas Meyer
Ill Fares the Land (2010) by Tony Judt
Social Democratic America (2014) by Lane Kenworthy
The Great Forgetting: The Past, Present and Future of Social Democracy and the Welfare State (2015) by Jack Lawrence Luzkow
Social Democracy: A Comparative Account of the Left-Wing Party Family (2017) by Hans Keman
Assorted Essays and Publications:
Why Socialism? (1949) by Albert Einstein
Understanding Social Democracy (2003) by Sheri Berman
Basics on Social Democracy (2013) by Thomas Kastning
From Socialism to Neoliberalism: A Story of Capture (2013) by Edmund Berger (Pts. 1 & 2)
Social Democracy: Dead as the Dodo or the only option? (2013) by Ed Broadbent (video)
A 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights: A Scorecard and a Proposal (2016) by Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg and Sheila D. Collins
The Future of Work, Wages, and Labor: Findings & Policy Recommendations (2018) by Mark DeSaulnier, Mark Pocan, Donald Norcross and Debbie Dingell
Articles:
Unheralded Battle: Capitalism, the Left, Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism (2009) by Sheri Berman
Bernie Sanders and the Rise of American Social Democracy (2018) by Ryan Cooper
Marxism’s Fatal Flaw (2018) by Sheri Berman
The Real Denmark (2018) by Andreas Møller Mulvad and Rune Møller Stahl
You Don’t Want Hygge. You Want Social Democracy (2018) by Meagan Day
Populism and the Decline of Social Democracy (2019) by Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya
Of Course Americans Are Turning to Social Democracy (2019) by Jorge Castañeda
Was Sweden Headed Toward Socialism in the 1970’s? (2019) by Kjell Östberg
The US Could Have A Welfare State – But We Don’t (2019) by Meagan Day
Bernie Sanders: An FDR Democrat and US Constitutionalist (2020) by Thomas Palley
The COVID-19 pandemic as a wake-up call: Social protection systems for all (2020) by Shahra Razavi
The revolutionary pandemic: exposing institutional blindness (2020) by Andris Šuvajevs
What America can learn from Nordic police (2020) by Ryan Cooper
Audio/Video:
The Minority Party in America: Featuring an Interview with Norman Thomas (1960) – Interview by Harold Langer for Smithsonian Folkways
What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy (2009) – Talk at New York University by Tony Judt
Social Democracy and the Creation of Modern Europe (2012) – Lecture at Claremont McKenna College by Sheri Berman
What is Social Democracy? (2012) – Produced by the Freidrich Ebert Foundation’s Academy for Social Democracy
Ed Broadbent on Income Inequality (2013) – Produced by the Broadbent Institute
The Historical Impact of Social Democracy (2014) – Panel discussion from SDUSA‘s 2014 national convention
Why Social Democracy? (2016) – Panel discussion from the Social Democrats (Ireland) national conference.
The Current State of Social Democracy in America (2017) – Panel discussion from SDUSA’s 2017 national convention
An Interview with Ed Broadbent (2019) – Hosted by Michael Valpy
Competition and Cooperation in Digital Capitalism (2019) – Lecture at Freidrich Ebert Foundation Berlin by Evgeny Morozov
Mike Passarini 