Ethics of Social Democracy

Many people in modern democracies support capitalism and multi-party representative government, with civil and political liberties protected by their country's constitution. They also support political measures to improve citizens' lives and to substantially reduce the economic inequalities that capitalist enterprise would otherwise create. They support policies for taxation, government expenditure, and economic growth that favor those with lower incomes over those who are well-off. This includes preference not only for the poor, but for any citizen who lacks effective access to medical care, advanced education, and cultural enrichment. This political program is often labeled "social democracy." In The Ethics of Social Democracy Richard W. Miller offers a moral justification for the pursuit of social democracy in advanced capitalist democracies, and he addresses how people living outside of that socioeconomic context should respond to local conflicts between the economic and the political goals that ought to guide social democrats. Miller also investigates the question of what social democratic ethics requires when it comes to the treatment of foreigners by its laws and policies-and what impact the experience of foreigners has on the moral foundations and political consequences of social democracy. The Ethics of Social Democracy is an important and timely statement by one of the foremost political philosophers of his generation.

Richard W. Miller (1945-2019) was Wyn and William Y. Hutchinson Professor in Ethics and Public Life at Cornell University, where he taught in the Sage School of Philosophy from 1973-2019. Throughout his career, Miller was widely heralded for extending the traditional boundaries of philosophy to incorporate the social sciences-an inclusive approach that reflected his diverse interests and his dedication to wrestling with a range of urgent ethical issues, from poverty and capitalism to U.S. foreign policy and climate change.