Progressivism in the United States
Progressivism in the United States is a political philosophy and reform movement. Into the 21st century, it advocates policies that are generally considered social democratic and part of the American Left. It has also expressed itself with right-wing politics, such as New Nationalism and progressive conservatism. It reached its height early in the 20th century. Middle/working class and reformist in nature, it arose as a response to the vast changes brought by modernization, such as the growth of large corporations, pollution, and corruption in American politics. Historian Alonzo Hamby describes American progressivism as a "political movement that addresses ideas, impulses, and issues stemming from modernization of American society. Emerging at the end of the nineteenth century, it established much of the tone of American politics throughout the first half of the century."
The Bosses of the Senate, a cartoon by Joseph Keppler depicting corporate interests—from steel, copper, oil, iron, sugar, tin, and coal to paper bags, envelopes and salt—as giant money bags looming powerfully over the tiny, weak U.S. Senators
A poster highlighting the situation of child labor in the United States in the early 20th century
Women marching for the right to vote, 1912
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle exposed Americans to the horrors of the Chicago meatpacking plants.
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and supports a gradualist, reformist and democratic approach towards achieving socialism, usually under a social liberal framework. In practice, social democracy takes a form of socially managed welfare capitalism, achieved with partial public ownership, economic interventionism, and policies promoting social equality.
A portrait highlighting the five leaders of early social democracy in Germany
Anthony Crosland, who argued that traditional capitalism had been reformed and modified almost out of existence by the social democratic welfare policy regime after World War II
Aneurin Bevan, minister of health (1945–1951)
François Mitterrand, president of France (1981–1995)