title: Organ (biology)

text: The adjective "visceral", also "splanchnic", is used for anything pertaining to the internal organs. Historically, viscera of animals were examined by Roman pagan priests like the haruspices or the augurs in order to divine the future by their shape, dimensions or other factors. This practice remains an important ritual in some remote, tribal societies.


title: Organ (biology)

text: The term "visceral" is contrasted with the term "", meaning "of or relating to the wall of a body part, organ or cavity" The two terms are often used in describing a membrane or piece of connective tissue, referring to the opposing sides.


title: Organ (biology)

text: Aristotle used the word frequently in his philosophy, both to describe the organs of plants or animals (e.g. the roots of a tree, the heart or liver of an animal), and to describe more abstract "parts" of an interconnected whole (e.g. his logical works, taken as a whole, are referred to as the "Organon").


title: Organ (biology)

text: Some alchemists (e.g. Paracelsus) adopted the Hermetic Qabalah assignment between the seven vital organs and the seven classical planets as follows:


title: Quokka

text: The quokka (Setonix brachyurus, ) is a small macropod about the size of a domestic cat. It is the only member of the genus Setonix. Like other marsupials in the macropod family (such as kangaroos and wallabies), the quokka is herbivorous and mainly nocturnal.


title: Quokka

text: Quokkas are found on some smaller islands off the coast of Western Australia, particularly Rottnest Island just off Perth and Bald Island near Albany. Isolated, scattered populations also exist in forest and coastal heath between Perth and Albany. A small colony inhabits a protected area of Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve, where they co-exist with the critically endangered Gilbert's potoroo.


title: Quokka

text: A quokka weighs and is long with a tail, which is quite short for a macropod. It has a stocky build, well developed hind legs, rounded ears, and a short, broad head. Its musculoskeletal system was originally adapted for terrestrial bipedal saltation, but over its evolution, its system has been built for arboreal locomotion. Although looking rather like a very small kangaroo, it can climb small trees and shrubs up to . Its coarse fur is a grizzled brown colour, fading to buff underneath. The quokka is known to live for an average of 10 years. Quokkas are nocturnal animals; they sleep during the day in "Acanthocarpus preissii," using the plants' spikes for protection and hiding.


title: Quokka

text: Quokkas have a promiscuous mating system. After a month of gestation, females give birth to a single baby called a joey. Females can give birth twice a year and produce about 17 joeys during their lifespan. The joey lives in its mother's pouch for six months. Once it leaves the pouch, the joey relies on its mother for milk for two more months and is fully weaned around eight months after birth. Females sexually mature after roughly 18 months. When a female quokka with a joey in her pouch is pursued by a predator, she may drop her baby onto the ground; the joey produces noises which may serve to attract the predator's attention, while the mother escapes.


title: Quokka

text: The word "quokka" is originally derived from a Noongar word, which was probably . Today, the Noongar people refer to them as ban-gup, bungeup and quak –a.


title: Quokka

text: In 1658, Dutch mariner Samuel Volckertzoon wrote of sighting "a wild cat" on the island. In 1696, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh mistook them for giant rats, and renamed the Wadjemup island , which means "the rat nest island" in Dutch.


title: Quokka

text: During the Pleistocene period, quokkas were more abundant and living on open landscapes. When the Europeans arrived in Australia, they introduced new species, some of which became predators to the quokkas. This caused the habitats of quokkas to eventually shift to islands and forests, where there were minimal predators and more vegetation. In the wild, the quokka's roaming is restricted to a very small range in the South West of Western Australia, with a number of small scattered populations. One large population exists on Rottnest Island and a smaller population is on Bald Island near Albany. The islands are free of certain predators such as red foxes and cats. On Rottnest, quokkas are common and occupy a variety of habitats, ranging from semiarid scrub to cultivated gardens.


title: Quokka

text: Prickly "Acanthocarpus" plants, which are unaccommodating for humans and other relatively large animals to walk through, provide their favorite daytime shelter for sleeping. Additionally, they are known for their ability to climb trees.


title: Quokka

text: Like most macropods, quokkas eat many types of vegetation, including grasses, sedges and leaves. A study found that "Guichenotia ledifolia", a small shrub species of the family Malvaceae, is one of the quokka's favoured foods. Rottnest Island visitors are urged to never feed quokkas, in part because eating "human food" such as chips can cause dehydration and malnourishment, both of which are detrimental to the quokka's health. Despite the relative lack of fresh water on Rottnest Island, quokkas do have high water requirements, which they satisfy mostly through eating vegetation. On the mainland, quokkas only live in areas that have or more of rain per year. The quokkas chew their cud, similar to cows.


title: Quokka

text: At the time of colonial settlement, the quokka was widespread and abundant, with its distribution encompassing an area of about of the South West of Western Australia, including the two offshore islands, Bald and Rottnest. By 1992, following extensive population declines in the 20th century, the quokka's distribution on the mainland had been reduced by more than 50% to an area of about .


title: Quokka

text: Despite being numerous on the small, offshore islands, the quokka is classified as vulnerable. On the mainland, where it is threatened by introduced predatory species such as red foxes, cats, and dogs, it requires dense ground cover for refuge. Clearfell logging, agricultural development, and housing expansion have reduced their habitat, contributing to the decline of the species, as has the clearing and burning of the remaining swamplands. Moreover, quokkas usually have a litter size of one and successfully rear one young each year. Although they are constantly mating, usually one day after the young are born, the small litter size, along with the restricted space and threatening predators, contributes to the scarcity of the species on the mainland.


title: Quokka

text: An estimated 4,000 quokkas live on the mainland, with nearly all mainland populations being groups of fewer than 50, although one declining group of over 700 occurs in the southern forest between Nannup and Denmark. In 2015, an extensive bushfire near Northcliffe nearly eradicated one of the local mainland populations, with an estimated 90% of the 500 quokkas dying.


title: Quokka

text: In 2007, the quokka population on Rottnest Island was estimated at between 8,000 and 12,000. Snakes are the quokka's only predator on the island. The population on smaller Bald Island, where the quokka has no predators, is 600–1,000. At the end of summer and into autumn, a seasonal decline of quokkas occurs on Rottnest Island, where loss of vegetation and reduction of available surface water can lead to starvation.


title: Quokka

text: This species saw the most significant decline from 1930 to the 1990s, when their distribution was reduced by over half. The quokka markedly declined in its abundance and distribution in the early 1930s, and this tendency has continued till today. Their presence on the mainland has declined to such an extent that they are only found in small groups in bushland surrounding Perth.


title: Quokka

text: Quokkas have little fear of humans and commonly approach people closely, particularly on Rottnest Island, where they are abundant. Though quokkas are approachable, there are a few dozen cases annually of quokkas biting people, especially children. There are restrictions regarding feeding. It is illegal for members of the public to handle the animals in any way, and feeding, particularly of "human food", is especially discouraged, as they can easily get sick. An infringement notice carrying a $300 fine can be issued by the Rottnest Island Authority for such an offence. The maximum penalty for animal cruelty is a $50,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence. In addition to restrictions on human interactions with Quokkas, they have been tested to be potentially harmful to humans with their high salmonella infection rates, especially in the summer heat. This has been proven and experimented by scientists who have taken blood tests on wild Quokkas on Rottnest Island.


title: Quokka

text: Quokkas can also be observed at several zoos and wildlife parks around Australia, including Perth Zoo, Taronga Zoo, Wild Life Sydney, and Adelaide Zoo. Physical interaction is generally not permitted without explicit permission from supervising staff.


title: Quokka

text: Quokka behavior in response to human interaction has been examined in zoo environments. One brief study indicated fewer animals remained visible from the visitor paths when the enclosure was an open or walk-through environment. This may have been due to the quokkas acquiring avoidance behavior of visitors, which the authors propose has implications for stress management in their exhibition to the public.


title: Quokka

text: In the mid-2010s, quokkas earned a reputation on the internet as "the world's happiest animals" and symbols of positivity, as frontal photos of their faces make them appear to be smiling (they do not, in fact "smile" in the human sense; this can be attributed to their natural facial structures). Many photos of smiling quokkas have since gone viral, and the "quokka selfie" has become a popular social media trend, with celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth, Shawn Mendes, Margot Robbie, Roger Federer and Kim Donghyuk of iKON. Tourist numbers to Rottnest Island have subsequently increased.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Lisa Ann Corpora, known professionally as Lisa Ann, is an American pornographic film actress and radio personality. She has also worked as a director and talent agent. She parodied former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin in six adult films and a music video. She is a member of the AVN, XRCO, and Urban X Halls of Fame. Ann has been described as one of the most popular and successful pornographic actresses in the world.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann quit porn in 1997 due to an AIDS scare in the industry, but resumed performing in February 2006. In 2008, she starred as "Serra Paylin", a parody of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, in Hustler Video's "Who's Nailin' Paylin?", which was released on Election Day. Her directorial film, "MILF Revolution" (2013), won the 2014 AVN Award for "Best MILF Release". In December 2014, she launched Porn Stars Boot Camp, a consulting firm, and also announced her retirement from performing in adult films; she had breast reduction surgery shortly after retiring as part of her return adult entertainment retirement. Four years later, in 2018, Ann announced her comeback to the adult industry, signing with Evil Angel.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Prior to beginning her adult entertainment career, Ann appeared as a "Snapple Girl" on "The Howard Stern Show". She played Palin in the music video for the song "We Made You" by American rapper Eminem. She voiced a character known as "Prostitute #2" in the video game "Grand Theft Auto V", released in September 2013. Ann appeared alongside Rayveness and in Season 4, Episode 7 of the Showtime series "Billions" titled Infinite Game. In 2013, she hosted a Sirius XM show titled "Stripper Town". In early 2016, she began participating in fantasy baseball.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann was born and raised in Easton, Pennsylvania. Her first hardcore scene was in "Flesh for Fantasy". During the first two years of her adult film career, she was under contract with Metro/Cal Vista and shot only once a month with porn artist John O'Rourke. She quit porn in 1997 due to an AIDS scare in the industry and spent the following seven years stripping. She also owned a day spa for four years during her hiatus from porn. She decided to resume performing in February 2006 after being asked to do a boy/girl photo shoot for Suze Randall. The first scene she shot after returning to the industry was with Christian XXX in "Bra Bustin' and Deep Thrustin"'. In addition to her work as a performer, she also has credits as a film director, producer, and for makeup.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann was selected to co-host the XRCO Awards in April 2010. She retired from pornography in 2014, which she announced via a Facebook post. She had a breast reduction surgery shortly after retiring from porn. Following her retirement, she continued to perform in webcam shows occasionally. In January 2018, she announced her return to the adult industry, signing with Evil Angel and making four more scenes. Her first scene was with male pornographic performer Isiah Maxwell for her website thelisaann.com.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In 2008, Ann starred as "Serra Paylin", a parody of 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, in Hustler Video's "Who's Nailin' Paylin?", which was released on Election Day in the United States. Hustler contacted her to offer her the part on the day of the vice-presidential debate, which she viewed to learn Palin's mannerisms in preparation for the role. She also studied Tina Fey's impressions of Palin on "Saturday Night Live". Afterward she became one of streaming video site AEBN's most popular female performers . She portrayed Palin again for the sequels "Obama Is Nailin' Palin", "Letterman's Nailin' Palin", "You're Nailin' Palin", "Hollywood's Nailin' Palin", and "Who's Nailin' Palin? 2". Hustler also produced a mask in the likeness of her portraying Palin for Halloween in 2009. She reprised her role as Palin in the music video for the song "We Made You" by Eminem. She has also performed as Palin at various strip clubs.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann made her directorial debut with the film, "Hung XXX", released on September 22, 2009 by Justin Slayer International. In August 2013, she launched her own production company, Lisa Ann Productions, and signed a distribution deal with Jules Jordan Video. Her directorial debut for the company, "MILF Revolution", was released on August 5, 2013. "MILF Revolution" won the 2014 AVN Award for "Best MILF Release".


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann worked as a talent agent for LA Direct Models between September 2005 and February 2006. According to Ann, female performers in the industry who were 30 years or older were rejected by other agents and had to represent themselves despite the demand for them amid the "MILF phenomenon", which motivated her to start her own agency and represent them. She launched Clear Talent Management in November 2006, which was later renamed Lisa Ann's Talent Management and merged with Adam Glasser's Lighthouse Agency in 2007 before closing in July 2010.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In December 2009, it was announced that Ann had signed on to be the spokeswoman for RealTouch, a mechanized artificial vagina produced by AEBN. She later had her own genitalia molded for Fleshlight in 2011.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In 2013, Ann hosted a show titled "Stripper Town" on Sirius XM. She currently co-hosts two Sirius XM radio shows, "Lisa Ann Does Fantasy", alongside Adam Ronis, on Monday nights, and "The Morning Men" on Thursday mornings.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In December 2014, she said that she is pursuing a career in fantasy football. By January 2016, she was also slowly getting involved with fantasy baseball.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In August 2014, Ann reached out to fellow porn actress Belle Knox, also known as the "Duke [University] porn star". Through her agent, who also represents Knox, she wanted to see "How's she doing?". She has been mentoring an average of 10 to 15 girls since 2005. In an interview conducted by XBIZ, Ann said she could sympathize with the media attention that Knox had faced. She had a similar experience when playing former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. "I understand that being a new girl in the business can be a very lonely place... She's already out on the road feature dancing, already has a million opportunities and I feel like if that all happened to me, if 'Palin' had happened to me at 19, I don't know how I would've managed it," she said. "So I reached out to her and we started just a little bit of mentoring by text, by phone, by Skype. And I enjoyed the bond when we talked." In December 2014, Ann launched Porn Stars Boot Camp, a consulting firm.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann appeared on "The Howard Stern Show" as a "Snapple Girl" prior to the launching her adult entertainment career. On November 7, 2008, she appeared on "Entertainment Tonight" to promote "Who's Nailin' Paylin?"


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann was ranked fifth on "Complex" magazine's list of "The Top 100 Hottest Porn Stars (Right Now)" in 2011. She was also placed on CNBC's annual list "The Dirty Dozen: Porn's Most Popular Stars" in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2015.


title: Lisa Ann

text: She was among sixteen pornographic actresses profiled in the 2013 documentary film "Aroused". In August 2013, she starred in the music video for the song "Dead Bite" by Hollywood Undead. She voiced a character known as "Prostitute #2" in the video game "Grand Theft Auto V", released in September 2013.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann appeared alongside Rayveness and Cory Chase in Season 4, Episode 7 of the Showtime series "Billions", titled "Infinite Game".


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann does not identify with any political party. In October 2008, she said she was voting for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election and that she was previously a supporter of Hillary Clinton. She supported Obama again in the 2012 presidential election. Ann has expressed support for gun rights.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In March 2010, Ann appeared in a public service announcement for the Free Speech Coalition on the topic of copyright infringement of adult content, directed by Michael Whiteacre.


title: Lisa Ann

text: On October 14, 2010, Ann announced that she would only be shooting scenes with condoms after a male performer in the industry was diagnosed with HIV. She also stated that the STD testing system at the time was not enough and encouraged other performers to also demand condom use during shoots. In August 2012, she called for legislation mandating condom use in heterosexual adult films and questioned the standards of syphilis treatment for performers by industry doctors. In August 2013, she alleged that a male performer she was scheduled to work with may have tested positive for hepatitis C and tried to work anyway. She stated that the performer showed her a test from a facility outside of the industry which did not indicate any results for hepatitis and that she discovered two adult performer testing databases had him listed as unavailable to work. Subsequently, the Adult Production Health & Safety Services announced that they would start implementing monthly hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and trichomoniasis testing on August 19, 2013. While in the industry, she paid for a fresh round of tests for her co-stars to ensure they were negative for STIs.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann has campaigned to destigmatize interracial pornography by speaking out about the treatment of black performers in the industry and the lack of work for them. She also wants to help transform the industry to give performers pensions, health insurance, and career guidance.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In 2015, she competed and won the FantasyFootballNerd.com Charity League playing for the charity Blessings in a Backpack which mobilizes communities, individuals and resources to provide food on the weekends for elementary school children across the U.S. who might otherwise go hungry.


title: Lisa Ann

text: Ann lived in Huntington Beach, California for at least fifteen years. She previously lived in Boca Raton, Florida for a year. As of October 2015, she owns a condo in Los Angeles and an apartment in Midtown Manhattan. She is a sports fan; her favorite sports are basketball and football. In high school, she played basketball and was in the ski club. She stated that if she had not worked in the adult film industry, she would have liked to become a sports agent or writer, blogger, and reporter. She is a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Cowboys.


title: Lisa Ann

text: At age 28, she married a bouncer, who she later divorced. In November 2009, she told TMZ that she started dating Rob Kardashian after meeting him at a gym. A source close to Kardashian spoke to "Us Weekly" and confirmed that they met at a gym, but denied Ann's claim that they were dating. Due to her interest in sports and professional athletes along with her work as a sports reporter for the Sirius/XM network, Ann has attended numerous games, which has led to interaction, sometimes publicly, with athletes. In October 2014, speculation was raised whether Ann and 18-year-old Notre Dame football player Justin Brent were dating when the two appeared at a game together. After their appearance at Madison Square Garden, personal photos of the two in bed together were released online. In November 2014, she commented via her Twitter account regarding requests made to her by former New York Rangers hockey player Michael Del Zotto.


title: Lisa Ann

text: In a February 2014 interview with "GQ" magazine, sportswriter Myles Brown, Ann wrote, "...if dudes could be with Victoria's Secret models, that's how I look at athletes. I'm 42. I'm looking at 18, 19, 20-year-old guys." and continued, "They're at the beginning of their lives, so they're still excited, naïve and simple. They're not negative yet."


title: Lisa Ann

text: When asked how many athletes she had slept with, she replied, "In my life in the [adult] business for twenty-something years? A lot. Hundreds." She stated that her favored athletes for interaction or relationships are NBA players. Ann said this could lead to awkward situations, such as when players are traded and several athletes she is in contact with are on the same team, a situation she makes an effort to avoid. "I don't mess with multiple guys on a team at the same time. I don't want to be in any locker room talk."


title: Lisa Ann

text: In March 2015, during the annual March Madness NCAA basketball tournament, there was media attention regarding a promotion she promoted in conjunction with the production studio Brazzers. The contest, "Win a Date with Lisa Ann", was co-sponsored by the studio and offered an all-expense-paid trip to the national championship game for the best trick shot video submitted. Unexpectedly, Brazzers withdrew the promotion via press release, effectively shutting down the contest.


title: Q

text: Q, or q, is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced , most commonly spelled "cue", but also "kew", "kue" and "que".


title: Q

text: The Semitic sound value of Qôp was (voiceless uvular stop), and the form of the letter could have been based on the eye of a needle, a knot, or even a monkey with its tail hanging down. is a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in many European languages. Some have even suggested that the form of the letter Q is even more ancient: it could have originated from Egyptian hieroglyphics.


title: Q

text: In an early form of Ancient Greek, qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent several labialized velar stops, among them and . As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to and respectively. Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa, which stood for the number 90, and phi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound that came to be pronounced in Modern Greek.


title: Q

text: The Etruscans used Q in conjunction with V to represent , and this usage was copied by the Romans with the rest of their alphabet. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the two sounds and , which were not differentiated in writing. Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C (and its variant G) replaced most usages of K and Q: Q survived only to represent /k/ when immediately followed by a /w/ sound.


title: Q

text: Depending on the typeface used to typeset the letter Q, the letter's tail may either bisect its bowl as in Helvetica, meet the bowl as in Univers, or lie completely outside the bowl as in PT Sans. In writing block letters, bisecting tails are fastest to write, as they require less precision. All three styles are considered equally valid, with most serif typefaces having a Q with a tail that meets the circle, while sans-serif typefaces are more equally split between those with bisecting tails and those without. Typefaces with a disconnected Q tail, while uncommon, have existed since at least 1529. A common method among type designers to create the shape of the Q is by simply adding a tail to the letter O.


title: Q

text: Old-style serif fonts, such as Garamond, may contain two capital Qs: one with a short tail to be used in short words, and another with a long tail to be used in long words. Some early metal type fonts included up to 3 different Qs: a short-tailed Q, a long-tailed Q, and a long-tailed Q-u ligature. This print tradition was alive and well until the 19th century, when long-tailed Qs fell out of favor: even recreations of classic typefaces such as Caslon began being distributed with only short Q tails. Not a fan of long-tailed Qs, American typographer D. B. Updike celebrated their demise in his 1922 book "Printing Types", claiming that Renaissance printers made their Q tails longer and longer simply to "outdo each other". Latin-language words, which are much more likely than English words to contain "Q" as their first letter, have also been cited as the reason for their existence. The long-tailed Q had fallen out of use with the advent of early digital typography, as many early digital fonts could not choose different glyphs based on the word that the glyph was in, but it has seen something of a comeback with the advent of OpenType fonts and LaTeX, both of which can automatically typeset the long-tailed Q when it is called for and the short-tailed Q when it is not.


title: Q

text: Owing to the allowable variation between letters Q, Q is a very distinctive feature of a typeface; as , Q is oft cited as a letter that gives type designers a greater opportunity at self-expression.


title: Q

text: Identifont, an automatic typeface identification service that identifies typefaces by questions about their appearance, asks about the Q tail second if the "sans-serif" option is chosen. In the Identifont database, the distribution of Q tails is:


title: Q

text: Some type designers prefer one "Q" design over another: Adrian Frutiger, famous for the airport typeface that bears his name, remarked that most of his typefaces feature a Q tail that meets the bowl and then extends horizontally. Frutiger considered such Qs to make for more "harmonious" and "gentle" typefaces. "Q" often makes the list of their favorite letters; for example, Sophie Elinor Brown, designer of Strato, has listed "Q" as being her favorite letter.


title: Q

text: The lowercase "q" is usually seen as a lowercase "o" or "c" with a descender (i.e., downward vertical tail) extending from the right side of the bowl, with or without a swash (i.e., flourish), or even a reversed lowercase p. The "q"'s descender is usually typed without a swash due to the major style difference typically seen between the descenders of the "g" (a loop) and "q" (vertical). When handwritten, or as part of a handwriting font, the descender of the "q" sometimes finishes with a rightward swash to distinguish it from the letter "g" (or, particularly in mathematics, the digit "9").


title: Q

text: In English, the digraph most often denotes the cluster ; however, in borrowings from French, it represents , as in 'plaque'. See the list of English words containing Q not followed by U. Q is the second least frequently used letter in the English language (after Z), with a frequency of just 0.1% in words. Q has the fourth fewest English words where it is the first letter, after X, Z, and Y.


title: Q

text: In most European languages written in the Latin script, such as in Romance and Germanic languages, appears almost exclusively in the digraph . In French, Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese, represents or ; in Spanish, it represents . replaces for before front vowels and , since in those languages represents a fricative or affricate before front vowels. In Italian represents (where is the semivowel allophone of ). In Albanian, Q represents as in Sh"q"ip.


title: Q

text: It is not considered to be part of the Cornish (Standard Written Form), Estonian, Icelandic, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Scottish Gaelic, Slovenian, Turkish, or Welsh alphabets.


title: Q

text: In Turkey the use of the letter Q was banned between 1928 and 2013. This constituted a problem for the Kurdish population in Turkey as the letter was a part of the Kurdish alphabet. The ones who used the letter Q, were able to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to two years.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest, and social welfare provisions. Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in Northern and Western Europe, social democracy became associated with Keynesianism, the Nordic model, the social-liberal paradigm, and welfare states within political circles in the late 20th century. It has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism, as well as the reformist wing of democratic socialism.


title: Social democracy

text: The history of social democracy stretches back to the 19th-century labour movement. It is a left-wing political ideology that advocates for a peaceful democratic evolution from laissez-faire or crony capitalism towards social capitalism sometimes also referred to as a social market economy. Social democracy opposes the full centralization of an economy as proposed by socialists, like democratic socialists, which are sometimes mislabeled as social democrats. The main difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is that democratic socialism is a political philosophy within socialism, advocating an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, using established political processes, as opposed to the revolutionary socialist approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism. On the other hand, social democracy seeks to improve the lives of people living within a free and democratic society, by having a well regulated market economy.


title: Social democracy

text: In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then-current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternative path to socialism or a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. Social democrats promoted Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state while placing less emphasis on the goal of replacing the capitalist system (factor markets, private property, and wage labour) with a qualitatively different socialist economic system. Along with communism, social democracy became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the early 1920s.


title: Social democracy

text: While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, social democracy is distinguished from some modern forms of democratic socialism for seeking to humanize capitalism and create the conditions for it to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian, and solidaristic outcomes. It is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, eliminating oppression of underprivileged groups, and eradicating poverty, as well as support for universally accessible public services like child care, education, elderly care, health care, and workers' compensation. It has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions, being supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers and measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination, or social ownership, for employees and stakeholders.


title: Social democracy

text: The Third Way, which ostensibly aims to fuse liberal economics with social democratic welfare policies, is an ideology that developed in the 1990s and is sometimes associated with social democratic parties; some analysts have characterized the Third Way as part of the neoliberal movement.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy is defined as one of many socialist traditions. As a political movement, it aims to achieve socialism through gradual and democratic means. This definition goes back to the influence of both the reformist socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle and the internationalist revolutionary socialism advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, by whom social democracy was influenced. As an international political movement and ideology, social democracy has undergone various major forms throughout its history. Whereas in the 19th century, it was "organized Marxism", social democracy became "organized reformism" by the 20th century. As a policy regime, social democracy entails support for a mixed economy and ameliorative measures to benefit the working class within the framework of democratic capitalism. By the 21st century, a social democratic policy regime is generally defined as an increase in welfare policies or an increase in public services and may be used synonymously with the Nordic model.


title: Social democracy

text: In political science, "democratic socialism" and "social democracy" are largely seen as synonyms, while they are distinguished in journalistic use. Under this democratic socialist definition, social democracy is an ideology seeking to gradually build an alternative socialist economy through the institutions of liberal democracy. Starting in the post-war period, social democracy was defined as a policy regime advocating the reformation of capitalism to align it with the ethical ideals of social justice. In the 19th century, it encompassed various non-revolutionary and revolutionary currents of socialism, excluding anarchism. In the early 20th century, social democracy came to refer to support for a process of developing society through existing political structures and opposition to revolutionary means, which are often associated with Marxism.


title: Social democracy

text: "Social Democratic" is the name of socialist parties in several countries. The term came to be associated with the positions of the German and Swedish parties. The first advocated revisionist Marxism, while the second advocated a comprehensive welfare state. By the 21st century, parties advocating social democracy include Labour, Left, and some Green parties. Most social democratic parties consider themselves democratic socialists and are categorized as socialists. They continue to reference socialism, either as a post-capitalist order or, in more ethical terms, as a just society, described as representing democratic socialism, without any explicit reference to the economic system or its structure. Parties such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Swedish Social Democratic Party describe their goal as developing democratic socialism, with social democracy as the principle of action. In the 21st century, European social democratic parties represent the centre-left and most are part of the European Socialist Party, while democratic socialist parties are to their left within the Party of the European Left. Many of those social democratic parties are members of the Socialist International, including several democratic socialist parties, whose Frankfurt Declaration declares the goal of developing democratic socialism. Others are also part of the Progressive Alliance, founded in 2013 by most contemporary or former member parties of the Socialist International.


title: Social democracy

text: What socialists such as anarchists, communists, social democrats, syndicalists, and some social democratic proponents of the Third Way share in common is history, specifically that they can all be traced back to the individuals, groups, and literature of the First International, and have retained some of the terminology and symbolism such as the colour red. How far society should intervene and whether the government, mainly the existing government, is the right vehicle for change are issues of disagreement. As the "Historical Dictionary of Socialism" summarizes, "there were general criticisms about the social effects of the private ownership and control of capital", "a general view that the solution to these problems lay in some form of collective control (with the degree of control varying among the proponents of socialism) over the means of production, distribution, and exchange", and "there was agreement that the outcomes of this collective control should be a society that provided social equality and justice, economic protection, and generally a more satisfying life for most people". "Socialism" became a catch-all term for the critics of capitalism and industrial society. Social democrats are anticapitalists insofar as criticism about "poverty, low wages, unemployment, economic and social inequality, and a lack of economic security" is linked to the private ownership of the means of production.


title: Social democracy

text: In the 19th century, "social democrat" was a broad catch-all for international socialists owing their primary ideological allegiance to Lassalle or Marx, in contrast to those advocating various forms of utopian socialism. In one of the first scholarly works on European socialism written for an American audience, Richard T. Ely's 1883 book "French and German Socialism in Modern Times", social democrats were characterized as "the extreme wing of the socialists" who were "inclined to lay so much stress on equality of enjoyment, regardless of the value of one's labor, that they might, perhaps, more properly be called communists". Many parties in this era described themselves as "Social Democrats", including the General German Workers' Association and the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany, which merged to form the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Social Democratic Federation in Britain, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. "Social Democrat" continued to be used in this context until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, when "Communist" came into vogue for individuals and organizations espousing a revolutionary road to socialism.


title: Social democracy

text: "Social democracy" or "social democratic" remains controversial among socialists. Some define it as representing a Marxist faction and non-communist socialists or the "right-wing" of socialism during the split with communism. Others have noted its pejorative use among communists and other socialists. According to Lyman Tower Sargent, ""socialism" refers to "social" theories rather than to theories oriented to the individual. Because many communists now call themselves "democratic socialists", it is sometimes difficult to know what a political label really means. As a result, "social democratic" has become a common new label for democratic socialist political parties."


title: Social democracy

text: Marxist revisionist Eduard Bernstein's views influenced and laid the groundwork for developing post-war social democracy as a policy regime, Labour revisionism, and the neo-revisionism of the Third Way. This definition of social democracy is focused on ethical terms, with the type of socialism advocated being ethical and liberal. Bernstein described socialism and social democracy in particular as "organized liberalism"; in this sense, liberalism is the predecessor and precursor of socialism, whose restricted view of freedom is to be socialized, while democracy must entail social democracy. For those social democrats, who still describe and see themselves as socialists, "socialism" is used in ethical or moral terms, representing democracy, egalitarianism, and social justice rather than a specifically socialist economic system. Under this type of definition, social democracy's goal is that of advancing those values within a capitalist market economy, as its support for a mixed economy no longer denotes the coexistence between private and public ownership or that between planning and market mechanisms but rather, it represents free markets combined with government intervention and regulations.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy has been seen as a revision of orthodox Marxism, although this has been described as misleading for modern social democracy. Some distinguish between ideological social democracy as part of the broad socialist movement and social democracy as a policy regime. The first is called "classical social democracy" or "classical socialism", contrasted with "competitive socialism", "liberal socialism", "neo-social democracy", and "new social democracy".


title: Social democracy

text: As a form of reformist democratic socialism, social democracy rejects the either/or interpretation of capitalism versus socialism. It claims that fostering a progressive evolution of capitalism will gradually result in the evolution of a capitalist economy into a socialist economy. All citizens should be legally entitled to certain social rights: universal access to public services such as education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services, including child care and care for the elderly. Social democrats advocate freedom from discrimination based on differences in ability/disability, age, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, and social class.


title: Social democracy

text: Later in their life, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that in some countries, workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means. In this sense, Engels argued that socialists were evolutionists, although both Marx and Engels remained committed to social revolution. In developing social democracy, Eduard Bernstein rejected orthodox Marxism's revolutionary and materialist foundations. Rather than class conflict and socialist revolution, Bernstein's Marxist revisionism reflected that socialism could be achieved through cooperation between people regardless of class. Nonetheless, Bernstein paid deference to Marx, describing him as the father of social democracy but declaring that it was necessary to revise Marx's thought in light of changing conditions. Influenced by the gradualist platform favoured by the Fabian movement in Britain, Bernstein advocated a similar evolutionary approach to socialist politics that he termed "evolutionary socialism". Evolutionary means include representative democracy and cooperation between people regardless of class. Bernstein accepted the Marxist analysis that the creation of socialism is interconnected with the evolution of capitalism.


title: Social democracy

text: August Bebel, Bernstein, Engels, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Marx, and Carl Wilhelm Tölcke are all considered founders of social democracy in Germany. However, Bernstein and Lassalle, along with labourists and reformists such as Louis Blanc in France, led to the widespread association of social democracy with socialist reformism. While Lassalle was a reformist state socialist, Bernstein predicted a long-term coexistence of democracy with a mixed economy during the reforming of capitalism into socialism and argued that socialists needed to accept this. This mixed economy would involve public, cooperative, and private enterprises, and it would be necessary for an extended period before private enterprises evolve of their own accord into cooperative enterprises. Bernstein supported state ownership only for certain parts of the economy that the state could best manage and rejected a mass scale of state ownership as being too burdensome to be manageable. Bernstein was an advocate of Kantian socialism and neo-Kantianism. Although unpopular early on, his views became mainstream after World War I.


title: Social democracy

text: In "The Future of Socialism" (1956), Anthony Crosland argued that "traditional capitalism has been reformed and modified almost out of existence, and it is with a quite different form of society that socialists must now concern themselves. Pre-war anti-capitalism will give us very little help", for a new kind of capitalism required a new kind of socialism. Crosland believed that these features of reformed managerial capitalism were irreversible, but it has been argued within the Labour Party and by others that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought about its reversal in the 1970s and 1980s. Although the post-war consensus represented a period where social democracy was "most buoyant", it has been argued that "post-war social democracy had been altogether too confident in its analysis" because "gains which were thought to be permanent turned out to be conditional and as the reservoir of capitalist growth showed signs of drying up". In "Socialism Now" (1974), Crosland argued that "[m]uch more should have been achieved by a Labour Government in office and Labour pressure in opposition. Against the dogged resistance to change, we should have pitted a stronger will to change. I conclude that a move to the Left is needed".


title: Social democracy

text: In "Origin, Ideology and Transformation of Political Parties: East-Central and Western Europe Compared", Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopecek explain how socialist parties have evolved from the 19th to the early 21st centuries. As the number of people in traditional working-class occupations such as factory workers and miners declined, socialists have successfully widened their appeal to the middle class by diluting their ideology; however, there is still continuity between parties such as the SPD, the Labour Party in Britain, and other socialist parties which remain part of the same "famille spirituelle", or ideological party family, as outlined by most political scientists. For many social democrats, Marxism is loosely held to be valuable for its emphasis on changing the world for a more just, better future.


title: Social democracy

text: During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, social democracy was a broad labour movement within socialism that aimed to replace private ownership with social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, taking influence from both Marxism and the supporters of Ferdinand Lassalle. By 1868–1869, the socialism associated with Karl Marx had become the official theoretical basis of the first social democratic party established in Europe, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany. By the early 20th century, the German social democratic politician Eduard Bernstein rejected the ideas in orthodox Marxism that proposed specific historical progression and revolution as a means to achieve social equality, advancing the position that socialism should be grounded in ethical and moral arguments for social justice and egalitarianism that are to be achieved through gradual legislative reform. Following the split between reformist and revolutionary socialists in the Second International, socialist parties influenced by Bernstein rejected revolutionary politics in favour of parliamentary reform while remaining committed to socialization.


title: Social democracy

text: During the 1920s and 1930s, social democracy became dominant in the socialist movement, mainly associated with reformist socialism while communism represented revolutionary socialism. Under the influence of politicians like Carlo Rosselli in Italy, social democrats began disassociating themselves from orthodox Marxism altogether as represented by Marxism–Leninism, embracing liberal socialism, Keynesianism, and appealing to morality rather than any consistent systematic, scientific, or materialist worldview. Social democracy appealed to communitarian, corporatist, and sometimes nationalist sentiments while rejecting the economic and technological determinism generally characteristic of orthodox Marxism and economic liberalism.


title: Social democracy

text: By the post-World War II period and its economic consensus and expansion, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to orthodox Marxism. They shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform as a compromise between capitalism to socialism. According to Michael Harrington, the primary reason for this was the perspective that viewed the Stalinist-era Soviet Union as having succeeded in usurping the legacy of Marxism and distorting it in propaganda to justify totalitarianism. In its foundation, the Socialist International denounced the Bolshevik-inspired communist movement, "for [it] falsely claims a share in the Socialist tradition". Furthermore, core tenets of Marxism have been regarded by social democrats as having become obsolete, including the prediction that the working class was the decisive class with the development of capitalism. In their view, this did not materialize in the aftermath of mass industrialization during World War II.


title: Social democracy

text: During the Third Way development of social democracy, social democrats adjusted to the neoliberal political climate that had existed since the 1980s. Those social democrats recognized that outspoken opposition to capitalism was politically non-viable and that accepting the powers that be, seeking to challenge free-market and "laissez-faire" variations of capitalism, was a more immediate concern. The Third Way stands for a modernized social democracy, but the social democracy that remained committed to the gradual abolition of capitalism and social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism. Although social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement, one distinction between democratic socialism and social democracy is that the former can include revolutionary means. The latter proposes representative democracy under the rule of law as the only acceptable constitutional form of government.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy has been described as the evolutionary form of democratic socialism that aims to gradually and peacefully achieve socialism through established political processes rather than social revolution as advocated by revolutionary socialists. In this sense, social democracy is synonymous with "democratic socialism" and represents its original form, that of socialism achieved by democratic means, usually through the parliament. While social democrats continue to call and describe themselves as "democratic socialists" or simply "socialists", with time, the post-war association of social democracy as a policy regime, and the development of the Third Way, "democratic socialism" has come to include communist and revolutionary tendencies, representing the original meaning of "social democracy", as the latter has shifted towards reformism.


title: Social democracy

text: Before social democracy was associated with a policy regime with a specific set of socioeconomic policies, its economics ranged from communism to syndicalism and the guild socialists, who rejected or were opposed to the approach of some Fabians, regarded as being "an excessively bureaucratic and insufficiently democratic prospect". Communists and revolutionary socialists were a significant part of social democracy and represented its revolutionary wing. Although they remained committed to social democracy representing the highest form of democracy, social democracy became associated with its reformist wing since the communist split starting in 1917.


title: Social democracy

text: The Russian Revolution further exacerbated this division, resulting in a split between those supporting the October Revolution renaming themselves as "Communist" and those opposing the Bolshevik development (favouring the liberal social democratic development as argued by the Mensheviks) remaining with the "Social Democrat" label. Rather than abandoning social democracy, Communists remained committed to revolutionary social democracy, merging into communism; however, they saw "Social Democrat" associated with reformism, found it irredeemably lost and chose "Communist" to represent their views. For the Communists, the Social Democrats betrayed the world's working class by supporting the imperialist Great War and leading their national governments into the war. The Communists also criticized their reformism, arguing that it represented "reformism without reforms". This reformist–revolutionary division culminated in the German Revolution of 1919, in which the Communists wanted to overthrow the German government to turn it into a soviet republic like it was done in Russia, while the Social Democrats wanted to preserve it as what came to be known as the Weimar Republic. Those revolutions transformed the social democracy from "Marxist revolutionary" into a form of "moderate parliamentary socialism".


title: Social democracy

text: While evolutionary and reformist social democrats believe that capitalism can be reformed into socialism, revolutionary social democrats argue that this is impossible and that a social revolution would still be necessary. The revolutionary criticism of reformism but not necessarily of reforms which are part of the class struggle goes back to Marx, who proclaimed that social democrats had to support the bourgeoisie wherever it acted as a revolutionary, progressive class because "bourgeois liberties had first to be conquered and then criticised". Internal rivalry in the social democratic movement within the Second International between reformists and revolutionaries resulted in the Communists, led by the Bolsheviks, founding their own separate Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 that sought to rally revolutionary social democrats together for socialist revolution. With this split, the social democratic movement was now dominated by reformists, who founded the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in 1923. The LSI had a history of rivalry with the Comintern, with which it competed over the leadership of the international socialist and labour movement.


title: Social democracy

text: In Britain, the social democratic Gaitskellites emphasized the goals of personal liberty, social welfare, and social equality. The Gaitskellites were part of a political consensus between the Labour and Conservative parties, famously dubbed Butskellism. Some social democratic Third Way figures such as Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair, who has described himself as a Christian socialist and a socialist in ethical terms, insist that they are socialists, for they claim to believe in the same values that their anti-Third Way critics do. According to those self-proclaimed social democratic modernizers, Clause IV's open advocacy of state socialism was alienating potential middle-class Labour supporters, and nationalization policies had been so thoroughly attacked by neoliberal economists and politicians, including rhetorical comparisons by the right of state-owned industry in the West to that in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and nationalizations and state socialism became unpopular. Thatcherite Conservatives were adept at condemning state-owned enterprises as economically inefficient. For the Gaitskellites, nationalization was not essential to achieve all major socialist objectives; public ownership and nationalization were not explicitly rejected but were seen as merely one of numerous useful devices. According to social democratic modernizers like Blair, nationalization policies had become politically unviable by the 1990s.


title: Social democracy

text: Some critics and analysts argue that many prominent social democratic parties, such as the Labour Party in Britain and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, even while maintaining references to socialism and declaring themselves democratic socialist parties, have abandoned socialism in practice, whether unwillingly or not.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy has some significant overlap in practical policy positions with democratic socialism, although they are usually distinguished from each other. In Britain, the revised version of Clause IV to the Labour Party Constitution, which was implemented in the 1990s by the New Labour faction led by Tony Blair, affirms a formal commitment to democratic socialism, describing it as a modernized form of social democracy; however, it no longer commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services either owned by the public or accountable to them". Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists", and some such as Blair "use or have used these terms interchangeably". Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term 'social democracy' only".


title: Social democracy

text: "Democratic socialism" represents social democracy before the 1970s, when the post-war displacement of Keynesianism by monetarism and neoliberalism caused many social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the "status quo" for the time being and redefining socialism in a way that maintains the capitalist structure intact. Like modern social democracy, democratic socialism tends to follow a gradual or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one. Policies commonly supported are Keynesian and include some degree of regulation over the economy, social insurance schemes, public pension programs, and a gradual expansion of public ownership over major and strategic industries.


title: Social democracy

text: During the late 20th century, those labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the emergence of developments within the European left, such as Eurocommunism, the rise of neoliberalism, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Revolutions of 1989, the Third Way, and the rise of anti-austerity and Occupy movements due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the causes of which have been attributed by some to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies. This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians, such as Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who rejected centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties.


title: Social democracy

text: According to both right-wing critics and supporters alike, policies such as universal health care and education are "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society". Because of this overlap, "democratic socialism" refers to European socialism as represented by social democracy, especially in the United States, where it is tied to the New Deal. Some democratic socialists who follow social democracy support practical, progressive reforms of capitalism and are more concerned with administrating and humanising it, with socialism relegated to the indefinite future. Other democratic socialists want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate the systematic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism.


title: Social democracy

text: Despite the long history of overlap between the two, with social democracy considered a form of democratic or parliamentary socialism and social democrats calling themselves democratic socialists, "democratic socialism" is considered a misnomer in the United States. One issue is that "social democracy" is equated with wealthy countries in the Western world, especially in Northern and Western Europe, while "democratic socialism" is conflated either with the pink tide in Latin America, especially with Venezuela, or with communism in the form of Marxist–Leninist socialism as practised in the Soviet Union and other self-declared socialist states. "Democratic socialism" has been described as representing the left-wing or socialist tradition of the New Deal.


title: Social democracy

text: The lack of a strong and influential socialist movement in the United States has been linked to the Red Scare, and any ideology associated with socialism brings social stigma due to its association with authoritarian socialist states. "Socialism" has been used as a pejorative term by members of the political right to stop the implementation of liberal and progressive policies and proposals and to criticize the public figures trying to implement them. Although Americans may reject the idea that the United States has characteristics of a European-style social democracy, it has been argued by some observers that it has a comfortable social safety net, albeit severely underfunded in comparison to other Western countries. It has also been argued that many policies that may be considered socialist are popular but that socialism is not. Others, such as Tony Judt, described modern liberalism in the United States as representing European social democracy.


title: Social democracy

text: In the 21st century, it has become commonplace to reference social democracy as the European social democracies, namely the actually-existing states in Northern and Western European countries, usually in reference to their model of the welfare state and corporatist system of collective bargaining. European social democracies represent a socioeconomic order that has been described as starting in the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s and ending in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. Henning Meyer and Jonathan Rutherford associate social democracy with the socioeconomic order in Europe from the post-war period until the early 1990s. This has been accepted or adopted across the political spectrum, including conservatives (Christian democrats), liberals (social liberals), and socialists (social democrats); one notable difference is that socialists see the welfare state "not merely to provide benefits but to build the foundation for emancipation and self-determination". Social democratic roots are also observed in Latin America during the early 20th century; this was the case in Uruguay during the two presidential terms of José Batlle y Ordóñez.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy influenced the development of social corporatism, a form of economic tripartite corporatism based upon a social partnership between the interests of capital and labour, involving collective bargaining between representatives of employers and labour mediated by the government at the national level. During the post-war consensus, this form of social democracy has been a major component of the Nordic model and, to a lesser degree, the West European social market economies. The development of social corporatism began in Norway and Sweden in the 1930s and was consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s. The system was based upon the dual compromise of capital and labour as one component and the market and the state as the other. From the 1940s through the 1970s, defining features of social democracy as a policy regime included Keynesian economic policies and industrial agreements to balance the power of capital and labour and the welfare state. This is especially associated with the Swedish Social Democrats. In the 1970s, social corporatism evolved into neo-corporatism, which replaced it. Neo-corporatism has represented an important concept of Third Way social democracy. Social democratic theorist Robin Archer wrote about the importance of social corporatism to social democracy in his work "Economic Democracy: The Politics of a Feasible Socialism" (1995). As a welfare state, social democracy is a specific type of welfare state and policy regime described as being universalist, supportive of collective bargaining, and more supportive of public provision of welfare. It is especially associated with the Nordic model.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy rests on three fundamental features, namely "(1) democracy (e.g., equal rights to vote and form parties), (2) an economy partly regulated by the state (e.g., through Keynesianism), and (3) a welfare state offering social support to those in need (e.g., equal rights to education, health service, employment, and pensions)". In practice, social democratic parties have been instrumental in the social-liberal paradigm, lasting from the 1940s and 1970s, and called such because it was developed by social liberals but implemented by social democrats. Since those policies were mostly implemented by social democrats, social liberalism is sometimes called "social democracy". In Britain, the social-liberal Beveridge Report drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge influenced the Labour Party's social policies, such as the National Health Service and Labour's welfare state development. This social-liberal paradigm represented the post-war consensus and was accepted across the political spectrum by conservatives, liberals and socialists until the 1970s. Similarly, the neoliberal paradigm, which replaced the previous paradigm, was accepted across the mainstream political parties, including social democratic supporters of the Third Way. This has caused much controversy within the social democratic movement.


title: Social democracy

text: From the late 19th century until the mid to late 20th century, there was greater public confidence in the idea of a state-managed economy that was a major pillar of communism, and to a substantial degree by conservatives and left-liberals. Aside from anarchists and other libertarian socialists, there was confidence amongst socialists in the concept of state socialism as being the most effective form of socialism. Some early British social democrats in the 19th century and 20th century, such as the Fabians, said that British society was already mostly socialist and that the economy was significantly socialist through government-run enterprises created by conservative and liberal governments which could be run for the interests of the people through their representatives' influence, an argument reinvoked by some socialists in post-war Britain. Advents in economics and observation of the failure of state socialism in the Eastern Bloc countries and the Western world with the crisis and stagflation of the 1970s, combined with the neoliberal rebuke of state interventionism, resulted in socialists re-evaluating and redesigning socialism. Some social democrats have sought to keep what they deem are socialism's core values while changing their position on state involvement in the economy and retaining significant social regulations.


title: Social democracy

text: When nationalization of large industries was relatively widespread in the 20th century until the 1970s, it was not uncommon for commentators to describe some European social democracies as democratic socialist states seeking to move their countries toward a socialist economy. In 1956, leading Labour Party politician and British author Anthony Crosland said that capitalism had been abolished in Britain, although others such as Welshman Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the first post-war Labour government and the architect of the National Health Service, disputed the claim. For Crosland and others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist state. According to Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health Service, which opposed the hedonism of Britain's capitalist society.


title: Social democracy

text: Although, as in the rest of Europe, the laws of capitalism still operated fully and private enterprise dominated the economy, some political commentators stated that during the post-war period, when social democratic parties were in power, countries such as Britain and France were democratic socialist states. The same claim has been applied to Nordic countries with the Nordic model. In the 1980s, the government of President François Mitterrand aimed to expand dirigism and attempted to nationalize all French banks, but this attempt faced opposition from the European Economic Community because it demanded a free-market economy among its members. Public ownership never accounted for more than 15–20% of capital formation, further dropping to 8% in the 1980s and below 5% in the 1990s after the rise of neoliberalism.


title: Social democracy

text: One issue of social democracy is the response to the collapse of legitimacy of state socialism and state-interventionist economics of Keynesianism with the discovery of the phenomenon of stagflation which has been an issue for the legitimacy of state socialism. This has provoked re-thinking of how socialism should be achieved by social democrats, including changing views by social democrats on private property—anti-Third Way social democrats such as Robert Corfe have advocated a socialist form of private property as part of new socialism (although Corfe technically objects to "private property" as a term to collectively describe property that is not publicly owned as being vague) and rejecting state socialism as a failure. Third Way social democracy was formed in response to what its proponents saw as a crisis in the legitimacy of socialism—especially state socialism—and the rising legitimacy of neoliberalism, especially "laissez-faire" capitalism. The Third Way's view of the crisis is criticized for being too simplistic. Others have criticized it because with the fall of state socialism, it was possible for "a new kind of 'third way' socialism (combining social ownership with markets and democracy), thereby heralding a revitalization of the social democratic tradition"; however, it has been argued that the prospect of a new socialism was "a chimera, a hopeful invention of Western socialists who had not understood how 'actually existing socialism' had totally discredited "any" version of socialism among those who had lived under it".


title: Social democracy

text: Social democratic policies were first adopted in the German Empire between the 1880s and 1890s, when the conservative Chancellor Otto von Bismarck put in place many social welfare proposals initially suggested by the Social Democrats to hinder their electoral success after he instituted the Anti-Socialist Laws, laying the ground of the first modern welfare state. Those policies were dubbed State Socialism by the liberal opposition, but Bismarck later accepted and re-appropriated the term. It was a set of social programs implemented in Germany that Bismarck initiated in 1883 as remedial measures to appease the working class and reduce support for socialism and the Social Democrats following earlier attempts to achieve the same objective through Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws. This did not prevent the Social Democrats from becoming the biggest party in parliament by 1912.


title: Social democracy

text: Similar policies were later adopted in most of Western Europe, including France and the United Kingdom (the latter in the form of the Liberal welfare reforms), with both socialist and liberal parties adopting those policies. In the United States, the progressive movement, a similar social democratic movement predominantly influenced more by social liberalism than socialism, supported progressive liberals such as Democratic presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Freedom and New Deal programmes adopted many social democratic policies. With the Great Depression, economic interventionism and nationalizations became more common worldwide and the post-war consensus until the 1970s saw Keynesian social democratic and mixed economy policies put in place, leading to the post-World War II boom in which the United States, the Soviet Union, the Western European, and East Asian countries experienced unusually high and sustained economic growth, together with full employment. Contrary to early predictions, this period of high economic growth and national development also included many countries that were devastated by the war, such as Japan (Japanese post-war economic miracle), West Germany and Austria (Wirtschaftswunder), South Korea (Miracle of the Han River), France (Trente Glorieuses), Italy (Italian economic miracle), and Greece (Greek economic miracle).


title: Social democracy

text: With the 1970s energy crisis, the abandonment of both the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system along with Keynesian social democratic, mixed-economy policies and the implementation of market-oriented, monetarist, and neoliberal policies (privatization, deregulation, free trade, economic globalization, and anti-inflationary fiscal policy, among others), the social democratic welfare state was put in doubt. This caused several social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way, a centrist ideology combining progressivism and social liberalism with neoliberalism; however, the Great Recession in the late 2000s and early 2010s cast doubts on the Washington Consensus, and protests against austerity measures ensued. There was a resurgence of social democratic parties and policies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the rise of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who rejected the Third Way, after the economic recession caused the Pasokification of many social democratic parties.


title: Social democracy

text: The United Nations World Happiness Report shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in social democratic nations, especially in Northern Europe, where the Nordic model is applied. This is at times attributed to the success of the social democratic Nordic model in the region, where similar democratic socialist, labourist, and social democratic parties dominated the region's political scene and laid the ground for their universal welfare states in the 20th century. The Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands, also ranks highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, economic equality, public health, life expectancy, solidarity, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity, quality of life, and human development, while countries practising a neoliberal form of government have registered relatively poorer results. Similarly, several reports have listed Scandinavian and other social democratic countries as ranking high on indicators such as civil liberties, democracy, press, labour and economic freedoms, peace, and freedom from corruption. Numerous studies and surveys indicate that people live happier lives in countries ruled by social democratic parties than those ruled by neoliberal, centrist, and right-wing governments.


title: Social democracy

text: Other socialists criticize social democracy because it serves to devise new means to strengthen the capitalist system, which conflicts with the socialist goal of replacing capitalism with a socialist system. According to this view, social democracy fails to address the systemic issues inherent in capitalism. The American democratic socialist philosopher David Schweickart contrasts social democracy with democratic socialism by defining the former as an attempt to strengthen the welfare state and the latter as an alternative economic system to capitalism. According to Schweickart, the democratic socialist critique of social democracy is that capitalism can never be sufficiently humanized and that any attempt to suppress its economic contradictions will only cause them to emerge elsewhere. He gives the example that attempts to reduce unemployment too much would result in inflation, and too much job security would erode labour discipline. In contrast to social democracy's mixed economy, democratic socialists advocate a post-capitalist economic system based on either a market economy combined with workers' self-management or on some form of participatory, decentralized planning of the economy.


title: Social democracy

text: Marxian socialists argue that social democratic welfare policies cannot resolve the fundamental structural issues of capitalism, such as cyclical fluctuations, exploitation, and alienation. Accordingly, social democratic programs intended to ameliorate living conditions in capitalism, such as unemployment benefits and taxation on profits, creates further contradictions by further limiting the efficiency of the capitalist system by reducing incentives for capitalists to invest in further production. The welfare state only serves to legitimize and prolong the exploitative and contradiction-laden system of capitalism to society's detriment. Critics of contemporary social democracy, such as Jonas Hinnfors, argue that when social democracy abandoned Marxism, it also abandoned socialism and became a liberal capitalist movement, effectively making social democrats similar to non-socialist parties like the Democratic Party in the United States.


title: Social democracy

text: Market socialism is also critical of social democratic welfare states. While one common goal of both concepts is to achieve greater social and economic equality, market socialism does so through changes in enterprise ownership and management. Social democracy attempts to do so by subsidies and taxes on privately owned enterprises to finance welfare programs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt III (grandson of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt) and David Belkin criticize social democracy for maintaining a property-owning capitalist class with an active interest in reversing social democratic welfare policies and a disproportionate amount of power as a class to influence government policy. The economists John Roemer and Pranab Bardhan point out that social democracy requires a strong labour movement to sustain its heavy redistribution through taxes and that it is idealistic to think such redistribution can be accomplished in other countries with weaker labour movements, noting that social democracy in Scandinavian countries has been in decline as the labour movement weakened.


title: Social democracy

text: Some critics say social democracy abandoned socialism in the 1930s by endorsing Keynesian welfare capitalism. The democratic socialist political theorist Michael Harrington argued that social democracy historically supported Keynesianism as part of a "social democratic compromise" between capitalism and socialism. Although this compromise did not allow for the immediate creation of socialism, it created welfare states and "recognized noncapitalist, and even anticapitalist, principles of human need over and above the imperatives of profit". Social democrats in favour of the Third Way have been accused of endorsing capitalism, including anti-Third Way social democrats who have accused Third Way proponents such as Anthony Giddens of being anti-social democratic and anti-socialist in practice.


title: Social democracy

text: Social democracy's reformism has been criticized by both the left and right, for if the left was to govern a capitalist economy, it would have to do so according to capitalist, not socialist, logic. This argument was previously echoed by Joseph Schumpeter in "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" (1942), writing: "Socialists had to govern in an essentially capitalist world..., a social and economic system that would not function except on capitalist lines. ... If they were to run it, they would have to run it according to its own logic. They would have to "administer" capitalism". Irving Kristol argued: "Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered it". Joseph Stalin was a vocal critic of reformist social democrats, later coining the term "social fascism" to describe social democracy in the 1930s because, in this period, it embraced a similar corporatist economic model to the model supported by fascism. This view was adopted by the Communist International, which argued that capitalist society had entered the Third Period in which a proletarian revolution was imminent but could be prevented by social democrats and other fascist forces.


title: Gerard Butler filmography

text: Scottish actor Gerard Butler has been in numerous films and television series since his on-screen debut in 1997's "Mrs. Brown". After taking minor roles in releases such as the James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997) and the horror film "Tale of the Mummy" (1998), he took the lead in 2000, portraying Dracula in "Dracula 2000". Butler co-starred in the films "Reign of Fire" (2002), alongside Christian Bale, and "" (2003), with Angelina Jolie, before playing André Marek in the adaptation of Michael Crichton's science fiction adventure "Timeline" (2003). Then he was cast as Erik, The Phantom in Joel Schumacher's 2004 film adaptation of the musical "The Phantom of the Opera" alongside Emmy Rossum, and "Butterfly on a Wheel" with Pierce Brosnan and Maria Bello.


title: Gerard Butler filmography

text: Although these films were important breaks, it was only in 2007 that Butler gained worldwide recognition for his portrayal of King Leonidas in Zack Snyder's 2007 fantasy war film "300". It earning him a MTV Movie Award for Best Fight and an Empire Award for Best Actor nomination. That same year, Butler starred in the romantic drama film "P.S. I Love You" with Hilary Swank. After appearing in the 2008 films "Nim's Island" with Jodie Foster and "RocknRolla" with Idris Elba, Butler took the lead in several 2009 films including the romantic comedy "The Ugly Truth" with Katherine Heigl and the thriller "Law Abiding Citizen" with Jamie Foxx.


title: Gerard Butler filmography

text: In 2010, Butler voiced the role of Stoick the Vast in the animated action-fantasy film "How to Train Your Dragon", a role he later reprised in "Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon" (2010), "Gift of the Night Fury" (2011) and "How to Train Your Dragon 2" (2014). He played military leader Tullus Aufidius in the 2011 film "Coriolanus", the modernized adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name. He also portrayed Sam Childers in the 2011 action biopic "Machine Gun Preacher". In 2012, Butler co-starred in the biographical drama film "Chasing Mavericks" with Jonny Weston, and the romantic comedy film "Playing for Keeps" with Jessica Biel. He starred as Mike Banning in the action thriller film "London Has Fallen" opposite Morgan Freeman in 2016 and had a minor part in the 2014 film "" where he reprised his role as King Leonidas in a flashback.


title: Gerard Butler filmography

text: Butler made his television debut in 1998's "The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star" (1998), portraying Marty Claymore. In the 2001 miniseries "Attila", Butler took the title role, and the following year he was cast as Johnnie Donne in "The Jury".


title: We Are the World

text: "We Are the World" is a charity single originally recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian for the album "We Are the World". With sales in excess of 20 million copies, it is the eighth-bestselling physical single of all time.


title: We Are the World

text: Soon after the UK-based group Band Aid released "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in December 1984, the musician and activist Harry Belafonte began to think about an American benefit single for African famine relief. He enlisted fundraiser Ken Kragen to help bring the vision to reality. The duo contacted several musicians, and enlisted Jackson and Richie to write the song; they completed the writing seven weeks after the release of "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and only one night before "We Are the World"'s first recording session, on January 21, 1985. The historic event brought together some of the era's best-known musicians.


title: We Are the World

text: The song was released on March 7, 1985, as the first single from the album by Columbia Records. A worldwide commercial success, it topped music charts throughout the world and became the fastest-selling U.S. pop single in history. "We Are the World" received a Quadruple Platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America, becoming the first single to be certified multi-platinum.


title: We Are the World

text: Awarded numerous honors—including three Grammy Awards, one American Music Award, and a People's Choice Award—the song was promoted with a critically received music video, a VHS, a special edition magazine, a simulcast, and several books, posters, and shirts. The promotion and merchandise helped "We Are the World" raise more than $63 million ($ million today) for humanitarian aid in Africa and the United States.


title: We Are the World

text: In January 2010, a magnitude 7.0 M earthquake devastated Haiti, leading another all-star cast of singers to remake the song. Titled "We Are the World 25 for Haiti", it was released as a single on February 12, 2010; proceeds from the record aided survivors in the impoverished country.


title: We Are the World

text: In March 2020, Richie suggested that a third version should be made to communicate a message of global solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic and raise funds for aid efforts.


title: We Are the World

text: Inspired by Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" project in the UK, American entertainer and social activist Harry Belafonte had the idea to organize the recording of a song including all the generation's best-known music artists. He planned to have the proceeds donated to a new organization called United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa). The non-profit foundation would then provide food and relief aid to starving people in Africa, specifically Ethiopia, where a 1983–1985 famine raged. The famine ultimately killed about one million people. Belafonte's idea for an American version of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" project in the UK Belafonte also planned to set aside money to help eliminate hunger in the United States of America. He contacted entertainment manager and fellow fundraiser Ken Kragen, who asked his clients Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers to participate. Kragen and the two musicians agreed to help Belafonte, and in turn, enlisted the cooperation of Stevie Wonder, to add more "name value" to their project. Quincy Jones was drafted to co-produce the song, taking time out from his work on the film "The Color Purple". Jones also telephoned Michael Jackson, who had released "Thriller" in 1982, and just concluded a tour with his brothers.


title: We Are the World

text: Jackson told Richie that he not only wanted to sing the song, but to help write it as well. The songwriting team originally included Wonder, but his time was constrained by his song-writing for the film "The Woman in Red". So Jackson and Richie wrote "We Are the World" themselves at Hayvenhurst, the Jackson family home in Encino, California. They sought to write a song that would be easy to sing and memorable, yet still an anthem. For a week, the two spent every night working on lyrics and melodies in Jackson's bedroom. Jackson's older sister La Toya recounted the process in an interview with the U.S. celebrity news magazine "People:" "I'd go into the room while they were writing and it would be very quiet, which is odd, since Michael's usually very cheery when he works. It was very emotional for them." She also later said that Jackson wrote most of the lyrics "but he's never felt it necessary to say that".


title: We Are the World

text: Richie had recorded two melodies for "We Are the World", which Jackson took, adding music and words to the song on the same day. Jackson said, "I love working quickly. I went ahead without even Lionel knowing. I couldn't wait. I went in and came out the same night with the song completed: drums, piano, strings, and words to the chorus." Jackson then presented his demo to Richie and Jones, who were both shocked; they did not expect the pop star to see the structure of the song so quickly. The next meetings between Jackson and Richie were unfruitful; the pair produced no additional vocals and got no work done. It was not until the night of January 21, 1985, that Richie and Jackson completed the lyrics and melody of "We Are the World" within two and a half hours, one night before the song's first recording session.


title: We Are the World

text: The first night of recording, January 22, 1985, had tight security on hand, as Richie, Jackson, Wonder, and Jones started work on "We Are the World" at Kenny Rogers' Lion Share Recording Studio. The studio, on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, was filled with session musicians, technicians, video crews, retinue, assistants, and organizers as the celebrity musicians entered. Jones hired session musicians to lay down the backing tracks: John "JR" Robinson on drums, Louis Johnson on bass, and pianist Greg Phillinganes. (These three first played together on "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" produced by Jones for Jackson.) Richie sat down at the piano to teach everyone the song. When it was time to roll tape, Robinson cleared the room of non-musicians, and the backing tracks were recorded. After this, a vocal guide of "We Are the World" was recorded by Richie and Jackson, mixed with the instrumental tracks, and duplicated on tape for each of the invited performers. The guide was recorded on the sixth take, as Jones felt that there was too much "thought" in the previous versions.


title: We Are the World

text: Following their work on the vocal guide, Jackson and Jones began thinking of alternatives for the line "There's a chance we're taking, we're taking our own lives": the pair was concerned that the latter part of the line would be considered a reference to suicide. As the group listened to a playback of the chorus, Richie declared that the last part of the line should be changed to "We're 'saving' our own lives". Jones also suggested altering the former part of the line. "One thing we don't want to do, especially with this group, is look like we're patting ourselves on the back. So it's really: 'There's a "choice" we're making.'" Around 1:30 am, the four musicians ended the night by finishing a chorus of melodic vocalizations, including the sound "sha-lum sha-lin-gay". Jones told the group that they were not to add anything else to the tape. "If we get too good, someone's gonna start playing it on the radio", he announced.


title: We Are the World

text: On January 24, 1985, after a day of rest, Jones shipped Richie and Jackson's vocal guide to all of the artists who would be involved in "We Are the World"s recording. Enclosed in the package was a letter from Jones, addressed to "My Fellow Artists":


title: We Are the World

text: Ken Kragen chaired a production meeting at a bungalow off Sunset Boulevard on January 25, 1985. There, Kragen and his team discussed where the recording sessions with the supergroup of musicians should take place. He said, "The single most damaging piece of information is where we're doing this. If that shows up anywhere, we've got a chaotic situation that could totally destroy the project. The moment a Prince, a Michael Jackson, a Bob Dylan—I guarantee you!—drives up and sees a mob around that studio, he will never come in." On the same night, Quincy Jones' associate producer and vocal arranger, Tom Bahler, was given the task of matching each solo line with the right voice. Bahler said, "It's like vocal arranging in a perfect world." Jones disagreed, saying that the task was like "putting a watermelon in a Coke bottle". The following evening, Lionel Richie held a "choreography" session at his home, where it was decided who would stand where.


title: We Are the World

text: The final night of recording was held on January 28, 1985, at A&M Recording Studios in Hollywood. Michael Jackson arrived at 8 p.m., earlier than the other artists, to record his solo section and record a vocal chorus by himself. He was subsequently joined in the recording studio by the remaining USA for Africa artists, who included Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and Tina Turner. Also in attendance were five of Jackson's siblings: Jackie, La Toya, Marlon, Randy, and Tito. Many of the participants came straight from an American Music Awards ceremony that had been held that same night. Prince, who would have had a part in which he and Michael Jackson sang to each other, did not attend the recording session. The reason given for his absence has varied. One newspaper claimed that Prince did not want to record with other acts. Another report, from the time of "We Are the World"'s recording, suggested that the musician did not want to partake in the session because organizer Bob Geldof called him a "creep". Prince did, however, donate an exclusive track, "4 the Tears in Your Eyes", for the "We Are the World" album. Wonder asked Eddie Murphy to participate, but Murphy demurred, busy recording "Party All the Time". Murphy later said after he "realized what it was, [he] felt like an idiot." In all, more than 45 of America's top musicians participated in the recording, and another 50 had to be turned away. Upon entering the recording studio, the musicians were greeted by a sign pinned to the door that read, "Please check your egos at the door." They were also greeted by Stevie Wonder, who proclaimed that if the recording was not completed in one take, he and Ray Charles, two blind men, would drive everybody home.


title: We Are the World

text: Each of the performers took their position at around 10:30 p.m. and began to sing. Several hours passed before Stevie Wonder announced that he would like to substitute a line in Swahili for the "sha-lum sha-lin-gay" sound. At this point, Waylon Jennings left the recording studio for a short time when it was suggested by some that the song be sung in Swahili. A heated debate ensued, in which several artists also rejected the suggestion. The "sha-lum sha-lin-gay" sound ran into opposition as well and was subsequently removed from the song. Jennings returned to the studio and participated in the recording, which bears his name in the end credits. The participants eventually decided to sing something meaningful in English. They chose to sing the new line "One world, Our children", which most of the participants enjoyed.


title: We Are the World

text: In the early hours of the morning, two Ethiopian women, guests of Stevie Wonder, were brought into the recording studio. They thanked the singers on behalf of their country, bringing several artists to tears, before being led from the room. Wonder attempted to lighten the mood, by joking that the recording session gave him a chance to "see" fellow blind musician Ray Charles. "We just sort of bumped into each other!" The solo parts of the song were recorded without any problems. The final version of "We Are the World" was completed at 8 a.m.


title: We Are the World

text: "We Are the World" is sung from a first-person viewpoint, allowing the audience to "internalize" the message by singing the word "we" together. It has been described as "an appeal to human compassion". The first lines in the song's repetitive chorus proclaim, "We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving". "We Are the World" opens with Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, and Billy Joel singing the first verse. Michael Jackson and Diana Ross follow, completing the first chorus together. Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, and Al Jarreau sing the second verse, before Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Steve Perry, and Daryl Hall go through the second chorus. Co-writer Jackson, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, and Kim Carnes follow with the song's bridge. This structuring of the song is said to "create a sense of continuous surprise and emotional buildup". "We Are the World" concludes with Bob Dylan and Ray Charles singing a full chorus, Wonder and Springsteen duetting, and ad libs from Charles and Ingram.


title: We Are the World

text: On March 7, 1985, "We Are the World" was released as a single, in both 7-inch and 12-inch formats. The song was the only one released from the "We Are the World" album and became a chart success around the world. In the U.S., it was a number one hit on the R&B singles chart, the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart, and the "Billboard" Hot 100, where it remained for a month. The single had debuted at number 21 on the Hot 100, the highest entry since Michael Jackson's "Thriller" entered the charts at number 20 the year before. It took four weeks for the song to claim the number one spot, half the time a single would normally have taken to reach its charting peak. On the Hot 100, the song moved from 21 to 5 to 2 and then number 1. "We Are the World" might have reached the top of the Hot 100 chart sooner, were it not for the success of Phil Collins' "One More Night", which received support from both pop and rock listeners. "We Are the World" also entered "Billboard"s Top Rock Tracks and Hot Country Singles charts, where it peaked at numbers 27 and 76 respectively. The song became the first single since The Beatles' "Let It Be" to enter "Billboard"s Top 5 within two weeks of release. Outside the U.S., the single reached number one in Australia, France, Ireland, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The song peaked at number 2 in two countries: Germany and Austria.