How does one effectively argue AGAINST social democracy not on a hypothetical basis, but a pragmatic one?
For instance, when a succdem tells you social democracy is "all that can be achieved right now" or "revolution isn't worth it, because most elements of capitalism will keep lingering afterward so why not just become a succdem too?" how do you respond?
Capitalists will take the first opportunity to reverse social progress and retake absolute control. Next economic crisis your brilliant welfare programs will start being cut. The only way to secure social change in the long term is by transferring power to the workers themselves.
Not if we implement good cybernetics. Read Cockshott.
it's objectively the left wing of fascism
the "gains" always get reversed
we need COMMUNISM to survive and reverse global warming
capitalism is adaptable and any concession you win through electoral politics will not "challenge" any macro level structures in a meaningful way
lmao most socdems(in america) dont even have philosophical reasoning for their views its just a social liberals non-committal conception of what socialism is
theres no arguing with them either because this is the extent of their possinle political radicalism
Just see what is going to happen in Brazil.Really is a example of what you say
None.
Social democracy and labor unions are the only things that actually help the working class.
Threat of violent revolution is the only reason social democracy will make ANY headway at all. All changes implemented will be eroded and reversed at every opportunity. That is assuming the SuccDems themselves won't betray and go back on changes they wanted to implement, as they have done repeatedly in the past. So if the only reason for capitalists to behave themselves is to have a gun to their heads, and will go back to business as usual the moment they don't, why not do the logical thing and pull the trigger? We need a final solution to the capitalist question.
This statement is objectively false.
Well, social democracy is a form of accelerationism which is supposed to transition us into socialism, and with the potential of technology and post-scarcity, it seems like it is a reasonable place to compromise at, if you are a marxist.
Socdems stab unions in the back all the fucking time.
without trying to be a downer: you don't because pragmatism operates on a degree of imminence not conductive to either ideology: social democracy isn't coming back and revolution isn't happening in short order.
that's not to say you should give up on pushing for change (because having people ready and waiting is essential), but from an analytical perspective it's just a choice of what you want to spend your time talking about in the here-and-now. tax reform or cybersyn?
this image is wrong and i will call it out every time it appears
it calls "actually existing social democracy" circa 1950-1970 as socialism. this is particularly obvious in the British example. (James Callaghan going to the IMF and imposing public spending cuts and a pay-cap on trade unions to the point where they lost their temper and doomed his chances of re-election predates the party betraying their socialist ideology "in the late 1980s"!)
"Revolution isn't worth it" succdems are just petty bourgeoisie liberals who want the government to forgive their debts and give them free services. They don't actually want to challenge capitalism because they are actually fairly comfortable under capitalism. Revolution isn't worth it to them because they don't have much to gain.
I get this, but it doesn't answer my question in regards to pragmatism. When some asshole says "social democracy will be the inevitable outcome of any socialist revolution" how do you respond?
Social democracy was only possible due to a certain historical and material context under a specific geopolitical paradigm that no longer exists. Succdems are a cargo cult who are hoping that if they gesticulate in the right way that historic arrangement, contingent on a context long since passed, will appear by some mystical force. It's quite sad actually.
how do you argue that Monarchist Bonapartism won’t be the outcome of every liberal revolution?
Non-sequitur.
Well I would probably start by asking him to make an argument. Until he does that all I could say is "no you're wrong".
Saying that "social democracy will be the inevitable outcome of any socialist revolution" is tantamount to saying that "any socialist revolution will always fail", which is a pretty bold claim that would basically require debunking all revolutionary theory and praxis, exposing some critical flaw that would make their failure inevitable. Simply stating that all revolutions have failed in the past or blabbering about "muh human nature" is not nearly enough.
Ultimately, every past society has inevitably collapsed due to their inherent internal contradictions, which they had been unable to resolve. These collapsed societies were overtaken by elements within them, which then formed a new society, also with their internal contradictions. Capitalism has its own contradictions, which are rapidly becoming more and more apparent, and not only is social democracy unable to permanently resolve these contradictions, it is sabotaged at every turn by the very system that it tries to preserve. In the end, socialism is the only movement today that actually stands to replace capitalism and resolve its contradictions.
Socdem > neoliberalism
The problem is socdem always leaves the opening for neoliberalism's greedy tentacles to seize any gains made by virtue of maintaining the liberal democratic capitalist framework just with higher tax/some welfare programs. It doesn't actually change the system, just the state budget.
The argument is, socialism was always carried out in the logic of capitalism, i.e. prioritizing development and productive forces, rather than, say, collectivization and moves towards more egalitarian social systems.
That image is kinda kek because PS is now kinda dead, PVDA isn't even the largest socdem party in the Netherlands (Groenlinks is), the SPD is now a fourth tier party, and Labour has gone full Marxism-Benninism. We need an update about PASOKification and how radicalism prevents that tbh.
TBH fam this is a historicist critique which can go directly to the dumpster.
Wow what an outcome.
easy, call them racist and say social democracy empowers racists, and if they say anything else call them racist again
victory is yours comrade
Yeah socdems always leave this little historical tidbit out when they are shit talking communists for not wanting to work with socdems to "stop" Hitler back then.
You need to eliminate bourgeoisie class with worker owned cooperatives for social democracy to work.
I've heard this before, the main problem is workers from different fields rarely get along in group consensus.
The technologists/"cybernetic creators" will get greedy like they always do, just watch.
Good luck with that.
Thats missing the forrest for the trees though. The particulars of exactly when the social democrats betrayed their nominally socialist agenda is a question that will always be up for debate - the important thing is that eventually, they did.
This implies that it's worth charting social democrats as socialists at all, rather than recognising social democracy as a separate ideology entirely, or at least a completely distinct branch from the marx-derived definition of socialism we use around here.
In the context of the labour party it's particularly important because there's a reasonable case that Labour has never been a socialist party. Indeed, as Tony Benn said:
[The Labour Party]'s never been a socialist party, but it's always had socialists in it, just as there are some Christians in the Church, it's an exact parallel.
or, as often attributed to Harold Wilson:
The Labour party owes more to Methodism than to Marx.