Ok so this is my current understanding, please correct me where I err and supplement where I omit needed information.
Historically the Mensheviks and chartists inspired social democracy whereas the Bolsheviks inspired Marxism-leninism.
They (demsoc and socdem) are extremely similar but have some key differences. Social democrats are to the right of democratic socialists and they are both centre-left parties slightly to the left of social liberalism.
left-ish------Center-left----Center
---------Demsoc-----Socdem Libsoc Lib
Where they differ is usually on imperialism and capitalism.
Social democrats typically support imperialism continuing so long as a slice of the spoils support a welfare state. In that sense they’re just capitalist reformists. It also appears that the DSA and the “Democratic-Socialist” movement in the United States is simply social democracy with no intention of seizing the means of production.
Democratic socialists do advocate for seizing the means of production and want the end of imperialism but believe this can be accomplished democratically – however naive that may be.
As far as I can tell social liberalism appears to be almost synonymous with social democracy but with an added emphasis on the “freedom” to own private property and a more laissez-faire role of the state.
Please fill in my understanding :)
In practice, they enact the same level of change in the same manner.
SocDems are aware that they just want capitalism with bigger welfare. They are true believers in class collaboration.
DemSocs are primarily reformist socialists, who want to establish socialism through reformist means. In practice, however, due to the necessity of overthrowing and replacing state power with proletarian statehood, DemSocs function as SocDems in denial. Their practice is limited to welfare capitalism.
This is the key crux. The difference is that DemSocs are SocDems in denial, while SocDems are nakedly SocDems.
It’s the exact same thing.
Where did democratic socialists ever succeed? What do they actually ask for?
Exactly. Same outcome as social-democracy.
what’s your take on salvador allende?
I support Allende and what he tried to achieve was amazing, but he failed nonetheless. And spectacularly too. Even Castro was telling him to be tougher on the opponents. He was in power for 2 years and 10 months, and ruled by emergency decrees, a power afforded to the President to bypass Congress approval on new laws, because Congress was controlled by the opposition and hostile to him. He also had to issue states of emergency, which temporarily promulgated martial law in a region.
This is not a criticism of Allende of course, it was his attempt at enacting socialism in a hostile world, not only internally but externally as well. The US ran thousands of articles against Allende every year, and bankrolled protests and opposition against him.
But what he shows is there is no path to a socialism promulgated on the basis of elections in the bourgeois state. He validates the theory of the vanguard party. He won the presidency, but not state power.
martial law
does this not constitute full state power? i definitely don’t understand the nuances of chilean law in the early 70s but could the allende administration have defended itself from the coup in any meaningful way? like was 9/11/73 an inevitability or could allende have taken castro’s advice and kept power?
The military was disloyal to him, which is how they came to coup him in turn. They’ll obey orders for a while, but they won’t defend the revolution.
Where did democratic socialists ever succeed?
Would you count Venezuela?
Not necessarily, for two reasons:
1 is that the PSUV has never considered themselves democratic socialist, their official movement is ‘21st century socialism’. Chavez had also attempted/participated in a coup in 1992, and though it failed and he eventually won the election in 1998 he allegedly was only convinced of the electoral route on practical purposes.
2 is that I am wary of outsiders trying to fit a mold onto existing movements. We saw this with the Black Panthers (they were apparently every possible shade of marxism) and the EZLN (that anarchists claim are anarchist, and the EZLN saying “no we’re not anarchists”).
Of course, I support Venezuela in the path they chose. But we still see several contradictions of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the country, and I am not aware that PSUV is trying to overcome them, i.e. making their socialism a transition stage to communism.
fair points. i often hear of democratic socialism in refence to latam elected socialist governments, like Venezuela, or even Allende’s Chile.
There is no fundamental difference. “Democratic socialism” is either:
- A term to demonize existing socialist attempts as not democratic or western enough, and thus make socialism palatable to westerners who want to keep their chauvinism, or
- The genuine thought that socialism can be acheived through the institutions of bourgeios democracy (IE the most stable form of government for capital), which is historically naive. Socialism has never taken root anywhere this way, and it’s always been accompanied by a revolutionary war. We can point to the failed attempts at “bringing socialism through the ballot box”, like in Chile and dozens of other examples.
- Since this is impossible, democratic socialism has to choose to either embrace Marxism and the violent proletarian overthrow of bourgeios democracy, or abandon socialism and embrace social democracy. History proves that demsocs always do the latter.
Some more resources:
- Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy’s job for them. Youtube Audiobook
- Halim Alrah - Why liberal democracies are a sham.
- What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn’t Sweden socialist?
- On the unraveling of the Nordic welfare states: increasing inequality and forced austerity.
- Scandinavia’s covert role in western imperialism
- Why can’t you acheive socialism through voting in our current democracies?
- Paul Cockshott - On Socialism and Democracy. 2 3
- Comrade Hakim - Why electoralism always fails.
- Why not just vote leftists into office: what’s wrong with democratic socialism?
Best answer here.
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Both of them are just a marketing term for neo-liberalism with benefits. There is nothing socialist about them.
Democratic socialism is not neo-liberalism.
SDP in Germany was involved in the privatization of Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1994 in 2008 The SPD executive branch voted in favor of a partial stock market flotation of Deutsche Bahn, SDP was involved selling off publicly owned utilities to private entities during reunification.
In the Netherlands The PvdA in the 1990s to early 2000s was involved in the privatization of the postal, telephone and energy system, they voted in favor of the breakup of Governement monopolies on public transport, they cut social security spending and introduced privately owned agencies responsible for administering benefits, they transferred all public housing to not-for profit/non state sponsored associations.
do I need to keep going?
Similarities do not equate to identicality.
Democratic socialism is an ideology, not a party. I would argue that any party touting the term around while cutting social security is akin to the Nazi party calling itself socialist or the DRC calling itself democratic—not true to its own branding. Misuse of the term by a political entity does not change the meaning of the term.
Also, parties change with time (e.g., the GOP platform of 1956 compared to the party at present). Present-day American democratic socialists include Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders.
So social democrats do exactly what Neo-liberals do but they aren’t the same thing because they have different names? Next you will tell me that Coke and Pepsi are 2 different things.
Democratic socialism is a false ideology that was debunked over 150 years ago. Democratic socialism is the lie that if the socialists just keep voting it magically cause socialism. The plan is 1.vote 2.??? 3.socialism. There is no through line it is just delusional wishful thinking. The rich will never give up power without using violence to defend their power. The only way to get socialism is to use violence back, kill the rich and take their power for the people.
The CPC has not changed with time they are as committed to communism as they were 105 years ago. Democratic socialist change with time because they require the bourgeoisie’s consent to be reelected. They are forced to give up the charade of socialism every single time because… YOU CANNOT VOTE YOUR WAY TO SOCIALISM.
Democratic socialism has never been “debunked”. Ideologies are based on morality, principally. One cannot “disprove” a stance on a subjective matter.
I have never met a democratic socialist who believes voting magically causes socialism, myself included. True socialism is impossible on a societal scale. Democratic socialism aims to get close and stay close.
I would have enjoyed a rational conversation, but since I see you are advocating for violence, I do not believe that to be possible. Withered trees bear no fruit; anything founded on violence is foul; the ends do not justify the means.
So you don’t even know what the Democratic socialism is and I am supposed to take you seriously?
You are talking about Social Democracy. Social democracy is Capitalism with social programs. Which is a different but just as stupid thing that has the same fundamental problem. Capitalists will never stop their quest for growing profits. Eventually the only place left to squeeze profits is the workers. (like what is going on in the Nordic model social democracies) And then the neoliberalism begins.
Democratic socialism and social democracy are basically the same thing. Both are trying to achieve “socialism” by reforming the liberal apparatus. The problem is, their strategy maintains the capitalist juridical superstructure intact, which is private property. If they ever try to get close to abolishing private property through reform, they will face fierce resistance from the bourgeoisie, who will try every tactic to undermine them. But since they adhere firmly to the liberal institutions, they will always retreat or be defeated.
I would call social liberalism, a even worse tendency than socdem, and this is our current hegemonic left throughout the western world. It’s basically a socdem tendency that chose to adopt neoliberal institutions as sacred. Figures like Tony Blair, Keir Starmer (or basically the British labor party), Cristina Kirchner, Boric, Lula, the current German SPD, and the US Democratic party are examples of social liberals. They are worse because they aren’t even reformist parties. They are basically conservatives who advocate for a few social policies, but who try to maintain the neoliberal counter-reforms at all costs. They are all adepts of austerity policies, privatization, and the neoclassical interpretation of (political) economy.
The social liberals are the reason why the workers are siding now with the far right in droves, throughout the whole world. The workers don’t see themselves represented by the social liberals because they don’t offer any meaningful change for them. They are going for the far right because they started adopting an anti-systemic rhetoric. If fascism rised after WWI as a response against socialists and communists that gained strength, the new fascists have risen from the weakness of social liberals.
they will face fierce resistance from the bourgeoisie, who will try every tactic to undermine them. But since they adhere firmly to the liberal institutions, they will always retreat or be defeated.
And recruit workers to their purpose by keeping them ignorant of the difference between personal and private property. This is a huge sticking point.
They’re interchangeable as of now, but the way how language changes, from now on, we are going to see the the term and movement ‘socdem’, in its connotations, drift to the right as soclib (neolibs with left face) and further more
the word ‘socialist’ drift to the right as socdem (it already has been so in Europe that many socdems still call themselves ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic socialist’)
so on and so forth
Social Democrats: capitalism is fine and all is needed is to introduce some socialist reforms through bourgeois democracy.
Democratic Socialists: capitalism is not fine and the way to achieve socialism is by introducing socialist reforms through bourgeois democracy.
Both are ultimately reformist, and this is not the way to socialism, let alone communism.
Some discussion semi-related to this came up just the other day and a few of us were thinking about terminology: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12055517/8383078
Malkhodr proposed “institutionalist” as opposed to “reformist” for talking about these types of people and the tendencies they go for. Which I like over the too-positive-sounding connotation of reformist.
I was further thinking about it after and thought of “paper worshipers” or “paperites”, at least for the US context: the kind of people who believe (or act like they believe) political power derives from a document written hundreds of years ago by slave owners, instead of from a gun
I mean, whether we’re talking about people who just want to “reform” capitalism or people who (allegedly) believe in bringing about socialism through voting out capitalism, they share this elevating of a constitution as having some kind of intrinsic political power. But marxist-leninists understand that if by some fluke of electoral momentum, people were able to elect a communist president and communist representatives, the capitalist class could call it illegitimate and smash it with state power; so no matter what way you get there, there has to be a militant vanguard party that is capable of militarily enforcing and defining what is and isn’t legitimate law. Otherwise, all you’ve got is some paper, which isn’t worth a damn when the exploiting classes can redefine what the paper means on a whim, backed by the barrel of a gun.
If we want to create a term that properly disparages while also describing these kinds of compatible leftists, I think it needs to be centered in already existing rhetoric among the masses. We shouldn’t be like liberal “intellectuals” who invent abstract terms that have little practical application and alienate the average person, or atleast the average learning leftist.
Paperite, for example, although it signals its meaning to others like ourselves, it doesn’t properly convey meaning to someone who we want to be agitating against opportunism. I picked Institutionalist on a whim based on my own experience with university administration and anti-imperialist organizing. These people’s arguments consistently looked towards their institutions as checklists for legitimacy on any discussed policy, rather than recognize that students/community members organizing around a policy on its own indicated a level of mass support. They viewed democracy as passing through hurdles rather than inspiring dynamic action/engagement.
Another term that I’ve thought of, though it’s more crude, is “liberal pick-me” or “pick-me socialist” maybe. The idea of a “pick-me” is self explanatory. A person, often a marginilzed person but not always, who feels the need to be validated by the opinions of those who degrade them.
Examples include: A woman who makes “ironic” jokes to a bunch of discord losers about woman’s place in soceity. An Arab adult who goes on about how Muslims and other Arabs are barbaric to their white associates. A black teen who gives their majority white friends access to say a slur.
The list goes on, but I think I made my point. People we’d call comprodors, mentally colonized, internally bigoted/misogynistic, etc.
One of the main issues that alienates people from socdems is there perpetual need to be legitimate by liberal bourgeois politics. They can’t just be representatives to the working class, they must do so in a way that is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. The term is absolutely reviled by those who get accused of it usually, and it’s also immediately understandable to the people most open to revolutionary consciousness in the west, young marginalized people.
It’s less refined than “institutionalist” but I think it conveys more to the proper audience while also not seeming like it comes out of the aether.
Valid criticism. Definitely easier to make use of existing terminology than to try to make new stuff. So “pick-me” as a term for it would probably resonate with younger people in particular. Then maybe “institutionalist” if talking to older people who may not have heard of a term like “pick-me.”
I’m wondering if Western libs aren’t so thin-skinned and defensive if the very accurate term “pick me” won’t also be alienating?
I was further thinking about it after and thought of “paper worshipers” or “paperites”, at least for the US context: the kind of people who believe (or act like they believe) political power derives from a document written hundreds of years ago by slave owners, instead of from a gun
Well dang, I also thought of “paper worshippers,” in that they worship both Constitution and money, but set it aside because I didn’t think was catchy. That two of us thought the same thing, perhaps we’re onto something?
These terms are not concretely defined. Like Lenin called himself and his comrades “social democrats”. In that context the term makes sense, since he was a socialist and overthrowing the czars would lead to a more democratic future. Outside of this I don’t hear anyone calling themselves social democrats these days.
Democratic socialists similarly I haven’t seen being used outside of DSA, the subsect of the the American “Democratic” party. The whole point seems to be about leaning into electoralism without building dual power structures. So demsoc is a bit euphemistic in that regard.
Outside of this I don’t hear anyone calling themselves social democrats these days.
German SPD members definitely do. Considering that the SPD is now a neoliberal party through and through, that kind of shows how far the term has drifted from its original meaning.
Yeah. I mean even if they do call themselves social democrats, they probably do not have tenets of social democracy, do not define their principles etc.
During the bernie high times, the youth wing of the SPD definitely had it own „revivalist“ moment.
Democratic Socialism is far more popular in the US (maybe to signal they are subservient to the Democratic Party perchance?). Euros use social democrat still.
you have it right basically
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well uhh
honestly, you could argue that there isn’t a difference
I kinda think there is but, well…
A Democratic Socialist is basically the DSA at this point lol
a social democrat is honestly a more antiquated term ngl
but in Europe, it is used to refer to politicians in certain parties that are generally more gung-ho about welfarist policies and social services.
…that might literally be about it
they’re kinda “samey” but have different connotations
