The idea that the system will reject reforms antithetical to its ideological basis is not exactly edgy and contrarian. At most the DSA will put a bandaid over capitalism.
Sadly, though, that's the best the US will ever get.
Jayden Taylor
Have you not heard of the Bernie Sanders killed Rosa'? Not literally, but metaphorically. Social Democracy kills any hope to achieve socialism.
Chase Brooks
Take it from a European SocDem who has never believed in socialism nor been particularly pure: Reformism doesn't work.
If there is hope for mankind, it is an asteroid impact.
Nolan Martinez
I know a lot of you will disagree, but I think Bernie Sanders social democracy platform and the DSA are ultimately good things for the left. It has caused more people to come over to our side, and although I agree reformism will likely never works, the DSA is good for organisation and it gets people talking about our ideals.
Andrew Thomas
What causes people to go to "our side" is the material conditions they live in.
Hudson Reyes
Can't talk about the DSA, but succdem reforms immediately get rolled back when the corporates don't need them to pacify the population. It has happened in just about every country that social democratic reforms have passed in.
Michael Peterson
Is easy to subvert or convert socdems cuckitalism to socialism ? Maybe yes maybe no…
Dominic Watson
What material conditions changed in the last year and a half?
John Murphy
seems like the problem is that countries have elections, not socdems
Jack King
It has been a much longer process, parlimentary "democracy" is simply dragging behind because it's shit.
Jackson Allen
Unironically read Žižek.
William Myers
Material conditions by itself doesn't create mass movements, it takes class consciousness raising to create the subjective conditions necessary for such a thing.
This is why Bernie and DSA are important, because they have mass appeal.
Benjamin Hall
What's right with them? The replace porky with the state (which is porky anyway). In fact, they're worse because they have an even more direct monopoly on violent force.
Luke Gray
Found the Posadist.
Adrian Russell
how do you make changes that are impossible to roll back?
Aaron Brooks
More like "how do you make changes that are impossible to maintain?", because social democracy is merely a more humane capitalism.
When social democracy first started to get beatings in the late '70s, it wasn't because the world just decided that social democracy sucked, but because social democracy, being a way of policing capitalism, is dependent on what capitalism allows. The welfare state dies because capitalist booms and busts slowly force the state to erode it, not because it really wants to.
Socialism or barbarism, my dude.
Ian Perez
Bernie and the like are the exact opposite of class consciousness.
Cooper Morales
how so?
Jeremiah Richardson
Make them a part of culture and secioty, build a cult of personality around it and even the lumpenproles will defend it: Case and point is the NHS. Even with the dictatorial grip that THatcher had over tehnation in the 1980s, her ability to o whatever she pleased, she could not touch the NHS because there were tories that unironically held the principles of the system to their hearts: and it had only existed for one generation at that point and there were still many MPs that had been in parliament before it existed.
Jason Peterson
Their rise in the mainstream may be useful for raising class consciousness, but that is their only use. Back when there was a large and active socialist movement with a more class-conscious workforce, socdems were borderline reactionary; today they are just useful idiots. As a platform unto itself, socdems just want capitalism with a welfare state. The problem is that, in the long term, the welfare state is untenable, and will revert to being a simple capitalist state (see Europe right now). The other problem, of course, is that they do not oppose capitalism–even those who say they do generally renounce revolution or other emancipatory violence, which is as absurd as an anti-slavery group being against slave revolts.
This is a board dedicated to people who oppose capitalism. Those who do not oppose capitalism do not belong here. There's nothing edgy about it, and it's not a "purity test." This is like you going to /a/ and complaining that they don't let you post about Full House there.
Andrew Kelly
ahh, guess we should forget about achievable reforms like single-payer and not dying in the streets and just post on a chinese message board all day
Isaac Nelson
You remove the conditions that create the drive to roll them back. Imagine you're a slave. Some faggots want to pass a law that says masters can't work their slaves on Saturdays. That would be an improvement. Until a few years later when the law changes again, because the masters control the government. But some other faggots want to entirely forbid the right to own human beings, which is a drastic improvement, and destroys the masters' hold on you. Because the power dynamic has been abolished, it can't reassert itself (at least not without violent counterrevolution).
I'm not convinced that it's the "opposite" of class consciousness per se, but Bernie and other socdems generally don't properly attribute these problems to capitalism itself, and instead tend to blame it on "the rich" or "corrupt politicians" or other individual "bad actors," rather than explicitly telling people that their woes stem from the fact that they are powerless in the workplace.
Angel Flores
I never implied that, you fucking illiterate. You're wrongly assuming that parliamentary reforms can only come from explicitly non-socialist groups like socdems. In reality, replacing capitalism with socialism will require reform, revolution, and transformation, and all three will reinforce each other and give each other more leverage. Anti-capitalist voting blocs, political parties, and advocacy groups can get some (though not many) reforms passed by legislation, but only if they have the implicit threat that revolutionaries will take up the cause if the government fails to meet these demands. This is how the New Deal policies were passed in the US in the 1930s. Reforms would embolden the population and cause them to demand more reforms and more rapid transformation, and there will be a resulting rise in the number of revolutionaries, and in their capacity and severity. They can engage in activities ranging from civil disobedience to open warfare. Transformation will also be necessary, especially in the early stages, to show people in real, practical ways what a post-capitalist society could look like. This is where people forming worker cooperatives (within an existing capitalist system) and creating voluntary, egalitarian communities are important. At no point in any of these wings, or any of these processes, are fucking socdems either necessary, useful, or wanted.
Angel Williams
If something is worth doing its worth doing right. Go ahead and fight for singlepayer, I don't think anybody here is going to tell you not to. Objectively its a good thing. But its a temporary fix and you soc Dems love to celebrate them as these great achievements.
Talk to the Brits and let them tell you all about their problems with the NHS. Its currently on the chopping block. Such will be any single payer in the US. It will be fine, until those in power decided its a bad thing. Look at Social Security, constantly brought up to be cut.
So our bad for looking for more long term solutions to these problems. Run along now
Austin Cooper
Gramsci would support DSA and the Podemos' of the world, but I guess leftypol knows better
You think Burgerland will go from the left-most mainstream position being Rachel Maddow liberal centrism to Maoism or some shit?
At least DSA is pushing the overton window to the left. And if the project amounts to nothing more than reformism, atleast it's reformism grounded in anti-capitalist rhetoric & principle. You can build off that
Grayson Morris
Well America won't go to the left at all if the best we've got is socdems. Like you say, they're somewhat useful for raising class consciousness, but we need a real socialist movement to give somewhere for the newly-class-conscious to go, so they can actually contribute and be useful to the overthrow of capitalism. Socdems are the jumpstart; if it goes no further, they'll also kill the whole thing themselves once people learn that their platform can't really fix things.
Daniel Lewis
What does it mean to be class-conscious (for a proletarian)?
It means being conscious our societies is divided in class with opposed and irreconcilable interests. It's being conscious the proletariat is currently dominated by the bourgeoisie, and that the only alternative is: dictatorship of bourgeoisie or dictatorship of the proletariat. It's being conscious that it is the historic role of proletariat to overcome this state of facts by socialising all of production through its own dictatorship.
This consciousness, Bernie and the like do nothing to raise, as they claim the exact opposite: that proletarian and bourgeois interests can be conciliated in the quest for a "greater good", that democracy, being somehow above classes, is the means to reach this greater good, and that historical progress can be obtained through reforms rather than revolution.
Anthony Jones
I've been to a few DSA meetings and they have several factions within them. The SocDems are to the right and the Leninists/Luxembourgists are to the left.(they both somehow get along within DSA).
Before Occupy Wall Street, DSA was a typical SocDem organization, but since OWS and especially since the Bernie moment, they have internally shifted to the left.
Kayden Barnes
Social Democracy is capitalism.
Nathaniel Butler
I meant to say that the Leninsts and Luxemburgists get along. "Right Wing" DSA is actually what the DemSocs are called. They hate it. They are mostly common in rural areas. I get the impression that left-wing DSA is more common in the big urban cities.
Josiah Ward
At best they'll instate minor reforms that pacify the workers for a while and prolong the lifespan of global capitalism. At worst they will turn on the left and support fascists hunting down commies. Socdems get a bullet before literally anyone else.
Anthony Perry
This mentality is obviously the result of factional brainwashing. We treat other factions of the left as bigger enemies than the capitalists.
Lucas Ward
But yes, I don't think there's much point in actively opposing socdems–just make it clear that they aren't socialists. When the revolution comes, they'll all turn into either fascists or socialists anyway, and then things become much more black and white.
Isaac Cruz
Socdems are not anti-capitalist. Socdems are not leftists. Socdems are welfare capitalists.
Brayden Ross
I will suck the dick of a Juche supporter before I fail to shoot a socdem. They are not leftists. They are the greatest of all capitalist-aligned enemies.
Anthony Hughes
Isn't Western Europe still pretty comfy for the most part? There's a ton of social services compared to anywhere else.
Jack Wright
Destroy the material conditions that allow the bourgeoisie to exist
Cameron Gutierrez
I agree. I guess I got confused because this thread seems unable to differentiate DSA from SocDems.
But people like are more counterproductive than anything. Killing liberals in a hypothetical revolution is not the answer. Besides, they don't own the means of production.
Samuel Martinez
Yes, but between austerity and privatization, that's slowly ending, and there's little indication of a turnaround. If even the most developed countries in the world are abandoning the welfare state, what does that say about the rest of the world?
Blake Williams
We don't reject social democracy because they aren't "Marxist enough", we reject it because it is actively harmful towards the realization of socialist society in that it legitimizes parliamentary, bourgeois democracy and in the same vain squashes revolutionary potential within the working class. Social democrats will only ever be allowed to implement reforms that stabilize capitalism, just by the sheer nature of how parliamentary democracy is organized.
Parker Russell
Lenin and Luxemburg were totally tsundere for each other.
Noah Evans
DSA has a "left caucus" because it isn't a leftist organization. Until DSA has expunged social democracy from their platform and social democrats from their ranks, I don't see why i should differentiate DSA and SocDems.
Jaxson Cox
Nobody in the thread mentioned Marx. Also, I don't think "legitimacy" has ever mattered to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But you're right about the rest.
Brandon Parker
From a leftcom standpoint, social democracy just makes capitalism more palatable for a short period, leading to an inevitable rollback of protections. If anything, such programs are reactionary by allowing capitalism to survive for far longer before its inevitable destruction by popular revolution.
But personally, I think that's retarded. Social democratic and democratic socialist movements (the latter which better describes DSA) are important to relieve the suffering of working-class people and also inculcate class consciousness. By providing explicitly socialist rhetoric and reading material to 20,000 normies, the DSA is doing some pretty important work. While the DSA is not a revolutionary cell, I do not believe a large militant party like the Bolsheviks can exist in the contemporary US, let alone succeed in overthrowing the government.
Any honest Maoist should support the DSA, because it's basically a toothless Black Panther Party for young proles from middle class backgrounds: it spreads class consciousness, promotes labor organization, and oversees poverty relief efforts independent of bourgeois state programs.
Zachary Long
In a society in which revolutionary action is not even considered a possibility, reformism is necessary to promote an alternative to liberal capitalism.
Hudson Reed
Absolutely not. You need to know what socialism is to be a socialist.
Josiah Lee
The left caucus of DSA is the future of DSA. We need to collaborate with DSA in order to empower the internal socialists to completely take over. It is the rural DSAers who have recently surged dramatically that are keeping DSA more in a SocDem Bernie Sanders narrative.
Justin James
Trotsky pls leave.
Jayden Rogers
What does Zizek say on the matter?
Connor Nguyen
I see nothing with your analysis, comrade. I completely agree.
Ayden Gutierrez
The Bolsheviks were an obscure spin-off of the mainstream Social Democratic Party until Russia started to collapse under the strain of the World War and Lenin was the only person with enough of a brain to capitalize on this.
Parker Williams
Because DSA is literally just a lefty social club anybody can join. This means that you will actually have Maoists and woke liberals in the same room.
While some of the leadership of DSA is kind of liberal, it's filled with Marxists. The leadership is actively working to bring the party platform leftward.
Christopher Fisher
I don't think there's even any Maoists here. thankfully
Luis Davis
What you're suggesting is that no class conscious is better than a half-baked class consciousness and you're absolutely wrong.
It's much easier to turn somebody into a revolutionary once they recognize that liberal capitalism is not the only option.
Henry Gray
Social Democracy IS liberal capitalism.
Dominic Barnes
I know that, comrade, but if I mentioned the Russian Social Democratic Party in my post, posters without an understanding of Russian history would think I was talking about a liberal reformist organization.
Jordan Adams
No, what I am saying is that socdem is what is preventing proletarians to move from half-baked class-consciousness (which they developed because of material conditions) to full class-consciousness.
Jordan Watson
Social democracy was essentially absent from American politics from 1992 to 2011.
Where was the class consciousness?
Jack Long
And you intend to learn what socialism is with Bernie?
Christian Davis
You are confusing cause and effect. Social-democracy is the reaction of capitalism to the raise of proletarian class-consciousness. It is a way to contain it, not its cause.
Colton Adams
At least 20% of this board learned what socialism is because of Bernie
Why do you think traffic shot up so much in the past year?
Bentley Brooks
This would be the case if capitalist encouraged social democracy, but except in extreme cases they fight it violently.
Just look at the American suppression of socdems in Latin America.
Joshua Campbell
You say capitalist and social democracy as if they are separate things. Social democracy is capitalist. What difference does it make that some capitalists are suppressing other capitalists?
Jacob King
Did you?
Jaxon Wood
Are you fucking serious? Have you not heard about austerity? Social-democracy is being dismantled everywhere.
The only way to provide a sustainably good life for everyone is to remove capitalism and implement communism.
Christopher Bennett
I didn't, but it would be disingenuous to suggest that the rise of social democratic dialogue within America had no impact on the simultaneous, smaller rise of socialist organization
Hunter Lopez
Why do we even allow social-cucks on this board anyway?
Kayden Mitchell
Capitalists recognize that social democracy is a gateway drug to socialism and communism. Many authentic socialists advocate for social democracy to get their toe in the door.
Juan Powell
And once again you confuse correlation and causation.
Blake Rivera
Nope. In accordance to your line of thinking, the 2008 crash should have created socialist discourse in America. It did not.
Daniel Murphy
You forget that the capitalists also used social-democracy to make the workers think that communism was not necessary, and that they could have a decent life under capitalism. And it worked. It is one of the biggest lies they've made people believe.
Lucas Perez
No, capitalists know very well that socdem is a necessary evil in order to contain revolutionaries. One that is to be gotten rid of as soon as the threat of a revolution has passed.
No.
James Lee
You just said the exact opposite.
Alexander Cox
This HAS happened, but only when communism exists as a viable threat – see Germany after WW1, America in the '30s, or Singapore in the '50s.
Communism does not exist as a viable threat anywhere except India, Nepal, and the Philippines.
Currently, the bourgeoisie fears social democracy. Although it preserves and arguably perpetuates capitalism, the start of any dialogue critical of capitalism will turn a section of the population toward socialism.
Kevin Lewis
Then why don't capitalists rally to support Socdems? Why do they oppose socdems so virulenty?
Colton Diaz
Not at all. 2011, not 2008, marked the beginning of the political radicalization of a small group of young Americans. This reached its current apex after the Bernie campaign.
Joshua Carter
Social-democracy is not critical of capitalism. It states that we can make capitalism work for everyone. Instead of saying "drop capitalism" it says "give it one more chance".
Angel Jones
Because social-democracy is no longer necessary, and they make more profit without it.
Bentley Wilson
Some of them do, some of them don't. You realise the capitalist class is not a monolith, right?
Xavier Fisher
Oh my…
Eli Thompson
dunno why the DSA triggers tankies so much. just do some entryism.
Liam Turner
You are actually proving my point.
Julian Watson
social democracy really is the battered girlfriend of leftist movments
Daniel Brooks
Foster mass support for left wing opposition in the United States for the love of Jehovah
Jonathan Bailey
No, we'd rather criticize any leftist organization that pops up for not being left enough.
Parker Powell
Sure, present actual leftist views and not social democracy hogwash.
Gabriel Cruz
I am an immigrant to this board and I'm trying to understand you communist guys since my country tells me you all are pretty bad hombres and wrong.
So basically for a leftist commie person Bernie and socdems are not radical enough and are like a bandaid on the bigger problem that is capitalism? I think that's understandable but does that mean you guys pretty much don't have anything to say about any capitalist country and are just waiting for the "revolution"?
Also these red/black flag posters seem pretty awful but I don't know anything about anarchism so maybe that's normal.
Isaiah Ross
If by "criticize" you mean "publicly claim they are wrong and explain why", then yeah, sure. That is how you help raising class-consciousness.
Charles Adams
fuck you for killing rosa
Jack Taylor
We are not simply waiting for the revolution: we are preparing it.
Owen Barnes
I don't understand what you mean. Our board is full of people talking about and criticizing capitalist countries
No, that's mostly just the leftcoms. Ignore them.
While you're here, google murray bookchin.
Jackson Baker
OP is right, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Soccdems, we're just trying to bring about socialism just as you are! It's absolutely ridiculous to think we're agents of the capitalists tasked with satisfying the population's needs to keep them docile and productive. That would be absolutely crazy!
Josiah Fisher
B-But Bernie is different, I swear!
Hunter Rodriguez
the only good thing about bernie is that he made socialist an acceptable word in america
Luke Collins
Well I mean anything useful. If a country is already capitalist it doesn't really seem very helpful to say "we should stop that" unless society is literally falling apart.
Or is it commie theory that it's always a few years away?
like>>1500110 ?
William James
Equating DSA with socdems would be the first problem. They've shifted significantly to the left and I'm certain the MLs and anarchists in their ranks don't want to be associated with socdems.
Carter Anderson
You mean his campaign had some success because socialism is becoming an increasingly acceptable word in the US?
Liam Johnson
That's quite a surprising theory. When should we fight for communism then, if not in a capitalist society?
Tyler Cook
i would say a bit of both. i've had alot of success marxpilling people who became "socialist" because they liked bernie.
Christian Martinez
Oh I get it. That was probably offensive to your "cause" I guess. It just sounds like your asking for a bloody revolution when most people just wanna get paid a little more, not take part in an armed overthrowing of "porkies" (much better badguy buzzword than the jews btw)
Sebastian Allen
In a few decades, a revolution will be necessary to accomplish even that.
Ryder Morris
Do you ask for the sun to rise in the East?
Samuel Edwards
Correct.
Left-coms are happy to wait. Most of the rest of us want instead to see the political intertia that led led to Bernie's campaign and have it redirected toward socialism. It's not like I can go outside and shoot some bourgeois dudes and start a revolution on my own; big movements require lots of mobilized people and at least some semblance of class consciousness, even if you have a vanguard. Hence, shitposting about capitalism and socialism on the Internet. We should be doing more, though. Organizing meetups, forming (or taking control of) a big-tent non-sectarian socialist organization, staging civil disobedience, etc. By "we," I don't mean Holla Forums, I just mean socialists in general. The time is ripe, but it's hard to get something more going just because you want to; reaching out to and convincing millions of people is hard work and takes decades.
It is, actually. You just have to say it loudly, in a widespread manner, with many, many voices, for several years. Implementing socialism will take the work of millions of people, and it's really fucking hard to get any idea that widespread. That's why memes are a blessing to us, by the way.
I would like to live in a world where we can abolish capitalism without bloodshed. But I don't think that's realistic, because in practice, those who benefit from the status quo can and will use violence to defend it–and we need to be equally willing to use violence, though only as much as is strictly necessary. But hey, if it can be done peacefully, that would make me happy. In practice, it will probably take both peaceful reforms (especially in the early stages) and violence (especially in the later stages).
That's fine, as far as it goes, but that desire can't be fulfilled under capitalism because all those decisions are in the hands of the ruling class. Imagine you're in a monarchy, and the king is being a dick this year. Most people just want him to relent, but some people want to get rid of kingship entirely so that the issue is permanently resolved and can't reappear–that's kind of how it is with us; the people want relief, but in order to actually have relief, we have to go a lot further and change the way things work.
Elijah Miller
Are they, though? Seems to me like DSA does very little
They don't even contest elections
Gabriel Thompson
...
Jordan Nelson
What good is spending money on candidates who will get less than 1% of the vote?
DSA aims to organize and educate outside the framework of bourgeois democratic politics. Basically all they try to do is spread the gospel.
Jacob Taylor
...
Nathan Richardson
As for the reform part, I'm not sure it's actually advantageous for reformers to be explicitly socialist and supporters of violence. Bernie probably knows actual socialist theory, and might ideologically be a socialist, the reason he doesn't talk about overthrowing capitalism is probably because it would make his job harder. He'd be more vilified as an extremist and probably get less support. MLK and Malcolm X (a bad example I know) didn't actually have to be on the same page. They each made the other more effective. As long as the reformers do their job in achieving reforms, does it matter if they call themselves socdems or socialists?
Aiden Sanchez
Why should they? If anything, entering unwinnable federal elections wastes resources and makes a party less legitimate. Look at the Greens.
What the DSA -does- do is participate in local politics to inculcate socialism in the general populace and relieve the suffering of the working class. Literally yesterday DSA member Khalid Kamau won a city council seat in South Fulton, Georgia.
Brandon Hughes
I do wonder why Bernie called his policies socialist and didn't just refer to them as social democracy (which is what they are) and make the distinction between social democracy and socialism, it seems like it would have made him more electable
Luke Richardson
no it wouldn't. nobody would understand the difference anyway. his strength was his simple and ambitious platform, not wonkish nuance.
Colton Morales
well he could've just said he doesn't want socialism like in the Soviet Union where the gubment does everything and toothbrushes are collectivized and he wanted the kind of capitalism they had in Norway, would've been pretty simple imo
that being said it was pretty funny watching right wingers start trying to discredit his platform by saying Scandinavian countries aren't socialist, not understanding the conclusions that should come from that stance
Andrew Watson
Because then he would have been pilloried for being a crypto socialist and trying to 'change the definition of words' etc
Jayden Jackson
No, we'd rather criticize any """leftists""" organization that pops up for not being in any way related to the class struggle.
Luke White
Socdems are literally fascists
Jackson Sanchez
socdems are actually stalinists
Caleb Ortiz
>making "socialism" less of a nono word! >raising class consciousness! >preparing for the revolution! how many levels of utopianism are you on, my dude.
seriously, has nobody looked at the track record of "democratic socialism" in action to find out that it's literally nothing more than social democrats rebranded with a veneer of radical rhetoric on the side.