We Need to Stop Tolerating Social Democracy Immediately

Social Democracy is welfare capitalism and reformism, both bourgeoise liberal solutions to the problem. If you are a Social Democrat you are not a Socialist, you are the left-wing of capital but you are still a capitalist, you are still a liberal. Welfare capitalism will never ever be socialism. Socialism is NOT when the government does stuff and Socialism is NOT nationalization, regulation, high taxation etc in itself.

For those of you who are slightly less retarded than the non-ironic succdems here, please stop shilling for people like Sanders, Corbyn, Melenchon and so on

The overton window has already been shifted far enough to the Left. Half of fucking America is at the least succdem now and those who were already succdem when Sanders was running are either full blown tankies or anarkiddies. So please fuck off with the entryism argument because

1: Entryism has never once worked

2: Sanders and Melenchon literally capitulated almost immediately after losing their respective primaries and tried to talk their supporters into voting for neoliberals, imagine how many compromises and neutered versions of their proposals they would make if they were actually in office

3. You can argue either of the above points but you literally can not argue that if you are really Leftist you are for the full abolition of wage labor, so shut the fuck up about any of these people being /ourguy/ etc

Those of you who still support these succdems unironically and don't ruthlessly criticize them and are still optimistic about the prospects for reformism and gradualism in the West need to either leave the board, perhaps for a website which tolerates your liberalism more such as reddit, or actually fucking read Marx and Engels who hated succdems and took every chance to distance themselves from them and shit on them at every single occasion.

Pic highly related

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planka.nu.
amestris.country/.
dsausa.nationbuilder.com/swagshop
marxists.org/archive/draper/1973/xx/microsect.htm
youtube.com/watch?v=p8EpaAWaOvg
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/politics-speech.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1872/hague-conference/introduction.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/
marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/71_07_18.htm
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-29/the-french-president-is-spending-his-summer-fighting-unions
aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/01/france-growing-income-inequality-problem-201512311224855101.html
youtube.com/watch?v=8Vy4Id8UZ40
youtube.com/watch?v=8k3XPYVlhng
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm
marxists.de/china/sheng/whither.htm.
youtu.be/LRSsybt9wAo?t=718
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

forgot to post highly related pic, sorry

Marx and Engels view of succdems all the way back in the Manifesto

Yeah, because the turn towards leftism among Western youth has nothing to do with Sanders and his message; everyone's going to become so devoted to socialism that they'll die for it because of some LARPing tankies. If you don't realize the value of shifting the Overton window, you haven't been paying attention to politics for the past 40 years. The more people that start liking left socdems, the more people there will be who are willing to give Marx a chance.

Yeah, alright. I agree with you that social democracy is not socialism and that it's sort of a dead end at this point anyway.

My question is, what's your way forward then? Let's say you start the New Super Revolutionary Anti-Succdem Communist Workers Party of whatever country your from. How, and around which issues do you organize people? If you're not going to work within a parliament, what sort of political work are you going to do? I think these sort of questions are important,

You need to offer people solutions to problems they face here and now, to gain the trust and support of the working class. I'm sorry but they're not gonna just come to you because you say you talk big words about revolution and communism. A party whose platform is nothing but "we want a communist society now" is a shitty party and will only gain support from people (like you and me) who spend all their free time reading 100 year old books about leftist theory and shit. You need to show people that you're on their side and that you're fighting for them.

didn't melenchon say NOT to vote for macron?

He said "do what you want but plz don't vote Le Pen", basically either Abstain, Vote Blank, or Macron.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are SuccDems. They're both strong supporters of universal healthcare and call universal basic income "a necessity" for the future. That should tell you something bout shitposters who unironically rep the rose icon on Holla Forums.

So much for the tolerant left!

Good post OP, though, and here I'm a rarity as an ultra, while I do not think there's any worth for communists in putting energy into supporting SocDems or tricking workers into supporting them, the apparition of SocDems at this time as well as the not half-bad working class support for them signals that conditions are already drawing themselves towards a point of discontent. Especially in America, such fairly significant support for a SocDem, advertised as a "socialist", in a country where "socialism" has been propagandized to mean living in a gulag without any type of individual freedom, does tell us something about the state of the working class at large today.


Literally right-wing culture war rhetoric and, even if it was somehow actually logical unto itself from a materialist PoV, explain to us why, after the golden age of social democracy, the workers' movement has done nothing but weaken everywhere, and capital has gone mass-centralization without almost any real restiance? Gradualism of any form, from the more petty and old types like social democracy, towards the more "radical" forms like agorism, fully follow the logic of capital's management, and as such cannot produce something that goes beyond, but indeed only reproduce themselves.

Because baby boomers are stupid niggers.

It's almost like they're a product of social democracy and its accompanying conditions, as is almost any other subject…

Would like a leftcom perspective on too

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They are socio-liberals you dumbass

What is the distinction between socdems and soclibs?

Socdems believe in Keynesian economics and have historical ties to syndicalism and trade unions.
Soclibs reject Keynes (Zuckerberg and Gates do), are less in favour of regulations and are usually just neolibs who still want the state to hold healthcare/education.

Hollande, Blair are soclibs, Mélenchon, Corbyn are socdems.

You're all liberals. You get the bullet too.

Yeah I was just shitposting, but I feel like there's more to it than social democracy is to blame. America's the worst offender and the global power during the entirety of the Keynesian consensus and they never had a social democratic system.
Wouldn't socdem policies accelerate the decline of RoP and exacerbate the contradictions of capital, while keeping socialist ideas in the public sphere?

That's it, that's it. Now run along, you've got cars to burn and cops to beat up.

More like home wiring to install and property safety evaluations to conduct, you NEET cunt.

I tend to agree, though at the moment I think they have a revolutionary role to play in radicalizing people. A lot of kids still suffer from the "capitalism works it just needs to be controlled" meme, and especially in the US have no idea how fucked things are, much less how fucked bourgeois politics are.

So succdems give them a taste, but when they see their various organizations making no headway and the democrats constantly fucking them they'll be faced with two choices: capitulation, or radicalization.

Was it ever not? Before anything, ask yourself that question very earnestly. Also check out unca Marcs's hot take user posted here and let it sink in a bit:


I've got a tier list for our current conditions: A) communize (effectuate and immediate transformation of the transfer of exchange values into freely flowing and accessible use values; some more on that and some examples of it later) and B) a return to Leninist class-party politics.

I'm gonna give you the Zizek take first but go beyond it afterwards: "I'm sorry, but I don't have the answer". Well, I do, sorta.

Developments in the material conditions, notably in the realm of labour's mode of organization and automation, have changed our form of labour; have created a sort of "joining" of the two that successfully masks the fact that only very deep underneath there is still a personified labour subject and a personified capital subject (as would any alternative mode of capital's management, cooperative or not!). What does this mean? It means the proletariat is domesticated and that the bourgeoisie is almost-superfluous. The symbiosis of the two makes capital more than just an automated subject as Marx thought, but a leading subject as well. We can no longer here see it to be relevantly possible for the proletariat to look at its real conditions of existence during antagonism and find itself clearly dichotomized in e.g. the factory unit: us men in blue making stuff and the pig in the fancy suit telling us what to do and what we work for. Our hopes thus more and more rest in abusing this new form of socialization and confluence of both management and productivity by immediately communizing; doing away with a private property now already centralized and concentrated for us.

So, some meek already-existing examples of communization. What about internet piracy? It completely does away with the type of property that is intellectual: your titty mag scan is owned by nobody but the whole, which both utilizes it and makes sure that further utilization is perpetuated. It ceases to exist when nobody gives a shit anymore (free association of individuals!). And what about the transport sector? Check this out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planka.nu. A primitive mode of communized transportation where participation itself sustains most of it by bypassing the institution of property.

But what about the real movement? Should't, if we are still Marxists, workers already be working towards this? Well, check this out: amestris.country/. I've not seen a utopian scheme quite as hare-brained as this one. On their what is Amestris section, they go out of their way to specify the culture of their non-existent polity, as though culture is something they can will into existence. their open source economy page…isn't terrible. They at least seem to have obtained, by themselves, the understanding that a truly post capitalist system has to annul the value form; that the commodity is at the center of capitalist relations. I doubt they'll succeed, but if we tail examples of workers trying this and help them formulate their conditions of existence, the communist movement is already in rise.

Leninism, then? Still possible and more likely to be a real constant force. The challenge lies in, as Lenin said, "finding power in the streets and taking it". Where is the clearly self-identifying proletarian today? Does he still struggle for the same in the same way? Leninism more and more needs to dive into propagandizing and subversion in order to be viable. Can we count on it?


Social democrats are a type of social liberal. Others would be persuasions like green politics, progressivism and ordoliberals and so on.

This is your brain on ideological purism

These are all political platforms that fall under the umbrella of social liberal politics, namely politics through liberal democracy; parliamentarism, with the tools of progressive capital, with aid of public funding, and so on.

Remember how that panned out in the USA, France, England, Germany, Iceland, and Canada about 20-30 years down the line?

I already said this in OP. That was my point by bringing up that there are tons of former sanders supporters who are succdems and those who weren't are now turning into them. My point was that NOW that that has happened, we can stop supporting succdems as an end in themselves and start organizing or spreading actual Leftist propaganda or whatever.

I feel a lot of Holla Forums just perpetuates this "We must literally ALWAYS support succdems every single time they have slightly more integrity than other liberals to shift le overton window!" because its safe and gives them easy victiories like Labour's win in Britain which brings feelings of escalation etc. It's just chasing a high at this point

Isn't that what's happening in the west, though?
A bourgeoise without the proletariat is already on its way. Production is either outsourced or on its way to become automated.

That is why we need Democratic Socialism now.

dsausa.nationbuilder.com/swagshop

What's your point? If anything this is why we should double down on our "revolution not reform" attitude

Also I think you misunderstood the passage. Marx and Engels didn't literally mean that the liberal reformers would abolish the proletariat merely manage them in such of a way that they would stop disdaining the bourgies and actually suck their dick. It's why shit like UBI is such a dangerous idea in the wrong hands


vomitinganimegrill.jpg

Well, that's what's happening now. Outsourcing and automation will guarantee there will be no proletariat uprising in the west, because there won't be a proletariat to begin with.
Unless the robots will rebel. Which is highly unlikely outside of sci-fi.

Automation won't completely remove the proletariat for at least another 20 or 30 years and even than you're kidding yourself if you don't think porky will find more creative ways of keeping around at least some of them.

The point though is that even with automationa accelerating you can't have bourgies and no class lower than them. In order for capitalism to sustain itself you absolutely have to have a lower class of some kind.

Fuck off, there is nothing wrong with supporting socdem parties and politicians you gotta have no morals to not allow the workers conditions to be improved while the revolution doesn't happen.

Yes, you can. Just tax the robots that replaces the workers. Now you have an robot "underclass."

There was a point in history when it at least seemed to work. But nowadays social democracy is being dismantled even in the Scandinavian and European countries because of the forces of capitalism. To me at least, it's more clear today that socdem is a dead end than it was in the 60's or 70's (even if I wasn't alive then but you get the point).

I don't know much about communization but it seems interesting. Except for the examples you provided, do you see any other areas where there's potential for communization to take place right now? Are there any limits to how far communization can go where it might become necessary to take political power, or some other approach? How do we communists push communization forward (except just torrenting porn)? Could traditional working class organizations (unions, workers' parties) play any role in pushing for communization?

What does this mean to you? There are still a bunch of Leninist parties all over the world. The problem with many of them (in my country at least) is that they are not interested in really "doing politics". They're ok with being irrelevant and useless. They will sit around and have their study groups and talk about the revolution until they all die of old age.

I absolutely think Leninism could be relevant today, in some form. When I think of Lenin I think of a sort of brutal pragmatism, like, use whatever strategy will take you closer to power. I just read "Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder" and I think what he writes in it is very relevant today (especially to these old useless european ML parties). Work within parliament if that's useful at the time, work within unions if that's useful at the time, cooperate with other parties if that's useful at the time, storm the winter palace if that's useful at the time etc. Purity is absolutely useless.

Leninist party politics and communization synthesis when?

t. anarchists

Social democracy is the original Marxism

That is 100 backwards

Wut?

Lol wut

There were some socialists in the 1870s from which Marx distanced himself because they weren't open enough for "reformism".

Highly debatable. I will develop on this.
This is true, but irrelevant.

What is a social democrat? Indeed, what is a socialist?
I would make the case that a social democrat is one who works towards the broadly defined social democratic policy set - with a particular personal emphasis on full employment as a policy goal. But in short yes - it is to make capitalism more bearable.

Now, what is a socialist?
We could spend a lot of time on this but fuck that, I'm just going to say it's someone who wants to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism, leaving what socialism is to the side.
Now then, let's reacquaint ourselves with an element of life we should be well familiar with as we waste it freely in this thread:
TIME

How long does it take to bring a social democratic government to power? Well, in ideal circumstances the wait is maybe 4-5 years. Indeed in New Zealand I believe it can be as low as 3. How long does it take to establish the underlying forces to bring such change about? In the worst circumstances the Labour party in Britain was out of power from 1979 to 1997, so 18 years build-up. (Although not a SocDem government incoming. "13 wasted years" would apply for Labour 1951-1964", Australia's party may have been out of power longer - from the 50s to the 70s if I recall rightly. So we'll say 20 years is a good round figure.)

How long does it take to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism on a lasting and stable basis? Well, I mean, if we take the Russian revolution and civil war, we'll say 5 years too. That's a very optimistic projection (and didn't leave a lasting, stable basis, or depending on your view even really abolish capitalism) - but how long did the buildup for that take? Well, the forces inside Russia were germinating for a long time. I won't be so strawmanish as to calculate it against when Capital was written, but certainly more than 20 years of Tsarist mismanagement to bring about revolution. China? Again, at the very minimum more than 20 years. We'll say (for laziness sake)

But remember, that's just the matter of revolution - and none of those has worked yet. So, on timescale terms we can definitely say that socialism is a long term goal, whereas implementing a social democratic government is very often a short term goal, and given all the inherent problems of capitalism the two can be essentially detached from one another with exception to vulgar accelerationism. It's absolutely obscene to propose that since it would only yield "minor" improvement in the widest possible systematic view, it's not worth 15 minutes in a polling booth to go and put a Sanders or Corbyn figure in power. The alternative to short term governance by the left wing of capital is short term governance by the right wing of capital, not socialism. Socialism is the long term alternative to capital.

The purpose of reformism as I am so keen to emphasise is not to abolish capitalism via the ballot box, but to provide alcohol and painkillers to the victims of capitalism while socialists organise against capitalism more widely. Indeed, with any sense of time it is entirely possible to be a Socialist Social Democrat - rather than a LARPing Trotskyite who feels it's a complete necessity to make Rosa Luxemburg jokes in person while proclaiming their socialism is evidenced by their desire to spend more on the NHS, before fucking off to give the party a kick in the balls by writing about how - really - a Corbyn government wouldn't be that great so socialists should throw their vote away.

IN POG FORM

You can put a tax on inanimate objects.

I agree that they deserve criticism and to have their feel held to the fire when they reel back from progressive policies

But holy shit what else do we have right now, especially for someone living in Burgerland. I hate Sander's stance on Isreal, I think his healthcare plan is limp dicked capitulation and his policies are more of a bandaid on a broken system than anything that will save it, but when every other successful politician is as far right economically as Regan, why wouldn't I want to support them other than from an accelerationist standpoint?

*Leftist, not progressive. Long day, sorry.

Succdems betrayed the 1848 revolution too.

Your days are numbered, fascist.

In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels support social democrats and even bourgeois movements in other countries, whatever form progressivism takes, depending on the circumstances of that country. The distinction they make though is when those movements stop becoming revolutionary or even progressive and seek to maintain the status quo.

In that event, you need to examine the class character of the socdem or party in question. Are they bourgeois, or travaileur? Do they have a radical platform that their incrementalism is in service toward? What's their history of revolutionary action? During unrest, did they side with the proles or with the managers? Do they lick the nuts of cops and beg for their votes and support? Etc.

Ideally then, you'd support succdems not because of whatever piddling reform they're promising this election cycle, but because their program will either materially advance the circumstances of the proletariat, or the cause of class struggle overall. Social Democracy should be viewed as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. If a socdem is the best possible choice in an election, then go with the socdem. Just be aware that bourgeois politics are a trap, and that any socdem party is likely to have a strong petite-bourgeois element, and that the petite-bourgeois are more terrified of the workers rising up and "taking everything they've earned" than they are of fascists sweeping into power.

Strategically supporting social democrats is a valid and potentially useful strategy, but never imagine that they aren't turncoats that are trying to preserve capitalism as much as if not more than they are trying to bring about socialism.

This is a big red flag that everything after is going to be a pile of bullshit.

literally no one that isn't an accelerationist can refute this

most of the "lol voting sux" types just want to look like a cool kid cynical purist. Their refusal to vote is more a fashion statement than an actual political act

Well, if it's anything to consider, the most concrete example of why reformism doesn't work is what happened in Brazil.

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"with friends like this who needs enemies?"

The thing is to vote for an actual anti-capitalist party that wants to have a socialist revolution not a party committed to capitalism with a human face. It's like Lenin said reforms come out of the revolutionary struggle if you go in with your merely on achieving some reforms then your gonna be disappointed.

friendly reminder that rosa had it coming

Your conception of social democracy and welfare capitalism is seriously fucked.

Also:
marxists.org/archive/draper/1973/xx/microsect.htm

what happened is we let them live too long

nothing funnier than reddit "anarchists" supporting bernie. or chomsky and hillary for taht matter like wut lel

A fascist satellite state.

Didn't Dimitrov advocate collaboration with socdems against fascism ?

Burgerland is so deprived of class consciousness that SocDem policies are practically revolutionary by their political standards. Transition. Babies gotta eat mush before they can learn to chew steak.

And they say liberals aren't leftist.

As always, the cuck is going strong with leftism.

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nah we'd rather just ruin it haha

Hi, Holla Forums

Yep, all shades but just whitey and black.

to be fair,
pick one

why do students larp as the proletariat again? even when they get their degrees it's just in complaining usually then they become neet bloggers, so they don't even have any relationship to production at all as far as i can tell. fuck students.

Small reminder

Except in Russia, China, and at one point historically like 40% of the worlds landmass was under socialist governments that came to power thru revolution

Ah yes, the famous Russian SFSR. Wonder how they're getting along nowadays…
Or perhaps Dengism will light the way. I do love a bit of socialism minus socialist characteristics, so I do.

many students work you stupid fuck

Sure you do buddy. Making shitty coffees for each other to buy questionable Chinese cathinones is not real labor.

...

First of all, they're not social democrats. They're socialists with a reformist agenda.

Second, Marx, Engels and Lenin supported reformist projects where that was possible. Revolution occurs only in extreme harsh conditions, and to wait for the ideal conditions of revolution without doing anything is garbage praxis.

Kill yourself.

so why don't they want to abolish capitalism?

At least you're finally exposing yourself as edgy liberals once and for all

Full blown communism on a massive scale isn't a viable option yet for cultural and economic reasons.

You need to shut the fuck up with your teen "widsom" and support actual socialist countries

youtube.com/watch?v=p8EpaAWaOvg

They do.
But the election is tomorrow and the structures to abolish capitalism have not yet been built. It does no harm to go and vote.

Social Democracies have been in charge at various times and in places like Iceland for an extended period of time for the last 30 years and yet capitalism not only still exists but is worse than it's ever been. Please tell me why they are taking their sweet time

If this was the case there would be even more socialism or at least social democracy than there was 50 years ago and there's far less. The SocDem countries have actually been gradually caving to the capitalists over the last decade or so.

Literally everything you say is backwards

Because the purpose of social democrats in power isn't to abolish capitalism. It's to make it less shit and miserable until it can be abolished.
The real question is: Why are icelandic socialists so useless? Why haven't they organised? They only had to go out and vote once every few years, what the fuck were they doing the rest of the time?

Social Democracy is a division of Labour problem for the left, and it's not the people on the social democratic side of that divide who've spent decades masturbating. Infighting, being infiltrated, compromising, resigning and appearing dead in rural areas, yes, but masturbating - never.

That's funny considering you just said they were socialists

So they are not revolutionary and thus not socialists. They are social democrats. Otherwise known as welfare capitalists.

Social Democracy is a division of Labour problem for the left, and it's not the people on the social democratic side of that divide who've spent decades masturbating. Infighting, being infiltrated, compromising, resigning and appearing dead in rural areas, yes, but masturbating - never.

You literally masturbated so hard you let the Nazis come to power fam

They are. (Or more strictly, they can be), they're just working towards a different task at present.
This doesn't follow. You can want and pledge full support for socialist aims while devoting the bulk of your time to another task. Nobody would deny that a bus driver can be a socialist despite the fact the vast bulk of his time is dedicated to driving a bus while capitalism lingers.

The real question - from both the social democrat and the bus driver - is what the fuck are these righteous socialists doing with their time? Perhaps they expect all of us to spontaneously have an epiphany and stop showing up. That ought to do it.

Ah yes, it was the social democrats who rejected alliance with the Social Fascists

A better phrasing of this - in terms of the rhetorical intent of the question - is "What the fuck do all these righteous socialists expect us to do instead?"

Although I dread the answers I'll get here, because it'll be some glurge like "read a book" that advances no serious cause on the individual level while helping the reader pass purity tests, and as the left wing of capital starts navel gazing the right wing of capital gets on with making capitalism even shittier - but never quite pushing things so far as to incite insurrection.

Glad we got that straightened out

Yes but this is because the bus driver under capitalism must still drive his bus to survive. Social democratic officials gain access to priveleged positions where they can directly influence how the country operates and rally the masses on a regular basis. They end up only influencing how the country operates to better perpetuate and make capitalism run more smoothly and almost never rally the masses except to re-elect them to continue to support capitalism.


The fact that the Left has its own failings which currently have not produced a revolutionary situation does not justify Social Democrats defense of capitalism as a "good system that just needs some reforms" nor does it make them socialists.

It WAS the social democrats who rejected an alliance with the Communists and used the military repeatedly to crush any working class orgs that didn't support social democracy, thus giving the Right in the Reichstag huge opportunities to fuck over the German workers, including tolerance of Not Socialism.

They're socialists if they want to abolish capitalism. The fact they don't LARP towards that end means nothing.
The social democrat must keep his bus company nationalised if he's to survive.
See Tony Benn (a man for whom I have great respect) for what happens when you try using your position as a social democratic politician to rally the masses. Lovely TV pictures, a great day out… and the continued existence of capitalism.
That's not necessarily the justification.
Capitalism is a shit system that needs abolished, but until it can be abolished we might as well make it less miserable and save the few we can.
Unless your solution to a broken leg is to just say "Well, it'll heal in a few months - no need for painkillers, they won't aid the healing process."
Yes, After Hitler, our turn - that famous Social Democratic slogan.
although it bloody well should have been given the state of the postwar world.

Social democracy is no longer possible. That's the point. It's not that we should hate social democrats because they're only gone go half-way. Instead, the fact is that to willingly divert the working-class into a project that is no longer realizable (the welfare state is everywhere in retreat after the fall of mass industrial capital) and in such a way that doesn't build its autonomous power, antagonism, and organization is to be objectively against the movement towards communism.

Which is what we want right, the path we can take as communists to move the working-class in its own struggles towards communist measures. Not charity work, not moralizing slavishness that just wants to appear as if it cares–but COMMUNISM.

I mean, again, the vast majority of the working class don't spend 5 years working for social democracy. They vote, once, on a single day. (Except in stupid countries like France.)

If that's the most political engagement the working class see, that's an indictment of far more than the doorknocking Blairite vermin in safe seats.

woah

The decomposition of the industrial capital–welfare state–working class post-war relation was totally because some communists didn't want to vote for socialists and social democrats. Totally. Let's ignore that socialists won in France and Italy during the same period and still presided over the same retreat of the working class and the dominance of capital.

You people are insufferable.

Socialists won in France and Italy… and whoa.. French Trade Unions are much stronger than the vestigial entities that exist in Britain… Whoa… 🤔

The point wasn't that the breakdown of the postwar consensus was inevitable, but that certain disastrous elements of letting the right manage that breakdown could have been prevented. The consensus had already come apart under Callaghan. (Who was making public spending cuts and gambled everything on a "Cling on until the oil arrives" strategy.) But Britain could be a country with a much stronger employment base, a much greater housing stock (simply by not adopting a universal right to buy), and much more to show for having struck oil. (Currently all it has to show for it is a giant - deserved - chip on the shoulder of Scottish Nationalists.)

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"Reformism" in the sense we use for Social-Democrats didn't even attain this meaning until the Second International, which is after Marx's death. You're projecting an anachronistic meaning to a common term.

And if you think Marx was against reforms, you're making it obvious to everybody that you didn't even read the Manifesto. And here's a little bit of thought on the subject from late Marx that you might want to let sink:

Being a NazBol is like openly admitting you have brain damage, tbh.

no, porky shill. it's a slow, gradual transition from cancer capitalism to communism without the need to wage an imperialist war - and most importantly, it is democratic, that is, the people actually decided to go that path and are not forced to do it.

that's right, i'm actually a communist rather than a socialist.

no, i'm not and you are a fucking porky shill shitting his pants because real social democracy is on the rise rise even in burgerland and you know that it's never anarkiddies and other larpers but real social democrats (no the bourgeois liberals under false flag such as spd, ps and nulabour) who are the ones who are actually stopping you from exploiting and making the life of workers worse every day because we did did that already. without social democracy there wouldn't be worker's rights and proletarians would still not have the right to vote and strike and we wouldn't have universal healthcare either.

also good job on infiltrating the mod team, porky shill. i can tell you are there because you changed the flag of social democracy to a blatant, heinous lie which is why i dot not use it anymore. AGAIN: IT'S NOT A ROSE AND REACTIONARIES KILLED ROSA LUXEMBURG WHO WAS A SOCIAL DEMOCRAT HERSELF, LIKE EVERY GERMAN LEFTIST OF THAT TIME.

no

In 1981. We're talking about 1981.
You can dispute that they're socialists, but take it up with instead of me.

Reformism a liberal solution? This is what happens when kids try to play radicals online and never bother studying our history. Reformism is still an strategy to arrive at Socialism, so to call it liberal is just plain idiotic. And sure, yell and cry about how the social-democratic parties became part of the system, completely lost their way and didn't achieve their intended goal, but can't you accuse the revolutionaries of the same thing?

I mean, Communist parties who got into power also failed to create Socialism anywhere. And is a French social-democrat defending capitalism really any worse than Stalin and Bukharin going to the kulaks with the slogan "get rich!"?

Most Revolutionary Marxists of the pre-LARPing era would say otherwise, since they consider it a divergence in tactics not in goals. But suit yourself.

This is not even a position Social-Democrats hold. You're acting like Social-Democrats are people who pick up right-wing definitions of Socialism and start from there. I never thought I'd say this, as a Leninist myself, but dear lord read Bernstein.

Also, what Socialism is and isn't as a historical stage is beyond our current concerns. Many "marxists" nowadays have picked up fixed, abstract definitions of what Socialism is and use it to virtually neglect Marx, because theorizing about a particular ideal arrangement, calling it Socialism and making it our sole aim is the definition of Utopian Socialism, and he was part of the generation that reacted against that. Socialism is a process, a movement, the progressive emancipation of labour from alienation, not a specific model to be attained. The working class empowers itself with all tools available under Capitalism so it can become the dominant class one day, like capitalists did under Feudalism.

To simply dismiss all this struggle and repeat again and again "uh…. Socialism is actually when workers control the means of production" or some other rehearsed phrase completley devoid of immediate political consequences violates the entire point.

This is just classic pseudo-revolutionary delusion, from the adventurism to the evergreen fantasy that the working class is with us and ready to rise up at any moment, they just need a spark! Dear lord, user, if this was the 70's you'd be part of one of those tankie clown acts like the SLA that thought the people were just one bombing or shooting away from rising up.

People in the US who lean further Left of their government want precisely what Social-Democracy offers them: a regulated economy, welfare, shorter working hours, labour rights, heavy taxation of the wealthy, etc. Our goal is to explain to them why these demands are insufficient, not to fool ourselves into thinking that they're Bolsheviks in desguise waiting for the right student group to shout the right revolutionary cliches.

Socialists who say the capitalist system needs to be abolished now just because Marx considered it an endgoal are the equivalent of Anarchists who want the state immediately abolished, and call Communists who talk about a stateless society and yet make use of it hypocrites. They simply don't understand Marx.

Frankly, the 20th century and western leftist experience give us way more reason to ruthlessly criticize tankies and pseudo-Insurgents than the naive but ultimately harmless social-democrats. And sure, you can ruthlessly criticize them, but expect to be criticized back.

I think you over estimate the amount of succdems in America. Also while there are a dgood amount. Of people who supported Bernie that ended up going far left, a good amount of people just remained liberal and ended up going "Hillary is the lesser evil" in the end

(cont.)
Marx distanced himself from any person who could be considered a predecessor to Reformism, it is true. But let's not forget that he also distanced himself from all sorts of revolutionaries, now mostly forgotten to history, that advocated inconditional revolutionary action and abstention from bourgeois politics, including the likes of Felix Pyat and his group of delusional insurgents, Blanqui, utopians, the anarchists, etc.

Are we now pretending that he didn't support the Chartists? Or that when the Socialist League was splitting between pro and anti-Parliamentarians, Engels and the Marx family didn't take the side of the latter? And his conflict with Bakunin is nothing but a conflict of Marxism with abstentionism, and in that he stressed again and again that those who refuse to work within the system pose a great danger to Socialism.

Here's a Marx I wish you had 'actually fucking read', OP:

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/politics-speech.htm

But we have never said that the means to arrive at these ends were identical. We know the allowance that must be made for the institutions, manners and traditions of different countries. We do not deny that there exist countries like America, England, and, if I knew your institutions better, I would add Holland, where the workers may be able to attain their ends by peaceful means. If that is true we must also recognize that inmost of the countries of the Continent force must be the lever to which it will be necessary to resort for a time in order to attain the dominion of labour.
marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1872/hague-conference/introduction.htm

(cont.)

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/

(ask yourself: why would he believe that if voting does nothing?)
- MECW vol 11 pg 335

marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/71_07_18.htm

Revolution is what happens when the working class is empowered, educated, and represented to the point of being able to wrestle political control from the bourgeoisie. It's the final stage of a gradual struggle of small petty conquests and victories, which are not an end in themselves (as a social-liberal would say) or a definitive path to socialism (as a reformist would say) but part of a series of struggles in many different fronts that culminates with a proletariat confident and strong enough to make a Revolution. You can't skip these stages any more than you can skip historical stages.

I think you over estimate the amount of succdems in America. Also while there are a dgood amount. Of people who supported Bernie that ended up going far left, a good amount of people just remained liberal and ended up going "Hillary is the lesser evil" in the end

1918 Germany
1945-48 Italy
1968-1980 France
1967-1979 Italy


The goal is the dissolution of capitalist political power and the construction of working class dictatorial organs.

Please somehow convince me how we get from Bernie to soviets.

lmao. You people are a waste of time.

Look at all the good social democracy and the French "Socialist" Party is doing France:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-29/the-french-president-is-spending-his-summer-fighting-unions

aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/01/france-growing-income-inequality-problem-201512311224855101.html

youtube.com/watch?v=8Vy4Id8UZ40

youtube.com/watch?v=8k3XPYVlhng

...

Guarantee you this poster is the type to accuse others of being dogmatic to a certain theorist (Marx, Lenin, et cetera) but is now maximally using no arguments except another theorist's commentary on their particular situation, adding nothing new.

But yeah dude, of course, let's keep having people vote for SocDems. That golden age of social democracy Marx never saw that fucked up more of the workers' movement than almost any given world war and centralized more capital than ever before into our post-modern late capitalism. The revolution will start after we elect Sanders in 2020!

SocDems did more damage than anyone else

Well it's a good thing they're out of power then, isn't it. :^)

I'm actually of a Mélenchon bent, but whatever. The last thing I need is to try and teach people nuance.

Leftists tended to use "social democrat" because terms like "socialist" applied to anyone that was for progressive causes, even those not explicitly anti-capitalist. "Social democrat" was an umbrella term that covered numerous theories, which is divorced from its current use.

Rosa's blood will never wash from your hands, fascist

What could possibly go wrong?

I'm glad to see where you stand so that I don't have to take you seriously anymore

Are all tankies like literally valley girls?

See

before writing ridiculous caricatures.


1. I like how centrists whinge he didn't endorse Jupiter strongly enough, while you're now pretending he gave wholehearted endorsement
2. This is a trap, because the alternative - once we're into the second round - is endorsing Le Pen so you can cream yourself to Social Fascism confirmed!!

In a no-win election a-la Britain's 2001, I endorse either voting for sucky but kindhearted non-socdem parties (Charles Kennedy's Lib-Dems.), local independents with no hope of winning, or other contextual outsiders (Scottish National Party/Plaid Cymru.), but like I said the last fucking thing we need is nuance when defending the general concept of voting in a fucking election that will happen regardless.

See? Arguing against arguments no one made. The only way they can sustain their teenage revolutionary fantasies.

You can explain where they are wrong, quote the theorists they pretend to have read to justify their ideas saying they are wrong, point towards the historical events where their strategies failed to work and what do you get in return?


No matter what, they just parrot the standard "college kid radical" lines, refuse to answer your arguments, refuse to read, etc. They just keep doing this until they're like 24 and then they put the "yeah I was a communist once! so embarrassing hahaha! " persona.

They're idiots.

...

Symb reasoning, everybody.

You people are beyond retarded, you are more worried about your ego than the working class.

If you make them one-and-the-same party it seems there are only really 3 routes to go down
#1 The party abandons anti-capitalism, and probably social democracy as well as rightist infiltrators drag it along.
#2 The party performs terribly in elections, not even finding itself lucky enough to hold the balance of power
#3 The party gyrates wildly between #1 and #2

You do need genuinely anti-capitalist parties out there, even if only to occasionally hold the balance of power (something the CPGB really fucked up, for example. But even there that probably requires incredibly strong local strategy more than necessarily strong communist ideas.)

Holy shit, tolerating Sanders support and the culture war was a mistake from the very beginning jesus fucking christ

Spotted the larping Democrat

Wow, you're Holla Forums-tier tactics now my man. Maybe you should just leave the thread and rethink things for a while?

you're using*

Creasing.
You're talking about the leftypol that regurgitated the "Labour were genuine socialists until Blair came along!" meme.
ROSE

Sure I'm the larper when you would let people suffer because it infringes your ideologies.

It's true though. This board was overwhelmingly anti-social democracy about a year or two ago and only supported Sanders for the OW shift and culture war. I'm not sure if we just let in too many redditors or what but it is not the same, regarding tolerance of social democracy, as it was before.

This guy is going to hit all the Holla Forums notes, won't he?

t. anarchists

When did you start browsing Holla Forums?

Stop embarrassing yourself, retard.

you have no clue what you are talking about.
there were no "progressive" causes back then, shillary shill. that word is rather specific to the anglo world and even there it's a fairly recent term if i'm not mistaken. buts it's just another word for bourgeois-liberal.
there are no leftists who are not anti-capitalist.
yes, but you "progressive" liberals never belonged to it.
because liberals are false flagging since 100 years under the banner of social democracy. we need to take back from them, because them holding it sullies the legacy of every social democrat who went to prison or was killed by the likes of noske.
actually, ebert and noske, who are to blame for the killing of rosa, were prototypes of you modern "progressives". you make me sick.

It's funny how whenever he was a massive spike in people acting like redditors the accusations of people being from Holla Forums also goes through the roof.

fugg

bullshit.

Lmao. I've been saying this before but lately it seems everyone's been doing the worst fantasies attributed to left communists themselves, while also likely at the same time hating them (funny thing to note, just on the side). It's like the self-satire jpegs of the ultraleft position I've made in Paint when drunk and shitpost with have become a reality.

Anyways, how retarded are you for not voting SocDem when it's the best you can get for just personal survival? The whole point is that social democracy isn't radical and taking it as the lesser evil has historically only been a hampering on the workers' movements (usually unions, who double down and act as conservative agents of capital versus the "progressive" SocDems").

But really, you should not be a retard and vote SocDem just get your socialized medicine and the best help you can get to get by day to day (without the local SocDems here I'd still be on sleep for dinner at least three times a week). Just don't pretend it's revolutionary, or that it in any way does anything significant for the communist movement (if anything it's done the opposite, but it's hardly as if the right wing of capital being in power would have been better for that at all).

It's a simple question, fam. It'd be a little silly if the guy complaining about people complaining about redditors was a newfag redditor

This is true tho. Bernie dicksucking was not very significant during the election period, though most of the board tolerated it or silently stood by noticing that he had some based moments. Then, almost immediately after it became apparent that he bended over for the Democrats and slowly but surely become more and more liberal almost all of the enthusiasm was gone. Still, almost every burger here would rather have seen him in the WH over Trump as I said. If anything, everyone on the board would've, because even though he's shown to be a cuck for Israel and supported a lot of the Democrat positions on war over time, he'd likely not even be nearly as bad as Trump or Hillary for world geopolitics.

How can you be a leftist and call people niggers?

… because this is something Holla Forums does?

And it's not an accusation of literally being Holla Forums, just of sharing with them the same bad debate techniques of pretending the original board consensus was with you, as if 1. anyone gave a shit and 2. it is true just because you said it is.

And for that matter, Holla Forums literally did that when they were trying to sell us the whole "support Trump for accelerationism!" thing.

By spending far too much time on imageboards.

[citation needed]

You may not be from reddit, but your soul is reddit. You love to space like reddit, and deny the fact the majority of the board wanted Trump over Hillary - truly the work of the eternal redditor.

That wasn't even a Holla Forums thing. That was completely authentic stupidity based on taking Zizek's opinion on Trump beyond what he meant to stupid territories (the guy was a Sanders fan or at least thought he was doing as I said in ; signaling a shift in politics and showing, even if he's just a SocDem, the type of politics the Left needs to (re)adopt). This, combined with the "left-accelerationism" meme were what produced that cancer. No Holla Forums needed for this at all.

nobody does.
in the last 150 years the only leftists that actually have achieved something real for the communist movement are social democrats and tankies. while tankies suffered a severe defeat in 1990 workers can still enjoy achievements of social democracy today, although i'm not sure how long. self-proclaimed revolutionaries tend to be loud mouths or stupid larpers who make the situation much worse with utter idiocy such as the g20 riots.

No we fucking can't. I live in a "socdem" country and it succumbed to neoliberalism decades ago.

In what way? As a screenshot of Marx in the manifesto says, all SocDems have done is extend the wage-labouring condition by making it more comfortable in appearance to revolting, which has as the same passage says ensure that capitalism became much stronger and lives much longer, and harder to take down. That doesn't help the workers' movement (communism) at all.?

I'm the source, I'm the board historian.


Calling people out on "reddit spacing" is itself the one of the biggest marks of the newcomer.


Ah, are you one of those mythical retards that came to leftypol because you were sold on the whole National Bolshevism thing?

...

Nah, you can tell when we're being spontaneously stupid and when there's a concerted effort to push something here. It comes out of nowhere and dies out of nowhere, more or less like Bookchin did.

so do i.
same here. but you still take for granted the right to strike and vote, universal healthcare, payed vacations and other things.
also, social democracy itself is not to blame for your country turning neoliberal/neofeudal. blame porky propaganda and stupid voters for that.

aren't boomers supposed to be rabidly anti-nazi thanks to the spooks they've ingested their entire lives?

And I'm the Queen of England

I think social democracy can be ok but only if it has syndicalist characteristics and tries to make coops but otherwise, nah.

Wow, newfags much? Reddit much?

*blame capitalism. Which Social Democracy wants to protect

Okay

Oh so you mean socialism?

*twitch*

This kind of academic purism is cancer.

Supporting candidates with socialist positions raises awareness of socialism. Trump was not a Nazi, but his election made white nationalism a hot topic and transformed the alt right into a somewhat significant political force.

Even if an explicitly socialist candidate is not elected, their news coverage acts as a vector for socialists to enter into public debate. Democratic politics is, at minimum, advertising.

i'm not with marx there, marx didn't predict hitler. i'd argue that if you don't work for worker's rights withing capitalism capitalism inevitably turns into hitler style fascism or 1984 or brave new world. do you believe it would be easier to reach communism from within a complete fascist dystopia or from (in comparison) moderate capitalism where leftist thought is at least slightly implemented? do you think Holla Forums would exist under fascism?

Nice name, faggot

no. who the fuck told you that utter bullshit?

That's been the Marxist argument against social democracy since fucking Marx, fam

Social Democrats

That isn't what I meant. I just meant that syndicalism is for the most part anti-capitalist and at least in its rhetoric seeks to establish a type of government where unions run things. So that +plus co-ops would be pretty much socialism or at least a socialist government.

I didn't mean social democracy with a few co-ops here and there is socialism

Marx didn't predict the following either: mass-centralization of capital through Keynesian policy and the (post-Bismarckian, very robust) welfare state, the confluence of labour and capital, the domestication of the proletariat and rendering superfluid of the bourgeoisie, the development of capital as a force going beyond automated subject but leading automated subject, et cetera. That doesn't stop us from using many of the tools he outlined; historical materialism, materialist dialectic, critique of political economy, and drawing new conclusions from the present state of things, as you say.

That's not at all how fascism came about. Fascism was born from a two-fold failure: 1) of the communist movements' inability to secure power anywhere solidly but in Russia and consequently in Europe dying to social democrats and 2) of social democrats themselves being incapable of consolidating the contradictions of capital into the huge crises of capital starting in the early '20s.

Quite ironically, the rebirth of social democracy post-fascism again suppressed the real demands of the workers or even communist activity and made sure that capital became so centralized that the second thing you outline, busybody totalitarian State where everything is privatized and the State's activity is relegated to mostly just defending that, was the product of that as well. Social democracy failed again to solve the crises of capital and this time without a communist movement to suppress(*) or any success of fascism to reach out to to try that again, the bourgeoisie coalesced under a return to classical pre-Keynesian liberalism but with a new flavor: neoliberalism, which started putting the final nails in the coffin towards that end.

Seeing as how fascism failed even harder than Keynesianism at securing its control and its internal collapse is largely what made the Allied economies develop much better than the fascist economies, I don't even think there'd be much of a difference. Given the choice, I'd much rather the world had kept on going SocDem after killing every workers' movement, but that would require a reality in which social democracy didn't happily invite fascism to take over anyways after killing us. So yeah, gimme that SocDem over fascism if possible, but I doubt it's possible in our current universe.

*: and there were actual workers' movements alive during the end times of social democracy and the first ushering in of neoliberalism. Again, the then still in charge SocDems repressed everything and handed over the keys to the Pélerin sycophants to do their thing.

when marx was still alive "marxists" did not exist. in germany every leftist was a social democrat and communist back then. marx just attacked social democrats that were not radical enough for his taste.

Also, did you miss the fact that Marx wrote the manifesto for the communist party?

That was mostly written by Engels actually

Social Democrats proving once and for all that they are liberals and not socialist

Holla Forums has become Holla Forums at this point, I swear.

Also there were plenty of intelligent posts that articulated opinions just fine. You just think this is the one because it agrees with you

Yes, let's abolish capitalism by not doing anything and whining about it on an online forum, rather than putting policy in place that will make socialism more likely.

...

It almost certainly hasn't regressed to a pre-SocDem state, even if you're now living in the ruins of one.
I mean for god's sakes even Thatcher and Blair couldn't destroy the NHS.


The only thing more obscene than proposing that we make capitalism more comfortable at the cost of delaying revolution is the proposal to make capitalism more painful so that revolution comes sooner.


Please tell me why you support Paedophile rights groups? If you didn't you wouldn't be in this thread, you'd be out there reading theory against them - isn't that right?

Both Bernie and Melenchon capitulated completely the moment they lost the election, and history has shown that if the choice comes between revolution or reaction, socdems choose reaction (for a commentary of this by red Santa himself, read the 18th Brumaire, or just google Rosa). If you want to vote, fine, but at least vote for actual communists

Then Trump wins for sure. Good job.


The Nordic countries you probably hate will become communist before America will. Watch.

This isn't the election anymore, fam. Do you prefer the Yaas Queen to Trump?
I live in a Nordic country, fam, and the socdems have done nothing but fuck us over. The Nordic countries are the last places a revolution is going to happen

That's not at all my point. Look at the rest of my posts: whenever the workers' movement was full of activity, and was in fact finding itself fully at odds with social democracy towards its ends, I would fully stand with the workers' movement and do everything to make you and your ilk go extinct. Why? Look at this post:

By effectively hampering communism whenever it tried to go beyond social democracy, by handing the keys to or even guiding or going along inside with the fascists and capital over the corpses of the workers' movements. At this point, yeah, you still exist and I, as a worker with no mass movement he can solidly find power in in order to overthrow capital, am basically gonna be very happy to give you my vote and suck your dick so I can maybe get a better life now that my continued existence as a wage-labourer in insured.

I'm looking for a German Spiegel article that features interviews with pre-fascism SPD members saying they were treated like royalty in the NSDAP government. Outside of those who got that as thanks for helping fascism take over without much resistance, almost none of the most influential social democrats really got anything done to them at all. The fucking Asserites got neutered in their political activity because they actually tried to influence the ruling party towards something actually anti-capitalist, while the social democrats kicked back, seeing their vision unfold except autocratically and without the hassle of representative democracy necessary. I mean, we all know this, but seeing them literally say it themselves, how happy they were and all would perhaps really help you smell the roses on that one.

I'm looking at The Communist Manifesto: A Roadmap to History's Most Important Political Document.

In section III of the manifesto, Marx describes several types of "socialism." Feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, German socialism, etc. On page 72 of my edition the notes say:

In the section on "Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism," Marx says
>To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.

Could you stop being retarded even for a single second?
Progressive causes such as those listed above were not necessarily anti-capitalist, nor were they leftists. It's why Marx says in section IV that while Communists might make common cause with them for progressing the status of the proletariat, they never hesitate to emphasize that the proletarian cause of international emancipation takes precedence.

It's the entire point of calling themselves Communists instead of Socialists, you buffoon.

Ever more retarded. Can you not fucking read? Do you not have a single ounce of understanding in that hollow skull of yours? "Social Democrat" was the term for differentiating what we call socialists from "progressive liberals."

Even Lenin considered himself a Social Democrat:
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1897/dec/31b.htm
Right in the first paragraph, you fool.

It was left to the liberals because no one else fucking wanted it.
Siding with fascists and constantly betraying the proletariat, always in the service of capital. Some "legacy."

The next time you shoot your mouth off, at least have the decency not to be rude and wrong, you incomprehensible dipshit. You massive fucking moron. You vacuous sodomite. Idiotic child, leave the internet and go read a book so you don't embarrass yourself again.

Literally a CTR argument, thanks for outing yourself

Social Democrat, as that user said, was not what it is today just yet. By the time Lenin and the Bolsheviks gained power they had all denounced social democracy, Lenin the most aggressively. Lenin was NOT a Social Democrat when the revolution occurred. It was on its way by that time to becoming what we know now as social democracy and by the time Weimar Germany was a thing it was pretty much there.

You aren't radicals, you are liberals. Get over it

Oh, I know. I'm just making that point. While theoretically social democrats pose problems "at the end", abandoning them at the mid-term is something even less palatable.

On a tangent back to 1975-81, I find it a very interesting analysis that one of the great failures of the left was to adopt particularly national strategies - Tony Benn's siege economy for example - instead of finding a way to integrate on a regional level. (I mean for example, if somehow the EEC could be integrated to the idea, then how could the EEC pose problems for the PS in 1981? This rests on a lot of situational hypotheticals [not least a Labour win in the UK], but it would be interesting to see some kind of regional level fightback instead of sporadic national attempts at protectionist Keynesianism having their spines snapped. New Zealand, isolated but another example…)

there truly is no hope for the left

Being well read about how shit is produced in the digestive system doesn't really amount to much. Holla Forums is more well read about the particularities of Nazi Germany and Nazism than several people on Holla Forums it doesn't mean Nazism is automatically justified or that we've "lost"

You can also go fuck yourself for making this defeatist post instead of joining in with something constructive against the succdems

Fam it would be something if a revolutionary party got 10-20% of the vote even 5% would be a sign that there's some significant social support for revolution. And I don't know why you think a revolutionary anti-capitalist party would have to abandon its principles or soften its message to win elections. The German communist party got like 33% of the vote and various other European parties got double-digit percentages post-WWII.

The reason they didn't move towards preparation for the revolution (except in the German case, where the Nazis were swept into power) is that the leadership of those parties became revisionist and they didn't want to go in for revolution.

In the Bolshevik case, they would step up their illegal work when they were repressed legally and vice-versa. Electoral politics is supposed to help the revolution.

In any case, a significant portion of the population voting for a radical proletarian party is more likely to make bourgeois parties of whatever hue offer reforms. We shouldn't be deluded into thinking these things come down merely to a 50%+1 victory of a reformist bourgeois "leftist" party or a large enough vote to create a correct governing coalition.

Power is only ceded when there is a radical threat and not by merely winning a majority at the ballot box.

So Bernie denounces Hillary, and then what happens? Oh I know, the law that says he can't run as an independent vanishes, he runs as an independent, Trumpkins decide to vote for a Jewish guy, Clintonites decide they don't really care about the banks that much and vote Bernie, then Bernie wins. Right?

...

Except everyone itt who has ever read anything are repeatedly contradicting their bullshit claims

It's not my fault that electoral politics under capitalism are rigged in the interest of the Ruling Class fam

Also he did all of that shit and the Dems still fucking lost so what's your point

The left's problem in a sentence.
Go ahead, kill the left wing of capital: All you do is ensure the unchallenged ascent to power of the right wing of capital. You've irritated but not wounded the Hydra.

"Theoretically"? Has there been a single instance where social democracy didn't violently suppress the workers' movement when it tried to go beyond it? The only success story, and it is a small one, for the workers' movement in seizing power (even briefly), was through the Bolsheviks, who decidedly broke with the pro-war social democrats, and violently, and as quickly as possible neutered them, fought a civil war and obtained power.

Every other communist movement in Europe got backstabbed by social democracy, truly the left wing of capital, because it was under siege and didn't act in its own interests early enough. The most tragic one, and the first, the KPD at the hands of the SPD, then the PCd'I at the hands of the PSI wing and fascism (in near-cohesion), to the CNT and POUM at the hands of the Spanish republic and then also the Stalinists… Whenever a workers' movement has historically embraced the idea of gradualism with social democratic (left wing of capital) types or even frontism with them, it killed them as soon as the time was ripe.

That's not even a theoretical matter at this point, and you're gonna have to give me a good reason why a future workers' movement shouldn't do what the Bolsheviks did but basically as first thing on the agenda and much more swiftly and precisely, should it actually want to live on and attempt to go truly beyond capital. Literally the only thing social democracy has going for it today is to just vote for it because there's no movement for it to kill, hence we might as well have a more livable wage for the time being.

At this point, the left existed either as the very new and experimental student New Left (utterly ineffectual), in social democrats like you, and the old guard of mostly trade union coalitions who were slightly more conservative than the social democrats and wouldn't cede to their reforms That shit still goes on today in France where unions won't budge even if the fucking PCF (M-L) asks them to with the current neolib government or (supposedly) SocDem government it preceded. Social democracy burried not just a bunch of communists, but it burried itself too: it failed to be a good mode of management for capital beyond a certain point and had to go. Now we have the neolibs in charge, and they don't even pretend to like the communists like you did…

The centre-left's problem in a sentence

I don't know if you've heard of this fam but there's this little thing called principles. If you're willing to turn into a milquetoast liberal in order to get elected, then you can't be trusted to give people communism. Socdems have repeatedly been given the popular mandate to enact socialist policies and have failed each time

Short replies because I'm off to watch Documentaries.


I have strong suspicions that in most instances if they couldn't take out the SocDems, they couldn't take out whoever would be waiting next.


So kill them both at once. Don't spend all your time plotting to stab Mr. Affable in the back.

That's what I just said you dunce.

Truly socdems are the superior-more well read brand of "leftism"

Gee, and you wonder why we don't trust socdems?

Holy shit yeah, there is no hope for a communist movement in the nordic countries any time soon. There are communist parties that are nothing but a bunch of old people drinking coffee and talking about how great Stalin was. There are left wing parties whose only ambition is to dismantle the welfare state at a slower pace than the right wing parties. The left is dying a slow and painful death here with absolutely no vision for the future. Meanwhile right wing consvervatism has a lot of momentum.

I'd rather live in muricah right now tbh (not really but if I as going to join an organization). At least you have DSA, PSL, SAlt, etc, who are optimistic, gaining support and organizing people. Those orgs aren't perfect but at least they're not dying a slow death.

Whenever it was the SocDems that dealt with them, it was the SocDems that were currently the vanguard of capital.

And what is this argument supposed to go towards, really? Am I, as a worker in a significantly large movement vying for a world absent of capital, simply to just lay my arms down here and then and wait to get assraped by you for free? Go down without a fight? Ally myself with you on the basis of weird frontist or gradualist lines until you're 100% sure you can assrape me? This follows the same logic Stalinists had with suppressing the Kronstadt and the Hungarian revolution: "well guys, you're just too left right now, and it probably wouldn't work out, so we're gonna kill you all", or even the Maoist argument for suppressing shit like this when the cultural revolution was actually producing workers that tried to go beyond capital: marxists.de/china/sheng/whither.htm.

I'm not childish enough to reinvoke the "you have Rosa's blood on your hands!" trope most of the time, but with the principles you're espousing right now I'm having a hard time not breaking that rule of mine. Fuck.

Exactly why is he supposedly /ourguy/ again?

I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or what.

That entire point of that whole argument was that the original soc dem poster is trying to take credit for the work of ancient SocDems and that modern socdems are part of some storied tradition, when the reality is that, while they called themselves Social Democrats, they fell under what we would consider different socialist tendencies, and that they called themselves Social Democrats because in the 19th century Socialism too had an entirely different meaning and connotations, mostly which had nothing to do with leftism or the proletarian cause.

Yes, that is my point, thank you. Death to Socdems, communism now, amen.

Sorry fam I guess I misread your post, this thread's been particularly fast so that's my bad

working_class_in_succdem.mp4

youtu.be/LRSsybt9wAo?t=718

It's cool dude, it happens to me too sometimes. You get in the thick of it and sometimes you get blue on blue. No hard feelings.

Not what Mr. Tank said, though.


You can't whine at us for suppressing a doomed revolution when the only alternative is senselessly getting ourselves shot too. Police forces under Social Democratic governments also shoot apolitical madmen who happen to be wearing che T-Shirts.


Fight to win or shut the fuck up in defeat, in short. (With regard to historical struggles.) Nothing is fucking worse than some turn to abstract theoretical scenarios and historical grudges when applied with a concrete situation. Refusing to vote for Jeremy Corbyn over Rosa Luxemburg is irritating madness.

I could probably give much better articulations but frankly I'm too tired and have very little sympathy left at this moment.

That's entirely false.

How has dissidence manifested itself historically? Through organs of politics, of course. Through the popular assemblies, the town halls, the soviets etc. Social Democracy is a dead end because it chooses to operate exclusively within the organs of statecraft. Now, you need the right material conditions for a revolution to take place, but in order to actually take advantage such revolutionary moments you need an intelligentisa (a vanguard, if you would) who's ideas and thoughts resonate with the current moment in time. Leftcoms will accuse me of idealism, but idealism would mean saying that ideas exclusively control and decided things. Rather, it is both ideals and material circumstance that shape our world. I would call this naturalism, not idealism

revolutionary socialism eventually failed to, but you aren't going "revsoc scum reeeee!" There are lessons to be learned from every failure. In the case of reformism it's "you die if you ever pause for a second" but now that we KNOW this it's something we can actually point to, when the public starts going "well you know things are pretty great right now do we really need to change things up any more" you can go "yeah that's what everyone thought in 1970, and look where that led, exactly to the shit that got you all to elect us in the first place."

Being a tankie must be exhausting

Because revolutionary leftism is still in basically the same place as it was, which is to say, with little to no wide scale global relevance or centers of power in meaningful places. However, with the popularity of SocDems like Sanders, Corbyn, etc. in western power centers as well as growth of groups like the DSA there's potential to move people further towards legitimizing SOME form of leftist thought in the wider public consciousness as well as rebuilding unions and passing some reforms that (while not total systematic changes) could alleviate the suffering of the poor and working class in the interim of further organizing.

I don't think non-American posters appreciate how effective Cold War propaganda was/has been at ensuring that anything to the left of corporatism with milquetoast social liberalism is seen as radical and often discredited almost immediately. There's real opportunity and potential here to actually DO something for the people instead of just bitching at one another about our particular flavors of leftism on a Mongolian basket weaving bulletin board. Though I know some would prefer nothing happen at all if it's not strictly to their philosophical specifications, which absolutely discounts the very real consequences for the lives of those impacted by the current structure if allowed to continue while waiting for some "perfect" method or revolution.

kek

Now to criticise your idea.
1. This is fucking bullshit. People are flat out tired of leftist bullshit by this point. They will not settle for aything left of centrism, and you'll be lucky to even get civic nationalism. No, real völkisch linguoenthonationalism is coming now, and no promise of "seizing the means of production" will help when people know the kikes are behind it.

Go read a motherfuckin book

Please explain how you aren't a fucking reactionary. You're worse than the tankies

OP is no more likely to get the revolution off the ground than Succdems.

SocDems did nothing WRONG
Rosa deserved it

Apologize for Rosa

Nah, as I said, the urge to bring back up historical events theatrically or to add any emphasis to the following is pointless: no matter where I'll be, I'll make sure opportunistic alliances of the workers' movement with any wing of capital, your left wing or any other left wing or right wing, are discouraged as much as possible. And we'll see how "doomed" the workers' revolutions really will be, even if it means we'll at best have culled a couple thousand of you class traitors along the way before we go to the grave you'd be sending us to anyways.

bumping this in hope that the leftcomrade will reply to

Has there been an instance where Marxist-Leninist and Maoist parties haven't also suppressed workers' movements who also tried to go beyond them or act independently? The same need to "transcend" social democracy could be leveled at them as well.

i don't mind kautskyist social democrats, being wrong about the ability to bring about socialism at the ballot box isnt that bad to me

people who, like bernie in particular, have no actual intent to massively nationalize industries and expand worker power in a qualitative, irrevocable way (and meaningfully attack capitalism) have shown themselves time and time again useless on paper and worse than useless in practice as they rapidly capitulate to chauvinism and opportunism

jezza falls more in the first category, i think, and i also generally disagree with

You nitpicked two of his points without acknowledging the whole argument, You don't deserve any reply.

Not everyone has time to answer a three-post long wall of text, famalam. If you want people to acknowledge your argument without nitpicking, make it concise. This is an indonesian etch-a-sketch board, not a debate club. Also not the user he was arguing with, just thought he was a whining prick

Who fucking made you boss of this place?

I did. This board is my property

You people somehow managed to do less than Leftcoms bb

wew

Because I only started wanting to strategically shoot revolutionaries ITT, and like most of the left-infighting that's personal instead of political.


I literally made that image btw :^)

Red fascist indeed

...

anyway
personally have never done this.
Also never done this.
Have hinted this because it's a ridiculously tired meme that people straddle between pretending that they're jesting and actually taking seriously. It's made doubly annoying by the fact that LARPers in the Labour party will bring it up if you call yourself a SocDem even though they hold essentially the exact same political views as you. (i.e. vote Corbyn, nationalise the trains, get rid of capitalism eventually.)

I mean, it's not like that was a one off thing. You've been acting bloodthirsty this whole thread (literally arguing "well if it wasn't us someone would have shot them instead"). If you want people to shut about Rosa, stop acting like a Rosa killer.
The fact is that socdems have a pretty bad reputation for siding with reactionaries once the revolution starts. Entryism is fine, voting is fine, but that eventually has to lead to some sort of revolution.

Garfield always cracks me up - he loves lasagna… but HATES Mondays! What's up with that!? Hahaha

We can tolerate them for now, i.e. Berniebros, Corbyn and Melenchon, but we should definitely distance ourselves as far as possible from their positions.

Don't forget Greece fell for the sucDem trap, and got 10 times worse the result. Keep hammering socdems that voting will never solve anything.

Hardly. You can tell when I'm tired of things because that's when I start acting bloodthirsty.

That's not bloodthirst, that's a lazy attempt to encourage some practical reflection. "Muh SocDem betrayal!" Is the communist version of "Social Democracy would have survived if the OPEC embargo never happened!", except that people genuinely believe it rather than using it as a quick political argument or easy departure point for an alternate history where the USA becomes an Islamic dictatorship under Nixon.


Best post ITT.

We're at a pretty unique time in history where the neoliberals may completely sperg out at SocDems. People say social democracy has been used to hand out scraps when things are getting dire - but I don't think they'll even be happy with this and could exacerbate the situation for themselves.

It's not our fault that we didn't realize you had PMS, fam
Except for the fact that it actually was a socdem betrayal and socdems did actually kill revolutionaries who were a bit too radical for their tastes. The fact that other reactionaries would have done the same doesn't make you not a reactionary. Imagine what would happened if the SPD had actually went "you know, we're cool with this". After all, the usual socdem argument is that they're pushing for reform because the revolution isn't around the corner, so when the revolution is actually there they should be happy, right?

It looks like it. I imagine if Jeremy Corbyn gets into power and does anything new, any left wing policy that is substantial and wasn't there at the height of social democratic power, the neoliberals might lose their shit and start declaring that there needs to be terrorism to stop the dictator.

Wait, I thought Melenchon was a democratic socialist? Ie like Orwell or Chavez

Considering there's an internal Labour document floating around with the title of something like "Alternate Forms of Ownership" suggesting nationalised automated industry I think we may see that implosion in the next few years.

Americans are assblasted that
A) Bernie lost
B) Bernie is shit compared to Euro socdems
So they all get lumped in together because they can't have healthcare so this means they're eternally assravaged revolutionaries and nothing less, pure coincidence they're 8 years away from anyone remotely social democratic getting near the WH, even though we all know they would have voted for him in a heartbeat. Some of the fuckers are still whining about people here being for Trump over Hillary.

God
I was expecting the punchline of the pic thinking it was like pic related