How to understand social democracy in our contemporary moment?

[Colfax]

For generations radicals have argued that social democracy is a simple reformism that saps organizational energies away from a genuinely revolutionary project. Yet since the 1980s with the rise of neoliberalism commentators have continually proclaimed the crisis of social democracy (and, admittedly, the Left as a whole). In country after country the center-left has dedicated itself not to 'progressive' economic reform, but to a more restrained liberalization than that offered by the center-right coupled with less reactionary social policies. In your view, has this changed how we ought to think of social democracy in relation to the classic texts of radical theory? Does it make a difference whether or not social democracy promises action in the direction of social justice or the simple conservation of elements of an already existing welfare state?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

It is a product of them serving the interests they served all along, at least since the late 1800's and first years of the 1900's. They go with the times. Their reactionary nature has just become so much more pronounced and obvious even to most casual observers after the crisis of capitalism that began in the 1970's and continue to this day.

[Nevsky]

I think that social democracy is increasingly proving itself to be what radicals predicted a hundred years ago. In Italy for example the social democratic party's true anti-revolutionary, capitalist nature gets more evident with every passing year. What once was Gramsci's PCI (Communist Party of Italy, criticized by anti-revisionists as reformist even back in the 70s) became PD (Social Democratic Party) after the USSR collapsed. The "leftism" of said party consisted only of "opposing" the neoliberal Berlusconi regime for the past 20 years. It is evident, however, that they like being the "opposition". They earn good money and have nothing to do but sitting there, bashing Berlusconi without providing a serious alternative. By now, even the ordinary italian citizen has realized the social democratic cowardice and hypocrisy, thus, they ended up voting for a comedian's protest party...

[Blake's Baby]

... What once was Gramsci's PCI (Communist Party of Italy, criticized by anti-revisionists as reformist even back in the 70s) became PD (Social Democratic Party) after the USSR collapsed...

Yeah? Left Comms criticised it in the 1920s. Does that make us 50 years more right than you?

Social democracy betrayed the working class and Marxism in 1914. It lined up behind different factions of the bourgeoisie and enrolled the working class for the butchery of WWI. They've been the whores of national capital for 100 years, why would they be anything else now?