So what exactly is social democracy

[billydan]

Is it just like regular democracy or what

[Winkers Fons]

As I understand it, social democracy is merely socialistic reforms within a capitalist system. For example, there may be a strong social welfare system but capital is still privately owned.

[Akshay!]

Is it just like regular democracy or what

No we don't have "regular democracy" anywhere (at the moment). What people call social "democracy" is basically a capitalist system with a welfare state (or a few welfare state measures like free healthcare, education, etc.) For example Sweden is considered a social "democracy". Obviously it's not really a democracy because, for example, workers don't get to decide the future of a corporation - the CEOs do, etc.. You can't have true democracy without communism.


As I understand it, social democracy is merely socialistic reforms within a capitalist system. For example, there may be a strong social welfare system but capital is still privately owned.

There's no such thing as "socialist reforms". Either you have socialism or you don't.

[Brutus]

Social-democracy originally stood for 'socialism and democracy'. Lenin was a key member in the 'Russian social-democratic labour party' and many key Marxists (like Rosa Luxemburg, Wilhelm and Karl Liebknecht, Kautsky) were in the SPD.



The question as to what position Social-Democracy should occupy in the political fight, can be answered easily and confidently if we clearly understand that socialism and democracy are inseparable. Socialism and democracy are not identical, but they are simply different expressions of the same principle; they belong together, supplement each other, and one can never be incompatible with the other. Socialism without democracy is pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is pseudo-democracy. The democratic state is the only feasible form for a society organized on a socialist basis.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1889/political-position.htm

[Tower of Bebel]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1889/political-position.htm

Democratic socialism proceeds from the principle that the political and social questions are inseparable; proudly rejecting any pact with the existing order, it is determined to win a democratic state for a society that will be organized on a socialist basis. Only we, the adherents of this socialism, are justified in calling ourselves a socialist party. The others are a clique or a sect. We are Social-Democracy.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
Current social-democracy, however, is an overgrown ruin of the former. Through several layers of bureaucracies (the party, the trade union leadership, municipal and state bodies, ...) it tries to impose the interest of the capitalist state on that of the working class. It does not try to win the battle of democracy against bourgeois democracy, it is bourgeois democracy.

[Brutus]

Surely we could 'reclaim' social democracy, as it sums up our fight for real democracy, opposed to bourgeois 'democracy'.
We want socialism and democracy, no?

[Comrade #138672]

Even Lenin was a Social-Democrat, before it became tainted.

[Marxaveli]

As others above said, it is essentially capitalism with a large welfare state.

However, I think it is important to define social democracy in any discussion in the context of time as Comrade138762 said above. Before the SPD went renegade in 1914, the terms social democracy and socialism were interchangeable from what I can see. But after the Second International, the term "social democracy" began to take on a new meaning, for obvious reasons, which leads us to todays understanding of it from a Marxist perspective. Many non-socialists today think of it as being the same thing as socialism (thus why so many think a country like Denmark is socialist even though it isn't) but this misconception exists because 1.) because of capitalist hegemony misconstruing socialism to the masses, and 2.) because most people have little knowledge about even the basic history of socialist/communist parties because of reason #1 (or socialism/communism in general). Thus the average person today would have no idea that social democracy took on a different meaning post-WW1, and has no relation to socialism at all. People are taught that socialism is a political system, and not a particular set of social relations.

[Tower of Bebel]

Surely we could 'reclaim' social democracy, as it sums up our fight for real democracy, opposed to bourgeois 'democracy'.
We want socialism and democracy, no?
the term social democracy was reclaimed once already. In its origin, social democracy stood for the alliance of the French radical and petty bourgeoisie with the workers' movement against the conservative royalist bourgeoisie. At best it represented a utopian bourgeois socialism. At worst, it meant to open betrayal of the working class by its petty bourgeois leadership. These alliances were short-lived in France between 1848 and 1853, and in Germany in 1848 and failed miserabily.

In 1869 the radical democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht and some members of the German workers' association VDAV, among them August Bebel, founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP). Karl Marx did not like the name, because of the failed French example. In 1875, after the unification of Germany, the SDAP merged with the Lassallean VDAV at Gotha and became the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany or SAPD. This name made it clear that this time the workers were dealing with a workers' party.

To understand why Marx disliked the name social democracy, we can go bakc to what he wrote about the revolution of 1848. This is what Marx wrote in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon:

As against the coalesced bourgeoisie, a coalition between petty bourgeois and workers had been formed, the so-called Social-Democratic party. The petty bourgeois saw that they were badly rewarded after the June days of 1848, that their material interests were imperiled, and that the democratic guarantees which were to insure the effectuation of these interests were called in question by the counterrevolution. Accordingly they came closer to the workers.

On the other hand, their parliamentary representation, the Montagne, thrust aside during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans, had in the last half of the life of the Constituent Assembly reconquered its lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the royalist ministers.

It had concluded an alliance with the socialist leaders. In February, 1849, banquets celebrated the reconciliation. A joint program was drafted, joint election committees were set up and joint candidates put forward. The revolutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the democratic claims of the petty bourgeoisie and their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy.

The new Montagne, the result of this combination, contained, apart from some supernumeraries from the working class and some socialist sectarians, the same elements as the old Montagne, but numerically stronger. However, in the course of development it had changed with the class that it represented.

The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided.

Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.

During the 1880's the German workers' party had to go underground. When they emerged, they were stronger than ever. However, after the ban was lifted in 1890, the SAPD rechristened itself as the Social Democratic Party of Germany or SPD. It also wrote the Erfurt programme, which was widely concidered to be a marxist programme. Thus the socialists in Germany had reclaimed Social democracy for marxism. But, oh the irony, by 1910/1920 the revolutionary point was broken off and a [bourgeois] democratic turn given to the social demands of the proletariat; the purely political form was stripped off the [proletarian] democratic claims of the [marxists] and their [reformist] point thrust forward. Thus arose social-democracy [again].

[svenne]

One problem with defining (and re-defining) the words the way they are used in public is that it's often about the political tradition in different countries. I'm pretty sure no one in Sweden (except some members of the social democratic party) thinks that socialism equals social democracy, and vice versa. In practice, it's a tainted word - a lot more positively loaded than communism though - and would point people to a "golden age" some 40 years ago or so, where everyone had their job and payed their taxes and whatever crap. Using the term social democracy to say you're for socialism and democracy really doesn't make any sense to anyone outside of the people with a knowledge about the history of the workers movement. And we're not really that many...