Social Democrat

[4thInter]

are social democrats revisionists?:confused:

[PhoenixAsh]

Yes. Depending on what you mean by Social Democracy.

Social Democracy in origins is revisionism of Marxist ideology. Social Democracy in the modern contemporary sense of the word and political ideology however is most often simply bourgeois with some rare exceptions which still adhere loosely to vague Marxism principles. These can still be called revisionist.

[Comrade #138672]

Yes.

Regarding the origin of the term, it does not matter much. When people talk about social democracy, we can safely assume that people are talking about the reformist tendency.

[Brutus]

Social democracy was a petit-bourgeois movement before Bebel and Co. started using the term, which is why Marx and Engels opposed the name for the German workers' movement.

[ProletariatPower]

I could be wrong on some of this, but from my understanding of 20th Century history early on, around the time of the Russian Revolution, it was a movement somewhat more loyal to Marxist theory and was often 'bunched together' with Communism, hence the name of the party from which the Bolsheviks emerged: the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Many other termed 'Social Democratic' movements also attempted revolution, e.g. the Hungarian Democratic Republic which soon became a Soviet Republic (temporarily). As strange as it may seem now words like 'Democratic', 'Socialist', 'Labour', 'Social' ,'Communist' etc. were seen as all generally being working class movement terms and so often they would be combined. Of course the splits had began to emerge before this but it was really around 1918/19 when the terms began to become clear cut with 'Social Democrats' believing in a reformist 'centre-left' (well, as they termed it) movement based on revised Marxist principles. Arguably this slowly became even more detached from the original Marxist root and why today most 'Social Democrat' parties could not even be considered even vaguely Marxist. You could say the Social Democratic movement began as revised Marxism, but for most modern 'Social Democrat' parties it isn't even that.

Perhaps it was for the better that terms like that were more flexible in the past, at least it created the impression of leftist unity (if not in reality), in many ways it's a disgrace to today see Capitalist parties using the same names and terms as some of the original Socialist ones.

[ComradeOm]

are social democrats revisionists?:confused:Not necessarily. Technically the term 'revisionist', in this context, only applies to those parties who effectively adopted Bernstein's reformist revision of Marxism. (Hence the name.) But there are Social Democratic parties whose intellectual roots are non-Marxist and who therefore can't be accused of revising Marx. So, for example, the SPD can be said to be revisionist (in the historical sense) but the British Labour Party cannot.

Mind you, it's a pretty weak charge to level at a modern party; the slur is well over a century old at this point. No social democrat is going to lose any sleep over century-old accusations that they have betrayed Marx.