Social Democracy vs Communism Argument

[Crabbensmasher]

I think this is one of the most important arguments that revolutionary leftists have to make. Also, whenever I try and make it, my explanation falls short.

Here it is:

When we present the idea of socialism to someone, and they retort that social democracy provides humanity with the same desired result.

They will argue that under a social democratic-state capitalist regime, workers are just as well off. The government can enforce equality. Either a). the bourgeoisie is taxed and the workers incomes are supplemented to the point of equality or b). the state takes over management of enterprises and pays all workers and managers equally.

They will argue that since equality exists between workers and bourgeoisie, the workers would be content and wouldn't even want to institute socialism. Why would they harbor resentment towards the owners of capital if they both come home with the same paycheque?

My arguments to counter this usually are:

1. the bourgeoisie obviously still exists and can make decisions in the enterprise that the workers cannot. the workers may get paid the same, but they still do not manage their own affairs.

2. the profit motive still exists and similarly, things like the division of labour and commodity fetishism. workers still exist for the purpose of creating surplus value, and not as human beings.

these arguments are very powerful to me, but when I present them to social democracy/state capitalist advocates, they don't seem convinced. Is there anything I'm leaving out? How can I improve my argument?

[oneday]

Another argument is the frequent undoing of the social democratic reforms by the owners of capital.

[VivalaCuarta]

Just look at the real world.

Social Democrats in power administer the capitalist state. They wage imperialist wars, break strikes, and impose anti-worker austerity measures. Brazil, Greece, France, everywhere you look that is what they do and that is what they always have done.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

First of all, the argument you ascribe to social-democrats is sheer fantasy. It makes about as much sense as saying humanity should be ruled by a hyper-intelligent strain of triffids - capitalism works because there is a dispossessed class of direct producers that is forced to sell its labour power, from which surplus value is extracted to drive the M-C-M' cycle. If the workers were equal to the bourgeoisie, capitalism would be impossible. And how is this equality supposed to be enforced? We live in a period of decomposing capitalism, where the bourgeois state has trouble reigning in the suicidal short-sightedness of the individual capitalist. And they expect us to believe the bourgeois state would enforce equality from the kindness of its heart? No, I take what I said earlier back - it's an insult to triffids.

And ultimately, as I said in another thread, communism is not about giving workers a bit more money. Communism is about a radical reorganisation of society, the end of the irrational way in which we produce things and services today and of the state power that exists to protect the privileges of a possessing class. Would social-democracy eliminate the state? Would it eliminate things being produced for profit instead of human need? Would it replace the family where the woman is subjugated to the reproduction of a class of dispossessed producers with the collective institutions of a free society? No, it wouldn't. It would result in the same unbearable world we have today, only we would have a bit more in our purse - until we are killed in one of the bourgeoisie's wars of plunder, are beaten to death for speaking a wrong language or just die because the lawsuits resulting from our deaths cost less than producing safely and responsibly.

I don't think anyone who considers themselves a social-democrat will see that, though.

[Rafiq]

It's simple. Social democracy existed in Western Europe for a long time. Social democratic policies existed in the United States for a long time. What happened? Why were these policies politically unsustainable in the long run, i.e. what factors led to the decline of social democracy and what is different about 2015 that would allow us to avoid those?

Such abstract moral arguments are meaningless. Communism is not a preference or a choice over social democracy. In fact, what sustained social democracy was the fear of Communism. So we end up hypothesizing ridiculous solutions about how we'd literally have to consciously orchestrate mas radical fervor to indirectly compel the state to adopt policies which keep the working people docile and content.

What reactionary bourgeois ideologues will never be able to fathom is the fact that what kind of society you want is a worthless abstraction. I mean, if social democracy were somehow personally possible, if most people would be able to be guaranteed a dignified means of life (i.e. no unemployment), that isn't riddled in crises and a constant precarious social existence, if we were able to have decent public infrastructure, public programs that would get rid of poverty and whatever within a social-democratic framework: Why not?

Before I'm accused of being a social democrat, let me make the same argument in favor of Libertarianism: If we could live in a stateless capitalist society where things would function as libertarians propose they would, why not? The point is that these are largely utopias, fantasies and abstractions of real ideology. Social democracy seeks to deter the fostering of radical consciousness, and libertarianism seeks to obfuscate the coordinates of struggle in linguistic terms that unite the working class and the petite-bourgeoisie while only the latter benefit (i.e. Fascism). Ideas do not come from our ass. Most of the so-called "political ideologies" (let me vomit!) are worthless abstractions that more or less have tried to copy the aesthetic of Communism, which proposed that another social existence is possible. It's like the token minority friend, or people complaining of so-called "reverse sexism" - you do it not because it actually reflects your ideological foundations, but only to make a self-ironic point, only to make worthless linguistic jabs that seek to undermine the linguistic incompetence of the enemy in properly conveying the reality of their message (i.e. That, for example, what makes rape so horrible isn't JUST the absence of proper consent, but the symbolically based connotations of power, domination associated with gender).

At the same time, the point of Communism is not that we create a society that we prefer on any kind of personal level, but that Communism is a real ideology, and not an abstraction. Communism is, in one way or another, the only solution of the working people. It derives " [...] from the premises now in existence", it is the militant elaboration of even the most petty kind of trade-union consciousness, an elaboration of the fact that capitalism creates problems which are IN COMMON without addressing those problems properly in common.


If the workers were equal to the bourgeoisie, capitalism would be impossible. And how is this equality supposed to be enforced? We live in a period of decomposing capitalism, where the bourgeois state has trouble reigning in the suicidal short-sightedness of the individual capitalist. And they expect us to believe the bourgeois state would enforce equality from the kindness of its heart? No, I take what I said earlier back - it's an insult to triffids.


The point, however, is to isolate the bourgeois notion of equality being conveyed here. The point of Marxism is that it makes knowable that which is dismissed as an eternal quality of existence. That is to say, precisely this relationship of domination between worker and capitalist is not conceived by the "social-democrat" because they are incapable of fathoming a world without such tacit relations of domination. For them, equality amounts to less traumatic income gaps, lack of political corruption and so on. But these values are already enshrined into the bourgeois state more or less: in its current form, the bourgeois state is degenerate. It was wrought out with the ability to reinforce the conditions of capitalism while at the same time protect itself from bribery and corruption. But so shameless, degenerate and outwardly depraved has our condition became that it is of no consequence that our politicians are directly bought off.

I mean, even mere appearances matter. Not many know that for a long time, the idea of "tipping" even in a private establishment was considered undemocratic and shameful by standards of ruling ideology, because it was seen as a form of bribery, i.e. that at least within respective establishments, all customers were to be treated equally (that is to say, a great many of those establishments could obviously only be afforded by the wealthy). The bourgeois value of equality had disappeared in the midst of the rise of Communism and the class interest of the capitalist becoming more and more acute in contrast to the antagonistic proletariat. The point is that - why is equality, as some kind of abstraction, a 'desirable' thing on a moral level? It is not. In fact, by BOURGEOIS standards of "equality", inequality will always exist, i.e. there will always likely be differences in how people live in approximation to their respective skills. The idea that Communists want to make everyone uniform is a bourgeois pathological delusion. The point is that these bourgeois standards do not take into account the realities of class, or different relationships to production by private property relations. The Communists seek to destroy the SOCIAL BASIS of the domination of man by man, not concern itself with trivial moral abstractions about what is more "fair". Bourgeois standards of equality do not concern relationships of power, they isolate the individual as an abstraction and measure him by his possessions, or "income", incapable of seeing relevance in what constitutes those possessions as private property, or stupid shiny gimmicks.

[Fire]

Can we do both? Try to improve conditions for the workers while building up a revolution? Might be more time consuming since you would reduce some of the conditions that lead to revolution but revolutions aren't things that happen by themselves. I always thought accelerationism was too risky of a strategy since it can so easily backfire and a revolution might still never come or might fail.

[VivalaCuarta]

We can improve the conditions of the workers while preparing for a workers revolution. In fact the only way to prepare for a workers revolution is by engaging in the class struggle, and partial struggles can bring temporary improvements for the workers.

But these reforms are conceded in the course of the struggle against the capitalists and their state. While social democracy sometimes promises improved conditions, it practices class collaboration and guns down the workers when they struggle against the capitalist state. It delivers war, oppression and poverty, not reforms.

[Q]

As Kautsky used to remark back in 1881:


To expect from the state that it will implement this equalisation means to expect the voluntary suicide from it. To expect from the government of the propertied classes that it will help by its mighty hand the strivings of the proletariat towards victory, means to expect the impossible from it. The power of the government reaches only so wide, as the interests of the ruling classes permit it. It can by a clever seesaw game between single parts of the ruling classes obtain a certain independent power from them, when these classes are too corrupted and exasperated to keep their independence: This independent power however disintegrates before the united onslaught of the ruling classes in the moment when it wants to help up the common underlayer, the lowest class.

State socialism is socialism by the state and for the state.

It is socialism by the government and for the government.

It is thus socialism by the ruling classes and for the ruling classes.

The abolition of the states seems therefore the necessary precondition for the emancipation of the proletariat.
Full text on LibCom (https://libcom.org/library/state-socialism-karl-kautsky).

[Left Voice]

Can we do both? Try to improve conditions for the workers while building up a revolution? Might be more time consuming since you would reduce some of the conditions that lead to revolution but revolutions aren't things that happen by themselves. I always thought accelerationism was too risky of a strategy since it can so easily backfire and a revolution might still never come or might fail.
You're pretty much describing the minimal-manimum programme that most major significant communist parties follow and have done for over a century. It hasn't worked, mainly because the minimal (i.e. reformist) programme takes priority as soon as the party gets any kind of political representation.

[Q]

You're pretty much describing the minimal-manimum programme that most major significant communist parties follow and have done for over a century. It hasn't worked, mainly because the minimal (i.e. reformist) programme takes priority as soon as the party gets any kind of political representation.
Sorry, but you're confusing the minimum (not minimal) programme with opportunism. Yes, many parties have fallen victim to the pressures of opportunism, but this isn't what the minimum programme is. The minimum programme is called that because it is the minimum basis on which our party ought to take government responsibility. Each demand is concrete and can be achieved within capitalism, making the struggle real. But the full programme amounts to the political hegemony of the working class.

The maximum programme then is what describes the road from taking power towards communism. There is no dichotomy between the two.

[redtux]

You're pretty much describing the minimal-manimum programme that most major significant communist parties follow and have done for over a century. It hasn't worked, mainly because the minimal (i.e. reformist) programme takes priority as soon as the party gets any kind of political representation.

No the issue is actually worse the MINIMUM program tends to get watered down to what is "possible". Which whether you call it the minimum program or transitional program, defeats the point

[redtux]

Sorry, but you're confusing the minimum (not minimal) programme with opportunism. Yes, many parties have fallen victim to the pressures of opportunism, but this isn't what the minimum programme is. The minimum programme is called that because it is the minimum basis on which our party ought to take government responsibility. Each demand is concrete and can be achieved within capitalism, making the struggle real. But the full programme amounts to the political hegemony of the working class.

The maximum programme then is what describes the road from taking power towards communism. There is no dichotomy between the two.
Isn't the minimum program not a set of demands that appears realisable, but needs the movement towards socialism to achieve