What was social democracy?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't know if this is really a "learning" question, a theoretical question, or a rhetorical question. [It could be all of the above.]

What was "social democracy"? When the German party was founded, why was it "social-democratic" and not "communist" (later adopted after "social-democratic" as a label was spoiled)? Did it have to do with Kautsky's merger formula between Marxism and the workers' movement? Weren't there inherent bourgeois connotations in the second word that doomed the label from the very beginning?

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Social democrat was originally used in reference to socialists who believed in a more gradualist approach to achieving socialism than revolutionary Marxists. Since Germany has a rich history of liberal and socialist ideology, Bismark worked to appease both sides. Germany industrialized out of a new form of capitalism that hadn't been seen at that point in history: strict health regulations were implemented, workman's compensation was provided, the government got involved in health care provisions, labor rights were granted, and the individual states tampered around to make themselves self-sufficient. As a result, the average German enjoyed immensely better living conditions than his English counterpart, despite the relative youth of Germany's industrialization process. You could compare the party with Fabian socialists.

Subsequent parties who adopted the same label (or even "socialist party," as is the case in France) started to deviate from Marxism until eventually regulated capitalism became the platform and not full-fledged socialism. The merger with the greater labor movement certainly did play a role: what we think of liberals in the United States came to dominate the parties. Revolutionary and even gradualist elements found their voices suppressed by sheer numbers and some left to smaller parties, making their opinions even less relevant.

The term social democracy stems from the idea of democratic capitalism. Public commerce was, foremost, held responsible to the state, although it employed a market system. You have to realize democracy was a dirty word in the 19th century due to its connotation with mob rule - which still exists today. The public was seen as too stupid to make all the decisions for themselves. This was true in both America and Europe. Social democracy carried a new populist message instead of the critical two wolves, one sheep message Ben Franklin employed.

[BobKKKindle$]

The meaning of the term "social-democracy" has changed. Originally it was used to refer to Marxists (for example, the RSDLP) but now refers to an ideology which is based on government intervention in the market in order to correct market failure (for example, the underproduction of merit goods) and to ensure a fair distribution of wealth through a progressive system of taxation. There is, to my knowledge, no revolutionary socialist party which continues to use a name which includes the term - most now describe themselves as "socialist" or "communist" to make it clear that they are not reformist e.g. The SWP.

Why do you have such an obsession with names? The term "Social-Proletocrat" is, when one tries to actually pronounce it, one of the most ugly and unwieldy terms imaginable, and I see no reason to use the term to refer to our movement - why not just define ourselves as Socialists? The use of a word ending in "crat" reminds me of "bureaucrat".

I honestly think that there are more urgent tasks confronting the Left than whether we should change our terminology to make ourselves seem more respectable - if workers are turned away because we talk about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" then they are not ready to storm the barricades and overthrow capitalism, and changing terminology (for example, using "proletocracy" instead) will not result in a sudden development of class consciousness. In a discussion environment, the use of these terms simply creates confusion, as few people are sure of what you're trying to say - as evidenced by CyM's comments in a recent thread.

What is this "merger" you keep referring to? Why does the Vanguard Party need to "merge" with anything? The role of the Vanguard is to maintain a position that is always to the left of the main section of the working class, and to develop class consciousness through intervening in workers struggles. We do not "dilute" our ideas.

[BIG BROTHER]

that's very true, I know a lot of people who can barely understand what socialism and communism is, the last thing they need is more terms to learn.

[Die Neue Zeit]

There is, to my knowledge, no revolutionary socialist party which continues to use a name which includes the term - most now describe themselves as "socialist" or "communist" to make it clear that they are not reformist e.g. The SWP.

Go tell that to the "Socialist" parties of France and Spain, or the "Communist" presidents of Moldova and Cyprus. :glare:

Is the term "communist" beyond saving (at the moment)? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/term-communist-beyond-t71765/index.html)


Why do you have such an obsession with names?

Why no objections to "parecon," "corporatocracy," "e-mail," and so on?


The term "Social-Proletocrat" is, when one tries to actually pronounce it, one of the most ugly and unwieldy terms imaginable

Compared to the "lofty" word "aristocrat"? :glare:


why not just define ourselves as Socialists? The use of a word ending in "crat" reminds me of "bureaucrat".

Again, consider the multiplicity of "Workers'," "Socialist," "Communist," and even "Revolutionary Communist" parties which are anything but. :(

[And corporate bailouts, too: "socialism" for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us"]


I honestly think that there are more urgent tasks confronting the Left than whether we should change our terminology to make ourselves seem more respectable

So why did Lenin advocate the abandonment of the "social-democratic" label even while there were more urgent tasks at hand (getting Russia out of the war)? :crying:

The "Marxist-Leninists" and the outright reformists have spoiled the labels above just as the warmongers have spoiled the "Social-Democratic" label. :crying:


if workers are turned away because we talk about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" then they are not ready to storm the barricades and overthrow capitalism

Gramsci's counter-hegemonic material is fundamental to modern Marxists. :(


the use of these terms simply creates confusion, as few people are sure of what you're trying to say - as evidenced by CyM's comments in a recent thread

Again, refer to "parecon," "corporatocracy," "e-mail," and so on. :crying:

[ComradeOm]

So why did Lenin advocate the abandonment of the "social-democratic" label even while there were more urgent tasks at hand (getting Russia out of the war)? :crying:Because the "rebranding", if you will, was part of the creation of the new Communist movement and thus intimately tied into European politics of the time. In a few short years you saw the establishment of the Third International, the split of the socialist current, the emergence of a wave of revolutionary Communist Parties, and the outbreak of revolutions across much of Europe. All of which was highly relevant to the situation in Russia. So it was far more than mere semantics at stake

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Ah, but likewise why was there a rebranding from "communist" to "social-democrat" in the first place by revolutionary Marxists? ;)

There weren't any outbreaks of revolutions save for the Paris Commune episode and the failed 1905 Russian revolution.

[ComradeOm]

^^^ Ah, but likewise why was there a rebranding from "communist" to "social-democrat" in the first place by revolutionary Marxists? ;)There wasn't. For much of the 19th C the terms "socialist" or "communist" were completely interchangeable. "Communist" I think has an older heritage but the phrase "socialism" was only coined following the Napoleonic Wars and was originally applied to the whole range of radical positions that emerged in the early 19th C

I suspect that the exact term "social democratic" is derived from the name of the original Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany which, after a few mergers, became today's SPD. This was the first mass Marxist party and served as the obvious role model for others throughout Europe. Similar to how that Russian CP was an inspiration to following generations... minus the great schism

[Die Neue Zeit]

Finally, I can quote a major revolutionary Marxist theorist in modern times (and a social-proletocrat in all but formal political labels :cool: ), Comrade Boris Kagarlitsky:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=SoTII6zqwq4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r


The masses who made the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were not inspired by Marxist ideas either. People followed the Bolsheviks not because Lenin and Trotsky had a more developed theory of socialism, but because the Bolsheviks put forward the slogans of peace, land and social justice. What works is not ideology but a concrete programme. It would have been a different matter if the Bolsheviks had not managed in good time to formulate their slogans that expressed the interests of the masses - if they had not been Marxists, and had not had an exceptional grasp of the dynamic of the revolutionary process and of the class struggle.

So long as the struggle against oppression is not at the same time a struggle for a new society, it is doomed to defeat. Indeed, the reality is even worse; the discrediting of progressive utopianism in mass consciousness can have only one, inevitable result: its place will be taken by a reactionary utopia.

Unless there is a clear idea of the goal, it is impossible to work out either strategy or tactics. Lenin considered that the main service rendered by social democracy at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries was to unite Marxism with the workers' movement. This explosive mixture really did shake the world. Lenin, as a genuine follower of the traditions of Enlightenment, was convinced that proletarian consciousness would readily penetrate the masses with the help of the intelligentsia. In reality the process was mutual. The masses could not elaborate theory, but without links to the mass movement theory becomes ossified. When Marx's ideas became the ideology of the workers' movement they underwent a transformation and became Marxism.

...

Marxism has indeed suffered a historic defeat. However, this did not come at the end of the 1980s when the Berlin Wall fell, but much earlier, when theory again became detached and isolated from the movement. This did not happen only in the East with the founding of Stalinist "Marxism-Leninism." As early as the 1930s Marxism in the West became the province of academic circles, while for social democracy and the communist parties the general "classical" formulae remained no more than dead letters.

In the 1990s the rituals were discarded. This was easy because it had been a long time since anyone had given any thought to their meaning. We returned to the starting point, then theory and the mass movement were quite disconnected. But the two are not separated by an insurmountable wall. The fact that a significant layer of workers has only a very dim notion of socialist ideas does not mean that these ideas should not be propagated.

...

Marx began by trying to cleanse the socialist project of utopianism. He did not succeed completely, for the simple reason that there is invariably a utopian dimension for any social idea and in any project. However, Marx's decisive contribution to political theory lay in the fact that he showed the necessity and possibility of abandoning utopian day-dreaming in favour of seeking practical change. Rejecting pragmatism, the Marxist tradition proclaimed the need to unite idealism (in terms of fidelity to aims and principles) with the political realism of concrete actions.

And a CPGB-PCC article, too:

Fuse workers’ movement and Marxism (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/648/russia.htm)




Do you accept Kautsky's theory of Ultra-imperialism, which, arguably, is his most important "contribution" to Marxism? This theory has been throughly rebutted, empirically, as there has been a renewed tendency towards inter-imperial conflict since the end of the Cold War, and was the theory also rebutted shortly after publication by the advent of WW1. Inter-imperial conflict is a key part of Lenin's theory, and so it would appear that if one accepts Ultra-Imperialism, one cannot be classified as a Leninist.

If one does not accept Ultra-imperialism, then surely one could not be considered to have "warmed up to" Kautsky? What other "contributions" did he make that would enable one to adopt him as a theoretical inspiration?

The merger formula between Marxism and the workers' movement ("the union of the labour movement and socialism"):

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/ch05.htm (Parts 11 and 12)

And you're right about the BS of ultra-imperialism, but the theoretical contributions of the FOUNDER of "Marxism" came much earlier.

[gilhyle]

Although sometimes interesting Kagarlitsky is no Marxist

A relevant quote from Engels, not usually quoted when these matters are discussed:

"I do not consider the term communism suitable for general use today; rather it should be reserved for cases in which a more exact description is required and even then it would call for an explanatory note having virtually fallen out of use for the past thirty years." MECW 50 P.269 Engels to Karl Kautsky 13 Feb 1894

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Huh? Care to elaborate on your hostile stance towards Kagarlitsky? This is a guy who's associated with the CPGB-PCC (my favourite British communist organization), for Pete's sake!

I'll bump up my thread on ditching the "communist" label. ;)

[Kyznetsov]

I think if a new term needed to be used it would be 'laborism'. The role of the politically active communist, or the professional revolutionary generally, is not sectarian, we are not the issue, we need to stop with out petty sectoidism and splitism and realize that the workers do not care about such arrogance. The role of the person who devotes themselves fully to political action is the role of short-term tactics for struggle, nothing more. Theory can be developed but it is done in a unifying way.

Communists are but the political wing of the working class, we need to remember this and get on with things.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ "Labourism" by itself sounds economistic. So do "proletarism" (Razlatzki, Ben Seattle) and "revolutionary workerism" (RS2K) :(

I actually have a two-stage approach to this process. One of my still-to-be-worked-on chapters in The Class Struggle Revisited ("One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, and Building the Mass Party of the Working Class") will address the need to have a "United Social Labour" that merges political socialism with either the workers’ movement as a whole or at least with the labour movement (per Kautsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/ch05.htm) and then Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/articles/arg3oit.htm#v04pp64h-215)).

However, "united social labour" as both a concept and a grand movement has its problems. The most important problem of all is that it will have reformists, but the presence of reformists is necessary if we are to repeat the same process from which the Bolsheviks emerged (http://www.revleft.com/vb/united-social-labour-t75056/index.html) (from the RSDLP): open, intra-party debate with reformists, but also no "center" calling for false "unity" (read: a "center" that is revolutionary in words and reformist in deeds).

[We can thank history that Plekhanov failed in his efforts to become Russia's Kautsky within the RSDLP.]

The second "stage" in this is the mass party for socialist proletarian democracy: social proletocracy. This revolutionary-Marxist mass party, emerging from the overall "united social labour," is the organizational manifestation the revolutionary merger of Marxism and the entire workers' movement.

[Kyznetsov]

That indeed poses somewhat of a problem for labor-movements and communists the world over, indeed In Australia where I live the Labor Party (which is in govt) is undoubtedly reformist and bourgeois yet is completely attached to the organized trade unions, most of which are bureucratic and are completely attached to government and don't care about workers.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Your "Labour Party" is NOT even reformist. :(

There's a sharp difference between economism (forgive me for raising this term from the dead) and reformism. The former pertains to the platforms of modern "social-democratic" parties. The latter pertains to achieving radical reforms under bourgeois rule (with the illusion that said reforms are revolutionary).

[Enragé]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabianism#History

that's what it is.

Makes sense tho, for the time, if you were a bourgeois with a heart (like Engels).

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/parliamentarism-why-bolshevik-t72977/index.html

When Russian Marxism emerged, it came in the form of “social democracy,” modeled after the German experience. Although this classical “social democracy” was a far cry from the liberal and economistic “social democracy” of today, the theoretical underpinnings of the former were rife with serious problems from the outset, which will be explained in the following deconstruction of key parts of Chapter 5 of Kautsky’s The Class Struggle.

The interest of the working-class is not limited to the laws which directly affect it; the great majority of laws touch its interests to some extent. Like every other class, the working-class must strive to influence the state authorities, to bend them to its purposes.

Great capitalists can influence rulers and legislators directly, but the workers can do so only through parliamentary activity. It matters little whether a government be republican in name. In all parliamentary countries it rests with the legislative body to grant tax levies. By electing representatives to parliament, therefore, the working-class can exercise an influence over the governmental powers.

[…]

The proletariat is, however, more favorably situated in regard to parliamentary activity.

[…]

The proletariat is, therefore, in a position to form an independent party. It knows how to control its representatives. Moreover, it finds in its own ranks an increasing number of persons well fitted to represent it in legislative halls.

Whenever the proletariat engages in parliamentary activity as a self-conscious class, parliamentarism begins to change its character. It ceases to be a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This very participation of the proletariat proves to be the most effective means of shaking up the hitherto indifferent divisions of the proletariat and giving them hope and confidence. It is the most powerful lever that can be utilized to raise the proletariat out of its economic, social and moral degradation.

The proletariat has, therefore, no reason to distrust parliamentary action; on the other hand, it has every reason to exert all its energy to increase the power of parliaments in their relation to other departments of government and to swell to the utmost its own parliamentary representation.

All of the above is an expression of parliamentary reductionism on the part of Kautsky, in part because of his “apocalyptic predestinationist” belief that capitalism would soon collapse because of a crisis either in the here and now or on the horizon, which would “explain away” his revisionist conclusions that no real revolutionary theory was needed and that only a Rabocheye Dyelo-style “economism” (albeit only in the polemical sense) was necessary. For him, the “union of the labor movement and socialism” – the central theme of this thesis – culminated in a mere parliamentarian “Socialist Party”: the social-democratic party. It is unfortunate that his most serious Russian disciple, when he scrambled to “find” the earliest traces of Kautsky’s transformation from the founder of “Marxism” to an anti-proletarian “renegade” – and then committed his “findings” to The State and Revolution – did not find the answers right under his proverbial nose.

On another note, even the word “democracy” in “social democracy” raises serious concerns. First, Kautsky entertained fetishes of “pure” (bourgeois) democracy, hence the aforementioned parliamentary reductionism. Therefore, the question to ask is: “social democracy” for whom? That is, was this “social democracy” for the working class, for the petit-bourgeoisie, or for the bourgeoisie? History has irrevocably answered that question. Second, it would appear that Kautsky, in spite of what he said about educated proletarians, was the intellectual forerunner of modern sectoral chauvinism (the application of the word “proletarian” to only those who work strictly to produce commodities, thus separating them from the rest of the working class) – hence the need for the confused “social democracy” and not the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (which will be revisited upon as a term later in the thesis):

The Socialist movement has, in the nature of things, been from the beginning international in its character. But in each country it has at the same time the tendency to become a national party. That is, it tends to become the representative, not only of the industrial wage-earners, but of all laboring and exploited classes, or, in other words, of the great majority of the population. We have already seen that the industrial proletariat tends to become the only working-class. We have pointed out, also, that the other working-classes are coming more and more to resemble the proletariat in the conditions of labor and way of living. And we have discovered that the proletariat is the only one among the working-classes that grows steadily in energy, in intelligence, and in clear consciousness of its purpose. It is becoming the center about which the disappearing survivals of the other working-classes group themselves. Its ways of feeling and thinking are becoming standard for the whole mass of non-capitalists, no matter what their status may be.

As rapidly as the wage-earners become the leaders of the people, the labor party becomes a people’s party. When an independent craftsman feels like a proletarian, when he recognizes that he, or at any rate his children, will sooner or later be thrust into the proletariat, that there is no salvation for him except through the liberation of the proletariat – from that moment on he will see in the Socialist Party the natural representative of his interests.

We have already explained that he has nothing to fear from a socialist victory. In fact such a victory would be distinctly to his advantage, for it would usher in a society that would free all workers from exploitation and oppression and give them security and prosperity.

But the Socialist Party represents the interests of all non-capitalist classes, not only in the future, but in the present. The proletariat, as the lowest of the exploited strata, cannot free itself from exploitation and oppression without putting an end to all exploitation and oppression. It is, therefore, their sworn enemy, no matter in what form they may appear; it is the champion of all the exploited and oppressed.

Third, this is rather surprisingly the forerunner to Lenin’s historically validated theory of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. The key problem with Kautsky’s formulation here is that it is best applied only during the beginning of the capitalist mode of production in any particular nation-state, and not during towards the end, when a proper socialist revolution occurs.

One can only wonder about the petit-bourgeois and lumpen elements – non-bourgeois classes – who flocked to the fascist causes, as well as wonder about modern “social democracy” (that is, “social democracy” for the bourgeoisie) being the direct result of not orienting the classical “social democracy” in the most advanced capitalist countries to the working class only. Lenin wrote a rather lengthy work attacking populism, titled What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats. Today, it is more apt to comment on what the populist “social-democrats” are – and how they fight the working class!