Social Democracy and Liberalism

[#FF0000]

The issue with social dems is as some others said it puts a band aid to cover up what really is a broken failed system.

It wouldn't even be so bad if that was the case, but American liberals don't even want that.

Found a pretty neat passage out of a Time article bout Marx today:

"The political left, dragged rightward since the free-market onslaught of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has not devised a credible alternative course. “Virtually all progressive or leftist parties contributed at some point to the rise and reach of financial markets, and rolling back of welfare systems in order to prove they were capable of reform,” Rancière notes."

Pretty much sums up the problem with liberals. Add to the fact that, on the ground, liberals and democrat-supporters will throw you and your organization under the bus if you aren't supporting their candidate or are pushing an issue that might hurt their candidate (See: the anti-war movement)

[Kindness]

It wouldn't even be so bad if that was the case, but American liberals don't even want that.

Found a pretty neat passage out of a Time article bout Marx today:

"The political left, dragged rightward since the free-market onslaught of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has not devised a credible alternative course. “Virtually all progressive or leftist parties contributed at some point to the rise and reach of financial markets, and rolling back of welfare systems in order to prove they were capable of reform,” Rancière notes."

This is why capitalism must be overthrown, not simply managed in a "fairer" manner.

Pretty much sums up the problem with liberals. Add to the fact that, on the ground, liberals and democrat-supporters will throw you and your organization under the bus if you aren't supporting their candidate or are pushing an issue that might hurt their candidate (See: the anti-war movement)

I agree that this is one of the most frustrating things about liberals.

[Orange Juche]

People who are more right wing, honestly, bother me less. Because basically, it's like "look at me, I'm full of shit, and I'm right here." I know where they stand, no bullshit, no games. The social democrat types drive me up a fucking wall because it's all about "compromise" and "pragmatism" and blah blah blah bullshit - they are taking people otherwise leaning in the right direction and holding them to being moderate and participating in political activities of futility. And they are probably the most obnoxious, self-entitled political group ever.

[MarxArchist]

Yes, these things are not socialism, but they do at least accomplish some good for the working class, such as instituting universal healthcare, lowering unemployment

Universal healthcare? Low unemployment? You're too kind.

[Althusser]

People who are more right wing, honestly, bother me less. Because basically, it's like "look at me, I'm full of shit, and I'm right here." I know where they stand, no bullshit, no games. The social democrat types drive me up a fucking wall because it's all about "compromise" and "pragmatism" and blah blah blah bullshit - they are taking people otherwise leaning in the right direction and holding them to being moderate and participating in political activities of futility. And they are probably the most obnoxious, self-entitled political group ever.

Agree 100%

This is why capitalism must be overthrown, not simply managed in a "fairer" manner.



I agree that this is one of the most frustrating things about liberals.

What is going on here?

[Kindness]

I never said social democratic reforms are all that is needed, only that such reforms re ultimately good for the working class. If we can't have a revolution, these reforms will make people's lives better.

[aty]

There was no bloodshed in places like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

Yes, there was...Sweden had most labor disputes in the world, constant riots, military put in that killed workers many times. Bombs and constant attacks against scabs.

Democracy was put in place in Sweden because of the russian revolution and the following revolutionary spirit among the working class in Sweden. The social democrats came into power on the backbone of Ådalen 1931 when 5 workers were killed and shot down and many injured by the military, this evolved into the famous Saltsjöbads-treaty between labor and capital some years later.

[Akshay!]

He has written a couple of books, and has become a celebrity. Hardly something that serious revolutionaries should praise.

What? Are you kidding? o_O
Last time I checked, he had written about 112 books. (Not to mention that he's been giving lectures for the last, I don't know, 46 years?)

As I said earlier, you don't have to agree with him (and I don't!) to know that his analysis of US Imperialism, how the media works (Manufacturing consent, Necessary Illusions, etc.) are a great contribution. I've met many many people who became socialists/anarchists because of Chomsky. He has spent his whole life criticizing and documenting imperialism and its affects. I know he's not a revolutionary. He's a 60% Anarchist, 30% social democrat and 10% liberal, but in spite of that his writings and lectures have been enormously helpful to everyone on the left. And saying that he has written a "couple of books" is just plain false even if you think that everything he says is wrong. So the argument is factually inaccurate to begin with, and then suggests that he's not a revolutionary. Well, don't the people who like Chomsky's work already know that?

EDIT: Just to add one more thing, you could say the same thing for Howard Zinn too. That he's a reformist, not a revolutionary (and then you could add a couple of factual inaccuracies like "he has only written 3 books" or something like that..) But would anyone in his right mind say that his People's History of the US didn't change the way he/she thought about history? You don't have to agree with these people to like some of their work.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What? Are you kidding? o_O
Last time I checked, he had written about 112 books. (Not to mention that he's been giving lectures for the last, I don't know, 46 years?)

I was engaging in hyperbole; the point is that writing books, even 112 books, that present a somewhat "left-wing" viewpoint, is not enough.

As I said earlier, you don't have to agree with him (and I don't!) to know that his analysis of US Imperialism, how the media works (Manufacturing consent, Necessary Illusions, etc.) are a great contribution.

I might consider his work a "great contribution" (to what?) if I thought that he offers a cogent materialist analysis. He does not; his "leftism" is nothing but bourgeois moralism and idealism.

So the argument is factually inaccurate to begin with, and then suggests that he's not a revolutionary. Well, don't the people who like Chomsky's work already know that?

They should; but even on this thread we have avowed revolutionaries proclaiming themselves "Chomskyians".

EDIT: Just to add one more thing, you could say the same thing for Howard Zinn too. That he's a reformist, not a revolutionary (and then you could add a couple of factual inaccuracies like "he has only written 3 books" or something like that..) But would anyone in his right mind say that his People's History of the US didn't change the way he/she thought about history?

...I would? And I know that there are comrades in the United States that have come to historical materialism through engagement in radical politics or through reading actual Marxist work.

I mean, alright, Chomsky or Zinn might have inspired some comrades to become revolutionary socialists. But what of it? These comrades could only have become revolutionary socialists by transcending the moralistic reformism of these authors.

I myself must have first heard about socialism when reading Wells - does this mean that his bureaucratic, racist authoritarianism is something that we should ignore, and that we should praise him? It does not.

You don't have to agree with these people to like some of their work.

You do have to like their work, though, which is difficult when the work is riddled with theoretical inconsistencies and preaching.

[Comrade #138672]

They do more harm than good.

[NGNM85]

I was engaging in hyperbole; the point is that writing books, even 112 books, that present a somewhat "left-wing" viewpoint, is not enough.

Out of sheer curiosity; what is; 'enough', and how do you make this determination?

It is also worth mentioning that not only have Chomsky, and Zinn done more for the working class than every single member of this forum, but they have done more for the working class than every single member of this forum, combined.

I might consider his work a "great contribution" (to what?) if I thought that he offers a cogent materialist analysis.

Evidence, please.

He does not; his "leftism" is nothing but bourgeois moralism and idealism.

Nonsense.

They should; but even on this thread we have avowed revolutionaries proclaiming themselves "Chomskyians".

'Chomskyan' has absolutely no meaning outside of the field of linguistics. Philosophically, Noam Chomsky is not really philosophically distinct from any number of other Anarchists.

I mean, alright, Chomsky or Zinn might have inspired some comrades to become revolutionary socialists. But what of it?

'Some', as in; hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Can you say the same? (The answer is; 'No.')

These comrades could only have become revolutionary socialists by transcending the moralistic reformism of these authors.

Neither Noam Chomsky, or Howard Zinn, is a moralist, or a reformist.

I myself must have first heard about socialism when reading Wells - does this mean that his bureaucratic, racist authoritarianism is something that we should ignore, and that we should praise him? It does not.

This is about the only sensible thing you've said, here. I would say that we should recognize the totality of the man, and his thought, both good, and bad. That would be the rational approach.

You do have to like their work, though, which is difficult when the work is riddled with theoretical inconsistencies and preaching.

If you're going to start penalizing people for preaching; you'll have to indict 99.9% of the forum, including yourself.

Specifically; what theoretical inconsistencies?

[NGNM85]

What? Are you kidding? o_O
Last time I checked, he had written about 112 books. (Not to mention that he's been giving lectures for the last, I don't know, 46 years?)

Longer than that. He also does a lot more than simply lecture.

As I said earlier, you don't have to agree with him (and I don't!) to know that his analysis of US Imperialism, how the media works (Manufacturing consent, Necessary Illusions, etc.) are a great contribution. I've met many many people who became socialists/anarchists because of Chomsky. He has spent his whole life criticizing and documenting imperialism and its affects.

Yes.

I know he's not a revolutionary. He's a 60% Anarchist, 30% social democrat and 10% liberal, ..

Here's the only part I take issue with. Chomsky is not a Reformist. He also isn't 1% this, or whatever imaginary meaningless numbers you want to invent; he's 100% an Anarchist.

but in spite of that his writings and lectures have been enormously helpful to everyone on the left. And saying that he has written a "couple of books" is just plain false even if you think that everything he says is wrong. So the argument is factually inaccurate to begin with, and then suggests that he's not a revolutionary. Well, don't the people who like Chomsky's work already know that?

No, they don't; because this is not true.

EDIT: Just to add one more thing, you could say the same thing for Howard Zinn too. That he's a reformist, not a revolutionary...

That would, also, be false.

... You don't have to agree with these people to like some of their work.

Obviously.

[Chris]

In my case, as a Norwegian, social-democracy isn't progressive as it is an inherent defence of the current, capitalist, status-quo (and in fact, social-democrats here are gradually destroying the gains of the welfare state).

Modern, european, social-democrats are the result of socialists who took the bribe that the marshall-aid was, and became some of the most fervent defenders of private property and the free market there is. In the case of Norway, the Worker's Party was aligning with the USSR and gradually instituting as planned economy (as per the original doctrine of social-democracy).

Then the Marshall-Plan came along, and they abandoned all pretense of socialism in favour of a quick buck from the USA, as well as a way to combat the rising popularity of Communist Parties among their voters. The modern Social-Democratic Project should be despised, because it is the greatest defender Capital has. They are 'nice' and march on the 1st of May, but when push comes to shove they march in line with liberals, conservatives, imperialists and capitalists to defend the status-quo.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Then the Marshall-Plan came along, and they abandoned all pretense of socialism in favour of a quick buck from the USA, as well as a way to combat the rising popularity of Communist Parties among their voters. The modern Social-Democratic Project should be despised, because it is the greatest defender Capital has. They are 'nice' and march on the 1st of May, but when push comes to shove they march in line with liberals, conservatives, imperialists and capitalists to defend the status-quo.

I'm afraid the norwegian social-dems started to crumble long before the marshall plan. One of the definitive points were when the social democrats made (or supported such a law? can't remember atm) the state have the final word in strikes, reducing the strength of the weapon the strike was until then.

But yeah, I honestly despise social democrats, at least those central in the party and government. Worst paternalistic spin doctors.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Caveat lector; due to another bout of insomnia, the prose in this post is purple and tortured even by my standards. But such is life.

Out of sheer curiosity; what is; 'enough', and how do you make this determination?

Any significant contribution to proletarian liberation would probably be "enough"; I "make the determination" simply by adapting the proletarian-revolutionary (not bourgeois-humanistic) standpoint.

It is also worth mentioning that not only have Chomsky, and Zinn done more for the working class than every single member of this forum, but they have done more for the working class than every single member of this forum, combined.

Quite the contrary; the members of this site might not have done much for the proletariat, though several noted posters are members of established revolutionary parties, but people like Chomsky have actively hindered the development of a revolutionary class-consciousness with their reactionary, moralist rigmarole. Not by much, in all likelihood, but still. The worst bourgeois ideologist is the one that has convinced themselves that they are a "socialist" or an "anarchist". These people are, sadly, quite common; before Chomsky and Zinn there were people like Webb - pardon me, the lord Passfield - and Tolstoy.

Evidence, please.

He admits so himself:

« One might ask what value there is in studying a "definite trend in the historic development of mankind" that does not articulate a specific and detailed social theory. Indeed, many commentators dismiss anarchism as utopian, formless, primitive, or otherwise incompatible with the realities of a complex society. One might, however, argue rather differently: that at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to -- rather than alleviate -- material and cultural deficit. If so, there will be no doctrine of social change fixed for the present and future, nor even, necessarily, a specific and unchanging concept of the goals towards which social change should tend. Surely our understanding of the nature of man or of the range of viable social forms is so rudimentary that any far-reaching doctrine must be treated with great skepticism, just as skepticism is in order when we hear that "human nature" or "the demands of efficiency" or "the complexity of modern life" requires this or that form of oppression and autocratic rule. »

(Notes on Anarchism, emphasis mine)

Nonsense.

From the same article:

« [Bakunin's] ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt's Limits of State Action, Kant's insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order. In fact, on the very same assumptions that led classical liberalism to oppose the intervention of the state in social life, capitalist social relations are also intolerable. »

And after that:

« On the same assumptions, capitalist relations of production, wage labor, competitiveness, the ideology of "possessive individualism" -- all must be regarded as fundamentally antihuman. Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment. »

This also demonstrates how far Chomsky is from materialism - good grief, the man thinks capitalism is bad because it is "possessively individualist" and "antihuman". How is that any better than the priest who thinks that capitalism is wrong because it contradicts the Bible?

'Chomskyan' has absolutely no meaning outside of the field of linguistics.

Why is that? Because no one calls themselves a "Chomskyian"? But first of all, this is demonstrably false, and second, no one called themselves a "Pabloite" either, yet Pabloism was widely recognised as an existing tendency. "Chomskyanism" is simply the liberal, moralistic deformation of socialism, popular in the least conscious, least consistent section of the intelligentsia, just as post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, etc. etc., were popular (and still are to an extent).

Philosophically, Noam Chomsky is not really philosophically distinct from any number of other Anarchists.

Chomsky is, of course, not the only "anarchist" that lacks even the most basic understanding of revolutionary politics. But he is as far from the positions of proletarian anarchists as renegades like Bernstein and de Man are from the positions of revolutionary Marxists.

'Some', as in; hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Well, then, surely you can prove that our intrepid professor has indeed led "hundreds of thousands" of people to consistent, revolutionary socialism.

Can you say the same? (The answer is; 'No.')

So what? I am not being offered as an example of a "revolutionary" figure that we all should praise and respect.

Neither Noam Chomsky, or Howard Zinn, is a moralist, or a reformist.

Chomsky's moralism has already been demonstrated, as for reformism, well, here are the words of Saint Noam of the Bookstore on "revolution":

« Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.


It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.


And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.


The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.


We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from
Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.


It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy. »

This is about the only sensible thing you've said, here. I would say that we should recognize the totality of the man, and his thought, both good, and bad. That would be the rational approach.

Perhaps, if we were priests debating whether the person under consideration will be eternally rewarded by some sky tyrant or will burn in an underground prison that might be metaphorical. We are not. Well, I am not; I am concerned mainly with the relation of one Noam Chomsky, and the co-indicted Howard Zinn, to the proletariat and to the revolutionary socialist movement. The "totality" of these men is irrelevant to me.

If you're going to start penalizing people for preaching; you'll have to indict 99.9% of the forum, including yourself.

The preachers think that everyone preaches. Now, demonstrate that I have, in fact, preached, or retract the slander.

Specifically; what theoretical inconsistencies?

He considers himself a materialist and then talks about universal moralities and how the goals of a revolution are "tainted" by the methods. He takes the standpoint of some imagined supra-class "humanity" but then addresses himself to the workers and talks about their liberation, etc. etc.