What do people here think of the Stalinist concept that social democracy is 'social fascism'?
It's a meme and not a good one. Social democracy is not fascism, it's liberalism. Fascism is both anti-socialist and anti-liberal, while liberalism is just anti-socialist. Fascist theory and praxis looks nothing like liberal theory or praxis. Yes, fascists and liberals will ally against socialism when the chips are down, that doesn't make them the same thing.
I think a better way to describe the relationship between social democrats and fascists is that social democrats are the left wing of capitalism and fascists are the right wing of capitalism.
yes, fascists and liberals will ally against socialism when the chips are down
This is kind of what I think the ultimate point Stalin was making is, that materially at that point what’s the difference? They’re both United as our enemy. Sure we can split hairs and talk about semantics but practically speaking socdems will pretend to be our allies and then betray us when shit gets real.
It’s definitely hyperbole and you’re technically right that there’s a difference but when you’re in the trenches and thinking about who’s the enemy, well they both are.
I just cant see it as the 'left wing of capitalism' because ever since the neoliberal/austrian takeover of the 1970s & 80s it has categorically rejected any regulation or oversight and is opposed to any form of compromise and will seek to undermine any no matter how mild.
the so called "overton window" of the capitalism spectrum basically has been skewing right ever since then. "left wing capitalism" is just woke neoliberalism now days. even basic keynesian economics is considered ultra radical and off the spectrum.
Sort of a meme but I do agree with the general view that socdems share one main thing with fascists: they are hardcore anti-communist, and will do everything they can to protect capitalism.
Well, except for that one time a bunch of social democracies allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.
To protect their own interests obviously. When fascists get in power in their own countries they're fine with it.
The premise here is that the interests of social democracies categorically align more with fascism than communism. You're saying -- correctly -- that the interests of social democracies in WWII aligned more with communism than fascism. I don't see how WWII (which had yet to happen at the time of Stalin's statement) isn't a major counterpoint to the original premise.
They didn't "align with communism". Look at the death tolls of other countries compared to the USSR... look at the post-war situation... They did far less than the USSR but still took over everything west of Berlin and continued imperialism in the Global South. It's more like the interests of communists aligned briefly with those of some capitalists, but its hard to say it was an equivalent exchange.
Their interests weren't perfectly aligned -- no one's claiming that -- but they were clearly more aligned with their allies than with their enemies. That's the opposite of what Stalin was saying: that when push came to shove, social democrats would side with fascists over communists.
You nail someone to the phrase "push comes to shove" but then "well obviously not perfectly_" when someone questions your wording. Just saying, that is probably how the other person feels about the harping on that one sentence
Using the exact phrase the person you're responding to used, which is a version of the phrase everyone in the thread is using, is not the same as clarifying that "more aligned" does not mean "perfectly aligned." It's the difference between responding to what the other person is actually saying vs. responding to an exaggeration of what they said.
You really have no clue how bad faith that comes off? No one wants to engage with someone who does that, I know cause I used to exactly do that. They clarified and you wouldn't stop. It is absolutely the same, and responding with the same semantic defensiveness is exactly what I am talking about. You keep calling the kettle black. People are supposed to know what you mean, but also you know what they mean better than they do
edit: what I am saying is I get why you felt Toledo was condescending, and that you come off that same way. So put yourself in their shoes. That's all I ask
I explained my thinking at length in good faith, and what I got back was some curt, snarky-ass "well I've already told you million times so I'm done here" shit that didn't address any of the many new points I raised. That was after at least two "as I've told you several times now" remarks two or three comments in.
You know how you felt about what you said, no shit. That does not mean its what came across to everyone else
Sweden maintained a position of neutrality during the Second World War; in spite of that, however, it acted as a major supplier of raw materials for Hitler's military, laundered the gold confiscated from Holocaust victims, and often failed to provide adequate asylum for refugees including the near-completely exterminated Norwegian Jews. Some Swedes even volunteered with the Waffen SS.[7] As in other wartime neutral European countries such as Ireland and Switzerland, the neutrality policy draws continued debate.
In 1941, Engdahl once again broke with his organization to find his own party, the Swedish Opposition (SO). Its main concern was anti-communism. Engdahl opposed all communism in the building of Swedish society, and printed 60,000 copies of an anti-communist brochure. Although Engdahl's new party expressed its admiration for Hitler and Nazi Germany on many occasions, the SO was not a Nazi or fascist party in a formal sense. Engdahl highlighted the differences between his party and National Socialism, particularly on Swedes united as a blood group rather than led by a dictatorship. As the war continued, the SO's sympathy with Hitler continued. On April 20, 1944, Engdahl wrote on the occasion of Hitler's 55th birthday, "words are too poor to express what we owe this man, who is a symbol of the best of what the world has produced. We can only celebrate him as the god-sent rescuer of Europe."[8]
When the war broke out, the former Youth League received a boost. The SNF's activities increased and membership soared. Its vogue proved short-lived, and opposition increased. Demonstrators showed up to its meetings and fighting was common. After a meeting in Uppsala on May 4, 1945, the police were unable to hold the crowds apart and rioting broke out.[9]
Lindholm's SSS had already distanced itself from Nazi Germany when the war broke out. Lindholm visited Germany during his honeymoon in July/August 1939 meeting Heinrich Himmler among others. He maintained some contact with Himmler throughout the war. From the German perspective, the SSS was the most organized National Socialist party in Sweden, even though there were those in the party who disapproved of Lindholm's personal attitude toward Germany.[10] After the German occupation of Norway and Denmark as "Jew depending western powers" Germany fell in the party's esteem.
The SO and public sympathy influenced Sweden's response to the refugee crisis. Between 1933 and 1939, Sweden accepted only 3000 Jewish refugees and permitted 1000 more to use Sweden as a transit stop.[7] As the war broke out, Sweden only absorbed political refugees and turned away Jews from occupied Norway at the border.[11] Sweden eventually accepted 900 Jews from Norway, but border controls and immigration contributed to the murder of over 700 Norwegian Jews at Auschwitz. In 1943, the policy changed, and Sweden provided asylum to 8000 Danish Jews.[12]
"A bunch" =/= "all."
Obviously social democracies leave a lot to be desired and cannot be trusted to be even reliably anti-fascist. But ignoring the contributions a bunch of social democracies made to the defeat of fascism in WWII is as absurd as modern capitalists ignoring communist contributions to the same cause.
I would at the very least expect them to not be actively pro-fascist by providing them with iron. What social democracies are you otherwise referring to?
The major Allied powers, outside of the USSR, can be reasonably described as social democracies. If they weren't social democracies, they were to the right of that, which makes Stalin's comment about social democracy's relationship to fascism (which he wrote about 15 years before the start of WWII) even more wrong.
It just doesn't hold up as a categorical claim when the biggest conflict in human history provides such significant evidence to the contrary. Even the general sentiment runs into problems if you take a wide view of the Cold War. This shouldn't be too surprising -- big, sweeping statements like that almost never hold up to close scrutiny.
I think it's kind of strange to include them as anti-fascists when they really had no choice since the fascists attacked them first, a choice which Sweden actually did have (possibly a suicidal choice, but a choice).
Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I think the France and UK were more Keynesian capitalists than proper social democracies sustained by mass movements.
Do you mean that the social democracies sided with communism in the cold war or what? Maybe for a short period in the 60's?
Social democracies aren't anti-fascists, at least not in the sense that they are reliably, ideologically opposed to fascism. Their foreign policy is probably best described (certainly prior to the Cold War) as conventional geopolitics. But (1) they were resistant to allying with fascists, (2) they eventually fought an incredibly bloody war against fascists, and (3) they did so while allying with communists. All of this suggests they weren't fascists themselves, and wound up seeing fascism as a bigger threat than communism.
Regarding that first point, consider that fascists attacking social democracies didn't occur in isolation; it occurred after a decade or so of trying and failing to reach some rapport. In Europe, Britain had a fascist party (and fascist sympathies among more powerful parties), but it never cooperated with Germany to the extent Italy (for example) did, so it became an enemy. The United States had a full-on Nazi party (with a significant German immigrant population, and with Nazi sympathies among major U.S. industrialists), but you had the same lack of cooperation, so it too became an enemy. You can make similar arguments to varying extents about other European countries. In Asia, there was actually a fair amount of pre-war U.S. economic antagonism towards Japan that led Japan to conclude war was inevitable. If the Allies were just moderate fascists, why did they have such a hard time getting along with other fascists, and why did they form an alliance with the big scary communist USSR?
I think the France and UK were more Keynesian capitalists than proper social democracies sustained by mass movements.
In the same document where we get "social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism," Stalin identifies France and the UK as social democracies. But if they were in fact to the right of social democracy, that makes Stalin's comments look worse, not better.
I haven't seen it as anti-communist, is that maybe just a thing from the German social democrats of the 1930s? And I definitely don't see it as protecting capitalism, its goal is firm regulations and restrictions on capitalism - for some that is the end of the road and for others that's just a stage.
I'd like to believe the former would find that power and money will resist such things and ideologically oppose compromise, and so they'd hopefully come to the realisation it cant be the end point.
That is protecting capitalism. Social Democracy shields it from the effects of crisis. Look at FDR and his correct view that he saved capitalism in America. You tether a strengthened trade unionist aristocracy to your capitalist system and create enough of a safety net that it cannot be challenged. The ones exploited most or given no say are kept on the periphery and have no means of getting support from the other workers as they now have something to lose.
Good piece from Germany right after the real shift in terminology occurred https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1927/sdc.htm
During its best days, social democracy established as its principle the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, and as its goal, the realization of socialism as soon as it could conquer political power. Now that social democracy has abandoned that principle and that goal, both of them have been taken up again by communism. When the war broke out, social democracy abandoned the fight against the bourgeoisie. Kautsky asserted that the class struggle was only applicable to peacetime, while during wartime class solidarity against the enemy nation must take its place. In support of this assertion he pulled from out of his sleeve the lie of the "defensive war", with which the masses were deceived at the start of hostilities. The leaders of the SPD majority and the Independents differed on this point only because the former collaborated enthusiastically with the war policy of the bourgeoisie while the latter patiently endured it, because they did not dare to lead the struggle themselves. After the defeat of German militarism in November 1918, the same pattern was repeated. The social democratic leaders joined the government alongside the bourgeois parties and tried to persuade the workers that this constituted the political power of the proletariat. But they did not use their power over the Councils and government ministries to realize socialism, but to reestablish capitalism. Besides this, one must add that the colossal power of Capital, which is the principle enemy and exploiter of the proletariat, is now embodied in Entente Capital, which now rules the world. The German bourgeoisie, reduced to impotence, can only exist as a peon and agent of Entente imperialism and is responsible for crushing the German workers and exploiting them on behalf of Entente Capital. The social democrats, as the political representatives of this bourgeoisie, and who now form the German government, have the task of carrying out the orders of the Entente and requesting its aid and support......
.....The social democracy has said that, in the current circumstances, after the terrible economic collapse, it is no longer by any means possible to realize socialism. And here we find an important distinction between the positions of communism and social democracy. The social democrats say that socialism is only possible in a society of abundance, of increasing prosperity. The communists say that in such periods capitalism is most secure, because then the masses do not think about revolution. The social democrats say: first, production must be reestablished, to avoid a total catastrophe and to keep the masses from dying of hunger. The communists say: now, when the economy has hit rock bottom, is the perfect time to reestablish it upon socialist foundations. The social democrats say that even the most basic recovery of production requires the continuation of the old capitalist mode of production, in conformance with which all institutions are structured and thanks to which a devastating class struggle against the bourgeoisie will be avoided. The communists say: a recovery of the capitalist economic foundations is completely impossible; the world is sinking ever deeper into bankruptcy before our eyes, into a degree of poverty which makes a break with the bourgeoisie necessary, as the bourgeoisie is blocking the only possible road to reconstruction ** So the social democrats want to first reestablish capitalism, avoiding the class struggle; the communists want to build socialism from scratch right now, with the class struggle as their guide.**
The social democrats of both tendencies, then, maintain the exploitation of the workers by capital; one policy leaves capitalism to its own development, the other stimulates and regulates this exploitation through the intermediary of the State. Both, for the worker, have just this one solution: Work, work, work hard, with all your strength! Because the reconstruction of the capitalist economy is only possible if the proletariat exerts itself to satisfy the demands of the most extreme degree of exploitation.
That is one persons view of the purpose of their reforms. As I said in another post some see it as a step and some see it as an end. They'd have to eventually see and acknowledge power no longer tolerates reform.
Now that social democracy has abandoned that principle and that goal,
Is that the philosophy as a whole or a specific political party in Germany from the 1930s? A lot of this debate might simply be due to being bogged down in confusing arguments between political parties in Germany in the 1930s and applying that to the whole concept today.
They didn't see it as a step. Look at the history there, late 20s Germany, what would the SPD soon do? Ban the Roter Front, crush unions, prop up Hindenburg and create the environment for Hitler. Sure you can say "well that's one guy's opinion" but it is a more informed opinion than your own, no offensive, if you are asking the initial question, and frankly more informed than any of us here aside from hindsight.
The SPD DID choose capital reconstruction over the workers, heck part of the stuff the paper is talking about is the literal murder of Rosa and the creation of the Freikorps. You asked a question but seem to have already decided an answer for yourself. Yes of course historical examples exist in the context of history, but they are foundational to socdem theory, and are the split that caused the creation and codification of social democracy as its own strange of political theory.
There is no non-materialistic application of ideology, and beyond that the party dynamics are not confusing. They are pretty simple and well documented and translated all over the left. It seems like you want affirmation, not actual political theory and historical materialism.
For a modern description here is Parenti https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2125595571100509
I think people overuse the term "fascist" to describe anything and everything, but in this case it's complicated.
Social Democracy isn't Fascism, but when push comes to shove, Social Democrats have a had terrible record of siding with fascists. Social Democracts are also not opposed to military/economic chauvinism, which some people use interchangeably with Fascism. There's also the fact that in the Stalin's time, many of the fascists and socdems had been quite literally the same people.
when push comes to shove, Social Democrats have a had terrible record of siding with fascists
Except WWII, of course. That's the key problem with this claim: the biggest piece of historical evidence runs squarely against it.
The claim that Social Democrats tend to choose fascists over communists during revolutionary moments is not disproven by WW2.
But is that because of two specific political parties in Germany in the 1930s or because of the philosophy as a whole?
One of the big questions aint it? I think you should come to your own conclusions, as displayed by this thread there are radically different positions within the left on this. Personally I think it happening in more places than 1930s Germany would hint at something other than the uniqueness of the political scene in Germany.
OK, so now we're talking about a tendency in a revolutionary context, which is a lot different from "social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism," Stalin's far more absolute statement. And even arguing that it's a tendency is dubious when the biggest historical example by a mile involved social democrats siding with communists against fascists.
None of this even touches on how ridiculous this claim sounds to anyone who isn't already on a forum like this, either.
Tendency is all I was ever talking about. I explicitly said I don't think Social Democracy is Fascism, was just explaining why Stalin used the term. Again, WW2 doesn't disprove the fact that in revolutionary moments they tend to side with the reactionaries/fascists. War time is obviously a different scenario.
War time is obviously a different scenario.
War time is "when push comes to shove," right? It doesn't make sense to claim that "when push comes to shove, social democrats will side with fascists" when we've seen push come to shove come to invading other countries, and the reaction of social democrats in that situation was to side with communists against fascists.
Of course, you can point to (smaller, more muddled) counterexamples, but all that means is that there isn't really a noticeable tendency.
This appears to me as SocDems reacting in a nationalist manner to Germany as a threat and a rival rather than SocDems reacting in a specifically antifascist manner, though they attempted to take those aesthetics. The second the bigger threat to their nationalist interests ended they sided once again against communism and communists.
Within Germany as the Nazis were rising the SocDems kept viewing the Nazis as a far lesser threat than the communists, who they just over a decade ago had literally slaughtered during the German revolution using the proto-fascist militias.
That reading of how non-German socdems responded to the rise of Nazi Germany sounds reasonable, but I think it's pretty far from Stalin's idea that socdems were anticommunist above all else, to the point where they operated basically hand-in-hand with fascists. If fascism can become such a big threat that your social democracy sides with communists against it, your social democracy is doing something closer to conventional geopolitical maneuvering than to picking sides based on ideology.
Bringing up nationalism as another distinct ideological factor is also a good point. There's more to these situations (especially in the imperial periphery) than just fascism vs. communism.
I've stated that I'm referring to revolution several times no? If you're trying to claim that periods of war and revolution are indistinguishable in the incentives/conditions they create I completely disagree. Even the Nationalists allied with the Communists during the war against Japan, and we all know the course of history after that. There's no denying that SocDems alongside liberals, conservatives, and Communists, fought against Nazi Germany I'm not saying otherwise.
Stalin's original comment was not limited to revolutions (it was from 1924, before the vast majority of communist revolutions got off the ground), and your original comment in this thread mentioned nothing about revolutions. And as many revolutions involve war, there isn't a clean distinction between the two concepts, anyway.
It's not a good take if you have to ignore the largest conflict of the 20th century to make it sensible, and if you have to assume a statement made in the 1920s was meant to apply to the Cold War but not the larger hot conflict that came before it.
It's a socialist forum, I assumed people would know what I meant when I said "when push comes to shove" in relation to SocDems. It's not specific enough, my mistake. For the 748373th time, I don't agree with Stalin I'm just giving my take on why someone would link Social Democracy with Fascism.
And as many revolutions involve war, there isn’t a clean distinction between the two anyway.
There's a clear distinction in the war between a country's revolutionaries and counterevolutionaries and a war between a country and some foreign invader let's not be silly here. The times where the two overalp only prove my point.
How is the largest conflict in human history not "when push comes to shove" as much as anything? It doesn't make any sense to write off WWII when considering the accuracy of such a big, bold claim. It doesn't make any sense to write off the most direct, dire threat social democratic countries have ever faced -- that involved open war between fascists and communists -- when making sweeping predictions about who they're likely to side with in a contest between fascists and communists.
Even making the much more limited claim that "in a revolutionary context, social democrats are more likely to side with fascists than communists" runs into a fair amount of historical trouble. For starters, many revolutionary contexts don't fit neatly into fascism vs. communism. Fidel Castro didn't hold himself out as a communist until months (if not years) after the Cuban Revolution, and when he did it was primarily because the U.S. had made its hostility clear. Ho Chi Minh famously modeled the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence after the American Declaration of Independence and sought an alliance with the U.S. after WWII. You have situations like Chile, where Allende's government was better described as social democracy than communism. You have situations like Venezuela, where Chavismo isn't exactly communism, and where the stooge backed by the U.S. is pretty close to social democracy. You have situations like Jamaica and Sierra Leone where a social democracy granted independence to former colonies in a situation where independence was popular but there was no movement worth calling a revolution.
Even that more limited claim has some pretty major shortcomings, and that's before we get to how little application it has to any sort of movement towards American socialism.
For the 748373th time
We've had a pretty short exchange where we've been clarifying our points. There's no reason to pretend you've had to repeat the same exact thing over and over and over and over again.
We’ve had a pretty short exchange where we’ve been clarifying our points. There’s no reason to pretend you’ve had to repeat the same exact thing over and over and over and over again.
One would think you would understand them by now then. Done engaging with you.
yeah they are pissed at you because you are pinning them to "when push comes to shove", a phrase they only used once and which, once contested, they immediately, repeatedly clarified towards a more nuanced position talking about revolutionary context. In that light YOU are refusing to engage with their argument in a miserably pedantic, sniping way. It's a testament to their character that you got as much text out of them as you did before they gave up on you.
Even making the much more limited claim that “in a revolutionary context, social democrats are more likely to side with fascists than communists” runs into a fair amount of historical trouble.
This is a claim
For starters, many revolutionary contexts don’t fit neatly into fascism vs. communism.
This seems to be the beginning of you reinforcing that claim.
Fidel Castro didn’t hold himself out as a communist until months (if not years) after the Cuban Revolution, and when he did it was primarily because the U.S. had made its hostility clear. Ho Chi Minh famously modeled the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence after the American Declaration of Independence and sought an alliance with the U.S. after WWII. You have situations like Chile, where Allende’s government was better described as social democracy than communism. You have situations like Venezuela, where Chavismo isn’t exactly communism, and where the stooge backed by the U.S. is pretty close to social democracy. You have situations like Jamaica and Sierra Leone where a social democracy granted independence to former colonies in a situation where independence was popular but there was no movement worth calling a revolution.
This is basically a bulleted list of extremely different places with extremely different circumstances, linked vaguely under the umbrella of revolutionary action. You don't even use the words social democracy until you insinuate that Juan Guaido, a LITERAL CIA OPERATION, is somehow an example of how social democracy is NOT at least tentatively linked with fascism. It's trash.
YTA. fix your engagement style. Moreover, get over the part of yourself that gets frustrated to be argued against.
I addressed the "in a revolutionary context" qualifier at length after first pointing out that it's not part of the Stalin comment OP asked about. Rather than discuss any of that, they got pissy about how exhausting it is to have a short conversation.
your whole attitude throughout the exchange oozes undeserved self-superiority
Hysterical coming from someone who just dropped an unsolicited, reddit-tier YTA comment.
Except they did. Socdems took up positions aligned with fascists before the war was even over. Greece is the best example imo. The British Labour Party and then the Truman era USA continued to arm literal nazis to continue the fight fight away against the communist factions of the Greek Resistance. Socdems broadly did not protest the western powers assuming an immediate militant stance against the Soviet Union. Even the socdem successes like the welfare state in the UK or France are built specifically to keep workers sated due to the USSR being right there on the other side of the curtain. They instituted policies with the intent of giving the workers enough that they had something to lose. All the while continuing undeniably fascistic wars in Asia and Africa, where they didn't have to appeal to a base of their own supporters of citizens.
Attlee was a committed social democrat and did some fantastic shit on the homefront, and also backed literal Nazis before the decade was out. Also I think "when push comes to shove" can be outside of war time tbf. In war it is easier to form an alliance like that, but when it is over and actually making peace and accepting one another is when push comes to shove, the other shoe dropped and they chose fascist collaborators rather than share a world with the Soviets.
Nothing socdems did to help fascists after the war (or before it) matters half as much as actually aligning with the USSR and actually fighting Nazi Germany. If you had read Stalin's statement on the eve of WWII (it was originally made in 1924) you would have thought he'd expect the social democratic countries to align with the fascists against the communists. They did the exact opposite.
This doesn't mean that social democrats are BFFs with communists, but it does substantially weaken the argument that "when the chips are down, social democrats tend to side with fascists," and it disproves the type of absolutist claim Stalin made in his original comment. We can't claim to have politics informed by history and then ignore the most obvious, most relevant bit of history just because accounting for it would make something Stalin said look like a bad take.
WW2 wouldn’t have even happened if SocDems hadn’t armed fascists to kill communists beforehand, so your notion that WW2 somehow disproves this is ridiculous.
Any statement beginning with "WWII wouldn't have happened if" is highly speculative at best. The Treaty of Versailles was a ticking time bomb right from the start, and that wasn't a controversial opinion even at the time.
But in any event, Stalin's claim is about who socdems will side with "when the chips are down," not who they'll opportunistically sell to in peacetime. And they sold to everyone, including the Soviet Union. You can say that socdems aren't reliably anti-fascist, but claiming that they're literally another wing of fascism is silly when a bunch of them went to war against fascists.
By “went to war against fascists” do you actually mean “fought back against a foreign country once it literally attacked them first”? That bar is so low it’s underground.
I didn’t say they sold weapons to anybody. I said they literally armed fascists to kill communists rather than allow communists to take power in Germany. Yes, WW2 would not have happened if they hadn’t done that. Your thesis is trash tbh.
They murdered Rosa, they murdered the Ruhr Red Army, they murdered Levine and the Bavarian Council Republic by aligning with the military, they wiped out the Bremen Soviet Republic, they carried out Blutmai, put down the March Action, among a shitload of other things.
I do really loath the "such and such war wouldn't have happened" thing, I especially try not to do it with WWI AND WWII, but if anything applies it is the literal creation of the Friekorps
Except it does matter about as much. They helped facilitate the Nazis getting power in the first place. They then continued the Nazis projects. The history shows that socdems align with and enable fascism. That Nazi Germany arising in the first place required the socdems to murder communists and create fascist militias. That is material to, and cannot be divorced from their later opposition to Hitler. You are acting like fighting against the Nazis exists in a vacuum, while aiding fascism does not and in fact is made null due to they helping mop up their mess.
They also do tend to side with fascists since before and after the big example, they have done so. We cannot make ww2 the singular case of fascism that matters. Socdem enabling of fascism in Latin America and elsewhere, or post-war Europe matters and is a stain on them that fighting the nazis for a time cannot clean away. You want to take some history and say that refutes the import or significance of other history before and after. The point is socdems can exist with fascism, they helped it become a thing in the first place. Fighting Hitler and then immediately protecting fascists' post-war does not somehow refute the point. It speaks to the ability of social democracy to facilitate fascism. It _can oppose fascism, but fascism also seems to rely on its help
Couldn't this argument just as easily be made the other way?
By rejecting social democrats efforts at reform and public services and focusing their energies on internal conflict aren't more orthodox leftists ensuring that nothing at all is done to curb the power elite and the publics concerns go unaddressed? Aren't they then siding with fascists by default?
In fact couldn't a cynic even argue that is their goal because in their conception of how Revolution must be carried out it is only at this stage of public suffering that it could occur - so they would oppose any effort to ameliorate. But of course in all their red bureaucracy edginess they've done nothing to engage with and organize the public. So all they achieve is a divided left that is easily conquered.
In fact couldn’t a cynic even argue that is their goal because in their conception of how Revolution must be carried out it is only at this stage of public suffering that it could occur
You don't need to be a cynic to believe this -- there's at least a small faction of leftist accelerationists who will tell you this openly. Shit, look at Posadists.
It depends what you view as empowering the power elite, working within their institutions or refusing to do so. There is a case to be made that the Communist party of Germany's total rejection of the Social Democrats is one of the big reasons why the Nazis were succesful in taking power. To argue that it was a bigger factor than the Social Democrat suppressing the revolution and directly collaborsting with the right wing, I think is a much more difficult argument to make.
I'm just going to ignore your third paragraph, it is a bit ridiculous.
So you've kind of gotta understand where the Bolsheviks/communists were coming from to understand social fascism.
The Bolsheviks were a faction in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, that is to say they were social democrats. Social Democracy evolved in the mid to late nineteenth century as a sort of broad spectrum left political front encompassing a lot of different tendencies that only had a few things in common, namely that they were not anarchists and that they tended to avoid official policies of violence, with the more moderate wings condemning violence while the more radical wings quietly supported it or carried it out. By the twentieth century, Marxism had firmly taken hold in social democratic circles, but that certainly doesn't mean a strict party line, and the Bolsheviks always found themselves to the left of the vast majority of European social democrats. They saw the second international fall into nationalism at the hands of social democrats and by the end of the 1920s they had completely split from the Mensheviks, purged a bunch of them, and assimilated a few.
Being the first socialist state, the Bolsheviks assumed that the rest of Europe would soon follow suit, particularly Germany, and in fact Germany was following suit with the November Revolution which was very similar to the Russian Revolution. By 1918, some communists had followed the Bolsheviks and established a communist party, but along with the radical wing of the social democrats, they failed to win a majority in the parliament and instead the conservative wing of the social democrats controlled the government. They established the Weimar constitution and began destroying the workers and soldiers councils by force. The conservative wing of the SPD ended the German revolution in 1919 where the Bolsheviks had advanced the Russian revolution just a few years earlier. From the communists's view, they stopped the world revolution.
The moderate wing of the SPD continued to suppress the workers and allow the freikorps to reign freely. Despite this, the KPD had been pursuing a united front policy through the beginning of the 1920s. The SPD would join the opposition by the end of 1920 and continue to lose relevancy, but would still support the violent suppression of worker's rebellions. They only won a few more seats in the 1933 elections than the KPD, and would serve as a constant roadblock to the KPD. This is why Stalin thought them no different than fascists.
So how does this apply today though? Well for starters, most of the social democratic parties in Europe were happily anti-communist after the war and went along with the neoliberal turn just fine. Today they're either irrelevant or the equivalent of the Democrats. In socialist states they usually form the right wing of the governing coalition and don't wield much if any power. In the rest of the third/colonized/peripheral world they vary. Ultimately it's going to be a case by case basis, but social democratic parties largely function as a relief valve in the imperial core for when tensions run too high.
My personal theory of fascism is that it is wrong to think of it as a distinct system from liberal democracy. It is the stick of bourgeois democracy. Social democracy is the carrot. The end goal of both is the preservation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie when threatened by a the worker's movement.
At minimum, it's wrong enough that it's silly to speak of it as if it has any real predictive power. Stalin said this in 1924, and while German Social Democrats sided with fascists over socialists around that time, World War II saw far more social democrats in far more countries side with the Soviet Union against fascists. The idea that "when the chips are down, social democrats will throw in with the fascists" runs contrary to the historical scenario where the chips were most obviously down, and when the fascists were most undeniably fascist. You can make a compelling counterargument about how social democracies acted during the Cold War, but even in the most charitable light that argument only gets us back to "this concept has no real predictive power -- different social democrats have acted differently in different contexts."
And today (at least in the U.S.), the concept is actively harmful to advancing the cause of socialism. To anyone who isn't already in some niche lefty forum, saying that the likes of Bernie Sanders are basically fascists makes you sound like a fucking crank. It doesn't matter how right you think you are -- if you sound like a fucking crank you aren't convincing anybody of anything anytime soon. If that's the stuff people hear coming from self-described socialists, people are going to think socialists are out of touch (and they'd be right). They aren't going to listen to what socialists have to say, and they definitely aren't going to want to identify as socialists themselves.
We also run the risk of more americans getting it into their heads that socialism=fascism.
Yeah, but we have to avoid baking it in harder. I also like use North Korea to convince them that the nazis weren't socialist. By the time the are realising NK has good points, they already know enough to not think the nazis were socialist.
Yeah, out of context (and outside of small lefty forums like this that statement will always be out of context) it would be easy to misunderstand as an endorsement of
horseshoehorseshit theory.
as for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.:mao-clap:
socdems are the vacillating middle. they see the issues but cannot bring themselves to commit.
when theyre enemies theyre enemies, when theyre allies theyre allies. simple as
Was he right about the doctors too?
But anyway, how do you see it as "Social Imperialism" or "Social Chauvinism”?
so what it does to help the domestic population is built on the backs of the global poor
How does financial regulations, public healthcare, progressive tax structure, etc do that?
Is it incapable of applying reforms to foreign policy the way it does to domestic policy?
He's right but it can seem hyperbolic before we reach the stage where conditions pretty much force liberals to choose between socialism and fascism.
to our boy Bernie, enthusiastically kept the imperial projects of their respective countries going rather than push back that hard against UK, French or US imperialism
Sanders hasn't tried to cut the military budget? He hasn't opposed US interventions?
I think leftists need to stop overreaching in their efforts to connect things.
Social Democracy is an economic model and series of methods for changing wealth distribution. Where that wealth comes from really doesn't matter to what social Democracy is. The foreign policy carried out by the government or movement has no bearing on wether it's a Social Democracy. You can have Social Democracy that's Imperialist and derives its wealth from its empire, or you can have a Social Democracy of colonized states, of marginalized people.
You don't need to hate people based on the label attached to them. You can actually put that asside and judge them on their actual actions and beliefs.
It's probably more accurate to say that social democrats inadequately, inconsistently opposed imperialism. That's still bad -- no one here is saying socdems are the ideal -- but it's not "enthusiastically keeping the imperial projects of their countries going."
Look at the peaceful independence of British colonies like Jamaica and Sierra Leone, or the American handover of The Philippines (a process started in 1934). Obviously those countries never should have been colonies to begin with, and you can say that neocolonial financial trappings undercut the significance of independence, but that's something less than enthusiastically maintaining empire. You can also look at how opposition to the imperial project in Vietnam was a major point of contention within the Democratic Party at the 1968 convention and how Bernie voted against the Iraq War. Again, these few steps are far from good, but they're also less than enthusiastic support for empire. At some point this stuff gets so far away from the common conception of "fascism" for "social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism" to make any sense for ordinary people.
Imperial countries were forced to leave their colonies in some cases, but left without any real revolutionary threat in other cases. Where was the revolutionary threat in Jamaica in 1960? Where was the revolutionary threat in The Philippines in 1934? I can believe that France saw the writing on the wall in Morocco, but there was actually some violence there (albeit short of a revolution). But there are some cases where there was no significant violence, and where there was no one who would have obviously forced them out.
Painting these events with a broad brush gets sloppy fast. "Bernie Sanders is just another flavor of fascist" isn't going to move anyone who isn't already a communist, anyway.
Well said. The fact that most of these "peacefully" freed nations still are largely economically ruled to the benefit of their "former" colonizers is telling. It always comes with implicit threats. Connolly said as much when talking about Ireland
If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.
England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.
England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.
Nationalism without Socialism – without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin - is only national recreancy.
It would be tantamount to a public declaration that our oppressors had so far succeeded in inoculating us with their perverted conceptions of justice and morality that we had finally decided to accept those conceptions as our own, and no longer needed an alien army to force them upon us.
As a Socialist I am prepared to do all one man can do to achieve for our motherland her rightful heritage – independence; but if you ask me to abate one jot or tittle of the claims of social justice, in order to conciliate the privileged classes, then I must decline.
Such action would be neither honourable nor feasible. Let us never forget that he never reaches Heaven who marches thither in the company of the Devil. Let us openly proclaim our faith: the logic of events is with us.
I get that you aren't going around telling libs that Bernie Sanders is basically a fascist, but this isn't a private forum, not everyone is as careful as you, and leftists sliding into "One True Leftist" territory at the expense of anything resembling a mass movement is a real problem. Entertaining stuff like this doesn't do any good and might do some bad.
And I don't think France getting their asses chased out of Algeria and Indochina explains the British turning over Jamaica (where there was no threat of anything like those French imperial wars), and it definitely doesn't explain the U.S. deciding to grant independence to The Philippines 20-30 years earlier.
The phrase is worthless and sectarian. There is a long term clash between the interests of SocDems and true Socialists, but in the current context, it just weakens both.
