Today's socdems are neoliberals who call each other comrade. But relative to the general political climate of their time, they occupy a similar niche - they're supporters of bourgeoise democracy who pretend to be on the side of "the common man." It's just that back in Weimar Germany, you needed to offer much, much more for that to work - when you have a giant industrial workforce that's heavily unionized and on board with playing rough, when the October Revolution has just happened, when there's battles in the streets and people just bring actual machine guns, you have a situation were capital is really, really scared and that means you can get much more concessions out of them.
So i agree with you that they cannot be equated with today's socdems, but there's still a certain continuity. They've always been left of center, it's just that where that center is has changed dramatically, and not in favor of us.
Today's socdems are neoliberals who call each other comrade. But relative to the general political climate of their time, they occupy a similar niche - they're supporters of bourgeoise democracy who pretend to be on the side of "the common man." It's just that back in Weimar Germany, you needed to offer much, much more for that to work - when you have a giant industrial workforce that's heavily unionized and on board with playing rough, when the October Revolution has just happened, when there's battles in the streets and people just bring actual machine guns, you have a situation were capital is really, really scared and that means you can get much more concessions out of them.
So i agree with you that they cannot be equated with today's socdems, but there's still a certain continuity. They've always been left of center, it's just that where that center is has changed dramatically, and not in favor of us.