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So, I got into a discussion earlier about the meaning of the terms socialism and social democracy, and someone linked me to this article: https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-socialism.amp.html I would like to make the argument that there is a fundamental misunderstanding about these terms in American politics and in political discussions, which, I believe, mainly stems from a lack of historical knowledge and the fact, that googling these terms on Wikipedia does not provide you with enough context. I am referring to these two articles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy My argument is, that historically, the terms (democratic) socialism and social democracy where as interchangeable when they first appeared as they are today and they never really competed with each other at the same time. Thus, the distinction is only needed to talk about history but not for talking about differences in ideology in the context of Western society. Unfortunately that is not aparrent at first glance from reading these articles. Let me illustrate that with an example about the german social democratic party (SPD), which is still a major party in Germany today. You can read its history here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany The party changed its name a few times but from 1890 called itself social democratic party and its members thought of themselves as social Democrats. Their goal, at this time, was to abolish the current capitalist system and replace it with a socialist economy, but in contrast to the soviet Union, not under an authoritarian leadership but in a democratic system. Still, they called themselves social democrats, not (democratic) socialists because that distinction was simply not needed. In time the ideology of the party shifted from wanting to replace capitalism with a socialist economy to having the social capitalism we have today in Germany. This shift of ideology was gradual and, after the second World War, in Germany, no one in the social democratic party wanted a socialist economy anymore. Yet the term social Democrats and (democratic) socialists was still as interchangeable as it was before. People wouldn't just stop calling themselves socialists, instead the meaning of socialism changed for them. And this is where the author of the article is wrong. Modern day socialists do not want to replace the capitalist system, instead they want a social capitalistic system like, for example, Denmark has. In fact, parties in, for example Germany, that actually want to replace the capitalist system would call themselves Marxist, leninist or Marxist-leninist today. Tl;dr Bernie sanders is a socialist, and that's okay. Socialism meant different things throughout history. Today it means having social capitalism. This link provides some insight about how socialism is used and debated in Germany: https://translate.googleusercontent...6XTN19ZB5TyYI7g demonicon fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Mar 8, 2020 |
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Mar 8, 2020 15:27
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