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I wish there was an option for Social Democrat, because that's what fits me. Bernie made Democratic Socialism famous but I don't think most people who define themselves this way understand the difference.
I mean, Americans can just look at Europe. It's basically entirely social democracy. I don't understand why entire America is pretending social democracy is some sort of socialist boogeyman...
It prevents money from being taken by the people who want to take your money. They pay a lot to keep the working class from thinking that's bad. Thus the boogeyman-ing.
Because they are uninformed. And Democratic socialism is closer to communism than social democracy.
Democratic Socialism is closer to socialism than communism. It literally means using democracy to transform the economic system to be socialist.
I'd consider myself a democratic socialist myself, as I believe that workers should own the businesses they work for instead of consolidating the power to a small amount of executives and shareholders who only care about making more profit than they did the previous quarter. I also believe this would limit the possibility of corruption by preventing extreme wealth from existing in the first place.
I do not consider myself a communist because I don't believe that centralized control is a good idea in most cases. An exception to that for me would be a single payer healthcare system, where the government guarantees healthcare to all of its citizens and visitors free at the point of service.
Here I reckon you’ve made an important point. Socialism is economics, not governance. Well, in a democracy anyway. Perhaps that should be indented. I think it’s one of the biggest barriers to being comfortable with the word itself.
Workers can own businesses today, so there's nothing stopping that from happening. There are lots of worker owned collectives out there. The major difference between Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism is that Democratic Socialism wants to nationalise many categories of business, ie. to have the government run them.
This tends to not go well where it's been tried because once business and government meld it becomes an unstoppable force that eats everything and has no accountability to anyone or oversight by anyone, and rapidly becomes inefficient and ineffective. I much prefer the Scandinavian way of mass deployment of labor unions, so that labor is a powerful force in it's own right rather than one that's ruled by a powerful merged political/business elite.
The difference between it being an option and it being mandated is that when the level of greed we see today is allowed to exist, then it will exist, and power will slowly and inevitably be taken away from the worker class.
There are also multiple types of socialism, and socialism doesn't necessarilly mean government ownership specifically. Check out Professor Richard Wolff's excellent lectures on the topic.
That's why I wish there was better understanding of social democracy.
I understand social democracy very well and I don't think it's a good system because the capitalist class ultimately stays in charge, which will inevitably lead to corruption and the slow reverting of social services. I used to be a social democrat myself around when Bernie started to run for president the first time, so I understand why the premise is popular.
My idea of socialism includes:
And that's just what I came up with and is by no means comprehensive.
Who is uninformed, Americans or Europeans?
Americans. And I can say that as someone who's lived half his life on each continent. But Europeans probably don't know what Democratic Socialism is either.
This sounds like the same kind of splitting hairs that results in fighting between “leftists” and “liberals”. As long as we continue to bicker and come up with all of these ridiculous purity tests then we’re never going to defeat the right.
There are pretty substantial differences.I voted for Bernie so I don't think they are so substantial as to cause a fight, but I just wish there was better education out there in the US on Social Democracy. It works in Europe and most Americans are blind to it or think Democratic Socialism is the same thing.
The function of the DSA, although they may seem extremist to you, is to pull the Overton window back to the left, where it was before virulent McCarthyism. Watch and learn.
Doesn't seem extremist to me at all, it's just not exactly what I'd prefer in the end. I vote for the candidates in it that I can anyway.
Vote for progressives in democratic primaries and there would be. It's pretty much too late now, but the path to a legitimate leftist party has always been there, but leftists don't vote in primaries.
I do. And we came very close with Bernie. I would even say that we won, but the party elite simply blocked his nomination. But there's always next time. I consider the primaries to be far more important than the general election where my state and county has gone blue for decades without much risk otherwise.
We didn't come close with Bernie, DNC favoritism aside Bernie overwhelmingly lost because enough progressives didn't register to vote in the primaries. That conspiracy bullshit needs to die. Yes the DNC backed the Democrat because why would they back an independent and not a member of their party? But they didn't cheat, it was simply that not enough Bernie supporters voted for him in the primaries, because progressives mostly don't vote.
Well let's put it this way, if 400-450 superdelegates had pledged for Sanders before any votes were cast as they did for Clinton, he would have won too. No one can really say the outcome without the ballot box being stuffed prior to the election. It was close enough that these kind of things are enough to sway it.
At any rate, my hopes lie with AOC. No one will be able to accuse her followers of being only "bros" and try to divide the vote by sex. She will probably lose the general election but getting her through the primaries will be a win.
No he wouldn't have, and we can generally assume that's true because, again, historically progressives don't vote, especially not in primaries. Democrats vote. Democrats voted for the Democrat, surprising absolutely nobody that wasn't terminally online. He never stood a chance because he was never that popular with democrats in the first place.
The Bernie bros thing was entirely propaganda though, very nearly every Bernie primary voter voted for Clinton in the general. More Russian republican disinformation.
I have zero doubt he would have had there been a level playing field.
It wasn't even close man. Clinton got nearly 4 million more votes, like 30 percent more votes than Bernie. It wasn't close and Bernie never had a chance. Also why would it be a level playing field? Bernie wasn't a Democratic party member, obviously the party is going to support the Democratic candidate. There was no cheating, there was no conspiracy, it was simply that too few progressives voted in the primary.
Completely relate to this. The reality too is that Bernie Sanders much more closely represent Social Democratic principles.
Not sure what combination it is that people don't understand the difference or have a tendency to gravitate to more absolutist ideologies, but I feel this.
You're absolutely right- Bernie and I'm guessing most of his followers are social democrats. I seem to recall an interview where this came up and he basically shrugged the question off and said it didn't matter to him what ppl called it. As for these political terms, I think Americans are broadly illiterate.
From what I've read, DSA is in practice a Social Democrat org, I suppose out of necessity. Bernie is the same.
I think if the real goal was social democracy they'd just call it that. I do think Bernie (as the primary torch bearer of the term), does want to nationalise much of private business in the end, but is starting with standard social democracy to get the ball rolling. Many of the others may actually just be social democrats who are on the Bernie bus because that's the one going somewhere.
True, but DSA is a large, national organization that's been around for decades, so that implies both institutional inertia and factionalism. It may be a group of both social democrats who don't feel welcomed in the democrat party and actual socialists who may not see any other viable alternative available to them.
Yes there is definitely something to creating a unified front between both camps, and I have no problem uniting under this banner, at least up until the point we take over the Democratic party in a stable enough way to start splitting hairs on policy.
That makes sense. Although we can dream about left unity, the differences between some of the folks in the party may be to great to reconcile (i.e., a lot of people in the party are not left at all).
Is a Social Democrat someone who only democrats at parties or with a group of friends? Okay have fun, don't democrat and drive 'cause it's gonna take every decent person to bring down the fascist authoritarian theo/pedo/oligarchy
The fascist authoritarian theo pedo oligarchy consists of the entire system, so unless you're talking about bringing down Democrats as well as Republicans, all you're doing is propping up the system as it is. Our current conditions did not form in a vacuum they had the assistance of the DNC and their ratchet effect
"Every decent person" includes a significant percentage of Democrats, a tiny smattering of people who still call themselves Republicans but don't vote that way, and not a single damned soul of the MAGA base.
BotHSiDEs
There are no 2 sides to US politics, there is one right wing fascist oligarchy