- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Original title (which I find a bit too click-baity):
Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century
Original title (which I find a bit too click-baity):
Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century
The European democratic socialist model really has made people’s lives immeasurably better (and still does). It’s far from perfect but I think that’s because it’s happening in the real world, where there will always be messy compromise. For me, I choose the mess that helps people!
The thing is, and I say this living a very comfortable life in Germany: this model makes life good for (many, not all) people HERE, but it still depends on people being exploited elsewhere. Call it imperialism, dependency theory or world system theory, they all say similar things. World-wide social democracy is impossible.
This is a common sentiment, but I don’t agree. I have family in Brazil, and I know that the democratic socialists there have done a lot to improve life for the Brazilian people, too, in very different material circumstances (i.e., in a largely agrarian ‘developing’ economy). The structures and principles of democratic socialism can be applied successfully outside the developed world.
European welfare is subsidized by interest payments made by poor countries to rich countries. European social democracy works because they steal money from the developing world. Social welfare in developing countries are notably less robust precisely because of the underdevelopment.
I’ve already addressed this critique. Democratic socialism works in the developing world, too. Everything there works less well because the countries are poorer, but democratic socialism still works best.
Yeah sure, whatever. Meanwhile I’ve watched social democrats in the Philippines turn to fascism while others become the left wing of the Liberal Party.
This is a strong refutation of the argument that social democracy always works and that all social democrats are good people.
Social democracy is a dead end. Where the left in power won serious gains like in Venezuela, Bolovia, or Brazil, they did so not under the banner of social democracy. And even in these countries, the left in power eventually developed a class consciousness diametrically opposed to the socialism of the streets and eventually betrayed their mass bases. In Bolivia and Brazil, where reaction was particularly harsh, the harshness of the reaction made people forget the failings of state socialism and tried again. I will continue to watch these dynamics play again and again and again for as long as I live. This is the folly of state socialism, whether social democratic or otherwise.
Also, please respect that this space is anarchist. There are other communities on this site that aren’t.
The Brazilian social democratic reforms were sufficiently well-embedded that, even when the people made the mistake of electing an authoritarian right government, that government wasn’t able to remove them. The organised working class in Brazil was than powerful enough to remove the authoritarians even in the face of voter suppression. The system in fact worked as intended (unsually for Brazil!) and the Brazilian people are benefiting once again.
By contrast, the record of anarchists is… what? A handful of temporary governments during civil wars, which anarchists can’t even agree were actually anarchist?
I didn’t think anarchists were oppose to having discussions. I don’t think you’re representative of anarchists in that regard.
Anarchists usually participate in a lot of grassroots movements, which put pressure on the state to benefit oppressed groups through reformism. So they too have an impact here, they just have a much more ambitious project that is extremely hard to create in a current world situation, but they are actively improving the lives of oppressed people.
I’m not opposed to having discussions, I’m opposed to you using this space to push authoritarian ideas.
The fact of the matter is that elections alienate people from agency and the ballot boxes represent mere images of agency. People voted in fascism in Brazil because it gave them that image of power that denied them true agency. They voted for PT again on the same grounds. These are the same dynamics I observed in the Philippines.
Anarchists don’t oppose the ballot box on the basis of its effectivity in gaining reforms but rather on the basis of the alienation it represents. Anarchists who argue to vote argue so on the basis that this alienated agency is easier to mobilize in the short run, not because it is inherently anarchist to vote. It’s only easier to mobilize votes precisely based on the same alienation that characterizes the alienation of electoral politics.
The record of anarchism is obviously not measured in taking state power because that’s the exact opposite of anarchy. Meanwhile social democracy will always run risk of turning neoliberal or fascist as it has in Bolivia and Brazil, if even reluctantly neoliberal. Anarchism opposes this fight for an image of agency that voters must contest over and smash this edifice of bourgeois democracy altogether.
Just recently, your beloved state socialists in Chile under Boric are resuming the colonial war on the Mapuche. All while under the continuing guise of socialism. The same happened in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil. I will watch it happen again in Brazil.
One could argue that the social democratic strategy stood in the way of all the different approches to peoples power. in many situations social democrats actively sabotaged or withdrew support for strikes, revolutions, riots and struggles. Imo what we have in many places in europe is not because of them but despite their constant effort to undermine any actual system change.
Your first two sentences come under the ‘messy compromise’ that I acknowledged from the start. The last is just obviously untrue.
i view the democratic socialist model as harm mitigation. It doesn’t remove the harmful structures of the state or capital, but it does reduce the harm somewhat. As such, those policies are concesions that anarchists should fight for, but the system itself is not a goal and anarchists should continue to work in opposition to it
And better only for the Europeans, while the Third World is worse off. Social democracy doesn’t erase poverty, it moves it somewhere else, it works only as long as there is a poorer country on the other side of the world that you can exploit for cheap labour.
Not true. I’ve addressed this critique twice already in this thread, but democratic socialism has been successfully applied in the developing world, too, precisely in those poorer countries you cite, without undermining the success of the European social democracies.