#max schachtman

[racefortheironthrone]

hi ser steven

been following awhile and while i came across your blog and tumblr from all the asoiaf stuff, i definitely stayed for the historical and economic analysis along the way

so my ask is more of a beginner's to left-right economic/political terminology question: is there a difference or distinction between a social democrat and a democratic socialist?

i see a lot of US politicians say they're the former and oly one prominent one identifying themselves as the latter

or there not really a distinction but the order became important because americans are still terrified of socialism's association with the red scare?

p.s. pardon my english and lack of knowledge of some issues, english isn't really my first languange and my knowledge of american history is the cliff-notes version lol

I'm afraid you've openeed up a rather large can of worms with this question. Not that it's not a useful or important question, but it's annoyingly complicated.

Because there is an explanation about what the differences between "social democrat" and "democratic socialist" are in a European context, but then there's an entirely different explanation about what the differences between "social democrat" and "democratic socialist" are in an American context.

The European Context:

In a European context, the difference between the two labels largely has to do with how different groups on the left feel about the Third Way movement of the 1990s and what's happened to the left (or more accurately, center-left) politically since then. So, for example, democratic socialists are more likely to emphasize the need for a shift from a capitalist to a socialist economy than social democrats, who traditionally have sought to regulate and reform capitalist economies.

However, this can very easily get into the weeds, especially if you try to follow the complex ideological manueverings and movements from the 1950s-1970s in the British Labour Party - where social democrats were the right wing of the party and socialists the center and more revolutionary socialists the left - and how those influenced struggles within the Labour Party in the 1980s that helped give rise to New Labour and so forth.

The American Context:

But the reason why the largest and fastest-growing socialist organization in the United States is called the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and why Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist actually has nothing to do with that complex economic debate, and everything to do with a man named Max Shachtman.

Max is a complicated and controversial figure in the history of the American left. On the one hand, he was probably the most significant American Trotskyist, he created this whole theory of "bureaucratic collectivism" that caused Trotskyists to fight amongst themselves about whether the USSR was "state capitalist" or a "degraded worker's state" until the Berlin Wall came down, and he was by all accounts a highly charismatic speaker and someone who recruited other intelligent and hardworking people into the movement.

On the other hand, Shachtman was also a lifelong devotee of entryism, a sectarian tactic by which members of an organization join or merge into another, larger organization. Rather than actually genuinely intending to work for the interests of the new organization, they're really there to recruit people into their own organization, steal the mailing list and the rolodex (this is how political organizations used to work before the advent of computers and the internet), and cause the larger organization to split and become politically paralyzed, so that it no longer poses a threat to the expansion of their own organization.

Shachtman was kind of a genius at this, because people from other organizations would agree to mergers with him, despite knowing that he had done this to other organizations before: there was the Workers Party of the United States merging into Norman Thomas' Socialist Party back in the 30s, then there was his break with the Socialist Workers Party in the 40s, then it was the Independent Socialist League merging with the Socialist Party in 1958 - and on and on.

Anyway, by 1972 said Socialist Party decided to rename itself "Social Democrats, USA." Michael Harrington (who was Shachtman's most prominent protege thanks to his authorship of The Other America) decided to break with Shachtman and the former Socialist Party due to their anti-Communism and thus support for (or rather, opposiition to opposition to) the Vietnam War.

In order to distinguish themselves from Shachtman and the "Social Democrats, USA," Harrington and his allies ultimately decided to go with Democratic Socialists of America as the name for their new group, and one of the historical ironies of the American left is that they probably would have gone with Social Democrats of America and avoided a whole lot of future confusion from European visitors and journalists had their former parent organization not had a name that was too similar.

[gregor-samsung]

" I neocons si formano nella “Nuova Gerusalemme” della diaspora ebraica a New York City, la Lower East Side di Manhattan. Dallo shtetl alla Jewtown, dallo yiddish all’inglese, in un contesto bianco-anglosassone-protestante (Wasp) carico di veleni antisemiti, il passo è lungo. Fra i giovani figli o nipoti di immigrati si forma una esigua quanto ipercombattiva élite intellettuale marxista e filobolscevica che si batte per affermare il socialismo in America e nel mondo. Di quella New York si diceva fosse la città più interessante dell’Unione Sovietica*. Nel City College della metropoli gli squattrinati giovani destinati a formare la spina dorsale del neoconservatorismo a venire frequentano l’odorosa caffetteria studentesca occupandone l’Alcove 1, fortilizio dell’avanguardia trozkista in dissidio con la maggioranza stalinista, che governa l’Alcove 2. Durante la Guerra fredda, le origini ebraiche e comuniste di molti neocons li renderanno sospetti agli occhi di paleoconservatori e repubblicani mainstream anche dopo che il presunto tradimento sovietico dei loro ideali li avrà spinti verso un bellicoso anticomunismo associato al sostegno di principio per Israele, per niente scontato nell’America degli anni cinquanta. Dall’antistalinismo all’avversione totale per il comunismo, dalla contestazione all’adesione al sistema, contro le derive moderate e compromissorie di liberals e appeasers disposti al dialogo con i tiranni rossi, i neoconservatori già trozkisti faranno sentire la loro voce nel dibattito pubblico del dopoguerra. Nell’accademia come nei media alternativi e nelle anticamere del potere, eminenti neocons quali Leo Strauss e Irving Kristol, Max Schachtman e Irving Howe, Richard Perle e Kenneth Adelman, fino a Douglas Feith e a Paul Wolfowitz, influente vicesegretario alla Difesa sotto George W. Bush, avranno modo di promuovere il globalismo democratico. Fine della storia. Mai come strutturata corrente politica o intellettuale, sempre al loro combattivo, lacerante modo. Il moto perpetuo della rivoluzione come fine in sé – comunista o anticomunista – impedisce di superare lo stadio delle connessione informali, esposte a litigi pubblici e odi privati, conversioni e apostasie. Fino al disastro iracheno, che nel primo decennio del secolo marca il tramonto del neoconservatorismo di governo. Non del movimento. In attesa della prossima alba. Perché in America profeti e crociati non muoiono mai. "

* Cfr. J. Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, New York-Toronto 2009, Anchor Books, p. 27.

---------

Lucio Caracciolo, La pace è finita. Così ricomincia la storia in Europa, Feltrinelli (collana Varia), novembre 2022. [Libro elettronico]

[davidhudson]

Leon Trotsky, November 7, 1879 – 21 August 1940.

With Natalya Sedova, Frida Kahlo, and Max Schachtman in Mexico in 1937.