#social democracy

[probablyasocialecologist]

Adopting rightwing policies on issues such as immigration and the economy does not help centre-left parties win votes, according to new analysis of European electoral and polling data. Faced with a 20-year decline in their vote share, accompanied by rising support for the right, far right and sometimes the far left, social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly sought salvation by moving towards the political centre. However the analysis, published on Wednesday, shows that centre-left parties promising, for example, to be tough on immigration or unrelenting on public spending are both unlikely to attract potential voters on the right, and risk alienating existing progressive supporters.

[...]

One of the key lessons was that “trying to imitate rightwing positions is just not a successful strategy for the left”, he said. Two studies in particular, looking at so-called welfare chauvinism and fiscal policy, illustrated the point, the researchers said. Björn Bremer of the Central European University in Vienna said a survey in Spain, Italy, the UK and Germany and larger datasets from 12 EU countries showed that since the financial crisis of 2008, “fiscal orthodoxy” had been a vote loser for the centre left. “Social democratic parties that have backed austerity fail to win the support of voters worried about public debt, and lose the backing of those who oppose austerity,” Bremer said. “Centre-left parties that actually impose austerity lose votes.”

[...]

The data strongly suggests centre-left parties can build a coalition of voters who believe a strong welfare state, effective public services and real investment, for example in the green transition, are essential,” Bremer said. “But doing the opposite – offering a contradictory programme that promotes austerity but promises to protect public services and the welfare state, and hoping voters will swallow such fairytales – failed in the 2010s, and is likely to fail again.” Similarly, said Matthias Enggist of the University of Lausanne, analysis of data from eight European countries showed no evidence that welfare chauvinism ��� broadly, restricting immigrants’ access to welfare – was a successful strategy for the left.

[wiki-fight]

[itscoldinwonderland]

**For context "center-left" and "center right" can just be described as "left" and "right respectably. The "center " part just means it's closer to the center than a far-stance.

Bonus put in the tags how you self describe your politics and what you picked.

[suprememayobros2]

Does america just not have high rise residential areas?

This is just a block of council flats. They're everywhere in great Britain, especially in North England. There are entire council estates of the things. My uncle lives in one. What's so commie about them?

Your just brainwashed into hating social housing.

[racefortheironthrone]

Do you think that intersectionality hurts or advances activism; for example let's say a climate change organization calling for a ceasefire?

Both.

In its positive aspects, intersectionality is grounded in reciprocal solidarity. It is an ideological and philosophical position that we are all connected and "no man is an island, entire of itself...Any man's death diminishes me/Because I am involved in mankind."

It is also a very pragmatic understanding that there aren't enough of us to win on our own. In addition to the concrete analysis of political struggle that we all share common enemies and have overlapping interests, the fractured nature of human society and identities means that coalition-building isn't a choice, it's a necessity.

In its negative aspects, intersectionality results in this weird, toxic narrowing of social movements to a point where only the most oppressed people possible are allowed to be in charge and make decisions and speak for the movement, and everyone else is a guilt-ridden privileged outsider who needs to shut the fuck up and lower their hands and listen and not make it about them - but only after they donate their time and money.

This is pretty much the opposite of what intersectionality was originally meant to convey: the whole point is that everyone exists in different positions on the various axes of oppression, discrimination, etc. (and these positions can change pretty damn quickly), and thus depending on the issue, certain people might have more of a lived experience and need to be listened to and have greater needs and need to have their agenda items prioritized, and who those people are going to be is fluid and dynamic rather than fixed.

And this brings us back to my earlier thing about reciprocal solidarity. I completely reject the notion that I exist within social movements solely as an ally to other people, because in truth I participate in these movements in no small part because I need help from other people on a whole host of issues. However, I remain in coalition when it comes to other issues (especially those in which my personal constellation of intersectionality puts me in a position of relative privilege), both out of a humanistic understanding that their lives and needs are equally important and out of that pragmatic understanding that if I help them on their stuff, they'll return the favor when it comes to my stuff. And over time, the experience of being in coalition will expand people's mindsets on issues that don't directly affect them and get them to act in solidarity more consistently.

And that's what I think is so good about social democracy and similar movements that have a comprehensive political "line" or policy agenda, because if we sit down and engage in good faith in democratic coalition-building negotiations where everyone understands what they are getting and what they are giving and that everyone gets a say but not an exclusive one, then we short-circuit this kind of toxic, self-destructive behavior and can move on to doing the work that needs to be done.

[anarchistfrogposting]

Ok, this is probably quite a big question so Tell me if you want me to specify more. Currently, im a democratic socialist. Why do you consider anarchism to be a better functioning system then democratic socialism ? I don't want to pressure you to write An entire book or Something. Just a few reasons is fine.

I know, I do tend to write out some lengthy responses. Y’all’s questions are just way too good!

I also used to be a democratic socialist (the democratic socialism as a means to communism way) and a hardcore pacifist. I was largely inspired and radicalised by Jeremy Corbyn, and his election loss just radicalised me further. I am now neither a democratic socialist (obviously) nor a pacifist (and if folks want me to talk about why I’m against pacifism, let me know).

From a purely philosophical perspective, anarchism posits that democratic socialism is doomed to fail because you can’t obliterate hierarchies (and, by extension, class hierarchies) through a system which is inherently hierarchical. This is a logical product of the anarchist theory of history, which argues that hierarchical systems are self correcting systems of domination which exist to preserve themselves; that the only way to end hierarchies is to uproot and destroy them.

Democratic socialism aims to achieve socialism through representative democracy, which, it is posited by anarchists, is anti-democratic, since it can only, at best, support the will of large majorities. It is also susceptible (and currently controlled by) capitalist interests. Capitalist powers can and do use their financial and social capital to dominate media narratives and societal tendencies to their own end. Capitalists do not sit idly by whilst their interests are curtailed, particularly if you live in a financial centre like England or the United States. They shift public perspectives against those pushing change until political leaders are forced to toe the line of their formerly supportive constituents. Remember when people were celebrating AOC being elected to the House of Representatives, only for her to almost immediately start falling back to the imperialist line?

Politicians, furthermore, are forced to compromise their beliefs lest their ideas get completely blocked by opposition bodies, even with considerable party majorities. We see this time and time again with decidedly progressive policy reform getting watered down until they are almost unrecognisably different. (There’s a reason the trans community has such a lean toward the radical left.) As Kropotkin talks about in the Conquest of Bread, these politicians which are constantly blocked and curtailed are eventually forced to change their base positions until proper socialist reform is impossible. Quite literally right where the capitalists need them to be.

Liberal democracy exists by and for the capitalists. Democratic socialist reform is quite literally impossible within it.

[infamousbrad]

You Need to Stop Kidding Yourself about Why They Hate Democrats

Long ago, Chicago labor attorney Thomas Geoghegan spent months at time, over about a decade, studying the German economy for a good book that came out in 2010 called Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? And I've spent all morning trying to find a quote that apparently isn't in the book, it must have been from an interview during his book tour. Here's the relevant passage in the book, with my emphasis added.

At the SPD headquarters, I met people on the left, the best and brightest, who can at least think in this framework. They grasp what their job is: to protect the way of life of a largely high school-educated middle class. That way of life is what constitutes the crown jewels. The protection of the crown jewels is a fiduciary responsibility. I hate to say so, but Democrats and Kennedy School-types (with honorable exceptions)—certainly Democratic politicians—really do not think seriously about how, in a practical way, to raise the standard of living of the non- college grad population, who happen to be, well, 73 percent of the adult population.

During an interview about this passage (that I apparently can't find) I remember him being asked about this, and as best as I can reconstruct it, he said that the SPD campaign organizer who pointed this out to him also said that once the OPEC crisis and resulting global recession back in the 1970s was over, the US decided to try to monopolize all the college-educated, high-wage jobs in the world, and to push every future head-of-household in America to get at least a bachelor's degree.

And the German said to him that nobody anywhere else in the world thought we could get our college graduate rate as high as we now have. But at the same time, the German government and its private sector as well set out to try to monopolize all of the skilled labor jobs in the world, because those jobs can, if that's who's available, be done by people with a high school education and a little bit of manufacturing experience.

In the 1992 Democratic Party primary, Bill Clinton, spokesman for the Democratic Leadership Council (or as my side of the party called them, the "Democrats for the Leisure Class") were explicit that they were literally throwing away any interest in supporting a living wage or any other protections for people with a high school diploma or less. They unashamedly said there was no future there, the real future was in the college-educated outer-ring suburbs.

So, he said, yes, life in America for college-educated whites is wonderful compared to most of the world, but that left him with two questions for this American labor attorney:

Do you have any plan for ever making it possible for any young man without a college degree to ever be able to afford to have a family? And ...

If not? Why do they let you get away with that?

Yesterday, Geoghegan's question was answered. They aren't going to let us get away with that. Not any more. Even if Trump is lying about his tariffs bringing back the working-class jobs, even if he also has no plans for those jobs paying a living wage, he says he hates the global trade in manufacturing with companies in China and Mexico that don't even allow private-sector independent unions.

As could have been entirely safely predicted, hell, as Eric Hoffer predicted way the hell back in the late 40s when he wrote The True Believer about the foot-soldiers for the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Klan in America, and the Nazis in Germany, there is nothing more dangerous than telling lots of young men from the dominant ethnic group in your country that they will never be able to afford to have a family. And now the chickens have come home to roost.

[cayomuchacha]

sadly it seems a vocal plurality of americans will simply always prioritize their material security over the lives of others.

you know, until harris actually makes concrete acceptable progressions wrt Palestine, until that happens KAMALA HARRIS CAN CHOKE, because, well ONE SHOULDN’T THINK that a military expansionist apartheid regime and genocidal rogue state such as israel deserves ANY right to “self defense” in a clear obfuscation of israel’s violative, menacing, authoritarian, expansionist and so clearly the antithesis of a self defensive position in the region.

I really, really don’t think any well meaning Democrat should so calmly accept such unacceptably condoning rhetoric of a pariah state committing genocide. We must demand from and hold accountable our leaders to the ideals from which we draw our collective power as a democracy.

:3 no respect for treaties with genocidal states! in breaking decency and humanity they thereby break the treaties! Which necessarily invoke propriety and good faith relations. please dont act like you liberals actually believe in treaty law now when you keep so quiet over broken treaties with Cuba, Hawai`i, Native Sovereign Nations, and beyond.

fuck you uncaring americans who only wish to elect a democrat so you can tune out from political engagement. many of us aren’t granted that luxury

[biologusputrifier777-blog]

Begging tumblr mfers to stop calling capitalism the most exploitative economic system in history.

Capitalism is the exploitative economic system that we live under, and it has reached its reactionary era. It is the driver of nearly all suffering that currently exists and it serves no purpose, history will not progress until Capital, the bourgeoisie state, and wage labour are abolished. Despite this, Slavery existed as the dominant mode of production at one point. As did feudalism. It is ahistorical to consider Capitalism the most exploitative ecomonic system to have ever existed, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Marx and his work, and it makes the people who say it seem stupid and misinformed.

[never-was-has-been]

Question from Quora: "When Democrats talk about 'democracy', they really mean socialism, don't they? If so, why do they appear not to know that socialism isn't democratic?"

My answer: Social Democracy is not pure socialism. Rather, it is fairly reminiscent of FDR’s era where Capitalism was somewhat balanced with social policies, business regulations and tax rates on Corporations & wealthy individuals were much higher than in today’s 21st century economy.

Many of the rubes and uninformed voters of today who have been given the false ideology of “trickle down” economics and “Free Market”(no such thing) Globalism as being to their benefit, do not know history well enough to see through that nonsense when they read it or hear it.

US Universities and many business oriented colleges churned out 1000’s of MBA graduates who went directly to Wall Street and consistently defended runaway capitalism and huge tax cuts during the Reagan administration, while also using an anti-union narrative that Reagan boosted during his 2nd term.

Plus..and this is a significant shift…Several “blue chip” corporations off shored to Brazil, India, China and the Philippines, 100’s of 1000’s of US jobs in the Tech industry over the two 1990–2000 decades that put American middle class laborers Out of Work.. Then they blamed unions for off shoring when very few (if any) companies that went overseas were unionized in the first place!

Americans ‘drank those sewage polices’ as if it were a ‘honey’ sustenance of the whole US economy…when in reality, it poisoned the US balance of social democracy and the pro-corporate anti-social policies Congress passed as multiple financial laws that the American people had no knowledge of and no clue how it affected main street & suburban American working people.

[sordidamok]

They've been saying they're going to impeach Biden for months and they can't even name a crime.

[alpaca-clouds]

Social Democracy is not Socialism

Nevermind me. Just me crying about people not understanding politics. Just let me rant, alright?

So, I was talking to a friend recently. A left wing, European friend. And then they said it: "I mean, at least we have not capitalism in Europe." Und I was just standing there like: 😐

Upon prodding I found out that, yes, indeed, the believed that Social Democracy as we have it in most European countries is not in fact capitalism, but a form of socialism. And once again I was standing there like: 😐

Europe has capitalism. Europe is capitalist. While not as guilty of intervening in the politics of other countries to keep capitalism going as the US, Europe still did a lot of that. There is not a single socialist (let alone communist) country is Europe.

What we have is capitalism with the minimalist safeguards to keep capitalism doing the capitalism thing and literally and figurative KILLING PEOPLE. We have a few rules for capitalism to follow. We have a few things for people not to literally starve when they are jobless. But that's it.

We absolutely still have capitalism.

Which is why we do not manage to go CO2 neutral and what not. Because capitalism cannot do capitalism and go CO2 neutral. Both things are mutual exclusive.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Boycotting the election doesn't work because you'd be indistinguishable from all the other non-voters out there. After all, in most presidential elections in the US, between one third and one half of eligible voters don't even vote! But remember, our leaders are still democratically elected representatives of the people!

Voting third-party doesn't work either. Everyone knows third parties and independents can't win. They don't have the funds or the media support necessary to launch a successful nationwide campaign. But remember, this is a free and open democracy, and anyone can be elected if they work hard enough!

If you live in a swing state, you have to vote for Biden if you don't want Trump in office. As we all know, swing states are what cost Hillary the election despite her getting 3 million more votes than Trump. But remember, we're a democracy, and every vote counts!

If you really want to make a difference, then you need to make your voices heard and help push the Democratic Party left. Even though Democratic politicians actively ignore left-wing voices and sabotage progressive candidates and fail to pass progressive legislation even in states where they have an overwhelming majority, there's still a chance we can work within the system! Nevada was a fluke! We just gotta wait for the old guard to die off and then we'll get real leftists in the party for sure!

[suprememayobros2]

LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO