Certainly revolutionary movements can cause social democracy to flourish. But then it flourishes as a way of preventing countries from undergoing a revolutionary change and thus in countries where there are strong social democracies revolutionary change is weakened because there are concessions to the social democrats. But in bad economic times social democrats fight a rearguard action or even help destroy benefits that took years of battle to establish. This should provide an environment in which leftists could fight for revolutionary change since obviously the system does not work for the working class but as long as social democracy is regarded as the only alternative any such struggle is regarded as utopian. What was utopian was the idea that by gradual reforms of capitalism you could obtain socialism or something like it.
Certainly social democracy survived the demise of the USSR and the transition to capitalism in China but in the developed countries where it flourished it is the changing economic conditions that change its role. A number of European countries continue to elect social democratic governments. My point was not that revolutionary movements cannot cause social democracy to thrive but that social democracy makes it difficult for revolutionary movements to thrive on the left. The inverse relationships existed even when there was the threat of expropriation from revolutionary movements in other countries. Those movements were systematically demonized in the west so that any radical transformation of capitalism became stigmatized with the admitted vices and problems in the USSR and communist China etc. Social democrats had to show themselves to be a responsible opposition just out to improve capitalism and make it more worker friendly.
Cheers, ken
----- Original Message ---- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Mon, July 11, 2011 9:24:52 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bad Times and the Left
On Jul 11, 2011, at 10:06 PM, ken hanly wrote:
> I do think that there is a relationship between social democracy as it is
> now at least and revolutionary movements. It is an inverse relationship.
I think you're wrong. I think social democracy is a concession forced from capitalists when the threat of expropriation looms. No socialist threat, no social democracy. That's why soc dem suffered from the end of the USSR.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk