I am trying to understand as much as possible about socialism as well as other leftist ideologies, and looking around i’ve seen many being critical about democratic socialism, but i honestly struggle to understand why that is such a bad idea as some say. I get that it’s incompatible with ML, but it doesn’t sound so unrealistic and unreasonable to me, so… can you explain? Excuse the ignorance, but as i said socialism is a new topic for me, i mean no offense to anybody
I think we are mixing democratic socialism and social democracy here.
Democratic socialism is literally the classical political perspective of the revolutionaries from early 1900s whereas social democracy is a political ideology where reformism is the endgoal. I know in modern contexts much of this revolutionary fervor has been liquidated into reformist tendencies but as a communist who firmly believes in democratic centralism and the obvious need for a socialist revolution in service of the creation of a communist society, I am comfortable calling myself a democratic socialist but reject the label of social democrat.
Reforms are not bad. Pushing for reforms can be in service of creating a larger revolutionary moment but it cannot be the endgoal of the movement or the politics advancing it otherwise it is simply fighting for a nicer form of capitalism that extends the longevity of the bourgeoisie’s hegemonic power. We are not going to free ourselves from the grips of capitalism overnight. We are not going to change the hearts and minds of people who have by and large lived every waking moment of their life indoctrinated into neoliberalism all at once. It will necessarily be a gradual thing but we must keep our eyes on what the ultimate goal is and ensure we do not lose sight of it. We are fighting for the liberation of every human being across the face of the globe - it’s gonna take some time.
PErsonally I feel that this is why I reject ALL reforms. Yes ALL reforms. Even the pro-socialosm ones.
In my opinion pro-socialistic reforms after pro-socialistic reforms are just reforms that extend rhe life of capitalism by paying temporarybconcessions to pissed off, super exploited members of the proletariat. ALSO something tjat Ive noticed is that people will often chalk up pro-socialistic reforms as a ‘better form of capitalism than what we previouslt had’ …when its clearly a socialistic policy… Has anyome seen anything that proves me wrong about this particular point? cause I havent been able to find anything.
Something Ive found awful about humanity is that humans tend to not steike out into violent, necessary revolution unless they have nother choice but to do so. So if things get bad enough people will surely the people will want to strike out sooner, no? You cam call me an acclerationist but I also reject accelerationism too. In my opinion humans are very capable of putting themselges in chains under capitalistic and fascistic leaders so there is no need to accelerate anything cause humans , as stupid as we are , are already accelerating towards our doom or our Proletarian Revolutions
Personally I want to see humanity make its own stupid , sefl-destructive decisions and from these decisions they have ar series of ‘Revelations’ as to how the socialists were always right all along . And from there the people organically from themselves become socialostic .And when the majirity of people are just organically socialistic you dont have to put in too much work to keep the revolution going because the average person will be putting in that work for you and for their communities. The Regolutions become self-sustaining in this one scenario