The difference between socialism and social democracy
Posted on Monday 6 September, 2010
Filed Under New Labour
BY THE end of this month, Labour will once more be led by a socialist. Well, that’s a logical inference from last night’s debate on Sky, during which all five contenders for the party’s top job insisted that such a designation could properly be applied to them.
Good. I’m pleased. I am, however, slightly concerned that we might have a problem of definition on our hands here. Asked to expand on the point, not one of them appeared to know what the word actually means.
Apparently, David Miliband is a socialist ‘because what we can do together is more than what we can do separately.’ Ed Balls seemed to concur, remarking rather more pithily that ‘we are stronger stood together’.
But if this is the yardstick we employ, then David Cameron is a socialist. As are Osama bin Laden, Drew Barrymore, Fabio Capello, Atomic Kitten, Simon Heffer, Ant and Dec, Kylie Minogue, Nicolas Sarkozy and that hooker Wayne Rooney has been having it off with behind Coleen’s back. No one can possibly doubt such an axiom, which is foundational to humanity’s social existence.
It is just a pity that such blinding theoretical insight has not previously been available to previous generations of thinkers on the left. Never mind getting your head around all that tedious political theory stuff, simply keep in mind that ‘many hands make light work’ and you can’t go far wrong, mate.
David’s kid brother Ed is a socialist because ‘we need to be able to criticise the injustices of capitalism’. But criticism of the injustices of our present economic system can be found in speech after speech from leading Tories, none of whom openly proclaim themselves in favour of nastiness.
Criticism of capitalism only becomes distinctively socialist with the recognition that such injustices can only be overcome with the transcendence of the market. I have yet to hear Ed – always quick to rebut the charge that he is a crypto-Bennite – even hint at such a political direction.
It is not as if David and Ed are unaware of any of these elementary points, given that they are the sons of one of Britain’s leading Marxist intellectuals. Bottom of the class, guys.
For Andy Burnham, socialism entails breaking the link between the postcode of someone’s birth place and their life chances. That’s better, but still misses the point. The physical location of where somebody is born is irrelevant; what counts is the class which they are born into, and what socialism seeks to create is a classless society.
Diane Abbott showed herself the best of the bunch, maintaining that socialism is about making society more equal, even if New Labour’s 13 years in office sadly saw Britain move the other way. Even so, such a sentiment could just as well be expressed by a Rawlsian liberal.
What none of the five mentioned was that socialism necessarily involves common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Labour’s would-be leaders patently do not think in these terms.
Whether or not such a state of affairs is either necessary or sufficient for greater solidarity or egalitarianism is a separate debate. But socialism has to translate into something more substantial than a vague plea for everybody to be nice to one another. Social democrats have no real business claiming a label they do not deserve.
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31 Responses to “The difference between socialism and social democracy”
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socialism necessarily involves common ownership of the means of production, distribution
and exchange.Good take on the debate, though the time limit for each answer was approx 4 seconds and in that time I would challenge anyone to come up with a viewer friendly definition of socialism.
The format of the debate sums up the standards of modern ‘news’. Press TV would have done a better job!
Isn’t socialism an economic system? In which case has any one of the four fellows said they no longer believe in the neo-liberalism that New Labour has been following for 13 years?
Just a bit from Wikipedia. Historically, social democracy was a form of evolutionary reformist socialism.
We should not allow the likes of Shirley Williams, Tony Blair and David Miliband to turn the meaning into something it isn’t. If they want to be middle-class liberals then they should call themselves that.
What makes you think any of them’s a social democrat? (OK, Abbott maybe.)
How can they be socialists if they believe in free market capitalism. Maybe some of them said when they were youngsters that they wanted to overthrow capitalism but not now that they enjoy the fruit from it. Hypocrites the lot. Bring back Blair he got with the programme.
Socialism would mean confronting every cultural institution in this country that pumps out neo-liberalism as the only ‘realistic’ choice – the banks, the press, big business, private and religious schools, the bbc (to a lesser degree), and almost every influential celebrity. Not only would such a candidate be abused and turned into a hate figure by the press, but they would, if possible, and far more effectively, be dutifully ignored throughout the contest – in much the same way that the media has turned the current leadership into a two-horse-race by continually focusing on the most newsworthy candidates – i.e. the personal interest story of the two brothers. Lots of the rest of us buy into that and feel that only the Millibands are therefore the ‘credible’ candidates.
We ain’t gonna get no socialism when so much of the cultural context is set by those with such a huge interest in the maintaining of the status quo.
But then Marx could’ve told us that years ago…
The sad fact is that a real socialist as leader would make the party virtually unelectable. Unless the leader was a major political heavyweight as well as being a charismatic personality. I think we’ll have to settle for social democracy for now.
Indeed Michael, the neo-liberal termites seem to have borrowed deep and dined well. We’re fucked for now at least.
I would critically support Diane Abbott.
Atleast your country has a labor party.
love not war
love your neighbour
less than 100 yrs on earth enjoy life not fight.
dont watch the news or read the papers only you get the bad stories
doom and gloom sells papers,
How can they espouse anything approaching a common ownership policy when the Blairites deliberately removed Clause 4 from the Party Constitution? To do so, would require a groundswell of revolutionary feeling. Most people are hunkering down.
Going back to that Wikipedia entry Historically, social democracy was a form of evolutionary reformist socialism.
I for one would be happy if the party returned to a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. I’m quite happy with a mixed economy on a gradual road to a socialist economic system. In fact to me it’s the only long term answer for the human race and the planet.
No matter how many roadblocks the Thatcherites and Blairites put in the way I know the overall direction is towards this socialist economic system. We are further along that path than we were 100 years ago and even more so than 200 years ago. Of course we wish it went faster, but then to achieve that you would have to become a revolutionary, and their track record hasn’t been particularly bright, has it?
This morning there is the news that the ‘social housing’ group Connaught is going into administration with the loss of thousands of jobs and uncertainty for its tenants. The BBC reports that 90% has been wiped off its share price since June. The reason for this is the Government cuts that have been announced, not so profitable for landlords. My point, Les Abbey, is that thre is a symbiotic relationship (or rather parasitic) between the private and the public sector and that was something that the New Labour clones could never admit. A strong private sector ie making lots of dosh for its investors, requires a strong public sector.
Sue R I suspect you are quite right. I would add that many of the private companies that do have a parasitic relationship with the public sector shouldn’t be in the private anyway.
Much of the kind of work Connaught does/did was done by the state but this service has been steadily privatised since the 80′s. The 90′s and 00′s have seen an explosion of ‘arms length organisations’ (or privatised companies in transition to be more accurate). The ConDem cuts have obviously put a real spanner in the works, which questions how capable the private sector is to take over the areas that are now being cut. How will they make profits without some significant and costly subsidies from the state? Or are we now in a post welfare system and back to jungle?
Great post, Dave – and you are right to question Ed Miliband’s Left credentials, which to me look wafer-thin – in fact, to a certain degree, worse than ‘old right’ candidate Andy Burnham.
I was depressed by the discussion between Tony Benn and Mehdi Hasan over the “meaning of socialism in the 21st Century” on last night’s edition of Newsnight, with Benn reducing socialism to “democracy” and Hasan saying that “no-one really” believes in workers taking ownership of the means of production and exchange any longer, with the obligatory disparaging gesture towards Chavez thrown in. Their pathetic, intellectually weak flim-flamming should be contrasted with Slavoj Zizek’s insightful, intellectually vigorous defence of communism on the same programme a few weeks ago.
Ultimately, right now, in our current situation, I think these signifiers – socialism, communism – fulfil the same function as the signifier “order” does in Hobbes’ state-of-nature. I refer here to Ernesto Laclau’s reading of Hobbes, in which the signifier “order” floats throughout the disordered state-of-nature as the necessary escape route. From within the state-of-nature “order” exists only as an empty concept rather than a fully-fledged political programme. Hobbes’ conservative mistake, as Laclau points out, is to fail to think through in dialectical or hegemonic terms the shift from “order” in an abstract sense (as it floats throughout the state-of-nature) to the actual concrete political order which emerges post-state-of-nature. In Hobbes, that shift takes place in a straightforward and direct sense, whereas the left should address that shift in dialectical and hegemonic terms.
And are we not currently in our own “state of nature”, when neither left nor right has a coherent political programme ready to get us out of the current crisis? What will socialism / communism “look like” on the other side of the revolution? We don’t know. But we can start by making a distinction between “socialism / communism” as an empty signifier, a mere index of the need for a complete paradigm shift, from this side of the revolution, and its concrete manifestation as an actual political programme on the other side.
But what must be absolutely resisted is to swerve this issue the way Tony Benn does by saying (as he did on Newsnight): “this idea of a perfect socialist society is more of a theological interest.” That is a non-dialectical, anti-intellectual approach which I find disturbing to hear from the one person who is probably most identified (by the general public) with socialism in this country.
Are many people really that interested in who becomes the new leader of The Labour Party, outside of its small middle class declining base of activists.
I do not trust any pf the candidates.
I left the The labour Party in 1995 and am pleased to say have never voted for New Labour.
The millions of people who have voted for Labour since 1995 might have a passing interest in who the leader is, I suppose.
Zizek certainly is impressive and his ‘End Times’ narrative is extremely compelling.
Most ‘Western’ citizens are either in denial about or floating around blithely unaware of the environmental crisis and the level of change it will effect upon all citizens, not just those in the poorer regions of the world.
It would not surprise me to see during this century a resurgence of socialist and nationalist guerilla movements springing up in those regions of the world effected most severely by climate change – while the rich world begins sealing off its borders entirely to the inevitable flood of asylum seekers.
KEVIN. What Kevin is really saying is he was happy to vote for the unelectable old labour along with the trade union comrades clique and the block vote.
Jimmy outs himself as a New Labour shitbag. What a surprise.
boilermaker. You are an out in the wilderness bag off shit. Whits wrang bilermaker no more secret meetings in the snug at the end of the bar with the comrades anymore.
Jimmy gave himself away as a New Labour apologist from the moment he started posting here. All that lauding off Alistair Darling was a dead giveaway. In fact, I did wonder if he wasn’t Alistair Darling himself.
The Sewer Rat. Its Capt Darling dear SueR.
“socialism necessarily involves common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”
I’m not sure how far this gets us, though. Exactly which of the means of production, distribution and exchange does a true socialist think should be commonly owned? All of them – every last factory and tool, vehicle and road, shop and bank? And what does ‘common ownership’ mean anyway? Does a farm or factory owned by its workforce count as being in ‘common ownership’? Or does ‘common ownership’ just mean ‘state ownership’?
Surely most self-identified democratic socialists nowadays – people who might see themselves as being well to the left of the Labour Party, perhaps advocating renationalisation of the utilities and the rail network, mutualisation of large chunks of the banking sector, radical tax reform asking more of the rich and less of the poor, heavy regulation of markets, the de-marketisation of public services, greater union rights etc. etc. – fall well short of calling for ‘common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’?
Essentially I think the problem is not that Labour’s leadership contenders don’t know what ‘socialism’ means, but that the meaning of ‘socialism’ has become very loose – certainly loose enough that social democrats are entitled to call themselves ‘socialists’ of a sort (although personally I’d stick to ‘social democrat’ just to avoid confusion).
It’s telling that the question posed in the Sky debate was not just ‘are you a socialist?’, but also ‘…and what does that mean to you?’ The term just doesn’t have a clear, universally-accepted meaning any more such that the second part of the question is superfluous.
The mere use of the word socialism in a debate on Sky TV renders the word meaningless.
How depressing, the LP run by policy-wonks and a leader without ANY real working experience…talk about deliberately disconnecting yourself from people’s existences.
Dave,
How do you survive in the Labour Party? I can understand that you duck your head down and think of an end goal, but surely even you get sick of the tories (in NL) and the state of the Labour party?
There is little or no ideological barrier nowadays between new Labour and the slightly left Tories, they can cross over to new Labour without ditching a single view, Woodward, etc
I suspect that the Tory faction in the LP is probably larger than the LRC, Dave, how do you rationalise it?
I’m trying to understand the mindset of LP members who are sincere socialists, I would even settle for the Social Democrats, but it seems that you are surrounded by opportunists, second raters, political thickos, new Labour zombies, lingering tories and the political dregs of NL.
Dave, how do you manage? honestly…
“The sad fact is that a real socialist as leader would make the party virtually unelectable.”
I don’t buy this. And I don’t share all of your antipathy to ‘social democracy’ either. It seems to me that an attractive programme based upon the notion of collective action and a much more participative democracy could be developed by the Labour Party in a way that would appeal to its more doctrinaire socialist followers and the wider country alike.
What’s missing is clarity, honesty and imagination on these issues. Labour and the wider left are tediously process-driven and we vastly undervalue the importance of civil conversational politics.
“socialism necessarily involves common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”
Most people perceive this to be an unworkable and unfair system, and most people don’t want it. (you may argue common ownership works, this is about peoples perception of it)
The current labour leadership contenders only stand for getting elected, that’s why they are not socialists.
Someone above quoted from Wiki that social democracy was a reformist socialism. Whilst at the end of the 20th century the name was hijacked by the so-called Gang of Three that later joined the Liberals (and clearly not socialist), social democrats at the beginning of the century were, actually, Marxists.
As for the article itself – brilliant – the leadership contenders thoroughly deserve this dose of ridicule. Pity John McDonnell wasn’t allowed to be a contender.