Forgive me for being a bit of an outsider, I thought socdem was essentially Democratic socialist, does it mean something else…?
Edit: just looked it up and it looks like a different thing than Democratic socialist but it certainly doesnt look fascism adjacent, am I missing something?
Ostensibly, social democrats believe in capitalism but want to borrow from socialist ideas to make it work. Democratic socialists are, ostensibly, anticapitalists who favor reform over revolution.
In practice, both groups protect capitalism. In practice, both groups side with fascism over socialism. In practice, you can ignore (especially Americans) those who call themselves demsocs and treat them as liberals.
Do you mean that of politicians who label themselves as demsocs, or anyone?
I don’t say this to try and start a fight, just talking about my experience, but as someone learning which versions of leftist political ideology I connect with, the purity testing by every different faction of leftist where anyone that isn’t their brand of leftist is a fascist is uhhh, challenging to try and navigate
I get the impression its because both both democratic socialist movements and non…Democratic socialist (what would be the term for the version of socialist you identify as? I feel like demsocs would say authoritarian but I don’t know how y’all would describe your own category, non-derisively. Marxist Leninist feels more specific than I mean) have betrayed eachother historically when enough momentum existed for one of them to succeed and it came time for one to win out over the other (is that a reasonable understanding?)
But it does make trying to navigate and engage with these spaces very hard 😅. Are there other brands of leftist that your faction sees as also legitimate leftists? (again, appologies for referring to y’all in this way it feels vaguely passive agressive, I just don’t have better language) Would the litmus test maybe be like a desire for revolution?
There’s a hazy progression that goes from demsocs, self-described Socialists and revolutionary communists. Most of us began as the former and, through experience and study, became the latter.
The difference between different groups purity testing is what they’re testing for. Liberals and liberal-adjacent people test your moral purity, or at least the moral purity of your rhetoric. Say all the right things, signal you’re on the good side, and don’t signal that you want the bad things. They do this because they are political idealists: that is, they have a fundamentally magical understanding of how power works, even if they don’t realize it. They think that if enough people hold The Right Opinions, then change will spontaneously follow. Their view of the world is a static one where everything fits into neat moral categories, and conveniently those moral categories just so happen to match what the person espousing it is comfortable with. To a liberal or socdem, violence against capital is morally unacceptable, no matter how many people it stands to save (and as of right now, it stands to save all of them). Their test is concieved as a test of abstract moral purity; in reality, it’s a test of how much atrocity you are willing to abide for the sake of being a good boy.
Marxists, communists, etc are materialists: we believe that the world is a constantly moving, ever evolving machine with a trillion moving parts that all change and are changed by one another. To make a long story short, dialectical materialism or “marxism” is simply applying the scientific method to all of reality instead of just formal science. That’s why the phrase “reality has a marxist bias” exists: because communists begin with the facts and build an understanding upwards, while liberals begin with the primacy of liberalism/capitalism and build an architecture of justification downwards, until they create friction with the uneven terrain of reality. “Blue maga” is an example of this phenomenon. Bill Maher is the spiritual avatar of this phenomenon.
When Communists purity test, we do so based on the effectiveness of your practices and the understanding that guides them. It’s basically peer review. We’re purity testing in a chemical way, to determine the potency of your shit and assess it for wider adoption.
To your last question, I respect anarchists. We fundamentally love humanity in the same way and want the same things for it, we just disagree on tactics. But they have a deep understanding of the urgent necessity of revolutionary change, and that makes them comrades.
I’ll be a honest a lot of that was pretty flowery for me, but theres some stuff in there that was really interesting and I appreciate you sharing your perspective with me! ☺️
It does feel like revolutionary communists (that seems like a better label for me to use :) also purity test for some of the same reasons everyone does- to dismiss the stances they see as outside of their group. Thats more the purity testing I find it hard to navigate. The implication in one of the previous comments is that a socdem is really just a liberal, and a liberal is capitalist, and a capitalist is really just a fascist so actually you’re a fascist. Which I don’t think is really ever a particularly useful beyond dismissing the need to ever engage with that person. I get why, but the way I see it you can just say that a socdem has bad ideology. It doesn’t require comparison to a fascist, which I don’t really think is accurate, though the other reply about social democrats and demsocs siding with capitalism when revolution is on the table makes sense, and I can see why that would make revolutionary communists uninterested in engaging
And thats interesting! Anarchism I think is what I most intuitively feel drawn to, but I don’t feel like there are some things I see it struggling to achieve, and I understand political theory well enough to truly identify with any ideology so I’m just trying to learn more and see where it takes me
If I may ask a question (don’t feel obligated to answer, I know I’m showing up in other people’s spaces and just interrogating folks to learn lol 😅)- a lot of what I find intimidating about ideologies or governments that would fall into the revolutionary communist category is that through the perspective I have now, they seem authoritarian and I generally (as one might guess from interest in anarchism) lean anti-authoritarian. What kind of actual governmental structure (or structures) in terms of power do revolutionary communists seek? How does power get organized? Are there ways that they structurally seek to counterbalance the way that concentrated power leads to overreach (like in western capitalist society democracy is ostensibly supposed to fill that role)? Like can revolutionary communism be Democratic? Are there reasons that doesnt seem like a concern to you for other reasons I may not have considered? (I don’t really mean to ask 30 seperate questions, I just wanna leave things open ended to whatever kind of answer makes the most sense, and I don’t know what kinda answer that might be)
And/or I would also welcome thoughts on what you mean by “applying the scientific method to all of reality”, that idea sounds interesting but its too abstract for me to know what that might actually mean in practice
Regardless of whether you choose to chat more thanks for taking the time to reply with your previous comment ☺️
You’re right. Marxist-Leninists understand the historical significance of revolution. When we push back against Social Democrats (and liberals disguised as reformist Socialists) we are making a choice based on study and history, not vibes. To MLs, your last sentence is crucial.
You can read about this topic. Beyond basic Marxist works, consider Rosa Luxembourg’s “Reform or Revolution” or Lenin’s “State and Revolution”.
Interesting, thank you for explaining! Perhaps revolutionary communist is a better label for the grouping of leftist ideology y’all fit into then?
Thank you for the reading reccomendation :). At some point I need to make myself sit down and read some theory, I just haven’t had the bandwidth yet. From the title “reform or revolution” by Rosa Luxembourg sounds interesting, and it looks like my library has it as an audio book or eBook ☺️
If you’d be open to chatting more and discussing kind of a broad question I’ve had- As I’ve explored a bit I’ve found I most intuitively relate to anarchism, but there are problems or social needs I can see anarchism potentially struggling to fill, so I have wanted to learn more about other leftist ideology and see where I end up. A lot of what I find intimidating about ideologies or governments that might fall into the revolutionary communist category is that through the perspective I have now, they seem authoritarian. What kind of actual governmental structure (or structures) in terms of power do revolutionary communists seek? How does power get organized? Are there ways that they structurally seek to counterbalance the way that concentrated power leads to overreach (like in western capitalist society democracy is ostensibly supposed to fill that role)? Like can revolutionary communism be Democratic (I know many folks feel electoralism is somewhat of a trap)? Are there reasons that doesnt seem like a concern to you for other reasons I may not have considered? (I don’t really mean to ask 30 seperate questions, I just wanna leave things open ended to whatever kind of answer makes the most sense, and I don’t know what kinda answer that might be)
Regardless, thanks for taking the time to reply previously, and I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts if you have more energy to explain how you see stuff ☺️
There is a longer more complicated history around the term social democracy, but the short version is that beginning in the later 1800s, there arose two camps: reformist / pacifist / bourgeios socialists, and revolutionary ones. The reformist ones formed parties who, in every country they did so, ended up joining forces with capitalists to repress and put down the revolutionary ones. Every country has a long history of socdems doing this, as its been occurring since the 1800s when Marx and Engels noted this tendency.
Gotcha, that makes sense and definitely helps explain some of the tensions I’ve seen between y’all and other leftists on the threadiverse, at least in terms of where y’all are coming from. Maybe I’ll bug some folks from the other sort of faction and see if I can learn what their deal is. I really appreciate you providing all the links and the historical context! I watched a bit of the first one and it was interesting, I can see now how much of northern Europe would fit into that camp you’re describing- thanks for teaching me the term “Nordic model” that is helpful to know!
If you’d be open to chatting more and discussing kind of a broad question I’ve had- As I’ve explored a bit I’ve found I most intuitively relate to anarchism, but there are problems or social needs I can see anarchism potentially struggling to fill, so I have wanted to learn more about other leftist ideology and see where I end up. A lot of what I find intimidating about ideologies or governments that might fall into the revolutionary communist category is that through the perspective I have now, they seem authoritarian. What kind of actual governmental structure (or structures) in terms of power do revolutionary communists seek? How does power get organized? Are there ways that they structurally seek to counterbalance the way that concentrated power leads to overreach (like in western capitalist society democracy is ostensibly supposed to fill that role)? Like can revolutionary communism be Democratic (I know many folks feel electoralism is somewhat of a trap)? Are there reasons that doesnt seem like a concern to you for other reasons I may not have considered? (I don’t really mean to ask 30 seperate questions, I just wanna leave things open ended to whatever kind of answer makes the most sense, and I don’t know what kinda answer that might be)
Either way, thank you for your time and for collecting some reading for me, I will have to sit down and at least skim through them :)
Forgive me for being a bit of an outsider, I thought socdem was essentially Democratic socialist, does it mean something else…?
Edit: just looked it up and it looks like a different thing than Democratic socialist but it certainly doesnt look fascism adjacent, am I missing something?
Ostensibly, social democrats believe in capitalism but want to borrow from socialist ideas to make it work. Democratic socialists are, ostensibly, anticapitalists who favor reform over revolution.
In practice, both groups protect capitalism. In practice, both groups side with fascism over socialism. In practice, you can ignore (especially Americans) those who call themselves demsocs and treat them as liberals.
Do you mean that of politicians who label themselves as demsocs, or anyone?
I don’t say this to try and start a fight, just talking about my experience, but as someone learning which versions of leftist political ideology I connect with, the purity testing by every different faction of leftist where anyone that isn’t their brand of leftist is a fascist is uhhh, challenging to try and navigate
I get the impression its because both both democratic socialist movements and non…Democratic socialist (what would be the term for the version of socialist you identify as? I feel like demsocs would say authoritarian but I don’t know how y’all would describe your own category, non-derisively. Marxist Leninist feels more specific than I mean) have betrayed eachother historically when enough momentum existed for one of them to succeed and it came time for one to win out over the other (is that a reasonable understanding?)
But it does make trying to navigate and engage with these spaces very hard 😅. Are there other brands of leftist that your faction sees as also legitimate leftists? (again, appologies for referring to y’all in this way it feels vaguely passive agressive, I just don’t have better language) Would the litmus test maybe be like a desire for revolution?
Warning, long:
There’s a hazy progression that goes from demsocs, self-described Socialists and revolutionary communists. Most of us began as the former and, through experience and study, became the latter.
The difference between different groups purity testing is what they’re testing for. Liberals and liberal-adjacent people test your moral purity, or at least the moral purity of your rhetoric. Say all the right things, signal you’re on the good side, and don’t signal that you want the bad things. They do this because they are political idealists: that is, they have a fundamentally magical understanding of how power works, even if they don’t realize it. They think that if enough people hold The Right Opinions, then change will spontaneously follow. Their view of the world is a static one where everything fits into neat moral categories, and conveniently those moral categories just so happen to match what the person espousing it is comfortable with. To a liberal or socdem, violence against capital is morally unacceptable, no matter how many people it stands to save (and as of right now, it stands to save all of them). Their test is concieved as a test of abstract moral purity; in reality, it’s a test of how much atrocity you are willing to abide for the sake of being a good boy.
Marxists, communists, etc are materialists: we believe that the world is a constantly moving, ever evolving machine with a trillion moving parts that all change and are changed by one another. To make a long story short, dialectical materialism or “marxism” is simply applying the scientific method to all of reality instead of just formal science. That’s why the phrase “reality has a marxist bias” exists: because communists begin with the facts and build an understanding upwards, while liberals begin with the primacy of liberalism/capitalism and build an architecture of justification downwards, until they create friction with the uneven terrain of reality. “Blue maga” is an example of this phenomenon. Bill Maher is the spiritual avatar of this phenomenon.
When Communists purity test, we do so based on the effectiveness of your practices and the understanding that guides them. It’s basically peer review. We’re purity testing in a chemical way, to determine the potency of your shit and assess it for wider adoption.
To your last question, I respect anarchists. We fundamentally love humanity in the same way and want the same things for it, we just disagree on tactics. But they have a deep understanding of the urgent necessity of revolutionary change, and that makes them comrades.
I’ll be a honest a lot of that was pretty flowery for me, but theres some stuff in there that was really interesting and I appreciate you sharing your perspective with me! ☺️
It does feel like revolutionary communists (that seems like a better label for me to use :) also purity test for some of the same reasons everyone does- to dismiss the stances they see as outside of their group. Thats more the purity testing I find it hard to navigate. The implication in one of the previous comments is that a socdem is really just a liberal, and a liberal is capitalist, and a capitalist is really just a fascist so actually you’re a fascist. Which I don’t think is really ever a particularly useful beyond dismissing the need to ever engage with that person. I get why, but the way I see it you can just say that a socdem has bad ideology. It doesn’t require comparison to a fascist, which I don’t really think is accurate, though the other reply about social democrats and demsocs siding with capitalism when revolution is on the table makes sense, and I can see why that would make revolutionary communists uninterested in engaging
And thats interesting! Anarchism I think is what I most intuitively feel drawn to, but I don’t feel like there are some things I see it struggling to achieve, and I understand political theory well enough to truly identify with any ideology so I’m just trying to learn more and see where it takes me
If I may ask a question (don’t feel obligated to answer, I know I’m showing up in other people’s spaces and just interrogating folks to learn lol 😅)- a lot of what I find intimidating about ideologies or governments that would fall into the revolutionary communist category is that through the perspective I have now, they seem authoritarian and I generally (as one might guess from interest in anarchism) lean anti-authoritarian. What kind of actual governmental structure (or structures) in terms of power do revolutionary communists seek? How does power get organized? Are there ways that they structurally seek to counterbalance the way that concentrated power leads to overreach (like in western capitalist society democracy is ostensibly supposed to fill that role)? Like can revolutionary communism be Democratic? Are there reasons that doesnt seem like a concern to you for other reasons I may not have considered? (I don’t really mean to ask 30 seperate questions, I just wanna leave things open ended to whatever kind of answer makes the most sense, and I don’t know what kinda answer that might be)
And/or I would also welcome thoughts on what you mean by “applying the scientific method to all of reality”, that idea sounds interesting but its too abstract for me to know what that might actually mean in practice
Regardless of whether you choose to chat more thanks for taking the time to reply with your previous comment ☺️
You’re right. Marxist-Leninists understand the historical significance of revolution. When we push back against Social Democrats (and liberals disguised as reformist Socialists) we are making a choice based on study and history, not vibes. To MLs, your last sentence is crucial.
You can read about this topic. Beyond basic Marxist works, consider Rosa Luxembourg’s “Reform or Revolution” or Lenin’s “State and Revolution”.
Interesting, thank you for explaining! Perhaps revolutionary communist is a better label for the grouping of leftist ideology y’all fit into then?
Thank you for the reading reccomendation :). At some point I need to make myself sit down and read some theory, I just haven’t had the bandwidth yet. From the title “reform or revolution” by Rosa Luxembourg sounds interesting, and it looks like my library has it as an audio book or eBook ☺️
If you’d be open to chatting more and discussing kind of a broad question I’ve had- As I’ve explored a bit I’ve found I most intuitively relate to anarchism, but there are problems or social needs I can see anarchism potentially struggling to fill, so I have wanted to learn more about other leftist ideology and see where I end up. A lot of what I find intimidating about ideologies or governments that might fall into the revolutionary communist category is that through the perspective I have now, they seem authoritarian. What kind of actual governmental structure (or structures) in terms of power do revolutionary communists seek? How does power get organized? Are there ways that they structurally seek to counterbalance the way that concentrated power leads to overreach (like in western capitalist society democracy is ostensibly supposed to fill that role)? Like can revolutionary communism be Democratic (I know many folks feel electoralism is somewhat of a trap)? Are there reasons that doesnt seem like a concern to you for other reasons I may not have considered? (I don’t really mean to ask 30 seperate questions, I just wanna leave things open ended to whatever kind of answer makes the most sense, and I don’t know what kinda answer that might be)
Regardless, thanks for taking the time to reply previously, and I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts if you have more energy to explain how you see stuff ☺️
There is a longer more complicated history around the term social democracy, but the short version is that beginning in the later 1800s, there arose two camps: reformist / pacifist / bourgeios socialists, and revolutionary ones. The reformist ones formed parties who, in every country they did so, ended up joining forces with capitalists to repress and put down the revolutionary ones. Every country has a long history of socdems doing this, as its been occurring since the 1800s when Marx and Engels noted this tendency.
What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn’t Sweden socialist?
Some more links:
Gotcha, that makes sense and definitely helps explain some of the tensions I’ve seen between y’all and other leftists on the threadiverse, at least in terms of where y’all are coming from. Maybe I’ll bug some folks from the other sort of faction and see if I can learn what their deal is. I really appreciate you providing all the links and the historical context! I watched a bit of the first one and it was interesting, I can see now how much of northern Europe would fit into that camp you’re describing- thanks for teaching me the term “Nordic model” that is helpful to know!
If you’d be open to chatting more and discussing kind of a broad question I’ve had- As I’ve explored a bit I’ve found I most intuitively relate to anarchism, but there are problems or social needs I can see anarchism potentially struggling to fill, so I have wanted to learn more about other leftist ideology and see where I end up. A lot of what I find intimidating about ideologies or governments that might fall into the revolutionary communist category is that through the perspective I have now, they seem authoritarian. What kind of actual governmental structure (or structures) in terms of power do revolutionary communists seek? How does power get organized? Are there ways that they structurally seek to counterbalance the way that concentrated power leads to overreach (like in western capitalist society democracy is ostensibly supposed to fill that role)? Like can revolutionary communism be Democratic (I know many folks feel electoralism is somewhat of a trap)? Are there reasons that doesnt seem like a concern to you for other reasons I may not have considered? (I don’t really mean to ask 30 seperate questions, I just wanna leave things open ended to whatever kind of answer makes the most sense, and I don’t know what kinda answer that might be)
Either way, thank you for your time and for collecting some reading for me, I will have to sit down and at least skim through them :)