Do You Consider Social Democrats Socialists

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is an odd question, but gives a good excuse for a little historical ramble.

Historically 'social democrat' denoted a socialist who believed in participating in parliamentary politics while also advocating for universal suffrage. It was particularly associated with the various Marxist parties who modeled themselves on the SPD, which is why we have the little historical irony of the future CPSU being founded as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In countries where the dominant socialist movement had a more indigenous character and was therefore not Marxist in orientation, the term was generally interchangeable with Marxist.¹

The dominant tendency in Marxism at this stage, incidentally, was the rather dogmatic Orthodox Marxism of Karl Kautsky, an ideological current that has no heirs. Orthodox Marxist's believed in History as a force; that events would inevitably conspire to produce the final victory of the workers movement, and that the role of socialist parties was to work towards the day that the Messiah came back prepare the ground for the imminent transformation of society. If you want to know why the often numerically superior and at times notably more popular Mensheviks never exploited their advantages over the Bolshevik cult, this is why. History turned out quite differently, and the two dominant strands in socialism ended up being the two principle opposition currents to Orthodox Marxism: the Revisionism of Eduard Bernstein (which was founded on the fairly logical principle that as History is plainly not unfolding as it ought to, why don't we focus our attention instead on practical reforms to improve the lives of our supporters?) and the tendency that eventually became known as Communism (founded on the logical but somewhat psychotic principle that as History is plainly not unfolding as it ought to, why don't we force the little fycker to do what it ought to fycking do?). Almost all Marxist parties split between the two tendencies,² and the term Social Democrat became associated entirely with the former as it was abandoned by the latter in favour of the new/old term Communist.

Which is where things get a little confusing, because as now there was little difference in practice between the Revisionist parties and non-Marxist socialist parties such as the Labour Party or the ALP, it became common (but only in Left Intelligentsia circles and only rarely in those countries without a strong Marxist tradition) to describe all non-revolutionary socialist parties (whatever their origins) as Social Democratic.

And things get even more confusing in the Post War decades, because in those countries without a Marxist tradition (which often happened to be English speaking countries), some people on the right-wing of their respective socialist parties started to refer to themselves as 'Social Democrats' as a way of distinguishing themselves ideologically from their more left-leaning comrades. Though something of an end was brought to this when part of the right-wing of the Labour Party broke away to form the (short lived) Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s.

And things get even more confusion, because (alas) academia discovered the word and threw it around like confetti from the 1970s onwards to refer to all kinds of different things (c.f. the supposed 'social democratic consensus' in Post War Britain). Worse still: the term was discovered by American academics, and as we all know most Americans are deeply weird on the subject of socialism and act as those the terms associated with it are magic words with all sorts of deep and significant mystical meanings. Americans badly need to be converted en masse to nominalism in my never knowingly humble opinion.

All of which leaves us in a state of considerable confusion, but I would argue that if the term has any utility, it is to denote traditional parties of the non-Communist Left and the members and supporters of such parties. Although, given all of the above, it's hardly a perfect term: there are certain members of the Labour Party who would likely respond to being described as 'social democrats' with physical violence. As to who is or is not a socialist, the difficulty you'll find there is that 'socialism' has no clear definition (or at least there is not now and never has been a clear definition of 'socialism' that all self-described socialists would agree with), and given the history of the word (in terms of widespread use it suddenly appeared in the early 19th century as a label applied to a wide range of political radicalisms, some of which were not particularly new) can never have one, except in very general terms. I wouldn't quite go so far as to argue that everyone who believes that they are a socialist is one, but such a claim would not be all that wide of the mark. Although if you'd rather be very American about this and just go with whatever nonsense Merriam-Webster claims, then I doubt I can do anything to stop you.

<sub>1. I.e. this was the case in both Britain (dominated by an already venerable tradition of trade unionism and heavily influenced by Nonconformist Protestantism and - in some areas - Catholicism) and Russia (dominated by the frankly nihilistic Socialist Revolutionaries). Not that the respective non-Marxist socialist traditions in either country had much (or frankly anything) in common with each other.
2. The remaining Orthodox Marxists were typically subsumed into the ranks of the Revisionists, though not always without drama. In some parties they - rather than the Revisionists - remained the dominant faction, which was usually terrible news for the party in question. But what is notable is that they very rarely fell in with the Communists.</sub>