Democratic Socialism: Social democracy.

Democratic Socialism, a term made popular today by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, is a subject that needs to be commented on from a real Marxist perspective.

Democratic Socialism is nothing more than an illogical reference to social democracy. The Democratic Socialism that Bernie talks about, is nothing more than a well-regulated capitalist economy, more liberal than non-regulated conservative style capitalism; Or in other words, social democracy. Social democracy is juxtaposed to fascism. With its shared corporatist model and capitalist mode of production, social democracy is of liberal influence; its liberal pacifism weakens the worker revolution, making the fight against capitalism ever more difficult as the working class stays sedated by its liberalism. Prior to WW II, the Social-Democrats were referred to as “social fascists” by the communists for their eagerness to pacify the emerging fascist movement in Europe. Rather than build a united front against fascism as called for by the communists, the Social-Democrats cooperated with the fascists and weakened the left resistance in Europe.

“Sometimes, the worst enemy isn't the opposition in the battlefield, it's the reactionary in the party”

Social democracy, the variant of fascism, must survive with the existence of fascism; The reason for this is that Social-Democrats sedate the working class through reactionary liberalism, selling them the lies of compassionate capitalism, ignoring the privatization, exploitation and wage slavery that capitalism uses to thrive. Fascism is a right-wing system birthed out of the decaying capitalist right-wing populism, misleading angry, divided working people and forcing them against themselves and against others abroad. Classic example of this is the campaign of Donald Trump.

On the other hand, Social-Democrats like Bernie Sanders, speak of “Democratic socialism” using Scandinavia as their model, while slandering the Soviet Union and twentieth century socialism; Social-Democrats see socialist planned economies, that overthrew the capitalist class, and suppress it, as “undemocratic” and “totalitarian.” What must be clearly understood is that democracy can never be true with the allowance of capitalist influence to pervert it and twist it against the workers. Allow capitalist parasites power and they will use it to politically destroy the workers state, and use it to exploit the working class once more. Proletarian democracy is the genuine example of a free, democratic society, and in any real democracy, suppression of parasites, like the capitalist class, is important to preserve the democracy for the proletariat.

As Marxists, the fight against fascism, is as important as the fight against liberalism; And part of the fight against liberalism, is the fight against social democracy, which automatically ties in to the fight against fascism. Overall, it is still part of our main fight, which is the fight against capitalism.