CasX wrote:Social Democracy versus Communism
Social Democracy: A political theory advocating the use of democratic means to achieve a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism. (Known more as democratic socialism today).
That definition ignores historical facts. Before WWI, the Social Democratic movement included both Marxists and reformists. It was WWI that completely revealed the rotten opportunism of the reformist parties, many of which sided with their 'own' imperialist bourgeoisie and after the war helped crushing the proletarian uprisings.
When communists were still in the Social Democratic movement, Lenin described SD parties as proletarian parties in countries where bourgeois-democratic revolution was yet to be completed. 'Social' referring to socialism and 'Democratic' to the democratic tasks (abolishment of the remnants of feudalism) of the party.
gradual transition from capitalism to socialism
What does that mean? Socialism is the 'gradual transition' itself. Are you proposing some transitional phase before the launchment of socialist transition. Gradual transition to gradual transition - What is that?
Do you think you can smash the organs bourgeois state gradually, replace it with proletarian state organs gradually, having the bourgeoisie just watching from aside as you deconstruct those very organs that were from the beginning build to preserve its class rule? How are you going to touch the machinery of force by which one class rules over the rest of the people, without getting a more or less violent reaction? Or is it to remain untouched?
Combine the bourgeois state with Social Democratic government, and guess what you have? Still a capitalist society. Imagine a genuinely socialist government in a capitalist government. That simply wouldn't be allowed to stay in power or realise its political program, if it even was accepted to take the government in the first place. What you have to do to avoid reaction from the bourgeois state, is to retain abstract 'socialist' phrases and give up any demands that would shake the very basis of capitalism. Then you are free to take the government. Such 'socialism' which doesn't seek to overthrow the bourgeoisie and smash its state, however well-meaning, will never get rid of capitalism and reach socialism. Such 'socialism' has become an integral part of the machinery of bourgeois parliamentarism, assuring that once in every four year the big capital gets a government that preserves its interests.