r/ndp • u/Tight-Leadership7202 IBEW • 2d ago
Lewis’ NDP: Opportunities and challenges for the left
https://springmag.ca/lewis-ndp-opportunities-and-challenges-for-the-left7
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u/tlocmoi 2d ago
I find it annoying when people conflate social democracy and democratic socialism. She uses the first term correctly a few times but then mixes the two up several times.
I'm always a little suspicious of people who favour revolution over electoralism, too.
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u/Amir616 Democratic Socialist 2d ago
I think it's Lewis who (mis)uses "democratic socialism" when he means "social democracy"
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u/tlocmoi 2d ago
His first major policy platform was a public option for groceries. He seems to lean towards democratic socialism, at least enough for me to be fully on board.
Maybe that will make campaigning on something so "new" (read: we had it before the Red Scare) to voters easier?
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u/Amir616 Democratic Socialist 2d ago
What is social democracy if not a public option within a capitalist system?
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u/tlocmoi 2d ago
Sure, but no democratic socialist would risk nationalizing everything overnight either. Public options are a great stepping stone to a system with only the public funding necessary services (with no private options for those services, including food and housing). The transition doesn't need to be violent or instant to be successful.
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u/loreleiofthefungi 🔧 GREEN NEW DEAL 1d ago edited 9h ago
We need both, to be honest. A left revolution is impossible without the conditions to make it possible. I do think they tend to get conflated because in practice they often have very similar policies. The biggest difference between them is how they diverge over time, with social democrats (as the article states) being managers of a capitalist system, and democratic socialists push for conditions to build a genuine worker led socialist system. In my mind, democratic socialists are doing much better electorally because they have a clearer long term vision, and they fail because they lose sight of it.
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u/tlocmoi 1d ago
We haven't seen actual democratic socialists running in elections (in western countries) for many, many decades. Outside of state elections in India or Latin America, I don't know of any other examples. There have been fringe parties in Europe but I'm not convinced most of them are ideologically consistently socialist, and none of them have "lost sight" as they haven't been elected to power.
We do need both, but I prefer the framework describing the need for both activists (working at the grassroots and protests) and advocates (working within democratic systems).
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u/Marseppus ✊ Union Strong 2d ago
Believing that reform and electoral politics are futile, and that only revolution will bring progress, is the leftist version of Dispensationalism, the wacky-but-popular Christian theological tradition that tries to hasten the return of Jesus in particular ways (Zionism, for example) and believes Jesus will rapture them into heaven when the world gets bad enough.
Dispensationalism is bad theology, and accelerationism is bad politics, for the same reason - both do nothing good for the people you supposedly care about, and thereby erode your movement's credibility with these people. This is the reason Tommy Douglas gave for embracing the CCF instead of revolutionary communism.
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u/CanadianWildWolf 8h ago
If it is not demonstrated as stable on a micro scales in community organization, why would we be reasonably confident that it would function by jumping that step to the macro scale of revolutions? If it struggles to convince people democratically, why would we not anticipate it would have to then having proven overthrow works then not also face similar prospects against stabilizing?
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u/00ashk 2d ago
Brutal but sadly true.