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> Social democracy is still capitalism

It's still capitalism in much the same way that capitalism is still feudalism.




Given that capitalism describes a mode of production, it literally is still capitalism. Capitalism is not feudalism in that serfdom is not the primary working relationship between classes in capitalism - though Yanis Varoufakis seems to think that we're headed that way.


> Given that capitalism describes a mode of production, it literally is still capitalism

Given that redistributive taxation and benefit systems labelled “social democracy” designed specifically to mitigate the adversity that provides the whip behind the capitalist mode of production modify both the property system and the mode of production that together are labelled “capitalism”, social democracy literally is not capitalism. It retains substantial elements of the property system of, and it's mode of production has important similarities to that of, the system for which the term “capitalism” was coined (as does that system with pre-capitalist aristocratic systems), but it's not the same system.

It's not Marxist socialism, either, and I know Marxists like to deny that any system that isn't pre-capitalist that fails to be Marxist socialism can be anything other than capitalism-under-a-different-name, but that's a giant false dichotomy.


A mixed economy still has private property and the capitalist-worker class dynamic, still experiences the crisis cycle - so it's still capitalist, it's just a better form of it. If your qualifying rules for "capitalism" require no welfare system whatsoever, then capitalism hasn't existed in the West for at least 100 years.

Bearing in mind that I'm using "capitalism" as a descriptor, not a snarl word. The snarl one is "neoliberalism" ;)




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