A very generous reading of social democracy says that they share the goals of workers emancipation with the left, they just have the tactical analysis that these goals are best achieved incrementally through participation in bourgeois parliamentarism. The problem with that reading is that no actual social democrat the imperial core has actually believed it since sometimes during the interwar period.
Actual social democrats think it is their job to defend capitalism to the benefit of a privileged labour aristocracy that certainly does not include workers in the imperial periphery and often exclude large parts of the domestic proletariat (the unemployed, the un-unionised, ethnic minorities etc.)
Actual social democrats are more viciously anti-communist than even most conservatives. Not only do they share the reactionary rage against those seeking to upend the capitalist system, they also feel enraged about someone to the left challenging their perceived birthright to be the sole political voice of the working class.
A united front might have made sense during the 1930’s, some social democrats still possessed some anti-capitalist sentiment, the communists were politically significant enough for the social democrats not to be able to overlook them and the imminent danger of violent death by the hands of fascist murderers was much more apparent (the horrors of modern post-fascism notwithstanding). And even though social democrats had practical and ideological reasons to work with the communists back then, the strategy still failed to materialise.
I think the most generous read you can make of this take is that they’re saying that the current situation is on the very cusp of full fledged fascism, just as it was in Germany and they’re suggesting that an alliance of the socdems and communists would’ve prevented it then and could prevent it now.
Revisionism aside, no such alliance is strong enough to prevent it now and no such alliance was plausible or possible back then.
Yeah the problem was that it was the Communists that extended the olive branch and the SPD threw them to the wolves.
Something we are essentially seeing repeat itself. It’s like a conversation I had recently with a guy who is kinda lib but probably a comrade still who said the Nazis might have won if they hadn’t started a war with the USSR first. He’s not wrong but that was inevitably the case because for as much as they hated Jews they also hated Slavs and wanted all that land for Lebensraum. History could not have played out any other way.
Figures like Mamdani think they can appease fascist elements in spite of the fact they will be rejected again and ultimately betrayed for their naivety.
I must clarify I am not trying to start another struggle session about the NYC mayor which is so tiring and I think he is sincere in wanting to improve the material conditions of New Yorkers and I have very limited very critical support for the actual good things he proposes I just don’t see it working.
said the Nazis might have won if they hadn’t started a war with the USSR first
It was actually because they didn’t start a war with the USSR that they lost in my opinion. If they had attacked the USSR when Poland was taken then they could have swiftly taken most of the entire industrial capacity of the country, which was near the border with Poland at the time. The molotov pact threatened France and the UK who both saw the pact as an indicator Hitler would come west ffirst instead of towards the USSR, it is basically what pushed them into fighting the nazis as before that decision they were content with using the nazis as their attack dogs against the USSR.
They would’ve succeeded and then they would’ve had all the power necessary to take the rest of europe afterwards. I’m not even sure if the Manhattan Project would’ve started under those circumstances, so there might not have been an atom bomb to threaten them either.
Sorry kinda high, that was what I meant. If they had gone straight for the east instead of jumping the gun on Poland and then attacking France they probably would have had support from the west, but they really wanted to go after Poland for some reason and that spooked the other western powers.
The other western powers cared about Poland as much as they cared about the previous annexation of Czechia, which is to say they didn’t give a rat’s ass about them. What made the UK abandon appeasement was the attack on France.
I think the left should reconsider buying into the “appeasement” narrative. I think it’s myth-making to ensure they look like the good guys of the war when the reality was they simply wanted to use the nazis against the ussr.
Look at Ukraine Russia today. EU supporting fascists against the Russians provided they aren’t a threat to EU is the same now as it was then, just that Ukraine started out much weaker.
The entire narrative about Ukraine would be different if they had stormed into one of their neighbours. I believe “appeasement” is story telling.
The only united front that can be achieved is with the small subset of non-anticommunist anarchists as I mentioned in my other reply just now. The SPD rejected and repudiated both the KPD and the German anarchists and the two factions actually had a short lived alliance before being outnumbered and violently purged by the collaborationist SPD.
A very generous reading of social democracy says that they share the goals of workers emancipation with the left, they just have the tactical analysis that these goals are best achieved incrementally through participation in bourgeois parliamentarism. The problem with that reading is that no actual social democrat the imperial core has actually believed it since sometimes during the interwar period.
Actual social democrats think it is their job to defend capitalism to the benefit of a privileged labour aristocracy that certainly does not include workers in the imperial periphery and often exclude large parts of the domestic proletariat (the unemployed, the un-unionised, ethnic minorities etc.)
Actual social democrats are more viciously anti-communist than even most conservatives. Not only do they share the reactionary rage against those seeking to upend the capitalist system, they also feel enraged about someone to the left challenging their perceived birthright to be the sole political voice of the working class.
A united front might have made sense during the 1930’s, some social democrats still possessed some anti-capitalist sentiment, the communists were politically significant enough for the social democrats not to be able to overlook them and the imminent danger of violent death by the hands of fascist murderers was much more apparent (the horrors of modern post-fascism notwithstanding). And even though social democrats had practical and ideological reasons to work with the communists back then, the strategy still failed to materialise.
But a united front today? Are they on glue?
I think the most generous read you can make of this take is that they’re saying that the current situation is on the very cusp of full fledged fascism, just as it was in Germany and they’re suggesting that an alliance of the socdems and communists would’ve prevented it then and could prevent it now.
Revisionism aside, no such alliance is strong enough to prevent it now and no such alliance was plausible or possible back then.
Yeah the problem was that it was the Communists that extended the olive branch and the SPD threw them to the wolves.
Something we are essentially seeing repeat itself. It’s like a conversation I had recently with a guy who is kinda lib but probably a comrade still who said the Nazis might have won if they hadn’t started a war with the USSR first. He’s not wrong but that was inevitably the case because for as much as they hated Jews they also hated Slavs and wanted all that land for Lebensraum. History could not have played out any other way.
Figures like Mamdani think they can appease fascist elements in spite of the fact they will be rejected again and ultimately betrayed for their naivety.
I must clarify I am not trying to start another struggle session about the NYC mayor which is so tiring and I think he is sincere in wanting to improve the material conditions of New Yorkers and I have very limited very critical support for the actual good things he proposes I just don’t see it working.
It was actually because they didn’t start a war with the USSR that they lost in my opinion. If they had attacked the USSR when Poland was taken then they could have swiftly taken most of the entire industrial capacity of the country, which was near the border with Poland at the time. The molotov pact threatened France and the UK who both saw the pact as an indicator Hitler would come west ffirst instead of towards the USSR, it is basically what pushed them into fighting the nazis as before that decision they were content with using the nazis as their attack dogs against the USSR.
They would’ve succeeded and then they would’ve had all the power necessary to take the rest of europe afterwards. I’m not even sure if the Manhattan Project would’ve started under those circumstances, so there might not have been an atom bomb to threaten them either.
Sorry kinda high, that was what I meant. If they had gone straight for the east instead of jumping the gun on Poland and then attacking France they probably would have had support from the west, but they really wanted to go after Poland for some reason and that spooked the other western powers.
The other western powers cared about Poland as much as they cared about the previous annexation of Czechia, which is to say they didn’t give a rat’s ass about them. What made the UK abandon appeasement was the attack on France.
I think the left should reconsider buying into the “appeasement” narrative. I think it’s myth-making to ensure they look like the good guys of the war when the reality was they simply wanted to use the nazis against the ussr.
Look at Ukraine Russia today. EU supporting fascists against the Russians provided they aren’t a threat to EU is the same now as it was then, just that Ukraine started out much weaker.
The entire narrative about Ukraine would be different if they had stormed into one of their neighbours. I believe “appeasement” is story telling.
The only united front that can be achieved is with the small subset of non-anticommunist anarchists as I mentioned in my other reply just now. The SPD rejected and repudiated both the KPD and the German anarchists and the two factions actually had a short lived alliance before being outnumbered and violently purged by the collaborationist SPD.