Even if Sanders wins the nomination, even if he then wins the general election, even if the state then didnāt undermine him in office so much that he was effectually impotent for everything except the imperialism heās clearly more than supportive of, the idea that he could implement social democracy in the US is farcical. The idea that Corbyn could have done it in the UK is also farcical, but at least we have a past history of social democracy; the US doesnāt even have that. Describing Sanders as a social democrat works as a shorthand, within reason, but it is not theoretically sound. Sanders is a neoliberal. He supports the global economy of free, frictionless trade promised by the ideologues that ushered in neoliberalism in the 1980s. Either way, the question is far too individualist to be important: even if he was a social democrat, it is essentially irrelevant and unimportant.
Social democracy was (and the term also has other meanings owing to the complicated and convoluted nature of history, but this is the relevant one here) a period, or stage, perhaps, in capitalism, characterised by an artificial decrease in the rate of profit to fall and a general economic improvement achieved throughout the world economy, facilitated by the mass destruction of latent, accumulated capital seen during the Second World War (which is one of the principal purposes of inter-imperialist hot conflict). We can define social democracy as being the international rĆ©gime (in the sense of the aggregate system and state of affairs) from 1945 to 1979/80. The conditions which gave rise to social democracy were very specific, historically unique, and, realistically, entirely unrepeatable. Imperialism simply cannot sustain such a system todayāit couldnāt in 1980, hence the rapid shift to neoliberalism, so to think that today, when imperialism is vastly weaker and less stable, having been subject to a further forty years of stagnation, atrophy and decline, is pure fantasy. Whatever these so-called āsocial democratsā that have been somewhat resurgent in the post-2008 period (though none have actually taken power, just made a lot of noise) actually believe and want, they would be incapable, even if they were not subject to state suppression, of ever resurrecting even a pale imitation of social democracy. Economy does not function according to human will! This is a basic reality made clear by even the very earliest Marxists, and it is not a difficult concept to grasp. The conditions for social democracy do not exist, no social democratic rĆ©gime is ever going to be constructed again, and the next financial crash would hit long before it had been implemented if it could be. Social democracy was a product of imperialism in a relatively healthy state, arguably at its historical zenith; today, imperialism exists in crisis conditions far more acute than any it has known before. To think social democracy, whether youād be in favour of it or not, is even remotely possible, is to be completely detached from reality and to be blind to the real conditions of imperialism today.
(And, as an aside, even if it were possible, are we really stupid enough to support it, even as some supposedly temporary lesser evilism, or as a stepping stone to the creation of our own class movements? Did the twentieth century just not happen? Social democracy destroyed the communist movement in the imperialist core at both its historic apogees, during and especially in the fallout of the first, and then the second, world warsāon what possible basis are you imaging it wouldnāt do so again? These people are our class enemies; they always have been, and they always will be. The left-wing of capital is still capital, no less pure or committed.)
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