Can Marxism and Social Democracy ever be reconciled?

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Can Marxism and Social Democracy ever be reconciled?

Following the Russian Revolution of 1905, the second International, the International organisation of socialist parties which included the two great democratic socialist parties of Europe (which are the Labour party and the SPD, the Australian Labour party, the Italian PSI and the French PSF) was split between revolutionaries and the gradualists.

The revolutionaries were referred to a group called ‘communists’ as the gradualists began to support a doctrine known as social democracy. Social democracy as a term is older than Marx himself and was originally used to summarise the differentiation between the objectives of socialism and liberal democracy. Social democracy takes the concept of equality further through applying to diverse areas of society which commits itself to means of production of both common ownership and a classless society therefore correspond to Marxist aims.

Social democracy is associated with orthodox Marxism and was planned to emphasise the distinction between the narrow goals of political democracy and collectivised productive wealth. Marxist parties were created in the late 19th Century therefore often styled themselves as social democratic parties e.g. The German Social Democratic Party abbreviated as SPD.

Social democracy during the 20th Century meant to lessen the abolition of capitalism through democracy but also it’s ‘taming’ and  ‘humanisation’ in order to serve the working class needs. It has come to mean increasingly combining a market economy with all-embracing state intervention, principally in the form of state welfare, to condense inequality and accomplish a degree of ‘social justice’. In doing so, they have created a loose, but coherent ideology different from classical socialism, Marxism and communism.

Social democracy has 4 core ideas which are firstly a commitment to ethical behaviour, extensive revision of Marx’s ideas, a pursuit of social justice and finally a belief in the community. Alternatively Marxism has broad themes considering the philosophy of history that outlines capitalism is in fact ruined, and why socialism is destined to replace it. He saw his work as both a theory of society and a socialist political proposal.

Both factions reconcile on the dialectic, Keynesian economics and the effects of capitalism. However they disagree on the majority of factors like ethnic socialism, revolution and so on.

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Social democrats believe that ‘ethics’ in the political sense means keeping moral conduct at a certain stage or level, often being forced by a set of rules that run on a basis of authority and those who not abide by them, loose their authority. E.g. Machiavelli argued that in politics, the end justifies the means, but has been attacked as immoral by socialists and modern liberals, both of who place ethics at the heart of their ideologies.

It is difficult to find an ethical element in Marxism. Marx and Engels abandoned the role of moral and religious beliefs in ...

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