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The ‘AOC Left’ Has Achieved Plenty
(nymag.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Socialism
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What I mean about the US not having a social democratic party is that the Democrats are to the right of what we'd usually refer to as social democrats - at best a hybrid between a social democratic party and a liberal party. Classic European social democratic parties were born as socialist parties aiming at a gradual parliamentary transition to socialism, which through a combination of moderating themselves and being defeated electorally never actually managed to get there. DSA does have a lot in common with that earlier version of social democracy, though in the present day they're more aligned with the further left parties like die linke or podemos than the official still existing social democrats.
As for the union issue, you're not distinguishing between unions being a major constituency of the Democratic Party and their being controlled by it. Democrats are obviously not as consistently pro-union as we'd like, but they for the most part accept them as a valuable part of their coalition who they need to keep happy, as opposed to Republicans who want to bathe in their blood.
I haven't described what my conception of socialism is, just described one mechanism socialists have used and are trying to use to enact the changes we want. So far we have not ever seen a developed capitalist society transition to socialism, so I don't think parliamentarism has been ruled out as a mechanism for that happening any more than anything else has been.
I think this point just seems insignificant because you're not getting what it is. Unions are not controlled either directly or indirectly by the Democratic Party. Instead, unions are one of the social forces that control the Democratic Party, which is ultimately an incoherent mess of forces and agendas stuffed into a big tent by the oppressive American electoral system that only really allows for two parties.