this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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okay but like (not particularly educated take inbound)
the biggest gripe we have with social democracy is that it's fundamentally just a more equitable distribution of plunder from the global south, but that criticism doesn't really hold up when you ARE the global south and it's your resources getting plundered by imperialists
The criticism of social democracy ultimately boils down to "you're not doing a juche-style degrowth to decouple from imperial satraps". Which is fine and perfectly arguable on its face. But it does lead you to breeze over the policies social democrats are most commonly championing - public sector professional services free at the point of consumption - that would, in fact, get you some of that juche-style degrowth you said you wanted.
What are you even saying?
I believe he’s saying that, while social democracy in the global south doesn’t directly serve to cut imperialist ties, the policies implemented by social democrats will do some of that cutting in practice.
What didn't you understand?
By Juche-style degrowth, do you mean a command economy? Socialism?
That's more the method than the end goal. Juche is about economic independence. Decoupling yourself from below-cost-of-production imports and waste-exports that an imperial state uses to enrich the core at the expense of the periphery. Command economies and socialist dictatorship of the proletariat can get you there. And one might even argue they're the only economic model that can get you there. But they still need to be pointed in that direction.
A communist economy in South American Country X that harvests lumber from the Amazon in Neighboring Country Y and fills in denuded landscape with landfills of waste generated by the consumption of the lumber isn't self-sufficient, even if its leaders are democratically decided and its capital democratically owned and operated.