Social Democracy - Criticism

Criticism

Marxian socialists of the classical, orthodox and analytical variations argue that because social democratic programs retain the capitalist mode of production, they also retain the fundamental issues of capitalism, including cyclical fluctuations, exploitation and alienation. Social democratic programs intended to ameliorate capitalism, such as unemployment benefits, taxation on profits and the wealthy, create contradictions of their own by limiting the efficiency of the capitalist system by reducing incentives for capitalists to invest in production.

Democratic socialists, such as David Schweickart, contrast social democracy with democratic socialism by defining the former as an attempt to strengthen the welfare state, and the latter as an alternative socialist economic system to capitalism. According to Schweickart, the democratic socialist critique of social democracy states that capitalism could never be sufficiently "humanized", and any attempt to suppress the economic contradictions of capitalism would only cause them to emerge elsewhere. For example, attempts to reduce unemployment too much would result in inflation, and too much job security would erode labor discipline. In contrast to social democracy, democratic socialists advocate a post-capitalist economic system based either on market socialism combined with workers self-management, or on some form of participatory-economic planning.

Market socialists contrast social democracy with market socialism. While a common goal of both systems is to achieve greater social and economic equality, market socialism does so by changes in enterprise ownership and management, whereas social democracy attempts to do so by government-imposed taxes and subsidies on privately-owned enterprises. Frank Roosevelt and David Belkin criticize social democracy for maintaining a property-owning capitalist class, which has an active interest in reversing social democratic policies and a disproportionate amount of power over society to influence governmental policy as a class.

Another criticism of social democracy has to do with its relationship to neoliberalism and labour unions. It is argued in Social Democracy: After the Cold War, that

"social democratic parties shifted to the right in the 1980’s, abandoning their traditional policy stance and embracing neoliberalism – either explicitly or in the guise of a ‘Third Way.’ Ultimately, they distanced themselves from their core union base to regain electoral viability."

Communists accuse social democracy of accepting the values of capitalist society and therefore not being a genuine form of socialism.