By Moses
Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism: what are they?
They are systems of government that seek to help the voting class thrive by giving them access to basic necessities like education, healthcare, food stamps, ,and infrastructure improvement. This is where they are so similar. They both want to improve society’s social contract. Both of them are pro-democracy with both encouraging the voting class to participate with their ballot. Unions are also a big player within both of them. For that’s where the power lays in both systems.
That is where the similarities end and the differences begin.
Democratic socialism seeks to go past capitalism and develop a socialist system where the voting class has control over the means of production like energy or transportation. They seek having the voters form coalitions with the means of production. This is done by democratic means or revolution.
Social democracy refered to a moral capitalism differs. For social democracts say capitalism is the only system that hasn’t produced a broken system. If also says inequalities produced by capitalism can be moderated with shots of reformation within the system. The end goal is to have capitalism idealized to where it gives back to society and takes care of downtrodden like the orphan or widow. Private ownership still exists, however monopolies are regulated where they serve the voters.
There are already real world examples of Social Democratic countries like the Nordic countries and or other european countries like Germany. So, social democracy is a proven system.
So, whats the difference? The end goals. Democratic socialism wants to rework the system, seeing capitalism as a stepping stone. Where Social Democrats see capitalism as the solution to society s woes, by being a proven system.
Democratic socialism is still a idea on paper that hasn’t been implemented successfully by any nation. There are nations that have given partial control democraticlly to the unions.
This all means that while similar the two are incompatible with each other based on Democratic socialism wanting to move past capitalism into a workers-working state.
Overall, they seem similar on paper but are different in practice due to there end goals and real world examples. They both support welfare systems for the downtrodden. The Social Democrat says “capitalism is the answer” while Democratic socialism says “let’s move beyond capitalism.
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