EVEN worse than the appalling spectacle of the mendacious incompetence of the Tory Party is the absence of any significant leadership from the supine leaders of the Labour Party.

That lack — of any significant policies; of any clear direction beyond the bland slogan of a “fairer, greener future” is the clearest indication of the bankruptcy of ideas in its leader, Keir Starmer and his supporters.

An earlier Q&A in this series, number 50, summarised the history of the various parties that have used the term Social Democratic in their titles. It also touched on some of the ideas that have animated these parties.

Since the establishment of the Communist International (the “Third International”) in 1919, Marxists have used the term “social democratic” to distinguish the reformist right wing of the working-class and progressive movements from the revolutionary left wing.

Some social democrats have a genuine belief in socialism but think it will be achieved by a long series of modifications to capitalism rather than by revolutionary action. This view used to be called gradualism or evolutionary socialism. Increasingly, however, social democrats have rejected socialism in favour of reforms to make capitalism more acceptable.

Whether avowed socialists or not, social democrats deploy a similar set of ideas to demonstrate their differences from Marxism. Some readers may say that it’s not ideas but ambition that drives so many Labour MPs and party officials to the right.

But though their main concern may be to advance a career or protect a comfort zone, they need intellectual arguments to satisfy their consciences or to placate their supporters. The widespread dissemination of these ideas by the capitalist media helps right-wing Labour to win elections.

So, it is vital for the left to fight this ideological battle. This answer examines some ways in which Marxist theory can expose the weaknesses and errors of social democratic ideas.

Let’s start with the fundamentals: the essential nature of the present economic and social setup.

Social democrats speak of free-market capitalism, neoliberal capitalism, crony capitalism, extractive capitalism, but rarely of the capitalist system. Instead, they think of different economic models, that can be turned on and off like a toy railway.

They see big business as one among several different “interests” to be accommodated. They speak of bad bosses who exploit their workforce, thus hiding the exploitation of all workers that is the source of capitalist profit.

Without a comprehensive and consistent economic theory of their own, social democrats inevitably embrace mainstream economic theory and the policies that flow from this.

For instance, Labour governments have twice sought to overcome “stagflation” by imposing a wage freeze, accompanied by a witch hunt against communists and the left. In the late 1940s and the late ’60s such policies led to Labour’s electoral defeat followed by many years of Tory rule.

Labour governments under Blair and Brown continued the privatisation process initiated by the previous Tory administration in education, healthcare and other public services as well as the Post Office.

Failure to understand the domination by capital leads to failure to recognise the basic fact, central to Marxist analysis, that our society is broadly divided into two classes with opposing interests and values. And that the struggle between them frames all political and social issues and activities.

Instead, social democracy makes much of changes in the nature of work, of “external” economic forces that have to be accommodated, of cultural variations among working people.

This enables them to ignore the potential unity of all workers, including self-employed tradespeople and small businesses, in their own struggle to survive against the power of monopoly capital.

Such neglect accounts for the past failure of right-wing Labour and trade union leaders to support workers in struggle, as during the great miners’ strike of 1984/5.

It is at the heart of the current failure of the Labour Party to support the current struggles of transport workers, health workers, teachers, and many other groups to protect their livelihoods against the rampant inflation, most of which is not due to global resource shortages (including energy), to the war in Ukraine, or to any other “external” factors but to price-gouging by monopoly capital.

Denying the domination of capital means that social democrats fail to recognise the nature of the state as an instrument of force and fraud which acts, ultimately, to ensure that capitalists not only dominate the economy but also control society.

Social democratic attention is focused on Parliament and the government it supports. They believe these are the beginning and end of political power, that other parts of the state machine — the civil service, the judiciary, the police and the prisons, the armed forces, the monarchy, local government, the media — are a neutral force standing outside and above society, to be used by any government for any purpose.

Failing to grasp the nature of the capitalist state, they become its prisoners. Holding pragmatism to be a great virtue, right-wing Labour minsters have been easily manipulated by senior civil servants and business leaders into watering down any proposed policies that seemed to threaten capitalist hegemony.

Belief in the centrality of parliament has had dire results. Social democratic MPs revel in the Westminster bubble, which seems to them more real than anything outside, including their constituents, and the communities that they are supposed to serve. They reject unified campaigning by progressive forces inside and outside Parliament. They think the Parliamentary Labour Party should control the Labour Party.

In the 1930s Germany the Social Democrats confined their opposition to the Nazis to the parliamentary benches, refusing to join the communists in challenging them on streets. This was the main reason for Hitler’s victory.

The failure of social democratic theory to understand the dominance of capitalism and the role of the state means it also fails to grasp the nature of modern imperialism.

It was the imperialist first world war that led to the institutionalisation of the split in the working class between revolutionaries and reformists; the former opposed the war; the latter supported their capitalist governments.

Globalisation is sometimes confused with internationalism. Social democrats still sometimes point to the Marshall Plan of 1948-52 as a worthy instance of international aid.

In fact, it was a project of US imperialism to rebuild European capitalism for the benefit of US trade and investment, and as a buffer against communism. It was the economic basis of the cold war against the Soviet Union.

Similar social-democratic thinking sees the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank as benign organs of international co-operation rather than as the servants of the big transnational corporations which dominate them and whose interests they serve.

All these illusions led to the greatest betrayal of all: the support of social democracy for imperialist wars of intervention disguised as humanitarian operations.

So social democracy is complicit in the dire state of the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries trashed by imperialism, and its support for US interests fronted by Nato is a significant contributory element to the ongoing bloodshed, suffering and misery of ordinary people in Ukraine.

Social-democratic ideas are often defended on the grounds that they serve “the national interest.” Marxists ask, as James Connolly always did: “Whose nation? The nation of the capitalists or the nation of the workers?”

If the question is not asked, the national interest always turns out to be the capitalist interest. Social-democratic ideas lead inevitably to the cul-de-sac of class collaboration and passive acceptance of the status quo and away from the highway of united class struggle that is the only road to socialism.

The Marx Memorial Library’s autumn programme — on site and online — continues with Andrew Murray speaking on What is ‘the State’ in Britain Today? at 7pm on Thursday October 20 and with Kenny Coyle on Defining imperialism in the contemporary context at 7pm on Monday October 24. Details of these together with downloadable copies of previous answers in this series on the library’s website www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk.