“More and more communists are coming to realize that socialism without democracy is no socialism at all. … I believe that the next decade will see the growth in democratic socialism against the ideas of monetarism and corporation.”

— Tony Benn

Speech to the European Republic Committee at the American Club in London (25 October 1978), quoted in The Times (26 October 1978), p. 5
1970s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Tony Benn69

British Labour Party politician 1925–2014

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“This book can be read as an argument that social democracy is not enough and we can establish something better than social democracy. The explanatory ideas of False Necessity provide an understanding of society that presents the institutional arrangements on which the social democrat relies as the relatively contingent and revisable outcome of a particular sequence of practical and imaginative conflicts. More generally, these explanatory arguments support a view of social reality within which the rejection of social democracy seems reasonable. The programmatic ideas propose an alternative to social democracy that realizes more fully the ideals that the social democrat can only imperfectly achieve and radically redefines these ideals in the course of realizing them.”

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“The Social Democratic movement need have no fear in regard to the political activity of Trotsky. On the contrary, he is more likely to give the death blow to the Communist movement outside Russia and to induce the Communist workers to return to Social Democracy than to strengthen any Communist Party or to weaken the Social Democrats in any way.”

Fyodor Dan (1871–1947) Russian revolutionary

Ibid. p. 621.

“At Munich, at the time of the Soviet Republic, he [Hitler] interceded with his comrades on behalf of the Social-Democratic Government and, in heated discussions, espoused the cause of Social Democracy against that of the Communists.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Hitler: A Biography (1936), p. 54

“Socialism without democracy is pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is pseudo-democracy.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

Wilhelm Liebknecht, On The Political Position of Social-Democracy https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1889/political-position.htm (1869 & 1889)

“Only Communists and Social Democrats who acted against the state were incarcerated. Most of the Communists and Social Democrats I had known became Nazis later. Only those who were doing anything against the state were thrown in concentration camps.”

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“By their critisism of the existing system, which repeats the Social-Democratic critisism almost word for word, the Bolshevik opposition is preparing minds … for the acceptance of the positive platform of Social-Democracy. … Not only among the mass of the workers, but among communist workers as well, the opposition is rearing the shoots of ideas and sentiments which, if skillfully tended, may easily bear social-democratic fruit.”

Fyodor Dan (1871–1947) Russian revolutionary

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““The innovative ideas of social democracy are emerging in other forums, in the networks of creative small business and social entrepreneurs.””

Mark Latham (1961) Australian politician

Unsourced

“We have to ensure that it is structured organically, so that it functions like a person functions internally, like the organs function... First in the examination of the matter. Secondly in that one develops a concept of.... a social order that have never existed before. That simply means: to realize freedom, democracy and socialism – free democratic socialism.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

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“Even in Scandinavia, where social democratic institutions were far more culturally ingrained, membership of the EU—or even just participation in the World Trade Organization and other international agencies—appeared to constrain locally-initiated legislation. In short, social democracy seemed doomed by that same internationalization which its early theorists had so enthusiastically adumbrated as the future of capitalism.
From this perspective, social democracy—like liberalism—was a byproduct of the rise of the European nation-state: a political idea keyed to the social challenges of industrialization in developed societies. Not only was there no ‘socialism’ in America, but social democracy as a working compromise between radical goals and liberal traditions lacked widespread support in any other continent. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for revolutionary socialism in much of the non-Western world, but the distinctively European compromise did not export well.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Conclusion: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

“Communists have always viewed the national question through the prism of the class struggle, believing that its solution has to be subordinated to the interests of the Revolution, to the interests of socialism. That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common struggle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Nations and Internationalism http://leninist.biz/en/1979/NI302/0-Introduction.005

“More and more communists are coming to realize that socialism without democracy is no socialism at all. … I believe that the next decade will see the growth in democratic socialism against the ideas of monetarism and corporation.”

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Tony Benn69

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