TIL Lenin used to term his beliefs as 'revolutionary social democracy'. I was reading 'Hands off Rosa Luxemburg!'; the various opinions people have on Trotsky or Luxemburg aside, I was surprised to find that Lenin apparently spoke of his own beliefs this way given what social democracy is nowadays.
>“… from the beginning we declared (see One Step Forward, Two Steps Back): We are not creating a special ‘Bolshevik’ tendency; always and everywhere we merely uphold the point of view of revolutionary Social Democracy. And right up to the social revolution there will inevitably always be an opportunist wing and a revolutionary wing of Social Democracy”
Apparently it's just another one of those things that got co-opted over time and he switched explicitly to terming it communism after 1917 or so. I wonder what his motives were for calling it social democracy? I know it does not exactly matter what labels we stick on what, but I find looking at the history of terminology revealing
>>2354891social democracy used to mean Marxism.
As "social democratic" parties moderated and degenerated throughout the 20th century the term degenerated as well. The present day SPD (Germany) has its roots in Marx's organization but today it's merely a center left business party.
before Marx, anarchism, socialism, communism, social democracy etc was a big tent thing which meant more or less the same thing
The first split happens in the first international → COMMUNISM vs ANARCHISM
Here, social democracy, socialism and communism mean more or less the same thing. Anarchism becomes its own separate thing, with Bakunin as its pope. The second international is born, with the Communists/socialists/social democrats, who uphold Marxism versus anarkiddies.
The Second International then splits into Communists vs Social Democrats, the communists uphold Marxism via Lenin, in contrast to Kautskyites.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany for example held Marx as their teacher back then. Only after the 2nd international split, that they renounced Marx.
>>2355489Real democrats ala Richard Wolfe
We just want real democracy in government as well as in the workplace