Good stuff then. I can denounce socialism as idle dreams too.
As long as you use the term correctly and use substantive arguments, be my guest!
I've never gotten the difference between Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy. Could you explain?
Let's see.
Social democracy is about reform within the democratic system and supports a capitalist economy, albeit it (strongly) regulated. It's basically staying within the boundries of the current system, like most of Western-Europe, or at least how it was up to a decade ago: a welfare state of some sort to alleviate poverty and protect citizens from loss of income because of illness or unemployment. Intensive care for education, health, etc. through government subsidies, minimum wage, labour standards, some sort of environmental protection laws, international solidarity and protective laws against racism, homophobia, and those type of things.
Socialism is a transition stage. Power and resources are allocated by the collective, which is more or less the state. There is no space for a capitalist economy in socialism, although there may be some remnants, and wealth/income is nivellated completely. In the end the goal is a communist society without private property or concentrated power. What is commonly known as the communist state, is more a socialist state.
Democratic Socialism is in between these two. The best example are socialists who do not believe in a revolution but a change to a new order through democratic means. There is definetly overlap with social democracy as for some proponents there is more space for capitalism than with socialists, but it tends to differ in the root of these reforms: from the grass-roots.
Trying to explain I must admit I can totally understand your confusion. Probably there are some people that know the huge body of literature on this better than I do, and they will doubtessly point out any mistake or missing crucial value in this post.
Depending on the way its implemented, it can also be very much like a drug addiction. The government control the supply and are the pushers, and the citizens have to prostitute themselves to keep getting fed.
I only need to replace the word 'government' with something like 'the ruling class' to make this a phrase that fits in Das Kapital. Now that I think of this: the government and the ruling class are one. So actually you just made an argument against capitalism.
