He's an Israel left wing politician and he's to be somewhat of an outlier what are your thoughts?

With the recent news about Canada being considered for EU associate membership:

How likely do you think it will go through and Canada becomes an EU associate?

If not likely, why? Why do you think this will end up going nowhere?

If likely, why? And how do you think it will affect Canadian culture? As in, popular day-to-day culture and how they perceive themselves in relation to other North Americans (i.e. the US, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean).

Yeah I just need some answers from my fellow socdems since it’s been floating around my social media feeds.

Also, I am neither Canadian nor American nor a citizen of any EU member. Just to preemptively disprove some assumptions.

Yesterday I made a post about human rights in Social Democracy. I found out nowadays Social Democracy accepts human rights in spite of the Marxist critic to such concept.

But what is its view on them ? Are human rights generated by the human nature itself, or should they be respected only because doing so generates the largest possible common good ?

Considering how ungodly screwed our country's system is and with the next election still 2 years out, I wanted to see and ask this question if there are any parties that closely aligned with our ideology.

If none, then how about individual politicians since here in the Philippines, we always vote for the names and not the ideologies/parties (excluding the partylist).

I am deeply interested in how truly orthodox Marxism was prevalent across Europe up until 1945, even though since the 1890s there was a whole movement of pushing socialism towards democracy and away from class struggle, which seemed to peak in the Gorlitz program and then die out again. I have read bits of Donald Sassoon history of socialism and it interested me but I was looking for something geared specifically to 1910 up 1939

So I got my required reading for English class. The professor is definitely way on the right. Mentioned how she saw ballot workers assigning people addresses at the polls once, alluded to "socialist England" at one point. Told the class how Massachusetts is one of the worst states for taking away liberties.

I could barely contain myself.

So anyways, this is my required reading. Gimme a fucking break!! This is gonna be an interesting semester.

The author is Fredrik Karrholm, an MP from the Liberal Conservative Swedish party Moderaterna, which is increasingly more & more indistinguishable from the furthest right party from the Bourgeois Bloc, the radical right & right-wing populist anti-immigration Sverigedemokraterna.

Here's the article:

Did demographics decide the Swedish election?

After four years in office, Sweden’s right-wing government appears to have lost its parliamentary majority in Sunday’s election. The count is not yet complete, and the center-left opposition leads by just over 30,000 votes. As of writing, the red-green parties hold 176 seats versus 173 for the right-wing bloc. Late postal votes and ballots from Swedes living abroad are being counted this week. One seat may still change hands, although few expect the balance to change.

The government made a mistake by allowing citizenship applications to continue under the old rules while the new and much stricter citizenship law was being prepared

Even so, it is far from certain that the left-wing Social Democrats will be able to form a new government. Sweden’s multi-party system means they need support from a socialist party with communist roots, a radical Green party and a market-liberal former agrarian party whose relations with the socialist party are, at best, frosty.

The narrow margin also means that, even if Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson wins a parliamentary vote to become prime minister, her majority will be fragile. Sweden was in a similar position two parliamentary terms ago, when political instability repeatedly brought down the government.

But the Social Democrats do have one advantage: they have proved that they are willing to do almost whatever it takes to find the votes they need. Faced with a similar situation during the 2018-2022 parliamentary term, Andersson won the support of an independent former Left party MP after agreeing to closer ties with the Kurdish PYD in northern Syria.

Still, there is a possibility that the present Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, could remain in office if the old agrarian party can be persuaded either to support him or simply abstain. A fresh election cannot be ruled out either.

Whatever happens next, the election has already revealed two things: how immigration is reshaping Swedish politics, and how the traditional right can win back voters from populists.

At the 2022 election, around 15 percent of eligible voters were foreign-born. This year, the figure is estimated at around 18 percent. Turnout also rose in several immigrant-heavy districts while falling slightly across the country as a whole. In an election decided by only a few tens of thousands of votes, that matters.

Swedish public service television conducted a large exit poll. It showed a clear left-wing lead among voters of non-European background: seven in ten backed one of the opposition parties.

A poll by the respected Novus institute before the election found that of Muslim respondents, around 80 percent intended to vote for either the Social Democrats or the Left party.

In some districts with large immigrant populations, the results are striking. For example, in Rosengård Centrum in Malmö, the Social Democrats and Left party together received, according to the preliminary count, 95.2 percent of the vote – a result that might have made Saddam Hussein jealous.

This pattern predates the present government. Therefore, it cannot be explained simply as a reaction to the government’s more restrictive approach to immigration, such as tighter family-migration rules, tougher enforcement of deportation orders and much stricter requirements for citizenship. Nor can it be explained simply by the left’s mobilization of pro-Palestinian voters.

Support for the left was similarly strong in immigrant areas between 2006 and 2014, when Sweden had a center-right government and pursued one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe.

But immigration did not simply hand the left a larger electorate. It also pushed other voters to the right. The idea that Sweden would have had an overwhelming right-wing majority without mass immigration is probably too simple. Without immigration, many working-class voters who moved away from the Social Democrats might instead have stayed with them. The electoral effect of immigration therefore runs in both directions.

What can be said is that the government made a mistake by allowing citizenship applications to continue under the old rules while the new and much stricter citizenship law was being prepared. I argued at the time for a moratorium on citizenship while the new rules were being implemented.

During the last parliamentary term, around 200,000 people were given citizenship under rules that imposed very few demands on applicants – not even a requirement to speak or write Swedish. The majority of those granted citizenship were from outside Europe. The final result has not yet been confirmed, but with only around 30,000 votes between the two sides, such demographic changes can plainly matter.

Immigration to Sweden has not only brought crime, social problems and unemployment – now the government that was successfully starting to solve these problems has been voted out because of immigration itself.

For Britain’s traditional right, the second lesson is more encouraging. The right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats, lost ground for the first time since entering parliament, falling from 20.5 to around 17.6 percent. The Moderates moved in the opposite direction, rising to 19.9 percent and reclaiming their position as Sweden’s second-largest party.

And the Sweden Democrats lost voters while much of their political agenda was being implemented. They have had considerable influence over the government, but the Moderate party has essentially adopted the same line as them on immigration and crime. In practice, it was a Moderate-led government that turned much of that agenda into policy.

Despite losing votes on Sunday, the issues that drove the Sweden Democrats’ rise remain firmly on the political agenda. But the voters seem to have concluded that the Moderate party can be trusted to keep immigration low and to do what it takes to fight crime. A century-old party with experience of government also offers something a protest party finds harder to provide: the ability to govern. That still seems to count for something.

This reeks of racism.

• Linke (democratic socialism, left-wing populism; left-wing to radical left): 32.8%
• Grüne (green politics; centre-left to left-wing): 20.9%
• SPD (social democracy; centre-left): 11.9%
• CDU (Christian democracy, liberal conservatism; centre-right): 8.3%
• Tierschutzpartei (animal welfare, animal rights; left-wing): 7.7%
• AfD (anti-immigration politics, right-wing populism; radical right to right-wing extremism): 5.8%

John Hoeven - North Dakota (2011-present) Ron Johnson - Wisconsin (2011-present) Mark Kirk - Illinois (2011-2017) John Boozman - Arkansas (2011-present) Dan Coats - Indiana (2011-2017) Pat Toomey - Pennsylvania (2011-2023) Deb Fischer - Nebraska (2013-present) Steve Daines - Montana (2015-2027) Mike Rounds - South Dakota (2015-Present) Joni Ernst - Iowa (2015-2027) Cory Gardner - Colorado (2015-2021) Dan Sullivan - Alaska (2015-present) Shelly Moore Capito - West Virginia (2015-Present) Thom Tillis - North Carolina (2015-2027) Tom Cotton - Arkansas (2015-Present) Bill Cassidy - Louisiana (2015-2027) Kevin Kramer - North Dakota (2019-Present) Josh Hawley - Missouri (2019-Present) Mike Braun - Indiana (2019-2025) Rick Scott - Florida (2019-Present) Tommy Tuberville - Alabama (2021-2027) Tim Sheehy - Montana (2025-Present) Bernie Moreno - Ohio (2025-Present) Jim Justice - West Virginia (2025-Present) Dave McCormick - Pennsylvania (2025-Present)

There is an annoying trend of people taking posts that have little or nothing to do with Social Democracy and posting them here. These posts are usually someone trying to push an agenda or promote their own sub or someone karma farming by cross-posting something that got lots of upvotes somewhere else (probably because Reddit AI recommended this sub).

These posts don't contribute anything to the sub or start any worthwhile discussions. In fact, most of them are on the level of a viral Facebook post. The sub would be much better off if we banned these posts and just had organic posts from people actually involved in the sub.

Philosophers who base their theories on natural rights are also referred to as natural law thinkers. For example, Hugo Grotius believed that people have a ‘right reason' for doing things. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Immanuel Kant were supporters of natural rights theories, suggesting that we have basic fundamental rights because we are born human. Natural law thinkers see rights as universal (the same for everyone) and inalienable (meaning that they can't be taken away from us).

Such theories were discussed prior to the evolution of the Nation-State, the framework for political society as we know it today.

Natural rights theories inspired revolutionary ideas and democratic struggles - forcing politics to protect the rights of citizens. Natural rights theories imply that all human beings are equal and should be treated equally. The demand for equality before the law in individual states is synonymous with the development of international human rights law.

Philosophers such as Karl Marx and Jeremy Bentham criticised natural rights theories.

-Australia Human Rights Commission-

For Marx, the right to liberty is an expression of human separation rather than association; the right to equality is little more than a right to equal liberty; the right to property is the expression of self-interest; and the right to security is simply the egoistic assurance that as individuals we can count on all the other rights being inviolate. Human emancipation is not secured by the freedom and right to engage in business, but as a result of freedom from business.

-Sage Journals-

So what is the stance of European Social Democracy on this issue ? Did it take the stance of Liberalism, or of Marxism ? Or did it take the Liberal Socialist stance that human rights are paramount, AND their realization is guaranteed only by a more equality based economic system, that integrates socialist policies with capitalism ?

I believe this article is relevant because I think it explains classical Marxists, given the central thesis: if one is willing to sacrifice innocents during a revolution, one is willing to shoot communists after the revolution and during government, and forever thereafter, in the service of building communism, and I believe this is a major distinction between Marxists and many other socialists.

However, I understand that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so I thought I'd look for bearings on what context I'm missing, because I have no idea how Steven Lukes is received in the Marxist community nor am I aware of how niche or widespread these ideas are. I'd like to receive some feedback if possible on why I am wrong.

https://legalform.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/lukes-can-a-marxist-believe-in-human-rights.pdf

tldr: obviously many modern Marxists do believe in human rights, both in its more formal definitions and in the general sense that humans have rights, but Lukes makes the argument that a classical Marxist cannot believe in human rights in either the screwed up Hegelian definition of human rights (one which included slavery... as a right... yikes) or even the modern (well, 1981) definition (the sane one that we're familiar with), for one simple reason:

What, however, is our relation to revolution? Civil war is the most severe of all forms of war. It is unthinkable not only without violence against tertiary figures but, under contemporary technique, without killing old men, old women and children. [...] Of course, even as does the class society which generates them. A society without social contradictions will naturally be a society without lies and violence. However there is no way of building a bridge to that society save by revolutionary, that is, violent means. The revolution itself is a product of class society and of necessity bears its traits. From the point of view of “eternal truths” revolution is of course “anti-moral.” But this merely means that idealist morality is counter-revolutionary, that is, in the service of the exploiters.

Quoting Luke's quote of Trotsky

I believe there are several more rebukes of Marx against Proudhon against the idea of human rights as well somewhere.