The contradiction facing the Left Social Democrats and reformist socialists/Mensheviks, is precisely that they, like Duhring, seek to continue with the “good” side of capitalism, and its productive wealth, whilst rejecting its “bad” side, of the corollary of its distribution, and, instead, to effect a redistribution via measures of state intervention, and that, indeed, by a capitalist state, whose very purpose is to advance the interests of capital, and not those of labour!
At least the conservative social-democrats understand that reality, even if they use it to justify the rationale of “making the workers pay”, whenever such a crisis erupts. As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, in setting out the logic of the Ricardian position, inherited by the social-democrats and reformists, it is that the best conditions for workers arise when capital expands rapidly, creating a larger demand for labour-power. What enables a more rapid accumulation of capital? A greater rate and mass of of profit (as Marx sets out in Capital III, at a certain point, it is the mass of profit that becomes more significant than the rate of profit). But, what makes possible a greater mass or rate of profit? Lower relative wages.
The conservative social-democrats accept the continuation of capitalism as a “good thing”. They see it as the basis upon which society has developed rapidly and improved the lives of all, including workers. But, that continuation means that, when any contradiction/crisis arises, in order to ensure the longer-term continuation of that progress, it is the immediate interests of the workers that must be subordinated. Their short-term misery must be accepted as the cost of the longer-term health of the system, and their own prosperity. It is the basis of the familiar refrain, heard again and again of “jam tomorrow”!
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