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Social democracy is not post-capitalism, it’s past capitalism

From Riots and Political Protest, by Simon Winlow, Steve Hall, Daniels Briggs and James Treadwell. From pg 101:

The hope of the majority of those on the left these days is to see the return of genuine social democracy, but to us this drive to return to the past seems both naïve and strangely defeatist. This defeatism reflects the triumph of liberalism and the absolute, unquestioned acceptance that liberal democracy is the best of all available systems. It reflects a deep faith in capitalism’s ability to bestow upon us consumer items that, before their arrival, we didn’t even know that we wanted. All other economic systems seem irredeemably tarnished and unable to deliver to us the forms of material excess that we now believe to be absolutely essential to civilised social life.

What I find particularly provocative is their argument that there’s fetishistic  disavowal at work in at least some advocacy of social democracy. Do intellectuals advocating past-capitalism do so because on some level they really don’t desire post-capitalism, without being able to admit this to themselves?

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