Commas and the Labour Party

Because I have nothing better to do, I was looking at the website of the Scottish Labour Party today. In the "About Us" section of their site, they set out the following:

"As a democratic, socialist party we welcome people to join the party from all walks of life, have their say and influence policy."

Notice, if you will, the comma here between socialist and democratic. What this suggests is that the SLP is both democratic and socialist.

Now, look at the same section at the UK Labour Party's website:

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party."

Where's the comma gone? The SLP is explicitly socialist, whereas 'London' Labour is democratic socialist. Interesting, don't you think?

By the way, in formal terms, the word "democratic" is redundant if it appears before socialist or socialism. Socialism is, by definition, the most democratic way of organizing human social life.

When groups put "democratic" before socialist, they're sending a signal to the people to whom real socialism would be dangerous i.e. you can trust us, we're not going to threaten your power, privilege etc.

That is, "democratic" socialist means capitalist socialist, or "status quo" socialist (not the band, though that would be interesting). Of course, the New Labour project is based on openly announcing this fact, whereas the "old" Labour Party would pretend (to itself as well as the class) to be a "real" socialist party, but was always ready to prop up the stinking system if they were required.