this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the "socialist" movement or party. And they don't really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics...
It's almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
There are numerous reasons for this. Stability in protecting revolution and genuine popular support are among the larger and more important reasons.
Neither are Capitalist states, and neither was Marx. Combatting international Capitalist influence was and is key for retaining Socialism.
Not true at all, actually. Those controlling the media want you to think it though.
I agree with a lot you are saying. No state can stay stable without some form of control and censorship as soon as it starts threatening the stability of the system. Capitalism does this as well. And they have a very effective propaganda machine.
I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don't have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn't exist.
The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn't agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).
Also please don't misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.
This is a massive confusion. Capitalism doesn't "appeal to human nature," aspects like greed are more expressed under it as they form the superstructure that reinforces the base. The base is the Mode of Production, which creates and reinforces aspects like ideology, politics, art, culture, etc which reinforce the Mode of Production in turn. Capitalism isn't natural, humans don't have an inherent draw to hierarchy, and Socialism doesn't requore empathy nor intelligence to implement.
Pol Pot explicitly rejected Marxism, and was stopped by Vietnamese Communists. Your ideas surrounding Mao and Xi Jinping are also unsupported.
You've already found them, it's AES countries. They use what they need to survive in a world currently dominated by Capitalism. Over time, the state will wither away more and more, but there's a reason that there are very, very few largish scale Anarchist projects.
Have you ever visited any of the AES Countries? They have a few rich and powerful families running everything and sucking up to daddy china. I have visited Laos and Vietnam and talked to the working people. They are suffering, barely making ends meed and are fed up with the people in power taking everything for themselves and living in luxury. And if they talk too much about it they get "visitors". These people in power over there are not working class. There is also absolutely no basic healthcare. If you get sick you die. I am sorry but for me a socialist country does not have an elite living on luxury and it doesn't have people dying of poverty and lack of healthcare.
Look at trendlines. This is a figure for the USSR, which often also gets slandered as you have done.
Vietnam and Laos are Socialist, and remain to be so. Socialism isn't defined as "everyone is pleased," it's a transitional state to Communism. Look at metrics over time, don't analyze immediate snapshots.
What are you trying to say with this graph? That distribution of wealth is better when it is distributed amongst less than 1% of the population of they call themselves proletarian? Or that it is somehow better if standard of living goes down for everyone just because the then nonexistent ressources are shared equally?
In a perfect world a whole cake is shared equally by all 8 people. But if you smash half the cake, give a quarter to one person and the remaining quarter to the remaining 7 it is not better than 2 ppl having half a cake and letting the other 6 have the other half. Maybe not the best example but I hope you get my point.
If not having equal but good standard of living, what is it we are strivong for?
I suggest this link as a good read. Because I think just strictly defending the existing socialist countries is actually hindering progress towards a both fair and high quality of life society.
https://queer-bolshevik.medium.com/the-aes-doctrine-wrong-then-wrong-now-a8666de371da
You haven't interpreted the graphs correctly. That the share of the top 1% got reduced during USSR times is what the graph is showing, and it was much greater before and it's much greater after. The remaining population had a bigger share of the total wealth of the country during socialism than they did before or than they do after. Please re-read the graphs.
But that's not what happened, and you would know if you had read about the topic before making claims out of your ass. The wealth of the USSR and its citizens grew MASSIVELY during its existence. The country went from a preindustrial, almost feudal backwater, with 80+% of population being farmers working the fields with manual labor, to the second world power. The gains in living quality for citizens were absolutely massive. Free healthcare, education and public retirement pensions for everyone, millions of living units were built yearly, and were rented to families for an average of 3-5% of their income making homeless disappear, everyone was guaranteed to have a job available if they wanted to work with the average time to finding a job being 2 weeks, real consumption rose, during the worst years, at a rate of 3% per year... If you really want to study the evolution of soviet quality of life, I recommend you the book "Human Rights in the Soviet Union", by Albert Szymanski. Please, refrain from making false claims about the material living conditions in other countries that you patiently haven't made any effort to inform yourself about.
Where on Earth did you get those ideas? I am saying AES countries have dramatically reduced wealth inequality and have been very progressive forces. Read the graph.
You're right, that isn't the best example, because it's entirely non-applicable and horrible for representing the reality of AES states. Even then, the idea that resources should be shared equally is anti-Marxist, Marx specifically wanted resources distributed by needs in upper stage Communism, which is an extremely advanced form of Socialism. You're fighting ghosts.
We are striving for continued improvements for the Proletariat. Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
This link is left-anticommunist nonsense that is utter idealism.
You're coming off as an ulraleftist that doesn't understand Historical and Dialectical Materialism, I have no idea what you're advocating for nor how you plan on achieving it.
Funny how you just disregard the information without actually going into it at all.
Coming off as someone blindly following another form of oppression by a bourgeoise elite claiming to be proletarian.
I was hoping for some actual insights.
Nothing you said had any substance. Can you explain exactly what you mean by "another bourgeois elite claiming to be proletarian?" What do you believe makes someone bourgeoisie? You have no analysis and lack critical understanding.
China has the 2nd most billionaires in the world and they are tied to "state owned companies". And you try to tell me it's a socialist country. Billionaires should not exist in a socialist country. If the economic gains of labour land in the hands of a few billionaires, this makes them bourgeoisie. Even though they claim to be socialist. But you seem to be as blinded by their propaganda as you claim the western people to be of capitalist propaganda because you can't seem to grasp what's wrong with these so called socialist countries.
"State Owned Enterprises" is the term. Anyway, is this actually true? My impression was that the billionaires had private companies (Alibaba, etc.) and SOEs did not produce them.
Read China Has Billionaires. The fact that the PRC has a bourgeoisie class does not mean it is not Socialist.
"Q: Will it be possible for Private Property to be abolished at one stroke?
A: No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity."
-Engels, The Principles of Communism
Why not? I agree that wealth disparity is a bad thing, and can be dangerous if it is allowed to alter the course of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but you need to actually make a claim for why. Socialism isn't good because it follows an arbitrary condition of ideals to meet definitions, but because it elevates the proletariat as its focus.
Not necessarily, nor is this true of what the distribution of production looks like in the PRC. The PRC does have a bourgeoisie, but this does not mean it isn't Socialist. By your logic, the US is Socialist because the Post Office is state run.
I am bombarded by western propaganda every single day, the idea that eastern propaganda, of which I am exposed to very little, is the driving factor of my analysis is absurd.
Read theory.
We can do different than the last times. I don't believe we'll get not even close to a moneyless society until... God knows when, but the system has to change before we end up in a new feudal world where we all burn alive.