The amount of Americans who were trained to misunderstand and hate socialism based on reaganomics but yet want to be Russian is heavily astounding. Americans are the weirdest bullies of the world.
What does modern Russia have to do with anything?
We do our best to ignore the countries that do have good social policy, or manufacture reasons that social policy doesn’t work while ignoring the exact same problems mirrored in our capitalist system exacerbated by disparity.
The US definitely doesn’t ignore countries like the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc that are more rapidly and equitably developing than their peers, it wages active economic warfare if these countries don’t play ball. The US Empire needs subjects, after all, so if countries don’t bend the knee the US either saber rattles or sanctions them to oblivion.
Stop couping yourself.
Stop couping yourself.
Stop couping yourself.Anyone who says they don’t like socialism I just tell to stop using public roads moving forward.
My younger brother moved from the bay area to a suburb of Nashville. He hates it because (per him, I haven’t verified this) there are no public parks or trails that he can run or bike at within like 40 miles of his place. Plenty of private parks, but nothing public. At least it seems that way to him since every city he’s lived in California had/has at least 15 miles of bike trail and usable public parks in every neighborhood.
Weird, I grew up in the Bay Area myself and I never even heard of private parks. Like, you need a membership? A resort I can understand, but a park??? That just seems insane. And I think of Nashville as a good ol’ down home American heartland kinda place.
I am familiar with only one. It was built by the HOA. The HOA fenced off the park and locked the gate to prevent nonresidents from using it. i have literally never seen anyone use the park (there are better ones in walking distance) but i just find it hilarious that they’d go to all that effort for something no one uses.
Publicly funded infrastructure and utilities within a Capitalist system isn’t an example of Socialism. Socialism is an organization of society where public ownership is principle, ie at least over the large firms and key industries. The US Army is not “socialist,” it’s an arm of the state within a Capitalist system. Same with roads.
I get what you’re trying to say, but I think this line of thinking backfires more often than it helps. Anti-socialists can easily point out that it’s the broader system that needs to be viewed, not the discrete element.
Purely pedantic. The terms socialism and socialist are perfectly legitimate to describe the outlook or philosophy behind running aspects of society as “an arm of the state” vs having private interests run them for profit.
I think most people associate socialism w social programs because we have a weak understanding of political theory due to cultural taboos about "politics’ in polite conversation.
If we talked about it as often as we do other things like sports or movies (and w should because of it has a HUGE impact on our lives) it would help us understand what socialism actually is and why social programs are usually half measures at best.
Social programs within Capitalism are band-aids, yes, but social programs within Socialism are necessary. I think that’s what you’re saying, but wanted to add clarity.
It isn’t pedantic at all. Capitalist countries like the Nordic Countries may have more social safety nets (even if they are slowly being picked apart by Capital), but that doesn’t make them “Socialist.” Using Socialism as a moniker in place of public ownership obfuscates how the entire economy is run, and in whose interests. The post office in the US, for example, primarily exists to work with the private sector and help smooth it out. Social programs aren’t Socialism.
You’re also on the community for Communism, you’re going to find people more strict and clear with using terms like “Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism.”
socialism is when the government pays for things, and the more things it pays for, the more socialister it gets
socialism is where the government socialisms for things, the more they socialism for, the more socialismier it is.
- Cunk on socialism
Then a dictatorship spending 80% of GDP to prepare for war would be a socialist country.
Even if all the money is spend on social issues, only utopian socialism equals this. It’s what got Karl Marx so fussy about because he knew the capitalists/monarchs/oligarchs will never allow it to happen for as long as they live. So a next social revolution à la the French revolution he predicted.
Since Marx, socialism is when the means of production is in the hands of the workers and one’s income is comparable to one’s contribution.
And since Marx didn’t have a good idea as to how a socialist government would function as his version did not get off the ground, we now have standard vanguard (SU) and capilliary vanguard (PRC '78) democracies as examples of socialist societies.
Just to clarify, the post you reponded to is definitely paraphrasing famous prof. Wolff joke about exact same topic.
A few corrections:
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For Marx, worker ownership is not Socialist. Cooperatives are petite bourgeois structures, the form of ownership must be public ownership, ie equal ownership across all of society, not just the working unit. Countries like Cuba, the PRC, and former USSR all have public ownership as the principle basis of society.
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Marx had a decent idea of how Socialism would function, you can read a bit about it in Critique of the Gotha Programme. Lenin and other Marxists took the basis created by Marx and implemented the first major steps towards Communism in real life.
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Why do you need to redefine a world that ot’s creator defined?
They are sarcastically pointing out that public roads aren’t Socialist.
Technically lemmy and the fediverse implement socialiam principles
Open source is inherently socialist
accurate.
Cuba being so based, that it did not work.
Given the fact that the strongest economic power in the world has been fucking with them for decades, and they still manage to keep up on things like life expectancy and education (at times even surpassing the US on the life expectancy), I’d say they’re doing pretty well. And looking at neighboring countries with similar histories that aren’t getting fucked by the US, but chose capitalism (or had it chosen for them in case of countries like Chile), I’d say Cuba’s a pretty good argument in favor of socialism.
Hasn’t Cuba been crippled by US sanctions and libel for decades?
Yeah, but they’ve had a lot of success despite that.
Sadly yes, but it is still way ahead of most other (in some cases even imperial core) countries in certain metrics.
Irrelevant, if they didn’t want to be embargoed so hard maybe they should have done a capitalism.
I know it’s a meme, but if it doesn’t work because of the USA, then that is one of the reasons it doesn’t work.
Edit: and you being angry at me just shows your inability to imagine a way forward. “If the USA hadn’t stopped us then it would have worked!” Is as smart as saying pigs could fly only if they had wings.
Edit2: I can’t imagine why people would think communists are hateful beings.
Good thing the US empire is dying then.
And without any other country “liberating” it either. That’s just how well fascism works.
The USA have for sure went full crazy/wannabe-fascists, but I doubt they are “dying” just yet.
rome didn’t fall in a day :shrug:
nothing works if someone shoots you as soon as you try it.
If someone shoots you as soon as you try to drive your car, would you say “cars don’t work” or “fuck that guy shooting at me”?If you drive through a shooting range, would you continue do it and blame it on the shooters? Again and again too.
You’re equating taking control of your own economy and trying to satisfy the needs of your people with something as gainless as driving through a shooting range. Socialism is a better mode of production, for more people, than Capitalism is. Remaining under the thumb of Imperialism comes with immense drawbacks, either you accept that or you work against it and draw a bigger target on your back.
if someone declares my driveway as a shooting range, i would blame the shooters and the people declaring it.
The USA had better fossil fuels and by better fossil fuels I mean more coal.
The Soviet Union fell because it mostly had to rely on oil and had no solution against the US petrodollar scheme… China is already doing better with just half as much coal.Even cultist theocracies could win against communism with enough energy/electricity sources packed in a small area that can’t be easily transported.
This coal advantage is quickly disappearing as solar power and to a lesser extend, wind power, is making inroads. By 2030, coal will be a curse like oil as it’s easier to transport than solar and wind, which aren’t transportable at all.
You say it like the fall of the USSR regime was a bad thing.
It was a bad thing.
Not only because of the things REEEEvolution said. Child prostitution, bread lines (which came AFTER the fall), wars and a fall of life expectency, but I live in Western Europe and the dismantling of the Soviet Union also triggered the dismantling of social democracy and rise of both fascism and rainbow capitalism in my own country and I sometimes don’t know which one to be more disgusted by.
Well fascism of course, but like religious people I consider their ideas to be so outdated that I’m often more amused and amazed by their stupidity and backwardness than I am frustrated by them during an age where China currently is undeniably the largest superpower in the world.Guess your country is in america lol, here in Europe we know our history.
@folaht@lemmy.ml quite literally stated “but I live in Western Europe.”
You’re a big fan of modern Russia then.
Neither dictatorship pleases me.
But I guess you’re onboard, you all seems to like a strong dictator like Mao or Stalin.
OK, so you’re not a fan of what the fall of the USSR led to. I guess you’re just a big fan of the mass poverty it caused?
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Undeniably it was a bad thing that the Soviet Union fell. 7 million people died because of it falling, and we lost one of the most progressive countries from an international perspective. Never has a country been so firmly dedicated to anti-Imperialism and decolonization with the actual real power that the Soviet Union had to back that up, it not only came with huge victories for the working class internally, but also supported Cuba, Palestine, Algeria, Korea, China, defeated the Nazis (90% of Nazis killed during WWII were from the Soviets), and more.
So yes, the USSR falling was a bad thing.
Judging from the fact that life expectancy dropped by 8 years, popuilation numbers in all former members of the USSR having not recovered to this day, the rise of the now famous russian mafia, and all the “fun” wars in recent times. Yes it was a horrible thing. You need to be completely insane to think otherwise.
The only people who profited from it were oligarchs, the mafia, the west(and there only the upper crust) and pedophiles(so much child prostitution holy shit). For 99,9999% of mankind it was a bad thing.
it was a good thing - what came after it was a bad thing.
ultimately what happened is that, confronted with either advancing the revolution or burocratizing the party cadres, the ussr chose the last one. the result could be no other than the restoration of capitalism. so far just cuba seems to be resisting this trend, but for how long?
“Advancing the revolution” of course being a shorthand for “spending all resources on exporting it like Trotsky wanted, only to end up failing externally and internally” rather than building up production so that it could actually afford to support revolution around the world, which it did in cases like Cuba, Palestine, Algeria, and more.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a complicated factor, but it was by no means because they chose to develop, rather than get themselves wiped out immediately like Trotsky wanted. There are many Socialist nations today, the PRC is by far the biggest and most relevant example on the global stage, it isn’t just Cuba.
True.
Cuba is a real dictatorship though, not really the country of the people IMO.
Cuba is propably one of the most democratic states on earth, what the fuck are you talking about?
just for clarification: with all its problems, cuba is way more democratic than the u.s… like, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more.
you got it wrong.
Oh aah, that clear things up so well, thank you for the thorough explanation!
You made the original claim, back yourself up.
Instead of repeating western progaganda, you could use your time to inform yourself about Cuban democracy and how that democracy is superior to western liberal democracies.
“Cuban democracy” aren’t they the epitome of communism??
Are you under the impression that Socialist economies and democracy are at odds with each other? Socialism is more comprehensively democratic for a much larger portion of the population than western-style liberal democracies, as Socialist democracy is run by and for the working class, while liberal democracy is run by and for the Capitalist class.
Democracy is a core part of communism.
“The world police is always right, it’s their fault for being commies”
World “police”? The real police is at least supposed to fight actual crime. The US is the world warlord.
@protestation @Valmond Bet you think black people must be inferior because they were enslaved by Europeans, too.
I made a little edit just for you.
Which proves your accusers right. You did not understand a thing and doubled down instead.
