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They tried so hard to make socialism a bad word. And non of their voters know one single thing of what it is.
Spoiler: it's from the countries doing better than you.
The US should stop saying socialism = evil communism ...
One can be social towards others without giving away all of one's personal possessions and liberties...
Personal property exists under socialism and communism.
Private property does not. A factory cannot be privately held under communism. Roads belong to the people. Workers own the farms.
It’s not “our toothbrush, Comrade”
But you also don’t need a totalitarian state to regulate every last thing. There can be independence for those who work and manage the resources; you can still create a restaurant and be paid a high wage for managing it, coming up with new and innovative dishes etc.
The point is to remove the incentive to exploit for profit. It’s literally the root cause of every scam.
Communism without a dictatorship is yet to be seen at large scale. That would be interesting to compare.
And you also dont have to go ALL IN on communism. You can absoluty choose sectors, that will never be private, and have private sectors that will be regulated by giving the workers more power and owners much less.
There's so many nuances.
It has actually been seen, and currently exists today. See the autonomous region of Rojava in Syria and the Zapatista territories in Mexico. Both were founded on anarchist principles.
Additionally, by definition, communism cannot exist under a dictatorship. That's why all of the "communist" dictatorships actually say they are socialist, and claim to be working towards a communist future, which is obviously bullshit. All nations founded on Marxist-Leninist principles inevitably become one-party dictatorships because they don't go all in on communism. You must immediately abolish the state for communism to ever work.
Uh... People in China and North Korea are somehow doing better than me here in Finland? Why? Please do elaborate. Assuming you can.
Are you calling them socialists because of their name, particularly NK? That's part of the propaganda. They're not, at least not in practice. The Nazi party did the same thing.
They are more socialist than anything else on this planet. And they are among the few countries that do call themself socialist.
There are no socialist countries on Earth, and have never been, as there's always been at least some amount of private ownership. But North Korea is easily the country with the least private ownership, so that's the one least far detached from socialism. It's a bit ridiculous calling that one socialist, either. But if not even NK is socialist, then what does "socialist countries" even mean in that context?!
The claim was that socialism is "from the countries doing better than you."
So, what are those countries that are doing better than Finland?
Europeans asking why colonized countries don't have the riches they took from them will never not be funny.
Could you elaborate on what you refer to and mean with this, please?
Putting China and North Korea in the same booth shows how little you know about this subject.
Which one of those two is not a socialist country?
That's like saying "which of the orange and the apple is not a fruit."
But to try to answer what I think you are asking, North Korea is a communist dicatorship controlled by one family. Kind of how Kings worked in the old days.
And China is an authoritarian one-party state.
North Korea does not have a privatized sector. China does. North Korea is not socialist by definition, and China is.
How is NK not socialist by definition?
EDIT: And, thank you for actually answering! This question of mine is a genuine one.
I know that it doesn't answer your original question (the thing about countries doing better than another country - I personally didn't any claim here), but I'd like to answer that one question.
North Korea is an authoritarian state with a planned economy with a highly unequal society, in part based on slavery. Its official ideology is juche. Supernatural phenomena is attributed to their leaders. It is in many parts similar to kingdoms of old.
Its miserable state could be taken as an indication of the failing of socialism, as socialism is also based on a planned economy.
There's a few nuances though.
First, socialism means that workers own the means of production. I'm not aware of any democracy, even local, in North Korea. Authoritarian states are famously wasteful and inefficient. Perhaps one should look to socialist states where democracy and rule of law were in effect for a real indication.
I'm not aware of workers having control of the means of production in any notable auto-ptoclaimed socialist states, apart from USSR for a very short period of time. It seems like socialist revolutions ending in authoritarianism and centralization is a common story, almost inevitable.
Second, there's some remarkable successes even in those authoritarian planned economy states. Cuba has spend extremly little in healthcare and manages to give its population a good life expectency. There were also good social indicators under USSR, and which went down under capitalist Russia.
Third, North Korea spends an enormous amount on the military. No country not in an active war in the world spends as much as North Korea does on its military as a percentage of its GDP. It's around 20-25% if I remember correctly.
Anyway, just wanted to chime on this.
So it could be called socialist if you look at certain aspects of the economical foundation.
They DO have no ownership of private companies, which is socialist thinking, but they also dont have private ownership for the people, which is not.
But North Korea is special. They call themselves socialist, but in reality they invented their own ideology called Songun. It means "military first".
The "spirit of the law" in socialism is also for the country to work for the people. But you can argue with Songun, every single thing is done for military power. Not power to the people - nor for the people.
So yeah, North Korea calls themselves socialist (because they like to be friends with China), but they act like a authoritarin military dictatorship - or Songun.
That's well put, thanks!
I would say much of that also applies to China, and precisely because a country that doesn't truly exist for its people cannot be socialist, I'd say there has never been a socialist country on this planet yet.
And then, if we choose to say that socialist countries do exist, then socialism stops meaning that the country really cares about asocial issues, and starts meaning a system where all means of production are held by the elite.
Lenin killed socialism and communism by trying to do them the bestial Russian way. (Of course that had to do with Marx's thinking, but I still Lenin is to blame the most)
Still: if you have a dictatorship, you will inevitably veer far away from being for the people.
At the moment the countries that have come closest to the core point of socialism have been the Nordic countries, in that they've put the freedom and welfare of the individual in the middle, but they've done that that without socialism, using a strongly regulated capitalism as base instead.
...Plus, spent the last two decades trying to dismantle all that was good here, chasing the neoliberalist dream.
Great points.
I think when we talk about these ideologies, the point is often being made, that it's not true socialism for example.
Which I personally think is not that relevant to go into, because we dont have true democracy either. Nor true capitalism.
It is also hard to have internet debates about them, because the topics are so complex to understand when they are in use.
Even to understand how the Nordics work and why, cant be explained with all the characters available in a post.
Finland has social democrats / socialists who have been in power, right? And decent labor unions, I thought. Must admit, I assumed Finland was similar in politics to the other Nordics, but I'll stand corrected if not.
No nordic country is socialist, though. Having a labour union does not turn a capitalist country into a socialist one. Having a social democrat party does not make a country socialism. It's not "Socialist democratic party", it's "Social democratic party". Their goal is not socialism and they are not doing socialist politics. They are doing nothing to end private ownership of property.
You realise the comment you're replying to was targeted at Americans, yes?
It was made on an international forum.
Regardless of how America-centric imperialist the comment was, it was written to everyone because it's on an international forum without specifying it was for residents of some specific country only.
What happens in the head of the person talking 8s not relevant. What is relevant is what they end up actually saying.
Something in the ballpark of 19 out of 20 people on our planet are other than US residents. It is not okay to write a comment with an assumption that the remaining 95 % don't exist. There are US-only forums, and you can outright say that you're addressing US residents only. Everything else is targeting everyone.
It's a comment on an article about American politics, specifically referring to the issues mentioned in the article. Context is a thing.
On an international forum. If you're talking on an international forum, you're talking to an international audience. Behave that way.
Context is a thing.
I'm an Asian, you're preaching to the choir. Or what, did you assume I was American? Tsk, that American exceptionalism.
OP should have included the country in the title, since that was relevant info. Beyond that though, the comment is clearly linked to the article. You're the only one present who can't seem to read the context.
No, I didn't.
They're not going to answer your question. They never do. These people don't know what socialism and communism is and in the same breath say that Republicans don't know what socialism and communism is either.
These people think that programs that benefit the indigent or economically impaired are inherently socialist programs. They think that universal healthcare is socialism as well.
They don't understand what a Republic is and they don't understand the difference between private and public ownership of the means of production. They think that socialism will make everybody equal but don't understand what equity is.
They think that Bernie Sanders and AOC are socialists and have no idea what a Democratic socialist is in the first place.
They don't know anything so they cannot possibly answer your question.
“They”
“They”
“Them”
“The ‘other…’”
Yes. I understand what you're getting at but I assure you I'm not some flat earth conspiracy nut so this rhetoric won't work here. By they them I mean the people in the commen thread I posted under.
But congratulations on stoking the bandwagon fire. Good on you.
Depends heavily on who "people" are in either instance. There are absolutely people in China living happier, healthier, and more prosperous lives than folks out in Finland. There are NKians living better, too (although significantly fewer due to Finland's position as a global north energy exporter). There are Chinese and Korean folks living worse, too, of course.
If you expand the question to all of Europe, relative to China/NK, then the numbers look even better for the East Asian states. Certainly, folks living in bombed-out Ukrainian border towns are doing a lot worse than their North Korean peers. And significantly worse than the folks living peaceful and prosperous lives in Chongqing or Shanghai. Middle Eastern refugees scraping by in Turkyie and Romania, or getting surrounded by angry mobs of protesters in some shitty apartment in the UK or France, are doing substantially worse. Elderly pensioners working into their 80s in countries like Bulgaria or Moldova are far worse off than their Chinese and NK peers, comfortably retired in their mid-50s.
For some reason, westerners have their view of these countries trapped in the early 90s and refuse to believe the intervening 30 year span has delivered any kind of social or economic progress. You can watch full reel-to-reel videos of people touring these countries and all you get back is "Potemkin Village! Fake News! Everyone is secretly starving just outside the focus of the cameras!" in the comments. Pure denialism. But its necessary to believe a country like Finland is the best any nation on earth can possibly be when your government is in the process of freezing university funding, cutting social welfare benefits, and fattening up its national security budgets.
I went by hitchhiking through China from Khorgos to the Laotian border and was hosted by several local families in their homes on the way. I have seen more of Chinese everyday life than you have.
Your view of China has been trapped in Chinese propaganda.
And also: I would not say that the Chinese that are living a lavish life with a lot of luxury are living a socialist life. They might be an example of how "capitalism makes people happy", but I don't think that's really correct either.
Funny, because I was stuck in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks during the 2019 riots. Was it Chinese propaganda when the students were waving big "Trump 2020" banners?
I wouldn't say this about anyone. It's not "luxury" if everyone's enjoying it. That's sort of the joke of socialism. It's a basic standard of human comfort, not a lavish expression of artificial scarcity. One day you wake up and there's cheap abundant cavier and 1 carat perfect clarity diamonds at bargain basement prices. Then they're not delicacies reserved for the privileged elites anymore.
Sure, if you ignore that the Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.
When wealth isn't being ruthlessly consolidated and surplus value vacuumed up from a powerless working class, its easy to walk down a main street in the Futain district and think "Wow, we've got Toys'R'Us in the states, too! I guess they're just as capitalist as we are."
Only problem is that Toys'R'Us doesn't exist in the US anymore, on account of a leveraged buyout and subsequent bust-out of the business. Commercial practices that would get you run out of town on a rail in Beijing are how you get rich quick in the States.
Correct.
In the case of China it's not enjoyed by everyone, though. A typical Chinese toilet is a huge hole in the ground with some kind of slabs of concrete over them, with a 15 cm wide slit between the slabs. You go stand on the two slabs and poop into the cavity underneath. There is typically a roof overneath. Homes often don't have anything on the floors. Just bare concrete.
The people living in opulence are not enjoying something everyone there has. They are enjoying something only the richest 0,5 % among their people has. China is a country where wealth is concentrated extremely strongly to the few.
That happened long before yesterday, though. If you look at decades such as 1970's or 1980's or even later, you'll notice that whatever Mao was striving for, got eventually all undone.
The industrialization of scarce commodities significantly increases the number of consumers of the given good or service.
It's funny, because I've been in some shockingly fancy squatty-potty restrooms. Definitely took some getting used to. But that's more a consequence of culture than economic necessity. And anything that's been renovated in the last 30 years will have a handicap accessible stall with a sit-down toilet.
I feel like I'm talking to someone who spent six months in the West Virginia back country, trying to insist everyone in the US still uses the Outhouse. What you're describing doesn't exist in any of the massive high rise apartments thrown up all over the eastern seaboard. You're discounting hundreds of millions of people.
The people still living in rural backwaters are at the tail end of a massive upgrade to trade and travel. They received access to modern industrial farming and manufacturing back in the 80s and 90s. That's why you don't need a full third of the population manually planting rice anymore just to avoid a continent-spanning famine.
If you didn't notice the big industrial combines and giant metal storehouses, nevermind the full electrification of the back country (a feat neighboring India, rural Latin America, Central Africa, and even parts of Eastern Europe have struggled to achieve) then you weren't looking.
It laid the foundation for a century of economic growth and prosperity. What you're seeing today is the fruit of the revolutionaries' labor.
China passed through an industrial revolution and changed the underlying economy from subsistence farms to a modern manufacturing and professional service-based economy. That's not a reversal of the Long March. It's the fondest dream of any well-read Marxist scholar.
Shorter working hours, high living standards, a more educated population, and a robust domestically owned and operated worker economy is Socialist stage of economic development that Marxists strive towards... until they get there and seek to go further.