Socialism
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic and constructive discussion from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
A certain knowledge of socialism is expected, if you are new to/interested in socialism, please visit c/Socialism101 before participating here. Socialism101 will gladly help you by answering questions, providing resources etc.
Memes go in c/Lefty Memes
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting those of low-quality!
Rules
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith discussion is enforced here.
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavour.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Xenial Xerus" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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This post has the word Capitalism™ written at the top. The USSR had a massive prison industrial complex which still holds the record for highest percentage of population imprisoned on earth, the CCP and Cuba are dystopian nightmares.
Lmfao thanks for not arguing against inequality, which was the point of the post, and moving the goalposts to "vague authoritarianism during WW2" because I literally proved you wrong with real-world data.
Simply not true. The USSR GULAG system was essentially dismantled during the 1950s, when the Nazi threat was eliminated, and the imprisonment rates dropped dramatically afterwards. Mass imprisonment was a temporary measure imposed from the threat of Nazi sabotage of the country, and it was a dark chapter of the Soviet Union that lasted less than two decades, whereas the socialist experiment lasted 70+ years. This is in opposition to an actual ever-growing prison industrial complex like that of the USA, which is systematic because it generates immense wealth for some corporations.
Poor Cubans, enjoying higher life expectancy than the USA, highest number of doctors per capita IN THE WORLD, and recently passing a Democratic referendum to reform the constitution in order to enshrine LGBTQ rights. Poor Chinese, seeing increases of 5% of consumer power yearly with an average inflation of 0%, truly harrowing.
Stop spreading false CIA propaganda, the community is called "actual socialism", not "USA propagandized left-punching faux-socialism".
China is not very communist if i may say
I explicitly said Maoist China. China's wealth inequality has risen since the market reforms.
Regardless: the Communist Party of China controls 60% of the stock market and has powerful direction over the economy; it's the largest producer of Electric Vehicles and batteries, and produces 93% of the world's Solar Photovoltaic modules, has an extensive high speed electric railway network, promotes reforestation projects in China and abroad, builds civil infrastructure in the global south, and hasn't carried out wars, sabotages, economic blockades or invasions of any country in the past 40 years. Also, the Chinese people enjoy the highest degree of satisfaction with their government of any country in the world. Sure, they're not my ideal form of government, in that private companies exist, inequality is still comparatively high, and healthcare and education aren't completely free as was the case in the Soviet Union, and importantly they're not helping emancipatory anticolonial projects to the degree that the Soviet Union did.
However, the Chinese model of government is still orders of magnitude than what we have in the west, not just inward but especially outward. Call it by the words you wanna call it, but Socialism with Chinese characteristics is still much better than what we have in the west.
Nothing has effectively changed since Mao, the same exact CCP is in charge of China, in fact real estate rentals continued even after Mao's famous execution spree.
Proving that you don't know what you're talking about. Market economy had been essentially abolished under Mao, and the Deng Xiaoping reforms brought back a market economy. This is a huge change, hardly "nothing changed since Mao"