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Some light genocide
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Look up what European social democracy means. It is just called socialism in most countries in there, and it's distinct from communism. I think there's a difference of vocabulary evolution compared to the Anglo-Saxon world.
Didn't mention Cuba and Vietnam because they had less impact and deaths than the big two. But please describe me how they avoided oligarchy and allowed proletariat dictatorship which is not a actually dictatorship but something certainly better than liberal or European style social democracy.
If it is just the common people ruling itself why is it not just democracy?
What I said about the intermediate step is in Marx writings not just Lenin's.
I'm so amused to see arrogance and naivete packaged together this way. You not only think I'm unfamiliar with the well-known concept of social democracy, but you also fell for the lie that it has anything to do with socialism. Social democracy is a liberal's dream come true. It is not leftist or socialist in any way.
Of course it's distinct from communism. It's capitalism. You still work for a wage, and owners still extract surplus value. Workers do not own the means of production, there.
Social democracy was a reaction to the socialist revolutions happening elsewhere, a placation, a concession to grease the wheels of capitalism, to soften the exploitation. Meanwhile, the most brutal exploitation was outsourced to poorer countries elsewhere. Look up unequal exchange.
Less impact? Cuba continues to thrive to this day. Vietnam only had to fend off the US in a brutal battle and win.
Because they govern according to socialist principles, which rule from the bottom up.
... It is democracy! Socialism is about universalising democracy.
Don't get slippery. You said dictatorship. And at that precise moment, I do believe you were referring to the absolute control of a single person or small group. Marx did not advocate for that. Lenin did.
Right, you're so full of modesty and realism with your certitudes about communism being the best system and Cuba being a democracy.
Or social democracy was a compromise found, considering the failure of both communist and unregulated capitalist experiments, that tries to mix economic efficiency of liberalism with social safety nets through regulation. It seems, countries who implemented that have among the best quality of life for the poorest half of their population. But maybe that's a big lie peddled by the comically evil capitalist elite, which is a pretty convenient scapegoat for all the issues of humanity, and allows preventing any deeper questioning of where those issues come from.
Yes, many of those countries are guilty of exploiting poorer countries, through colonialism or out-sourcing. But in the later form, it actually brought value to those developing countries, many of them have seen very fast growth in all domains and taking large percentages of their population out of poverty.
In the case of Marx, if I said dictatorship, I meant proletariat dictatorship as he writes himself. For example, here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch03.htm
So, I guess you don't like Marxism-Leninism because of the dictatorial oligarchy it created? Well, Cuba claims to come from Marxism-Leninism. You can find it in their constitution: http://cuba.cu/gobierno/NuevaConstitucion.pdf
It also proclaims a single party as being the leading force of the country, and the party leader, as being the leader of the country. How is that democratic? Do you think a single party can represent the opinions of the whole population? Or maybe you like to choose which opinions are allowed to be represented, that would not be very Democratic.
The little bit of election they have is done with a show of hands, so it is easy to bully people into voting for whatever the party requires. Information is censored, independent journalism is repressed, so it's hard for the people to be informed of what the government is doing and make them accountable, but they can't do much anyway since they can't vote freely, and even if they could, well there are not many parties to vote for.
Of course, some courageous souls still try to fight against this dictatorship. Guess what happens then, the dictatorship playbook: arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, torture and extrajudicial executions. https://www.hrw.org/news/2008/02/18/cuba-fidel-castros-abusive-machinery-remains-intact
But they have good schools and medicine, so we should forget about the dictatorships aspects?
I prefer to believe that this is not what you actually want. I think you focus on what's positive in there, and you proclaim, "see, that's real good communism!" and you ignore the rest because it makes your view of the world easier to live with. Easier than accepting that there is no magical political system that will make everything better.