this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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all of the above listed counties have very solid healthcare and are not entirely socialist. what’s your point?
socialism is not a requirement for being a place that treats people with respect and dignity; nor is it a silver bullet
As @[email protected] said, the Nordics can only provide the safety nets they do while paying generally high wages while still maintaining enormous profits for their bourgeoisie because they expropriate vast sums from the Global South via Imperialism, manifested in outsourcing manufacturing for pennies and through large loans. They are Landlords in country form.
They aren't alone in this, of course, the whole of Western Europe generally does it, and the US Empire is the biggest at it.
i don’t disagree, but socialism won’t solve that just by virtue of it being different… global socialism, perhaps but on the country level it’s just not. socialism just aligns local incentives
Socialism allows it to be solved, Imperialism cannot be eliminated while Capitalism remains. Imperialism is the later stage of Capitalism.
theoretically
and now you’re arguing for massive bloodshed and forcing people to live the way you want, in potentially awful living conditions for a lot of people (i certainly, as an LGBT person, would not want to live in any previous or current socialist state) for a long time for theoretical improvement
I would point out that the system we live in now is also maintained by violence and a lot of bloodshed, all alternatives are aggressively opposed, many people live in awful conditions already, and more often they tend to be the people on receiving end of US weapon systems. The actual death toll of capitalism is extremely high if you include social murder and neglect too.
i don’t disagree, but i’d say that humans are, and will be responsible regardless of the system used
we’re living in the most peaceful time ever, with the highest quality of life… i’m not saying that fully socialist systems wouldn’t produce that, but i am saying compared with most of human history, things really aren’t that bad, and i’m not sure that it’s worth paying in human lives for a radical (and i’m using that world to mean big; not bad) change because the outcome is uncertain
Theoretically and practically. We have evidence for this throughout the last 130 years.
As for advocating for "bloodshed," revolution remains the sole path to end the bloodshed, especially of the genocidal US Empire.
As for LGBTQ rights, I am pansexual myself, and I can confirm that Socialist countries make faster progress on social issues. Cuba today has much better LGBTQ rights than anywhere else in the world, and countries like the PRC are gradually improving as well. Socialism, if anything, improves the rate of progress. Even the GDR began pushing for LGBTQ rights well before Western European countries and the US did.
it sure is great that the USSR treated ukraine with respect aye… that holodomor sure is a lark
we are living in the most peaceful time in human history… a world with humans just isn’t going to be a utopia - we aren’t that good
but you’ve pulled 1 example out of many, many counter examples
There's pretty much no evidence the USSR's famine in the 1930s was intentional. Moreover, it was the last major famine outside of war time in a country that had regular and common famines before collectivization.
As for this being "the most peaceful time in history," that's wrong, and is Neoliberal propaganda. The US Empire is still propping up genocide around the world, and expropriating the fruits of the labor of the Global South.
As for 1 example out of "many counter-examples," can you legitimately link Capitalism itself to LGBTQ rights? The USSR had better treatment of queer folk than the modern Russian Federation, one of the PRC's most famous celebrities is openly trans, queer rights advance more quickly in countries where the working class has control. Consider reading Leslie Feinberg's Lavender & Red | Audiobook
it is a requirement if you want to do that without oppessing brown people elsewhere.
the important thing is not socialism: it’s a government that deals with negative externalities
socialism tends to do better at that simply because often it often does better at long-term planning (but that’s not a given either), but capitalism without corporate bullshit, stock markets, etc (ie actual ownership over a business rather than just ownership over a vague thing where you’re only concerned with line goes up not long term business health) has pretty much the same drivers: long term sustainability and this holding others to account for their negative externalities
What you describe as "corporate bullshit" and "stock markets" are just a symptom of later stages of Capitalism. You cannot maintain the small stages forever, eventually they will coalesce into large firms and syndicates. You can't simply bust up monopoly either, manufacturing gets so complex that it needs to be done by large companies to handle the scale.
This process doesn't stop, though, it becomes better and more efficient to publicly own and plan these large firms as they get larger and larger. This is why Socialism is a necessity regardless.
i don’t disagree of course, and i wasn’t saying capitalism is the only way; i think capitalism like this is absolute trash as well… i’m simply saying that those qualities are neither intrinsic to, nor exclusively found in socialist systems
perhaps, but honestly i don’t think we’ve actually even tried. we jumped straight from feudalism to some form of capitalism to some socialism. we’ve never had a system that tried to keep things small - and i’m not saying we should either necessarily
but these arguments are all reasonably theoretical
socialism is perhaps part of a solution but dealing in absolutes is rarely ever correct
Corporate bullshit and stock markets and whatnot are magnified in impact and scale in Capitalist systems, surely that's relevant?
As for "trying to keep things small," that's been tried. Trust busting was attempted, protectionism has been attempted, but regardless of will, material processes continue.
As for Socialism being a necessity, it's true. It will have various forms, but eventually as production gains in complexity it necessitates public ownership and planning to continue to be efficient.
and authoritarian tendencies are magnified in impact and scale in socialist systems because they are by definition centralised - that’s not to say it’s inevitable, just that anyone living under these systems needs to be hyper aware of those issues and respond accordingly
nothing is perfect
i think the closest we have to that is the EU with things like the DMA which is making a dent… with strong regulatory authority that’s resistant to capture, it’s not impossible to regulate these things… the same is true of socialism: you need strong regulatory authorities that are resistant to capture to stop people from abusing the system for the own personal interests
i think perhaps we should define what we actually mean - i think socialism is necessary in some part to tackle the issues we face (healthcare, housing, something akin to UBI, etc)
but i think no single system is going to be the silver bullet to all our problems: it’s going to take a long and sustained effort over many generations to figure out the right mix of all the systems we have, and it’s absolutely not going to happen in a big bang
I don't know what you mean by "authoritarian tendencies," AES states are generally more democratic for the working class than Capitalist states. I think you're just accepting the tyranny of the bourgeoisie as outside the realm of democracy, when political economy is interlinked.
As for the EU, it's in decay and relies on Imperialism, it isn't a sustainable model and they are thoroughly vassalized by the US Empire.
As for Socialism, I don't mean Social programs. I mean moving from an economic model where Private Property is dominant to one where Public Property is dominant. You're right, this will be a long process, but it will be through such a model based on Public Owneship. Look to the PRC to see the kind of long, drawn-out process this is in action.