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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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Socialism
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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.
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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
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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavour.
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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" (read: Dengist) (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).
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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.
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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.
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(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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Would you say the reason for those famines is because Stalin bureaucratized the Communist Party? What do you think would've prevented the famines?
The Soviets were at the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" part of communism the whole time, except instead of the proletariat there was an inner circle commanding a giant bureaucracy filled with people who were not chosen because they were good at their jobs but because they ticked ideological boxes. The collective farming system was also implemented without studying what the communities were already doing by people who didn't know how to farm and only cared about looking ideologically correct to their superiors. Hence failed crops and ideologically based taxes that literally took more than what was produced. Authoritarian regimes, especially total dictatorships, are usually quite ineffective at governing or providing for the general welfare outside of the few places where a command economy actually is a workable solution.
It's funny but almost the same could be said about Franco's dictatorship and the famine years after the war.
Authoritarians really suck at running countries! Something about an individual or small group with no expertise and a violent hatred of constructive criticism making arbitrary decisions doesn't seem to work out.
What do you think the USSR should've had and done instead of a command economy?
I don't like command economies but they can work. The USSR made the mistake of basing a lot of their government, academia, and economy principally on ideological purity. For example the collective farms should have taken decades to implement with regional studies, test farms, and slow conversion of the existing farming infrastructure to collective farms. Move fast and break things does not work in agriculture and other critical infrastructure. If the Soviets (especially during Stalin's time) had done their command economy differently they probably would have had a lot less famines early on.
Study the situation and talk with the experts in before doing anything. The two main things no dictator wants to do because "I'm the man".
Tons of reasons. Famines were occurring way before the USSR, in the 1890s there was a huge famine in Ukraine and Russia that killed about a million people, and several other smaller regional famines until the Revolution.
During the collectivization a lot of regions slaughtered livestock, destroyed crops and equipment as protest... pikachu face when they realized they just destroyed their food and means of producing it... but was that practice all so widespread to justify all famines? There was poor resource management and planning as well until they managed to industrialize (and stuff like exporting food while people were starving), as long with natural causes.... I'm in no way sharp enough to discuss this right now, almost 20 years since I left college and this is a subject I care very little at the moment. But that book I recommended is a start.
Would you blame the bureaucratization of the CPSU for mismanagement? Also, would other forms such as De Leonism or council communism prevent these famines?
My only argument on all of this is really ignore theory, theory is a shower argument, you have to read historians.
Are you more of a libertarian socialist than Marxist-Leninist?
Not to answer for them but DBZer0 is an explicitly anarchist server, in my experience most users fall into the bottom left side of the political compass.
Does DBZer0 allow other forms of communism like De Leonism, council communism, syndicalism, non-anarchist libertarian socialism/Marxism and left communism?
Of course! Look at the sidebar though it is explicitly anarchist. I'm not an admin or mod, just some asshole, personally if someone is not an authoritarian and is anti capitalist we have a lot of common interests but have some ideological differences that can wait until fucking literal fascism and other forms of authoritarianism and done and dusted.