on the use of language regarding socialism

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i was reading a biography on Che Guevara and i'm thinking about how the rhetoric of "socialism leads to authoritarianism" is eerily similar to "african-americans are more likely to commit crimes". In both cases, the accusing party doesn't stop to think about why that is the case; in the african-american example, it can be explained by redlining, disenfranchisement, discrimination, racism, etc. In the socialism example, it can be explained by the imperialist hegemony being incredible hostile to any country lefter than your left hand. Wouldn't you try to quash counterrevolutionaries if most of the world, including the most powerful country in it, actively wanted your country gone and replaced with a fascist dictatorship?

The difficulty lies in getting the government to remember to return rights to the people without external pressure, just like getting african-american to remember to become law-abiding citizens despite discrimination from the whole society.

I hope it works, it just seems a bit difficult

"It's OK for us to not hold elections because the US doesn't like us" is not a valid excuse.

There are times and places where that sort of logic might hold. Like, I think we can excuse Vietnam during the war, for example, for the same reason we don't expect Ukraine to hold elections right now, or why the UK didn't hold elections during WWII. But that doesn't work for North Korea, China, the Eastern Bloc, the USSR, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or Cuba after about 1970, or for Nkrumah in Ghana or Nyerere in Tanzania.

It's probably fair to forget about post-colonial Africa (although less so Mugabe, who clung on even as Botswana became successful), and even to give North Korea and China some slack until the 1980s. But South Korea and Taiwan have been holding free and fair elections for decade now. There was no reason why Eastern Europe couldn't have been the same.

Now, look, most people have some idea of how we'd like the country to be run. We think we know best, unless we're good at humility. But democrats think that we should gain power by convincing people to agree with us. Socialists have rarely succeeded in gaining power democratically, and never succeeded in holding onto it once they have, because socialism just doesn't achieve its promises. So naturally, the socialist states that have stuck around are authoritarian. If you don't suppress dissent, then you lose power. To a democrat, losing power is acceptable, to most socialists it isn't.

Not at all convinced by "socialism would work if the US wasn't so evil". The Eastern Bloc was large enough to pursue its destiny without US support, and received support from the USSR. The US experienced more economic growth than the USSR because it was pursuing capitalism. The Western bloc also outperformed the Eastern bloc. Countries the US barely pays attention to have failed under socialism, like Zimbabwe. Neutral Sweden flirted with socialism and it was a disaster.

And look... let's not frame imperialism as "something the West does". Russia is an imperialist nation. China is an imperialist nation. They both currently have colonies and would like more.

you raise some valid points but are also wrong on some counts.

the Bolivian MAS party is very open about liking socialism (Movimiento Al Socialismo literally means Movement Towards Socialism) and is winning democratic majority votes, for example.

When Fidel Castro announced the abolition of elections, crowds cheered, because he claimed that the people now were the government. There is room for debate within that claim, but one cannot deny how much Cuba has over the USA in terms of public services. I am critical of the current president's support of Russia, because what is imperialism if not the invasion of Ukraine -_- but I understand why he's doing what he's doing; Cuba needs the economic support and America ain't the best neighbor.

I think we are operating on different definitions of democracy. For me, it means 'the majority of people have the power in the society.' I don't know much about Taiwan, but I do know South Korea is effectively a cyberpunk corporatocracy, so I don't think that's the best example you can have.

Granted, by that same definition, you could not only argue that socialist governments are not democratic, but that no government has ever been democratic- keep in mind that I am simplifying the definition.

If we are speaking on democracy, it's necessary to discuss the concept of the Vanguard Party which I am split on supporting or opposing. Wikipedia defines it as such: "Vanguardism, in the context of Leninist revolutionary struggle, relates to a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically "advanced" sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations to advance the objectives of communism. They take actions to draw larger sections of the working class toward revolutionary politics and to serve as manifestations of proletarian political power opposed to the bourgeoisie."

From the outside looking in, particularly from a capitalist country, it's all too easy to cry 'propaganda! they're shoving propaganda down their throats!' when the propaganda in question might just be a poster saying that american imperialism is destroying latin america.

again, i ask you to think on why socialism 'doesn't achieve its promises.' think on the external pressure. democrats are fine with losing power because at heart, they are capitalists and have no issue with exploitation because they see capitalism as the pinnacle of society. 'that's how it is. it can't be changed.'

is pursuing economic growth really the best thing you can do? how about societal growth? and anyways, the USSR developed in 30 years what took the US 150.

also, sweden is currently pursuing social democracy with some socialist elements and is doing quite well but i know it isn't pure socialism and it can be improved a LOT. I don't know much about Africa so I can't speak on that

Last edited by Readydaer on 09 Jan 2024, 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

As far as I can tell, neither pure socialism nor pure capitalism is the best economic system. All of the world's best economies are mixed economies of one kind or another.

So, to me, the question is: what is the best mixture? There have been both good mixtures and bad mixtures.

the problem is that capitalists will always always ALWAYS try to end the mixture and get all the wealth for themselves.

I don't see any inherent reason why socialism necessarily has to be authoritarian. Some socialists are libertarian. It's much the same with the right-wing thing - some of them are authoritarians, others not.

there is no internal reason within the theory. socialism can become authoritarian through 1. corruption within the leaders, or 2. external pressure to be capitalist leading to a harsh pushback

Yep, that's a big problem. That's pretty much what has been happening here in the U.S.A. since the 1970's.

The problem is how to get the working class sufficiently organized to resist -- and also how to get the ruling class to realize once again (as many of them realized back in the 1930's) that capitalism needs to be saved from itself via various government programs to safeguard the well-being of the workers.

Is Bolivia really an example you think should be imitated? True, the geography is challenging, but it's one of the poorest countries in the Americas, has a poor human rights record, and poor health and educational outcomes.


Cuba punches well above its weight when it comes to life expectancy, but does so in part because it makes it very hard to emigrate, allowing it to massively underpay doctors.



This is an exaggeration. There have been issues with corruption relating to five large corporations, but if it was a corporatocracy then the corruption would be unpunished. It's not a paradise but it's a damn sight better than Bolivia or Cuba.

Democracy isn't when a group of people who agree declare themselves to be the enlightened ones and suppress their opponents through revolution.


You can't just handwave away the issues by talking about "external pressure", you could do that to excuse literally any system. Taiwan is under much more external pressure than China and yet has much lower poverty rates. The USSR was one of the most powerful empires in history, with plenty of allies, and yet it limped along during the greatest expansion of the world economy in history. The reasons communism doesn't work is because the methods it pursues are, to say the least, sub-optimal ways of minimising human suffering.


Economic growth is societal growth. A good society requires resources and activity. You can't have mass university attendance, world-class creative arts, or cutting-edge technology without a strong economy. Stronger economies both lead to better standards of living and allow governments to provide more services.


Not sure what this is referring to, but if you look at the economy of the USSR vs the US from, say, 1970, the gap between the two countries only grew. The things the US did worked, the things the USSR did didn't work.

In general, countries experience faster economic growth over time - it's easier to adapt technologies that already exist than it is to invent them to begin with. The gap between European settlement of New Zealand and industrialisation was much smaller than the gap between the Roman conquest of Britain and industrialisation.

Like basically every country in the world, Sweden has a mixed economy. Sweden's model is to combine an extremely business-friendly environment with high taxes on everyone, allowing it to fund a generous welfare state. They dabbled with socialism in the 1970s and early 1980s, it didn't work. This article has a biased tone but the underlying facts hold up: https://capx.co/the-idea-of-a-socialist ... ng-mirage/

It's mildly amusing to me that right-wing Americans cite Sweden as an example of what the US should be more like because it's an economically liberal country that supports business and enterprise, while left-wing Americans cite Sweden as an example of what the US should be more like because it's socially liberal and has a generous welfare state. The two things go together - Sweden's welfare state enables people to take risks with less fear of failure, while the permissive business environment also encourages risky business ventures and helps to fund the welfare state and public services.

This is something a lot of self-proclaimed "anti-imperialists" don't even get. But in the end, one man best described this issue in what is imperialism and what is anti-imperialism.

"The most widely practiced disguise and justification of imperialism has, however, always been the ideology of anti-imperialism. It is so widely used because it is the most effective of all ideologies of imperialism." - Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations

Number two would lead to fascism because fascism would encourage state capitalism and that would ultimately abolish the Marxist principles since fascism prioritizes the state rather than the World.

And that is how an economic issue would be solved. Mixed economy with regulations to prevent capitalist exploitation and at the same time maintain an open market trade. I do however prefer more self-sufficiency to avoid any major damage to the economy in case a global economic crisis hits us.

at the end of the day I'm a fan of a strong government made up of the working class protecting the working class. In the US, much of the bureaucracy is made up of a revolving door of politicians funded by large corporations, which used to be members of that corporation. https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/

This is bad. This is implementing the greediest capitalists in the country into the inner workings of the country.

I think government should be a completely isolated sector, in a supposed mixed economy. Just pure elections, no bribing or lobbying allowed. set salaries. you know.

this can open the gateway to marxist principles being implemented.

This sounds like a great choice for a socialist democracy. No bribery and no lobbying means elections are truly free and fair just like the true democracy intends them to be.

This is fascinating TBH. To me, an interesting topic of discussion is Che Guevara and his image in the US vs. the rest of the Western world.

For reference, consider:

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17anp05/eli5_why_is_che_guevara_such_a_big_name_in_the/

On the one hand, you have Cuba which has been a dictatorship of some sort since forever, at least since Fulgencio Batista obtained total power (I suppose there may have been a period of democracy before that, but it would have been a LONG time ago).

Everyone claims to support democracy but at the same time, everybody admires the Cuban Revolution which was extremely authoritarian from the get-go. And nobody sees the irony in that.

The topic of whether to admire Guevara as a hero is a good way to focus such a discussion.

I think that during the Cold War, almost nobody liked the Soviet Union and preferred to live in the West, yet at the same time most people seemed to hold a visceral grudge against the US, which meant they adored Castro's revolution seemingly identifying with the Soviet camp in that regard.