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Democratic Socialists
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Democratic socialism just means you believe in democratically governed socialism, not that you think you can just vote capitalism into socialism. There's both reformist and revolutionary democratic socialists. I both believe in democracy and also see that the only way to overturn capitalism (at least in the US) would be through revolution. All the democratic part means is that they're opposed to monarchies or dictatorships.
All socialism is democratic, so "democratic socialism" in practice either means reformist socialism, social democracy (capitalism with safety nets, usually dependent on imperialism), or is a means to distance this new socialism from the really existing socialism in the world today and historically. Reformism is wrong and doesn't work, social democracy is still capitalism and depends on imperialism in the global north version, and the last is just red scare "left" anti-communism that reeks of chauvanism.
No. That's incorrect. Democratic socialism is always and has always been an opposite to revolutionary socialism. Read some goddamned books. ALL forms of socialism are democratic, essentially by definition, but certainly by historical precedent. The only undemocratic "socialist" movements have been fascist movements using socialist aesthetics.
Are you saying that you can have undemocratic socialism?
Isn't that what USSR was, dictatorship?
No, the soviet union was democtatic. The soviet union had a more comprehensive and complex system of democracy than liberal democracy.
Illegally though, most of citizens voted against in a referendum that was just ignored.
Yep, that's also true. My point was more along the lines of Michael Parenti's, where the so-called totalitarian USSR never seemed to need blood to overturn it. Can definitely see how it would be counter-productive to use it as a point, though.
Good question. No. It was not. Please read about it. There is plenty of writing about the political structure of the USSR, its constitutional documents, its legal and court systems, etc. It is imminently possible for you to learn about it if you're curious
Dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy for the people
There was no dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky prevented labor unions from going on strike. War communism was forcing workers to labor as slaves. The new economic policy sent managers bourgeois back to run the factories.
It was a top down dictatorship. Not a bottom up dictatorship of the proletariat. It was supposed to be all the power to the soviets. The soviets ended up being a tool for the politburo.
This is remarkably liberal. In times of existential war, strict control and competent planning was necessary. The NEP was strictly necessary going from barely out of feudalism to a somewhat developed industrial base upon which economic planning can actually function properly. The system of soviet democracy waa far better at letting workers run society, and the wealthiest in the USSR were only about ten times as wealthy as the poorest (as compared to the thousands to millions under Tsarism and now capitalism).
The USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat, through and through. There is no fantasy version of socialism that can ever exist without needing to deal with existing conditions, obstacles, and barriers.
I really don’t want to believe that requisitioning the grain of peasants at gun point and killing those who protested , burning their villages and raping their women as punishment was necessary. I don’t believe that sending the Tcheka to union leaders who had “bottom up” demands and disappearing them was either.
The kromstadt sailors, who made the October revolution happen, didn’t want that. They wanted socialism without the dictatorship, they wanted power to the soviets, democracy. They mutinied to ask for that and were killed / had to flee to finland.
The USSR was not run by the workers, that was propaganda. It was run top down by the communist party apparatus, specifically the politburo, of whom most were from the intelligentsia, not workers nor peasants.
Again, very ahistorical understanding. The USSR was not this comically evil Red Scare version you seem to think it was. The bourgeois farmers, the kulaks, that burned their crops and fought the red army rather than collectivizing were directly responsible for making famine worse. The Krondtadt rebellion was led by Stepan Petrichenko, who became a White Army soldier after the failure of the rebellion. What the sailors demanded in civil war would have led to the loss of the war for everyone.
The USSR was run by the workers. For starters, kulaks were wealthy bourgeois farmers that you frame as "peasants" and paint systemic sexual abuse was weilded as punishment. The Kronstadt sailors were largely unsupported as their demands were unsustainable, and amounted to active sabotage of the war effort. Terrorists, Tsarists, and fascists were targetted, yes.
Nobody is saying the USSR was perfect, but taking the opposite approach and believing wholeheartedly every Red Scare myth is also wrong.
And at what point is it no longer a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Do you really think, say, the Soviet leaders were looking out "for the proletariat"? Is Kim Jong-Un doing so because the country's official name contains the word "people"?
The working class saw a doubling of life expectancy, reduced working hours, tripled literacy rates, cheap or free housing, free, high quality healthcare and education, and the gap between the top and bottom of society was around ten times, as opposed to thousands to millions. The structure of society in socialist countries is fashioned so that the working class is the prime beneficiary. Having "people" in the name of the country makes no difference on structure, be it the PRC, DPRK, or otherwise, what matters is the structure of society.
If the defense for a NK-style society is that it "at least benefits the working class" I suppose even trickle-down isn't that bad.. whether class exists as a concept or not means nothing if you have to live like in NK..
The truth is that as long as you have a structure that allows a group of people to control and steer society - be it a "Proletarian dictatorship designed to benefit the workers" or otherwise - those people are gonna shape it in a way where it benefits themselves. It's a reasonable assessment that the main issue of the Soviet Union was Stalin's insanity and forcing certain policies (collectivisation) too fast, but the truth of the matter is that a new class simply emerged: the political, the ones that might not be traditionally rich but benefit in other ways. The working class was never the main beneficiary of the Soviet Union.. at the end of a day a dictatorship is just a dictatorship and it's never for the people. I'm in no way against socialism or enacting various socialist or socialist-adjacent fiscal policies but that doesn't mean that all just magically become good when the working class dubiously "benefits".
And how much has those same parameters improved in capitalist societies? China didn't become rich and influential until they started transitioning into s capitalist class society. No shit that working class conditions improved compared to (almost) literally being serfs
Comparing socialism to trickle-down economics is a false-equivalence. Trickle-down was a lie sold to the working class to justify lower taxes and safety nets, nothing trickles down. Socialist economies like the PRC, USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc have had the opposite experience to varying degrees, an uplifting of the working class.
It is absolutely not a reasonable assessment of the USSR that relies on Stalin simply being "insane." He was paranoid towards his later years, sure, but he was never "insane." Further, Stalin was neither an absolute leader, nor was he a bad leader. The USSR was run collectively, from top to bottom, Stalin merely had the most individual influence. The structure of the USSR required lots of input from every part of the system. Further, under Stalin, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates tripled, healthcare and education was free and high quality, housing was cheap or even free, unemployment was practically 0, and the USSR went from feudalism to a developed economy that defeated the Nazis.
The idea of a "political class" is absurd. There were administrators and government officials, yes, but the top of soviet society was about ten times wealthier than the bottom. This numbers in the thousands to millions in Tsarism and capitalism. You have a fundamentally flawed view of socialism.
As for China, adopting market reforms does not mean transitioning to capitalism. They always had classes, even the DPRK has special economic zones like Rason that have limited private property. In China, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, they have a socialist market economy and are in the primary stage of socialism.
All in all, you have a very liberal, western view of socialism and socialist history that does not correspond to material reality.
This is all anticommunist gish-gallop with no bearing on material reality nor an understanding of socialism. The DPRK is villianized largely the same way Cuba is, it's doing well despite overwhelming sanctions. Stalin didn't change the weather to cause the 1930s famine nor did he tell the kulaks to burn their crops. China is socialist, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and the proletariat is in charge of the state.
Overall, you have no clue what you're talking about, so you parrot standard liberalism.
How? You still have 1 person having full power instead of being first among equals?
You don't, though, this is ahistorical. Not only was the politburo a team, but the politburo wasn't all-powerful, merely the central organ. There was a huge deal of local autonomy.
What are you talking about about? Go read a goddamned book about the political structure of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, its many voting structures, its multiple state entities, its levels of power of distribution, and THEN try to argue that 1 person had full power.
It's ridiculous to think that your level of ignorance counts as a political perspective on history.
Stalin was a captain of a team
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
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