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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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And what really is the difference between Socialism and Communism?
Communist and socialist terms have been conflated for a long time.
See https://existentialcomics.com/comic/123 for an illustration.
Communists believe in abolition of capitalism through communist revolution and eventually want to reach a Communist society. Given that such vision has not actually happened yet, Communists often support Actually Existing Socialism (AES).
Socialism is some varying degree in between that and capitalism. On the one hand, there are democratic socialists like Bernie. On the other, there’s also AES countries (e.g. USSR, China).
(P.S. If any other communists see any problems, feel free to correct my mistakes.)
While democratic socialism is a variety of socialism, Bernie isn't really a democratic socialist, but a social democrat. Social democracy is the left of capitalism, which is right of socialism in any form.
Before some moron turns up, Nazism is not socialism.
In general, I find the term "democratic socialism" to be pretty cringe. It's like saying right up front "I'm not like those OTHER socialists!" Socialism is a liberatory project. Socialism is the auto-emancipation of the working class. THAT is what democracy looks like. Rule of the people.
Liberation comes hand in hand with revolution though. Socialism will certainly NOT be very democratic for the people who own vast amounts of real estate, productive machinery, and ~~propaganda~~ media empires. Those people will certainly need to end up on the wrong side of a gun for the project to succeed. The wise ones among them won't force us to pull the trigger.
It will be a hostile take-over. It will be a break from the constitutional order. It will be a break from the "rule of law." When the ruling class starts losing the game, they will flip over the table. All your precious civil liberties will be torn to shreds. Fascism is simply capitalism under crisis.
The Liberals commit themselves to playing by the rules even when the fascists never would. Salvador Allende (the world's first elected Marxist head of state) tried to do this, and in three years it ended in his death and a fascist military dictatorship. There is no room for idealism in revolution. The stakes are very real. You need to crush your enemies by any means necessary. Maybe you don't give Rupert Murdoch the freedom of speech. Maybe you don't respect Jeff Bezos's property rights. Maybe you stuff all the Proud Boys into a mineshaft.
A lot of people whine about authoritarianism in the English speaking left, but the English-speaking left has no power to speak of. Just a bunch of very online sectarians bickering. We run around trying to cancel internet forums which amount to little more than fucking book clubs, as if they were the embodiment of high Stalinism.
Wow, I disagree with every single word of this. You seem to be saying that it's worth sacrificing liberal rights to attack the right (which you are falsely claiming to be fascists - fascism is a specific ideology, not just an insult for anyone on the right). But in doing so, you become worse than the right.
As a social democrat, I am willing to support and ally with democratic socialists. While we have some differences, we're both pulling in the same direction. Your revolutionary leftism, on the other hand, is further beyond the pale for me than any liberal ideology.
If this is what your project requires to succeed, then may your project fail.
A theoretical question: How do you think social democratic politics could be implemented in a peripheral or semi-peripheral country? In the core countries, it's evident that successful social democracies are built not only on national resources but also on the exploitation of the periphery and semi-periphery, through which corporations and capitalists generate profits which are then taxed back into the country. So, what would make a social democratic world fairer than other forms of capitalism? There have been attempts to implement social democratic economies in peripheral regions, for instance, the often-mentioned Venezuela and Bolivia are much closer to the Norwegian economic model than to Cuba.
What could a peripheral social democratic government do at all if, after winning an election, the capitalists would simply withdraw their capital from the country and/or sabotage the government, while using their media to portray every measure taken by the government in a negative light?