Socialism and fascism are entitely different, both in theory and historically. In socialist countries, the working classes are in power and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, while fascism is the violent assertion of power in capitalist countries to prevent the working classes from taking power.
All states are "authoritarian," as all states are a product of class struggle and exist to put one class on top. In capitalist states, that class is the capitalist class, in the PRC and former USSR, that class is the proletariat. That's why they both have high approval rates (when Russia was still socialist), as they implemented proletarian democracy and authority against capitalists. There are no paths to communism that do not require authority against capitalists.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
Europe isn't socialist in the slightest, though, so I'm more confused than mad. Socialism is a form of society where public ownership is principal, and the state is run by the working classes. No country in Europe has this, nor the modern Russian Federation, they are all capitalist states where state authority lies in the capitalist class, while the PRC and former USSR do fit this.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
The profit motive as the driving force of capitalism selects for those best able to seek it, creating corruption. Administration isn't a problem inherently, and people aren't supernaturally good or evil. It's perfectly possible to create a system that includes recall elections and other measures to help combat corruption in socialism (and these features exist in socialist states already).
I don't put theory over practice, they are both crucial. I am perfectly willing to defend the DPRK from Yeonmi Park-style nonsense as it's the most propagandized against country in the world. Is it perfect? No, no country is, but it also isn't literally hell on Earth either, it's a real socialist state that does a lot with how little they have due to sanctions, similar to Cuba (and both Cuba and the DPRK have historically been on great terms, which is a good litmus test to begin with).
"Tankie" is a pejorative for communist, I think you're confused here. Communists don't support "wars of conquest," but they do support using force as necessary against fascists and capitalists, and censoring capitalist and fascist speech. Class analysis is core to communism, by reducing it to "groups we don't like" you're obscuring the class nature of communist theory in a way that makes it seem based on whims or genetics like fascism.
The "Human Rights Orgs" have provided little to no evidence of there being deaths in the tens of thousands.
The US and Europe aren't democracies, while many of the listed countries are democracies.
The socialist market economy in China is based on the NEP and is built on foundations laid by Mao.
Stalin did not distort Marx or Lenin, he synthesized what Marx and Lenin theorized and practiced into a unified ideology and term. The reason it isn't called "Stalinism" is because compared to Marx and Lenin, Stalin's new contributions to Marxism-Leninism are like a puddle to their oceans, a tree to their forests.
The DNC is incapable of being a communist vanguard, the purpose of a vanguard party is to build up a reliable cadre of disciplined communists that can bring the working class struggle under one banner for the purposes of revolution. The idea that a liberal party dominated by capital could be confused for a vanguard is genuinely baffling, and the fact that you think Marxist-Leninists organizing in parties actually attempting to become a vanguard like PSL is baffling. I've never seen someone so confidently incorrect about Marxism-Leninism.
Lenin's central thesis to the vanguard model is written plainly in What is to be Done?
Are you really putting one of the most cited economic texts of all time next to the ravings of two genocidal fascists?
Socialist countries are generally more liberating for their working classes than oppressive, hence high public support, but necessarily curb absolute freedoms such as those of capitalists.
Nah, they fit right in at Lemmy.ml.
Socialism hasn't failed. The soviet union may no longer be here, but socialism still is a working mode of production. The problems of capitalism are entirely different from those found in socialist countries.
Lemmy.ml is largely made up of communists, who support the working classes holding state authority, rather than capitalist states where authoritarian control is in the hands of the tiny capitalist class over the working classes. State authority isn't independent of class struggle, but is a product of it, and as such all states are "authoritarian," but it's far better for the working classes to hold that. And for what it's worth, Iran is supported against the west and Israel, not as a socialist state.
As for your post body, a number of claims you made are lies.
Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks.
Incorrect, the UN estimates ~3100 total deaths. Western press made up the 30,000 figure at the behest of the CIA/Mossad to help foment regime change before their invasion.
The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping.
No? Do you really think a landmass that large would do something like that? There was a wall in Berlin, but that was just as much to keep West Germans out, as the Cold War had tons of spies on both sides.
China censors the internet.
Not really a problem, it's a good thing western spyware like Facebook isn't allowed, and VPNs are plentiful. Censorship isn't willy-nilly, it's largely the internet equivalent of industrial protectionism.
China wants to eliminate Islam.
No? China has freedom of religion.
Watching anime is a crime.
No it isn't, lol.
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
It's the opposite. Socialist countries have flaws and real problems, but the genocidal western empire is the biggest obstacle holding human progress back. They plunder the global south, are obliterating Palestine, and are all surging to the rightas the empire falls.
Yep.
"Tankie" was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, "coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways."
"But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing."
"Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements' ...." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
"The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary."
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about "democracy" or "freedom" is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about "freedom" and "democracy," but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it's used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn't buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call "tankies" that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam's forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people. :::
Why do Tankies tell me that the reason China has so many billionaires is because they’re controlled by the party?
If anyone told you that the reason the PRC has billionaires is because they are controlled by the party, they are confusing things. The PRC has billionaires because secondary industries, and highly competitive non-essential industries (like tech) are generally privatized. The reasoning for this is because the CPC made a decision to allow in foreign capital in special economic zones to boost development and help catch up to developed capitalist countries, as this is how they can best integrate with the global economy and protect themselves.
Billionaires are prevented from having political power through the already established worker-state, and by holding the commanding heights of industry, the principal aspects of the economy as public. The rubber factory has power over the rubber ball factory. As markets do their thing and centralize, this makes these industries easier to fold into the public sector, and this is how the PRC advances to higher levels of socialism.
Isn’t that fascist mode of production?
Nope, fascism is when the capitalist state intervenes to prevent the working classes from siezing control of the economy, usually in crisis.
Also, having lots of public ownership while permitting private ownership is just social democracy, and no one of us claims Norway is any way socialist because of that.
Not quite. It isn't about raw amounts, it's about which aspect is principal, ie rising and dominant, public or private, and which class controls the state. Norway has private ownership as principal and a bourgeois state, and is reliant on the western imperialist system.
In fact, the Tianmen Square incident, that for a lot of you is fake news, was driven by Maoists who were protesting the turn from Maoism to a market economy.
Partially true. The part that is "fake news" is the idea that the PLA committed a massacre on Tian'anmen Square itself, what's true is that conflict between the PLA and rioters across Beijing resulted in hundreds of deaths (the CPC reports 240+ on June 4th, 1989). Further, by the time of June 4th, the Gang of Four supporters that protested Reform and Opening Up were largely gone, leaving the western-backed student movement that wanted to liberalize the economy. The Gang of Four supporters and the students actually disagreed with each other.
And don’t claim MLs and derived are the only Marxists. There are non-authoritarian forms of Marxism, like Luxemburgism, Autonomism and Dutch Left-Communism/Council Communism. The ML-derivate dominion on Marxism has hurt Marxism more than it helped it.
MLs aren't the only Marxists, just the vast majority. The idea that MLism has hurt Marxism more than helped it is nonsense, western-chauvanism. No non-ML ideology has ever successfully established socialism, only Marxism-Leninism has. None of the ideologies you listed has made any real impact, and mostly serves as a way for westerners to finger-wag global south communists for not "doing it the right way" (nevermind that this "right way" is both non-existant and not necessarily better than existing socialism even if these western Marxist ideologiws were to establish socialism).
You have an entirely unearned smug attitude throughout this comment, it's really nonsense.
The overwhelming majority of bans on Lemmy.ml are temporary, and the permas are for repeat abusers, or bigots.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The Kim family does have outsized influence, but the DPRK is not a hereditary monarchy. For example, the position of President, held by Kim Il-Sung, was abolished and split into multiple positions upon his death. This is why he is remembered as the “Eternal President.” As such, both Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have held different positions. Both have held high positions, for example Kim Jong-Il had the title of General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, a position held by Kim Jong-Un presently. However, this is not the whole story.
The DPRK has a much more distributed level of power, and the Kim family is both widely supported due to its influence, and yet is not the undisputed top-dog, so to speak. What’s more, the Kim family is so venerated precisely because the legacy of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is lived memory, imagine if Lenin had survived and raised his children as successors. It would be no wonder that the soviets would have elected his children, but it would not be a monarchy either.
Finally, class. Class is not a level of material wealth, but a relation to production and distribution. The DPRK is overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, administration is not a distinct class in and of itself but a subset of broader classes, same with intellectuals. What determines class is based on that key aspect, the Kim family does not own capital but instead recieves wages from the state. Kim Jong-Un is largely used as a symbol, one that is democratically elected and directly trained by his father for the position.
This is why it’s important to actually study the real systems at play, rather than coast on pre-formed opinions drilled into us about the DPRK from western media. The Black Panther Party maintained good relations with the DPRK, visiting it and teaching Juche to Americans.
From Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.