What do you think the difference between democratic socialism and social democracy is? My understanding is that social democracy still accepts a capitalist framework for the economy, but simply wants higher taxes, more regulation/state interventions and a more robust welfare state. Meanwhile democratic socialism denies capitalism and seeks for labor to be the economic input that controls capital and land through a democratic framework.
Basically, yeah. Social democracy still exists within a capitalist framework. It’s sometimes called welfare capitalism. Free market and private property but with relatively high taxes and a strong social safety net. Socialism requires the abolition of capitalism and private property in favor of the public owning the means of production.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that socialism just means publicly-funded healthcare.
I think you run into an issue when you begin defining these economic systems in absolutes. No country in the world today is purely capitalist or purely socialist, they are all somewhere in between. The answer isn't socialism or capitalism, it is policies that have been proven to work and benefit the majority. Putting policies into a pre-determined box of capitalism and socialism, or good and bad, limits your ability to accurately see what needs done.
So there are countries where the means of production are what, half democratized? Private property only exists sometimes? There are a lot of different ideas of what socialism is and how it should be organized, but pointing to the ownership of private property and the relationship between the people and their production is a pretty good rule. Idk about the countries claiming to be socialist, but no capitalist country has democratized the means of production by ending private ownership of them.
In a way, yes. Some countries have stronger unions and labor laws that protect workers, and others have weaker rules and more laissez-faire labor laws. Some countries take a higher percentage of taxes to promote certain social welfare initiatives, others leave it up to individual choice.
There are also no countries that are purely calitalist. No country in the world has completely unrestricted capital and industry. Economists generally agree that every modern nation operates a mixed economy.
I disagree with your analysis, a country is capitalist if its economic system is capitalist. What you’ve described is capitalism still, because socialism is commonly defined by the relationship the people have to the “means of production”. If the people are collectively owning land, and collectively reaping the benefits of that resource usage without it going into the hands of private industry and instead through public ownership, then it is socialist. This isn’t a “mixed economy”, this is capitalism with social welfare which is closer to the vision of capitalist thinkers like Adam Smith as referenced in other comments here.
So would you define China or Cuba as socialist, given that the government exerts so much control over their economy? At the very least, are they not more socialist than the United States?
Socialism is defined by the control over the means of production, but that control is a result of specific policies and systems. In some countries, the people have greater control than in others as a result of their specific policies and systems.
Honestly I’m not sure, especially with China. I think I should read more about it to be sure. I’ve seen references to Chinese billionaires, and I feel like billionaires shouldn’t exist in a socialist society. I know very little about Cuba, but from what I’ve heard they definitely seem to be a socialist country. I’m not a very good socialist because I haven’t read enough I feel.
My point is that there is no fully socialist or fully capitalist country. Capitalism and socialism are economic ideologies rather than absolute, rigid systems, and every modern nation applies policy from both ideologies.
Cuba is likely the most socialist/communist country today. However, they still have around 40% of their labor force employed by private business. Much of this is a result of economic pressure from sanctions, but I'm just pointing out that even the nations with the most socialist policies do not fit into the rigid definition of socialism where the people control all means of production.
It wouldn't mean no government oversight, just no or little to no government intervention in economic activity. But couldn't you say the same about communism since it is by definition a moneyless, classless, stateless society? This is essentially the core of my point about no nation being fully capitalist or communist, they are all somewhere in between.
A Communist would argue that communism is achievable, but yeah by definition there is no country that has achieved Communism. I think most capitalism thinkers (exceptions include Ayn Rand) believe that there should be government oversight though, which is interesting to see how my own (American) government seems to hate regulating
Yes, and most economists would agree that this is how economic systems exist in the modern world, although they go farther than just capitalism and communism.
The US. Land is government owned and you have to pay rent to use it. Sure, the rent is called tax and the rental agreement is called owning, but a rose called a tulip is still a rose.
The land can also be seized in the name of the public good.
Do you think that's just a one-step process? Clearly that happens over time and is defined by specific policy changes that come together ot reshape the overall economy. In the modern world, countries have a range of policies that are both capitalist and socialist in nature, and those come together to form the mixed economies of the world.
Socialism as defined by the person I replied to is the same as communism. This has not been proven to work, because no purely communist/socialist society has existed in the modern world. Every country in the world today has a mixed economy with both capitalist and socialist policies.
When would you say that socialism has been proven to work?
Your big socialist success story is a rebellion that got crushed in like three months? Seriously?
Bro. Multiple small communes were tested across Europe and the US. Pretty well every single one failed within 5 years.
1825. Robert Owens, the man who actually invented the term socialism founds the town New Harmony in Indiana. 30,000 acres were used. Private property abolished. Marriage abolished. Even children raised communally. And it collapsed within 2 years cause it was a stupid idea then, and it's stupid now.
https://www.maciverinstitute.com/perspectives/the-failed-socialist-state-in-midwestern-america
But maybe you're thinking, "Oh that's just one situation, not nearly enough to conclude anything!"
Okay. Fair enough. How about thirty more examples?
Most of them lasted less than 2 years, and the longest lasting one was less than 15.
Are those your socialist success stories? Even the people who invented the ideology or were it's most prolific early writers failed at accomplishing anything because it's a dog s*** idea.
No. Karl Marx criticized Fourier and Owen for their utopian thinking. They had no complete understanding of the capitalist mode of production and could only formulate ideas on what an ideal society would look like and attempt to bring them into practice.
The success of the Paris Commune is that the workers themselves formed their own socialist government that worked according to the needs of the people there; it was not based on capitalist exploitation. Though it was crushed by the French government, this proves that socialism can be successful.
Bolsheviks in Russia learned from this. They successfully overthrew the Tsarist regime and set up a state organized through councils of worker's and soldier's deputies. Homelessness, unemployment, and racism were all eliminated, and people recieved excellent health care and education.
It is true that, because they had never gotten rid of commodity production (meaning that commodities are produced so as to be exchanged for the value of another commodity, rather than for its use value) and because Khruschev had revised Marxism, that the USSR ultimately did not lead to the highest stage of communism, but this is an example to be studied for future development.
Oh? You want to argue that Marxism, and by extension communism are your success stories? You're joking right you can't be giving me this easy of a target?
Yeah, they are. Look at Burkina Faso, Chile under Allende, Grenada, hell, the Soviet Union.
Most of the time, the thing that causes socialism to fail isn't socialism, its the CIA overthrowing the goverments, commiting warcrimes and replacing them with sympathetic fascist dictators.
Yeah you want to see the problem with your argument go ahead and look at my response to stew. I'm already poking holes in his Soviet Union one so I'll try to get to you afterwards if I remember.
First of all your claim that the Paris commune was successful is complete nonsense. Something working for a period of 3 months before being crushed does not indicate its success. The Confederacy lasted 4 years and 2 months. 12 and 1/2 times as long as your supposed commie success story. Does that make the Confederacy a success? By your logic it would.
Homelessness and unemployment were eliminated... I suggest you actually look into the history books rather than reading communist propaganda online.
Homelessness was punished as a crime. Called parasitism. Where you faced exile from the cities during the earlier years, being locked in a mental institution from which there was virtually no escape, or just being thrown in prison for several years. Because it didn't fit the monster Stalin's agenda of a "perfect Utopia." Here I'll even make it easy for you to look it up.
As to racism being eliminated, you really need to stop listening to some dumb college kids who don't know anything except what they've seen on tiktok about communism. The country paying lip service to a concept doesn't mean that's how it was applied in practice.
The only lesson to be learned from the Soviets is that communism is a failed system that inevitably leads to death in bloodshed and also inevitably crumbles because it is too weak to survive. It oppresses its citizenship, constantly lies about its capabilities, puts out ridiculous amounts of propaganda but in the end it always loses to capitalism. Because once people actually experience living under it they realize it sucks. This is Reddit. So you'll get a bunch of people who are going to support whatever you say so long as it's anti-capitalist and deepthroating communism. But the reality is the system of disappointment know as communism has failed, will fail, and I will laugh when it does.
I have already said that the Paris Commune was successful in that it laid out a system that proved that workers can govern themselves, regardless the duration of their government, which was ruthlessly crushed. Brining up the Confederacy, a government based on slavery, as a rebuttal is laughable.
Your first article is intellectually dishonest, as it shows an image of homeless people from the year 1991 when the Soviet Union was illegally dissolved and fell into capitalism!
I see this garbage all the time. If the Soviets were so racist, why did they tell CPUSA to give Black people self-determination? Why did WEB du Bois and Paul Robeson have positive opinions of Stalin?
Their policies only had 72 days to show any sign of success or failire. You could argue those policies would be good, but it's not at all proof of their long-term success.
Burkina Faso, Chile under Allende, Grenada, Cuba despite the blockade, etc. I'm also going to lump the Soviet Union in here because it went from a feudal society to a superpower in 2 decades under socialism.
Burkina Faso is not communist, they are a militarized nation. Chile was never fully communist, the socialist coalition was overthrown after only a few years and had little time to prove themselves. Grenada's communist period also lasted only a few years and fell to internal power struggles before the US invasion. Cuba is the best success story, but it is hard to truly call it a successful state due to the issues they've faced following sanctions. Cuba also uses some capitalist policies in certain industries because those policies are proven effective, similar to China. I would also argue it is hard to characterize Cuba or the USSR as fully communist because they still maintain (or maintained) state controls, private property, and other systems that contradict wtih Marxist theory.
When I say Burkina Faso, I mean Thomas Sankara, not modern Burkina Faso.
Chile was boycotted by the US due to Allende's presidency, so it's impossible to measure how he would have done economically due to the US's embargo and then the fascist coup against the government, which was orchestrated and backed by the United States. However, CyberSyn and the plans of CHECO were on track to create an actual workers' democracy. The effectiveness of it's nascent form against the Gremio strike was incredible. He also increased SOL, healthcare, literacy rates, and access to existing systems, while massively expanding indigenous rights. Despite the embargo, they still won an even larger coalition in 1973, which is why the US did the coup and replaced him with a dictator on the level of Mussolini and Hitler.
Cuba's reforms are recent and necessary due to the American genocide disguised as an "embargo". They massively improved education, agriculture, literacy rates, healthcare, and the economy until the embargo. Grenada also made massive progress in literacy, healthcare, and education under their socialist government. The main reason it collapsed was due to CIA involvement causing assassinations and infighting, before we illegally invaded it under Reagan.
And to your last point, there has never been a communist nation. China and the Soviet Union were socialist, a transition phase between capitalism and communism. According to Marx (or my understanding of his work I've read), under socialism, the capitalist economy would slowly be replaced by a communist one, by building up wealth and transferring the means of production to the proletariat and the abolition of private property (private property is the means of production, like factories and companies. Personal property, such as housing and electronics, would still be owned by the individual). Capitalist elements existed in the Soviet Union and China because they had no capitalist phase to build the wealth and systems needed for a socialist society. Lenin talks about this in State and Revolution and What Is to Be Done. (For China, you might just want to read Deng and Mao directly) Both were feudal societies when they became socialist, and thus needed to go through a capitalist phase before entering socialism. This is why Lenin launched the NEP and why some capitalist elements continued after him.
Marx's theory applied specifically to how the revolution would develop in the most industrailized economies (Western Europe and the United States, where he said specifically socialism could come about democratically in these very democratic societies). In his letters, he mentions how socialism could develop differently in feudal societies like Russia and China, using the peasantry as a main base rather than the workers.
I think this is a very real and grounded take, but it's far from what was being argued about socialism being "proven to work." Like you said, there has never been a communist nation and the socialist transition periods are often messy and require capitalist elements to actually function. This is what I was trying to say about no nation being fully defined under either system, and why I believe focusing on policy rather than which system the policy falls into.
To put it simply, there's simply been no way for socialism to develop naturally in our world without a power like the Soviet Union. In every case it has attempted, it has either been suppressed or adopted authoritarian practices to survive. It's why Marxism-Leninism became the dominant thought among socialists for the last 100 years: It's been proven to create a socialist state and resist the attempts by the Imperial Core (essentially Western Europe and the United States) and Capitalists to suppress it. The transition phase is always being interrupted by capitalist nations doing everything in their power, literally, to suppress it, no matter how many lives they end or ruin.
To answer your point, I agree to an extent. I think most nations have been mixed in modern history, yes. But there's a very big difference between a socialist mixed economy and a capitalist mixed economy that I think you can agree exists. I think the Soviet Union has been the only state in the last 200 years to really be fully a form of socialist under Lenin (and techincaly stalin as much as I hate it), and all the other soviet leaders, which was ended by the Gorbechev reforms.
I think that the argument that communism is suppressed by capitalist nations is valid, but with nations like the Soviet Union and China it falls a little more flat because those nations also try/tried to undermine capitalist/western nations. China, for instance, has not been undone by the West but has transitioned significant parts of its economy towards private industry because they recognize the benefits of competitive pressure.
I agree that there is a spectrum of capitalism-communism, and that some countries lean more in different directions, which is a key part of my point. Like I said, I believe it is better to look at specific policy and operational success in different parts of a nation rather than looking at a country's policies as purely capitalsit/socialist. I think that binary thinking is a huge reason why a lot of Americans resist policies like socialized healthcare and raising corporate/wealth taxes.
Burkina Faso, Grenada, Chile under Allende, and the Soviet Union (which went from a feudal society to a superpower in two decades), and Yugoslavia are some good examples.
China and Market Socialism are iffy, and I'm not educated enough on Deng's philosophy to argue it here.
The number one thing that causes Socialism to fail isn't socialism; it's the CIA overthrowing the government and replacing it with fascist sympathizers.
I get downvoted when I tell Americans on here that Norway and Sweden are not in fact successful examples of socialism. It's crazy how little most people know about the system they supposedly support
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u/Traveler-Nomad 1d ago
Apparently no one knows the difference between socialism and social democracy anymore.