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  1. #16
    Chad Jar Jar Pinsir's Avatar
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    Socialism as described by Marx was fundamentally democratic, the phrase 'dictatorship of the proletariat' means a worker centred democracy. Just because some countries call themselves socialist doesn't mean they actually are, like China is clearly state capitalist.

    This video by Noam Chomsky goes into detail about why the USSR wasn't socialist and why the Soviet Union called themselves something they weren't

    Last edited by Pinsir; 07-01-2021 at 12:16 PM.
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  2. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    I was referring to traditional socialist governments, a lot of European governments have socialist elements but are ultimately capitalist.
    But even the countries people call socialist like China use a lot of capitalism.
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  3. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    Can someone give me an example of one?
    That aren't both poor and authoritarian no.

    The Scandinavia welfare states (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) run on capitalist engines so you can rule them out, as well as countries like France.

    China has become rich by adopting a capitalist engine, but they are still operating with the same totalitarian government that dates back to Mao. Vietnam is still a one party state, despite some gains in wealth.

    Former Soviet satellite states like Belarus still tend to be authoritarian and under the sphere of Putin's influence, the democratic ones like Latvia & Estonia operate under free market principles.

    I suppose you could sight Nicaragua and Bolivia, but they're still poor, and not exactly shining examples of uncorrupted free and fair elections, whether it be the left or right biding for power. That and I'm pretty sure there is still lots of free market activity going on. (I'd rather take Nicaragua over El Salvador though, but...)

    The answer is no.

  4. #19
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    I was referring to traditional socialist governments, a lot of European governments have socialist elements but are ultimately capitalist.
    Isn’t your question about countries that have a communist organisation of their economy? Then, no.
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  5. #20
    Astonishing Member mathew101281's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelena View Post
    Isn’t your question about countries that have a communist organisation of their economy? Then, no.
    It is my understanding that socialism and communism aren’t the same thing.

  6. #21
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    A truly socialist country is likely to be communist, simply because an authoritarian central government is needed to make it work by running the economy. However, to answer the original question, most Western democracies (including the USA) are socialist to a significant extent. The capitalist country / socialist country distinction is largely a question of degree rather than of kind.

  7. #22
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    I don't think any country has ever been wholly "capitalist" or "communist/socialist". And if it were in the latter category it almost certainly had outside forces working to undermine it, mainly funded by my country. Especially in this hemisphere. I think there should be a balance of both, you wouldn't want a market that policed itself like some Libertarian utopia (which, like communism, sounds great on paper but doesn't hold up well when it encounters real people/situations and doesn't even have the option of shooting them or sending them to gulags if they don't comply). We want a safety net, we want those without power or resources to have a say and a seat at the table, and we want to keep one faction or another from controlling others to the extent that we can. Why we've never been a purely capitalist country and the thread's question could easily substitute capitalist for socialist and come up with mostly the same general answers.

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by CSTowle View Post
    I don't think any country has ever been wholly "capitalist" or "communist/socialist". And if it were in the latter category it almost certainly had outside forces working to undermine it, mainly funded by my country. Especially in this hemisphere. I think there should be a balance of both, you wouldn't want a market that policed itself like some Libertarian utopia (which, like communism, sounds great on paper but doesn't hold up well when it encounters real people/situations and doesn't even have the option of shooting them or sending them to gulags if they don't comply). We want a safety net, we want those without power or resources to have a say and a seat at the table, and we want to keep one faction or another from controlling others to the extent that we can. Why we've never been a purely capitalist country and the thread's question could easily substitute capitalist for socialist and come up with mostly the same general answers.
    I quite agree.

    Forgive me if I vent some of my darker thoughts in this post, but there's an inherent bias in the topic question that triggers me. I realize now, decades later, that in my youth school, T.V., movies, society in general programmed me and everyone else to look at all those "other countries" as horror stories.

    In my head, as a kid in the 1960s, I believed that everyone behind the Iron Curtain was living in some nightmare scenario, in concrete blocks, like something out of THE 5000 FINGERS OF DOCTOR T (a movie that made me paranoid about losing my own freedom).

    Granted a lot of countries are horrible places to live--especially for the poor and the disenfranchised--but the idea of the Soviet Union as this grey world of misery was so pervasive that it stopped me from understanding that most people in the largest nation in the world were human beings, with all the same joys and sorrows--that they had a valuable culture and strong family ties.

    The decades since, I keep discovering the wonders of Russian literature, cinema, art, music--each time, I'm pained that I did not know this in my childhood--that the system intentionally prevented me from having compassion for those other countries and people.

    Sure the regime in the Soviet Union was not fair--it was nominally socialist but not really. The regime now in Russia is not fair, either, and it's nominally capitalist and democratic. Anyone can game the system to gain power--it doesn't matter what type of state it is supposed to be.

    One can just as easily ask if there are any capitalist countries that aren't authoritative or poor. Americans might think the U.S.A. is a free and affluent nation--but is it? We see that half of that nation supports politics that divide the country and deny basic rights to anyone they do not like.

    Just like in so-called communist countries, where the elites enjoy privileges that the rest of the population have no access to, in capitalist countries, the elites enjoy privileges that the rest of the population have no access to.

    The United States invented the Monroe Doctrine that granted them a God-given right to dominate the western hemisphere. They used that power to invade countries and install dictators. Millions of people lived on starvation wages, as these dictators enjoyed their lavish lifestyles, supported by the U.S.A.

    Yet when the people in these countries followed charismatic communist leaders--then it was a different story.

    And when the resources the capitalists could extract from the western hemisphere proved not enough for their greed, they decided that, since the U.S.A. in the world's policeman, they have the right to go into any country they choose, engage in wars, and extract resources from them, as well. Is it any wonder that terrorists now exploit a natural hatred from people that have suffered under the capitalist boot?

    And to the extent that some in the U.S.A. live the American Dream, a nice middle class world, their existence depends on the exploitation of billions of other people in the world. It's like one giant pyramid scheme, where the people at the top draw out wealth from the people below them--with the people at the bottom of the pyramid slaving away until they finally die from unsafe working conditions, exposure to environmental toxins, unavailable medical treatment, and psychological torture.

    The goal of socialism and communism was to share the wealth. The idea, symbolized by the five pointed star, is that when the whole world is communist this can be possible. But since the world is not communist and half of the world deliberately condemns the other half of the world--that's not possible. Which gave Joe Stalin and others the pretext to govern as dictators, because the workers' paradise was not yet possible.

    Nevertheless, in the 1930s, when capitalism failed, recovering nations, including the United States, borrowed some of the solutions from socialism. Without this socialism today, most American workers would not have the rights they do enjoy. Things like unions, employment insurance, welfare, old age pensions would not exist. And the poverty in the U.S.A. would be even greater than it is now.

  9. #24
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    Without those half measures those lower on the income level probably would have pushed us all the way over. Rich folk might be mostly evil, but they're not dumb. Better a half measure than the full measure. Then once they're comfortable start clawing it all back one piece at a time.

  10. #25
    Surfing With The Alien Spike-X's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    Can someone give me an example of one?
    Sounds to me like you've already decided that any example we might give isn't 'proper' socialism.

  11. #26
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    I don't know why people always talk about the relative merits of socialism and capitalism as if there was some complete economic reset in 1945 and that the two systems have just been competing on a fair and level playing field ever since. In reality, the capitalist countries have always controlled the lion's share of the productive forces, much of which was built from the spoils of genocide and slavery, while socialist countries invariably begin as underdeveloped agricultural societies who turned to the ideology to push back against the encroachments of imperial powers. And for the better part of the last century, the capitalist powers have pulled out all of the stops to try and prevent any socialist country from achieving meaningful progress, including but not limited to starting wars over the flimsiest of pretexts, rehabilitating fascists and propping up apartheid regimes, and using debilitating sanctions and embargoes to freeze them out of global trade.

    As for authoritarianism, you would think that after the braying over Russian election interference and the Jan. 6th siege that people would be able to realize that, while allowing for free expression in all circumstances certainly sounds good on paper, in practice it leaves gaping holes that can easily be exploited by bad actors and adversaries both foreign and domestic. And while America's institutions have so far proven resilient enough to withstand these disruptions, many countries don't have this luxury, particularly when the enemy that is trying to undermine them happens to be the United States. Preferring to have a strong leader who will safeguard your nation's sovereignty over a flaky figurehead who is so committed to freedom and democracy that he allows his country to be bought up by American corporations doesn't make you some kind of brainwashed bootlicker. Most of the communist leaders reviled in the West enjoyed widespread popular support at home, and it's beyond delusional that we can just chalk this all up to propaganda rather than the far more sensible explanation that many people simply prioritize effective governance and leadership over having certain rights that are ripe for abuse by bad faith actors.

    And despite starting with all of these disadvantages that Western countries never had to deal with, it's pretty clear that by any reasonable standard socialist countries HAVE been extraordinarily successful, transforming from backwards agrarian societies into industrialized superpowers virtually overnight, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and achieving standards in healthcare and education that surpass those of far wealthier capitalist countries. And lest anyone think that this had nothing to do with socialism itself and that any capitalist government could have done as good or better, when the Soviet bloc fell nearly all of these gains were reversed just as quickly, as ill-conceived market reforms led to economic stagnation and declines in nearly every quality of life metric, accompanied by corresponding increases in corruption, violent crime, and sectarian conflict. To dismiss all of these accomplishments by simply fixating on the bleakest periods of these countries' histories and assuming that to be how it always was only reveals how much propaganda and misinformation WE have been fed despite living in a supposedly free and open society.

    On the flip side, many of the accomplishment we typically attribute to capitalism and liberal democracy only came about because the threat of a socialist uprising forced right wing governments into compromises that they would never have made had the opposition instead consisted of milquetoast centrists and incrementalists. It's no coincidence that the father of the European welfare state model was actually an extreme ultranationalist who only developed these programs as a ploy to get out in front of the rising tide of working class unrest. It is an insane fantasy we hold that somehow the society we live in is a product of the downtrodden masses simply voting themselves more resources and power, or that this is a viable path for any other country to succeed, and once again speaks to our absolute ignorance of the historical reality.

    But in this thread just like most discussions of socialism anywhere, people are overlooking one of the core concepts of Marxism which is that socialism is NOT an alternative path of development but rather a system that emerges FROM capitalism just as capitalism emerged from feudalism. Socialist thinkers have always realized that markets are necessary for capital formation, particularly within a system of international trade dominated by capitalist nations, and that jumping directly to a utopian society without first developing the productive forces is a recipe for disaster. And the transition to socialism occurs not because it is somehow better at winning hearts and minds but because of the inherent contradictions in capitalism itself - the same process of capital accumulation responsible for the prosperity we have is also inevitably guiding us down a path where all of the wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller group of plutocrats. The "status quo" we perceive, of an innovative, competitive economy that respects the rights of everyone while still allowing for unique talents to flourish NEVER actually existed, and wouldn't be sustainable if it did. Our socioeconomic model is simply too self-contradictory to be maintained, either we begin the transition towards socialism or our society will collapse. Conversely, poor nations in the global south who have yet to accumulate sufficient capital to make the leap and must adopt some free market policies to survive should not be dismissed out of hand by Western liberals who have no understanding of the material reality.

  12. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    I don't know why people always talk about the relative merits of socialism and capitalism as if there was some complete economic reset in 1945...
    PwrdOn, I don't know why you write these theses on a comics site since 98-odd% of your audience quits reading at about the same point I cut off the quote. Save it for a blog or a poly-sci journal.

    Nonetheless you have a point. There's never been an absolute socio-poltical system other than dictatorship.

  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    PwrdOn, I don't know why you write these theses on a comics site since 98-odd% of your audience quits reading at about the same point I cut off the quote. Save it for a blog or a poly-sci journal.

    Nonetheless you have a point. There's never been an absolute socio-poltical system other than dictatorship.
    Eh, I suppose that like most people, posting online is more just like a matter of self-gratification for writing something you thought was intelligent and deep, regardless of whether anyone else appreciates it. Besides, the reason I got hooked on this forum in the first place is because there was always a lot of discussion on sociopolitical topics and not just the usual arguments over continuity and feats.

  14. #29
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    I tend to read, whether I agree or not (say I'd probably agree with most of what he's saying than many others, bleeding heart myself) and I do wonder the same thing sometimes about posting on a comic book site. I love comics, been reading them for decades, most likely will for decades more. Why I came here. But after initial discussions on favorite Batman runs or which artists/writers to check out I kind of ran out of things to say about them. But I can discuss politics or football or religion or some other topics pretty much all of the time, and it interests me more than which Batman era was the best or who my favorite Robin was.

  15. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by CSTowle View Post
    I tend to read, whether I agree or not (say I'd probably agree with most of what he's saying than many others, bleeding heart myself) and I do wonder the same thing sometimes about posting on a comic book site. I love comics, been reading them for decades, most likely will for decades more. Why I came here. But after initial discussions on favorite Batman runs or which artists/writers to check out I kind of ran out of things to say about them. But I can discuss politics or football or religion or some other topics pretty much all of the time, and it interests me more than which Batman era was the best or who my favorite Robin was.
    Same for me pretty much, and the other thing is also that even though the message board format seems a bit old hat these days compared to newer social media platforms, I still do appreciate the ability to have a more extensive and nuanced discussion about these topics rather than having everything devolving into memes and like farming. Especially when it comes to something like socialism, trying to oversimplify the ideas is exactly the reason why so many Americans completely misunderstand the concept. Obviously everyone would rather be rich and free than poor and oppressed, but it's silly to believe that this is something that just comes down to choosing the right economic system. We wouldn't accept a comic supervillain who just went around murdering and enslaving people for no discernible reason when he would be much better off just being a hero instead, so why do we think that painting entire countries with that brush is somehow reasonable?

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