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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Destroyed and replaced by?
People fail to realize that socialism isn't just an ideology but a process. It involves looking back at previous attempts and learning from their mistakes and improving.
Is every ideology also a process where people learn from their past attempts at achieving the ideology?
Sure, but this is the very core of socialism, or the whole concept of scientific marxism
I think it's important to distinguish socialism and Marxism here, since you're referring pretty specifically to Marxist theory.
That said, you're not wrong - Marx postulates that history moves through a continuous fight between classes, and that on average we move towards a more equal society over time as a result of this fight. The fall of the monarchy was the result of class struggle, but so was the fall of the Soviet union; the Bolsheviks had just replaced the ruling elite, walking on two legs in Orwells terms. In this sense, every revolution could be understood under the logic of Marxism, as "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles".
But then we're speaking about a Marxist understanding of history, not a socialist ideal for society.
It doesn't need to be a unidirectional process - things get worse, the proletariat revolts, and they get better. Then things get worse again, and they revolt again. Eventually we reach a stable point where things are good enough for the proletariat to stop revolting - and that would be the communist society.
That said, while I largely subscribe to a Marxist understanding of history, I don't personally find historical determinism very convincing. Marx' theory might even have been a self-defeating prophesy, as it taught the ruling classes the mechanisms of history it needed to defeat in order to stay in power. The American right wing might not be fans of Marx, but they for sure ripped a page from his book to understand the importance of union busting.
It kind of echoes the old mantra that evil triumphs when good men do nothing - as opposed to when evil men do evil things. At the end of the day the thing to be concerned about is probably the combination of the two.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I do have a Nintendo Switch lying around somewhere - I might check out Disco Elysium if I find myself with time on my hands! Thanks for the recommendation. :)
I'd argue the internet was a major opportunity towards distributed knowledge and coordinated social action.
But that peaked in the early 2000s and the tide has been receeding ever since.
The latest developments indicate more and more corporate enshitification is coming.
Correct, and the beneficiaries of capitalism have learned very well.
Hey, you cut it out with that education! How are people supposed to falsly believe that socialism is China or Russia or Vuvuzela if you go around explaining how it's not?
That’s what capitalism is for😎
Sounds like fixing to me
Fixing would be if we had logical productive discussions about these. But the US government is fundamentally broken and it is functionally impossible to fix these things in a reasonable amount of time.
Sure, you can get to a utopia by first destroying the old system, just look at how nice the world is in Star Trek.
It's going to suuuuuck for you though, living through the apocalypse needed to clean out the old system. It might be quicker overall, but I wouldn't wish that pain on the current generations of people living in the US.
Rome wasn't built in a day?
The fun part is that you're on lemmy and I'm surprised no one has called you a conservative yet. This is because all of your ideas involve keeping the current system, and many people around here specifically want full socialism, Marxism, what have you
Huh? Most of those they listed are socialist ideas. And I'm pretty lemmy would agree with most of them.
Socialist by degree - but he mentions these things but not necessarily replacing the current system entirely. This is basically market socialism, which many (mainly Marxist-Leninists and the like) do not consider true socialism. There are a lot of MLs on lemmy. Hence my saying I'm surprised no one has come in yet to tell him he's not going far enough. We came close, someone called these fixes with the possible implication that he isn't going far enough, but not outright
Where?
Hold up I asked what political sistem would replace it. Lol not what changes we want no matter the system you are on
Versus doing nothing? Lemmy is fucking ass lately, shitting all over hyperbole while rolling over and letting capitalism and pessimism run your sorry, sad fucking lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Which is a fix, not possible to implement in the chaos after a revolution, and not remotely a replacement.
I'd argue the only reason it was possible to implement in the first place was the post-war context of having to rebuild everything from scratch; the power dynamics in place before the war were left in the rubble. The father of Norwegian social democracy spent the years before the war in and out of jail, the war years in a prison camp, and the post war years as prime minister.
They also had to contrast the USSR, which had a very good quality of life for most citizens. Without socdem, people would have seen the difference between the USSR and Europe as positive due to things like eliminating homelessness, a right to food, and guaranteed healthcare. In the ~30 years since the Soviet Union fell, the EU is slowly crawling back in line with the US.
you might want to speak with someone who lived in the USSR.
Even if you do, the past is a complicated thing. Plenty of people are nostalgic to the USSR, and many of them might very well have been better off under communism.
That said, in terms of standards of living, I think it's fair to say the Nordic countries were comparing themselves to the US way more than the Soviet Union in the postwar era. The Finns would rather be dead than associated with the Soviets, which many of them demonstrated quite forcefully during the war. As for the other Nordic countries, the Marshall Plan certainly didn't weaken the admiration of the US.
If anything, what made the Nordic model such a success was the decision to look away from the Soviets - the influence the Soviet Union had over European socialist parties somehow didn't catch on in the North. Marxist-Leninist parties existed (and still exist), but they were mostly sidelined (to a degree that is, in all fairness, problematic in its own right).
Maybe YOU should speak to someone who lived in the USSR. 75% of people from the former USSR polled want to live in the USSR again.
that poll is only of people currently living in russia.. none of the former soviet states and other parts of the world. and of course we all trust the moscow times. when you do speak with them they mention never having tried fresh fruit until the 1990s, standing in line hours for bread.. not being able to leave their apartments because strung out muggers took over the lobbies and always having to take the stairs, and not being able to control the temperature of their homes because the govt controlled the boilers, and having to use rugs as insulation against concrete, and all the drivers were terrible because the drivers tests were just a vodka buyoff, and the cars were constantly falling apart and the movies and music and artists in general were never allowed to criticize anything there, and the news didnt bother trying to be reality based etc
I will ask the questions, comrade
Nothing.
Well, nothing where a human is in charge. I'd rather let Bing AI take the wheel. AI isn't greedy or ambitious for one so no need to go full totalitarian like every single revolution.
yet. I heard AIs are trained with data from humans who are... whoops!
Well then I guess we should give up and just line up to suck off billionaires like a circus seal then 🤣
Worker ownership over the means of production
(Not a huge fan of centralized planning since that tends to lead to authoritarianism)
Let's iterate!