Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist? (startrek.website)

submitted 5 months ago by jimhensonslostpuppet@startrek.website to c/startrek@startrek.website

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In case you don't know, they explicitly use the term socialist to describe the Federation economy in SNW. I was wondering if ppl liked or hated it? I like it personally since it's not a dodge like "new world economy"

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[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

You're right.

There's a bad habit of calling socialists the countries that should be called something like"capitalist but a bit to the left"

[-] halm@leminal.space 7 points 5 months ago

Also countries that probably started out socialist but took a sharp turn into authoritarianism and under-the-hood oligarchy... You know who you are.

[-] jimhensonslostpuppet@startrek.website 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well I'm not a Marxist Leninist or anything like that, and neither is Star Trek ever promoting anything like that

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 months ago

Socialism isn't a binary yes/no thing. It's an economic ideology that can be realized in many different ways

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 5 months ago

Hi.

That's called "socialdemocracy" and it's been around for centuries. It's actually older than the marxist concept of socialism, if you're gonna get pedantic about it.

I get that Americans have completely sandblasted off any remaining meaning in the word "socialism", first by having conservatives use it as an insult and then by having weird US lefties get all purity test about it, but most of the world has a pretty clear picture of socialdemocracy, it's not that ambiguous. Most socialdemocrat parties across the planet are called some version of "Socialist Party", "Labour Party" or "Worker's Party". It's a thing.

So no, it's not a bad habit. It's just... what that's called. It does get easy to mix up with the Marxist concept of socialism, which is likely why most marxist parties advocating for a socialist society are called "Communist Party" instead. The bad habit is to not challenge the fundamentally conservative, deliberate confusion between the two that any range of neoliberals and protofascists continue to use to pretend milquetoast socialdemocratic policy is some form of revolutionary action.

Man, US politics are so weird.

this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024

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