After seeing a megathread praising Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer, and a post about a guy saying “99% of westerners are 100000000000% sure they know what happened in ‘Tiny Man Square’ […] the reasons for this are complex and involve propaganda […],” I am genuinely curious what leads people to this belief system. Even if propaganda is involved when it comes to Tiananmen Square, it doesn’t change the atrocities that were/are committed everywhere else in China.
I am all for letting people believe what they want but I am lost on why one would deliberately praise any authoritarian system this hard.
Can someone please help me understand why this is such a large and prominent community? How have these ideals garnered such a following outside of China?
EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has responded! This thread has been very insightful :)
I empathize with some of the thinking, but I don’t necessarily agree with it. To keep it simple, imagine how many different world powers are working to sabotage openly Socialist and Communist governments. What kinds of tools and resources might these world powers have at their disposal? I can’t imagine being part of a disfavored leftist government and not becoming haggard and paranoid beyond reason.
I break it down like this:
Free-for-all Capitalism has gotten us this shit state.
Free for all Communism has never worked in any meaningful way. Now, the always ready retort is “it’s never had the chance to!” to which I’d reply: it never will. If it can compete with other forms of governance let it rip, but… ? where is the success story?
Democratic Socialism has worked for the US already: the new deal, labor rights, Social Security, 40hr work week, etc., et.c,
/then came the 80s… reaganomics destroyed unions, made education a gamble… conservatives saw a path to reducing it all.
Democratic Socialism works very well in other countries all over the world: they recognize there are certain services that are critical to provide in order for democracy to function: fire, police, healthcare, disability affordances, so many things that government is uniquely situated to promote and provide.
I’m happy to change from free-for-all-capitalism, welcome it, but you can’t point to a hypothetical end point that’s never ever existed AND won’t be allowed to exist as long as resources require capital.
I would argue that Democratic Socialism works somewhat better than the perverse form of capitalism that exists today. It does have its flaws also. See the increasing surveillance of the population in the EU that is being pushed by politicians as a start.
At some point in the future, socialism will fail just like every other form of governance humans have devised.
Social democracy (what you call democratic socialism) in the EU depends on imperialism to function. The reason it’s deteriorating and pushing to the far-right is because of the decay in imperialism. This is a consequence of the capitalist nature of social democracy, not something that would be applicable to socialism. Socialism one day will emerge, and from it communism will, as contradictions within socialism as resolved.
The problem is that this is false. Socialist countries led by communist parties have consistently brought dramatic, radical improvements over what came before in a way that far surpasses any upsides of capitalism. Metrics like life expectancy, in many cases, increase by 50-100%, poverty rates plummet, land reform helps end famine where it was once common (a huge part of life expectancy increases), and their economies are democratized in a way that fundamentally doesn’t exist in capitalist countries. Socialism works.
Communism is a post-socialist stateless, classless, moneyless society. Communist parties have always governed socialist countries, because communism has not yet been achieved, and is itself a global phenomenon.
Not sure what you mean by “free for all.”
You’re confusing social democracy for socialism. Social safety nets within the boundaries of capitalism are not socialism, socialism is not when the government does stuff. Capitalism is a mode of production characterized by private ownwership as the principle aspect of the economy and capitalists in control of the state, with socialism being public ownership as principle and the working classes in charge of the state.
“Democratic Socialism” itself is a a vague term. Socialism is already democratic, rule by the majority is a necessity when the working class is in control of the state. What it ends up meaning in practice is socialism relying heavily on electoralism and reformism, such as in Chile under Allende and in Venezuela.
The important factor here is that the social democracies that are doing the best, their safety nets are largely funded by imperialism and unequal exchange. These are not internally driven systems, but closer to landlords in country form towards the global south. Now that imperialism as a global system is weakening, we can actually track the erosion of safety nets in these social democracies, and in the general shift to the far-right.
We can point to the real existing socialism in the real world and uphold their gains. No socialist country has been perfect, of course, all have had problems and struggles. They have, however, always been progressive and emancipatory as compared to what came before, and more effective at providing for their people compared to peer capitalist countries, without relying on imperialism.