Historical examples, like Revolutionary Catalonia for Anarchism, and the USSR, Cuba, Maoist China, Vietnam, etc. for Marxism-Leninism, absolutely count as Socialist and should be learned from, both the good and bad.
If you dismiss them as “not real Socialism,” you fail to learn from what did work in those instances, like literacy rates and life expectancy skyrocketing. If you dismiss the bad, you make the equal mistake of not accounting for the flaws in systems like Soviet Democracy, which resulted in a corrupt Politburo with outsized power.
Study them in detail and find what to take and what to leave behind.
communism is a classless stateless moneyless society. is that how you’d describe any of those societies? i wouldn’t. because it’s not true. but there are certainly anarchist and communist societies that have existed.
I think we should learn from that.
Maybe all forms of power solely resting within the governing function invites corruption.
I haven’t given up yet on it because capitalism is definitely not working right now but there is a form of communism that you can have an informed and rational fear of.
I think most real-life examples have been plagued by corruption to the point that they fall into a different category altogether.
Historical examples, like Revolutionary Catalonia for Anarchism, and the USSR, Cuba, Maoist China, Vietnam, etc. for Marxism-Leninism, absolutely count as Socialist and should be learned from, both the good and bad.
If you dismiss them as “not real Socialism,” you fail to learn from what did work in those instances, like literacy rates and life expectancy skyrocketing. If you dismiss the bad, you make the equal mistake of not accounting for the flaws in systems like Soviet Democracy, which resulted in a corrupt Politburo with outsized power.
Study them in detail and find what to take and what to leave behind.
communism is a classless stateless moneyless society. is that how you’d describe any of those societies? i wouldn’t. because it’s not true. but there are certainly anarchist and communist societies that have existed.
I think we should learn from that. Maybe all forms of power solely resting within the governing function invites corruption.
I haven’t given up yet on it because capitalism is definitely not working right now but there is a form of communism that you can have an informed and rational fear of.
Generally, if you have a system where more powerful people are more influential, you invite yourself to corruption.
In Capitalism, this expresses itself in Capitalists buying politicians.
In Marxism-Leninism, this is expressed in the upper Soviets becoming more entrenched and corrupt.
The solution for Socialism is to make the upper rungs directly accountable to the masses. The solution for Capitalism is to abolish Capitalism.