this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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No socialist State has ever been won at the ballot box, though electoralism has its tactical uses in the interim. It’s mostly done through helping the working class develop class consciousness, through labor organizing and militant labor action, through developing dual power, and then ultimately replacing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Few people remember that Communists and other socialists helped us win the weekend and the eight hour workday, and these weren’t won through elections but through labor militancy. They don’t remember because we were purged and memory-holed by two red scares and a cold war.
I appreciate all the links you're posting in this thread, I'm learning a lot.
Which are the socialist states in existence right now? Are European countries socialist? Nordics? I know these classifications are subjective but I would love to hear what you and others think.
Actually Existing Socialisms (AES): The five predominantly recognized AES states are China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and, [North] Korea.
The Nordic model is a social democratic one, which is still fundamentally a capitalist one. This is what someone like Bernie Sanders claims to want.
Sanders gets away with calling himself a socialist because Americans have forgotten what socialism actually means: “social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.” Americans have forgotten what socialism means because the American socialists were persecuted into obscurity in the 20th century. So now even the vocabulary for socialism is lost in Orwellian fashion.
Great thank you for the info and links.