this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Thank you for providing a great example of being confidently incorrect.
Do you have any example of working socialism?
Every single socialist country is an example of working socialism having lifted millions of people out of poverty, provided them with, food, housing education, and jobs. Meanwhile, we're still looking for examples of working capitalism where majority of the population is not being exploited for the benefit of the capital owning oligarchy.
Wow. Read the rest of the thread because I'm not gonna rewrite stuff.
But as I was saying. I live in post communist country and the influence of socialism was extraordinarily destructive and I can see damage made from it to these days.
I grew up in USSR, and I lived through the collapse of USSR. It was one of the biggest humanitarian disasters in history. People who are cheering that on are the ones who benefit from all the exploitation under capitalism today. People who got theirs and don't care about anything else. Deplorable.
Only a small percentage of socialists (albeit larger in this instance) hold the USSR up as anything but an example of an early, ham-fisted attempt at socialism with a lot of mistakes. If there have been no places socialism has worked yet (debatable, but I’ll argue from this position), that disproves nothing. The first several hundred tries at the lightbulb were probably failures, too, but capitalists talk about that failure as a side effect of innovation without realizing that social systems might need innovation too. I’m sorry if you suffered under an authoritarian socialist government; there’s nothing inherent about the connection between those two characteristics. But authoritarian governments tend to survive better against the kinds of conspiracies and attacks established capitalist governments launch against socialist ones, so you get to see what’s left. (If you don’t know about this, go to a library, start with…maybe Allende in ‘73…It’s very well-documented.). In sum, it has nothing to do with not caring about people harmed by authoritarianism. It has to do with seeing the evils of the system around us and refusing to accept that this is the best humanity can do. I’m sorry you can’t see that. But I’m not letting my friends’ access to insulin sit in the greedy hands of insurance companies without a fight. I’m not living in a pay-to-play political system where donors’ interests matter more than voters’ my whole life if I have anything to say about it. Regardless of your beliefs.
I think perhaps you meant to reply to the parent comment, I certainly did not suffer in USSR and the dissolution of USSR was a great tragedy in my view.
USSR obviously wasn't the ideal of socialism. In fact, it would be pretty surprising if the first ever attempt at building a socialist society didn't have problems. Obviously we can learn from USSR and do better going forward. However, I do think that despite all its problems, USSR did manage to achieve many positive outcomes for the majority of the people. It provided everyone with education, housing, healthcare, jobs, and all the necessities of life. This was done despite USSR having been under duress during its whole existence and it's something that current capitalist regimes are unable to achieve.