I’m lightly amused by the interpretation that socialism necessarily means dictatorship, as if other democratic forms of government are somehow incompatible with socialist economic structures and policies.
well, i can actually support democratic socialist governments, and i actually have voted for a party trying to build that out on every single occasion so far while i had a vote. i’m also all for integrating socialist principles into a capitalist society – i do actually believe capitalism is a great tool for the luxuries in life, but the necessities must be provided to all for it to actually work. like supply and demand both need to be variable for it to work, if everyone needs a home you can’t have the market “just figure it out” on the pricing of hosing, it’s going to result in rampant exploitation, but a market for upgraded housing compared to a baseline would very much work.
mostly i was just directly responding to the notion communicated to me in this conversation, which is that the path to communism is a state that takes power away from people for their own good, builds a society for them, and then gives back that power, or at the very least allows the people to take back that power with force. that promise is bogus and has been the previous 40 times a nation has been sold on it. as someone who has to live in the aftermath of one of those attempts, i’m not going to not blame it for its lies and its oppression. especially when the system it’s trying to reach, as described in this very thread, has been technologically impossible to reach on the scale of even just hungary, let alone the whole soviet bloc
I’m lightly amused by the interpretation that socialism necessarily means dictatorship, as if other democratic forms of government are somehow incompatible with socialist economic structures and policies.
well, i can actually support democratic socialist governments, and i actually have voted for a party trying to build that out on every single occasion so far while i had a vote. i’m also all for integrating socialist principles into a capitalist society – i do actually believe capitalism is a great tool for the luxuries in life, but the necessities must be provided to all for it to actually work. like supply and demand both need to be variable for it to work, if everyone needs a home you can’t have the market “just figure it out” on the pricing of hosing, it’s going to result in rampant exploitation, but a market for upgraded housing compared to a baseline would very much work.
mostly i was just directly responding to the notion communicated to me in this conversation, which is that the path to communism is a state that takes power away from people for their own good, builds a society for them, and then gives back that power, or at the very least allows the people to take back that power with force. that promise is bogus and has been the previous 40 times a nation has been sold on it. as someone who has to live in the aftermath of one of those attempts, i’m not going to not blame it for its lies and its oppression. especially when the system it’s trying to reach, as described in this very thread, has been technologically impossible to reach on the scale of even just hungary, let alone the whole soviet bloc