this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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No, the people that want genuine socialism instead of safety net band-aids want socialism because it has a proven track record of dramatically uplifting the working classes in ways capitalism cannot. We socialists do know what the soviet union was like, we read books, study history, and more in order to try to best emulate what worked well while learning from what didn't, and adapting it to our conditions. The safety nets you describe cannot stop the imperialist decay of the dying US Empire.
This is a lot of buzzwords with very little to no content.
With so many significant problems with their system, why use it as a base at all as opposed to simply advocating for the change you want to see?
The previous commenter brought up Mamdani, and they were wrong for thinking Mamdani is a socialist, but they weren't wrong for observing that reality does not bring you to your socialist utopia dreams within a lifetime, and thus the "bandaids" you decry are necessary to even begin to convince people to be less afraid of the ideas of socialism.
You are clearly letting perfect be the enemy of good, or improved here, because hard line idealist stances do worse than accomplishing nothing; they make the politics you state you support harder to sell people on, and harm change towards that direction.
Mamdani is actually a great example of what the stepping stones actually look like. A real person, making real, socialist changes within a much larger system at a level that people accept and will hopefully grow to appreciate rather than sitting making grungy alt comments on the internet in an effort to put down other people they agree with far more than any other groups.
Mamdani is far better than his opposition, but his policies aren't gonna bring socialism. I agree it's better to support him than not because I don't want people to suffer under worse politicians, but we should use this opportunity to organize and demand more, not less. Whether Mamdani achieves his goals or not, people won't be able to maintain any gains without an organized working class. The best time to organize was years ago, the second best time is now.
See, this is exactly the type of thing that is wrong with the general attitudes of people on this website.
Moaning, calling the majority of people fascists for having pragmatic plans, joking about revolution plans youll never attempt, much less succeed at all are severe forms of idealism.
You will literally never magically go to sleep one day in capitalist land, and then wake up in socialist land. That just is not how it works.
All the people who think they remember reading some historical account where that happened clearly missed a lot of information, because no societal change like that happens that quickly. Even for changes that appear quick, what is often missed are the huge amounts of smaller events that built up to those events, and the stepping stones.
Everyone on this site seems to utterly refuse to acknowledge this and seems to want to lambaste any idea that deals with the reality that socialist rome cannot be built in a day.
Anything that isn't a full measure to them, might as well literally be the same thing as trump, and that's just absurdly counter productive and naive.
Mamdani is bringing socialism, but slightly, and with digestible measures which should change public opinion. It's not all or nothing. Small change is good change too.
Others should do so as well. In so doing people warm up to an idea rather than the fringiest, cringiest people thinking that shrieking at the general public will magically lead them to change their opinions and accept massive differences immediately.
In case it was purposeful, I want to add that it should be "not only because", because, and this is another problem I have with many of attitudes here, right now matters! People who are alive and living right now matter! Their lives and shared experiences matter!
It's absolutely not ok to throw away their lives for some idealistic hail mary you (general you) think will save the world, particularly when doing so wouldn't even work.
I am cautious about using the word demand, because it implies that you have leverage in a way I think many lemmy users think they have leverage, but they absolutely do not.
I think too many lemmy users think that protest voting does anything other than setting them back, not realizing that 2 party systems love the rocking back and forth where one party can just outright benefit the rich, and the other can campaign on cutting some of those changes back. Any allowance for this hurts the cause.
Instead, the only areas they have leverage are in electing people like Mamdani through primaries, local and state politics. They can apply leverage by changing what the average member of the party closest to their views looks like to start a progressive shift.
I think they will, because there is something to be said for changing the uncaring persons passive opinion on what has been marketed as the devil for too long. The average person notices that NYC does better with Mamdani, and the next time some big media source rages on about how socialism will ruin us all, they think "meh, thats probably not true".
just because you don't want to understand what the words mean, doesn't mean it's meaningless.
you will find that demsocs like mamdani are relatively common throughout the world outside the US. how it usually goes for us is he will eventually either hit a wall or be forced to by the system.
the kind of change you hint at wanting comes from the bottom up, not from top down from an oligarchical ballot box.
understand what you are doing, and then organize with your fellow workers.
This type of purposefully too vague to be worth while conversation is just irksome.
The idea that your votes don't matter, despite billionaires bending over backwards to encourage exactly that type of opinion, so that people stop using all of the levers they have (especially given how easy this one is to pull) is ridiculously counterproductive.
Organizing with your fellow workers sounds like a great idea, except that you can't do so effectively if the ballot box you want to ignore the importance of works to effectively remove your protections and help the ownership class press you.
Even if you think its little oppression vs big oppression, that difference absolutely matters, especially given the cost the benefit analysis which makes voting crazily valuable for literally just showing up and casting a vote every few months.
This right here also lacks significant nuance. Its once again based on some vague idea that if a solution isnt everything, its nothing. You ever wonder what would happen if there were enough Mamdanis out there?
my brother in christ, we are not discouraging you from voting. we are trying to show you it doesn't work.
we have experience with people like mamdani outside the us that you just refuse to accept.
please just look up the things you don't know instead of pretending we are not saying it. i literally cannot be clearer than i am being.
Honestly the best thing Mamdani will do is fail at making fundamental change and encurage people to reject electoralism
At this level of self contradiction, I can only conclude you are either trolling or arguing just to argue. Saying that something does not work is discouraging someone from doing said thing.
Its also part of everything I previously discussed, pointing out that you think everything has to be a whole solution in and of itself, and that idea is naive, because nothing ever will be.
This is utterly irrelevant as you've failed to acknoledge me already addressing this point with pointing out just because roadblocks eventually exist doesnt mean you just stop and roll over/dismiss this as not being a part of the solution.
All of this comes from the naive notion that there is just 1 big button that needs pressing before everything magically falls into place.
Its many little buttons, slow changes over time, and people like you, not fighting that tooth and nail, somehow with righteous indignation against anyone pragmatic enough to understand why that is wrong.
That is because you have little of substance to actually say but wish that you did, so all you can do is use vague rhetoric to dismiss points you can't argue against.
No, my comment wasn't filled with buzzwords. The soviets had a remarkably effective system, as does the PRC, as do other socialist states. It isn't a matter of trying to rescue demonstrable failures from their contradictions, but trying to replicate their astounding successes and go even further.
Historically, your method of trying to work within a system designed not to change in order to help ease people into socialism never works. Not only can Mamdani not implement socialism, but only expand safety nets within the constraints of his mayoral position, at the same time he's already strongly opposed by the state. Instead, what's important is working class organization directly, and following up on what has worked historically.
The capitalist country with slightly more social sytems?
At this point this is a joke.
Historically there is no historically and you continue to make vague statements that don't actually call for any positive actions and instead call for apathy.
The PRC is a socialist country. The commanding heights of industry are overwhelmingly publicly owned and controlled, the state is under the control of the working classes, and public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. Socialism isn't the absence of markets or private property, but a transitional mode of production between capitalism, where private ownership is the principle aspect and the state under the control of capitalists, and communism, a stateless, classless, moneyless society where production and distribution are fully collectivized and run according to a common plan to fulfill the needs of all.
History exists, and the failures of those to successfully reform capitalism into socialism from within are important lessons.
There are many private businesses in China, probably most are.
Many other countries you would not call socialist also have the government owning critical industries/companies (like outside of NA, most governments own their state resource extraction businesses). The typical things we discount as not being socialist but that actually are such as mail etc also count.
You are basically arbitrarily choosing when to call something socialist vs not socialist by choosing to call china, a booming capitalist state with tons of humanitarian harms, just as any other booming (or used to be booming) capitalist state that of course also has socialist elements.
The rational person would instead focus on what else should be socialized because gradual progress is the only rational route. Irrational people spout off expecting bold revolutions where other people die horrifically so their idealist perspectives can be satiated, which more than likely would end up falling further towards the other direction.
Something you mention repeatedly as a way to add false credibility to your ridiculous stances, but also something which you can only draw vague, poorly correlated to examples with.
I'm starting to feel like Im arguing with an LLM with talking points designed to aggravate and talk me into a circle.
China has private property, yes, but it isn't the principle aspect of the economy, nor does it govern the large firms and key industries, which are state owned:
Capitalist countries are much the opposite, even if they have public ownership of some industries, they are ultimately dominated by private capital. Mail services are not socialist, but an example of social services. China's socialist system has resulted in the single greatest eradication of poverty in history. Over 90% of Chinese citizens support their system, and the vast majority believe their country is strongly democratic, more than westerners believe of their governments:
China is in the early stages of socialism. They are taking a gradualist approach to collectivizing production and distribution, and relying on markets to rapidly develop underdeveloped portions of the economy while relying on massive state owned enterprises for the backbone of their economy:
What you're talking with is a communist that actually knows what he's talking about. I organize in real life and study theory, even writing an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list to help people like yourself better understand communism and socialism. I'm not an LLM, nor am I irrational, what's irrational is clinging to a failed method of trying to convince a ruling class to give up the reigns through peaceful means, while people die due to imperialist genocide all over the world.
You're so confidently incorrect. China does have voting and democratic structutes. They have the largest elections in the entire world. Further, they have eliminated absolute poverty, and year over year have steadily improved living conditions across the country.
You have no sources, no points. You vaguely gesture to "atrocities" and "officials living above the law," without any concrete examples. I give numerous facts and statistics, the blog post I linked is a compilation of peer reviewed studies and other metrics.
China isn't free from negatives, the fact that I disagree with your blatant misconceptions like claiming China has no democracy doesn't mean I don't acknowledge their actual faults, such as the sluggish (but still positive) progress on implementing more LGBTQIA+ protections. I deny the absurdities you claim.
To answer your questions:
China is democratic, and I gave many sources from both China and western firms confirming it.
As answered in 1, China is democratic. I support democracy.
All in all, most people are receptive to what I have to say. You in particular opened with ableist attacks (that you keep repeating, I might add), dehumanization of me by comparing me to an LLM, and an utter refusal to engage with the points or sources I bring up. I doubt I'll be able to convince you in particular, but I also doubt you'd listen to anyone that isn't already repeating what you say.
TBF, on Reddit they never needed facts, studies, or evidence to browbeat and win fake internet points.
Fair, just felt it was important to highlight for them. They aren't going to change their minds this time, but in the future when others keep showing them similar points because reality is oriented that way they may finally reconsider.
No, I mean most people, in real life and online, are receptive to the basic facts and sources I include. You even claim a Harvard-based study is "misleading evidence" when it affirms what I'm saying. If it sounds like it's from a different reality, then that means that your current understanding is divorced from our reality.
Not sure why you're doubling down on ableism and dehumanization. It's incredibly easy to just not be ableist or dehumanize people.