this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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And at what point is it no longer a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Do you really think, say, the Soviet leaders were looking out "for the proletariat"? Is Kim Jong-Un doing so because the country's official name contains the word "people"?
The working class saw a doubling of life expectancy, reduced working hours, tripled literacy rates, cheap or free housing, free, high quality healthcare and education, and the gap between the top and bottom of society was around ten times, as opposed to thousands to millions. The structure of society in socialist countries is fashioned so that the working class is the prime beneficiary. Having "people" in the name of the country makes no difference on structure, be it the PRC, DPRK, or otherwise, what matters is the structure of society.
If the defense for a NK-style society is that it "at least benefits the working class" I suppose even trickle-down isn't that bad.. whether class exists as a concept or not means nothing if you have to live like in NK..
The truth is that as long as you have a structure that allows a group of people to control and steer society - be it a "Proletarian dictatorship designed to benefit the workers" or otherwise - those people are gonna shape it in a way where it benefits themselves. It's a reasonable assessment that the main issue of the Soviet Union was Stalin's insanity and forcing certain policies (collectivisation) too fast, but the truth of the matter is that a new class simply emerged: the political, the ones that might not be traditionally rich but benefit in other ways. The working class was never the main beneficiary of the Soviet Union.. at the end of a day a dictatorship is just a dictatorship and it's never for the people. I'm in no way against socialism or enacting various socialist or socialist-adjacent fiscal policies but that doesn't mean that all just magically become good when the working class dubiously "benefits".
And how much has those same parameters improved in capitalist societies? China didn't become rich and influential until they started transitioning into s capitalist class society. No shit that working class conditions improved compared to (almost) literally being serfs
Comparing socialism to trickle-down economics is a false-equivalence. Trickle-down was a lie sold to the working class to justify lower taxes and safety nets, nothing trickles down. Socialist economies like the PRC, USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc have had the opposite experience to varying degrees, an uplifting of the working class.
It is absolutely not a reasonable assessment of the USSR that relies on Stalin simply being "insane." He was paranoid towards his later years, sure, but he was never "insane." Further, Stalin was neither an absolute leader, nor was he a bad leader. The USSR was run collectively, from top to bottom, Stalin merely had the most individual influence. The structure of the USSR required lots of input from every part of the system. Further, under Stalin, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates tripled, healthcare and education was free and high quality, housing was cheap or even free, unemployment was practically 0, and the USSR went from feudalism to a developed economy that defeated the Nazis.
The idea of a "political class" is absurd. There were administrators and government officials, yes, but the top of soviet society was about ten times wealthier than the bottom. This numbers in the thousands to millions in Tsarism and capitalism. You have a fundamentally flawed view of socialism.
As for China, adopting market reforms does not mean transitioning to capitalism. They always had classes, even the DPRK has special economic zones like Rason that have limited private property. In China, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, they have a socialist market economy and are in the primary stage of socialism.
All in all, you have a very liberal, western view of socialism and socialist history that does not correspond to material reality.
I'm saying that I'd take even a full on trickle-down society if NK is a good society to you solely based on the "working class being more equal".
It absolutely is. Even before he went full on paranoid tens of millions of people starved to death because it was more important to collectivise just for the sake of it rather than taking a pragmatic approach to transition. But hey, that's okay because the working class had more power, right? No one ever has "absolute" power; Stalin was way more powerful than anyone should ever argue for. Hitler also improved the economy of Germany, are we gonna praise him now? And Stalin, the dude that you apparently love, did help defeat the Nazis by sacrificing 20 million young men and being lucky with the weather. But that's surely due to Soviet socialism being great, right?
It is absolutely not absurd to talk of a political class. When a certain group of people get the best houses, the best food, the dachas, the best security, access to the secret phones, yes you have a damn political class.. I have a realistic view of socialism. You have an insanely rose-tinted view of evil regimes that were never the type of socialist they should've been.
Please, China is out-capitalisming basically every capitalist society. They're built up around amassing personal wealth and mass consumption. There's literally nothing socialist about modern-day China except that they have a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat". And by that I don't mean that it's a bad country - it's thriving more than most Western countries and it's safe, clean, and well-off in most places.
All in all you have the view of a privileged c*** who read Marx once and thinks they're cool but have no experience with totalitarian states