There seems to be more and more of these reactionary socialists popping up. They somehow assume the capitalists will just allow them to be democratically elected and take their wealth from them. How can they be this naive, are they controlled opposition?
It seems they’re too scared to move further left because they still believe all the scary things about ML states, but when pressed on how they would defend their new socialist state from capitalists/imperialists, they hand wave it away with vague ideas of cooperation.
What is the best way to deal with them, and how many here were DemSocs before becoming MLs? If so, what convinced you?
Be patient. Many of us went through DemSoc phases too. The contradictions are sharpening and ideology is born through experience.
When their progressive heroes ultimately fail/betray them, a lot of them will become more radicalized.
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they still believe all the scary things about ML states
This describes pretty much all non-ML “leftists”.
For me being a DemSoc was part of the pipeline here, so just never stop explaining. Quote Lenin plenty, his writing is extensive and can be useful in situations or for scenarios DemSocs can’t just wave away
omg its the legend
As a part of a labor aristocracy suffering with alienation throughout my whole life, I was a vague idealist socialist suspicious of USSR before I got tired of buying shit and started trying to fix it - like patch up clothes or solder some electronics. Eventually that lead to me realizing how much labor all over the world the stuff I’m used to - like a smartphone - actually takes and how long did it take for it to get where so many can be made. It was a small step from there to realize the importance of material conditions for economic development. In addition to that I’ve watched plenty of quality history content about USSR which was so wildly different from the picture my history lessons taught I’ve come to be very sceptical of what I think I know and what makes “common sense”. That led to me understanding how AES countries are a product of their history too.
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In the developing world this is not a problem in the least for revolutionary Marxists. In fact “democratic socialists” of the global south, despite not being truly socialist, are definitely nationalistic, anti-globalization and anti-imperialism, so they are natural allies for revolutionary AES governments of the world.
In the global north the situation is reversed, as mainstream socialist parties serve as honeypots and controlled opposition for the status quo, never actually winning anything. Only thing to do is increase awareness of how they’re used to fool People.
Funnily enough the situation of the far right is the opposite. In the global south far right parties generally are fiercely imperialistic and in many cases are basically remote-controlled by Washington. In the developed West they are considered a threat by globalists.
I agree that many socialists of the global south are more democratic and are also anti-imperialist, but the case that is worrying to me is that of Allende and Pinochet, Allende was democratic and was ultimately killed and replaced by a Fascist that repudiated democracy. Allende represented the right things, but his death proved, to me at least, that the right has no worry about being undemocratic to achieve their goals and I sorta think the left should be just as willing to betray democracy in favor of the working class. You also made some very good points that I am interested in, you had a good analysis of this tbh
You bring up an interesting example. Allende belongs to a long list of democrats targeted for regime change, like Arbenz, Sukarno and many others. However even revolutionaries fell prey to imperialist aggression, as was the infinitely sad case of the beloved Thomas Sankara.
In the XXth century the only way for a socialist government to survive was to turn into a police state. Just look at how quickly the USSR fell after political reform. But lately regime change attempts by western imperialists are failing more often than not. The coups in Honduras and Bolivia were overturned, and soon the same will happen in Brasil. Color revolution attempts in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Kazhakstan, Belarus and others have failed, as have the attempts to overthrow the Houthis and Al Assad.
IMO the reason for this is simple, neoliberalism has weakened the US and the West as eventually happens with all imperial powers. At the start of the XXth century the British empire missed out on the 2nd Industrial Revolution which took place in the US and Germany. The brightest british minds were devoted to extracting value from their high-margin rentier economy rather than innovating, which led the UK to simply stop being a world power after WWII. The US is currently on the same track, it’s been left out of the 4th Industrial Revolution which is raging in East Asia. Nowadays Asia represents more than half the purchasing power of the world and growing, that’s why the West can’t project power like it once did.
That is true, the coup on Venezuela that was foiled by fishermen was laughably bad. And I totally agree that the East is now becoming the next bastion of infrastructure change. It’s interesting to see the US shoot itself in the foot like this, infrastructure will influence trade so the US should always be fighting to be apart of a new infrastructure project or starting new ones if it wants to compete, but they aren’t and it will definitely affect the US for decades to come
show them what happens
I was a DemSoc for a while(I thought Bernie was one lol) and I was inspired by the thought that the working class can all democratically choose the people that will break their chains systematically. I didn’t really have an understanding of socialism at all. When I learned about Allende, I thought that DemSoc actually had a viable path…for about 5 seconds until I learned about Pinochet and how democratic socialism will be dismantled undemocratically and without concern for optics. When I learned THAT, I became a baby ML and now that’s basically where I am. Allende was great but proved that Fascists don’t care about democracy and that those who cling to it will be punished. It’s unfortunate but even Bernie, a SocDem, was organized against so heavily within his own party(ik he’s Independent but still he ran for Dem) that anyone that asked for fundamentally different changes in the system would never be given a fair opportunity.
When I learned about Allende, I thought that DemSoc actually had a viable path…for about 5 seconds until I learned about Pinochet and how democratic socialism will be dismantled undemocratically and without concern for optics. When I learned THAT, I became a baby ML and now that’s basically where I am
For starters don’t let them near Rosa
Rosa’s “Reform or revolution” was pretty great though
Wait, I thought Social Democracy (socdem) and Democratic Socialism (demsoc) are two different things. Alende was a democratic socialist. I am a communist because I think we need guillotine back.
Socdems are honest demsocs. At least they openly admit that they would preserve the capitalist status quo.
I learned it differently. What I learned is that demsoc want to sieze the state through democratic means and then there is no blood in the revolution. Well, way less blood. Then they turn country into socialism. Socdem just want little reforms.
I just wish them luck but remind them we never voted on labor laws or suffrage movements. Watching the recovery of 2008 turn back into status quo debt slavery removed my illusions of a more democratic society being born of representative democracy
As a former one you just gotta let them keep getting owned in elections and their leaders selling out. They’ll come around.
I was a demsoc, with a lot of us it’s just a matter of time before getting radicalized. For those that don’t, teach them about anti-imperialism and how the state undermines even democratic socialism
It’s less that we deal with them and more that we pretty much ignore or leverage them for revolutionary purposes.
DSA-type “socialists” aren’t a majority, and they’re not the masses that we should be trying to meet and reach out to; our focus should be on them. Demsocs will either stay hard in their position before inevitably being proven wrong (as history has shown) or flip to being true anti-communist reactionaries when the time comes.
The problem is i cant ignore them. Whenever I discuss Socialism on reddit, often against capitalists, the DemSocs come out to criticise the ML position. The moment i mention China being socialist they come flying out to condemn it as a hyper-capitalist state, or if i mention how a socialist state needs to be able to protect itself from internal reactionaries they immediately mention the 2000 bazillion deaths that supposedly occured. They are so frustrating and just seem like little libshits under a new name, and all their socialism seems to be entirely concerned with issues in western countries like healthcare reform, when for me its just about basic fucking human rights and exploitation around the world.
Just tell them they’ll be the number 2000 bazillion and one?
When people bring up death counts due to hardship under Communism they’re usually parroting propaganda derive wittingly or not from the Black Book of Communism and its ridiculously inflated figures.
I like Chomsky’s demolishing retort to that argument in this article, using the much superior research from Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, who won his award by researching famine:
… before closing the book on the indictment we might want to turn to the other half of Sen’s India-China comparison, which somehow never seems to surface despite the emphasis Sen placed on it. He observes that India and China had “similarities that were quite striking” when development planning began 50 years ago, including death rates. “But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India” (in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame,” 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen).
In both cases, the outcomes have to do with the “ideological predispositions” of the political systems: for China, relatively equitable distribution of medical resources, including rural health services, and public distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979, when “the downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted, and possibly reversed,” thanks to the market reforms instituted that year.
Overcoming amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable half. We therefore conclude that in India the democratic capitalist “experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the “colossal, wholly failed…experiment” of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone. The “criminal indictment” of the “democratic capitalist experiment” becomes harsher still if we turn to its effects after the fall of Communism: millions of corpses in Russia, to take one case, as Russia followed the confident prescription of the World Bank that “Countries that liberalise rapidly and extensively turn around more quickly [than those that do not],” returning to something like what it had been before World War I, a picture familiar throughout the “third world.” But “you can’t make an omelette without broken eggs,” as Stalin would have said. The indictment becomes far harsher if we consider these vast areas that remained under Western tutelage, yielding a truly “colossal” record of skeletons and “absolutely futile, pointless and inexplicable suffering” (Ryan). The indictment takes on further force when we add to the account the countries devastated by the direct assaults of Western power, and its clients, during the same years.
Anything online’s going to be a crapshoot. Honestly arguing and trying to win over demsocs online is going to be futile. Majority-white “socialists” online aren’t going to change their opinion in confrontations against communists. It can be infuriating, but we all need to hold revolutionary optimism that revolution in the imperial core is an inevitability.
Stop arguing with liberals online.
If it doesn’t make you crazy: keep arguing with liberals online
If it does make you crazy: don’t argue with liberals online
Great question
