That’s fair. You have to start somewhere.

Thank you. I am surprised to hear that even serious organisations are not running night classes or the like. I had heard groups such as the BPP would intensively study Chairman Mao’s 红宝书 as a group.

You’re very clearly a “baby leftist” from your few comments here so I really don’t want you to take this the wrong way. You really need to read some theory. Your heart is seemingly in the right place but that doesn’t mean much when you have yet to deconstruct your liberal foundations and actually come to understand the how and why of scientific socialism.

Cowbee’s reading list should give you a good start

Socialism is not an end point. It is the transitionary phase between capitalism and communism.

Maybe? But in my circle 白左 usually refers to Western liberal progressives who spend all their time moralizing and being performative, often focused on identity or humanitarian rhetoric while ignoring material conditions or imperialism. Like those who call for regime change in Iran for women’s rights or the destruction of Gaza for gay rights.

Pulling on Deng’s name when they have never read anything he wrote, listened to any of his speeches or investigated at all his beliefs and political line. 白左 never cease to amaze me with their unlimited arrogance to speak authoritatively on things they haven’t even looked into not to mind attempt to understand.

Yes the USSR attempted both, but thanks to some realpolitik and the material conditions aligning China has properly situated itself in a position to hugely help develop the periphery through initiatives like the BRI as well as just generally being a stable partner and a means for countries to bypass imperialist sanctions.

I think people just yearn for the days of the USSR shipping AKs and explosives around the world. As opposed to China’s focus more on breaking imperialisms grip through rising as a new economic pole.

KKKIAB$$

No capital isn’t a ghost with a name tag, it’s a material social relation: ownership of production, control of investment, wage labor, and the institutions built to defend them. That’s why elected officials who threaten profits immediately face capital flight, media attacks, legal sabotage, and economic strangulation, among other attacks, regardless of their intentions. You keep reducing structural power to personalities because liberalism can’t think past individuals.

Again I beg read Lenin and Chairman Mao, looks into what was done to Aellende Sankara and Lumumba. Until you understand that class power determines the state (not vibes and ballots) you’re just repeating liberal talking points and it’s not worth continuing this.

You’re still doing the same shell game: redefining terms mid-argument, ignoring material institutions, then declaring victory.

You said “every attempt at communism results in elites stealing surplus labor.” That is a specific claim about class extraction. It is not the same thing as “inequality exists.” You keep pretending they’re interchangeable because your original statement collapses otherwise.

You wave away Cuba by saying “whoever controls the state owns the surplus.” That’s liberal abstraction. Cuban officials do not privately own factories, land, or finance. Surplus is overwhelmingly allocated socially (healthcare, education, housing, food subsidies) under permanent blockade. That is categorically different from capitalist ownership. Calling every state-administered surplus “elite theft” empties the concept of meaning.

You dismiss Yugoslavia even though workers’ councils directly controlled enterprises and surplus. That alone falsifies your “every attempt” claim. Your preferences don’t override historical structure.

On China under Mao Zedong, you claim redistribution was “just revolution, not communism.” No. Those mechanisms were implemented through socialist institutions: collectivization, mass-line governance, cadre supervision, campaigns explicitly aimed at suppressing bureaucratic privilege. When inequality later rose after political line changes, you treat that as proof against socialism instead of proof that outcomes depend on material conditions and leadership. You’re proving the materialist point while denying it.

You invoke the “nomenklatura” in the Soviet Union as if this is some revelation. Marxists have analyzed bureaucratic degeneration for over a century. Yes, a privileged stratum emerged under siege, devastation, and isolation. That does not automatically make them a property-owning bourgeoisie, nor does it validate your universal claim. Degeneration under pressure is not identical to surplus extraction as a ruling class.

Your rain-and-curtains analogy is embarrassing. Social systems aren’t weather. They operate under concrete historical forces. Treating imperialism, sanctions, invasion, and sabotage as background noise is textbook idealism.

Then you retreat into “communism vs socialism” hair-splitting to dodge counterexamples like the Paris Commune, where officials were recallable and paid worker wages, or early Soviet soviets and factory committees with income caps. These were explicit anti-elite mechanisms. They directly contradict your claim.

At this point the pattern is obvious: whenever concrete institutions don’t fit your thesis, you redefine “communism,” redefine “elite,” or redefine “surplus.” That isn’t analysis. It’s cope.

And your final pivot is telling: “no system works unless the world cooperates.” congratulations on discovering imperialism. Marxists begin with the reality of imperialism. You invoke it only to declare socialism impossible, while giving capitalism a pass despite it requiring global coercion just to function.

Now for the part where you really make yourself look ridiculous: you pretend you’re some “hard science” guy while dismissing historical and dialectical materialism. I have a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in STEM, alongside a master’s in Marxist theory. Socialist theory is not vibes or moral preference, it’s a systematic framework for analyzing class relations, production, surplus, and material conditions. You clearly don’t understand that method, yet you keep lecturing people who do. Liberal capitalism, by contrast, rests on idealist fairy tales about “human nature,” “markets,” and “incentives.”

At this point you’re either arguing in bad faith or you fundamentally don’t grasp basic political economy. Either way, this isn’t a serious exchange anymore. I’m done engaging with someone who substitutes semantic evasions and surface-level cynicism for material analysis.

Of course the state is made up of people, but those people operate inside a pre-existing system of property, law, coercion, and institutions. That system doesn’t change just because you swap officeholders. Under capitalism, the courts defend private property, the police protect capital, the media belongs to capital, and the economy is owned by capital. Anyone entering that structure is forced to govern within those limits. That’s why workers can vote forever and still remain exploited.

You keep saying “just put different people in charge,” but history shows what happens when elected governments seriously threaten capitalist ownership: capital flees, investment stops, media turns hostile, courts obstruct, and imperialist pressure mounts until the project is neutralized or overthrown. That’s not theory, that’s how bourgeois power has observably functioned from its inception . Liberal democracy allows rotation of managers, not transfer of class power.

You’re also reversing cause and effect. Democracy doesn’t shape class relations, class relations shape democracy. As long as private ownership of production exists, the state exists to defend it. That’s why bourgeois democracy always resolves crises in favor of capital. It’s structurally designed to.

Real change only begins when exploitative property relations are abolished and the old coercive apparatus is broken and rebuilt to serve the working masses. That’s when democracy stops being a shell and becomes material, because the people control production, not just ballots.

I beg you to please read Lenin, and Chairman Mao you don’t understand what you’re talking about and they have far more extensive writing on this than I can fit into a debate with you on a message board.

You’re still wrong. “Democracy” is not some floating, neutral mechanism that anyone can simply take over. It exists inside a state, and every state has a class character. Under capitalism, democracy operates through bourgeois property relations, bourgeois courts, bourgeois media, and bourgeois control of production. That means capital rules no matter who you vote for. Workers cannot vote away private ownership of the means of production. That’s why Marxists call it the dictatorship of capital.

Saying “just put someone else in charge” ignores how power actually works. The bourgeoisie doesn’t politely surrender its property because a ballot box asked nicely. Socialist democracy only becomes possible after that class power is broken, after bourgeois ownership is abolished and exploiters are politically suppressed. That’s not “using the same tool differently.” That’s a different state, serving a different class.

And no, democracy doesn’t magically “free” you by itself. Liberation comes from class struggle. When new bourgeois elements emerge under socialism, they are suppressed, because socialism is an ongoing process of preventing capitalist restoration, not a one-time electoral event. You’re treating democracy as primary and class power as secondary. The opposite is true.

You’re treating democracy as class-neutral. That’s wrong. There is no abstract “democracy” floating above society, every democracy expresses class power. Liberal democracy is the dictatorship of capital: private ownership, capital controls media and institutions, and workers can vote forever without ever voting away exploitation. Socialist democracy is the dictatorship of the proletariat: bourgeois property is abolished, exploiters are politically suppressed, and the working class holds state power. Same word, different class rule. Not “the same hammer used differently,” but qualitatively different systems.

And your “what if someone exploits it again?” question just proves the point. Yes, class struggle continues under socialism. When new bourgeois elements emerge, you suppress them. That’s exactly what proletarian dictatorship exists for. Socialism isn’t a one-time constitutional tweak; it’s an ongoing process of fighting capitalist restoration.

You should really read Chairman Mao and Lenin.

A wrought iron sledge hammer and a plastic toy hammer are both hammers yet they are qualitatively different. Liberal democracy and Socialist democracy are both a democracy yet are qualitatively different.

You’re moving the goalposts. You started with “communism results in elites stealing surplus labor.” Now it’s “communism can’t prevent inequality” and “maybe there’s something outside capitalism and communism.” Pick a lane. Those are completely different claims. The original one is already falsified. In Cuba, the political class does not own production and surplus is routed through the state into healthcare, education, housing, and food subsidies under permanent siege. That is not capitalist surplus extraction. In Yugoslavia, workers’ councils directly controlled enterprises and surplus, your personal approval of worker self-management doesn’t magically make it irrelevant. In China under Mao Zedong, mass-line politics and collectivization explicitly targeted bureaucratic privilege (especially during the Cultural Revolution). In the Paris Commune, officials were recallable and paid worker wages. In the early Soviet Union, surplus was socialized through soviets and factory committees with formal income caps on officials. These are concrete institutional facts. None of this fits your original caricature of “a small elite stealing surplus labor.”

On Cuba: inequality exists. That is not evidence of a new exploiting class. The Cuban leadership does not privately own factories or land. Complaining about internal distribution while casually brushing aside six decades of blockade, sanctions, sabotage, and economic warfare is lazy. You’re treating Cuba like it developed in a vacuum. I hope you can see how patently ridiculous that is.

On China: you admit Mao-era redistribution was real, then dismiss it because inequality resurfaced later. Congratulations, you’ve just demonstrated that outcomes depend on material conditions, not some mystical communist essence. Also, China’s post-reform poverty reduction rested on Mao-era foundations: land nationalization, universal literacy, basic healthcare, and industrial infrastructure. Markets were layered on top of socialism, they didn’t replace it.

On the USSR: saying “attempts don’t matter, only outcomes” is historically illiterate. Institutions don’t appear fully formed, they evolve under civil war, invasion, famine, and international isolation. Ignoring that context while declaring socialism “powerless” is like judging a burned house without mentioning the arsonist.

And notice how far you’ve already retreated. Now you say communism doesn’t create elites, it just “can’t stop them.” That’s not what you originally claimed. Marxists have been writing for over a century about bureaucratic degeneration under scarcity and imperialist pressure. You’re not discovering anything new, you’re just refusing to engage with the material conditions that produce it.

Finally, since you want to posture: socialist theory is not vibes or moral preference. It’s a scientific framework (historical and dialectical materialism) built on analyzing class relations, production, surplus, and concrete conditions. You clearly don’t understand that method, yet you feel comfortable lecturing people who do. Liberalism and capitalism, by contrast, rely on idealist abstractions about “human nature,” “markets,” and “incentives.” That’s about as scientific as the Bible. If you actually want to contribute something meaningful, start by learning how material analysis works instead of recycling warmed-over liberal common sense and calling it insight.

The only exhausting thing here is your seemingly unlimited arrogance to lecture others on topics you don’t understand beyond surface level vibes and idealism.

Cuba? Yugoslavia? Mao-era China? Paris Commune? Spain in 1936? The early USSR?

In Cuba, large parts of the social surplus have long been distributed through universal systems rather than privately captured. In Yugoslavia, workers’ self-management gave enterprise councils real authority over production and surplus allocation. In China under Mao Zedong, mass-line politics and collectivization explicitly targeted bureaucratic privilege especially during the cultural revolution you likely demonize (even if that had its own major issues). In Paris (1871), officials were recallable and paid worker wages. In Soviet Union, the early revolutionary period featured soviets, factory committees, and formal attempts to cap official incomes and socialize surplus.

If you dismiss all of these, it starts to look less like analysis and more like bad faith. And your argument completely sidesteps the decisive factors, relentless external pressure from capitalist hegemony, war, blockade, sanctions, sabotage, plus the material limits of poor, devastated societies. Treating outcomes as if they emerged in a vacuum reeks of liberal idealism. That’s about as useful for understanding political economy as quoting scripture. What actually recurs historically is not some mystical law that “communism creates elites,” but bureaucratic pressures under siege and underdevelopment, concrete problems of socialist transition, not proof that surplus must end up in the hands of a new ruling class.

I would recommend you study some theory and learn to apply dialectical and historical materialism rather than wasting your time spreading malformed “analysis”.

Have you considered you get called dumb because “it is known” isn’t a valid argument outside of liberal spaces.

It’s not an adhominem also you can’t prove a negative the burden of proof is on you. You’re doing a Russell’s teapot. You have made a statement that is false with no evidence to back up your claim.

The setup of society isn’t radical in and of itself at least in the short to medium term , look at China, the USSR, Cuba, it’s simply the path to get there is one unfortunately of violence and struggle against those currently enforcing the capitalist order.