Cool, now break it down by population totals rather than pretending each country has an equal population. Further, it’s important to separate those raised before and after the dissolution of socialism, not just looking at population totals, where later polls have more people born after the dissolution and more people who lived in it dead and no longer able to answer.

The USSR was not a “Russian Empire,” lmao.

nationalized industry under a capitalist mode of production just turns the state into a collective capitalist

Besides the fact that Engels saw “state capitalism” as he defined it as a positive, final stage of capitalism (he was wrong on that since the transition to socialism has always occurred in feudal countries, not in the core countries where capitalism is strongest, but that discussion is better suited to lemmygrad or hexbear), as Lenin and later socialist leaders noted, state capitalism has different potential definitions:

“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly”

• Marx

“The state capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry.“

• Lenin

None of these socialist thinkers meant the term to be used in the ultraleft definition you’re using, as a tool to demonize actually exist socialist states and decry them as “not socialist enough”.

China’s economy still runs on wage labor, commodity production, capital accumulation,

Good, developing the productive forces, building a thriving socialist market economy and putting that capital to use to serve the whole people, is the goal of every current socialist state.

massive billionaire class extracting surplus value

As I linked below, the PRC is a mixed economy, where the publicly owned and planned sector predominates, and there is also a restricted private / capitalist sector. I don’t expect an ultraleft to be familiar with the “bargain” strategy, but having a capitalist sector within an overall planned economy, has resulted in the export of tech and production to China, with it becoming an economic powerhouse and primary trading partner for most of the world, and real wages rising 4x in the past 30 years alone. The limited and short term wage exploitation in the private sector (in reality, its a small expense to buy off private capital and keep them operating within the socialist legal framework), has under a socialist government resulted in those incredible economic gains, whereas the capitalist 3rd world is still writhing in poverty, and completely at the mercy of western finance capital.

Plus, you can’t claim the working class controls the state when independent unions are banned, strikes are suppressed,

False. The PRC even supports more strikes than nearly any other country, which clearly irks the western finance rag I linked. Also, people don’t have much reason to strike because of the people’s congresses in nearly every workplace, and the wages rising so much recently. They of course don’t allow US-sponsored strikes and slowdowns, which do happen occasionally.

private CEOs literally sit in the national legislature

A small number of them do, which of course is a good thing if you want to make sure that they’re working towards the betterment of the country, and to avoid them organizing an opposition. Regardless, they do not control the state, and capital has no enshrined rights, especially to organize.

If you’re going to demonize socialist countries in the future, at least post sources for your claims.

State ownership under a capitalist state is not socialism, correct. Private ownership under a socialist state is not capitalism either. You are entirely missing the point of Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Socialism is a transitional mode of production and distribution between capitalism and communism, characterized by social ownership as the principal aspect, ie rising and dominant, aspect of the economy and the working class as in control of the state. Both apply to China right now. The path of socialist construction in China utilizes a Marxist understanding of economics that sees the material basis of markets as decentralized and underdeveloped production, and the material basis of planned economy as highly developed and centralized production.

China maintains social ownership of the commanding heights of the economy which have already reached monopoly scale, and employs controlled marketization to accelerate the development of underdeveloped industry to create the basis for social ownership through development. The CPC stands at the top, a working class party with a strong basis in Marxism-Leninism with Xi Jinping Thought, and uses this dominance of the state to restrict the capitalists from forming a politically unified and coherent class that could undermine this socialist construction and derail it.

Here’s a diagram of that “stages of socialism:”

They are currently developing towards the intermediate stage, with plans to reach it by 2049. That means they are already socialist, just developing towards higher stages of socialism.

As for independent unions, why is the independence of a union from the socialist system a good thing? There is already a massive federation of trade unions, independence from this creates a fulcrum by which the capitalists could leverage against the system. You have a liberal idea of socialism that envisions it as just as disunified and disorganized as capitalism, but socialism is a process of collectivizing. Capitalists are barred from the highest levels of the CPC, and are prevented from ever having a large presence in it.

Neither Bernie nor AOC are pro-communism.

Also communism is not socialism.

Glad you acknowledge it.
Plenty here get real defensive for pointing that out.

I guess we are slightly less indoctrinated into bootlicking the authoritarian state.
We don’t thank our regime troops for their service, our cops don’t get free stuff in shops, etc…
No comically large flags or killer jet fly overs at sports games either.

Then we need to kick these bootlicker EU ‘leaders’ or nato cucks like Rutte out with the US invaders.

Nobody is arguing for a party to have unilateral and unaccountable power. You are deeply confusing how unitary socialist democracy works by alienating the party from the rest of the people, and drawing a hard line between democratic participation in society and the party itself.

Class is not shifting or amorphous. Class is a social relation to ownership of the means of production.

1. Capitalists own the means of production individually.

2. Workers sell their labor power.

In socialism, workers jointly own the means of production.

You are confusing the type of labor with class itself, which makes it amorphous.

Transition is also not shifting or amorphous. Between capitalism, where there is privatized means of production, and communism, where all production is planned and socially owned, is a period where the means of production need to be advanced enough to accommodate social planning, and administration needs to be advanced enough to facilitate it.

You keep separating the party from the people by erasing their shared relations to ownership of the means of production. The party is of, by, and for the working class, and is accountable to the rest of the working class.

Right off the bat, you are already ignoring what I said. I never said nepotism and corrpution did not exist in the USSR. I said that power is not class, class is a social relation to ownership of the means of production. Managerial workers are not their own class, just like plumbers are not their own class. You are confusing a type of labor for a relation to ownership, and thus conflate the two into class.

Your next example is again, confusing the nature of the state. Socialism and communism cannot be brought about by a socialist party winning electorally and replacing the state bit by bit into a socialist one via policy. There is no generic “state,” there are capitalist states, socialist states, etc, and one state is broken and a new one takes its place through revolution alone.

As for replacing socialist democracy and scientific, planned organization with random lottery, this is a recipe for disaster. A truly democratic society is one where the working class as a whole is organized and capable of electing the best among themselves to higher organs, that can prove themselves through practice to their constituents. This can be organized via a single political party, that being the organization of the most politically developed of the working class.

You are explicitly rejecting a competency-based, democratic selection process with one that results in chaos and an easy-to-manipulate state that the bourgeoisie can overturn incredibly easily. This chaos is the foundation by which the bourgeoisie can bring about their own persistence.

In any case, you are getting into the weeds about a specific form of electoral democracy, while entirely ignoring the nature of class and the state. By your own definitions, you would be creating what you believe to be a ruling class. This is why it’s important to actually understand the theory and history you are trying to critique, because all you have done thus far is wax poetic about lottery-based elections while vulgarizing class and the nature of the state.

You’re doing the thing. You’re opening the interaction pre-aggrieved and from a self-imposed prone position, awaiting the boot. Just relax, man. Most groups of people, anywhere in the world, are very chill if you don’t approach them aggressively, or in this case passive-aggresively.

Thanks! I first came across it on Prolewiki, but it’s originally from Cheng Enfu’s On the Three Stages in the Development of Socialism. I’ve been reading more of his work to understand contemporary Chinese Marxist thought.

The average workers are seeing the effect of socialism. Within living memory, workers have gone from foot binding and mass famine on a regular basis to a modernized socialist society. Real wages dramatically improve year over year:

Extreme poverty and homelessness have been eradicated. Home ownership is among the highest in the world, and every day technology is made to benefit the people over corporate profits.

I think you have a caricature of China that exists in your head, but it isn’t the China that exists in reality. Had China adhered to your moralist stance on socialism, that private property is a sin, then the average worker would not have the same levels of dramatic improvements year over year. This is dogmatism, not Marxism.

Since “Totalitarianism” is a word with deeply emotional baggage, let’s see how Wikipedia defines it, and measure it up against Marxism-Leninism and “Stalinism.”

Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that completely controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. It is characterized by its prohibition of opposing political parties and its extreme suppression of opposition to the state. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, where in all political power is held by a dictator. This figure controls the national politics and peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and state-aligned private mass communications media.[4]

In short, any socialist system that has a unitary form of government, no matter how democratic, is “totalitarian.” The additional baggage of propaganda and the use of the word “dictator” are also there to beef this up in scary terms, but at face value any socialist system with a unitary form of government would be totalitarian by this. We will investigate the term dictator later, for now let’s continue:

Two versions of the World War II U.S. propaganda poster “Your Lot in a Totalitarian State” depicting a process of compulsory sham election which took place in totalitarian states, the flags of which – Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy[a] and the Soviet Union – are presented below. In the version on the right, produced after Operation Barbarossa, the flag of the Soviet Union (Allied member) is replaced with that of the Empire of Japan[b] (Axis member), which is not always regarded as totalitarian by Western scholars.[1] In regards to the USSR, the label has also received some criticism.[2][3]

Interesting! Wikipedia even acknowledges that labeling the USSR as “totalitarian” is criticized! Let’s continue a bit further, for the final paragraphs:

A totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as the political economy of the country, the system of education, the arts and sciences, and the private morality of its citizens.[5] In the exercise of power, the difference between a totalitarian government and an authoritarian government is one of degree. Whereas totalitarianism features a charismatic dictator and a fixed worldview, authoritarianism only features a dictator who holds power for the sake of holding power. The authoritarian dictator is supported, either jointly or individually, by a military junta and by the socio-economic elites who are the ruling class of the country.[6]

So, a socialist society with a unified ideology like Marxism-Leninism, and the working class as the rulers of society, is “totalitarian.” It’s doctored with scary language, but easily applies to any socialist state with a cohesive worldview. Continuing:

The word totalitarian was first used in the early 1920s to describe the Italian Fascist government.[7][8] The term totalitarianism gained wider usage in politics of the interwar period; in the early years of the Cold War, it arose from comparison of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin to Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler as a theoretical concept of Western political science. The term achieved hegemony in explaining the nature of Fascist and Communist states, and later entered the Western historiography of Communism, the Soviet Union and the Russian Revolution; in the 21st century, it became applied to Islamist movements and their governments. The concept of totalitarianism has been challenged and criticized by some historians of Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR. While the two states are defined as exemplary cases of totalitarianism, these historians argue that the main characteristics of the concept – total control over society, total mobilization of the masses, and a monolithic centralized character of the government – were never achieved by the dictatorships called totalitarian. To support this claim, the historians argue that the political structures of these states were disorganized and chaotic, and that despite the supposed external similarities between Nazism and Stalinism, their internal logic and structure were substantially different. The applicability of the concept to Islamism has also been criticized.[7][9][10]

Now we get to the juice! The word “Totalitarianism” arose to equate the Nazis and the Communists as “twin evils” with “twin devils!” The word itself arose to discredit communism during the cold war! The truth is that the communists uplifted the working class and oppressed the bourgeoisie, while the Nazis uplifted the capitalist class and oppressed the working classes. Superficial similarities are used to equate the entire systems with foundational opposition! This is a part of Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization. Onto how Wikipedia identifies dictators, to complete this foray:

A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is defined as a state ruled by a dictator.[1][2] The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times of emergency.[2] Like the terms “tyrant” and “autocrat”, dictator came to be used almost exclusively as a non-titular term for oppressive rule.[3] In modern usage, the term dictator is generally used to describe a leader who holds or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power.

Considering that Wikipedia considers unitary socialist governments, no matter how democratic, to be “totalitarian,” they therefore use this to determine the leaders must be “dictators,” no matter the democratic process of selection. Moving on:

20th-century leaders typically described as dictators (from left to right and top to bottom): Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union; Adolf Hitler of Germany; Augusto Pinochet of Chile; Mao Zedong of China; Benito Mussolini of Italy; and Kim Il Sung of North Korea

If it wasn’t obvious before, we again return to the “twin evils, twin devils” comparisons meant to directly equate fascism with communism! It cannot be more clear, this is an attempt to equate any existing socialism with fascism. Continuing:

Dictatorships are often characterised by some of the following: suspension of elections and civil liberties; proclamation of a state of emergency; rule by decree; repression of political opponents; not abiding by the procedures of the rule of law; and the existence of a cult of personality centered on the leader. Dictatorships are often one-party or dominant-party states.[4][5] A wide variety of leaders throughout history have been described as dictators.[6]

More baggage and fearmongering onto the word. Given the careful, liberal construction of definitions, it’s clear that the only purpose on the Wikipedia entry for “Stalinism” is to contribute to the blanket equating of communism with fascism as twin evils, and liberalism as synonymous with democracy, even though socialist societies with communist governments have been more democratic than liberal democracies, and liberal democracies have far more in common with fascism than fascism with communism.

Wikipedia uses Zbigniew Brzezinski as a neutral source on communism.

They’ll say all the same things we hear from the most clueless capitalist subjects, day in, day out. They will firehose their recieved propagands into the gap.

Right and my argument is that there is nothing anarcho-communist about Christiania, which I also wrote out quite explicitly. “The media” or “hired journalists” likewise do not promote anything anarcho-communist about Christiania. That is such a vague and pointless statement however, and even if the opposite were true then that would be in the interest of the bourgoisie since “Christiania sux” and it is thus not something to copy. Promoting it as some cool neat little ancom thing would in fact be detrimental to any leftist movement, since it is not something one should seek to replicate.

Waow

I calls em like I sees em. Plus that’s a different account.

Thanks, and happy to help!