Comments by "K X" (@kx7500) on "Historian Alfred McCoy: As Tensions Rise over Taiwan, U.S. & China “Edging Ever Closer” to War" video.
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@leogeek sure I appreciate the genuine question, and for the record I don’t think you’re dishonest or anything like that.
Socialism has a long history at this point. The one consistent tenet of it always being at its core, worker management of their own workplaces. So basically an economy that is ran bottom-up. During the Russian revolution, this was still what socialism was seen to mean. However Lenin when he was rising to prominence and the revolution was taking place and workers were taking over their workplaces, created a new political dogma called “vanguardism” which basically argued that the way towards socialism was to not directly hand over power to workers but to centralize power in the hands of a state, and basically did a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify how creating an elite vanguard party ruling over society would somehow lead to worker’s emancipation. Workers councils tried fighting this, and many socialists, communists, and especially anarchists at the time noticed this was some weird right wing deviation of what socialism was supposed to be. This wasn’t a naturally evolving meaning of socialism, this was an authoritarian state appropriating a popular term opportunistically for its own power. That combined with the fact that this gave America a perfect opportunity to demonize socialism by giving that term to the USSR basically made all genuine discourse on socialism poisoned thereafter. Many socialists did genuinely get caught up into supporting the USSR as they saw it as beacon of hope and were willing to look past a lot of things because it fronted the idea that it was socialist so successfully. This has happened with multiple different political terms. “Libertarianism” actually used to mean a left wing movement basically akin to anarchism. The term “free market” has no place in current society, our markets are controlled by centralized private and state power with little control or freedom of the masses to trade. Communism, a stateless classless moneyless society is somehow now a totalitarian state, the precise opposite. Basically, vanguardists are not genuine socialists and are closer to right wingers than anyone on the left. The most consistent tenet of the political spectrum is one of supporting or being against social hierarchies/oppression, and the one different systems ally or fight against each other most on generally. This is why anarchism is considered to be the farthest left position possible. Because it categorically rejects all social domination of others in every form.
To sum up, actual socialism is a society/economy in which workers directly run their own workplaces, rather than a capitalist society where private owners control workplaces top down. Many states around the world still cling to the label socialism for propaganda purposes similar to the USSR, it’s the same as the USA calling itself democratic or free while elections and politicians and policies are practically bought off entirely by massive corporate power with remarkable consistency. There are no socialist states in existence as far as I’m aware. There are countries that are CLOSER to socialism than others, for example nazi Germany was significantly farther from socialism than the United States, and Finland is significantly closer than the USA. But majority of the power is still in private and state power separated from the masses, and therefore still capitalist. Genuinely socialist countries are crushed under the collaborative weight of capitalist powers unifying to destroy them top down. If you’d like to see a phenomenal example of a socialist society currently in existence, the Zapatista uprising in Mexico is a particularly good example, and not only are they socialist but anarchist as well. (Though they reject all political labels put onto them, which I support.) the anarchist revolution 8 million people strong during the Spanish civil war is a great example too. If you’re looking for a nation-state that’s socialist though, you’re not gonna find any since that’s kinda antithetical to socialism in concept, and any that came close were typically crushed by the United States in recent history, such as Yugoslavia and Cuba. I of course as an anarchist still have critiques of many societies that don’t seek to liberate people across all sectors like race, sex, gender, gay, age, etc etc. as well. Hope this helps you.
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