I am living in a liberal (social) democracy and can give numerous reasons as to how and why it is currently failing, even as it is internally miles ahead of any shithole capitalist hellscape such as the US. Goals and ideals matter if they are based upon a factual understanding of material reality.
I am much more interested in a qualitative argument about socialist policy founded on proper material conditions, rather than what you deem to be the historical, and thus I infer the inevitable future, truth of a socialist system.
I am also not going to engage with effort if I do not see some effort in return, which I really do not at the moment.
I am much more interested in a qualitative argument about socialist policy founded on proper material conditions, rather than what you deem to be the historical, and thus I infer the inevitable future, truth of a socialist system.
… while fixating on the historical and therefore inevitable failures of any alternative.
Effort would be wasted against a double standard. If you only want to discuss practice, then the only relevant comparisons are to other real things that already happened. If you get to defend how and why those countries fucked up, by appealing to goals and ideals, and saying they were just shit at doing them - so does everyone else.
This conversation is never worth having unless it’s apples-to-apples.
Things rarely go “swimmingly” for the left because it fights against existing power structures, and those power structures fight back. And the countries that tend to have socialist revolutions also tend to start out with terrible conditions, bad enough for people to rise up, and then made worse by the devastation of conflict. Then they have to grapple with future threats from invasions, sanctions, and clandestine subversion.
In spite of this, many socialist countries have made major improvements to people’s lives, especially in comparison to what the previous regime had been doing.
For example, Cuba was a gangster state under the dictator Batista, who was in league with the American Mafia and plundered the country for his own profits and those of wealthy plantation owners. After the revolution, in spite of sanctions, life expectancy improved greatly surpassed the US, literacy skyrocketed, and the country now has the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, who are regularly sent abroad to provide aid. Cuba recently (2022) passed an amendment to its constitution which greatly strengthened LGBT rights and gender equality.
Stalin and Mao, famous capitalists. Yeah? Otherwise, no, history has some prime examples of leftists fucking things up amongst themselves.
If you’d like to compare those historical examples to theory, instead of defending them purely as-they-were - great. But then so would anyone discussing any liberal democracy. It would be dishonest to demand a defense of practice alone unless we’re judging against practice alone.
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I am living in a liberal (social) democracy and can give numerous reasons as to how and why it is currently failing, even as it is internally miles ahead of any shithole capitalist hellscape such as the US. Goals and ideals matter if they are based upon a factual understanding of material reality.
I am much more interested in a qualitative argument about socialist policy founded on proper material conditions, rather than what you deem to be the historical, and thus I infer the inevitable future, truth of a socialist system.
I am also not going to engage with effort if I do not see some effort in return, which I really do not at the moment.
… while fixating on the historical and therefore inevitable failures of any alternative.
Effort would be wasted against a double standard. If you only want to discuss practice, then the only relevant comparisons are to other real things that already happened. If you get to defend how and why those countries fucked up, by appealing to goals and ideals, and saying they were just shit at doing them - so does everyone else.
This conversation is never worth having unless it’s apples-to-apples.
Things rarely go “swimmingly” for the left because it fights against existing power structures, and those power structures fight back. And the countries that tend to have socialist revolutions also tend to start out with terrible conditions, bad enough for people to rise up, and then made worse by the devastation of conflict. Then they have to grapple with future threats from invasions, sanctions, and clandestine subversion.
In spite of this, many socialist countries have made major improvements to people’s lives, especially in comparison to what the previous regime had been doing.
For example, Cuba was a gangster state under the dictator Batista, who was in league with the American Mafia and plundered the country for his own profits and those of wealthy plantation owners. After the revolution, in spite of sanctions, life expectancy improved greatly surpassed the US, literacy skyrocketed, and the country now has the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, who are regularly sent abroad to provide aid. Cuba recently (2022) passed an amendment to its constitution which greatly strengthened LGBT rights and gender equality.
Not really, the ones that had promise were conquered by capitalists, and all states should be abolished anyways.
Do you have any examples of right wing governments that don’t primarily exist to protect the interests of their oligarchy?
Stalin and Mao, famous capitalists. Yeah? Otherwise, no, history has some prime examples of leftists fucking things up amongst themselves.
If you’d like to compare those historical examples to theory, instead of defending them purely as-they-were - great. But then so would anyone discussing any liberal democracy. It would be dishonest to demand a defense of practice alone unless we’re judging against practice alone.