Comment on It really is like this
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 day agoSocialism isn’t when the government does stuff for the people, it’s when the people take matters into their own hands and do stuff for the good of each other. Even if a state behaves in the most benevolent way possible, it is not socialist unless the workers have collective ownership of the means of production.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
By the definition there are no socialist countries.
When people talk about socialism in the real world it doesn’t mean owning the means of production
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Only because the very concepts of ownership and the collective-individual dichotomy are necessarily vague and subjective. China considers themselves socialist because they equivocate the people with the state. If the people are collectively represented by the state and the state owns (some of) the means of production, then at least transitively the people own (some of) the means of production.
As an anarchist I don’t believe the state adequately represents the interests of the people, nor do I think it could even if it were radically democratic and egalitarian, though I would still certainly prefer that to the existing status quo. Somewhere a line must be drawn arbitrarily and I prefer to draw it on the other side of authoritarian state control.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
Isn’t that kinda the line between socialism and communism? That communism has no state, but that a socialist state can act as a sort of intermediary.
Not that it’s the only socialist model, mind you; a market economy composed entirely of individual private worker co-ops is another model, for example. Then there’s the issue of implementation, whether the people actually democratically control the government.
But ideologically, while not communist, I don’t see how that structure can’t be considered socialist.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 hour ago
It’s not that it can’t be, I just personally don’t consider a state socialist unless it is a functioning democracy that enacts what is at least an approximation of the will of the workers. It becomes obvious this is not the case when a state is hostile towards workers who attempt to organize.