Comment on This is why Americans hate Socialism.

mechoman444@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

O my God. I cannot even begin to tell you how truly stupid this meme is!

Building collective power and protecting the vulnerable.

Show me one example of a socialist or communist country that has actually accomplished what this meme is describing. And no, don’t just say China. China is a hybrid economy that has incorporated extensive markets and private enterprise alongside substantial state ownership and control. It isn’t some straightforward example of the socialism this meme is talking about.

More importantly, socialism and communism were never originally designed around “protecting the vulnerable” in the first place. The central issue was economic power and ownership.

The fundamental socialist argument was that the people who collectively produce wealth should have collective ownership and control over the means of production, rather than allowing those means of production to be concentrated in the hands of a relatively small class of private owners.

And ironically, wealth concentration is exactly the problem we’re dealing with today. You don’t need to invent a “parasitic pedophile class” or some grand conspiracy to make that argument. Concentration of wealth inevitably creates concentration of political and economic power, and that is a legitimate problem that deserves serious discussion.

You can absolutely argue that collective economic power would provide greater protection for vulnerable people. But that’s an argument for socialism. It isn’t the original definition or purpose of socialism.

If you’re going to defend socialism, at least defend what socialism actually is rather than turning it into a generic synonym for “things that help vulnerable people.”

And can we please stop attributing every good thing a government does to socialism? Socialism is an economic system. Programs designed to help people are social programs run by the government, and they are not inherently socialist or communist. Providing public services and social programs is simply one of the basic functions of a governing system.

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