this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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"Democratic Socialism" is a bit of a misnomer. It usually means one of two things, achieving Socialism via liberal democracy (impossible, as was proven by Rosa Luxemburg) or creating a Socialism via revolution but recreating liberal democracy, and not Socialist democracy, which is contradictory. In reality, therefore, it remains a Social Democratic ideology that upholds Capitalism but wishes to expand safety nets, and therefore isn't Socialist at all.
As for State Capitalism, that refers to a specific period of time, namely the NEP. The economy of states guided by Marxism historically are guided by public ownership and central planning, which was core to Marx's conception of an eventual Communist society. "State Capitalism" refers to a specific formation where a Socialist State employs a market-focused economy and heavily guides it in a manner to achieve quick development, as Marxists believe public ownership and central planning is incredibly difficult to build "from the ground up" but that Markets readily create the infrastructure for public ownership and central planning through competition.
Err what.
Lenin's economy. Market-focussed. I'm just going to leave that standing there, uncommented.
See I don't even disagree, in principle, with the statement "The SPD does not know how to bring about socialism". Only Anarchists do. Thing is: The SPD's approach is still way more on the money than anything tankies have ever come up with.
With respect to Rosa Luxemburg, I am referring to Reform or Revolution, an excellent work.
For the uncommented bit, I am not sure the point you are making here. The goal of Socialism is not a fully publicly owned and planned economy, those are the means once industry has developed enough to make such a system practical. Russia was extremely underdeveloped when the NEP was employed. I think reading Marx might help you understand a bit more:
In a country where such a process hadn't yet become more developed, the Marxist answer is to create the foundations for public ownership and planning through a highly controlled and temporary market-focused economy, which was done away with.
The bit on the SPD is a bit silly, you claim that they are on the money yet have never created any form of Socialism, while Marxists have. You can be an Anarchist if you think that's best, that's your choice, but I recommend reading Marx if you want to better critique Marxists.
Liberals do not want to critique Marxism, they wish to endlessly dismiss it
Yep, eventually twisting into knots to defend movements that haven't accomplished anything as "truly practical."
Sure bud. Tell yourself that. While the USSR ultimately reached the stateless part, no actual groundwork for socialism was laid so banditry took over once the Bolshevik power structure collapsed. What followed was a free-for-all until the KGB got its shit together and... instituted imperialist nationalist capitalism. That organisation really hasn't changed since the times of the Tsar.
The Bolsheviks did not build resilience against any of that because building a society which is resilient against rule of minority groups seeking to exploit the masses would have undermined their own rule. The whole thing is inherently self-contradicting, Anarchists have been telling that Marx himself long before either of us were born so stop telling us to "read Marx". Rather, you read "On Authority" and identify the strawmen.
"Stateless" doesn't mean "governmentless," though the dissolution of the Socialist system nearly a century after its founding does not mean they never had a Socialist economy. Further, such a system did not "exploit the masses," it achieved massive working class victories such as free healthcare and education, doubled life expectancy, over tripling literacy rates to be higher than the Western world, and democratized the economy.
On Authority doesn't strawman anything.