Comparing socialism to trickle-down economics is a false-equivalence. Trickle-down was a lie sold to the working class to justify lower taxes and safety nets, nothing trickles down. Socialist economies like the PRC, USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc have had the opposite experience to varying degrees, an uplifting of the working class.
It is absolutely not a reasonable assessment of the USSR that relies on Stalin simply being “insane.” He was paranoid towards his later years, sure, but he was never “insane.” Further, Stalin was neither an absolute leader, nor was he a bad leader. The USSR was run collectively, from top to bottom, Stalin merely had the most individual influence. The structure of the USSR required lots of input from every part of the system. Further, under Stalin, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates tripled, healthcare and education was free and high quality, housing was cheap or even free, unemployment was practically 0, and the USSR went from feudalism to a developed economy that defeated the Nazis.
The idea of a “political class” is absurd. There were administrators and government officials, yes, but the top of soviet society was about ten times wealthier than the bottom. This numbers in the thousands to millions in Tsarism and capitalism. You have a fundamentally flawed view of socialism.
As for China, adopting market reforms does not mean transitioning to capitalism. They always had classes, even the DPRK has special economic zones like Rason that have limited private property. In China, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, they have a socialist market economy and are in the primary stage of socialism.
All in all, you have a very liberal, western view of socialism and socialist history that does not correspond to material reality.
I’m saying that I’d take even a full on trickle-down society if NK is a good society to you solely based on the “working class being more equal”.
It absolutely is. Even before he went full on paranoid tens of millions of people starved to death because it was more important to collectivise just for the sake of it rather than taking a pragmatic approach to transition. But hey, that’s okay because the working class had more power, right? No one ever has “absolute” power; Stalin was way more powerful than anyone should ever argue for. Hitler also improved the economy of Germany, are we gonna praise him now? And Stalin, the dude that you apparently love, did help defeat the Nazis by sacrificing 20 million young men and being lucky with the weather. But that’s surely due to Soviet socialism being great, right?
It is absolutely not absurd to talk of a political class. When a certain group of people get the best houses, the best food, the dachas, the best security, access to the secret phones, yes you have a damn political class… I have a realistic view of socialism. You have an insanely rose-tinted view of evil regimes that were never the type of socialist they should’ve been.
Please, China is out-capitalisming basically every capitalist society. They’re built up around amassing personal wealth and mass consumption.
There’s literally nothing socialist about modern-day China except that they have a so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”. And by that I don’t mean that it’s a bad country - it’s thriving more than most Western countries and it’s safe, clean, and well-off in most places.
All in all you have the view of a privileged c*** who read Marx once and thinks they’re cool but have no experience with totalitarian states
This is all anticommunist gish-gallop with no bearing on material reality nor an understanding of socialism. The DPRK is villianized largely the same way Cuba is, it’s doing well despite overwhelming sanctions. Stalin didn’t change the weather to cause the 1930s famine nor did he tell the kulaks to burn their crops. China is socialist, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and the proletariat is in charge of the state.
Overall, you have no clue what you’re talking about, so you parrot standard liberalism.
Comparing socialism to trickle-down economics is a false-equivalence. Trickle-down was a lie sold to the working class to justify lower taxes and safety nets, nothing trickles down. Socialist economies like the PRC, USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc have had the opposite experience to varying degrees, an uplifting of the working class.
It is absolutely not a reasonable assessment of the USSR that relies on Stalin simply being “insane.” He was paranoid towards his later years, sure, but he was never “insane.” Further, Stalin was neither an absolute leader, nor was he a bad leader. The USSR was run collectively, from top to bottom, Stalin merely had the most individual influence. The structure of the USSR required lots of input from every part of the system. Further, under Stalin, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates tripled, healthcare and education was free and high quality, housing was cheap or even free, unemployment was practically 0, and the USSR went from feudalism to a developed economy that defeated the Nazis.
The idea of a “political class” is absurd. There were administrators and government officials, yes, but the top of soviet society was about ten times wealthier than the bottom. This numbers in the thousands to millions in Tsarism and capitalism. You have a fundamentally flawed view of socialism.
As for China, adopting market reforms does not mean transitioning to capitalism. They always had classes, even the DPRK has special economic zones like Rason that have limited private property. In China, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, they have a socialist market economy and are in the primary stage of socialism.
All in all, you have a very liberal, western view of socialism and socialist history that does not correspond to material reality.
I’m saying that I’d take even a full on trickle-down society if NK is a good society to you solely based on the “working class being more equal”.
It absolutely is. Even before he went full on paranoid tens of millions of people starved to death because it was more important to collectivise just for the sake of it rather than taking a pragmatic approach to transition. But hey, that’s okay because the working class had more power, right? No one ever has “absolute” power; Stalin was way more powerful than anyone should ever argue for. Hitler also improved the economy of Germany, are we gonna praise him now? And Stalin, the dude that you apparently love, did help defeat the Nazis by sacrificing 20 million young men and being lucky with the weather. But that’s surely due to Soviet socialism being great, right?
It is absolutely not absurd to talk of a political class. When a certain group of people get the best houses, the best food, the dachas, the best security, access to the secret phones, yes you have a damn political class… I have a realistic view of socialism. You have an insanely rose-tinted view of evil regimes that were never the type of socialist they should’ve been.
Please, China is out-capitalisming basically every capitalist society. They’re built up around amassing personal wealth and mass consumption. There’s literally nothing socialist about modern-day China except that they have a so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”. And by that I don’t mean that it’s a bad country - it’s thriving more than most Western countries and it’s safe, clean, and well-off in most places.
All in all you have the view of a privileged c*** who read Marx once and thinks they’re cool but have no experience with totalitarian states
This is all anticommunist gish-gallop with no bearing on material reality nor an understanding of socialism. The DPRK is villianized largely the same way Cuba is, it’s doing well despite overwhelming sanctions. Stalin didn’t change the weather to cause the 1930s famine nor did he tell the kulaks to burn their crops. China is socialist, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and the proletariat is in charge of the state.
Overall, you have no clue what you’re talking about, so you parrot standard liberalism.