Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
Words mean what they're used to mean. Even the word "government" is wildly different between Europe and the US. We flip out over headlines like the government of Belgium has collapsed! and it's only as much of a kerfuffle as the House trying to elect a Speaker.
What's wrong with the DPRK? The only source that life there is terrible are defector's testimonies, which contradict each other on a daily basis and where the worst, most emotional stories are rewarded with fame and money. Often it's the only way to make ends meats for them. If you come to the south from the north you are a nobody.
Furthermore, the DPRK has never threatened anyone.
They have a 100% literacy rate (literally on the CIA website) and every citizen is guaranteed free healthcare, free education and a place to live. They use all of their arible land for food production but because of the sanctions and their mountainous terrain sometimes they have scarcities, but no one is starving. Their constitution is full of human and political rights and social gurantees.
And to proof that I don't shill for any country calling itself socialist, I don't like China at all (while still thinking that they are at least better for the world than the US).
And of course there are things to criticize the DPRK for, like the lack of LGBT rights and their weapons exports and hackergroups. But considering the sanctions (that even China upholds) they are in very dier need of foreign currency.
I would also encourage everybody to study the history of Korea.
The only source that life there is terrible are defector's testimonies, which contradict each other on a daily basis and where the worst, most emotional stories are rewarded with fame and money.
Their average height is much lower than people from South Korea. The most likely cause is malnutrition. When malnutrition affects even the military, your civilians aren't doing well.
If you're looking for sources, there are plenty of links should you search for "north korean vs south korean height". The difference is pretty dramatic for 75 years of isolation.
one thing i might add is the fact that most if not all of the propagated lies about the dprk are projection. sexual slavery was a thing the american occupation forces engaged in massively and south korean dictator pak chong-hui was killed during a dinner party with a underage concubine present. later, haircut policing was a thing in the south during the 1980s under chon tu-hwan. the most prominent korean defector, pak yon-mi is a white supremacist btw.
i believe that the whole hacking thing is massively exaggerated by western media as part of their whole "the enemy is both weak and strong"-strategy. it is both a way to engineer further fear mongering against korea, as well as to mask their own incompetence. but even if im wrong and they are indeed from the dprk, i still find them quite based and funny tbh.
do you happen to have any resources on the lgbt situation within the county? i would love to educate myself on the topic.
i also slightly disagree with you on china. they never seized being a socialist state, but have sadly become revisionist since deng. that doesnt make them any less worthy of critical support though.
Man im pretty socialist who lives in ex east germany with my parents actually being parz of that time and i gotta tell you, with what i hear from them, it was horrible
"Throughout Eastern Europe and the former USSR, many people grudgingly admitted that conditions were better under communism (New York Times, 3/30/95). Pro-capitalist Angela Stent, of George- town University, allows that "most people are worse off than they were under Communism . . . . The quality of life has deteriorated with the spread of crime and the disappearance of the social safety net" (New York Times, 12/20/93).
An East German steelworker is quoted as saying "I do not know if there is a future for me, and I'm not too hopeful. The fact is, I lived better under Communism" (New York Times, 3/3/91). An elderly Polish woman, reduced to one Red Cross meal a day: "I´m not Red but I have to say life for poor people was better before .... Now things are good for businessmen but not for us poor" (New York Times, 3/17/91). One East German woman commented that the West German womens movement was only beginning to fight for "what we already had here... We took it for granted because of the socialist system. Now we realize what we [lost]" (Los Angeles Times, 8/6/91)." Michael Parenti - "Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism".
A new book by Kristen Ghodsee, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that women have better sex under socialism.
If that sounds strange to you, consider this: A survey of East and West Germans after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women (the socialist side of Germany during the Cold War) had twice as many orgasms as Western women.
What in the world accounts for such a wide gap?
According to Ghodsee, it’s about social safety nets. If, she argues, you build a society that supports women and doesn’t punish them for having children or devalue their labor, it turns out they’ll be happier and have better sex.
But it doesn't matter how many studies or surveys or policy differences you point to -- some guy always has an old relative whose story outweighs everything.
What exactly are these quotes supposed to prove? This was what, a few months or a few years after reunification? Any social change that large is going to cause some turbulence. And of course Parenti has an agenda, so he wouldn't include someone lauding their new experience.
Ah yes the oh so good DDR with exciting features such as
no freedom of movement
constant shortage of any goods
being a dictatorship
(contrary to your first point) a housing shortage
a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time
political pressure
control over the media
the fucking stasi
And what i mean by pretty socialist is: everyone gets equal opportunities no matter what race, religion, gender, political views, etc. I want that chad - who just lost all his belongings - has the same chance to live a fulfilled live as elon musk has. I abhorr the fact that there are billionaire's or even just millionaire's while other people have to choose between paying rent or eating, and those people not even being in the worst situation compared to others.
This is bullshit. I will refute most of your points as someone who has lived in Socialist Hungary before the iron curtain.
Housing was not guaranteed. You were assigned lodging based on need. If you had no children, you were staying with your parents and two siblings in the 1BR apartment. Once you got a kid, if you were a young couple, you got an apartment with an elderly in it, that you had to take care of along with your new born, until their death. After that the apartment would be yours. To overcome the shortages of housing, the government invested into building temporary housing called panel buildings. They were not meant to last for more than twenty years.
Education was discriminatory in the sense that those favoured by the party got a pass. You have long hair? Your dad had long hair? You are a Gypsy? Yeah sure, you can pass elementary grade 8, but you sure as hell won't be allowed to go into a four-year highschool for your profession and graduation . Best you could hope for is a 2 year middle school for a manual labour job (szakmunkásképző). If at all. Often it's off to the fields for you to work at the communal fields.
0% unemployment because if you are unemployed you go to prison. Off to the fields or else!
Sales tax (VAT) has been 25% even before 1988
The railway system the country has was all built before the second world war. It got maintained during socialism, but the best they could do was put train drivers on concession show trials and execute them when accidents happened instead of actually improving the system. To this day the max speed on these rail lines is 120kmph and many of the smaller lines are falling into disrepair and unelectrified.
Healthcare was universal, however it was not highly developed nor without discrimination. What was true for education was also true here. You better be a good party member or else. If you were lucky, you had a relative working in healthcare to skip waiting lines (I've benefited of this a lot)
This one was a given. Although you still had to pay for meals for your kid at the daycare. But the times were also different back then. Those responsible for child care were not necessarily professionals and hitting children if they had misbehaved was still a thing.
I don't think this had a measurable comparison in any way. How do you draw comparisons?
Ahh yes, how nice. Went from nazi dictatorship to literal Russia planted dictatorships in both East Germany and Hungary ('56).
Его поинт в том что социализм это не только исковерканный марксистско-ленинистский брэйн рот жёстко социально репрессивных стран как бест корея, полно и анархистов и соц демократов которые так же зовут себя социалистами но они не будут симпить за Ким Чин Ина, лол
There is a massive difference between liking a concept or the implementation of that concept. Communism is an utopia, socialism is seen as the way to get there.
Socialism did not proof to be viable in reality, with dictators claiming to set up communist states, while not setting up working socialist societies.
The thing is that implementing such a society includes a massive restructuring of government and ownership of goods. Those measures have a very strong tendency to dissolve in civil wars and dictatorships.
It is of course an option to label anyone who doesn’t want to give up resources an enemy of the class / state and imprison and torture them, but it does not create a stable society in which people actually choose to live, if they can decide on that.
I would caution you about socialism being a way to get to communism.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of communist ideology, believed democratic socialism was a sham and true communism could only be achieved through a violent overthrow of the bourgeois.
The complex restructuring you mentioned is why they thought a transition from socialism to communism would not work.
The US is included in my list too with the Native American genocide for what its worth lol. But people tend to forget that Soviet Russia and Communist China killed millions of their own people. They should not be praised or imitated. We should learn from the horrible mistakes of the past.
libertarian "socialists" are a deeply idealist tendency that didnt manage to get anything done ever. the only thing they do is criticize actually existing socialist projects, mostly using state department talking points. the concept of critical support is unknown to them and the only revolutions they like are the ones that fail. they are puppets in the hands of the cia.
It's not very enlightened to call entire movements like libertarian socialism (AKA anarchism) just idealist, ineffectual, and to imply they're essentially brainwashed by the US government.
Anti-state movements have a history as long and storied as socialism, and theoretical frameworks for their beliefs far more complex than you give them credit for.
Lemmy is less popular and therefore more niche, meaning you'll get smaller communities with stronger opinions, and therefore way more political extremism
It's only like two guys that have been doing this for the last week, and I have no idea what their game is.
Lemmy doesn't have enough people for the propaganda to make a meaningful difference, even if everyone did buy into it.
Are they stupid?