China isn’t expansionist, though.

I suppose that exists on Reddit, but I don’t really see that much overall.

I don’t think that was their intention.

Ah, gotcha.

If it’s not on the list, it isn’t socialist. As for the PRC, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state, it’s socialist by definition.

No? To the contrary, people need to work if they are able, at least until automation can cover most production and distribution.

Do you live in Cuba, Vietnam, the PRC, DPRK, Laos, or Venezuela? If not, you don’t live in a socialist country, but a social democracy, which is capitalism but with safety nets. These social democracies in Europe rely on imperialism to subsidize their safety nets.

I don’t see anyone explaining socialism that way.

We don’t live in a civilized world while most of the planet lives in threat of the US Empire and its vassal states.

May the US Empire and its vassals crumble to dust.

The soviet union wasn’t run by a dictator. To the contrary, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.

When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.

The soviet union did not “bleed dry” their member-states, or anyone else. As a socialist economy, it did not need to run on the same mechanisms of capital expansion the west does. Instead, all socialist countries saw dramatic growth over time, and riding key life metrics.

Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).

• V.I. Lenin

Just some context on the spiral bit!

Believe me, I’m not a Eurocomm, I’m very aware of the lacking Statesian left and the weakening of the movement in Europe.

Fair enough!

Yea I’m not going to press you any further, I’ll edit it out of my comments. Yes, I’m a Statesian.

Gotcha. Either way, I’m aware that activism can be draining and it can be easy to become demotivated.

Filler text

Sure, but I don’t really think that’s universal.

The Russian Social Democratic Party was a communist party, not what we think of as social democracy. I’m specifically talking about Russia, because Russia was the only country at the beginning of the 20th century to actually achieve socialism. Your family, unless I’m misreading you, isn’t what I’m talking about when advocating for socialism, because they never achieved it if they weren’t in Russia at the time of World War I.

The bolsheviks supported pulling out of the war, and did. I’m not referring to non-communist parties, this meme itself is about the USSR. I’m not sure why you’re bringing in social democratic parties.