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Actually Existing Socialisms (AES): The five predominantly recognized AES states are China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and, [North] Korea.
The Nordic model is a social democratic one, which is still fundamentally a capitalist one. This is what someone like Bernie Sanders claims to want.
Sanders gets away with calling himself a socialist because Americans have forgotten what socialism actually means: “social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.” Americans have forgotten what socialism means because the American socialists were persecuted into obscurity in the 20th century. So now even the vocabulary for socialism is lost in Orwellian fashion.
Now, is north korea socialist? Do the workers there enjoy democratic control over the means of production? Or really democratic control over anything? I'll admit that info from North Korea is mostly not great but it seems to me that they are run only by the one ruling family.
I have similar doubts about china and have always seen it as more state-capitalist than anything else. Simply because it seems to me that individual workers do not own the companies they work at. It seems to me that China has corporations structured almost exactly like our own in the west. Unless I've been misled and these massive Chinese corps really are co-ops with the workers having an equal say in the decisions of the company.
I think these are very good questions. You can’t rely on Atlantacist government propaganda or corporate media to get good answers to them, unfortunately. The don’t like there to be any threats of a good example, which is why the CIA tried to assassinate Fidel Castro hundreds of times and why Cuba is still under a trade embargo. It’s one of the reasons they never stop attempting regime changes (the other reason being to steal countries’ natural and labor resources).
North Korea is especially difficult for a Burgerlander like me to get a clear picture of. I hope the Kim dynasty largely acts as a state figurehead, but I haven’t investigated and have no idea.
China does have a limited capitalism going on right now, which, if I understand correctly, is a part of the ongoing Reform and Opening Up project. From my (still fairly ignorant) P.O.V., I can’t help but imagine a risk to this strategy, where the capitalists become strong enough to wrest control. The project has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty, though. The government recently took the capitalist real estate speculators to heel (to the dismay of capitalists everywhere and the delight of people just wanting a place to live), so it seems they haven’t lost control. Their professed long-term plan is to phase out capitalism entirely.
It’s worth noting that no Marxist worth their salt will paint any of these socialist countries as utopias, especially given that Marxists reject utopian socialisms.
Oh I know that China has lifted lots of people out of poverty and is generally popular with the population. But they engage in massive censorship among other issues and I just can't see how there can be a democracy (which I consider the most important component to make something socialist) with that degree of control. What I meant with China is it seems to me the state is the capitalists. The state has control over all the means of production in the country and I believe it uses it for its own benefit over the benefits and desires of the workers at those places.
I guess I'm just an anti-authoritarian first and my issue with capitalism has always been the authoritarian nature in which we parcel out resources and I can't see bringing up China or northkorea as examples of what I want. Though I do often have to push back against liberal narratives especially about Vietnam and Cuba and China.
But I'm not a Marxist though I do think he had some good ideas and was skilled at inspiring class consciousness. Ive always been more inspired by anarchist philosphy and go by Libertarian-socialist if forced to pick a name. I just think that we've seen now that a dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't go away and that you trade one state power for the other.
But they engage in massive censorship among other issues and I just can’t see how there can be a democracy (which I consider the most important component to make something socialist) with that degree of control
Maybe they do, maybe that’s mostly the propaganda we’re fed. I’m sure that at least some of the “censorship” is the Chinese State keeping foreign capitalist enterprises from dominating China’s indigenous internet.
The state has control over all the means of production in the country and I believe it uses it for its own benefit.
I do think that is predominant (though there are also worker co-ops & individual projects). If China is a democratic socialist state, then the “it” in “its own benefit” is largely the working class. This is in contrast with a bourgeois democracy like the US, where the “it” is largely the capitalist class. Our votes are somewhat effective when they don’t conflict with the capitalists, but otherwise not so much. We get fed a lot of propaganda about socialist states having an authoritarian “ruling class,” analogous to our capitalist class, living high on the hog at the expense of the people, but is that really so, or is it projection?
I guess I’m just an anti-authoritarian first […] I’ve always been more inspired by anarchist philosophy and go by Libertarian-socialist if forced to pick a name.
Quite understandable: I came from that place. It took a lot of convincing, because my heels were pretty dug in to a Noam Chomsky/Mark Fisher position. I think one of the quicker/easier ways to seeing arguments on why this position has never and can never succeed, and why the “authoritarianism” of communism has succeeded and is a necessary step on the path to socialism, is Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds. It’s a short book and as such doesn’t—on its own—provide a whole lot of backing evidence; it’s a jumping-off point for further inquiry.
Well I mean we know China blocks a ton of info and publishing must pass state censors. And vpns etc aren't really allowed there. And Chinese corps have some brutal working conditions. I'm not saying there aren't things China has done right that we should look into but I don't see them as a shining example of the working man getting control over his own destiny.
I will give that book a read but I disagree with your assertion that china, or the soviet union succeeded in bringing socialism and I'll continue to work with but never trust leninists maoists etc. due to all the historical violence marxist-leninist revolutionaries have used against anarchists and people who believe like me as soon as they have power of their own.
A few capitalist tech companies started a brutal 996 system, which from what I’ve heard was illegal, and the state has since been cracking down on it. I agree that we shouldn’t assume what China has done to be the best possible path, nor should we directly imitate it, because our material conditions are very different from theirs.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Great thank you for the info and links.