From a Swedish standpoint, this is just nonsense. The Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Island and Denmark) are all in the top six most democratic countries in the world (according to The economist, England). These are were much socialist countries and most definitely democratic.
Then you have china, soviet and alike. Those are countries that call(ed) themself communist. I will argue that that's however mostly used as a label to legitimate the government and to obscure what they really are, in the same manner north Korea is formaly named the democratic people's republic of Korea (DPRK). Those countries does/did not operate as communist states the way that Marx and other political theorists imaginend them.
Capital has a lot of power in China to the point where some have argued it is a State Capitalist system. At the very least there is a political tension between nationalist, Maoists, and capitalists within the Chinese government and Communist Party there.
Does the average Chinese system actually feel and justifiably so, that they voice can be heard and direct the government or are they more likely to believe that speaking up will result in worse conditions for themselves and those around them?
Yes i know it's not perfect and the exact positions might not be completely accurate but I still think the overall picture it paints it useful. Maybe we aren't the most democratic countries but we're defently democratic. You can check this whit whatever source you happen to prefere
The United States was forged by a bourgeois revolution, and the wealthy, land-owning, and often slave-owning Founding Fathers crafted a bourgeois democracy, which by design was not democratic, and it never has been. The Separation of Powers is BROKEN, Here’s Why. The US state has always predominantly been in the hands of the capitalist class to subjugate the working class and to protect their property, which originally included their chattel slaves.
I'd like to add that the nordic countries are not socialist by any metric.
Also, we shouldn't be so quick to trust western media on the DPRK, who have gotten to the point that they can literally say anything about their enemies, and have it be believed.
They Nordic countries type of socialism may not be a replacement for capitalism (I live in Sweden so I'd know) but works alot more like the type of socialism that's common in Europe.
This terminology might not be on spot but I still think the Nordic countries are what most people would refere to as at least a little bit socialist. Maybe the proper term is social democratic?
The proper term is social democratic. Socialism has a simple and specific definition. Those Nordic countries have changed nothing about who owns the means of production and therefore have no relation to socialism.
The Nordic countries are at best welfare capitalist states, and that welfare relies on the super-exploitation of the Global South. No Nordic country is even gesturing toward the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. In fact they’re moving in the opposite direction, toward the neoliberal privatization of more and more of the commons and the financialization of everything, which is burying the working class in debt. The Eurozone is just the cartel of the European private banks, and it was designed to enforce neoclassical economics and preclude Keynsian economics.
Jag hae inte läst Marx (men har en kompis som håller på med det) och jag är faktiskt 15. Men jag vet en del om vad han tänkte/skrev t.ex. att Marx inte uppmanar till att döda demonstranter och bygga murar för att stänga inne folk. Han beskriver ett samhälle styrt av arbetetarna, inte ett samhälle styrt av en liten majoritet med enorma klasskillnader som i dagens Kina.