How close is socialism to coming back in Russia and Belarus? (April 2024 edition)
How close is socialism to coming back in Russia and Belarus? (April 2024 edition)
Here I am, asking pretty much the same question again, only a year later. I ask again because conditions have changed a lot even in as little as a year. BRICS is becoming more powerful, state enterprises are becoming stronger in Russia, the USSR remains a positive memory to the majority of Russians and Belarusians. What are your thoughts and predictions?
I'll try not to ask the same question again to prevent from annoying yall.
From the perspective of a USian, no one is implementing land reform until China does it. The new "going socialist" is aligning with BRICS and more specifically aligning with China and Iran. This is sort of a net new development in the last ?5? years where now instead of going socialist, it's more important and more significant to be anti-imperialist. One of the big tipping points will be when Cuba gets healthier from BRICS. That's my real bellwether for periphery socialism on the horizon. If Cuba gets what it needs from BRICS aligned countries, which honestly needs to happen now that Russia has demonstrated that sanctions can be ignored, then the major hurdle for "international rules-based" socialism is cleared. But the empire needs to fall before socialist revolutions are safe and that means every socialist revolution is now an anti-imperialist one first and an economic one second. That's the times I think we're living in.
from the perspective of someone in the periphery, anti-imperialism was always the most important bit. if the empire really falls, not much is stopping most of us from even allende-style social democracy as a path to socialism. dealing only with our local burgeoise would be infinitely easier than the current state of affairs.
state enterprises are becoming stronger in Russia
As the result of the Russian nationlists' desire. I can't see Russians participating in a violent revolution any time soon. They're not really that unhappy with the state of things neither are they anywhere near an economic or social breaking point. The country seems to be steering more into a nationalist, heavily centrally planned/state owned capitalist country like Iran
When Putin retires/dies, anything could happen. He's going to be hard to replace, and his party might not be able to hold on to the support it has now.
Putin was raised in Russia that was failing because Stalin failed to create a succession plan and the liberals took over. He was capitalist likely due to material conditions. When he was spurned by the West and forced to remain not even a junior partner, he became anti-imperialist. I don't think he's a rapid anti-communist, I think he's an incredibly talented nationalist. I could see him creating a succession plan that creates the path for communism if the imperial threat has been neutralized before he retires.
Belarus is already sort of socialist. I’m pessimistic about Russia.
Same, from what I can tell the model in Belarus is very close to what China is doing. Belarus is also increasingly working more closely with China which will only help strengthen the direction of politics and the economy. On the other hand, Russia is very much capitalist, and the conditions in Russia are nowhere close to revolutionary right now. People's lives are generally decent, so I don't think there's going to be any mass interest in rocking the boat. That said, I do think there is long term potential in Russia because people do view socialism positively, and they're not completely blind to the problems of capitalism.
what do you mean by sort of socialist?
https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.11.4.0428
Read this one for a change
In the early days of Lukashenko’s administration, the public economy accounted for about 75% of total GDP. With the reform of state-owned assets in the new century, the proportion of private sector increased, but generally accounted for no more than 30% of GDP, while amounting to 60–80% in Russia, Georgia, and Eastern European countries after the transition. The public-owned economy is also the main force to absorb employment, with those employed in state-owned or state-controlled enterprises accounting for about 70% of total employment (Slon Magazine 2015).
I was going to give you a study, but you’re not going to read that; I only read the intro myself. I’d say, search the grad because you’ll have better answers than me riddling something off the top of my head.
Belarus is pretty close, but we might have to wait longer for Russia unfortunately.