Not sure how to take the idea that dissolving Socialism and replacing it with Capitalism was harmful other than a preference that Socialism be maintained.

It wouldn’t be terrible if it happened, but there’s no path to actually making that happen that wouldn’t make more sense to go for revolution. Even when congress was more controlled by the Democrats, no such program emerged.

Revolution has already happened in quite a few countries, one of them with one of the largest economies and populations on the planet. It’s more a matter of time.

We don’t live in that theoretical fantasy world, and moreover that still does not logically justify allowing a small handful of people to live like gods. I am talking about reality, not a dream you had.

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And we would continue to centralize and give power to fewer and fewer hands, when we could provide much better living standards for all.

Hey, I’m the author of that post! I don’t see how my post says the same thing at all, it very much talks about which aspect, private or public, has power in society is what determines the nature of its economy.

Close. Communism cannot exist until the entire planet is Socialist, but Socialism can be determined at a country level.

It is not Socialist. Social programs are not Socialism. Every economy is a mix of private and public property, that doesn’t make it mixed Capitalism and Socialism. Capitalism and Socialism are descriptors for economies at large, as you cannot remove entities from the context they are in. A worker cooperative is not a “socialist” part of a Capitalist economy, because it exists in the broader Capitalist machine and must use its tools.

What determines if a system is Capitalist or Socialist is if private property or public property is the primary aspect of a society, and which class has control. In Canada, Private Property is dominant, so Social Programs are used to support that.

Social programs are not Socialism. Every economy is a mix of private and public property, that doesn’t make it mixed Capitalism and Socialism. Capitalism and Socialism are descriptors for economies at large, as you cannot remove entities from the context they are in. A worker cooperative is not a “socialist” part of a Capitalist economy, because it exists in the broader Capitalist machine and must use its tools.

What determines if a system is Capitalist or Socialist is if private property or public property is the primary aspect of a society, and which class has control. In Norway, Private Property is dominant, so Social Programs are used to support that.

Norway funds its safety nets off of super-exploitation of the Global South, ie Imperialism. It is firmly Capitalist and in no way Socialist, private property is the primary driving aspect of Norway’s economy, the higher standard of living comes from acting as a Landlord in country form.

This retains class, though. If your councils only have ownership of their own jurisdictions, then the members of each council are Petite Bourgeoisie. Marx specifically advocated for full centralization because chiefly it becomes a necessity anyways with increasingly complex production, but also because it gives more democratic control over the whole of the economy, not just individual bits.

This isn’t true, unless you have a different conception of what “class” is from Marx and Marxists. The State is the only path to a stateless society, in that the state disappears once all property is publicly owned and planned, and thus the “state” whithers away, leaving government behind.

For Marx, the State is chiefly the instruments of government that reinforce class society, like Private Property Rights, not the entire government.

Yes, you’re correct here. Class collaborationism is a Social Democratic tendency, not a Socialist one.

However, if you use the right magic words you can convince them that it will be good for them.

This is Utopianism, and was practiced by early Socialists like the Owenites. The problem is that such a practice never works. One of Marx’s major advancements was in developing Scientific Socialism, which looks at material reality and its trends to see how to better guide them.

Historically, this just doesn’t work, and it even risks supporting PatSoc movements like the American Communist Party (not to be confused with the CPUSA), also known as “MAGA Communism.” Essentially Imperialism combined with Communist aesthetics. You need to be honest with people, otherwise they will learn they have been tricked and resent you. Further, this isn’t really Socialism, but Capitalism with bigger safety nets.

The problem with policy is that it needs material foundational backing, otherwise it will be walked back if the class in power doesn’t like it.

Considering we are speaking about the US, those safety nets would come from the massive Imperialism the US commits constantly. Workers in the Global South would continue to slave away so workers in the US can live cushy lives.

In a Socialist system, we can end that, but under Capitalism there is no path to deliberately end the practice of Imperialism, as it forms the basis of US foreign policy, and why the US Empire has hundreds of millitary bases around the world.

Theoretically and practically. We have evidence for this throughout the last 130 years.

As for advocating for “bloodshed,” revolution remains the sole path to end the bloodshed, especially of the genocidal US Empire.

As for LGBTQ rights, I am pansexual myself, and I can confirm that Socialist countries make faster progress on social issues. Cuba today has much better LGBTQ rights than anywhere else in the world, and countries like the PRC are gradually improving as well. Socialism, if anything, improves the rate of progress. Even the GDR began pushing for LGBTQ rights well before Western European countries and the US did.