There are plenty of surviving socialist states, and Cuba and Venezuela and Vietnam for that matter still exist despite extensive US meddling so it’s weird to call them non-surviving.
Whether you want to call China socialist is a whole different kettle of worms, but I think it demonstrates rather handily that socialism’s second greatest burden beyond the necessity of fighting off capitalists is the authoritarianism of Marxists.
Marxism posits that socialism is best achieved through a command/centralized economy. There’s plenty of room for interpretation and of course being a Marxist doesn’t mean you have to agree with 150 year old socioeconomic theories on every point but generally that’s the form Marxist governments have assumed, probably because it is in the interest of the people running a government to take all the power they can.
If the government controls production from the ground up there’s just no other model to call it but authoritarian, everything within that society can only happen by their consent or by breaking the law.
There are plenty of surviving socialist states, and Cuba and Venezuela and Vietnam for that matter still exist despite extensive US meddling so it’s weird to call them non-surviving.
Whether you want to call China socialist is a whole different kettle of worms, but I think it demonstrates rather handily that socialism’s second greatest burden beyond the necessity of fighting off capitalists is the authoritarianism of Marxists.
I’m a total lamen but what makes Marxism authoritarian?
Marxism posits that socialism is best achieved through a command/centralized economy. There’s plenty of room for interpretation and of course being a Marxist doesn’t mean you have to agree with 150 year old socioeconomic theories on every point but generally that’s the form Marxist governments have assumed, probably because it is in the interest of the people running a government to take all the power they can.
If the government controls production from the ground up there’s just no other model to call it but authoritarian, everything within that society can only happen by their consent or by breaking the law.
I agree, that’s why I called them non-working socialist states.
My point is we haven’t yet seen how well (or bad) could a socialist state work if left alone.