At the risk of getting banned or flamed, but like, isnt that literally what Cuba and NK do? I already made a thread about this but, like, isnt the entire Cuban and NK economy controlled by the state who manage and plan the economy?
You're absolutely right that ML states almost always have planned economies, but that's more a tool they use to try to achieve their goals than a defining feature that makes them socialists. States can be socialist without having heavily centrally planned economies and non-socialist states can and often do have heavily centrally planned economies. During the world wars, for example, pretty much participant resorted to a centrally planned "war economy" , but that sure as fuck didn't make them socialist, because those wars and the economy they required were being ran by and for the benefit of the bourgeois and old aristocracy rather than the working class.
Socialist states seizing and excercising power to benefit the working class is often cool, good and what Marxism Leninism is all about but states seizing and exercising power isn't in and of itself a good thing. States like the US ran by and for the benefit of the bourgeois are going to use their state power to benefit the bourgeois and fuck over everyone else.
We usually define socialist governments as governments ran by the working class for the benefit of the working class, in Marx's terms, dictatorships of the proletariat. Other definitions, especially ones that don't frame things in terms of class conflict, are usually something to be suspicious of as they're often trojan horses for fascist or class collaborationist rhetoric.
Socialism is, indeed, when the government does stuff.
At the risk of getting banned or flamed, but like, isnt that literally what Cuba and NK do? I already made a thread about this but, like, isnt the entire Cuban and NK economy controlled by the state who manage and plan the economy?
EDIT: I will make a thread asking about this
You're absolutely right that ML states almost always have planned economies, but that's more a tool they use to try to achieve their goals than a defining feature that makes them socialists. States can be socialist without having heavily centrally planned economies and non-socialist states can and often do have heavily centrally planned economies. During the world wars, for example, pretty much participant resorted to a centrally planned "war economy" , but that sure as fuck didn't make them socialist, because those wars and the economy they required were being ran by and for the benefit of the bourgeois and old aristocracy rather than the working class.
Socialist states seizing and excercising power to benefit the working class is often cool, good and what Marxism Leninism is all about but states seizing and exercising power isn't in and of itself a good thing. States like the US ran by and for the benefit of the bourgeois are going to use their state power to benefit the bourgeois and fuck over everyone else.
We usually define socialist governments as governments ran by the working class for the benefit of the working class, in Marx's terms, dictatorships of the proletariat. Other definitions, especially ones that don't frame things in terms of class conflict, are usually something to be suspicious of as they're often trojan horses for fascist or class collaborationist rhetoric.
Hope that helps ❤️
:RIchard-D-Wolff: