https://twitter.com/the_vello/status/1321435262023536641
Feels like (the good parts of) old chapo again, drop an AOC post and go grab some lunch... come back and there are over 60 replies :)
https://twitter.com/the_vello/status/1321435262023536641
Feels like (the good parts of) old chapo again, drop an AOC post and go grab some lunch... come back and there are over 60 replies :)
I really don't think convincing people that Scandinavia is socialist while condemning actual socialist countries is going to help with anything.
Bernie helped reintroduce class politics to a lot of the country, but he's not useful anymore now that the public has already begun radicalizing. 36% of millennials said they supported communism last year. Not just socialism, which as we all know at this point doesn't mean a whole lot in the public discourse, but communism. You combine this with months of periodic uprisings and I think we're well past the point of needing social democrats to open the door. She's a tailist.
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[Excuse the hastily crafted, disorganized reply here.. have to rush out the door]
People have a hard time distinguishing True SocialismTM and socialist goals and methods, at least when you're referring to democratic socialism.
Is Scandinavia socialist? No. Do they have a pretty strong socialist movement and tendencies in their public policy? Yes.
Just one example: The Danish Social Democrats explicitly say they are a democratic Socialist party. They don't nationalize shit, but they do have a 67% unionization rate, great wages, and nearly no homelessness, higher rates of cooperative ownership of businesses and housing etc.
I don't think anybody here would argue that Danish Democratic Socialism (which can also be called Social Democracy) is worse than American Capitalism.... or even close on the spectrum of equality and erasing class distinctions.
As a Democratic Socialist, I share the many same goals of Communists (moreso than Neoliberals for damn sure)... and if a communist revolution were to pop off I'd jump on the band wagon, but until then I am going to be supporting socdems and Demsocs as they also materially benefit the working class as well.
Growing the Communist movement cannot only be about punching right 100% of the time, you have to lay out a vision for people to reach for. Any movement which exists soley on the premise of nagging the opposition is self-limiting by nature.
(end mental diarrhea)
That's true for all of us regardless of whether we like AOC or denounce her. The solution is the same: in-person organizing and probably media for agitation and counter-propaganda.
I'm not convinced that AOC will prime people for actual socialism who wouldn't already respond positively to actual socialism. Critcizing her and clarifying that she's an imperialist who misrepresents socialism can help push people in an actually revolutionary and anti-imperialist (i.e., actually effective) direction.
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I don't think so, since our cause isn't just healthcare and because we aren't social democrats. You couple that with the anticommunism that comes from denouncing existing and historical socialist states and I think she's just reinforcing hostility and opposition to actual socialism by offering it a left-wing outlet. See NJR's "actually Cuba isn't socialist because it's an authoritarian dictatorship" as an example of this kind of thing. It poisons attempts at international solidarity and drives a wedge between simple demands for healthcare and the necessity of dismantling and rebuilding the system entirely.
People want their material needs met, and social democrats offer them solutions for their problems in the short term which only prolong capitalist exploitation in the long term, especially for the workers in the global periphery.
We can offer solutions to the same problems that don't throw the global proletariat or our own futures under the bus, but they get in the way of that by rebranding their imperialist welfare states as socialist.
But that's the problem: she misleads people about what socialism is, which is actively counterproductive. It waters down our demands into social democracy which hurts the movement.
We shouldn't be supporting imperialists whatsoever. Imperialism is the glue that holds the whole global capitalist system together, and we can't under any circumstances support it if we want to see both ourselves and those outside the imperial core liberated. It's the primary contradiction of global capitalism, and has to be prioritized in order to defeat capitalism.