They were explicitly talking about capitalism. I thought there were a genuine anti-capitalist at first, but then they just hit me with the "small and incremental change" bullshit.
I'm thinking they're more like a "Democratic" socialist who still has their brain rotted from red scare propaganda and can't take the next step. This comes about from a lack of education and theory.
For the record, this is just some random on reddit who I was disappointed in.
What I told them, for the record:
There is actually a solution to this problem; it is called proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Actual socialism.
And it's far from "magical". It's grounded in the science of Marxism-Leninism and the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Hundreds of millions of lives have been uplifted by this historically progressive system; it's been tried in the real world, and it's been successful.
These states were not idealistically perfect because after a successful revolution you actually have to deal the contradictions and material conditions that your country faces. China and the USSR were not "State-capitalist".
The nature of the state is authoritarian. But which class is it authoritarian to? It is only a mechanism of class domination. The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie (Most Western countries and European Social Democracies) has the Ruling capitalist class oppress and be "authoritarian" to the working proletariat because that's the way they maintain their rule. The goal is to flip the script; the proletariat becomes the ruling class and oppresses the small exploiting minority to maintain and defend the revolution. If they do not, the bourgeoisie will come back and destroy everything the workers have worked so hard to build. It's only one class dictatorship or the other.
As long as class contradictions exist so will the state, that is its reason for existing.
With enough time, these contradictions and classes will eventually wither away, and so will the proletarian state, as it's material base for existence is no longer there. However, for this to happen most of the entire world would have to adopt socialism. It will take a long, long time.
But once this goal in the far future is "achieved", this will be called the state of communism.
"Authoritarianism is not something to be desired, but it is a necessity in a world dominated by international capital and Reaction.
We are for the withering away of the state.
And yet we also believe in the proletarian dictatorship, which represents the tightest and mightiest form of state authority that has ever existed in history.
To keep on strengthening state power in order to prepare the conditions for the withering away of state power – that is the Marxist formula. Is it contradictory? Yes, contradictory. But the contradiction is vital and wholly reflective of the Marxist dialectic.”
--J.V. Stalin: Address to the 16th Congress of the Russian Communist Party
To finish this off with a quote from Michael Parenti:
"The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
I don't know what more I can do at that point...