this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
293 points (85.0% liked)
Memes
52408 readers
558 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Democratic socialism just means you believe in democratically governed socialism, not that you think you can just vote capitalism into socialism. There's both reformist and revolutionary democratic socialists. I both believe in democracy and also see that the only way to overturn capitalism (at least in the US) would be through revolution. All the democratic part means is that they're opposed to monarchies or dictatorships.
Are you saying that you can have undemocratic socialism?
Yes, under a dictatorship, it's literally happened before. Are you being serious or is this supposed to be some sort of gotcha where you go "socialism can't exist without democracy so the label is pedantic"?
Socialism under one party governments have happened, that is not democracy, even if democratic elements exist within. You can't have democracy under one party, the people need the ability to form an opposition party if the need arises.
You don't understand party systems, so you imagine one-party systems are undemocratic. You are incorrect. In a multi-party systems, competing interests fight for power using the electoral system. That means you would have a capitalist party and a socialist party and they would fight for votes. Why in the world would you ever expect a communist country to have multiple parties?
Instead of that, communist parties have structures within them for different factions to have sub organizations within the party. These are all people who support communism but differ on the particulars. They fight for power within the party, ensuring that the country remains communist while still enabling democracy.
It is only in fully capitalist countries that have eliminated the power of their internal communist where you have multiple capitalist parties that actually collaborate and then spread propaganda that only multi-party states are truly democratic. It's transparent bullshit.
That's why we say that under capitalism you can change the party but the not the policies and under communism you can change the policies but not the party. Ever notice just how democratic the West is regarding war? No matter how much the people don't want war, no matter what party is in power, the leadership always chooses war. No matter how much we want profits to take a back seat to social issues, profit always wins. The policies of capitalism are unchangeable by the people. Is that democracy simply because you get to choose which team is oppressing you and killing foreigners?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Having a single party simply means that the society as a whole agreed on a single collective vision. There can be plenty of debate within the framework of a party on how to actually implement this vision. Meanwhile, any class society will be a dictatorship of the class that holds power. Given that socialist society would arise from an existing capitalist society, it would necessarily inherit existing class relationships. What changes is which class holds power. That's the difference between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Finally, the notion of dictatorship in a sense of a single person running things is infantile beyond belief. People who peddle this notion are the ones who should truly be ashamed of themselves. As Anna Louise Strong puts it in This Soviet World:
if we're going on about pedants then I might as well add that a democracy can't exist with only two parties, either.
a wild dronie appears
You're right, I'm just wasting my time in a really dumb losing battle.