this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Roughly, Socialism is a way to reach the state of perfect Equality of Outcomes called Communism, which requires an Revolution of The Proletariat where the Means of Production are siezed - so, an autocratic stage - to get there, and said stage is where all the so-called "Communist" countries are stuck - there is no nation in the World were everybody had the same, and there never was.
Social-Democracy is about how to get as much Equality as possible with the expectation that Equality Of Outcomes (in other words, Communism) is an impossible utopia because people are different, have different capabilities and have different levels of wanting to have things, and to do so without going through autocracy but rather using Democratic means.
So Social-Democracy aims for Equality Of Opportunity rather than Equality Of Outcomes (i.e. everybody gets the same chances rather than everybody has the same things), has things like higher taxation for people with higher incomes, wealth taxes and higher inheritance taxes (basically, the idea that those who can most afford it pay the most) to try and flatten wealth inequality and instead of seizing the means of production in the whole Economy, has a mixed system were in areas deemed essential for life or to provide equality of opportunities the state provides for peoples' needs (so for example, Public Education including University level, with a meritocratic selection processes) whilst in areas not deemed so (say, the manufacture and sale of soap) there's a Capitalist market system though with strong regulation and oversight for things deemed important for people's quality of life (for example, to stop Environmental damage).
Of course, even the most effective Social-Democratic systems have been highly subverted and undermined by the push in the Neoliberal Era for "Free Markets", "Low Regulation" and other such ideas designed to put the Power Of Money above the Power Of The Vote (by making the structures controlled by the vote de facto have less power over most of that which affects people's lives, than those controlled by Money).
That doesn't mean that Social-Democracy in its original form is a bad idea, it means that even in so-called Social-Democrat countries what they have is a system were Capitalism is currently dominant (having taken over a lot of "essential for life" domains which should still be controlled by the State, and nullified regulatory oversight in many areas that although not essential are important for people's quality of life), though still less so than in nations were when Neoliberalism started spreading Social-Democracy was weaker or even non-existent.
Further, Neoliberalism spread faster and deeper in places were Corruption was higher since it mostly works by buying politicians to sell Public companies, change the Laws to remove State participation in and oversight of important areas of the Economy and to weaken Regulatory oversight both by weakening the actual Regulatory Authorities directly and by making the fines for breaking regulations be smaller than the profits of doing so.
All this is why, for example, the US is way more fucked up than Denmark.
this is completely wrong and i challenge you to find a socialist who agrees with you.
since none of that is even vaguely correct the rest is not even worth reading.
edit: I read the rest and was correct, read socialist theory, that was well worded nonsense completely divorced from even one thing socialists believe and if socialists believed any of that I would not be one... but they don't, this is completely wrong.
0/10 you did not even read a small amount of marx. Or any socialist philosopher at all. I genuinely don't get how people get this confident without reading any primary sources, you are VERY propagandized. If you want to make me look like a complete buffoon and prove me completely and utterly wrong show me any socialist philosopher agreeing with you.
Oh, I'm a member of a small leftwing party in my home country and there are plently of old people there who were once Communists and still are anti-Capitalists who fought against the Fascist Dictatorship and in the Revolution against Fascism in 74, who agree with me. It's only tankies and Chinese Propagand muppets who do not.
Your "it's not autocratic" interpretation is just you chosing to reframe the definition of property in such a way that confiscation by force of that which some people own doesn't count as the state taking their shit.
Sure mate, everything is naturally owned by everybody, hence those people controlling the "Revolution" deem to be the burgeouisie are people keeping everybody else from enjoying what is actually owned by everybody, hance taking the shit of those deemed the burgeoisie is not confiscation by force, rather it's "freeing" it and when those deemed the burgeoisie try to stop that "freeing" of those things they feel are theirs and end up killed by the force wielding structures of a government that calls itself the "Revolution", that's just Justice, not State Organised Theft.
Same circular logic as when America invades a country to take their shit and calls it "Bringing Freedom to that country".
That shit is even more convolutedly self-justifying through circular logic and redefinition of the meaning of words than most Religions.
then my task should be easy, present a socialist philosopher that agrees with you. Do you want me to provide a list of ones that don't? When you do everyone will know just how stupid I am and just how little I know what I'm talking about! Win-win.
revolution is indeed fundamentally authoritarian in that way, do you oppose the american revolution as well? Do you oppose every revolution in history? I thought you were talking about the society post revolution, which of course is not. And is what dictatorship of the proletariat refers to.
there is no reinvention of words, we use the original philosophical meanings, it's funny that you say that, you're the one using reinvented meanings, such as "private property". Look it up! What do you expect philosophers from back then to do, update their wording with the times?
Now we're getting somewhere.
The next part is this: what is there in Socialism to make sure that the period of Revolution is time-limited and if within that time limit the Revolution does not reach Communism, then the Revolution none the less ends?
Consider the following mental exercise:
If both cases started from a state of low freedom and during the Revolution the freedom is even lower, why would one situation be autocratic and the other not: they're both claiming to be Revolutions to reach a better system, they both never stop being in the state they call "Revolution" and in both the leadership can change and end up being people of ill-intent - they look the same, are both autocratic and both never end.
My point was never that Socialism has overtly or covertly ill intent or that it wants to create an autocratic state (I believe it's quite the contrary - it's genuinelly a political theory meant to produce the "greater good for the greater number"), my point is that de facto its a plan structured in such as way that the Revolution - which is as you admit a period of autocracy - it says is required to reach Communism never actually ends because it fails to reach Communism and has no mechanisms accept a less than perfect system than Communism after a while even if it's vastly better than the previous system) and end the Revolution. Meanwhile the power structures of the Revolution are captured by people with ill intent (who are the kind of people who seek power, especially the unrestrained power of a Revolution), which is how for example the Russian Revolution went from what it was under Lenin to the murderous psychopatic shitshow it became under Stalin.
Naive idealism in the original plan or incompetence in its execution, together with an unwillingness to let go create an ethernal state of autocracy called "the Revolution" - in other words an unending autocratic situation - just the same as ill intent claiming to be a Revolution does.
Absolutelly, all Revolutions are periods of autocracy. What makes some actual autocracies is that that stage never ends and there is no mechanism in place to de facto end it, even when the original intention was to end it but said end was conditional with reaching an objective which has never been reached in practice anywhere in the World.
If you can't exit Revolution in any what other than to reach a state which was never reached in the World, then de facto what you have is a process to create a neverending Revolution, not a process to reach a better state.
before we continue this argument i'd like you to first admit you could not do what was asked of you.
the answer to your thought problem lies in dialectical materialism, not in institutional design or moral guarantees.
in a marxist framework, the revolutionary period is something that cannot be extended or terminated at will, it is produced by material conditions, and the duration is not decided by any leaders, but rather by whether or not class antagonism persists.
societies develop through contradictions between productive forces and relations of production and when they become unsustainable, things intensify until the ruling class is overturned. marx would argue that such a state cannot legitimize itself forever by rhetoric alone, because political superstructures ultimately depend on material relations, and if the proletariat no longer exists as a class, the state loses its function and withers away, if the state persists, that indicates unresolved class structures, not a valid permanent transition, essentially eternal revolution is impossible under the correct material conditions
I can expand upon this more if you need but at this point it is woefully obvious you have not read a single piece of socialist literature, these questions are kinda basic and covered in socialism 101, i suspect you've been getting your information from jordan peterson or prageru or something in that vein, i suggest you spend some time actually reading some primary sources.
your homework:
sources to read from for the answers:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Contribution_to_the_Critique_of_Political_Economy.pdf
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm
That logic defines the Revolution by its outcome rather than by how it's conducted, so it's one big No True Scotsman Falacy were the One True Socialist revolution is the one which yields a state were all class structures are resolved and there is no state, and you only know that's the case when you get that outcome: per that theory is perfectly possible to have a Revolution were the "rulling class is overturned" following a period of "contradictions between productive forces and relations of production" "becoming unsustainable" resulting in there being "no state" and yet there still being at least in part "unresolved class structures" and a "proletariat as a class".
In fact both the Soviet Union and "Communist" China both quickly showed that their "Revolution Of The Proletariat" wasn't really The One Socialist Revolution as after the initial period of "no state" during the initial stage a "state" once again arose (which is, for example, what managed how food was grown and distributed) and there were clearly people who worked and got some benefit alongside other people who "led" and even got greater benefits (i.e. there was a "working class" and a "ruling class") thus showing that the "no state" phase of the Revolution was reached with"unresolved class structures" hence was not the true Socialist Revolution.
All of this feeds into my original point: Socialism is not a plan to successfully reach Communism, it's more of a Manifesto which basically says that amongst many ways (possibly an infinite number of ways) which are not correct, there is a correct way to have a Revolution that results in Communism, though one has to somehow "resolve all class structures" including eliminating a "proletariat as a class", and how to do that is exactly the hard part to figure out which is left for others to do, which is such a typically way to "pass the hot potato" rather than address the devil in the details.
It's funny because I have a background in Science and one in Engineering and that stuff is like Alcubierre coming up with a Mathematical proof that one can travel faster than light and leaving the hard details (namelly how to transform a planet the size of Jupiter into energy to actually power said Alcubierre drive) to somebody else - yeah, sure, nice to know it's possible, but without the actual details of how to make it happen it's totally useless.