Power isn’t some mystical force that “corrupts” like a supernatural curse, that’s idealist hand-waving. Power operates within material structures: who controls production, how institutions are designed, what class interests they serve. Blaming “power itself” dodges the actual question: power for whom, exercised how, under what constraints?
China’s system for example isn’t an “all-powerful minority” ruling by fiat. It’s whole-process people’s democracy: democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight woven into a continuous cycle. NPC deputies aren’t a closed clique, they come from factories, farms, labs, ethnic minority communities; even the smallest ethnic group has guaranteed representation. Major policies (like protections for delivery workers) emerge from legislative proposals and public consultation, not backroom decrees.
You mention growing up in a “socialism past” country (which leads me to assume post soviet, please correct me if I’m wrong). Given you’re posting online with this analysis, you’re almost certainly too young to have lived experience of the actual socialist period. What you’re calling “socialism” was likely the shock therapy neoliberal collapse that followed: male life expectancy in Russia dropped over six years between 1989 and 1994; similar crashes hit all across the former USSR. That wasn’t due to communism(socialism) failing, it was rapid privatization, asset stripping, and the rise of oligarchic kleptocracy. Inequality didn’t just rise; it exploded. People saying “it’s better now” aren’t comparing capitalism to socialism, they’re comparing post-shock-therapy stability to the immediate humanitarian disaster of the 1990s, with no lived memory of the prior system’s guarantees.
And no, we won’t just “press the communism button” once humanity “evolves.” That’s pure idealism. People aren’t abstract moral agents who magically become selfless when the time is right. Consciousness is shaped by material conditions. You don’t skip the socialist transition by wishing harder; you build the material foundations (productive forces, social relations, institutional capacity) that make higher-stage communism possible. Wishing for the end state while rejecting the transitional process is like demanding a skyscraper while refusing to pour the foundation.
Vibes aren’t analysis. Nostalgia for a period you didn’t live, conflated with the trauma of its violent dismantling, is not the correct way to approach this issue. If you want to critique socialism, engage with its actual theory and practice, not a caricature filtered through the lens of neoliberal collapse.
Power isn’t some mystical force that “corrupts” like a supernatural curse, that’s idealist hand-waving. Power operates within material structures: who controls production, how institutions are designed, what class interests they serve. Blaming “power itself” dodges the actual question: power for whom, exercised how, under what constraints?
China’s system for example isn’t an “all-powerful minority” ruling by fiat. It’s whole-process people’s democracy: democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight woven into a continuous cycle. NPC deputies aren’t a closed clique, they come from factories, farms, labs, ethnic minority communities; even the smallest ethnic group has guaranteed representation. Major policies (like protections for delivery workers) emerge from legislative proposals and public consultation, not backroom decrees.
You mention growing up in a “socialism past” country (which leads me to assume post soviet, please correct me if I’m wrong). Given you’re posting online with this analysis, you’re almost certainly too young to have lived experience of the actual socialist period. What you’re calling “socialism” was likely the shock therapy neoliberal collapse that followed: male life expectancy in Russia dropped over six years between 1989 and 1994; similar crashes hit all across the former USSR. That wasn’t due to communism(socialism) failing, it was rapid privatization, asset stripping, and the rise of oligarchic kleptocracy. Inequality didn’t just rise; it exploded. People saying “it’s better now” aren’t comparing capitalism to socialism, they’re comparing post-shock-therapy stability to the immediate humanitarian disaster of the 1990s, with no lived memory of the prior system’s guarantees.
And no, we won’t just “press the communism button” once humanity “evolves.” That’s pure idealism. People aren’t abstract moral agents who magically become selfless when the time is right. Consciousness is shaped by material conditions. You don’t skip the socialist transition by wishing harder; you build the material foundations (productive forces, social relations, institutional capacity) that make higher-stage communism possible. Wishing for the end state while rejecting the transitional process is like demanding a skyscraper while refusing to pour the foundation.
Vibes aren’t analysis. Nostalgia for a period you didn’t live, conflated with the trauma of its violent dismantling, is not the correct way to approach this issue. If you want to critique socialism, engage with its actual theory and practice, not a caricature filtered through the lens of neoliberal collapse.