this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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I mean, sure, that's very funny, but please don't help feed the right-wing lie falsely equating democratic socialism with communism.
To be clear, all socialism, communism included, is democratic. "Democratic Socialism" just refers to reformist socialism, in most cases, or is used to make social democracy seem more appealing. Mamdani has expressed support for more radical groups online, though, so it's clear that he isn't just your typical social democrat at minimum.
Oh man kerala reference
socialism and communism can be any form of government you want because they are economic styles
Not really. You can't compartmentalize government from the economy, both are so thoroughly inter-twined that they cannot be truly distinct. There's wiggle room, to be sure, but the state is fundamentally attached to the question of the class structure of a society. Systems aren't recipes picked out in a book, but physical things that evolve and change over time, radically shifting societal structures not due to decisions made by individuals, but economic compulsion.
That's why the study of economics was often called "Political Economy."
which form of government isn't compatible with which form of economy? I guess a communist anarchy would be pretty hard, but not impossible. totalitarian free-market capitalism, not as hard. I'm not saying some don't work better together.
You're again looking at government systems as personal choices, and not as intrinsically tied to the economy. Just because you can imagine a form of society doesn't mean it's actually feasible in the real world, this is called utopianism, ie crafting a utopia in your head like someone picking out their outfit for the day, rather than through economic analysis.
Further, most anarchists would consider themselves communists, though the focus on horizontalism makes it a very different form of communism from Marxist communism, which is fully centralized. Moreover, "totalitarian" isn't a form of government, really, just a descriptor for levels of freedom of an individual in a subjective, negative manner.
Why? Maybe if people understand that what they are scared with to be "communism" is affordable housing, public transport and education and not being harassed by police, they will break out of the propaganda alltogether.
I think it's a bit confusing, but in my view almost all socialists (including democratic socialists) are communists since the end goal they are trying to achieve is communism. Socialism (which can be described as welfare state, majority-publicly owned capital, and planned or market-socialist economy) is almost always seen as a stepping stone towards communism (stateless, classless, moneyless society), even though it is would also be an improvement on its own.
(to confuse matters even further, Lenin's party was initially called Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, even though today's understanding of social-democracy would only apply to the Menshevik wing).
Yea, in the bolshevik's case back then Social Democracy was also used as a term for communism in some areas. Not so much anymore, but that makes reading older texts a bit confusing if you aren't aware of that.
Was tempted to troll lemmygrad with this classic meme: https://lefty.pictures/post/view/15726
Good meme, but it wouldn't work on grad, we did read enough theory to know the history behind that name.
Pretty sure they'd get the irony, lol. A tier shitpost