this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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There's an ideological ocean between utopian socialism and actually-existing socialism, yes. There's a reason why there's not been a successful historical instance of socialism in which workers collectivised without taking the power of the state in their hands.
Calling it "authoritarian state" kinda portrays lack of knowledge at democratic power structures and mechanisms in former socialist countries. Examples for the USSR: highest unionisation rates in the world, announcement/news boarboards in every workplace administered by the union, free education to the highest level for everyone, free healthcare, guaranteed employment and housing (how do the supposedly "authoritarian leaders" benefit from that?), neighbour commissions legally overviewing the activity and transparency of local administration, neighbour tribunals dealing with most petty crime, millions of members of the party, women's rights, local ethnicities in different republics having an option to education in their language and widespread availability of reading material and newspapers in their language... Please tell me one country that does that better nowadays
Current western Europe (Germany in particular) still has free education, free Healthcare, guaranteed housing, legalized LGBT marriage and weed, and many things more, and you don't go to Siberia for making a joke about the leader.
Union and party membership were obligatory BTW, if you didn't want to be labeled as a troublemaker.
Lmao, Germany has guaranteed housing?! Germany has Vonovia, a company that hoards real estate and rents it in terrible conditions, and own about 500k+ houses. In what universe does Germany have guaranteed housing when Berlin tried to implement a directly democratically voted rent cap on housing and it got repelled by the tribunals a year after it began?
Free healthcare in Germany is absolute bullshit. Yes, it's free, but the quality of healthcare is astonishingly low. I've had the misfortune of living there for a few years, and the whole system is horrendous, especially for how ludicrously expensive it is compared to other European countries. In Germany, you have sick senior people queuing at 7AM in frosty winter mornings STANDING ON THE STREETS to be able to see the family doctor, you can consider yourself lucky if you can wait sitting in a stairwell indoors while waiting for the doctor. It's beyond me how German people aren't constantly on the street complaining about this bullshit, again especially given the absurdly high costs of public healthcare there.
Funny that you also mention freedom of speech, when in Germany they are literally arresting Jewish people for expressing antizionist and pro-Palestinian points of view. The actual Nazis run rampant though, friends of the police if not outright members of it, with an extreme rise of the far right.
Harz IV guarantees housing.
Damn, you should tell that to the 700k homeless people in Germany, I'm sure they'll be happy to know that
I don't know them.
European countries are under fascist rules right now it's terrible. And many still die of hunger or improper housing or hygiene. I'm thinking particularly about France because I'm from there, but Germany has similar issues
Harz IV, bro.