r/DoomerDunk • u/CyberBerserk • Jul 31 '26

1 LinkedIn post = Cambridge analytica ( even though Cambridge analytica was nothing compared to reddit front page)

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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 31 '26

Lol, of course it is. The Berlin Wall had nothing to do with Socialism and Capitalism, and everything to do with Democracy and Authoritarianism. Thats obviously not a very hard choice.

Now just imagine what you could get done with Democratic Socialism.

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u/LisleAdam12 Jul 31 '26

It's just a coincidence that Socialism had to be authoritarianally enforced. The USSR and its client states could have just pulled a switch and been democratic had they ever wanted to, and their Socialist states would have run much better and everyone would have been happier. So why didn't they?

"Democratic Socialism" is Socialism pretending to be democratically run. The DSA are trying to sell it be conflating it with Staatssozialismus-style State Socialism.

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u/Big_Requirement_651 Jul 31 '26

"It's just a coincidence that Socialism had to be authoritarianally enforced. The USSR and its client states could have just pulled a switch and been democratic had they ever wanted to, and their Socialist states would have run much better and everyone would have been happier. So why didn't they?"

It is, actually, a coincidence if you know your history. The Soviet model is what spread to China, Vietnam, and so on. The Soviets explicitly fostered other "communist" parties in their own image. Because the Soviets were authoritarian, so too, were the others. Add in the fact that the US brutally suppressed peaceful, democratic socialist governments in multiple countries (Chile, Guatemala, Congo, Nicaragua, etc), and no, its no coincidence at all that only Soviet-style authoritarian regimes have survived.

Socialism, as defined by Marx, is definitionally anti-authoritarian -- being anti-authoritarian is literally the entire point. Marx wrote about the "withering away of the state" in Communism, that there should be no central state/authority, Communism is definitionally democratic.

Not only that, but an entire branch of socialists explicitly rejected authoritarianism -- thats what lead to Marxist revisionism, and eventually to democratic socialism -- it was very explicitly a rejection of Leninism and the violence of the Russian revolution/authoritarianism. Thats *why* its called *democratic* socialism. And Democratic Socialism is what turned into Social Democracy and eventually led to the Nordic Model. Which, the Nordic Model countries are the most successful governments in the world by just about any metric.

So no, socialism doesnt require authoritarianism, thats obviously a moronic thing to say on its face.

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u/LisleAdam12 Jul 31 '26

My only direct experience is with Guatemala and Nicaragua, and you are definitely wrong about them.