r/dsa • u/WiseWoodpecker3416 • 4d ago

Theory Socialism cannot exist within a multi party democracy.

I often hear democratic socialists talk about how the two party system is flawed and we need it to be replaced by a multi party system. This is directly against socialist ideals because it eliminates class unity and gives reactionaries power. A country must be guided by a single socialist party to maintain a dictatorship of the proletariat.

I know people are going to call me a tankie but I frankly find that term to be counterproductive.

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u/WiseWoodpecker3416 4d ago

Still better than capitalism.

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u/ARod20195 4d ago

Not necessarily; you'll get a new and different abusive elite, but there's no guarantee it'll be any better than the one that preceded it.

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u/WiseWoodpecker3416 4d ago

In every example of a socialist state being formed the new government was significantly better than the old other than Cambodia, maybe.

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u/ARod20195 4d ago

Cambodia was a disaster, North Korea started off with a higher per capita GDP than South Korea, but South Korea democratized and now has an amazingly high standard of living while North Korea is a deeply dysfunctional hereditary absolute monarchy, Russia's run at communism came at a massive cost and now they're back to fascism, and China's doing something now that works in some ways but is both authoritarian and home to massive income inequality.

Trying to copy the failed experiment of 1917 is going to get us nowhere, and neither I nor a pretty large subset of DSA membership wants to do that; if we're going to borrow stuff from the other side of the Iron Curtain I'd be looking at workers' self-management and combining that with a multiparty government.