Look at the track record of nationalized industries. It's not good.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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1 word: pluralities.
America is a capitalist nation. The Republicans openly support it. The Democrats less openly support it.
Socialism breaks the mold, it evens the playing field for everyone - people part of the establishment will always oppose it.
America is a capitalist nation. The Republicans ~~openly~~ rabidly support it. The Democrats less ~~openly~~ rabidly support it.
For generations, Americans have been raised to believe that socialism and communism are the same thing, and that they're not only bad policy, but actively un-American and evil.
Liberals hate progressive more than they hate the GOP. But this way Democrats keep saying every election is the most important election in our lifetime. They still expect the vote blue no matter who, so Democrats want nothing more than to have the progressive fall in line.
I hate it here. I want off this ride.
Helping people is woke.
There again. What's wrong with being woke?
Helping people who aren't me is woke.
Swede here, if we compare the two political parties in the US to the Swedish political spectrum, the Republicans would be far to the right of even Sverigedemokraterna, the Democrats would be center-right.
What the US calls the left side of the political compass is nowhere near the actual left on a proper political compass.
The US badly needs a new voting system, the current one promotes stagnation and I can't see it ever having more than two realistic choices again.
I wish we could add a progressive party, labor party, and the like. The two party system is broken.
Compared to Germany, the republicans are far right like our AfD... Your ICE is the dream of the AfD.
And the democrats are more "economy-liberal" instead of actually liberal. Also, they contain much of the CDU (conservative) energy, a bit of green party energy and a bit of SPD (social democrats) energy....
I totally agree with you. I'd like to add that, as I understand it, Mamdani ended up the democratic candidate because of the voting method (ranked choice).
I think this is precisely why current political interests are so opposed to changing the first-past-the-post method for ranked choice voting. Let alone proportional representation.
It also shows how effective and necessary it is to change the voting system! Imo this is what the 'no kings' movement should focus on above all else
Yeah FPTP is increadibly harmfull to a democracy, it will effectively remove any small parties over time, it will also promote results manipulation like Jerrymandering.
Get rid of FPTP and smaller parties will pop up like crazy all over the US.
The DNC are just republican lite, madini upsets thier status quo, aka center right, so not even on the left. the voters may support DS, but the politicians dont at all, all that money that comes with being like the gop is too god to miss.
Mamdani is being excoriated because he doesn't support one particular donor class. I dare not mention who these people are for fear of being wiped off this platform. The Z word seems OK enough.
You're on Lemmy dawg, you can talk shit on AIPAC and Zionism.
unless your on a world instance, which they are pretty "pro-zionist or nazis" talking about israel/gaza,,etc. your free to talk about aipac and israel.
Democrats aren't socialist but there are socialists who are democrats. The majority of the party are beholden to big donors just like the Republicans and view anything even remotely socialist as not only a threat to their donors but a threat to their position in the party.
The democrats are melting down over Mamdani because he might cause a wave of socialists primarying them.
They are also melting down because the main attack they used against Mamdani - calling him an antisemite when he's really just an anti-zionist - had zero affect. This is huge because it's been a tried and true tactic to use against socialists most famously in the UK against Corbyn.
the public is finally evolving past not knowing the difference between anti semitism and anti zionism
Yes 🐸
I thought Democrats embraced socialism
There is no time in the history of the US Democratic Party that they embraced socialism as a party.
Democratic Socialism
This is not actually the same as socialism. It's confusing, I agree. The closest comparison is to "social democratic" parties in Europe, which offer expanded government programs but leave capitalism intact. The simplest definition of socialism is "when the workers own the means of production" (with "means of production" being things like factories, farms, etc. Any business, really). The Democratic Party has never pushed for that and Mamdani is not pushing for that now.
This is not actually the same as socialism. It’s confusing, I agree. The closest comparison is to “social democratic” parties in Europe
Democratic Socialism is not Social Democracy. Democratic Socialism advocates for real socialism through the existing democratic institutions, whereas Social Democracy only advocates for softer capitalism. Particularly, DemSoc's view capitalism as fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
Now there's plenty of things wrong with Democratic Socialism, but the main one is you're playing by the rules written by the capitalists and are assuming the capitalists will follow those rules.
DSA's national website is ambiguous. It says: " ...democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society. " "A real voice in" is not the same as ownership of or control over.
However, DSA (both national and local ones) has a number of different movements within it. Some are social democratic, some are authoritarian socialist, some are libertarian socialist, and so on. In the context of Mamdani and Sanders, Democratic Socialism's social democratic wing is probably the movement having the biggest impact so far. I do hope the libertarian socialst/anarchist movements within DSA ultimately come to influence it the most!
The DSA was founded by Marxists and has always been socialist. If you show up at a meeting and say 'I don't think we need to overthrow capitalism' you will be laughed out of the room. I've seen it happen.
The libertarian wing of the DSA doesn't caucus within DSA because they got completely shut down in either the 2017 or 2019 confrenece. Everyone else actually learned something from the failures of Occupy.
What goes forthe Social Democrat wing of DSA is the faction most connected to Labor unions in the DSA, namely Bread and Roses. The rest are either Trotskyite or ML. There are plenty of anarchists still but they don't bother with any national caucus. Besides, its not like anarchists aren't also reading from spooky "authoritarians" like Lenin and Mao. If you want to overthrow capitalism you should read up on the people who've actually done it.
Besides, its not like anarchists aren't also reading from spooky "authoritarians" like Lenin and Mao.
...what? They may read them, but not sympathetically.
If you want to overthrow capitalism you should read up on the people who've actually done it.
Yeah, like the anarchists in Catalonia, the EZLN in Mexico, AANES/Rojava, and the original workers councils in Russia.
First everyone should be reading these works critically and not as absolute doctrine. Any ML who's actually knows what "scientific socialism" means and isnt a tankie larper should know that.
Second, all except for the Catalonia examples are false.
- EZLN is literally a Maoist people's army started by a Maoist cadre. The people they organized simply didn't see overthrowing the entire Mexican government as worth it. If you knew anything about Mao you would've known that.
- Lenin and Mao were required readings for for the YPG according to western volunteers. Just look into Occalan their connection with the PKK and understand they were just softening their image to get US support.
- "original workers councils in Russia" AKA the Soviets. Yeah they didn't read Mao or State and Revolution because they hadn't been written yet! But to suggest they weren't reading early Lenin is obvious baloney given that him and the Bolsheviks were their contemporaries.
I see. I like the idea of a mix of social programs and regulated capitalism and I feel like capitalism has run amok for far too long. I’m sure you all understand it better than I do.
We all start somewhere! My politics were more like yours a while back, but now I would disagree that it is possible to keep capitalism regulated. Since then, I have come to understand that the basic drives of capitalism, especially the one that forces every capitalist to increase the amount of profit they get and the rate of increase of their profit, would just make them throw money into politics and overcome any possible regulations.
Keep reading and you'll get explanations of how capitalism works and you can decide for yourself whether regulation is possible or not.
To provide a simple historical example without getting into too much of the theory, consider the progression from The New Deal to where we are now. That was about as close as the US got to social democracy and that's been all but destroyed over the following decades by capitalists. But yeah they should definitely read more if they want to understand the mechanisms in more detail.
You get it. Regulated capitalism is ideal. Problem being, as with any economic/political system, the rich rise to the top and take over. Lemmy's hate for capitalism is childish.
"This sucks so burn it all down!"
Well, I kinda get that feel, but baby with the bathwater is a thing.
Capitalism describes a system of exploitation by which a privileged few profit from the labor of others. Regulated capitalism (also known as welfare capitalism) has only ever come about as a result of popular labor and social movements (which tended to be explicitly socialist) fighting for labor rights and threatening revolution, causing the owning class to allow reforms and expansion of welfare as a form of appeasement. This happened in the US mid-20th century and it succeeded in taking the wind out of the sails of the movement, and since then the owning class has steadily eroded the welfare state through austerity.
Capitalism should not be preserved because it creates inequality by design; that is its purpose. You can claim that is a childish perspective, but here are some of the people you're calling childish:
- Albert Einstein
- Helen Keller
- Martin Luther King Jr
- Malcolm X
- Bertrand Russell
- George Orwell
- Oscar Wilde
- Pablo Picasso
You have a limited perspective right now because you've been conditioned to dismiss alternatives with little thought. So was I, but I've since learned the history of capitalism and how it functions, as well as the various movements against it and what they've accomplished.
Nothing.
Are you joking or seriously asking, I am not joking it is hard to tell genuinely.
Simply put, he's not on their team and as mayor of New York it's a good amount of power and if he wins there it'll encourage more and suddenly they'll have less chums in positions they like and won't get what they want done
I’m serious and not very savvy when it comes to politics. I feel like the establishment is out of touch with regular people. I wouldn’t mind if more socialists got elected. I would have voted for Sanders. Also, it’s hard to tell just what the establishment actually wants half the time. I don’t know, it just seems like democrats should support more socialist ideas.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/324-the-abcs-of-socialism?_pos=2&_psq=socialism&_ss=e&_v=1.0 you might want to try this as a gentle introduction to socialism. It's a big topic, but you can start here and then look for the next book that interests you if you like.
Cool, thanks
The quick answer is that the Democratic Party isn't socialist. Socialists work against the interests of capitalists and guess who the Democratic Party takes a lot of money from? The few socialists or democratic socialists that try to run through the Democratic party are fighting an uphill battle and are only doing so mostly because the two party system makes it impossible for 3rd parties to win in most cases.
This has always been the case, but what might cause this confusion is that the Democrats appeared to favor more socially oriented policies in the mid 20th century with The New Deal and The Great Society. But the thing to understand about that is:
- Despite creating some social spending programs, they kept capitalists in power.
- They never stopped doing the other part of capitalism: Imperialism.
- There was a lot of pressure from outside the government. Unions were stronger. The Great Depression was the greatest crisis capitalism had seen up until that point, and the success of communist revolutions in other countries could have shown the American working class a different path forward.
In the 90s, with the Soviet Union dissolved and the power of unions thoroughly gutted, the Democrats under Clinton did a realignment to the right. Clinton famously passed welfare "reform" (read: gutting it) calling it "an end to welfare as we know it." Clinton entered us into NAFTA, a trade deal that helped facilitate corporations moving production to other countries to exploit cheaper labor. He passed the Crime Bill which is credited with being a huge contributor to mass incarceration. Etc.
Since then Democrats have looked a lot more like Clinton than FDR, and even FDR wasn't a socialist. So yeah, the people who helped take things away from the working class aren't super thrilled about someone who wants to take some of that stuff back for us.
Democrats, democratic socialism and socialism are all different things. The Democratic party has different objectives from Democratic socialists. Perhaps it would be helpful to label Democrats as the "center moderate" party, democratic socialists as "left and the Republican party as "fascism".
I guess I’m closer to the left then
He might like do a thing that helps the peasants... Or even hurt the parasite.
Who knows but when you end counter this many enemies on both sides, you know this bro is going the right way. NYC politics is a corruption galore though. He is about to finding out how impotent that can make him. Hope fully he can do something to kick off a wave across US.
People haven't gained the full class consciousness yet but post covid fuckeninng has shook the normie to the core and they asking questions that make daddy very uncomfortable
Justice Democrats, progressives, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani are all outliers – the majority of the Democratic party (and especially the DNC) have dedicated their very souls to maintaining the status quo and maintaining their corporate funding – they are the “white moderate” that MLK was warning as being even more dangerous than KKK – we know the Republicans hate us while the Democrats will pat you on the back as they tell you their hands are tied and this isn’t the time and don’t rock the boat and they know what you want better than you do
The main potential problem of democratic socialism is that it can fuel a sort of populist policies, where politicians promise all kinds of benefits to the voters. The politicians who promise and implement those things only get the benefits (votes and power) and never have to answer for the problems (e.g. inefficient and expensive structures that were perhaps not needed at all) they create. It's always the cleanup crew (the politicians who are responsible and implement austerity) who get the blame.
Like almost all things in this world, democratic socialism can also be great if it's implemented well. For instance, well-funded and well-planned public schools can be awesome for the whole society, both the poor, the rich, and everyone in between. But that requires skill, intelligence, hard work, all of which are scarce resources.