Society/Culture Can a purely socialist society exist?

[Seeds]

A purely socialist society has no means to allocate resources. You take away the price system then resource allocation collapses and thus so does the system. How long this takes depends on how long the leaders are willing/able to hold guns to everyone heads.

 

[IlovethePies]

So, responding directly to the thread title, can a genuine socialist society exist...
the answer is most emphatically, yes.

History shows that there was an alternative to Stalinism - it was the program of world socialist revolution.

Trotsky established the Fourth International in 1938, which was the genuine continuation of socialist internationalism, in opposition to Stalinism.

Since then, the Fourth International has fought for the principles of socialist internationalism.

For decades, it has remained small for several reasons, some of which include: the polticial assassinations and violent political provocations carried out by Stalinists and their allies, along with the imperialists themselves, and because the Stalinist regime itself criminally usurped the name of socialism.

Millions of workers and colonially oppressed peoples worldwide were hoodwinked: they believed that the right wing, nationalist dictatorship within the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries somehow defended socialism.

While this gigantic bureaucracy continued to hold state power, and syphon off the cream of the wealth made possible by the nationalised property relations, it was able to maintain this noxious myth.

However, in the end, when the globalised capitalist economy overcame the nationalised property relations within one country (as Trotsky predicted would happen in the end, because it was absurd to ever believe it possible for one nation to match the technological level of the globalised capitalist economy), the Stalinists moved to consolidate their wealth by reimposing capitalism, and ensuring that they themselves became the new capitalist class.

Hence, we had the phenonomen of former Stalinist bureaucrats who only years before had been preaching their commitment to socialism, suddenly emerging from the social chaos of capitalist restoration as capitalist billionaires.

 

[IlovethePies]

A purely socialist society has no means to allocate resources. You take away the price system then resource allocation collapses and thus so does the system. How long this takes depends on how long the leaders are willing/able to hold guns to everyone heads.

This is precisely what happened in the Stalin dictatorship that ruled the Soviet union. Every national program leads to inequality, because the productive capacity within the borders of a single country will always be incapable of satisfying the social needs of everyone.

Hence, the bureaucracy within the Soviet Union did rule with a revolver to the head of the working class.

Just like Hitler's fascist dictatorship ruled in the same manner.

Just like Pinochet's fascist government ruled in the same manner.

You see where I am going with this? Every capitalist government, because it is based on a national program, enforces social inequality through one means or another.

IN so called bourgeois democracies, social inequality is enforced through capitalist law, jails, the police and a trade union apparatus which constantly betrays the social demands of the working class and enforces the interests of the corporations.

Howver, as the social crisis deepens, and class polarisation reaches a level of intensity not seen since the 1930's, once again throughout the world we see a general trajectory towards authoritarian and fascist forms of rule. Throughout Europe, neo-fascists are either taking political power, or in the position of dictating to governments (France, Italy, Germany...) and of course in the US we are witnessing the attempts by Trump to create a paramilitiary fascist movement to seize political power. We also see a fascist government in Israel carrying out genocide in Gaza and now attempting to spread this to a regional war in Lebanon and ultimately against Iran.

The only way out of this is for the international working class to resume its struggle, begun under the leadership of the Bolsheviks in 1917, for world socialist revolution.

 

[FruitTingles]

Are we talking about here on Planet Earth or are we talking about on another planet where there are no Humans?

One of the few interesting things I heard Musk talk about. He was asked what political system we should use if we colonise Mars.

We would be turning up without all the baggage of slavery, colonial exploitation or holy sites of religious significance. Probably early on, it would be a sharing of resources. Initially a market economy might not make sense as at the bare survival level everyone needs to contribute and getting more people onto the planet difficult. To survive most human groups would need a cop and a leader who follows agreed upon laws.

 

[peetoo]

One of the few interesting things I heard Musk talk about. He was asked what political system we should use if we colonise Mars.

We would be turning up without all the baggage of slavery, colonial exploitation or holy sites of religious significance. Probably early on, it would be a sharing of resources. Initially a market economy might not make sense as at the bare survival level everyone needs to contribute and getting more people onto the planet difficult. To survive most human groups would need a cop and a leader who follows agreed upon laws.

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