Successful Socialist Countries

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What does this mean?

People are not starving and have a place to live and have enough the minimum amount of materials to live a fulfilling life. I''m not sure what you're getting at?

Why don't you tell me a successful example of socialism in YOUR eyes.

Aren't they allowing families to start business or something similar to coops? Isn't that a win for socialism?

Recently they're allowing 'foreign investment' aka sweatshops. But they had a good run, they couldn't realistically last that long with the whole capitalist world against them..

Isn't cuba a shithole? poor economy and people?

Tito's Yugoslavia

The USSR before Stalinism went into full effect (>inb4 people will debate this)

The Paris Commune

Cuba

Catalonia

Mahknovist Ukraine

Many of the Indigenous tribes of the Americas also had systems similar to socialism albeit in an obviously more primitive way

Also remember to:

-Define the actual meaning of Socialism

-Point out that external Capitalist and Imperialist forces were the main cause of the downfall of Socialist societies and organizations in the 20th Century not internal flaws within the ideologies themselves (outside of the later State-Socialism of the USSR of course)

-That anything relatively Left wing in nature has been subverted, often through military means, by America on behalf of the corporations lolberts love to defend for the last 50 years

-That Nazis weren't socialists and had to appropriate the rhetoric and imagery of Socialist movements of the time for the very fact because people knew it was better and demanded it (same with the rise of Mussolini)

-That Capitalism has killed infinitely more people than Socialism

-That Libertarianism is a left-wing ideology and they are stupid Neo-Fuedalists/Proprietarians

-That they're faggots

Even if you don't get them to change their mind, you'll at least make them buttmad, which is always hillarious

Can you elaborate? Not to familiar with that.
Also

Are you sure? I'm a burger so I want to hear a dissenting view backed up by facts to the popular dogma.

What about Rojava?
Does the Free Territory count?

That's interesting. I have two questions:

1. If co-operatives can work fine under capitalism, why the need to smash capitalism and force socialism down people's throats when they can already enter into voluntary worker co-operatives?

2. Do co-operatives usually have hierarchy? As in: everyone owns a part of the business but there are still store managers who are ranked above shelf-stackers, for example.

Yeah that's another good example I just forgot about it. They might try to give you shit because they're aligned with the PKK who are considered terrorists by some countries but just tell them to fuck off

It ties in the with military interventions that overthrew any remotely Left political establishment in other countries. A lot of stuff involving trade embargos and such towards Socialist countries and making sure to support their enemies even if it meant supporting terrorists (for example what happened in Afghanistan, after the Soviets invaded, was that the group which ultimately became Al-Qaeda was armed to the teeth and funded out the ass by the CIA just so long as they fought the USSR and ceased Socialism, with the added benefit of helping legitimize the more radical strains of Islamic thought that ultimately helped to bring the Taliban to power in Afghanistan which was formally secular and even social democratic in nature)

Cuba is a bit of a grey area but it's pretty much a fact that until the 70s Cuba was very successful as a socialist country and there was plenty of collectivization and workers ownership. It technically wasn't "full Socialism" but I still count it because i'd say it got close enough until the late 60s/70s where it started experiencing really bad economic shocks and peasant revolts which made it harder for the Communists to keep power without resorting to some kind of methods which would make them look barbaric to Capitalist countries. They also ceased to receive funding from USSR around that time and were under heavy trade embargos from the US IIRC (I haven't studied up on it in a while so i might be wrong about this but I'm fairly sure that's roughly the situation)

but why? If it was so great?

take a look at this map.

pic related.

What is necessary for a fulfilling life? I'm not trying to argue about socialism, this is a very abstract and speculative sub-discussion. I am trying to probe the distinction between life as an ideal and survival. We agree at least that a high standard of living means something qualitative, not just a quanta of calories and square footage for living.

Okay just use these three basic definitions
- some form of superfluous commodity( TV's for example) that people can use on their spare time
-enough food to eat(and water obviously)
-a house to live in

They can work "fine" by capitalist definitions.
But under capitalism cooperative workers are forced to work against their own interests - such as lowering costs and therefore wages in order to compete with more capitalistic businesses. And they still have to rely on capitalist production with all the resources they use.

No. Most industry was state controlled. Only recently has the government begun to liberalize and allow worker control because of their wanting economic condition.

The Soviets were the main reason they were succeeding. When they dissolved in the 90's so to did they. This is indeed due to the American embargo, though.

This is just extremely vague. What is "totalitarianism", for example?

Having a state that controls every aspect of a persons life. All liberty is subsumed by control. Think fascist.

Then it's not socialism, by definition.

Right. So I'm asking: any examples of socialism being successful(aka sustaining a population for say, 5 years)

There is no example of socialism at all, neither "successful" nor unsuccessful. As I said, socialism will be global.

No, socialism involves a state. Communism does not.

This sounds more and more like a pipe dream the more you keep going.

Socialism IS communism!
Communism includes two stages of which socialism is the lower.
>What we have to deal with here is a communist society […] just as it emerges from capitalist society
K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme
Lenin, The State and Revolution.
The state indeed still exists in socialism, but not as a "special organ" like former states were. And it's already withering away.

Well, it's not. May I suggest you to read?
By the way, it took more than a thousand years for feudal societies to die. Just saying.

Cuba is doing surprisingly well for itself, but has some problems reemerging after the end of the Soviet bloc, like institutional racism (the real thing, not Tumblr whining).

Yugoslavia under Tito was a tremendous leap in progress for the nation. He was also an actual socialist that wanted to give workers ownership of the MoP after the transitory period, which I'm sure is just a coincidence, at least according to the Mises Institute.

From a global perspective, capitalism has easily caused more suffering than it has eased.

Regardless, state socialism is in no way a logical contradiction.

Thank you! I really, REALLY do not mean to be a dick but I just happen to have bigger ambitions that yours that cannot be fulfilled in the capitalist mode of production. I cannot call a life where I have spare time. That's because the rest of the time I am either working to make someone else rich and receive just enough to live or in the opposite position – keeping people alive on a bare thread. And what's worse, is that both parties involved in that arrangement are both slaves to the imperative of capital accumulation.

I can't live with just a TV or an XBOX to have, because the actual "is-ness" of that activity is to literally just sit and watch. I can't live vicariously. But that's all that's left in this world, where the only thing that really "lives" is capital, all real people running around and surrendering their real lives at the altar of an abstract notion of value. Sorry I'm just trying to hone my rhetoric. If you think socialism can't offer more than a box to sleep in, a TV, and some food, then of course I'm not surprised you don't like socialism. I want real culture, I want voluntary combination, I want peace and love and joy. I go in the streets and people can't look each other in the eye, people are afraid of one another.

Assuming you're
please tell me of an instance of socialism where the capitalist counties left them alone for 5 whole years instead of trying to murder them all. Pro-tip you can't because labor and capital are mutually antagonistic. Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, Chile…all places where socialist governments were attacked or socialist peoples were murdered en masse.

socialism = state, communism = no state

Woah dude, calm down.
I'm reading Das Kapital right now and I wanted to hear of some examples of socialism working. I made that outline because that's what the average normie would consider a high quality life, and the majority of people under our system will be normies.

Oh wow, I hope it's going well! I think it's important to agree that most people will be normies

are you an imbecile?

im from latin america, cuba is way better than any other latin country, along with chile and argentina.

daily reminder that communism is literally feudalism

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You idiots literally started a fight with other leftists in the middle of an anti-communist thread. You can't not be sectarian even for the sake of fighting anti-communists.

Wow, you learned how to screencap your own post. I'm impressed.

mondoweiss.net/2012/02/the-iraq-war-coverup-what-did-aipac-do-and-when-did-it-do-it/

What about Marinaleda, Spain?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinaleda

theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopia

Josiah Warren opened up a shop which ran on the labor theory of value and it nearly put everyone around him out of business.

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thanks for clarifying this, I've always been a bit shitty on the details of the Cuban revolution

at least i was half right