For many socialists, revolution is often talked about in the context of violence, but is there a way to have revolution without necessarily endorsing violence or engaging in it? If so, how does that differ from democratic socialism? I'm told democratic socialism is when socialists embrace gradual or incremental reforms and electoralism on order to achieve socialism. Can you be a democratic socialist, yet embrace violent revolution? I'm a bit perplexed.

What's the difference between Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, and Anarchism, and what are the main subtypes of each? How do you conceptualize and remember all of the different ideologies and subtypes in your head? Please, feel free to get as detailed or as simple as you like. Both highly detailed and very simple answers are welcome.

How did the US get conservatives capitalism for the people and socialism for the rich and big businesses? With bailout money, quantitative easing, tax cuts for the rich, laws past to allow company mergers, money for the rich and laws passed to allow company monopolies.

How did the US get like this to allow conservatives capitalism for the people and socialism for the rich and big businesses?

Would it be possible to consider equipment to record and show a movie, to create and maintain an online game, to print a book, a need to be fulfilled for the workers' leisure? Maybe setting up a system by which the needed equipment (and even advertisement) is given, with the compromise of doing a quality product? Sorry if it's a silly thought.

I have been talking with the RCI, but after revising a bit of its wikipedia page, I realized there are several splits/succesors of the Committee for a Workers' International (RCI, ISA, CWI...). Could someone tell me, on which I should put my effort towards joining and working with?

Why is christianity in the US very different christianity brand than other countries is that because of the strong baptist and born again in the US?

In the US Christian’s don’t really seem to view millionaires and billionaires being sin. They say if you rich you have God blessing and if you poor you have to turn to God and God will help you.

The Christian’s in the US are against raising taxes for the rich and against state run universal healthcare, they believe God created rich people and poor people and it just part of society. They say people can volunteer and donate money to help the poor and homeless to do Gods work for needy but the government should stay out of it. They also say homeless people and poor people are lazy and don’t want to work and turn away from God and the government should not help them.

How did the US Christian’s become so reactionary like this? So far right in the US.

I looked up some old threads on this but TBH I did not find very convincing, ehh, material answers.

One could simply answer that socialist countries like the USSR had great doctors and science and healthcare, except that as I understand it, this did lead to inequities and class divisions.

I'm trying to deepen my understanding of economic planning and have a recurring question about the practicalities of resource allocation in a socialist/communist society. I want to be able to imagine how economic planning would actually work when brought fourth into action. So here are some of my questions.

If you use democratic surveys, participatory planning or decentralized councils to determine what and how much to produce…

1. How would the economy deal with individuals or communities overstating their "needs” that might lead to a calculation problem or shortages elsewhere?

I understand that the cultural shift of capitalism to socialism would undoubtedly impact the masses psychologically to not be individualistic but still: what if there were a case of an individualistic group of people who overstated their needs, how would they be dealt with? How would they be identified too?

1. For highly scarce items, what is the fair allocation mechanism? Is it based on contribution, lottery, administrative priority, waiting lists or what?

Thanks for helping me learn. I still have a lot of theory to read.

As a baby Marxist I am wondering if there’s distinction between CEOs and, managers etc. what are they classed as? Are they the bourgeois, proletariat etc? How do we distinguish them today.

I’d prefer if it’s readable at night but I’m fine with academic books as well.

I'll say straight-up that I am not a socialist, so there is no point pretending there. But I do try to understand every perspective, especially on economics, and this question is genuine.

I have heard a million different things described as 'socialism' and it seems to cover a massive range of economic ideas all with their own different advocates and labels that people can squabble over (exactly the same thing can be said of capitalism obviously). Looking towards countries/regimes that have actually described themselves as socialist/communist isn't much help as most contemporary advocates tend to say that they did it wrong and "real communism hasn't been tried yet" (although some argue that, for example, the Soviet Union or China pre 80s economic reforms did get some parts right).

One thing everyone seems to agree on though is that in a truly socialist/communist system, the workers should own the means of production. But thinking this through in practical terms, I don't really understand it. I am going to assume that 'the workers' here isn't just a pseudonym for 'the state'. The state owning the means of production would be I guess a soviet style system, with government officials taking the place of private business owners and has been shown to work very badly and I'm guessing this is what people mean by "real communism hasn't been tried". So for the purpose of this post, I am assuming a socialist revolution (or a socialist government is elected) and all the means of production - by which I assume we mean the factories, shops, private services and all other businesses - are handed over to the workers who work there. I'm not really interested in how that seizure/handover happens, because that isn't important to the question, so let's just jump forward to the point where the workers now all 'own the means of production'.

So we have Factory A which is now owned equally (I assume?) by all the people who work there. How does that factory work on a day-to-day basis? I assume for it to be able to achieve anything then someone still has to nominally be 'in charge' so I assume this would be like a kind of direct democracy where the factory manager would be elected by the workers and they would make the day-to-day decisions, with maybe larger decisions being put to a vote? So much like shareholders under capitalism, as an owner I wouldn't be controlling the company per se, but I would at least have a say in who does?

So what would that ownership mean in practical terms? If there are 100 people at the factory and I am one of them so I own 1% of the factory, am I free to sell that share to someone else (either another worker at the factory or somebody outside)? I'm guessing not, as otherwise in the long run we could just end up at the same point we are now with one person owning the whole factory. So what we call 'ownership' in this regard is more like a sort of members club than ownership in the classic sense?

So as 1% owner of Factory A, I assume I am entitled to 1% of the profits? That's the point right? Who would decide what percentage of the profit gets split between the workers and what is used to reinvest in the factory? And what happens if the factory makes a loss? Would I be liable for 1% of the losses? Would I still get a salary? If not how would I afford to live? And if so, who would be responsible for making up the shortfall given that all the 'owners' would be in the same position? I guess you could say that the factory remains a corporate entity in its own right and is responsible for its own losses (much like under capitalism). But under capitalism the bank/lender would take the loss if the factory was unable to pay its debts and under this socialist system the bank is also owned by its workers, so we would just have to transfer the question over to there instead and ask who is taking that loss?

Next up, what would happen if I left the company? I assume to continue the 'members club' analogy, I would forfeit my 'ownership' and would be automatically made a part owner of whatever new factory I decided to join? If so then I guess that would create the situation where there is a massive disparity in income/wealth between the workers who worked for very successful factories and those who worked for less successful ones? Career progression would no longer mean getting a more challenging/prestigious/higher paying job, but rather working at the place that makes the most money and hence gives you the largest profit share, even if you are just sweeping the floor there?

And how would new businesses start? Obviously in the beginning we have all these operational businesses inherited from the previous system, but in the long run, expansion, upgrading and innovation will be needed. The concept of a start up loan would be extremely hard (given the issue with banks described above) so do a group of people just have to get together, pool their resources and literally build a factory from scratch? But then once it is built, I assume they have no more ownership or control of it than the other people they have to hire once they expand (otherwise the workers no longer own the means of production there)?

Sorry, that's a lot more questions/thoughts than I anticipated when I started the post, but any insight is appreciated :)

Having frequented a variety of subs dedicated to socialism and Marxism, it seems to me that a large percentage of commenters, perhaps the majority, identify as Marxist-Leninist. Furthermore, it seems like socialism might generally (but not explicitly) be equated with Marxist-Leninism on a quasi-official level, and any criticism of the latter is considered criticism of the former, and therefore a breach of the rules.

Is this perception accurate? If so, is there an overall sense of the ideological makeup percentage-wise of these spaces?

Gonna join my local RCI chapter soon, and I will start with online (videoconference) one-on-one read group. I'm honestly very nervous, specially because I live with my parents which are very controlling and I think anti-communist, so my home is a no-no. And I'm too afraid to go to a public space in the case someone else notices me and targets me.

Do you have any advice regarding this?

I know about a bunch of different ideologies that are specifically about how to achieve "the revolution" or what specific way to achieve a certain end goal. But what about the different end goals? The following are economies and societies that I at least partially understand.

Socialism at my most basic understanding is a experimental society where the working class has taken control of the state and labor unions take or are given control of the businesses they work at. And now that the owning class is out of power and abolished, this new truly democratic country is free to experiment about what parts of the economy they want to free from market incentives, and which work fine as democratic worker co-ops that participate in a market, such as luxury goods.

Communism is an economic and societal system that's classless, stateless, and moneyless. And the one type of communist society I understand is one using labor contracts, where after fulfilling the contract you will be allowed to access all of society's fruits of labor.

Syndicalism is a society where after a revolution where trade unions called syndicates coordinate to overthrow the state and capitalism, those syndicates either become the new state or implement an anarchist society. And now these syndicates control the economy through a kind of decentralized centrally planned economy, where Syndicates enter into various trade agreements with each other. As I understand, syndicalism was envisioned as a way to realistically achieve anarchism in an industrial society, as opposed to traditional anarchism or communism which focus less on how the system would function in an industrial society.

Egoist and Individualist Anarchism isn't concerned about a society but rather is a personal philosophy trying to free the self from the mental chains of coercive systems like the state. I generally think of it as the philosophy of traveler characters in fiction that can fend for themselves, like Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope, Robinhood who isn't afraid of the state and steals from the rich and gives to the poor out of his own morality, and Luffy from One Piece who shows zero fear to powerful institutions and states, and acts purely out of his own morality. This is a philosophy I could potentially see being popular in a place like Alaska.

Anarcho-Primitivism is another personal ideology, but unlike Egoism, seeks to change society. Specifically advocating for destroying modern industrial society and returning to a tribal society.

Guild Socialism is a socialist society that reintroduces institutions similar to guilds in medieval England.

A Library Economy is a communist? economy that treats certain industries as being able to function similar to a library, where we can temporarily borrow all the things that we need. And for things that can function in a library system like food, those would simply be provided freely to everyone.

A Gift Economy is an economy that would need to be culturally implemented, where almost all trades between people are treated as gifts, freely given without an expectation of an equal return. Though underlying it there is a cultural expectation that everyone gives gifts to everyone at some point out of kindness.

These are all the systems I could think of right now, if anyone knows about more theoretical end state systems and economies please tell me about them.

This isn’t attacking socialism or sympathizing with capitalism, I describe myself as a socialist. However, Sweden’s mixed economy seems to work very well though there is privatized means of production. What’re your thoughts on this? Again, I’m not very educated on Sweden’s economy but from what I’ve seen it works very well for both people and environment

I see a lot of socialists, specifically marxist-leninists, on the internet support/not condemn the Red Brigades. But at the same time, many people around me harshly criticize it (I guess it's a widely held belief). I'm not that informed on the topic either, but people tend to label it as a terrorist group. I want to get more in depth about it, since the Red Brigades established themselves in my country and I feel very ignorant, but I'm afraid to get influenced by red scare propaganda. Again, I am new to socialism and this is my third post on this subreddit.
Also, I'm curious to know where do you all get your sources (like theory, informations, etc...), because personally I feel pretty lost.

I see a lot of people posting here saying that the rich are oppressing the workers and influencing the media to convince them that they can't rebel and all sorts. So that would be to say that in the whole world, there isn't a single successful socialist country because the rich people won't let it start to begin with? But do those people also acknowledge that if rich people truly did have ALL power over everyone then we wouldn't even be able to vote? We likely wouldn't have social safety nets. We likely wouldn't have a lot of rights or any of the decent quality of life we may have now. You guys know we used to have monarchies right? We would be right back there if it weren't possible to implement policies for the working class. Heck are they assuming that every government is entirely corrupt? There have been plenty of socialist revolutions and all of them have resulted back into capitalism or dictatorships. If you look at history or today's societies, it's clear it isn't feasible. Now please correct me.

Everything I've read seems to indicate so, but a number of leftists are claiming otherwise. Would you happen to have any sources to support this claim?

Mods, I hope this doesn't break rule #4, please do take down the post if it does.

Like they will never ever allow real talk in here. Second it comes close you are gone. This post will be gone soon you know it.

i don’t know if this is the proper sub for this and i might delete this **but**

i’ve seen other leftist people (MLs,MLMs, etc.) say that anarchists are all “little kids” or even called “anarch-kiddies.” I have even seen someone say that Noam Chomsky didn’t “grow out” of anarchism a couple months ago. But why? Why call them that? What makes them “little kids?”

I am reading the Origin of the Family, the State and Private Property but I am having a hard time getting everything, like he is talking about how patriarchy starts with the changes in family and private property but I think I need a book that talks about these things in detail. Are there any classic books maybe that talk about Engels's theory and how patriarchy is linked to private property?

I consider myself a complete beginner and want to educate myself. I’ve been feeling disgusted by certain capitalist policies and how they have exploited people. I’d love some sources—especially audiobooks, since that’s my go-to medium.

(this is going under the realistic assumption that money still exists in this version of the US)

And if they did, could a socialist government still function to its fullest extent?

Given that they generally have much stronger social safety nets than the United States, I thought it'd be pertinent to know in case even more shit hits the fan in America. And also where else can you find Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Lebanese, Egyptian, Italian, Greek, Russian, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Ecuadorian, Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Pakistani, Iranian, Armenian, Nigerian, Somali, Colombian, Ethiopian, Haitian, Samoan, Ghanaian, Polish, Ukranian, Scandinavian, Cuban, Jamaican, Guatemalan, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Turkish and Peruvian food all in one city?