communism, socialism, nordics…

I posted this to Reddit yesterday. So might as well keep track of it here too.

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Ok, go easy on me. Please.

I get so confused and (almost) sucked into the love of associating all 3 of the above words together that I have to go through this exercise every few months to remind myself of some things. And given Mamdani in NYC, it seems especially relevant - although it always is.

Again, please, I'm throwing this out for people to say where I'm right or wrong because I may not be that smart, but I'm smart enough to know this is all very complex and nuanced and my opinions are certainly wrong somewhere.

1. Communism is not socialism. (The Communist Manifesto is an interesting read.)

2. Communism has no official state. The state has dissolved into nothing as it's no longer necessary... it is the "final" expression of socialism, according to Marx.

3. Socialism is not Nordic Social Democracy.

4. Socialism is ownership of the means of production (wealth and power) by the workers with the state still functioning.

5. Nordic Social Democracy is capitalism with some caveats (but all forms of capitalism that have been attempted has caveats).

6. Nordic Social Democracy has lots of guard rails (in part guard rails to keep the flow of wealth and power moving to a broader group than a smaller group.)

7. Nordic Social Democracy has loads of safety nets (universal healthcare, free education, etc…)

8.Just repeating #5. Nordic Social Democracy is capitalism. All the Nordic countries have tons of millionaires, billionaires, and private capital.

9. Communism, as defined by Marx, has never really been attempted.

10. Communism as defined by the U.S.S.R., was a miserable failure. Socialism, in Venezuela as well.

11. Communism, as defined by Marx, is ownership of the means of production by the workers... and the state dissolves. See #2.

12. Communism, as tried, was, and has been (Venezuela included) state ownership which means, really, the government and its rich friends owned everything and had all the power.

13. Most forms of communism that we’ve seen are, in many ways, actually oligarchies. (Getting scary here.)

14. Oligarchies are the vast majority of wealth and power in the hands of a few.

15. Arguably, this is the U.S. or at least where we're headed fast. A very small number of companies own most of every other company. A very few media companies run the vast majority of media. A very small percent of the population own the vast majority of the wealth which often funds elections, etc… and leads to a lot of power. One could argue the U.S. is operating very similar to communism with just different branding on the wealthy and powerful class. (I know this is a big statement and probably an exaggeration but you get the idea.)

16. Which is ironic, because this is what Marx (who kinda came up with the idea of communism) warned about: capitalism leads to the wealthy owning most of the power and the state serving the wealthy and why his answer was socialism and eventually communism.

17. Which is ironic, because those in power (Democrats and Republicans) are threatened by anything which could chip at their power and wealth and thus run from words that contain "social" like vampires run from sunlight.

18. Which is why it seems they either a) ignore it (like Democrats) or b) call it communism (like Republicans). Both are scared of it and come up with different ways to make sure it doesn't take real foothold of power.

19. Which is why we’re at where we’re at with all these words.

20. Fire departments and Social Security are examples of social democratic programs already operating in the U.S... that are pretty great. There are many others - cancer research, hospitals, much of the stuff being defunded lately that most Americans like.

21. The vast majority of Americans want universal healthcare, free tuition (we used to have this), higher taxes on the extremely wealthy (we used to have this) and services provided by the government.

22. The vast majority of Americans want Nordic style social democracies and yet…

23. Our leaders (on both sides) never really do much for either because, again, they are funded by the wealthy who own all the power and wealth and it would threaten their own power and wealth, because we're closer all the time to an oligarchy.

24. All of this to say, Mamdani is not even anywhere near a communist.

25. All of this to say, if you’re not a billionaire, and you work, and you live in the U.S., and you’re not threatened, and you understand words, you really should be all for a Nordic style of social democracy. Which is maybe why Mamdani has gotten the support he has out of the blue.

Again, love for you all to correct me where I'm right and wrong and I can further try to understand and differentiate the complexities.