communism, socialism, nordics…
Ok, only because I always get confused and (almost) sucked into the right’s love of associating all 3 of the above words together with anything that isn’t ridiculously MAGA, let’s pull back for a second and remind ourselves of some things, especially given Mamdani in NYC. I have to do this every few months.
Communism is not socialism. (Read The Communist Manifest, it’s actually really interesting.)
Communism has no official state. It has withered away as the final stage of socialism.
Socialism is not Nordic Social Democracy.
Socialism is ownership of the wealth by the workers with the state still functioning.
Nordic Social Democracy is capitalism.
It’s capitalism with lots of guard rails (in part guard rails to keep the flow of wealth and power going to a broader group than a smaller group.)
Nordic Social Democracy is also loads of safety nets (universal healthcare, free education, etc…)
See #5 again. It is capitalism. All the Nordic countries have tons of millionaires, billionaires, and private capital.
Communism, as defined by Marx, has never really been attempted.
Communism as defined by the U.S.S.R., was a miserable failure. Socialism, in Venezuela as well. (This is about the only thing most of the right gets right.)
Communism, as defined by Marx, is worker ownership and the state dissolves. See #2.
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.
Most forms of communism that we’ve seen were actually oligarchies.
Oligarchies are the vast majority of wealth and power in the hands of a few.
Arguably, this is the U.S. A very small numbers of companies, own most of every other company. A very small percent of billionaires fund elections, etc… one could argue the U.S. is operating very similar to communism with just different branding on the wealthy and powerful.
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.
Which is ironic, because this is why Democrats and Republicans don’t like anything that has the word “social” in it. It threatens their power and wealth.
Which is why they either a) ignore it (like Democrats) or b) call it communism (like Republicans). Both are scared to death of it.
Which is why we’re at where we’re at with all these words.
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, most of the stuff Trump is trying to defund.
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.
The vast majority of Americans want Nordic style social democracies and yet…
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.
All of this to say, Mamdani is not even close to a communist.
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 why Mamdani has the support he does.