• comfy@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    which depends on what qualifies as socialist.

    This is the critical point in a lot of these online arguments. “Socialist” is such a vague term that two people can unknowingly be reading completely different questions from the same statement. It can mean anything from a person following a school of thought (“I’m a socialist”, “We are a socialist party”, “The socialist movement”) to a description of economic conditions (“That commune has a socialist economy”), let alone looser usage (e.g. describing social policies within capitalism, people who have no understanding of socialist theories calling things socialist, etc.). When possible, I find it’s best to avoid the whole “thats not real socialism” spiral by being more specific.

    • Flax
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      2 days ago

      It literally isn’t real socialism. They don’t even have free healthcare.

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        11 hours ago

        As my previous post implied, socialism can refer to a school of thought/philosophy, or a movement, or a political position. China’s government clearly does not claim it has achieved a society with a socialist mode of production (which I’m assuming is what you mean by “real socialism”?), but that doesn’t contradict their claim of being a socialist, and further, communist party.

        Furthermore, free healthcare is irrelevant. It’s not a precondition of socialism. The working class can control and own their means of production without having free healthcare. It’s a great policy which I support, but it’s not socialist.

      • Halasham@dormi.zone
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        1 day ago

        Okay, so you’ve got one criteria: Socialized Medicine, care to list out the rest of them for how you determine if something is socialism?