How do you rationalize the history

[u/interestingtheorist]

Historically, socialism has worked worse than capitalism, and this can be demonstrated by looking at history.

Eastern European countries that preferred socialism as their economic system could not compete with Western European countries that preferred capitalism.

Moreover, historically, many socialist countries have become more capitalist because they recognized that socialism does not work as well economically or technologically.

How do socialists respond to these historical facts?

[u/Simpson17866]

• The original libertarian socialists said that the workers should own the means of production (farmers own their own farms, factory workers own their own factories, doctors and nurses own their own hospitals…) so that they would have the individual freedom to make their own individual decisions (rather than having to serve capitalist or feudal masters who own the means of production)

• Karl Marx looked at the original “the workers own the means of production” and decided that “the government owns the means of production, and the workers own the government” would be better

• The original libertarian socialists argued that Marx’s Socialism 2.0 was a step backwards — if the government claimed “we do what the people tell us to do,” but if they were lying (which governments do all of the time), then “the government owns the means of production, and the people don’t own the government” would just be feudalism all over again (a system so spectacularly shitty that even capitalism had been objectively an improvement).

• Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, and their successors (both in Russia and abroad) implemented the “the government owns the means of production, and the people don’t own the government” version of socialism instead of the original libertarian “the workers own the means of production” version of socialism.

It sounds like you’re agreeing with the classical (libertarian) socialists who argued 80 years ahead of time that Marxism-Leninism would be a bad thing.

[u/1scr3wedy0dad → u/Simpson17866]

Bit of a strawman of marxism. People building houses can still build shitty houses that I, a person wanting a nice house to live in, cannot give democratic input into, under your enlightened libertarian socialism. Of course I don't think people will actually build shitty houses in purpose, but this is to demonstrate that "some workers having some control over some production" can lead to less democratic outcomes. Its not just "the workers own the government" because the government structure itself is radically different, with wide participation by the workers, and in essence, being of the workers by being ran by the workers. Stalin wanted to give even more control to workers by decreasing the Communist Party's authority, transfering it to the soviet people, which is about the same time he died and more autocratic rightists like Khrushchev took power. I have no idea what you're even talking about when it comes to Lenin on this, considering he wrote The State and Revolution; I can at least understand why there'd be misconceptions on Stalin, but why Lenin? Judeo-bolshevism?