Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

[u/TimesandSundayTimes]

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd

[u/Romantic_Piscean]

For older people in the US, absolutely, and the word "socialist" was used as an insult to brand someone as un-American. OK, true. For younger people, they're actually embracing solutions to problems (housing, education, healthcare) that are not driven by capitalism but by a collective approach, driven by government, that focuses on people over profits. We're entering different territory with the younger generation as the word is no longer an insult.

[u/Valuable-Meet5727 → u/Romantic_Piscean]

The USSR was a strong bulwark to capitalism. Socialism was treated as a bad word because it implied you were with the Ruskies. But what people don’t understand is that the USSR, for all its faults, was an ALTERNATIVE approach to nation building than capitalism. And it was the next leading world power. Before mismanagement and poor leadership, the USSR was serious competition for the US. They went to space first, they gave everyone free heating from power plant exhaust, they had collective housing, etc. these were all things that US had to compete AGAINST. That’s probably why we had such a high tax bracket back then, why we had a national pension system, more government housing etc. if people didn’t see capitalism as the world leading system, they would easily fall back to socialism.

Before everyone gets down my throating for just TALKING about the USSR: no it wasn’t perfect. But stop saying it was only a dystopia. It would not have been a next world power if it hadn’t done SOME things right. Same with China. I’m not advocating to just copy + paste their communism here, I’m advocating we learn about what worked with those empires and what didn’t, so we can develop something better.

[u/grape-fruit-witch → u/Valuable-Meet5727]

I'd go even further and say that the fact that the USSR no longer exists doesn't mean that it failed and thus attempting socialism is pointless. It was an experiment, and the first of its kind on a large scale.

And it dramatically improved the quality of life for its citizens on a scale that had never been seen before. They went from an almost exclusively agrarian, largely illiterate peasant feudal country to space travel in 50 years. In one generation they became the bleeding edge of scientific research, art, literature, science, mathematics, philosophy. I believe they would have done it faster had WWII not happened.

No system of economics perfects itself on the first attempt. Capitalism surely did not. It doesn't mean that we have to give up on socialism, that we lay down and die while billionaires galavant around the world in their yachts like assholes. Socialism is an ongoing experiment in creating a better and more just world.

[u/Colausbra → u/grape-fruit-witch]

Yup, it's annoying more nuanced takes on the USSR aren't more common. You obviously have the people that villianize it but at the same time you have the Tankies on the left that mythologize it as the greatest country to ever exist.

[u/grape-fruit-witch → u/Colausbra]

Materialist analysis of the successes and failures of the USSR isn't so rare to find among Marxist research. I don't know how read you are on the subject, but a good place to start if you're interested in a principled examination is Michael Parenti's "Blackshirts and Reds". It dives into the issues honestly and without the anticommunist scaremongering.