Recently I posted a pretty harmless meme in my DSA chapter's Discord (see image). It was in response to South Korea's recent spate of Fascism.
In response I had comrades jump down my throat, attacking me for critical support of AES states like DPRK and China. According to these comrades "there is no real Socialist nation."
As tempting as it is to quit DSA I think I should stay and try to educate.
Comrades also jumped on me for a comment I made months ago in response to some right wing BS where I said "maybe Democracy isn't always a great idea". The point I was trying to make was that Trans rights and other basic freedoms should never be put up to a popularity contest... I'm ok with a state that defends these rights and doesn't allow a reactionary majority to vote them away!
During this thread, people brought up multiple times that DPRK isn't Democratic because the Kim's have always been the figurehead, China isn't Democratic because "reasons" (racism), China lies about their suicide rates to WHO, etc.
Frustrating. I'll post more details in the comments.
My question: What constitutes a "real" Democracy? Is it leadership changing hands every few years? We don't have that in the U.S. Is it secret ballots? All the nationa above have that. Is it that the people's votes and voices actually change the government actions? We saw this in China unfortunately when people demanded ending the COVID lock downs early. It was the wrong thing to do but done for the right reason.
And is there any hope for these people in my chapter? One of them was basically racist against Chinese people and they seem very set in this "not real Socialism" mindset.
This is a tough question, but I've come to the conclusion that the only way to know if a Democracy is "real" or not would be to a) study whether or not that government's policies follow the opinions, desires, and needs of the people it represents, and if that data is unavailable then a half decent substitute is b) asking the people themselves if they consider their system democratic.
oh hey look at that a study that suggests that the United States is not democratic and oh hey what's this it's a study that shows Chinese people have extremely high satisfaction and confidence in their democracy.
Now to be clear this stuff does not prove anything, it at best suggests something. In an ideal world we would have dozens of data points like these on every country to compare and contrast, but we don't have that which is where Marxism-Leninism comes in for me to fill in the gaps. They call it scientific socialism for a reason, after all!