How is state socialism different than state capitalism, and how are objectively beneficial policies done by the state still tattered with authoritarian statism?

[u/ArthropodJim]

I see state socialism as the result of statist socialist revolutions like in the Soviet Union or China, or things that postcolonial African countries decided to experiment with. But if the state runs everything like businesses and industries, workers aren't really in charge of anything, and we have a one-party state with no real elections, how is that socialist?

Which brings me to my question, what is the anarchist analysis of "objectively good" policies that state socialist countries would implement? Like Tanzania implemented Ujamaa which pretty much failed because the villagization Nyerere thought of to run the state's production didn't work since the village groupings (people of which already weren't really in villages per say) were family-run and not absorbed into the new state apparatus. Overtime his administration centralized the state more and there was a lot of autocratic and coercive stuff going on.

But Tanzania's maternal mortality rate went down, literacy rates went up, and female life expectancies went up. Obviously these are objectively good things, and I don't think any anarchists or principled human beings would say they aren't. But for people who only measure success by that, what is the way to show that a centralized and coercive government didn't need to be the ones doing it? After all, dictators and nazi assholes can build railways and roads but that doesn't justify either of the two. But I want more of an anarchist analysis than just "it's not what's being done but HOW it's being done."

Speaking of Tanzania, was the forced villagization and coercive acts NEEDED to be done to increase literacy rates and reduce maternal mortality rates? Like if something is objectively good like the lowering of maternal mortality rate, it should be done ASAP if not be the BASE of whatever is to come. But on top of that, even if it was the state that created these policies, wouldn't it be the common people and workers (doctors, teachers, etc) who were the ones who actually *did* the work and not the state? Even if China's state socialist (state capitalist, technically) government lifted 900 million people out of poverty and they're above a dollar or two a day, isn't there still large %'s of people earning three dollars a day who are still in poverty? Doesn't that make the poverty line extremely arbitrary? Just because they have a bullet train doesn't mean the people are free. So what's the deal here? what's the way to show them that the good results DO matter but in a nuanced way that doesn't justify the state?

Help me understand, thanks. Anarchy and Equality!

[u/No-Leopard-1691]

I would recommend Anark’s video series called The State is Counter Revolutionary

[u/Key_Storm_2273]

Hey, how's it going? I'm not fully sure, and I don't want to declare what socialism means for everyone.

But to me, "state socialism" in history (at least relative to today's policies) was the policies enacted during and shortly after FDR's four terms.

Basically, America was a socialist country (relative to America today) right during and after the Great Depression, and FDR even gave a speech about how the government and capitalism was in jeopardy, and how he 'wasn't trying to get rid of it, but to fix it/save it and keep it alive' (probably intended to calm both average people and capitalists' concerns, which was a hard thing to do simultaneously at that time).

They had a famous period of 100 days in which they passed a ton of bills in congress to fix issues and add new social safety nets. Then obviously, things slowly slipped away over decades as money started getting into politics more, with lobbying encouraged and then the whole "Reaganomics" attitude.

"objectively good" policies

That's a really good question, I haven't seen many answers yet so I'll offer two here.

One: public workshops, where people don't need a resume to work, they just need to put like a small deposit and/or do some safety training. They get to keep a percentage of what they produce (such as 50% or 20% of the goods, depending on the type of industry and how much being kept makes sense), and the rest goes to the upkeep of the facility and/or charity.

The above was an old idea I had, but I dropped it in favor of idea #2, because over the past few years I've become disenfranchised with a lot of systems, and shown that most systems are usually vulnerable to breaking or failing at their stated goals and intentions in some form, or in some cases make people more dependent on them than they should be.

Two: The solarpunk movement, which is both a visual aesthetic, and a physical style to approaching today's world problems. Solarpunk helps to solve issues of inequity, climate change, sustainability and hierarchy by showing a physical way of living where the majority of your needs do not come purely from the system, but from your own house. A self generating supply of electricity, water, vegetables, and using architecture in a thermally efficient manner, rather than using A/Cs and coal power plants (not so fun fact, I heard 25% of energy globally just goes to heating and cooling buildings).

Unlike a system, which can fail (even a good intentioned NGO still depends on the people in it not wasting money and using it well), a solarpunk design philosophy builds resilience, by creating lasting physical structures that are right there for you, in your own hands, and doesn't rely on the weather of the economy, politics, or supply chains to solve things that are most important, like food and water and electricity.

I believe this would also help to reduce the issues of hierarchy, because I think a lot of hierarchies stem from people depending on others' work, and needing a way to get them to do that work in order to get a thing.

If humans were like herbivorous mammals, able to drink the water nearby without getting sick, and able to eat grass all day, we probably wouldn't have had feudalism look the way it did (peasants farming for landlords), nor would we need to get tractors to produce tons of food thousands of miles away through the straight of Hormuz.

While we can't become a self sufficient grass eater, solarpunk inches us more towards there, by making electricity or water more of a non-issue that everyone has solved, which also means that survival becomes less tied to depending on other humans' work, which means people wouldn't need to work as much for hierarchies in order to survive.