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Comment by alsetmusic | Hacker News Reader

> socialism need not be authoritarian

True socialism is the opposite of authoritarianism. Simply put, it's taking care of everyone. Just because the label has been misused doesn't change the goal of those of us who identify as socialists. USA propaganda made it a bad word.

> As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is the standard left-wing ideology in most countries. [0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

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True! But at some point the rubber needs to meet the road and we haven't seen this materialize in practice, so for all intents and purposes, when we talk about realist socialism we need to account for the various forms of authoritarianism that comes in the package, I think

shouldn't we, by the same account, maybe even more, be disparaging of capitalism?

I don't know, I don't care about capitalism, I prefer to reserve my attention for things that could work long term and let it wither and die.

Having said that, I don't subscribe to capitalist propaganda. When I say realist socialism that should refer to the inherent structures of power that need to exist in order to organize large groups of people and how to manage greed and ambition so it doesn't eat society from within. It's important to idealise true socialism, but just as much as the Ubermensch can't materialize, that is also just a compass, a guiding star.

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