The aforementioned USSR, for example.

There are historical examples of completely and actually socialist countries, so it’s not some impossible idealistic notion for me.

The transitory period of New Economic Policy lasted only a few years in USSR, and China under Mao was much closer to actual socialism than later under Deng Xiaoping.

And the trend of expanding government control over the economy only comes alive in the 2020’s, roughly since the COVID-19 outbreak (just a milestone, not saying they are related). Previously, the trend was strongly on privatization of industries, with the share of state-owned enterprises falling from 80% to 30% in the previous decade, and it’s too early to make any conclusions.

This is all true - state intervention and state-owned businesses and funds bring about a positive change for the majority, and they should be there, but seriously calling those economies socialist would be missing the definitional mark, which is what I have highlighted.

I do believe that moving entire economy under public control would be beneficial, and that, actually, will be what can be called “socialism”. Virtually no country, except for heavily sanctioned and blatantly tyrannical North Korea, is currently there.

What we have right now, with heavy state intervention, is certainly better than “free” market economy though, and it reflects in quality of life for the economically disadvantaged - this very intervention leads to these economies following a different path compared to traditional capitalist societies. I do not argue there is no difference between China and, say, US in that regard - the difference is big, it’s just not what it takes to call the economy socialist.

I did not say of a severe crisis, I just highlighted both homelessness and inflated housing prices are a thing. And under the rule of the workers, neither should be true.

Do any of the sources define socialism?

All of this could be true - none of this makes China socialist.

What your data shows is that the share of state in the economy has partially recovered in 2020’s from ~30 to ~50%, after falling from 80% to 30% in the previous decade. Impressive, indeed, and way ahead of most capitalist countries - but China is home to numerous giant private megacorporations, and allows many companies from abroad to build in the country.

“Who holds power” is very abstract and is not part of definition of socialism or capitalism. Even still, we just talked about homelessness - if workers held all the power, would there be homeless? Would there be any poor at all? Would there be overheated markets, including housing, which is one of the craziest in the world? Would there be Tencent, Alibaba, etc.? Would there be billionaires? Etc. etc. What defines “workers holding power” for you?

What is it about some leftists desperately trying to put socialist label on capitalist China - a desperate attempt to demonstrate a mighty socialist economy in the modern world? Socialist countries have lost the Cold War and are mostly not on the map anymore; there are objective reasons to that, including the fact most of the world never moved away from socialism and capitalist forces had greater capital to work with, and this does not mean socialism is bad, but currently, socialism is not represented by any large economy. That’s just the fact.

Capitalism is not defined by how the poor are treated, but by the economic relationships and mode of ownership.

Nordic countries have low poverty and generally good social support. Like it or not, this is achieved with private property on means of production, hence they are capitalist.

China has private property on means of production, hence it too is capitalist.

Both of them feature strong state oversight, which allows them to direct more of the capitalist profits to help the poor - which is good! But this doesn’t make them “socialist”.

Because China is capitalist, despite being formally led by a communist party. It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one. Socialism, by definition, requires social ownership of means of production, which is not the case in China; the term was appropriated and wrongfully used by US and several other countries to define economies with more state control and/or social policies, but this is simply not what socialism is.

Interestingly, China has entire ghost towns full of homes ready to accept people in - but, as in any capitalist economy, homes are seen as an investment, and state subsidies are low, pricing out the homeless. They have more than enough homes, they just chose to pursue a system that doesn’t make homes and homeless meet.

Then we should define social left and right and keep it separate, and have one type of left and right as default (probably economic) or always mention it.

Because otherwise there’s a giant field for manipulations.

To my mind, there is nothing wrong with majority of people falling to some range. We can still make sense of it, looking at the levels of distinction that will ever be present.

Otherwise, we risk losing any common anchor, which is very important when we talk any point of statistics or want to trace dynamics and trends of political thought.

Taking some of the extreme examples, in USSR you would be “right-wing” for wishing to open your small business, and in modern US, you would be “left-wing” for wishing to make healthcare more affordable to the poor or have minorities heard. In fact, USSR was just full of people on the left, and US is full of people on the right, driven by propaganda, political technology, media, communications, genuine core beliefs etc.

Updating tools could be about bringing more clarity to some new formations and events, but it shouldn’t be about constantly redefining the base values.

Left and right are primarily economic, and we can only look at one axis at a time.

Otherwise, what you would call, idk, a devout Christian commune where people share everything? Left, because they’re equals, or right, because religion?

On the other hand, if we continuously move goalposts, we risk changing definitions so much that being anti-slavery would be “explicitly left”, and as most people tend to stick close to “center”, whatever it could be, this can really change the political landscape.

I’d argue that, among the working class, the right wing of the political spectrum represents either the expectation/ambition to gain much more than others, or distrust of the left, commonly driven by following capitalist BS or having certain reservations or misunderstandings.

Which is not exactly why we should remain in solidarity with those who started figuring something out, not alienate them based on past views.

Give him a bit of time, he already started looking through some of the BS.

Lemmy is generally leaning pro-Palestine, but it varies.

I’ll bash them too when I see them doing so. So long, it’s mostly them (or really, everyone leftier than liberals bunched along with actual tankies) that are under fire.

Your war made too much collateral damage, that’s what I’m saying. Newbies come to .ml and other popular instances, and are attacked on the spot for being presumably almost Nazis. Others come and see this mess.

You are so concerned about someone making China/Russia look better that you are ready to overlook everything else.

As a resident of a politically indifferent instance that is on good terms with everyone, I can say one thing:

Fuck absolutely everyone who turns Lemmy into yet another Internet battlefield.

Leave .ml alone. Leave Hexbear alone. Even yes - leave Lemmygrad alone. People there will not change their opinion when facing hatred, and newbies coming there doesn’t change the big picture, as Lemmy is federated and they can figure stuff out for themselves.

Trying to silence entire instances, especially the biggest ones, is absolutely not a welcoming picture to whoever’s coming here, and being cut out and filtered for happening to choose the “wrong” instance is the worst possible greeting.

Mostly of being constantly bombarded with .ml harassment instead of useful, funny, or interesting content.

Assuming this to be a working strategy (and not a way of swaying new users out of Lemmy in general), what’s the endgame? If everyone you deem “sane” leaves the place, it will just be even worse, a concentrated “tankie” circlejerk, visible to plenty of newbies. Then what?

They’re on the normal regular instance. Political content is mostly propagated through lemmy.world anyway.