Why do you think a violent revolution would result in a worker-controlled socialist society? It seems it would just result in a society dominated by whoever controls the revolution, its resources, and distribution systems.

There are two fundamentals I need to hammer home here, so that you can best understand my position.

The first is the Marxist understanding of the state. The state is not a neutral body to be wielded by whatever individuals happen to work as administrators, but instead is created by the base of society, the economy, and dictated by the class that owns the commanding heights of the economy. In any class society, there are two dominant, diametrically opposed classes that form the primary class struggle, in capitalism, that’s the working class and capitalist class. The capitalist class presently controls the commanding heights and the state.

The second is the Leninist understanding of revolutionary strategy. A revolution requires, in Lenin’s understanding, the following 3 conditions:

1. A theoretically correct, disciplined, mass revolutionary socialist party trusted by the rest of the working class
2. A millitant, politically educated working class
3. A crisis within capitalism that leads the capitalist class unable to rule as it could before, and the working class unable to live as they were before.

The first condition is why I always suggest organizing with a political party. Without an educated and disciplined cadre that takes under their study and practice the science of revolution, there can be no way to spread this knowledge to the rest of the working class. Class consciousness does not form spontaneously, at most it is limited to trade unionism, not an interconnected socialist struggle.

The second condition is why socialists spend so much time trying to agitate among the people and bring them to theory. I personally, as part of my party responsibilities, have to touch grass and cold open with people about revolutionary socialism. It’s uncomfortable at first, but people generally respond more positively than you’d first think. I also made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, which a comrade is running a reading circle for over on Hexbear. You should take a look at it and see the kind of discussion that goes on.

The third condition is made inevitable by the structure of capitalism itself. You seem to broadly agree with it, except you still seem to think social democracy can save capitalism, up until it collapses and spontaneously turns into socialism without any organization for it, believing capitalist organization to be a swap for socialist organization. This is naive.

And the thing you gloss over is that that’s precisely what tends to happen in so-called “communist” revolutions. I put communist in quotes because I know that’s not true communism. But Stalin and Mao were both authoritarian dictators who centralized resources under their personal control, maintained dominance and hierarchy through their personality cults, and caused millions of deaths and widespread suffering throughout the regions under their control. To say nothing of the surveillance states they used to maintain their hold on power.

You’re correct on one thing: what I advocate is precisely what has happened in socialist countries, and that’s why I wish to replicate their strategy and adapt it for the conditions of the US. You are, however, trapped in Red Scare ideology masked as “common sense.” The “common sense” of any society is the ideology of the ruling class. Sometimes this is benign, like the sky being blue. Sometimes this is insidious, like the reflexively ingrained propaganda reinforced by books, Hollywood, academia, and other capitalist-controlled institutions meant to demonize existing socialism.

Stalin and Mao are both beloved in Russia and China accordingly. This is not because Russians and Chinese are lesser able to think critically, nor is it due to a chauvanist idea of brainwashing. It’s instead because, under them, life expectancies doubled. Society was, counter to your point, democratized at mass as compared to Tsarism and semi-feudal society. Did you know, for example, that students often were able to pick their teachers in the Soviet Union? That children were treated not as subjects, but as active participants in society that need to actually practice self-governance in order to be equipped to run the kind of society socialism is?

That’s not to say they never made mistakes. Socialism exists in the real world, as do its real leaders. But the myth that they slaughtered millions of people like maniacal dictators is not correct. Famine from underdeveloped agriculture and mismanagement is not the same as directly engineering the slaughter of entire peoples a la Hitler and Churchill. Their names have been drug through the mud in the west because they stood to recreate society in a new form.

In both the USSR and PRC, it was the working class that took power. Not the capitalist class, and not the aristocracy. These incredible achievements in education, literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality, equality of opportunity, the liberation of oppressed nations, all came from working class power. Not something commanded from above, but pushed from below and guided by the organized working class, the communist party.

In any case, the idea that socialism must come from the collapse of the welfare state, with no organized group outside the system to take its place, is incredibly shortsighted. Not only does this perpetuate imperialism in the short term, which you did not counter in any way, but it also will collapse into barbarism. The organizing work done by socialists to practice for state power and train the working class on how to govern ourselves is so we can replace the capitalist state with a socialist one. We cannot simply recreate a capitalist state and hope it actually is a socialist one, the old one must be entirely replaced from the ground up with a new system.

Different modes of production correspond to different forms of state. This isn’t an accident, like liberal academics often believe it to be, but a necessity of how the state and economy reinforce each other.

I want you to take a step back and think. How much study of existing socialist states have you done? From whose perspective? How much socialist theory have you studied? From whose perspective? And how much analysis have you done based on this study of your own contemporary conditions? All 3 of these are critical to understanding how we go from here to socialism, which will necessarily also include liberation from settler-colonialism and land back for indigenous peoples. I am asking you to make the study of social change a priority, rather than a gut feeling.