I might sound like an asshole and I apologize in advance if I do because it's not about you specifically in this case but, while I'm glad that you had people in your life who were willing to consistently talk to you and help you rethink some things, the problem to me is exactly that like you said, it does not happen overnight. At all. It actually takes a long time and a lot of trust between people to achieve what was achieved with you in this particular case. And while I am certainly glad to have another ally, time is a luxury in some cases.

Using the case of Palestine, a Palestinian village getting bombed because so many liberals simply don't value their lives enough and don't pressure their officials to do something about it, doesn't have the luxury of time.

As another example, the collapse of our ecosystem is happening every single day. And while we let companies continue business as usual, those liberals think that it's a topic that can always be postponed. But it can't. And now we're past the point of no return and yet we waste time in pointless conversations trying to explain to people that what is happening, is happening.

If some people on the left are willing to and have the time to take liberals by the hand and explain to them things they could look up for themselves if only they weren't so dismissive and disinterested in the suffering of others, great. They surely have my thank. But I don't think as a general strategy makes sense to wait for such liberal people to suddenly decide that importent issues are finally important enough to them to be acted upon.

Those issues have always been important and worthwhile. Their previous lack of interest about such topics is their own failure.

I have news for you. The most notorious conservatives in the last few decades (Reagan, Thatcher, Trump, to name the most significant) are all neoliberals.

Economic liberalization, according to Wikipedia, is the lessening of government regulations and restrictions in an economy in exchange for greater participation by private entities. Policies in service of this include privatization, deregulation, depoliticisation, consumer choice ("the invisible hand of the free market"), globalization (economic imperialism), free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending. These policies are designed to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.

You might not realize it, but this encompasses the entirety of your US political options. For example, when Democrats say they want to make housing more affordable; they don't mean they want a government-driven effort to build housing, control rent prices, or win any ground back from corporate landlords. They mean they want to supply tax incentives to big business and "cut red tape" by deregulating the housing industry. They talk about it differently, but at the end of the day they want and work towards the same things as Republicans, if not in a slightly less obviously fascist way.

Liberalism overall is a conservative ideology. The way american media uses these terms is completely disconnected from reality. They don't want you to understand that who you're cheering for does not represent you or further your views. They don't want you to understand what leftism is, they just want you to be afraid of it. They want you to pick a flavor of conservative and think you made progress for the social good.

Good questions.

1. I don't think it makes sense to classify Socialism as a quantitative measure, but qualitative. If you recall from Politzer's work, there's really no such thing as a "pure" system, ergo when deciding if an ideology is Capitalist or Socialist we need to see what it does and what it works towards.
2. Social Democracy definitely borrows from Socialism and Socialists, certainly in aesthetics and many supporters genuinely believe in Reformism as a tactic (even if I personally think it obviously disproven at this point). However, the basis of Social Democracy is in not only maintaining markets (which are found in Socialist countries as well), but Bourgeois control and the present institutions formed in Bourgeois interests, such as the US 2 party system. Without doing anything to truly assert proletarian control over the economy and leaving the Bourgeoisie uncontested besides the "democratic" institutions they set up and approve of, I don't consider it truly Socialist.
3. In a way. If we are being serious, all ideologies are critiques of the present system in some way, even libertarian Capitalists believe in significant critiques of modern Capitalism. What matters more is the manner and character of the changes. In Social Democracy, even if adherents think social safety nets need to be expanded, they don't typically think we should work towards collectivization and public ownership, and wish to "harness Capitalism." In addition, the Nordic Countries many seek to replicate only exist via Imperialism, they fund their social safety nets largely through massive IMF loans and other high interest rate forms of exploiting the Global South. It's like if Chase Bank were a country.

Ok, so essentially a social democracy can be considered leftist if it seeks to overthrow bourgeois hegemony and shift power dynamics in favour of the working class over time is what I'm getting from this? Everything is relative.

On your second point, i agree that bourgeois institutions remain largely intact in social democracies, but what about historical examples like Sweden in the mid-20th century, where labor movements and socialist parties significantly shifted power dynamics in favor of the working class? Couldn’t social democracy, under certain conditions, be seen as a stepping stone toward proletarian control ergo making it leftist? At least if we're going by Politzer's view that there are no pure systems.

I also agree that the Nordic model has benefited from imperialism, but this same critique could be applied to the USSR as well who engaged in exploitative practices in its satellite states. Doesn’t this suggest that imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist systems, but rather a feature of powerful states under various ideologies?

Such a Social Democracy isn't Social Democracy anymore and becomes "Reformist Socialism," which is historically a failure and theoretically a failure.

Per Sweden, concessions came as a combination of strong labor organization internally, and a successful Socialist neighboring country to look towards. The ruling class made concessions, rather than risk losing control entirely. Such systems have eroded now that the USSR isn't there anymore, and to adopt Social Democratic tactics without such a neighboring Socialist State has not really worked out.

As for the USSR, it wasn't Imperialist. It did engage in widespread planning, and certain more populous regions recieved more support and development. However, this was not done for profit, and the goal remained widespread development. If you want to get into Leftist critique of Imperialism, Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism really is necessary reading to understand the basics. If you truly want to see Imperialism and how it evolved over time, a dense and academic but nonetheless fantastic resource is Hudson's Super Imperialism is great.

I'm not going to address your first claim, because I'm not aware of the context surrounding how reformist socialism is "a failure".

I'll skip to your last point and just say i disagree with your framing of the way things happened under the Soviet Union and you are once again defending the Soviet Union's failed practices to protect ideological purity. Imperialism isn't only done for profit y'know.

What about cases where resource transfers or forced economic realignments harmed satellite states? For instance, East Germany was heavily exploited post-WWII to pay reparations, which stifled its recovery for years. Wouldn’t the imposition of Soviet control and extraction of resources qualify as imperialist, even if it wasn’t driven by capitalist profit motives?

What about the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? The Soviets responded with military intervention killing thousands. This doesn't seem any different from what Putin's doing with Ukraine today.

These same satellite towns were also used as buffer zones to protect against Western aggression. The result? They were dragged into Cold War conflicts they had nothing to do with.

You can provide sources or that try to explain how these actions only served to contribute to development, but that doesn't take away the practical implications of these actions. I haven't even mentioned COMECON yet. The USSR was largely imperialist.

Reformist Socialism is disproven in theory by Rosa Luxemburg in Reform or Revolution and in practice by its lack of existence anywhere. The closest was Comrade Allende's Chile, who got couped within a couple years with US support.

As for Imperialism, it's important for you to actually understand what Marxists are talking about by referencing Imperialism. Marxists maintain this definition as a valid and useful one because it explains what it is, why it exists, and how to stop it. What you describe later is not the same as this process, you fold a bunch of different subjects in in a way that adds confusion, not clarity.

For the GDR? It made contextual sense, considering the Nazis intentionally waged a war of extermination and genocide against the Soviets, who desparately needed to revover. The US took advantage of Western Europe's weaker standing to essentially fold them into a subservient status in exchange for monetary support, while the Eastern Front saw 80% of the combat in the entirety of WWII. The scale of devastation of the Soviet Union by the Nazis cannot be understated.

For Hungary? Not sure why you are defending a US-supported fascist counterrevolution where literal Nazis were released from prison by pro-Nazi Hungarians in order to coup the Socialist system. I'll chalk it up to ignorance, as the idea of a state crushing a counterrevolution can certainly seem dystopian if you don't know who the "revolutionaries" are or what they wanted. One such leader was Béla Király, you should dig into that Wikipedia article a bit. They try to play down his support for the Nazi regime, of course, but it is what it is.

As for peripheral states being used as "buffers?" Doesn't hold water. The Cold War is a war of existence for Socialism, and destruction of Socialism for Capitalists. The Soviets repeatedly tried to deescalate, but the US pressed further and further. Listen to historian Dr. Michael Parenti's 1986 lecture on US/Soviet relations, if nothing else.

Overall, when you call the USSR "Imperialist," you do so by changing the meaning of the word, exaggerating its impact, and minimizing just how horrifying western Imperialism actually is that makes what you call "Soviet Imperialism" seem laughably kind. You distort it qualitatively and quantitatively because of what I presume to be a lack of research and an intentional desire to not research for fear of becoming sympathetic to Socialists.

Not sure why you are defending a US-supported fascist counterrevolution where literal Nazis were released from prison by pro-Nazi Hungarians

And it's this kind of one-dimensional analysis of events that keeps me from taking you guys seriously. Like ok, i guess the main goal of all those university students and workers was to put into place a pro-Nazi government rather than advocacy for political reforms and economic autonomy. Yeah bud.

The Cold War is a war of existence for Socialism, and destruction of Socialism for Capitalists.

And yet Warsaw Pact countries were not allowed to pursue independent policies, even when those policies might have strengthened socialism locally. Hmm, what was that about internationalist solidarity again?

lack of research and an intentional desire to not research for fear of becoming sympathetic to Socialists.

Again with this ad hominem. You are well aware of my willingness to acquiesce to defeat when i have been bested in a debate and of my willingness to research upon what i know not of. Your points aren't convincing enough and only serve to spread your propaganda in the hopes that you net some unaware working class individuals who don't know any better.

Genuine question, have you ever changed your stance on something on this platform?

It's not at all "one-dimensional." Counter-revolution frequently works by trying to organize an appearingly "leftist" revolution, but starting with US funding and fascist leadership. Genuinely, do you think the Nazi leading the anti-soviet counterrevolution had the best intentions at heart? Or that releasing Nazis from prison to help was a good thing for worker's rights? The same fascists that bound, tortured, and killed the Soviet supporters, prompting the Soviet Union to send in tanks? The same fascists that the peasantry entirely opposed? This was not a popular movement, it was an attempted fascist coup.

Yes, there were absolutely legitimate greivances with the Soviet system. To deny such would be absurd. However, this was not a legitimate revolution by any stretch.

As for the Warsaw pact countries, not sure what you mean by "not being allowed to pursue independent policies." They had local governments and their own jurisdictions.

As for your own reluctance to read anything that might change your mind, I know you read Elementary Principles of Philosophy. That's more than most can say. However, I also know you refused to read more than a couple sentences of "Tankies" out of some objection to the monstrocity of Churchill, who had this to say of the Chinese:

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China — I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.

And this to say of the millions of Bengalis his policies starved to death:

“I hate Indians,” he told the Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” The famine was their own fault, he declared at a war-cabinet meeting, for “breeding like rabbits.”

Or this to say of Palestinians in his support of Zionism:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, “The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here.” They had not the right, nor had they the power.

So yes, I do believe you fear sympathy for Socialists if you reflexively defend genocidal monsters like Churchill and avert your eyes from anything that brings that to light. Hopefully those quotations were enough to get my point across, but we can certainly keep going. Churchill was a demon in flesh.

As for my views? Many times. I used to consider myself more of an Anarchist, even denouncing the USSR to an extent I recognize now as counterfactual. You can go back to my earliest comments on this account if you want and see the evolution. What changed was that I bought an eReader and started reading again, including theory and history books, and went fact checking where I could. The fact that you haven't been able to change my mind doesn't weaken my willingness to change my mind about subjects.

I have also begun adhering to the notion "no investigation, no right to speak." I simply do not share any semi-formed opinions I may have if I have not investigated them enough to be truly confident in doing so.

I'll leave you with a quote from "Tankies:"

The reason we “defend authoritarian dictators” is because we want to defend the accomplishments of really existing socialism, and other people’s false or exaggerated beliefs about those “dictators” almost always get in the way — it’s not tankies but normies [4] who commit the synecdoche of reducing all of really existing socialism to Stalin and Mao. Those accomplishments include raising standards of living, achieving unprecedented income equality, massive gains in women’s rights and the position of women vis-a-vis men, defeating the Nazis, raising life expectancy, ending illiteracy, putting an end to periodic famines, inspiring and providing material aid to decolonizing movements (e.g. Vietnam, China, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Indonesia), which scared the West into conceding civil rights and the welfare state. These were greater strides in the direction of abolishing capitalism than any other society has ever made. These are the gains that are so important to insist on, against the CIA/Trotskyist/ultraleft consensus that the Soviet Union was basically an evil empire and Stalin a deranged butcher.

As for the Warsaw pact countries, not sure what you mean by "not being allowed to pursue independent policies." They had local governments and their own jurisdictions.

Warsaw Pact countries had local governments yes, but these governments were heavily subordinated to Moscow's interests. Policies were vetoed by the USSR, and attempts at independence were met with military intervention.

I also know you refused to read more than a couple sentences of "Tankies" out of some objection to the monstrosity of Churchill,

Fwiw, i did end up reading Tankies, and i came out more unconvinced than when i went in. I'm not denying that Churchill was racist and that his colonialist and imperialist actions were harmful, but it feels like you're trying to downplay the horridness of what the Soviets did when you bring up this stuff. This just runs into whataboutism and bad faith arguments.

Yes, the accomplishments of AES are indeed worth defending, but dismissing all criticisms as CIA propaganda (particularly when it comes to the CCP and Xi Jinping) or Trotskyist exaggerations oversimplifies history. Yes, the USSR’s role in aiding decolonization is admirable, but they still suppressed worker uprisings in its own sphere of influence. You can't just ask me to ignore this.

Socialist systems require cohesion and centralism, efforts at decentralization result in difficulties with maintaining effective economic planning. Unlike Capitalism, where competition is the goal, in Socialism cooperation is the focus. You'll have to actually dig into what was veto'd and why.

As for Soviets vs the Western Powers, I do not wish to downplay genuine failings by the Soviets. I wish simply to contextualize what has been exaggerated or twisted by the western powers, much of whose stories you repeat back originate with Goebbels. There's a clear difference between "whataboutism" and trying to explain that your repeated condemnations of the Soviet Union are not based on fact, but distortions. These distortions lead you into logical pretzels, like calling the Hungarian fascist-led riots a "worker revolution" despite being opposed by a majority of the workers.

What I am asking you to do is make a genuine effort to dig into the facts of the situations you believe yourself familiar with. Sticking with Hungary, how much research have you done? Have you only looked at anticommunist sources, or also pro-communist sources? Does the revelation that the riots were led by Nazis change your opinion of the actual character of the events, or not?

There's plenty I can and do criticize about the Soviets, and other AES states. Stalin, while being a committed Socialist, absolutely made errors and blunders, same with Mao. I'd say Castro and Ho Chi Minh ended up being some of the most consistently "correct," same with Deng Xiaoping (not including Lenin because he didn't live long enough, sadly, to make major mistakes, but if I was including him he'd be at the top). However, I understand that there has been a century of misinformation of the highest degree piled onto AES states, and this misinformation campaign exists to this day against modern Socialist states like China and Cuba.

Want some advice? Check out Dessalines's Socialism FAQ, click a country you want to learn about, and try to legitimately engage with the points that interest you. Try to poke holes in the sources, or see if other sources contradict. There is a massive effort by Western countries and media to deliberately propagandize against any form of Socialist countries, so any preconcieved notions you have are likely misleading at best or outright fabrications at worst.

To leave you with an amazing quote from Dr. Michael Parenti regarding this anticommunist framework, taken from Blackshirts and Reds:

In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

Funny enough, Communists frequently just say "Parenti Quote" as shorthand for this, as it is that powerful and accurate.

how much research have you done? Have you only looked at anticommunist sources, or also pro-communist sources? Does the revelation that the riots were led by Nazis change your opinion of the actual character of the events, or not?

As with most of my knowledge about history, it comes from Wikipedia pages and YouTube videos. Concerning whether the revelation that the riots were fascist-led has changed my opinion on the character of the events. I would say maybe a little bit. It doesn't change the fact that there were clear grievances with the system and there were many dissidents in the revolution, and maybe Nazi support was a way out for them? I don't know. However that's for me to do more research on.

On your point about misinformation, i can agree that there is some level of bias when it comes to Western reporting on AES states, but it's not so easy to recognize where the misinformation is coming from: especially when it is well known China has a habit of suppressing negative news about them. Evidenced by the Tiananmen square protests being a taboo topic there, so it's also not clear to me where I'm supposed to be getting accurate information from if leftist sources are taking China's every word for things like the Ughyur pogroms, Tiananmen square protest, etc etc.

Regarding Wikipedia and Youtube videos, I want to make this clear. English media is overwhelmingly Western. The biases presented in English media will inevitably rest on whatever those with the most power in the Western world want to present. Analyzing the Western world alone, that means the interests of the United States and Western Europe are dominant, and the class in power in these countries is undeniably the wealthy Capitalists, like Musk, Bezos, etc. Historically this was even worse, as media was mostly physical and an "internet" didn't exist. Much of the data on the USSR, for example, comes from this period of little fact checking and unchecked corporate dominance. These narratives get passed along uncritically today, even if they directly contradict the Soviet Archives opened in the 90s.

Today, Wikipedia and YouTube aren't scholarly sources. You have to check the sources of these sources. Many Wikipedia articles reference Robert Conquest, a crank historian disavowwed by his colleagues. That's why it's important to seek non-western sources to compare against, and to read scholarly sources. Without doing as such, I recommend you not believe anything about geopolitical adversaries of the US without hard evidence, and adopt the notion of "no investigation, no right to speak." Otherwise, you uncritically accept a US State Department approved narrative uncritically, such as being unaware of the Nazi involvement in the Hungarian riots, a fact deliberately hidden to push a narrative.

As for China, another example presents itself. The CPC frequently mentions the Tian'anmen Massacre under the name "June 4th incident." This is because the hundreds of deaths of protestors and lynchings of PLA officers happened outside the square. What gets censored is stuff like BBC reporting 10,000 people died on Tian'anmen Square, when there's no proof that there were any deaths on the Square itself (despite tons of evidence of deaths outside the square) and there's no proof that the total deaths were anywhere near 10,000. The source? A British Ambassador later confirmed to have abandoned the square before, and in contrast to a US ambassador who stayed saying no massacre happened on the square. Meanwhile, the CPC often references the events as the "June 4th incident," which is why little comes up when searching "Tian'anmen Square Massacre" in China. That is like searching "New York Attack" to find 9/11 information, sure you can probably find something but it will take a while.

Really, that whole exercise was to show that ultimately, you need to look at many sources. The Western media and English speaking internet will, without fail, largely allow the narrative to be dominated by that which upholds US legitimacy, even if it means changing the Quantity (many hundred deaths to 10,000) to Quality (deaths on Tian'anmen Square vs the overwhelmingly well documented deaths outside the square as the PLA advanced to the Square). Don't accept anything at face-value, try to find the bias of the author and see if they have weak points you can poke. Everyone has bias, that's why I don't hide mine. I encourage an unapologetic pursuit of truth, and encourage not sharing information you aren't sure of.

These narratives get passed along uncritically today, even if they directly contradict the Soviet Archives opened in the 90s.

That's why we often don't just take the words of the CIA for instance, but we back it up with accounts from people that lived under these governments. There's a lot of interviews out there of people sharing their experiences. Sure their memory of events might not be completely accurate, but you can't just dismiss it as entirely false either.

Also your Tiananmen Square example strikes me as being a bit nitpicky. Yes, it's important to question dominant narratives, but the focus on whether deaths happened on the square itself seems overly semantic. Even if most deaths occurred outside the square, it still feels like you're/they're trying to downplay the broader violence against unarmed protesters and the suppression of their dissent. Similarly, wouldn’t state-controlled narratives in China have an interest in minimizing the scale and nature of the violence to preserve legitimacy?

Further, you’re right that Wikipedia and YouTube shouldn’t be treated as definitive sources, but isn’t that why they include citations to trace information back to its origins? Let's accept that Robert Conquest’s work is controversial; dismissing all scholarship on the USSR from Western historians because of bias that may or may not be there seems like overcorrection.

Also the point you made about how all media echoes the biases of the bourgeois is kinda reductive. I agree that dominant Western narratives often align with elite interests, but doesn’t the diversity of perspectives in democratic societies complicate that? Investigative journalism, academia, and even dissenting voices within the West often challenge these narratives. Wouldn’t it be more constructive to identify when elite biases appear rather than assume all narratives are controlled?

The thing is, you don't listen to the CIA directly. You listen to the New York Times, Radio Free Asia, etc who are paid by the CIA to report in the way you do. It isn't intentional listening to the CIA, but happens regardless. Parenti's Inventing Reality is a great resource on this.

As for Tian'anmen, it isn't nitpicky at all. If we accept the common Western narrative, there were 10,000 students rolled over by tanks on the square as peaceful protestors. If we accept the PRC's narrative, there was a month long protest that eventually attracted US support, until eventually protestors lynched unarmed PLA officers, prompting sending in tanks and hundreds of deaths in total. Such a mischaracterization perists to make the US' adversaries look bad, while the thousands killed by South Korean dictators in the Gwang-Ju Massacre around the same time are unheard of. Why? Why this double standard? Because the US wants you to know about some things and not others.

As for dismissing all western reporting on the USSR, I don't. Blackshirts and Reds is a critical look at the USSR by an American that isn't even a Marxist, just sympathetic to working class movements.

The "diversity" in thought in Western Nations does not blunt the dominance of narrative. The fact that true information exists and is accessible, as I have been linking, does not mean that the dominant narrative isn't selected for via specific funding and popularization. Figures like Orwell and Chomsky that are aesthetically left but denounce Socialists and Socialist movements are deliberately taught in schooling because of this. Endless interviews to coopt leftist movements. Actual, genuine challenges are usually erased, like author Domenico Losurdo or Michael Parenti.

Eh, I think it's kind of a stretch to say thinkers like Parenti and Losurdo are ‘erased’ Their works are widely accessible online and they have dedicated followings. I think it's less about suppression and more about a general lack of interest in radical critiques among the broader public which is why thinkers like Chomsky and Orwell are held to such a high standard as they present a sort of more close-to-home type of dissent. This can also be applied to your assumption about the dominance of a narrative. While funding plays a role, the public’s demand for certain types of stories—like conflict and sensationalism—also influences what becomes dominant. Dissenting narratives can also gain traction even if they're not beneficial to the capitalist class and resonate with the people's lived experiences - the whole Luigi Mangione saga is evidence of this.

All in all, this still doesn't address the fact that China also doesn't hesitate to tweak the narrative to suit their own agenda. Evidenced by the Uyghur pogroms in Xinjiang where the state censors reports of forced internment, reeducation camps, and cultural erasure, labeling them instead as ‘vocational training’ or ‘anti-terrorism efforts'. Also by efforts to control the narratives surrounding Xinjiang by enlisting the help of Chinese influencers to show Uyghurs 'thriving'. Yes, i don't doubt that Western media over-exaggerates some aspects of the situation but the Chinese government is also culpable in that they deny any wrongdoing when this isn't so.

This is why i think it is sensible to conclude that both the West and China engage in rhetoric twisting and why we should be skeptical of all governments and not just Western ones.

Socialism is generally a form of society where public ownership and collectivization is the driving force of the economy. Communism is when that process is complete. There are various different forms and characteristics Socialism takes, but they all exist in motion and thus will either move on to Communism or revert to Capitalism. To call Communism a type of Socialism would be to call Capitalism a type of Feudalism, just because both have property owners, but this of course is not a good form of analysis.

I understand that you aren't a Marxist-Leninist. I am, sure, but again I made the very clear case that the overwhelming majority of Leftism worldwide and historically has fallen under the categories of Marxism, which is without fail Communist, or Anarchist. These aren't necessarily ML specific points of view, if you can point to major non-Marxist, non-Anarchist strains of Leftist practice that have any major relevance, then I can concede.

As for Leftists that don't ascribe to labels, I don't really care about what one individual is thinking, because I am not trying to prepare them for random internet leftist #18948 with their own specific eccentricities. I am talking in extremely broad and relevant distinctions, like what has actually existed and continues to exist.