We Need to Talk About This.

The frustrating thing about modern political discourse is how the entire left gets thrown into one big, messy pile as if every single left-wing ideology is just a different shade of Stalinism. The moment you start advocating for something as basic as higher taxes on billionaires, free healthcare, or stronger worker protections, you’re immediately hit with, “Oh, so you want gulags? You want the government to control everything? Why don’t you move to North Korea then?” It’s honestly one of the most infuriating things to deal with because it shows a total lack of understanding about the huge ideological differences within the left. Instead of recognizing that progressives, social democrats, democratic socialists, anarchists, and Marxist-Leninists are completely different from each other, the mainstream narrative just collapses everything into one giant category of “dangerous socialism” and calls it a day. It’s lazy, misleading, and it actively shuts down any real conversation about fixing the very obvious problems in our current system.

I think a big reason for this mess is the disaster that was Marxist-Leninism. Let’s be real, every single time someone tried to implement full blown communist states, it led to authoritarianism, mass repression, and economic disaster. People love to argue that Stalinism wasn’t “real socialism” or that Mao’s China was just a misstep, but at some point, you have to accept that if an ideology keeps failing in the same catastrophic way every time it’s attempted, maybe, just maybe, it’s a bad ideology. I don’t care how noble the intentions were. If your system relies on brutal crackdowns, show trials, secret police, and millions of dead people to maintain itself, it’s not liberation, it’s just another form of oppression.

Take Stalin’s USSR. On paper, it was a workers’ state. In reality? It was a repressive, totalitarian regime that controlled every aspect of its citizens’ lives. Instead of the workers running things, you had a small political elite making all the decisions for them, a glorified dictatorship dressed up as socialism. The economy was completely centralized, with bureaucrats deciding what was produced, how much, and at what cost. Dissent was met with execution, forced labor, or exile to the gulags, and millions of innocent people were accused of being “enemies of the people” just for being slightly inconvenient to the state. Then there was the Holodomor in Ukraine, where forced collectivization and brutal economic policies led to mass starvation, killing millions while the government pretended everything was fine. Stalinist apologists today will tell you that these deaths were “necessary sacrifices” for industrialization or that they were exaggerated by Western propaganda, but the reality is that this was a man made famine, caused by a government so obsessed with control that it starved its own people to maintain power.

And yet, somehow, people still defend this ideology. These people, often called tankies, will bend over backward to justify every atrocity committed by authoritarian socialist states. They’ll tell you Stalin did nothing wrong, that Mao’s Great Leap Forward was just an unfortunate mistake, that the Soviet purges were actually good because they got rid of counter-revolutionaries. It’s pure, unhinged revisionism. These are the same people who look at North Korea and say, “Well, at least they aren’t capitalist puppets.” It’s absolutely insane. And the worst part? They make it impossible for normal people to take leftist ideas seriously. Every time someone tries to argue for basic progressive policies like universal healthcare or affordable housing, conservatives just point to the tankies as proof that “the left” is crazy and dangerous. It doesn’t matter that progressives and social democrats have nothing in common with Stalinists, the damage is already done. Tankies have completely poisoned the well for every other left wing ideology.

What’s frustrating is that there are actually good leftist ideologies that deserve to be taken seriously. Anarchism, for example, is one of the most misunderstood political philosophies out there. The average person hears “anarchism” and immediately thinks of chaos, lawlessness, and people running around looting and burning everything, but that’s not what anarchists actually believe. Anarchist thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman didn’t advocate for chaos. They wanted a society without oppressive hierarchies, where people cooperated freely and organized themselves through mutual aid instead of relying on the state or corporate power. And you know what? Morally, that’s an incredible idea. I have a ton of respect for anarchists because they’re actually committed to the principles of freedom, human dignity, and democracy. Unlike tankies, who just want to replace capitalist overlords with state bureaucrats, anarchists actually oppose all forms of oppression, whether it’s from the state, corporations, or traditional power structures.

But let’s be honest, anarchism isn’t realistic in a modern complex society. It works fine for small communities, worker cooperatives, and maybe even regional governance, but on a national or global scale? It just doesn’t hold up. How do you maintain infrastructure, trade, large scale healthcare systems, and complex economies without some kind of centralized coordination? How do you stop external threats without a military? How do you keep things running smoothly without some form of organized government? We live in a world where multinational corporations and global trade dominate everything, as much as I sympathize with anarchist ideals, I just don’t see a way for them to work at the scale we need.

That’s why I think the best solution, the one that actually makes sense in modern society, is progressivism and social democracy. Instead of trying to abolish capitalism outright, you regulate it and make sure it works for everyone instead of just the ultra rich. You tax billionaires fairly, provide universal healthcare, make sure workers aren’t exploited, and invest in public infrastructure and climate action. It’s not about creating a government controlled economy like the USSR, but about putting guardrails on capitalism so it doesn’t become a corporate dystopia. And here’s the thing, this already works in countries like Germany, Sweden, and Canada, even if they’re far from perfect. These places have market economies, democratic governments, and high living standards precisely because they balance capitalism with strong social programs. They aren’t Stalinist regimes. They aren’t anarchist collectives. They’re just well functioning societies. People love to romanticize these nations as social democratic utopias, but they still struggle with growing wealth inequality, corporate influence over politics, housing crises, and worker exploitation. Germany, despite having strong labor protections, still has rising rent prices, increasing job insecurity, and a government that often caves to corporate lobbying instead of prioritizing the working class. Sweden, while having one of the strongest welfare states, has seen privatization creeping into healthcare and education, making services less accessible than they used to be. And Canada, despite having universal healthcare, has long wait times, underfunded hospitals, and a housing market that has become completely unaffordable for ordinary people. But here’s the difference, unlike the US or other purely neoliberal economies, these countries have the tools to fix these problems if they choose to. Their governments, flawed as they are, actually have mechanisms in place to regulate corporations, provide safety nets, and tax the ultra rich. They are still capitalist economies, but they show that you don’t have to let billionaires and megacorporations run society unchecked. The reason these nations are still struggling with inequality is not because social democracy doesn’t work, but because capitalist forces keep trying to erode the policies that make it work. The solution isn’t to abandon social democracy, but to push back harder against deregulation, privatization, and corporate influence over politics. Would I say Germany, Sweden, or Canada are perfect models of what progressivism should look like? No. But they are proof that balancing markets with social policies is far better than the alternative. Compare them to the US, where millions go bankrupt from medical bills, wages have stagnated for decades, and billionaires hoard obscene amounts of wealth while homelessness skyrockets. The key takeaway here is that progressivism isn’t about achieving perfection, it’s about making life measurably better for ordinary people, even if it’s an ongoing fight to maintain those gains.

And yet, because tankies have tainted the left’s image, even mild, reasonable policies get dismissed as “socialism” or “communism” by people who don’t know what those words actually mean. When progressives push for things like wealth taxes or better wages, conservatives scream about Venezuela and Stalin as if those are the only possible outcomes of leftist policies. Centrists, who are supposed to be the “rational ones,” don’t help either. Instead of actually learning about the differences between progressivism and authoritarian communism, they just lump everything together and say, “Both sides are equally bad.” It’s complete nonsense.

At the end of the day, the real enemy isn’t socialism, capitalism, or even government itself, it’s unchecked power. Whether it comes from corporate oligarchs or authoritarian dictatorships, concentrated power always leads to oppression. The reason I support progressivism and social democracy over full blown communism or anarchism is that it actually balances power in a way that works in the real world. We don’t need violent revolutions, forced collectivization, or one party states. We just need a fair system that stops billionaires from hoarding everything while disadvantaged people suffer. Progress isn’t about destroying everything and starting over, it’s about fixing what’s broken and making sure no one gets left behind.

If leftist ideas are ever going to be taken seriously again, They need to stop letting tankies define what socialism means. People need to understand that progressivism isn’t about dictatorship, it’s about justice, fairness, and a better future for everyone. And if we don’t fight back against this false narrative, the right is just going to keep weaponizing Stalinism to shut down real discussions about change. That’s why we need to push back, correct the lies, and make sure people know that the left is so much more than the failed experiments of Marxist-Leninism.