The people of Cuba loved and supported Fidel. They quote literally backed a revolution to put him in power, at which point the revolutionary government implemented a complex and robust democratic system that went far beyond the brutal dictatorship of Batista and the slavers that supported the old system.

China has not developed into communism yet. Socialism is a transitional status between capitalism and communism.

Welfare is not socialism. Socialism is a broader system with a worker state and public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Regulations without a worker state and without public ownership of the commanding heights is always twisted in a manner that either protects capital or entrenches it. The European social democracies all rely on imperialism for their safety nets because they do not have socialism.

No, it was not. We went over this already, the economy of the Soviet Union was overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned under a worker state. Its economy was nothing like state capitalist countries like the ROK or US.

That’s why I am asking what counts as “world-changing,” as most people would consider the first man in space to be world-changing.

Surviving in space and successfully returning from orbit is absolutely an incredible achievement that spurred on the space race.

No, you could not say this. The USSR was socialist.

Vostok 1 was the capsule that contained Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. All of these were critical advancements in space flight and science. What is the criterion for “world changing” that doesn’t include the numerous critical advancements in space?

Restricting political action to voting ensures that either way, evil wins.

Sputnik, Vostok, the artificial heart, the math behind modern multi-stage rocketry, and space rovers were all invented by the Soviets.

The SPD worked with the Nazi party to kill communist organizers. The SPD carried through their goals of getting Hindenburg elected, who then gave Hitler the reins. The KPD was correct in identifying the SPD as social fascist, as the SPD aided with murdering labor organizers and indirectly gave Hitler Germany.

Voting is great in systems where the working classes actually have some degree of control. Democracy isn’t the problem, it’s what’s presented as democracy within the boundaries of capitalist dictatorship. Electoralism cannot change this dictatorship.

Voting isn’t organizing. Voting is engaging directly with the bourgeois state apparatus on its own terms, purely through bourgeois parties. Organizing requires on-the-ground movements, party building, unionizing, striking, and more. The idea that funneling people into a narrow bourgeois framework prepares people for overthrowing said framework is absurd.

Organizing for revolution is a lot of work, it requires educating yourself and others, building up a party apparatus, building up internal logistics and mechanisms for getting people aligned. It’s like herding cats, it’s incredibly difficult work, and is often thankless.

Even if ranked choice voting were to be won, it still would not be able to change the nature of the bourgeois dictatorship, it would just allow for more choice between bourgeois parties.

Organizing for revolution isn’t doing nothing. You’ve made a strawman of the only path that actually allows for forward movement.

How so? Trying to change the nature of a bourgeois state from within is dangerous to forward progress, which requires revolution.

Socialism has always worked. Power is not a supernatural corrupting force, nor is socialism especially weak to corruption as compared to capitalism. Socialism has been a tremendous advancement everywhere it has been established, even in the face of foreign siege. The idea that all systems are the same in effect is an abstraction that is entirely unrelated to the material reality of socialism as compared to capitalism.

What better solution is there? Why should the daily violence of capitalist exploitation and imperialism, and the fascist paramilitary body ICE, be thought of as a problem to be solved through the systems that prop up and enable them in the first place?

You cannot overturn bourgeois rule using the bourgeois state.

Genocide began well before independence from Britain.