Liberal here. Just had a couple questions both about the USSR and its ideology.
I promise I’m coming at this in good faith, so apologies if I come off rude or uninformed in any of these questions. Just trying to learn.
In western liberalism, at least in theory, freedoms of press and speech are held among the highest freedoms in their political societies. How do you justify the limiting or restricting of those freedoms? This is most notable to me in the Soviet people’s inability to participate in any meaningful elections to the federal level, since the Soviet constitution enforced one party rule.
Whether west or east, all governments have to address the problem of corruption regardless of ideology. How can a people expect its government to police itself in terms of limiting corruption?
What’s the general consensus on the ideas of Market Socialism or Social Democracy? At least to me, these governments seem to provide for the well being of their populations fairly well, while often still preserving the freedoms found in an idealized western liberal system.