- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.world
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It can definitely be argued that capitalists themselves fucking hate capitalism.
That was a brilliant read.
I appreciated the nuance, and it even added a lot of perspective to the notion that Adam Smith’s “capitalism” concept was not the evil and inhuman machine we experience today.
I’ve noticed this move to “technofeudalism” everywhere but didn’t have a name for it. It’s exhausting seeing how many services, products, businesses, whatever, all simply want to coast on monthly payments and lock-ins for what amounts to merely keeping the lights on.
The PetsMart thing was insidious. This surely solidifies the definition of “human resources”: Seeking to control people as “assets” that generate profits like (proprietary) batteries.
It seems it should be a priority goal to undermine the corporate and wealthy’s dominion over “assets.” They’d be terrified of this, as they might actually have to do something besides acquire everyone else’s hard work for a change!
Regarding OP’s image…
- They make blanket statements
- They tell you what your problem is and they think they are more qualified than you, to know what your problem is
- They think they have the perfect solution for you, if only you weren’t in the way
Naturally the government they favor would have the same perspective, no?
Not everyone. Capitalists love capitalism. It’s the people who aren’t capitalists but think they are because they love capitalism.
Sort of like how people think they are Christian’s because they go to church believe in Jesus, but don’t actually follow the teachings.
People think they are all sorts of things they are not and make themselves and or other miserable because of their fantasies.
We haven’t had capitalism in any sense of the word for about 60 years at this point. What we have seen is government interventionism in a protection of certain businesses that align with the interests of the sitting politicians - in other words, a form of Oligarchy.
What has transpired is an increasing degree of government deficits to fund entitlements, that drive inflation, which create more dependency on the entitlements and a call to do things like raise minimum wages.
The actual solution is: Trim federal spending, go into deflation, and drive the buying power of the currency up. This would allow people to pay down debts while maintaining standard of living, and allow for a reduction of dependency on hand outs - which would allow for a further reduction in government spending. The problem here is that the first step ABSOLUTELY SUCKS for a LOT of people - but it needs to be done.
From here: The big hedge funds, and such need to be ripped apart systemically.
Trim federal spending, go into deflation, and drive the buying power of the currency up. This would allow people to pay down debts while maintaining standard of living.
My problem with this logic is the same problem I have when suited clowns claim they’ll just raise prices on everything 300% if the minimum wage goes up by $2.
Say we “trimmed federal spending” (which is kinda its job as an entity, to spend towards the people, ideally), and somehow magically our already-printed simoleons became worth more per dollar…
What, besides intense federal regulations, would prevent bosses from just spinning this as some kind of crisis, and making it an excuse to pay us less because “each dollar is worth more now so you’re making too much”?
“Entitlements” and “hand-outs” are necessary not because people are lazy, but because from a business perspective, jobs aren’t worth doing anymore , but we do them anyway because we’re forced to, if we want to participate in society at all.
TL;DR:
Basically, the solution is to tell the rent-seeking neo-gilded-age robber-barons of our day “Fuck you. Pay me.” If they actually paid a fair wage for the profits their employees generate, we’d be able to “pay down debts while maintaining standard of living, and allow for a reduction of dependency on hand outs - which would allow for a further reduction in government spending.”
-We haven’t had capitalism.
Continues on with Capitalistic solutions.
This is so fractally wrong that it would take two hours to untangle this hodge-podge of confusion. So I’ll just say, the only way out of neoliberalism’s problems is to do neoliberalism even harder. 😂
You’re just describing how Capitalism has reached its later stages, its death throes. You can’t turn the clock back, we have to turn it forwards to Socialism.
I think capitalism is fine in principle, but like anything else that needs limits and rules that people are willing to enforce.
Here’s a nice quote from The Communist Manifesto:
What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen…
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate… Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people…
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
Ah shit, never mind. This was from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
Wow, that was smooth. Points for impact!
I wish these minds could have been put in charge for arguing for and hashing out a combined sensible economic system, as they might have had differing ideas, but all clearly wanted a system that was optimal for human beings to thrive in.
Instead, these fellows are deified as proxy prophets, excuses and motivations for wars and slavery, by those who seek to enrich themselves entirely at the majority’s blood, sweat, and tears.
I’m on the fence about this, because as far as I understand, the regulatory mechanisms that end up serving as the limitations you’re talking about are actually contrary to the system’s core principles.
I think the flaw is human nature. All governments and organizations are corrupt. All implementations are always twisted to suit the greed of individuals.
It’s entirely possible to create policy and enforcement mechanisms that would mitigate or eliminate excessive greed but nobody with anything votes for it because they’ll lose out on their own personal greed by their measure. They want that chance to fleece the masses even if they aren’t in the club that’s already doing it.
Blame humans.
I think the flaw is human nature. All governments and organizations are corrupt. All implementations are always twisted to suit the greed of individuals.
Please take your nickname seriously for a moment and do some critical thinking about what you just said.
“Human nature” being greedy and corrupt is a completely horrible and wrong argument that only serves to keep us desillusioned about change. Saying that human nature is greedy and corrupt while currently living in a capitalism system is the same as studying human nature inside a coal mine and coming to the conclusion that it must be human nature to cough your lungs out. Our environment have a deep influence on us and you can’t just ignore that.
If you really want to argue about human nature, the simple fact that we are social creatures that often help each other out of empathy and compassion already negates your argument.
It’s entirely possible to create policy and enforcement mechanisms that would mitigate or eliminate excessive greed but nobody with anything votes for it because they’ll lose out on their own personal greed by their measure.
Voting will not change the system, you cannot change it from within. The capitalist class might give us a few breadcrumbs here and there to keep us from revolting, but they will always do everything to keep the system as it is because it benefits them as a class.
This is not an individual issue. As much as some individuals are horrible pieces of shit, these interests are collective and shows the class struggle in society.
I would argue this is more an issue of when citizens get complacent and stop holding those who govern them accountable. This is when any form of government will eventually start turning to the corruption. Those in power can change the rules while citizens are going about their lives. It works even better if the citizens are too busy and stressed out to worry about “silly things like politics”.
Getting everyone to be involved and knowledgeable about absolutely everything and to fight to make things right is beyond the capabilities of current humans. The more I know the more I understand I don’t know a lot about so many things beyond what i’ve experienced. Ignorance drives so many reactions (including the personal attacks from my comments here.)
I have met many individuals in this world who get very, very angry that someone else is doing x, y, or z - even if it has zero impact on them. Some of the reactions to my comments here about a very logical challenge that could have solutions with technology are attacked with illogical non-arguments and are a perfect example of how impossible it is to get humans to think critically about things when they have their own biases.
I do agree that human nature is a huge problem. For a utopian government, I do think that is fairly impossible at the moment. As you have said we will need some novel idea or technology, or human nature will have to evolve in some way (that could take a very long time though).
As for citizens advocating for themselves, you seem to be thinking of peaceful ways to have a government that avoids becoming corrupt. While ideal, as we know humans are far from that and why eventually corruption turns to revolt if the needs of citizens are not met. I am not saying this will solve the issue either. As far as I can tell it just renews the cycle at best, or continues the corruption under a new group at worst. I only say this as technically this is a way citizens will eventually advocate for their rights if the government becomes too corrupt.
As for the desires of laws for each individual citizen, this is essentially impossible as only very small groups will have ideals and values that are homogeneous. In a populace large enough, human nature will lead to conflicting ideas on which laws should exist and how governments should run. In democracies, this plays into the hands of people or organizations with nefarious political goals. These groups can exploit human nature to get citizens to focus emotionally on a small subset of policies and laws. This tactic can be very powerful in places that don’t regulate this kind of propaganda, such as the United States.
I would argue this form of political propaganda being pushed by powerful groups that don’t represent the majority of citizens, towards citizens in other groups is one of the main cause of citizens being politically inactive. This creates biases and causes a lot of people to make decisions based on issues whose prevalence is artificially amplified. While that issue may be very important and should be advocated for, this should not be left to powerful groups or organizations that are not representative of the citizens. This also creates a ton of noise, making other issues that may directly affect or be advocated for by a large portion of the population to be obscured. All of this leads to information overload, fatigue, and complacency which leads to ignoring politics and possibly being politically inactive. I say possibly because people will still vote because it’s their civic duty but will be uninformed which can be even more dangerous than not participating in politics. This also turns politics into a sport based on what the current political “hot topic” is, which a lot of people don’t want to participate in and turns them away from being active politically.
In my opinion, the best solution to get citizens politically active is the need to make politics less biased and present legislation and policies in a fairer fashion. This will not get every citizen involved, but it will encourage more unbiased and informed decisions which will further fight corruption. Politically active citizens can look at legislation and policy proposals and make the sometimes difficult decision of which is the best choice in the present moment. This should also help with “political fatigue” which can cause citizens to not participate. Of course some people will never vote (unless forced to by law), but the best we can do is try to make the process simpler and use less of peoples time and resources.
All this being said, it will still be an uphill battle for democracies such as the United States to undo the influence of powerful groups in politics, and make their democracies fairer and more representative of the people. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but to do so peacefully will take a ton of perseverance, hard work, and most likely a bit of luck.
0·12 hours agoAll implementations are always twisted to suit the greed of individuals.
So it would be best to live under a system that doesn’t encourage and reward such behavior, no?
I’d love one, I don’t think humans are capable.
In very small organization sizes it’s possible but as people come and go eventually someone will get control to make decisions that put their interests or their connections interests ahead of the masses.
I think “it’s human nature” is an excuse made by the ruling class to quell challenges to the system that benefits them.
Sociopathic hoarding and anti-social manipulation is an abberation that our system artificially elevates and rewards.
If we were culturally more hostile to attempts to rent out our lives and natural resources back to us, and didn’t put zero-empathy profit hoarders on the front of magazines, things could be better.
I agree with you on group sizes though. When people are treated like hyper-specialized insects with ID numbers instead of identities, funneled into highly-specialized roles, every one a stranger to the other, something has gone horribly wrong.
I think it is possible
In what way does this graph say humans are not corrupt and taking advantage?
Even under communism the 1% had 4% of assets, that’s not 1% of assets like true communism should be. That in and of itself proves corruption to me. The fact that the USSR fell and a handful of 1%ers got the majority of industries for pennies on the dollar is egregious corruption. None of this is a criticism of communism. This is criticizing the actions of individuals who decided to be corrupt.
It’s just human nature. Some people call it “enlightened self interest” others call it nepotism, some call it survival of the fittest. Some call it gaming the system. In all cases it’s the same problem. Sometimes things can go well for a while but on a scale of even just a hundred years when an organization has more than a couple hundred people it simply goes sideways.
Even under communism the 1% had 4% of assets, that’s not 1% of assets like true communism should be.
In the US, the top 1% has over 30%. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because a socialist state hadn’t yet reached some Platonic ideal doesn’t mean it should be thrown out with the bathwater. You can’t go from a decimated, war-ravaged, illiterate, feudal agrarian backwater to some socialist utopia overnight.
This graph does not say that no-one is corrupt, correct. It does however show that the soviet system had much less inequality than what came before (under the Tsar) and after (capitalism). This is an improvement. This graph does not prove corruption either. Some having more than others is not corruption.
The soviets did not reach communism, they were building socialism.
Under capitalism, the vast majority of people must labour, by getting a job… if they can, to get money to have a house, food, medicine, etc. They take actions in line with how capitalism functions, this is “human nature”, to survive, yes, but not in the way that you use those words. Under socialism, you are guaranteed a job, housing, food, there is free healthcare, etc. The actions the same person would take under socialism are different. So what you call “human nature”, but is just actions taken within context of capitalism, is not actually human nature.
Maybe in the context of an ideologically opposed global hegemony, you’re right. Maybe we should do something about that.
No
You’re wrong.
No, take your fascist misanthropy elsewhere.
Based on your comment history and how negative you are about absolutely everything… have you looked in the mirror lately?
Also keep in mind that I have simply made a hypothesis that humans are incapable of not being corrupt in organizations at scale. How in the fuck is that any one political leaning? The system itself is irrelevant. Even in communes where everyone “shares equally” there’s usually someone in leadership getting special exemptions and special treatment.
No, take your fascist misanthropy elsewhere
Strong “I can fix him” energy out there.
Things I hate were present where I live through half of USSR and then till now, and replaced things even scarier present since the revolution.
Tell me it’s capitalism, mofo, I beg you.
What things are you talking about, “mofo”?
Things you hate? How can it be explained as capitalism if you won’t say what it is.
You act like there was never a guy named Karl Marx who proved this stuff, and debunked many myths about the economy, like 150+ years ago. It isn’t just a random thing like a superstition. In fact believing capitalism isnt responsible is almost a superstition.
Wages are flat while production has skyrocketed the last 50 years, a little longer than I’ve been alive. The system produces a few rich people at one end and a bunch of poor people at the other, that’s what it is meant to do, it’s what it does. It isn’t just an economic system, its the state and media as well.
People aren’t just blaming all their problems on capitalism like some petulant child. There are causes that are very clear and some more hidden, but its no secret and hasn’t been for a pretty long time.
You act like there was never a guy named Karl Marx who proved this stuff, and debunked many myths about the economy, like 150+ years ago.
Marx proved nothing and debunkednothing , he’s not a scientist, he’s an ideologist and a creator of a cult.
It isn’t just a random thing like a superstition.
It is exactly that.
Wages are flat while production has skyrocketed the last 50 years, a little longer than I’ve been alive.
That means the balance of power hasn’t changed, or changed in the way that wages stayed flat.
There are causes that are very clear and some more hidden, but its no secret and hasn’t been for a pretty long time.
I disagree. Human societies are very complex, and economy is basically an open system. Any reductionist model, like that of Marx, will fail in most cases and kinda work in some.
Clearly you’ve never read Marx, which is unfortunate. If you think Marx is a “reductionist model” then you are cleanly, plainly, completely mistaken. Das Capital isn’t a pamphlet, its 4 unfinished volumes.
Your anti intellectualism is a sad affair, but propaganda is a hell of a drug. I love being told by people who haven’t studied Marx in a meaningful way what he is all about. Do you also have strong opinions on Augustine, Hegel, Kant or Descartes? Have you ever read them?
If you think Marx is a “reductionist model” then you are cleanly, plainly, completely mistaken. Das Capital isn’t a pamphlet, its 4 unfinished volumes.
You know, an adequate Marxist (I’ve met such, believe it or not) would not argue that it is a reductionist model (every model is, my point was that Marxists apply it universally without feedbacks, for which no model is good) and of course wouldn’t use amount of text as a measure of quality or correctness.
Your anti intellectualism is a sad affair, but propaganda is a hell of a drug. I love being told by people who haven’t studied Marx what he is all about. Do you also have strong opinions on Augustine, Hegel, Kant or Descartes? Have you ever read them?
This text doesn’t make sense. I have a strong preference for Marcus Aurelius’ notes and Tao Te Ching over these, if you insist, but Descartes is fine too.
What power? The power of workers? You might have more Marxist ideas than you think.
In this case the power of people with interests weighing more on the employer’s side or the worker’s side. I wouldn’t say it’s power of workers, just like wind filling ship’s sails is not ship’s power.
I don’t think anything is strange in intersections.
Thank you for the considerate response.
You might be more well equipped for Marx than you think. The Tao the Ching, and the I Ching are both works of dialectical philosophy. Marxism, when applied correctly, is a fusion of empirical materialism and dialectics. Whenever people new to Marxism struggle with his method, I always recommend the Tao te Ching. People raised with western rational model, like us, struggle with contradiction in our reasoning. Except when it affects our lives directly, our minds reject it. The Tao teaches us to stay with the contradictions, which is what is needed to perform a dialectical analysis, since dialectics is the logic of change, progression, and synthesis, relation and contradiction.
This along with the mention of Marcus Aurelius reminds me of when I first started trying to educate myself, and came across the work of Nick Taleb. Its a bit pitched to the right for my taste these days (although his sterling advice, “don’t be a sucker” is as good advice as you’ll ever get,) but at the time it is what got me into studying philosophy, Meditations was the second philosophy book I ever read. I don’t consider myself a stoic, but I loved that book at one time, as well as the Enchirideon by Epictetus.
Your claim of an imbalance in power between the workers and owners is at least an acknowledgement of Marx’s theories. Maybe you like that balance, lots of people have a fetish for “balance of powers” and maybe there’s something to that. Except the balance can’t be achieved, it always prefers the owners and requires historical amounts of civil unrest to make any reluctant progressive change at all.
I don’t appreciate being told that I’m in a cult, a cult that never existed, and certainly Marx never started one. Its dishonest, but I guess you picked it up somewhere. I def didn’t know what Marx was about before I studied him. Buy now if I don’t know an author, I don’t have to pretend I’m smart or know something I don’t, I just say I don’t know and if I am interested then I study them. Very simple and honest.
Here’s the thing they won’t tell you about Marx: when you’re a worker and you learn to read him, because he’s difficult, you realize that he confirms your experience as a worker and goes deeper. He proves what we suspect but that everyone tells us isn’t true. He removes doubt and provides a way forward –
– and then you study the history of the USSR and other 20th century socialist experiments and the doubt comes back. But Marx was, hands down, the greatest intellectual of the 19th century and should be read and studied by all. Not to indoctrinate into a cult, but to actually open peoples minds to what is possible, and how class rule, throughout history, has worked tirelessly to alienate us from our selves and each other. Capitalism is just the latest and greatest form of class rule.
But a better world is possible!
USSR had a state capitalist economy
The USSR moved out of State Capitalism with the end of the NEP. It is technically correct that they had a State Capitalist economy, but they moved on to a traditional Socialist economy relatively early on.
And also water is dry, the sky is red, and the earth is neither round nor flat, but a klein bottle.
“State Capitalism” is a form of Socialist economy primarily categorized by a State’s participation in a market economy, heavily directing it. The NEP was used early on as the USSR was very underdeveloped, and Marxists believe markets serve as efficient tools for rapidly developing productive forces at lower stages of development. This was shifted away from after the NEP to a more Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned economy characteristic of traditional Marxian Sociailsm. There were still some small markets and small commodity producers, but by far the primary sector of the economy was in the Public Sector.
Socialist economies are when you have commodity production and MOP owned by an ownership class.
👍
“Uhh akshually the proletariat owns the means of production because the state is basically the people.” Please, tell me you don’t actually believe this.
an ownership class
???
The owners of something are the owners of that thing.
Yes, and the owner of the MoP in the USSR was the state, which was controlled by a small political elite.
This creates a class conflict very similar to the conflict under free market capitalism.
Socialist economies are determined by which form of production is primary in an economy, and in the USSR post-NEP this was public ownership and central planning. It is undeniably Socialist from a Marxian analysis, the ownership being the public and therefore the Proletariat, not some obscure “ownership class” that has no bearing in Marxist analysis.
The Proletarian State is the tool of class oppression against the bourgeoisie. This is traditional Marxism, the public owning the MoP is the hallmark of Socialism, and the Proletarian State withers with respect to how collectivized production has become. Marx was certainly no Anarchist, there can be no Marxism without Public Ownership and Central Planning.
Socialist economies are determined by which form of production is primary in an economy, and in the USSR post-NEP this was public ownership and central planning.
This doesn’t mean it wasn’t commodity production.
Socialist from a Marxian analysis, the ownership being the public and therefore the Proletariat, not some obscure “ownership class” that has no bearing in Marxist analysis.
Not even but you’re too deep in the kool-aid to even understand your own prophet.
The Proletarian State is the tool of class oppression against the bourgeoisie.
And yet, it was a tool of oppression against the proletariat.
Turns out that the state and capital are one and the same, and when you try to use a system of oppression to liberate someone, it doesn’t work out.
This is traditional Marxism, the public owning the MoP is the hallmark of Socialism, and the Proletarian State withers with respect to how collectivized production has become.
“Actually, worker control of the MoP is when a very tiny political elite decides how the MoP is used.”
And of course, the fabled “withering of the state” which can be seen by how the late USSR oligarchy withered into the Russian Federation mafia state!
Marx was certainly no Anarchist
Take a drink every time a tankie randomly stays this.
there can be no Marxism without Public Ownership and
Marx was pretty vague about central planning in his writing in general, and there are arguments that he could have been opposed to it later in his life, this is however irrelevant.
I cannot emphasize enough that I do not care about Marxism, it’s a useful tool for analysis of capital, but Marx lived and died in the 1800s.
It’s time for the socialist movement to move on forward, we can synthesize the old with new information and analysis which waa gained throughout the last 150 years, and create better systems and theories.
The endless discussion on what the “prophet” Marx and Engels wanted us to do are fucking poinltess and furthermore incredibly boring and played out.
I fully agree. So when you are against capitalism, what is your alternative that doesn’t devolve into state capitalism?
That’s something you can write a book about.
In my opinion it has to come from a bottom up movement, that puts emphasis on the sort of types of organization a socialist movement ultimately aims for.
The Leninists tried to disconnect the means and the ends of the movement, using the tools of the bourgeoisie to try and build a new system, which failed.
Marxist-Leninists did not “disconnect means and ends.” The goal of Marxism is liberation of the proletariat, the means of which being working towards Communism, a fully publicly owned, centrally planned world republic free of classes, the state, and money. Marxism-Leninism adds analysis of Imperialism, Capitalism as it spreads internationally (which was not developed yet in Marx’s time), as well as strategic advancements like Democratic Centralism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination.
Marx was not an Anarchist, he wanted full centralization and public ownership, not a horizontal network of Communes. Engels even argued against such a system in Anti-Dühring.
Marxist-Leninists did not “disconnect means and ends.” The goal of Marxism is liberation of the proletariat, the means of which being working towards Communism, a fully publicly owned, centrally planned world republic free of classes, the state, and money.
And it has accomplished exactly 0 of those goals.
Marx was not an Anarchist, he wanted full centralization and public ownership, not a horizontal network of Communes. Engels even argued against such a system in Anti-Dühring.
Marx did not explicitly argue for centralisation. Plus, I do not care what Marx thought.
The divorce of the means and ends of the socialist movement in Russia, after it was betrayed by the bolsheviks is apparent from the results of their rule.
The purpose of a system is what it does. The bolshevik regime, and the systems inspired by it resulted in the oppression for the proletariat.
But in the end, there is no reason to argue with your kind.
You are not capable of critically examining the failings of past movements.
You can always conveniently ignore all critiques of your favorite regimes as “western propaganda” without listening to the accounts of the people who lived under them.
You can always excuse the atrocities and failings of your favorite regimes by vaguely gesturing at “counter revolutionaries” and “foreign interference” without examining them further.
You are toeing the party line of a long dead regime for internet points. Citing Marx and Engels more like prophets than human beings.
I dislike you very much and I hope you get better one day.
Marxist-Leninists have not yet achieved a global Socialist republic yet and therefore not Communism, yes. Marxist-Leninists have thus far succeeded in transitioning from Capitalism to Socialism, but not from Socialism to Communism.
Marx absolutely argued for Centralization. His core argument was that Capitalism’s natural tendency to centralize production laid the foundation for full centralized ownership and planning in common. Your lack of care for Marx doesn’t shift his arguments.
The result of Socialism in Russia and the successful implementation of it resulted in a doubling of life expectancy, the highest literacy rates in the world, an end to famine, robust safety nets like free and high quality education and healthcare, and massively reduced wealth disparity speak for themselves. No, they were not perfect, but to assert that it is Marxist-Leninists who adhere to dogmatic and uncritical support for Socialism when you yourself make the error of erasing all of the working class victories achieved by the billions of people who have worked towards building Communism is hypocritical and dogmatic. You are correct in saying that the purpose of a system is what it does, when we analyze Socialism in the USSR, we see an incredibly dramatic and directed improvement in the real lives of the Proletariat and Peasantry.
You spend over half of your comment building up and attacking a strawman, then directly attacking me as though I am the strawman you created. I really hope that at some point you spend more time reading theory and history, as well as more time organizing, than you appear to be doing now.
This discussion is boring.
You have a religious devotion to Stalinism, and as such you’re completely disconnected from reality.
Please, do the world a favor and stop engaging politically.
“Things can only get better if the whole world is under one big totalitarian government, and then the totalitarian government will disappear on its own, I promise bro!” is not at all appealing or logical to anyone who isn’t already indoctrinated into your faith.
The flaw in capitalism and the flaw that makes it unmanageable is how over time capitalism will find ways to extract more for less.
This will always fall to the workers. The recent recession had tax payers bail out the banks as well as pay bonuses. all because banks got very greedy.
Its not a flaw, its working as planned. But yeah, our “market solutions”, basically any problem created by capitalism just gets exploited for profit. Even when the economy crashes its actually a good thing for the very rich, as it " disciplines" labor, moves people down and out of the middle class which lowers wages systematically, takes out a few competitors, etc.,
Even when the economy crashes its actually a good thing for the very rich, as it " disciplines" labor, moves people down and out of the middle class which lowers wages systematically, takes out a few competitors, etc.,
If you look at it, every crisis always results in transfer of wealth up. Covid was the biggest up to date.
There are other things unmanageable.
Like a nuclear superpower with vast fertile southern lands fit for growing grapes, sea access with fishing fleet, and all such, which had a significant part of population under threat of scurvy. Because capitalism makes logistics work, it’s the reason European colonial empires could exist.
Or the same nuclear superpower, which boasted widespread literacy and all that, except that conveniently ignored Central Asian areas mostly busy with growing, collecting and processing cotton. Damn right, my dear. These were, ahem, not very developed even in 1991.
Or the same nuclear superpower, which had a powerful standardization apparatus, but when you look at its tank models or anything else, the components which could be interchangeable were just slightly incompatible. They were designed by people with the same kind of education and understanding and context, for the same purpose, but, first, every defense plant or research institute or something wanted to have their standard and they did get it, second, due to secrecy and vertical administrative structure there were little communication between them.
Or a system of logistics, that turned into shit the moment that superpower decided to leave the chat, leaving populations of whole countries foraging for wood to not freeze at winter.
Capitalism works differently, because it (any human actually, you included) tries to get more with less. Non-market instruments are supposed to constrain it to doing that only honestly.
I would never advocate for a super power, I want a classless society, this means no political class either.
“Political Class” isn’t really a thing, though, unless you’re replacing Class with Category, in which case “plumber” and “janitor” would be distinct classes. Administration and management are forms of labor, and are necessary in large-scale complex production, even Anarchists concede this.
I wish this was true.
In what manner is it not?
Sorry I edited my response
I edited mine as well, I’ll copy and paste it here for coherence:
I think you are confusing power with classes, and hierarchy with classes. A class is defined by its social relation to the Means of Production, a CEO can technically be proletarian if they are merely employed by the board and have no ownership. There is hierarchy, and unequal power, but the relation to Capital is fundamentally different as the M-C-M’ circuit does not directly funnel into their pockets like it would with Capitalists.
Well, we’ll see a lot of things tried.
If you’ve heard of the “new Medieval” concept, we are approaching it.
I like Star Wars as a really prophetic piece of culture (before Disney of course).
So - there was the original trilogy, with the set of symbols that is normal for us today, but wasn’t when the first movie came out. In some sense it warned of what would happen for more than a decade after it.
And there was the prequel trilogy, which it seems to be a fashion of calling stupid and bad, and Attack of the Clones is often called the worst movie of the prequels. Well, in implementation it may be not too good, but just like the original trilogy’s second movie is the deepest, the prequel trilogy’s second movie is the deepest. AotC too was prophetic, and in that prophecy we live right now.
Now there’s that issue with chronology, where the order of events is different, but it can be anything. It’s symbolic art, not a chart. In real life events can happen in any order.
So - Lucas wanted to make three more movies (discarding Disney crap), after RotJ chronologically. I don’t know what these would be, but logically AotC’s philosophy is between ESB’s and something which would look like that “new Medieval” I’ve remembered. BTW, it’s not a nice thing. Just inevitable in opinions of some people.
LOL, a post out of nothing.
Never in my life have I seen someone call Star Wars prophetic before this moment.
Don’t turn it into Harry Potter. SW has seen enough pain as it is.
No, everyone doesn’t hate capitalism.
True. Capitalism can be made to work well for most people, as shown in many European and Asian countries. You need strong regulations (and for workers to engage in unions and in voting). People (specially on lemmy) seem to mix American oligarchy with capitalism.
My country speedran capitalistic invasion in 30 years. Or 23. Depends how you count it.
The capitalist class that expropriates the working class’ surplus value sure doesn’t hate capitalism.
Yeah alot of them love capitalism so hard, while simultaneously bemoaning every single part of capitalism, while being too stupid to be convinced the two are connected.
it’s a question of education. They’re not stupid, but ignorant
To be honest, I have never meant the word stupid to mean anything outside of “decided they already know everything and have thus stop allowing themselves capable of learning”, I dont believe anyone is actually stupid, they just stop learning and it appears the same way anyways.
what no class consciousness does to a mf
but everyone hates the big companies and the rich people
its just that the right has been told that the left are the rich people (and then the left say that the neoliberals are the rich people, etc)
Do you think the problem with big companies and rich people is that individual rich people and the CEOs they elect just happen to be bad people?
The people who are willing to do more unethical stuff to make a profit make more of a profit, and become more powerful as a natural consequence, so the problem is with the system that incentives this and brings it to the top
Then I am confused why you would disagree with the left, that the political philosophy of capitalism, liberalism, is to blame.
People blame capitalism, but capitalism isn’t the problem. The problem, as always, is power.
Under feudalism things were much worse. Serfs worked 6 days a week, 12+ hours a day. Up to 3 days of that week was spent tending your lord’s lands for free.
Under absolute monarchies, dictatorships and police states you work as hard as you can for whatever hours your employer sets, and you keep any complaints to yourself or you’re dragged off to a camp, or summarily executed.
So far, every time “communism” has been tried, it was just a dictatorship or police state where the leaders pretend that there’s a higher ideal.
Capitalist republics don’t give people at the bottom much power, but they get a little bit. And, that little bit is the best that the people at the bottom have ever had, even if it isn’t much.
The fact that there are people at the bottom isn’t the fault of some political system, and especially isn’t the fault of capitalism, it’s the fault of human nature.
You were two steps away from discovering libertarian socialism/democratic confederalism and then you crawled backwards.
The fact that there are people at the bottom isn’t the fault of some political system
If your political system is based on hierarchy, there will always be someone at the bottom of said hierarchy. It’s the logical consequence.
and especially isn’t the fault of capitalism, it’s the fault of human nature.
This is literally capitalist propaganda. Humans are a social specie, by nature they seek cooperation, not competition.
You were two steps away from discovering libertarian socialism/democratic confederalism
Riiight, a tried and true political/economic system which is sure to work perfectly as soon as it’s tried, just like communism.
If your political system is based on hierarchy
If you’re human, your political system will involve hierarchy as soon as more than about a dozen individuals are involved.
This is literally capitalist propaganda
Suuure… it’s capitalist propaganda to acknowledge that all mammals act in ways that are hierarchical and unfair.
There will always be hierarchy with complex, large scale production. Management and administration are necessary roles in production. It is better to make said hierarchy work for the people through the abolition of classes, and democratization.
Many of today’s problems were yesterday’s solutions. It’s a common cycle for an improvement to come along, be implemented, show some new problems over time, and then need another improvement to address those problems.
Capitalism was an improvement over feudalism (Marx agrees with this!), but no one is advocating going back to feudalism. The argument is that the problems with capitalism are so large and capitalism itself is unable to address them. Hence the need for the next improvement: socialism.
police state where the leaders pretend that there’s a higher ideal
When the Bad Countries do this it’s a damning indictment of their entire system; when the U.S. does it, it’s just bad apples that can be reformed away.
A better angle might be that currently in the US capitalism is rarely actually scrutinized for the disadvantages it does have. Capitalism is almost synonymous with America and people often see critiques of capitalism as an attack on the nation itself, even though most of them don’t actually know the principles or characteristics of capitalism.
It goes the other way too where people automatically think that characteristics of America are capitalist
As an example a majority of Americans probably think that American politics and democracy is part of capitalism, or that the economy is pure capitalism.
If people were more willing to critically evaluate capitalism without feeling attacked it could increase support for more worker friendly policies that are generally socialist in nature while still having a capitalistic foundation.
Capitalism is better than feudalism, yes. The problem is that Capitalism inevitably gets to the point where it is more detrimental to the population as a whole than it is beneficial (Global Warming, Wealth inequality, power imbalances, etc.), and that point is now.
Capitalism did bring us many advancements, but we have outgrown it. Just because it did good things at some point doesn’t mean that there isn’t something better. We should all be striving towards better as a species, but we aren’t.
The problem is that Capitalism inevitably gets to the point where it is more detrimental to the population as a whole than it is beneficial
That’s humanity, not capitalism. The Olmecs weren’t capitalists. But, they formed a hierarchical society and there were some very rich people. “This highly productive environment encouraged a densely concentrated population, which in turn triggered the rise of an elite class.[14] The elite class created the demand for the production of the symbolic and sophisticated luxury artifacts that define Olmec culture.” They grew and expanded until they caused “very serious environmental changes that rendered the region unsuited for large groups of farmers”. After that, they died out and the region was sparsely populated for centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmecs
It’s not Capitalism that causes this, it’s humanity. Also, no political/economic system is beneficial to the population as a whole. The whole purpose of political/economic systems is to allow the many to exploit the few. You can have an egalitarian society if you only have a few dozen individuals. More than that and you get hierarchies, and when you get hierarchies, the people at the top want to find efficient ways to make use of the people at the bottom. Capitalism is at least better than serfdom or slavery, both for the people at the top and the people at the bottom. The people at the bottom have a bit more freedom and a bit more agency. That makes revolutions and collapses less likely, which makes bigger hierarchies possible, which benefits the people at the top. But, it’s not like feudalism, capitalism, or any other “ism” is designed for the benefit of the people at the bottom. The people who have the power to make the changes are the ones at the top, so they’re only ever going to adopt systems that are beneficial to them.
I agree with most of your individual points… But your thesis relies on a false assumption.
Capitalism is the current problem for 95% of the world… Just like monarchies were a problem for that particular country. Just because many political and economic systems throughout history reflect an aspect of human nature to control and bequeath that control to their offspring, doesn’t take capitalism off the hook. Hell, if that were the case, we could blame everything on the evolutionary drive to be sexually successful, and not place the blame on anyone or anything else. That’s what those at the top would love the rest of us to believe.
Capitalism is the current problem for 95% of the world
Capitalism isn’t the current problem for 95% of the world. The problem for 95% of the world is 1% of the people who have the power/wealth. Whatever “ism” you use, there will always be people at the top who are exploiting people at the bottom. Capitalism succeeded because it provided a new and more efficient form for the people at the top to exploit the people at the bottom. But, it was also better for the people at the bottom. Instead of being tied to the land where they were born, born into a trade, and so-on, now they at least had a tiny bit of agency in their lives.
Capitalism isn’t the cause of any of these problems, humanity is the cause of the problem. Humanity forms hierarchical groups, and people at the top exploit people at the bottom. In fact, you could probably extend it well beyond humanity. This is pretty common even in apes, and even in other mammals. Dolphins don’t know about capitalism, yet they still have hierarchies.
political and economic systems throughout history reflect an aspect of human nature to control and bequeath that control to their offspring, doesn’t take capitalism off the hook
Ok, so what puts capitalism on the hook? In what ways are people exploited more under capitalism than any other previous system? What makes capitalism so uniquely bad that you have to call it out rather than just acknowledging that it’s human, or even animal nature?
You have a very simplistic view of cause and effect. No one thing is ever the cause of anything. Everything is a result of multiple factors. Just because something isn’t the sole cause of another thing doesn’t mean you ignore it. Only shills would think otherwise when the issue of capitalism is involved.
Whatever “ism” you use, there will always be people at the top who are exploiting people at the bottom.
communism is classless. there is no top or bottom. same with anarchism.
Yes, and there’s a reason that those can’t exist in actual human communities of more than about a dozen people.
those can’t exist in actual human communities of more than about a dozen people.
this is a lie.
Ok, then disprove it. Show a counterexample.
the swamp maroons
exarcheia
the Paris commune
Communism will have administrators, planners, managers, etc so it keeps some form of authority and hierarchy, to be clear, it’s just that these are a necessity for large-scale production and aren’t classes.
so there is no one “at the top” “exploiting people at the bottom”
Yes, technically there is a top and a bottom, like an upper level administrator and a lower level worker, but this is not a relationship of exploitation just like it isn’t your manager that exploits you under Capitalism, but the Business Owner(s).
under communism, there is no exploitation
Inequality isnt the fault of the system that creates inequality. It just is.
The system doesn’t create inequality, the inequality was always there.
We already produce enough food to feed all of humanity, we already have enough houses to house everyone, and we have the means to prevent and cure most diseases, yet people at the top gatekeep access to those resources to increase their profits.
But sure, inequality just happens spontaneously. There’s nothing we could do about that 😒
Yes, because we’re humans, and humans are mammals. Dolphins have a 1:1 male/female sex ratio, and yet male dolphins team up to control breeding access to females. Damn capitalism, making dolphins not share fairly!
You can be fine with the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism and still favor a wealth cap and abolishing laws like Citizens United that give money undue influence on politics. Extreme wealth concentration actually hurts capitalism by starving the spending economy of money. It’s a defect in the system that eventually spoils the system.
Innovation and entrepreneurship is not exclusive to capitalis. People innovated and undertook ambitious projects before capitalism, and they will be doing so after it.
There is nothing inherent to the private ownership of the means of production and the wage exploitation/human rental system we have now that mandates innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact the opposite is visible today, with big companies stifling innovation.
Lots of people on Lemmy forget that the choice between Capitalism and Socialism isn’t binary. Country picks individual policies that are capitalist or socialist in nature. All of the modern countries are a combination of both. Even USA has certain socialist policies. Most of Europe is roughly equally capitalist and socialist.
It’s just making a character build and picking perks. Capitalist policies aren’t bad (for the general public) by default. Depending on how and which ones are implemented, they can be beneficial to everybody.The problem with this is the capitalists have a way of revoking rights when the working class has its back turned, and the privilege of making unlimited propaganda to make sure those backs stay turned and either complacent or focused on other things. The only way to prevent this is for the wealthy to answer to the people rather than the other way around, which means the working class must control the means of production. This is the capitalists’ lever of control as a class.
By making sure that society cannot produce anything without them, they get to control our material conditions, who lives or dies, what gets produced and how it gets produced, with no real regard for the people’s needs besides what coincidentally creates more capital for them. And they can direct this all in the particular way which convinces us that this is the natural order of things and we should actually be thanking them for the breadcrumbs they leave us when all is said and done.
Realistically, you cannot have one without the other. Anything else is leaving the door open to the capitalists to pull things back in their direction using their vast accumulation of wealth, which under capitalism directly translates to influence and power.
You’re thinking of Capitalism and Socialism as Private Property and Public Property, and as oil and water. That’s not how systems work in the real world, however. An economic system is determined by what is primary in an Economy, and at scale property relations are entirely mixed and inter-related. Having safety nets doesn’t make the Capitalist EU somehow “a mix,” and having markets doesn’t make the Socialist PRC Capitalist either.
You are partially correct, in that markets are a useful tool at lower stages of development and public ownership and central planning at higher stages, but that doesn’t seem to be where you were going with that.
Europe has many more Social policies than the US, but it is nowhere close to equally parts Socialist and Capitalist.
Socialism means that the Workers own the means of production, and there is no country in Europe where that is the case.
Social policies != Socialism.
It’s not about strictly “owning”, it’s about controlling. Control can be achieved in many different ways, including, but not limited to regulations. Socialism is an economic system, of which you can implements certain parts.
I didn’t say “social policies”. Socialist policies are a more specific subset of social policies, so all socialist policies are social policies, but not all social policies are socialist.
Regarding the European countries’ degree of being socialist, it of course depends on the country. But on average, you might be right, and perhaps using “equally” was an exaggeration.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism:
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy […] characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think a common-good healthcare regulation or whatever housing plans fall under the definition.
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and when it does a whole bunch of stuff, its communism.
Hopefully that’s tongue in cheek, but it’s pretty much how a large (voting) segment of the population sees it. Freedom Good, Government Bad.
It’s famous quote from professor Wolff who said it incredibly ironically, just watch the clip. But yeah, tons of people actually do believe this.
It’s a quote from (left) professor Richard Wolff. Link
Edit: had gotten the first name wrong
Thank you, that is such an important point! Many if not most issues in our world are non-binary, but facing this requires thinking beyond memes, which many people don’t want to do. Gotta swipe left or right, those are your two choices, or you’re a shill for the wrong side. It’s really discouraging, almost a New Conservatism - not in a political sense but in an insular thinking and circling the wagons sense.
“The truth must lie somewhere in the middle” is one of the most overused and underexamined memes in public discourse this comment is about to collapse upon itself into an irony black hole
Good illustration - binary thinking turns “the truth CAN lie somewhere in the middle” into “the truth MUST lie somewhere in the middle” because there has to be one right answer and one COMPLETELY OPPOSITE AND WRONG answer to everything. Except no, you’re just doing it wrong.
When the hinges on the door to your mind palace have rusted shut “Um actually false dichotomies are themselves a false dichotomy!”
Funny enough, reducing Communists to rigid thinking devoid of nuance is actually anti-Marxist. Nuance and looking at issues dialectically is core to Communist thought, it’s usually non-Marxists that paint Marxism as dogmatic and inflexible.
it’s non-Marxists that paint Marxism as dogmatic and inflexible.
Yeah, it’s such a tired trope that it’s almost become a meme.
“Read theory” is already such an all-encompassing meme though, and covers that pretty well. Truly, if every liberal read like 3 or 4 pamphlets on Marxism we’d probably be at Socialism by now, well on our way to Communism.
For real, it doesn’t take much reading to dispell many of the myths and I frankly think most people wouldn’t be content to stop there. Once you begin reading, you hunger for more.
Absolutely, I started taking theory fairly seriously about a year ago and I haven’t been nearly as voracious in my studies or reading since childhood. The process of learning how the world genuinely works and seeing everything click into place is immensely satisfying.
The US has a bunch of socialist policies, it’s just that the people who complain about socialism don’t know what it means.
Those have been withering away. They’re trying to get rid of the postal service, we’ve never had national health…I was reading about Slovenia who now has a mixed economy, with the government heavily involved in planning. The only way I see capitalism working at all is social democracy, but I’d much rather see socialism. Luxury goods for profit, necessities as service, progressive taxes with the top incomes, corporate and private, being taxed in the 90th percentile, to fund services, and heavy sanctioning of nations that hide wealth from non-citizens and lifting of sanctions on nations that do the same, as well as not trying to overthrow their governments as long as they are no threat to us. And arms de-escalation.
Classic example: “I don’t want Big Government Socialism messing with my Medicare!”
Or farm subsidies
If you think the US has “socialist policies,” I wouldn’t be so sure you know what Socialism means either. It’s worth reading theory IMO.
The US doesn’t have any socialist policies.
Arguably, The US does have several socialist policies, albeit implemented very badly. For instance, public education. Does capitalism stick its grubby fingers into it from every possible angle? Yes. But at its core it has collective funding through taxes (therefore owned/controlled by the state), universal access, and the prioritization of public welfare over profit (at least on paper). Those principles are strictly socialist and not capitalist.
Socialism does not mean controlled by the state, that is just a state service, which can be capitalist.
Socialism, and I cannot stress this enough, is not when the government does stuff
Where did I say “government does stuff”? If a service is provided not for profit, funded by the community and is otherwise not privately owned, it’s socialist. It needs to be for-profit and/or privately owned to be capitalist.
This may help clear up much of where you are butting heads with MLs in your comments.
No, this type of thinking is anti-dialectical. Capitalism is a system where private property and commodity production is primary, and socialism is a system where collective ownership and planning is primary. This does not mean systems are partially Socialist and partially Capitalist, but that property relations are not uniform in most systems. I think reading Marx would be helpful for you.
But when government has social programs it’s socialism. It’s in the name!
I don’t think this needs a /s, but the world doesn’t fucking make any sense.
Blaming “capitalism” for all of society’s problems is about as useful as blaming God or some gremlins. For example, if you’re in the USA and you blame “capitalism” for your problems, then what are you gonna do about it? There is no path to change this society from capitalism to socialism or communism. We have entire armies of military and police who will ensure that the status quo stays in place. You also can’t vote your way out of this. No candidates advocating such changes will be elected.
The best thing we can do is aim for better regulation of the systems that have allowed for the oligarchy to take it all over. Which won’t be easy or quick at all but is at least somewhat possible.
We could have utopia tomorrow. The path to change worldwide is to effect change where you live. If we all started there, then the local changes would spread. People would want what they have locally to work in larger scales. We don’t have to call it socialism, capitalism, communism, conservative , liberal, freedom, whatever. Terms are proxy enemies used to make us fear or love based on heuristics. We inherently know what a just world would feel and look like. It’s in our nature. If someone has to convince you to override your intuition, then it’s shit. Don’t look for answers elsewhere. Don’t blindly follow anyone. Build the world you want in your heart at home. It will grow out from there. Also, I used to love orange juice as a kid. I drank it from a silly clown cup I got at a performance on ice one time when my parents took me.
there are paths you’re just not willing to consider them.
So what are you gonna do about it then? In reality.
as i said you’re not willing to consider them as clearly demonstrated by trying to push the responsibility for these issues onto others.
Could it be that you just don’t want to admit that you can’t do anything about it?
As for me, I don’t have any responsibility to push onto others about it. I accept the things that cannot change, and I have adapted to survive in the environment that I live in, and things are going generally well.
No, I just have no interest in dicussing a topic like this with a random on the internet where it won’t matter. very different. enjoy your day time being ineffectual.
Likewise, have a great time with your fantasies of revolution or whatever.
I think they meant, like, practical actionable paths, not like ‘I’m playing a Sim and everyone does what I say’. Perhaps they were trying to think about what people could do in the real world that we actually live in
all paths are practical and actionable, if you take action. but thats a you issue not a me or others issue. someone recently showed you a path to take that is effective and simple to do on your own. you’re just not willing to consider it.
Your definition of practical and mine differ. For me, a path that makes my life considerably worse is not a practical path. I would assume the same is true for you, you’re just unable to admit it.
the systems that have allowed for the oligarchy to take it all over
They didn’t take it over, they created it. The lack of democratic influence isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. They have been laying to you all your life!
The path has been laid out by Mr Luigi
Look, you can have nuance or you can have performative outrage, you don’t get to have both. Lemmy has made its bed
I mean, not around here?
We don’t have a lot of dyed in the wool capitalists on Lemmy, so I see a lot less of that sentiment here. On Lemmy we have way more issues with full-on-tankies than right wingers.
The rest of the internet, though? Oh yeah.
Removed by mod
My sentiments exactly. Couldn’t have said it better.
User: “we don’t have a lot of problems with capitalists here”
Also user: immediately starts to shit on a flavour of socialism
Usually complaining about “tankies” is just another way to hate Socialism, the Red Scare never ended and being aware of it doesn’t make you immune to its effects in any capacity.
complaining about “tankies” is just another way to hate Socialism
Even if you’ve got a legit beef with 1950s Stalinists, the idea that they’ve teleported through time to argue with you in English on a 4th rate social media forum is so fucking self-aggrandizing.
Blackshirts and Reds is phenomenal in total, but specifically the subsection Anticommunism & Wonderland should be necessary reading.
Would that Michael Parenti, David Grabber, and Richard Wolfe had been as ravenously consumed by Americans as Milton Friedman, David Brooks, and Anne Coulter.
Not disagreeing with the wider point about the Red Scare, but here specifically I’ve seen more issues with tankies supporting authoritarian regimes - up to and including saying that North Korea should “reclaim” South Korea and the like - than I have the rest of the political spectrum entirely, except for maybe centrist both-siders. There’s the occasional MAGA chud trying to spew nonsense, but they seem to be pretty rare.
There are certain tankie instances that other servers have defederated for a reason.
Of course Korea has to be reunited. The south has been under US control since the end of WWII, taking control after the Japanese
Yep, hopefully Korea can be liberated from the US.
I don’t know if something can be done soon with all the shit happening in Republic of Korea
I remain hopeful.
It’s worth noting that I’ve seen far more people thinking of citizens of North Korea as pitiful subhumans than support for the DPRK in general, and fewer still who support the DPRK extending to the ROK. The “tankie” instances end up just being regular Marxist and Anarchist instances.
It’s crazy to see the degree of vile racism aimed at North Koreans. They’re straight up not acknowledged as human beings with any individual intelligence or agency.
Saw a thread over on Sopuli that made me want to throw up, there are many people here that don’t see Koreans as human beings. They speak of North Koreans the same way European colonialists spoke of African peoples (and still do, but in secret usually), and blame the DPRK for being the target of genocide by the US.
Given what’s become of Palestine, I’m increasingly sympathetic to DPRK militarism.
Absolutely. The DPRK is no utopia, but the brutal starvation tactics of US imposed sanctions and the utter obliteration and genocide they are working their way up from deserves immense sympathy and understanding.
Aye, but it’s pretty telling of what the political spectrum is like on Lemmy when we can say that the crazies on that end of the spectrum are more frequent than the MAGA cultists. Not that I mind the lack of the far-right nutjobs, mind you. Their absence is one of the reasons I’m here.
The real crazy genocide denying leftists seem largely relegated to one particular instance anyway, and defederating that seems to make a big difference in your feed.
The real crazy genocide denying leftists
We’re right here, actually, and we do indeed deny Western Cold War II bullshit propaganda.
I was trying not to name drop, but I was referring to the Stalin-stans over on Hexbear who say that he didn’t do anything wrong, and if he did do it, then they deserved it.
Nor did I say anything about Saddam or Bush’s photos of the bomb from Die Hard that they used as evidence of WMDs, but go ahead and use me as That Guy and go off, queen.
Seeing how this thread is going and what posts and users have been deleted/banned, I can see where this is heading and I’m just gonna go ahead and block .ml. Enjoy your chapo-trap or whatever.
The first sentence of “Tankies” by Roderic Day over on Red Sails explains that no one actually believes Stalin did nothing wrong. That’s a combination of Hexbear being more of a Communist and Anarchist hangout than a Communist party. It’s the internet. What people generally mean is that Stalin did not kill 100 million people, and his actual historical role was as a leader of the world’s first Socialist state, and as such has had piles and piles of myths distorting the real facts of his life by Western propagandists.
Stalin-stans over on Hexbear who say that he didn’t do anything wrong, and if he did do it, then they deserved it.
Hexbear’s flavor of irony-poisoned humor does confuse some people. But Stalin didn’t do nearly as many things “wrong” as cold war propaganda told us. Even contemporary Western historians see Stalin in a very different light than corporate media, airport books, and popular culture do.
My friend, there is an ideological ocean between “workers should collectively own the means of production” and “we need an authoritarian state with a monopoly on violence to enforce communism.”
I swear to god westerners have had over a hundred years to read The State and Revolution and we’re still having the same dumb fucking argument.
In the time y’all take to talk shit about any revolution that actually succeeds you could have read about twenty books on the subject.
we need an authoritarian state with a monopoly on violence
We already have one. Americans just need to keep believing the monopoly is working for them, rather than for their bosses, or the system of compliance falls apart.
It’s not because we have a boner for authority, it’s because history has shown us that, under the current conditions of global capitalist/imperialist hegemony, such a state is a necessary step in the process of reaching a classless society. It’s simply not possible to go directly from where we are right now to where all socialists want to end up. That’s why anarchism has never had a win that’s lasted more than few months before capitalist forces crush it.
Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds:
But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
There’s an ideological ocean between utopian socialism and actually-existing socialism, yes. There’s a reason why there’s not been a successful historical instance of socialism in which workers collectivised without taking the power of the state in their hands.
Calling it “authoritarian state” kinda portrays lack of knowledge at democratic power structures and mechanisms in former socialist countries. Examples for the USSR: highest unionisation rates in the world, announcement/news boarboards in every workplace administered by the union, free education to the highest level for everyone, free healthcare, guaranteed employment and housing (how do the supposedly “authoritarian leaders” benefit from that?), neighbour commissions legally overviewing the activity and transparency of local administration, neighbour tribunals dealing with most petty crime, millions of members of the party, women’s rights, local ethnicities in different republics having an option to education in their language and widespread availability of reading material and newspapers in their language… Please tell me one country that does that better nowadays
Current western Europe (Germany in particular) still has free education, free Healthcare, guaranteed housing, legalized LGBT marriage and weed, and many things more, and you don’t go to Siberia for making a joke about the leader.
Union and party membership were obligatory BTW, if you didn’t want to be labeled as a troublemaker.
Lmao, Germany has guaranteed housing?! Germany has Vonovia, a company that hoards real estate and rents it in terrible conditions, and own about 500k+ houses. In what universe does Germany have guaranteed housing when Berlin tried to implement a directly democratically voted rent cap on housing and it got repelled by the tribunals a year after it began?
Free healthcare in Germany is absolute bullshit. Yes, it’s free, but the quality of healthcare is astonishingly low. I’ve had the misfortune of living there for a few years, and the whole system is horrendous, especially for how ludicrously expensive it is compared to other European countries. In Germany, you have sick senior people queuing at 7AM in frosty winter mornings STANDING ON THE STREETS to be able to see the family doctor, you can consider yourself lucky if you can wait sitting in a stairwell indoors while waiting for the doctor. It’s beyond me how German people aren’t constantly on the street complaining about this bullshit, again especially given the absurdly high costs of public healthcare there.
Funny that you also mention freedom of speech, when in Germany they are literally arresting Jewish people for expressing antizionist and pro-Palestinian points of view. The actual Nazis run rampant though, friends of the police if not outright members of it, with an extreme rise of the far right.
Harz IV guarantees housing.
Damn, you should tell that to the 700k homeless people in Germany, I’m sure they’ll be happy to know that
European countries are under fascist rules right now it’s terrible. And many still die of hunger or improper housing or hygiene. I’m thinking particularly about France because I’m from there, but Germany has similar issues
Harz IV, bro.
I mean this with all sympathy, after all, I used to share views similar to your own before I started taking Marxism seriously, and to dismiss you would be to dismiss myself, and thus the capacity for change. When you simplify Marxism to “workers should collectively own the Means of Production,” you remove the entirety of Marxism, as such a thought was common even pre-Marx. When you simplify AES to “authoritarian states with a monopoly on violence to enforce Communism,” you assume greater knowledge of the practice of building Socialism than the billions of people who have worked tirelessly to bring it into existance for the last century.
With all due respect, and no “I’ve read more than you so my power level is higher” nonsense, have you read Marx?
With all due respect to theory, I’ve seen too much of it shit all over people who lack education, context, or ability to understand, and basically leaves those people out of the conversation and acts like their opinions don’t matter because they haven’t read the right books or have the right education.
The differences between academic unions and blue-collar unions were always stark to me, and when there was ever any connection between the two, the academics would roll their eyes and be dismissive of the blue-collar people, who may have not always been theory conscious but were good people, a la Samwise Gamgee (in terms of Tolkiens ideas of the kind of good, kind, but simple people he met in WWI). Constantly telling those people that they don’t know enough to be involved isn’t ever really a positive way forward, in my opinion, and anything where it’s forced from the top-down on those people instead of having their input is something I’m against, sorry. You can’t explain away taking away people’s right to input in their own governance with theory, to me.
I’ve read some Marx, but never got my hands on an unabridged copy of Capital, nor did I finish it because it was pretty tedious. I personally think Debord had way more profound things to say, and Society of the Spectacle is the most dog-eared book I own. Mixed with McLuhan’s Understanding Media, I’m actually partial to think communications might actually be neck-and-neck with commodities in terms of importance of understanding them. I mean, Debord thought that too, which is why he thought he would be remembered for his board game Kriegspiel, (a war game focusing on lines of communication) not for SotS.
ve seen too much of it shit all over people who lack education, context, or ability to understand,
It kinda irks me seeing comrades engage with people assuming they’re arguing in good faith and immediately it turns out it’s just unabashed western chauvinism. The fact that you refer to Debord is just the icing on the cake.
I’ve read Debord, guy had a good fifteen page essay hidden inside The Society of the Spectacle and then over a hundred pages of masturbatory inscrutability of the kind Zizek perfected and good old french chauvinism. I put more stock in the works credited by people who actually achieved revolution and then a better quality of life for their nations through them. A social science requires falsifiability.
On the other hand, there is Lenin boiling down in a hundred pages a very thorough understanding of Marxist thought and the critical steps the revolution must take to defend itself as well the reasons for it. No fluff, no academicist posturing, just keeping in the Marxist tradition of making the subject only as complex as it needs to be. Then he went and fucking proved it with his practice.
Capital isn’t an entry level text, is a thorough study of the mechanisms of capital, the value form, the objects of financial speculation and their interaction with the real material economy. Critique of the Gotha Programme, The Poverty of Philosophy, The German Ideology, even Socialism: Utopic and Scientific by Engels are through, clear, and concise. And they work.
Yea, I try to make it a rule to engage in good-faith almost regardless of what the other person is saying unless it’s clear that nothing can come from it, be it reaching the other person or reaching onlookers. In this case, it was more for the latter.
when there was ever any connection between the two, the academics would roll their eyes and be dismissive of the blue-collar people, who may have not always been theory conscious but were good people, a la Samwise Gamgee
Samwise Gamgee isn’t a good person, he’s a fictitious character in a fantasy novel.
You can’t explain away taking away people’s right to input in their own governance with theory, to me.
You need to have something before it can be taken away from you.
Society of the Spectacle is the most dog-eared book I own.
Then you know the illusion of choice isn’t the same thing as a people’s right to self-governance. And further, that a movement of people in opposition to a media established regime is not stealing their neighbors’ liberty by asserting some of its own.
Not even if all the TVs and radios and newspapers say so.
I am not trying to tell you that your opinions are “invalid” or “worthless.” You raise a good problem well known by actual, practicing Marxists among Western “Marxists” that seek to endlessly critique society without changing it. However, it would be a mistake to not learn from Socialists in the past and present who have a wealth of experience and lifetimes of analysis to draw from. Rather, my goal isn’t telling you that you don’t know enough to be involved, but that I think you are making a critical error in attacking Socialists based on what I believe are misconceptions and misunderstandings, and this hurts leftist movement.
I think if you made an effort to understand what these billions of Socialists believe in and are committed to, you would better understand if their ideas and systems are valid or not. I think without reading theory that you are only going to have an incomplete and partial view, and this, while not delegitimizing your opinions and views, certainly harms the integrity. Celebrating an “end to theory” was something the Socialist Revolutionaries adhered to pre-revolution in Russia, and this was proven a mistake, while the Bolsheviks’ strict adherence to theory and mass worker organization proved correct.
Bud, I’m reading theory, and you’re literally telling me I’m not reading the right theory.
Kinda? If you want to have an opinion of Marxists, I would read Marx and historical accounts by Marxists to even understand better what they are trying to do better, rather than Anarchist critiques of Marxism. Your initial comment came out attacking Marxists, so I tried to contextualize that more.
How could any socialist country protect the workers without a state in 2025?
So you’re saying you only believe hierarchical societies with monopolies on violence are viable societies? Where a strong-man makes the decisions from the top-down for everyone else?
There is no room for decentralization of control or a non-authoritarian dominance? There is no room for socialism grown from the bottom up organically instead of forced from the top down?
Why must the idea of “state” equal “authoritarian state with monopoly on violence?” There is no other such type of state we can imagine?
Markets aren’t evil, workers who own the mean of production will still be trading with other groups of workers who own their own means of production. A t-shirt factory will be trading with a textiles factory. Capitalism just raises the importance of markets to the detriment of pretty much everything else in life.
Hierarchical? Yes, we need administrators, managers, planners, and other forms of necessary hierarchy as we continue to work towards more complex production at larger and larger scales. Even Anarchists concede this point.
Authoritarian? What constitutes “authoritarianism,” any hierarchy? If you oppose all hierarchy, it sounds like you disagree with even mainstream Anarchism, and seek to return to more tribal modes of production, scavenging and whatnot.
Grown “from the bottom-up?” Yes, Marxism has historically been accomplished by Proletarian revolution and organization, it hasn’t succeeded from tiny terrorist cells throwing coups. Mass worker movements are what achieved Socialism.
A “strong-man” making all of the decisions? No, and that’s not how AES states actually existed. Nobody argues for such a method, if that’s a euphamism for full public ownership of property, I ask why you separate the people from the government at that point.
As for the idea of an “authoritarian state with a monopoly on violence,” I don’t know what you specifically mean here. That sounds to me like all states, sans the as-yet undefined “authoritarian” bent. AES is democratic, so there must be something you don’t like but haven’t defined yet. Furthermore, trying to “design” a perfect society is Utopianism, and doesn’t actually focus on how to build Socialism from where we are.
Markets aren’t evil, correct, at low levels of development they are highly useful. However, the goal is full Public Ownership, as Central Planning becomes far more efficient at higher levels of development. A system of “worker coops” would inevitably work towards either a regression into Capitalism or centralization into Socialism, a problem shown and worked out in Anti-Dühring by Engels.
Overall, I think you owe it to yourself to read more historical accounts of AES and how they function, Blackshirts and Reds as I linked earlier is a good start.
A system of “worker coops” would inevitably work towards either a regression into Capitalism or centralization into Socialism
Or have right-wing factions armed and trained by the CIA to overthrow the government and do a bunch of crimes against humanity during the 90s.
I don’t know enough about Yugoslavia’s economy to say whether their coop-centric model was responsible for the stagnation and high unemployment rates.
Yep, that’s the problem with making such a structure the focus of the economy, and not just another element subservient to the Public Sector and government in general. Easy to take advantage of individualists in a cooperative based economy than a collectivized one.
AES is democratic, so there must be something you don’t like but haven’t defined yet.
Well to be fair, I’m probably closer to anarchist than strict socialist because to me decentralization of power and communications is how you solve a lot of this and no societies that exist or have existed have really tried it in the sort of capacities we could try it at this point in history, I believe. There’s just no society who has even come close yet. I do think we were held back slightly technologically and communications have progressed to the level that things can be more decentralized, a la citizen communications like the barbed wire telephone network. I think current iterations of democracy are all really outdated and that there’s been plenty of new options to try but there is no political willpower in any society to pursue those things.
I wouldn’t say I ascribe to Critical Theory, but the general idea of “there is no perfect anything, we must always be critiquing and trying new ways” speaks to me. So hanging our future on 200 year old ideas without any progression or growth of those ideas feels foolhardy to me.
Do you have specific issues with the real democratic structures of AES states that you can point to further decentralization helping with? Most AES countries practice a sort of “top-down, from the bottom-up” form of democracy. Essentially, building “rungs” of councils that start at local levels, elect delegates for regional councils, who elect delegates to further levels as necessary. This is both centralized, in that the highest level has the final say, but decentralized in that the higher levels only make decisions pertaining those lower to them, and can change delegates or practice recall elections. It gets more complex than that, obviously, but this seems as decentralized as is practical.
As for your support for “critiquing everything,” you sound like a Marxist-Leninist. Criticism and Self-Criticism are core concepts of Marxism-Leninism, and the practice of repeating the dialectical materialist cycle of turning theory into practice to refine theory and refine practice is the core to Marxist-Leninist knowledge. The base of Marxism isn’t simply 200 years old, but thousands, it’s a cumulative effort of the early materialists, the early dialecticians, Capitalists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, Utopian Socialists like Owen, Dialectical Idealists like Hegel, and more. We keep Marx’s ideas (and Lenins, etc) inasmuch as they are still valid, and by our analysis they overwhelmingly are.
Does that make sense?
We don’t have a lot of dyed in the wool capitalists on Lemmy
*dyed in the wool liberals
Liberalism is the philosophy of capitalism, capitalists are people who owns significant amounts of capital.
Capitalism is owning the means of production - which isn’t limited to billionaires. Almost everybody who has a retirement plan is a capitalist because retirement funds invest in stocks, bonds, etc. Everyone with a savings account is a capitalist - they are supplying money the bank loans to other people, which is where savings account interest comes from. To honestly avoid being a capitalist you’d have to have no money or keep it in a mattress.
If you really think about it anyone with hands is a capitalist.
everybody who has a retirement plan is a capitalist because retirement funds invest in stocks, bonds, etc.
The term you’re looking for is petite bourgeoisie: people who do get some income by owning slivers of the means of production, but who also have to live by selling their labor. Someone who has investments purely for retirement purposes is straining the lower bounds of that definition.
Everyone with a savings account is a capitalist
Change in your pocket is not anywhere close to owning the means of production.
