cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18056637
source: https://x.com/MaraWilson/status/1288387415833317382
Capitalism sucks.
She is based and so fucking true. We were lied to and we need to do something about it.
she’s great. I was a medium player in the Weird Twitter scene and she found it and loved it.
William Gibson followed me because Mara retweeted some dumb weird Twitter “joke” of mine
Coooooooool
Socialism vs capitalism is a false dichotomy. There are other alternatives like economic democracy or mutualism where all companies are democratic worker coops. There are other critics of capitalism besides Marx such as the classical laborists like Proudhon and their modern intellectual descendants like David Ellerman
Economic democracy is just an aspect of a healthy socialist society.
Mutualism is a type of socialism.
The false dichotomy is between Leninism and liberalism.
Mutualism is not socialism as it has been defined in the 20th century @leftism
- Proudhon referred to himself as a socialist.
- Revolutionary Catalonia, the Makhnovshina, and the MAREZ all existed in the 20th century. All of them had mutualist elements and called themselves socialist. The successors to the MAREZ, the CGALs, still exist and still consider themselves socialist.
Proudhon referred to himself as a socialist in the 19th century sense. Most people don’t have what Proudhon advocated in mind when they use the term, socialism, today. It is clearer to use a different word, and also helps the left avoid any unnecessary negative associations and connotations
You’re not gonna dodge the negative associations for long. The bourgeoisie, state bureaucracy, and their useful idiots will just call you a woke radical left postmodern cultural neomarxist anyways. If you’re gonna get called a socialist anyways, might as well insist on using the word as it was meant to be used, rather than ceding it to be used as an insult.
You also ignored point #2
Classical laborists and their intellectual descendants’ case against capitalism boils down to the idea that the positive and negative results of production are the private property of the workers in the firm. When understood properly, the unique arguments they make are that we should abolish capitalism in the name of private property. The left should lean into this framing. It’s hard to call private property supporters Marxists.
Socialism doesn’t clearly evoke those examples to people
Proudhon said that property is theft
Why do you keep doing that thing at the bottom of your posts?
The false dichotomy is between Leninism and liberalism.
Wait, are you implying these are the same thing?
A dichotomy is where there are only two choices or extremes. By saying it’s a false dichotomy you are pointing out there are other options. It doesn’t necessarily mean the two options from before are the same.
By saying it’s a false dichotomy you are pointing out there are other options.
Ah, was a bit confused, because I’ve never seen anyone doubt the alternatives of Fascism or Anarchism.
or mutualism where all companies are democratic worker coops
I think that Karl Marx might have described that as the workers controlling the means of production. In fact I think he had a word for that…
Marx wouldn’t have described an economy that uses markets as socialist
Thanks for the info.
Real Capitalism Has Simply Never Been Tried
That’s what they keep telling me, but every step closer to free market capitalism we take seems to make things worse.
I’m very confused and I’m sure it’s because I’m very ignorant of modern pop culture, but who is Matilda?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117008/
The protagonist of a book that got adapted into a movie almost 30 years ago
Thank you. I read the book when I was a kid, but I was 18 or 19 when that movie came out, so I’m not surprised I didn’t realize she was the actress in it.
She looks older in the picture too
The fact that no one would ask this about Radcliffe/Harry Potter is exactly why this tweet of hers is hilarious
Again, it boils down to “define socialism”.
Are we talking about USSR, Cuba and China-type socialism? Then they are all those things.
But if we’re talking about Finland, Denmark Sweden and Norway-socialism, then I’m on board with socialism!
The problem is that none of the countries you listed were ever socialist. Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are just capitalist countries with good social policies.
And as much as their propagandists wish they did, the USSR, Cuba and China never got past the state capitalism part of establishing socialism.
There has never really been a socialist country in the world, it’s a bit of a moot point to go like “I like this kind of socialism but not this kind” when nobody ever got to see it…
That’s my point. Socialism developed a broad meaning as time went on. Before, it started to mean simply demanding better worker’s rights and conditions. But evolved to mean businesses owned by workers. Eventually, communism came into the scene and started to promote stateless society run by the proletariat. Then with so many people being turned off by the violence of communism, the more moderate left-- social democrats-- advocated to implement socialism through political and electoral mobilisation. But even then, as time progressed, social democrats abandoned their attempts to implement wholesale socialism and instead rein capitalism with sweeping regulations, instead of abolishing capitalism. Nonetheless, even though social democracy still embraced capitalism, the ideology is still considered under the wide tent of socialism but further right to it.
IIRC communism was the original Das Kapital version, and socialism came into being as “communism-lite” not really following Marx’s ideal but giving some good things to workers
The term socialism was first coined in 1832, way before Das Kapital has been published in 1866. But before Karl Marx, socialism as we know it wasn’t something that is fully solid despite the term already being coined. During 1848 liberal revolution, there were some who participated who’d be considered “socialists”, but they don’t necessarily know what they want.
That’s really cool! Thanks for the context I hadn’t known about that broader current of socialist thinking
Define the Nordic Model. It’s not socialism what they have. At best it’s a social democracy. They still run on a capitalistic system. Not to mention they are crawling to the right.
Social democracy is still considered under the umbrella term of socialism, but it’s further right than most leftist ideologies.
I would strongly disagree with that.
Using socialist to mean “has social policies” is weird to me (and some of the Nordics aren’t in a great state government-wise right now)
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Socialism has a broad definition than antisemitism. Does it mean worker-run businesses? Businesses run by the government on behalf of workers? Or should society be organised by commune?
Anti-semitism is anti-semitism. Nevermind what Hasbara says and the Israeli state weaponising the term to their convenience, anti-semitism just means being bigoted against Jews.
Are the Chinese antisemitic?
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Please quote me making that claim.
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It was not clear to me. Do you think it’s possible that not everything you say is universally understood by everyone to be what you mean to say?
You know, sort of like how it wasn’t clear to you that I never said anything about the government?
None of those are socialism.
The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home is right.
Wait, Matilda voices the Faceless Old Woman?? TIL
She does, yes.
The Trumpshbull
That’s literally Venezuela
