- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.world
- anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.world
- anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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That’s partially because like many other words and names (just consider Isis, an important goddess of ancient egypt), “socialism” to most people means the type of absolute control that communist countries usually feature. But of course, as a word/concept, socialism is just the application of socialist policies, not even remotely alluding to some absolute end goal or so. And naturally as a part of society except a tiny minority at the top, most people would benefit from more socialist policies.
Socialism isn’t really as simple as “socialist policies.” Such a character classification into binaries like “Capitalist policies” and “Socialist policies” doesn’t make much sense, Capitalism and Socialism describe much larger systems and what drives an economy. Social programs are good, yes, and Socialism is a good thing too, but they aren’t the same.
It can definitely be argued that capitalists themselves fucking hate capitalism.
Posts like this one are chasing people away from Lemmy.
Lemmy doesn’t need people to “succeed,” it already does its job. It’s not a commercial product to be profited from. Further, you aren’t going to be able to chase away the Socialists from Lemmy, the structure is appealing to Leftists and its developed and maintained by Communists.
Good, we don’t want that kind of person.
Strong “I can fix him” energy out there.
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.
That’s a main feature dude!
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.
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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.
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.
Survivors bias. People in Russia or China don’t appear to complain about their systems because… they can’t.
Modern Russia is Capitalist, the Socialist system was looted and sold for parts over 30 years ago. As for the PRC, people don’t complain as much as they do in the US because over 90% of the citizens of China support the CPC.
https://redsails.org/anticommunism-and-wonderland/
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
not an american, I grew up in the Soviet empire, don’t care about your dumb walls of propaganda. Try again.
It must be so easy being a reactionary ultra-nationalist like you: you Just assume anything that confirms your pre-existing beliefs is true and anything that challenges them is propaganda.
Westerners continue to be the most brainwashed people on earth
Do they think Russia is a communist country?
Many of them do, yeah.
Lol
Lol
Nope, grew up in Soviet occupied eastern europe. Fuck that, I’ll take flawed capitalism over whatever torture and misery was that thanks. You are free to disagree more politely tho.
Ah yes, the classic “I was born in Poland in 1989, I think I know a little bit more about communism than you, buddy!” style of reactionary westerner.
Whatever makes you feel better about your flavor of brain wash my friend. At the end of the day I’d rather have flawed democracy and capitalism than whatever else is on the table. At least there’s a path forward here.
Capitalism and democracy are mutually incompatible, and the only path under capitalism is “forwards” into ever increasing inequality and poverty.
Honestly, not going to continue with this as clearly we’re not going to find any value in this comment thread so have a good day and I hope you feel better :)
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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.
18·2 days 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 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, to the extent they are doing so to survive, this is “human nature”, yes, but I don’t think this is the way that you are using 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
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.
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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.
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. “Left” anticommunists have a long legacy and have done immense damage to Socialism worldwide.
Blackshirts and Reds is phenomenal in total, but specifically the subsection Anticommunism & Wonderland should be necessary reading.
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.
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 from the inside, not criticizing from afar.
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 as 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, it 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 thorough, 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.
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 about 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.
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.
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
How could any socialist country protect the workers without a state in 2025?
So you’re saying you only believe hierarchical, authoritarian 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? Do we really lack such imagination?
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 still 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. We also add analysis as it becomes more applied, and we see where earlier Socialists, even Marxists, went wrong.
Does that make sense?
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.
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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.
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The real crazy genocide denying leftists
We’re right here, actually, and we do indeed deny Western Cold War II bullshit propaganda.
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It doesn’t reflect well on your media literacy to still be accepting this stuff uncritically, especially given how Western corporate media has been misreporting on an actual, ongoing genocide in our name. Not to mention Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, or the thousand other lies in the twenty years between.Removed by mod
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.
Edit to add: And to be specific, “double genocide theory” was Nazi propaganda, which you’re continuing to propagate.
User: “we don’t have a lot of problems with capitalists here”
Also user: immediately starts to shit on a flavour of socialism
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My sentiments exactly. Couldn’t have said it better.
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.
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?
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.
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
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 Paris commune
the swamp maroons
exarcheia
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
na you’re just making assumptions instead of reading what is actually said. I have not made a statement about what paths I personally support, only that unless you take action personally non-sense about the practicality of a particular idea is self defeating. there are always challenges and struggles the point is to surmount them not wallow in self pity. again pointing to a personal issue with the person claiming impracticality. not with the person proposing and ideally taking action on a path.
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Look, you can have nuance or you can have performative outrage, you don’t get to have both. Lemmy has made its bed
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.
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?
