I haven’t met any soc dems who think capitalism can be saved. Most agree that it can only be contained. Just look how successful the Nordic countries are. They have successful companies and still have billionaires, but the rich are heavily taxed. And if the rich threatens to leave with their assets, they will still be taxed heavily for doing so.
The problem is that in order to unite the left it is necessary to agree to the ideological level, very difficult, to unite the right it needs just a briefcase of money.
Or a general hatred of the other
The briefcase of money turns into velocity of money, which turns into jobs, which turns into wage pressure, which turns into higher wages for the poor, so they can buy the product or service with their own greatest marginal utility; so in their eyes they view the briefcase of money as the optimal empathetic choice.
Well, assuming the right in this case are Ron Paul right-leaning and not Trump right-leaning. In Trumps case he does just want the briefcase of money for himself.
Money’s got nothing on hate. Nothing unites the Right more than hate, every fascist ideology centres around hate for a certain group. Be it Jews, Palestinians, Chinese, or Hispanics.
Oh man… wait until you hear about how the Democratic Party is funded…
He said the right.
tbf the democratic party isn’t a left party.
to unite the right, all you have to do is say “so, we all hate Black people and immigrants, right?”
“so, we all hate capitalism, right?”
A lot of people aren’t ready to let go. Probably something to do with having lived their whole lives like this they can’t accept its wrong and needed to be changed this whole time. Sunk cost?
You can’t exploit capitalists. Hate alone is not enough.
hate is good fuel for class solidarity though.
I wish. You’re giving right-wingers way too much credit. Most of those craven idiots do it for free for the opportunity to lose themselves in a gaggle of other morons. They are vulnerable in a way that is easy to exploit for people who know how to do it.
can we do it too?
I swear bro the next capitalism actually works, bro trust me, bro without capitalism you wouldn’t have iphones bro.
No no no you don’t get it bro, what we have right now is adjective capitalism, that’s very different from real capitalism. Bro if we had real capitalism things would be so nice
bro i promise, with social democracy capitalism is equalitarian. yes bro i promise. bro, no more oppression! please don’t look at the global south
Global South wouldn’t be a fair example since you’d have to factor in historical (and current) exploitation by Western nations. This tends to bolster corruption by having leaders sell out their population to align with Western prerogatives, enriching themselves in the process.
The social democracies in these nations is generally an attempt to protect the populace from Western capitalism moreso than domestic capitalism.
One example would be when the US overthrew the Shah in Iran back in the 50s because they socialized ownership of their oil reserves (previously owned through exploitation by a Western coporation). They staged a coup d’etat to install a pro Western leader so that the Western exploitation could continue. This inevitably led to the Iranian revolution, playing a significant role in Iran’s current state as a theocracy.
The Global South, particularly South America, has countless of examples of this. The term banana republic is used to describe this very situation.
This is by no means an indictment on Western culture, just that the global rich will inevitably be in a position to manipulate the global not-so-rich for their own gain. Western nations are the global bourgeoisie.
Nordic nations are a better example of social democracies as they are not subject to the same type of meddling.
oh yea i agree with you, my point was that western socdem nations (like scandinavia, for example) still exploit/depend on the exploitation of the global south
bro capitalism is the best we’ve got, trust me bro despite its flaws it’s the only one that works bro, bro just accept this as truth, bro don’t question it bro.
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I love the iphone thing because they are literally all manufactured in the most successful socialist country still existing.
Yeah, and the most capitalist part in them is the outrageous price tag and planned obsolescence. But yeah, keep talking about “muh technological development”
Don’t forget privatizing an IP that was only made possible through government funded research. Literally the only “innovation” jobs made was taking a bunch of existing tech and being like, “what if we made a media player that is also a phone with a touch screen”
And don’t get me started on how much I fucking hate touch screens. Whoever decided all cash registers should be touch screen only and took away my 10-key is going to beg for me to kill them once I am done with them.
Stealing other peoples’ work and selling it as your own for your profit, the sacred art of the capitalists (it just works!)
Yeah, I work as a bartender and have occasionally had to deal with register/payment terminal combos that are basically just Android based devices with a receipt printer. I hate them, because it’s completely possible to swipe up and close the app, or double press the unlock button and open the camera, or accidentally input something and trying to undo anything without starting over is a pain 'cause the buttons are too small. And occasionally those things will just not work, and the battery drains real fast.
The luddites were right.
True
I like this analogy, because you can kill all those other ideologies and it’ll come back as capitalism and even when you kill capitalism, it doesn’t stay gone so you just make it work for you.
There is no alternative ™
The best you can do is control it for a time.
No, sorry, this is incorrect. There are much more efficient and fair modes of production out there. Case in point would be Cuba, or China. The leaps and bounds they’ve made in spite of the largest and most murderous economic power in the world trying to sabotage them every step of the way should be evidence enough of that.
The most efficient mode of production doesn’t really matter if you want your economy to thrive, helping the working class does, and China is now better at than than the US. That’s why they’re doing well, not because they’re less capitalist. Capitalism can help the working class more than hurt it just as easily as not.
Sorry but here again you’re just wrong on a factual level. China is not capitalist. Read whatever Cowbee writes, they’re usually good at explaining things.
There are no capitalists in China, China itself is the capitalist.
Well said!
You’re a very entertaining poster
What on Earth are you talking about?
All roads lead to capitalism.
No, Capitalism is just one Mode of Production, a relatively new one, in a long chain of them. It isn’t the first, and will not be the last unless we nuke ourselves to death or Climate Change kills us all.
We’re literally going to capitalize ourselves to death because of human nature.
Basically, humans trade, humans establish hierarchy, hierarchy establishes currency based on real things or favors to deal with the presence of other hierarchy and to compete, real things end up being used as it is more reliable and favor based economies get conquered, capitalism.
Edit: And if you think you can solve capitalism with a moral bullet, you’ll likely pacify us into losing to someone or something more violent than we are or create an violently enlightened society led by dark empaths and capitalism is still a thing because we’ll still be trading and be using money to exchange goods to build things whether the system is open or closed.
Such has been the present interpretation of the course of recorded history. Recorded most often by conquerors, looking favorably upon the the ends of their conquest to justify their means, and if you boil just about every single conquering ideology down for long enough, you will see two things, in this order: greed for what the conquered populace had, and fear of not having enough.
That’s not “human nature,” that’s a response to human nature. Most of us would probably generally prefer to go on living. For many people, that looks like “i just need my necessities covered and I’ll figure out the rest.” Historically this happened by banding together and looking out for one another, not by hoarding resources and making people do extra work just to fucking exist with a modicum of comfort in a society forever dangling a golden carrot to keep you distracted from the meat grinder.
Bigger text doesn’t make your point look better it makes it look obnoxious, but there is a lot of truth in that.
Our problem is we’ve grown so big because we’ve had more nature to conquer and now we’ve conquered the land, we only have each other left to conquer unless we figure out a way to conquer more nature.
All roads lead to present thing
Person experiencing present thing
More like, capitalism is the road. There’s a lot ways to build a road, and some roads are better than others, but you need the road. When there is no road, you create one. Whether the currency is money, favors, ideas, or bartering.
Capitalism is not when money.
Capitalism is when you make companies the government.
Capitalism has only been around for a tiny portion of human history
Human nature is malleable, it is determined by material conditions, ie the surroundings and experiences, including the economic formation of society. As society shifts in Mode of Prodiction, “Human Nature” shifts with it.
Further, Capitalism is not simply using currency to trade. It arose only a few hundred years ago. Currency existed back in feudal eras, despite predating Capitalism. Capitalism specifically arose primarily with technologies like the Steam Engine. More generally, Capitalism is more about turning a sum of money into a larger sum of money through paying wage laborers to create commodities using Capital you own, competing within a market where this is the principle aspect of the economy.
This system is relatively new, and is already being phased out in Socialist countries like the PRC.
Yes and no. We conquer and dominate and build. All human cities look roughly similar. Productivity wins because it conquers those who aren’t.
Even China uses their own form of capitalism. Chinese history is more capitalist than most countries too imo. China hasn’t risen above capitalism, they mastered their own style of it, but as waves rise and fall, the state of a country’s economy is ever changing. Today they are wolves, but without the century of humiliation they might not be, just as America would not have had anywhere to fall if did not climb so high.
You’re conflating production with Capitalism, and ignoring that the principle ownership of China’s economy is public, not private. I don’t think you’ve genuinely engaged with Socialism as a concept, you are over-generalizing Capitalism to periods and forms of production it doesn’t apply to.
I’ve never come across anyone who calls themselves a “Stalinist.” Maybe that’s what some horseshoe theorists call Marxist-Leninists.
Hoxhaists called their ideology Stalinism often
I’ve never run into one myself. ProleWiki/Lemmygrad user Wisconcom was before my time.
A self-proclaimed Hoxhaist (although he would later start calling himself a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, anti-revisionist, or a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist… and eventually claimed he was never a Hoxhaist as Hoxhaism “does not exist”) […]
Incredible mind palace.
The only people I call Stalinist are people who intentionally go about delaying or postponing things. They gotta quit stalin for time.
You could say that but you could also say that they’re biden their time
Is this horseshoe theory?Lmao post this in dad jokes please
I must confess to have stealing this meme from elsewhere and didn’t even notice that lol
This is one of my favorites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX8GeXpw84c
Oh that’s gold.
The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is what they have in mind. But, on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet; it is an honor for us to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will never force us to our knees.
What would it even mean?
Kinda like Marxism-Leninism, but in a one-man cult-of-personality police state and if you as much as look funny at the leader, you get disappeared/shot?
In other words, what’s happening to the USA minus the Marxism-Leninism?
Which movie is this from?
Shaun of the Dead, but this particular scene is nothing like the meme is portraying it as. In fact, the two images arent even from the same scene.
I’m pretty sure it’s Shaun of the Dead.
Shaun of the Dead
Yet you participate in a society, curious, etc etc
But have you considered iphone?
How about, “are anyone of you qualified to do open heart surgery on an entire country?”
i never heard this one.
Stalinists, Maoists and Socialists (at least the reformist ones) are pro-capital, just under a different form. They love their commodity production and wage labor…
Marxism-Leninism (which I presume you mean by the term “Stalinist”) is more classically Marxist than those who think they can abolish commodity production over night. I elaborate more on that in this comment.
While I do like your writing style and think you’re quite talented at it, that’s just a bunch of ML revisionism/State capitalist (Dengist) apologetics that misrepresents Marx.
Not gonna thoroughly debunk it cause it’s a wall of text, but ownership =/= mode of production. Marx never said that public ownership alone makes something socialist, what matters is how things are produced: Is it for exchange or use? Is labor still waged? Does surplus value still exist and get extracted? If yes - that’s still capitalism therefore not Marxist.
You also claim that “Marx didn’t think you could abolish private property by making it illegal” which is true cause else it would be idealism, but then you use this to spin it into “that’s why we need to let firms develop then make them public” while in reality what Marx meant is that we should abolish capital relations, not co-exist with capital and preserve businesses until they’re “ready”.
You’re also trying to spin the “by degrees” quote from the manifesto to act as if Marx argued for gradual market-led process of evolution from Capitalism to Socialism (or in other words, keeping Capitalism and Markets for decades after the revolution) and not a revolutionary process of abolition of Capital entirely.
That isn’t Marxism, but maybe I’m just too ideologically pure and idealistic. Still, I think being more honest that it’s not actually “classical Marxism” wouldn’t hurt.
3·7 hours agoI’m very interested in how you think we should abolish capital relations?
Off the bat, I do usually agree with you more than disagree with you. I’m not saying anything out of a sense of malice or a desire to be “correct.” However, I am entirely confident in my analysis here.
You’re correct in saying that I’m a Marxist-Leninist, as are the majority of Marxists worldwide. The fact that Marxist-Leninists agree on this subject does not make it revisionist, nor does it misrepresent Marx.
Marx indeed did not say that Public Ownership alone makes something Socialist. Quite right, in fact, many Capitalist states like the US have sizable public sectors. However, at the same time, Capitalism is not Private Ownership. Capitalism itself can only exist as an interconnected system, trying to slice systems up and analyze each slice discretely is an error the pre-Dialectical Matetialists made, and it is an error because it obfuscates the movements and trajectories of the system.
The abolition of production for exchange-value is indeed the goal. However, saying any system that has not yet managed to do so is not Marxist, or not Socialist, is wrong. It may not be upper-level Communism that Marx describes as a future society, but in fact, Marx would call it “Lower-Stage Communism.” We can observe this in Principles of Communism:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
Engels was not in opposition to Marx on this. You say that it’s idealism to say that we cannot simply outlaw private property, but then say we need to abolish capital relations. How do you do that without abolishing private property? You cannot, through fiat, declare Communism. Modes of Production are material things, not just agreements between individuals, the reason the Utopian Socialists such as Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier failed is because they tried to create their systems through Utopia building, not through transformation of existing society along the laws of materialism. Marx himself explains in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but itself life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Marx clearly implies that in lower-stage Communism, contradictions from Capitalism still exist. Marxists post-Lenin call this transitional stage “Socialism,” but the mechanics are still quite clear.
We build Communism through Socialism. That is, by revolution, smashing the bourgeois state, replacing it with a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and firstly nationalizing all key industry and developed, large firms. Then, the process is to build up the productive forces as rapidly as possible, and that means the use of manipulated market mechanics at the lower-developed sectors, and public ownership at the higher, until the markets themselves do what Marx already observed and create an economy pretty purely of publicly owned firms. It is at this point the value form can gradually be erased, and higher-stage Communism built towards.
In the end, I maintain that it’s classically Marxist because it is. Everything Marx wrote indicates this to be the general process he described. We can even observe the measures he and Engels proposed in the Manifesto of the Communist Party:
Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
- Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
- A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- Abolition of all right of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
- Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common p!an.
- Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
- Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction[50] between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.[51]
- Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally,[52] and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
We can clearly see that even by Marx’s original measures, markets would remain, and it would be the job of the Proletarian state to gradually appropriate Capital to the degree it develops, not simply go through a short restructuring period and then achieve full Communism. Such would be idealist Utopia-building.
There’s a huge difference between capitalism and oligarchy. What we have is oligarchy. All the worst parts of capitalism. 19th century robber-baron “capitalism.”
Bro bro no listen we need to capitalism better
“It wasn’t real
communismcapitalism”❌❌❌
Capitalist economic systems will inevitably lead to oligarchy
It leads to corporatism, the most important aspect of fascism.
Wonder why capitalist countries never mention that?deleted by creator
Oh, it isn’t real capitalism. Trust me, it would work so much better another time, trust me
The “oligarchy” of today is not distinct from Capitalism, but Capitalism at a later stage in its life.
Capitalism today looks nothing like capitalism in the 1950s. Back then, a family could easily survive on the income of one person. With money left over to pay for college education, a car and a house.
That is not the situation today, where most Americans have NO retirement savings. Unless you’re redefining what capitalism IS, then that’s a problem caused by the people in charge (oligarchs).
Americans really don’t understand that they aren’t the only country on earth
That is not the situation today, where most Americans have NO retirement savings. Unless you’re redefining what capitalism IS, then that’s a problem caused by the people in charge (oligarchs).
Bananas were cheap too… because Western [capitalist!!!] imperialism supported fascist death squads in Latin America who sold out their country to United Fruit [a capitalist corporation]. It’s a whole system of oppression, not just the WASPs you see on Mad Men reruns.
You are the one who is deeply confused.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. Thinking there was no oligarchy when C. Wright Mills was writing The Power Elite shows that you are not only confused about economic theory, but misinformed about the history of the US as well.
You literally do not know what capitalism is. Capitalism is not commerce or economy, capitalism is a social relation system that is defined by private ownership of the means of production and prioritizes commodity production for profit by way of wage labor and class antagonism. Maybe you should read more before you state your factually incorrect statements.
The erosion of safety nets is a product of ever-further monopolization and the dissolution of the USSR, as well as the liberation of many colonies. I am not redefining Capitalism, the Capitalism we have today is the natural following point of earlier Capitalism.
Same underlying system, different levels and scale.
And then the capital started buying the politicians.
So back then capitalism had working colonialism and now many colonies freed themselves, and now we are the ones getting exploited
Where do I fit in, I want capitalism with massive regulation and oversight and no corporation protection for board members?
Socialism with chinese characteristics.
China is a controlled market economy where capitalists hold no political power. Tho there is not that much regulation as people think there is, people are very free to enterprise as long as they comply with the general direction of the CPC.
Sounds like SocDem, the problem with that is you want to give Capitalists all of the control of key industries and large firms yet somehow not also have control of the state.
Where do you fit in? Do you own capital? Are you a business owner or a factory owner? If not then you are a tool for capitalists to exploit as they wish
Sounds like SocDem.
Liberalism and capitalism is the best system in the world.
for the rich? absolutely.
For every single person
Why don’t you move to Nigeria then?
just because we have shiny new inventions every year doesnt mean its working for everyone. the entire system of capitalism is based on taking advantage of the poor. to the point of killing them directly and indirectly en mass, through war and poverty related illness. so that the rich can own more property and assets.
its a horrible system.
Yeah… thats not what capitalism is based off but a nice vibes based analysis none the less.
then why is the american military the largest expenditure by the US government? why does the military industrial complex exist? why does the “richest nation on earth” have the largest debt, no free healthcare, a massive homeless population, but also the most billionaires? why do they survive by exploiting third world countries where people starve to death daily? why do they constantly undermine socialist and communist movements in other countries that have valuable resources? going so far as to assassinate popular leaders and trading them for puppet dictators?
thats literally capitalism living off the backs of the poor, and murdering them for profit, and they have to keep them poor so they can take advantage of them. thats why capitalism hates unions, labour laws, and social reform at home and abroad. it effects the bottom line and maximum profit margins. its inherent in the system, and a part of its structure. its what allows it to “work” in the first place. and whenever capitalism has its way, unchecked, the poor suffer and die as a result. through no fault of their own besides being born into an unequal society, with little or no opportunity because of their lack of starting capital, compared to the wealthier participants in the same system.
i implore you to read almost any book on american history and economics. the US itself was built on genocide and slavery for the purpose of profit, under the guise of freedom. and that simply evolved into different forms over the years, its still prevalent to this day.
i wish you well on your journey of self education on this topic.
then why is the american military the largest expenditure by the US government?
Its not and the fact you couldnt even do basic research to prevent parroting an obviously incorrect fact is shocking. Like I said before, your analysis is vibes based not reality based.
You think married people have it way worse?
For the bourgeoisie, perhaps, but only temporarily. We can see that out of every country right now that it’s the Socialist PRC that is making the most dramatic and rapid improvements and growth.
It’s interesting how many China stans have popped up in the past few weeks.
That’s the normal stance on Lemmy.
It was founded by communists, so you’d better get used to it
Honestly I don’t notice much of that.
Plenty of right-wingers here.
I’ve been pro-PRC for years, but more people have started shifting their opinions based on the latest trade war and how China is standing up to US bullying.
Lemmy is developed by Communists, there are going to be Communists.
We’ve been here for, like, four years…
The PRC is a capitalist country but not liberal. They have good growth but they lack a lot of the freedoms we enjoy in liberal society.
Also its funny to me how when you wanted to pick which system was “the best” you selected economic growth.
The PRC is Socialist, large firms and key industries are firmly in the public sector, while the private sector is largely cooperatives, sole proprietorships, and small firms. This is classically Marxist. I elaborate more on this here.
Economic growth is merely one vector. The PRC saw the largest reduction in poverty on the planet, has strong democratic control from the people, very high approval rates, high confidence in improving conditions, and regularly increasing purchasing power for workers. The PRC is also leading the green revolution, and isn’t Imperialist like the liberal countries you claim to work so well.
I guess it just depends on what your metric is.
Unfortunately one of its leading metrics is its contributions to human suffering. It certainly is the best system in the world at spreading suffering.
Serious question: has communism ever been proved to work at scale? (not communist regimes, the communist ideology)
No, it gets destroyed by a CIA-funded coup every time. (Read Jakarta Method)
But look at Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Kerala, China, Burkino Faso for modern attempts at Socialism/Communism
China, seriously?
Yes?
The PRC is Socialist, large firms and key industries are firmly in the public sector, while the private sector is largely cooperatives, sole proprietorships, and small firms. This is classically Marxist. I elaborate more on this here.
They’re all ‘one-party states’ aren’t they?
Opposite of democracy… so whether they work well economically is irrelevant, since you’re relying on the party not to become totalitarian. 😬
The USA has one party: the capitalist party. They do not represent you, they represent corporate interests. Your vote doesn’t even really matter because of the electoral college, and other racist relics such as the Senate, giving ridiculous power to to just a handful of “swing voters”.
Voting once every 4 years for either the capitalist war monger or the other capitalist war monger, while they both ban 3rd party candidates from the ballot, does not make the USA “democratic”.
Edit: also who cares if it’s one party? In each of these cases the party has brought the entire population out of abject poverty (usually the result of capitalism exploiting them), increased education surpassing the USA, brought healthcare to all, have higher home ownership rates than the USA, etc.
Objective quality of life measurements all surpass the USA.
Having one party doesn’t mean you aren’t democratic. Democracy is about fulfilling the needs of the people based on their input, ie it’s more important that the people be able to impact policy than party. In the US, you can change parties, but not the policy, in countries like the PRC, you can change the policy, but not the party.
China, Yugoslavia, USSR, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Cuba, DDR, etc etc
Yes, The PRC, DPRK, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and former USSR all are examples of Communist parties over Socialist systems. Communism, the post-Socialist, global fully publicly owned economy hasn’t been achieved yet, but thus far Communists have been able to successfully build Socialism, its necessary prerequisite.
Have to get past American and western interventionism to figure it out. But socialism lifted millions out of poverty look at Chinese and Russian history. Both countries went from feudal and monarchal society to industrial powers houses lead by peasants and workers, rivaling the United States in mere decades. So I’d say yes socialism does work. Also both those societies went from a near totally illiterate society to a 100 % total literacy within a generation. Free healthcare, housing, education and unemployment was non existent. Just to name some more achievements of socialism.
Socialism yes. I’ve always thought that capitalism regulated with socialist policies is the way forward. That way you can still encourage entrepreneurs to get going.
But we’re still left with the r > g problem (money attracts more money).
Communism is the extreme end of socialism isn’t it? And I’ve always thought that extremes never work. Extremism is a circle…
I’m open to being educated on this though…
There is no such thing as capitalism regulated with socialist policies. That’s ridiculous and only shows that you don’t know what those terms mean
I was just in Denmark recently and it seems like that’s what they have: a capitalist society but regulated by very socialist policies like (really) high taxes. Makes sense to me - I’m probably just not using the right terminology.
Denmark is a capitalist country. There is nothing socialist about it. Socialism is when the workers own the means of production (directly or otherwise), not when a country provides social services, that is a social democracy.
There are a few clarifications to be made and some fallacies in your understanding of communism and socialism here. I’m not the one to clear all of this up, because I’m not going to put the effort and time needed into these subjects, but I’ll try to guide you in the direction of some resources to help.
Some quick clarifications:
Socialism and communism are the same thing. Communism is the end goal, but you cannot just jump directly to communism from capitalism, so we fall the transition period socialism. Communists often use the terms interchangeably, but any actual differentiation is a distinction of progress, not the goals of the project.
Communism is no more extreme than socialism and politics are not a horseshoe or circle where the far ends are the worst. This is a thought-terminating notion meant to keep you boxed within the status quo so that those who are currently in power stay in power, meaning you will remain relatively powerless. The same thing goes for trying to stay in the middle of a conflict: you end up not taking a side, meaning you remain on the side of the status quo, meaning you stay on the side of the oppressor. Your oppressor. As much as people argue communism is extreme, communists can argue that “the middle” or “liberalism” or “other leftists” are extreme. These arguments are always made for the purpose of getting you to stop thinking about those topics, to stop considering their validity. They are not trying to convince you those are wrong, but that they are not worth even considering. I implore you to do the opposite: do some reading and interact with what “extremists” are saying in good faith, then decide what you believe. I’m sure you’ll agree with some parts and not with others. We are all humans and most of us are of the same class. The “extremism” of communists is that we say working class people should run the world and the rich leeches should be oppressed in a sense that they cannot oppress anyone else through the use of their extreme wealth. We want to flip the system on its head to use an overly-simplistic metaphor.
Capitalism cannot be mixed with socialist policies. What you are probably referring to as socialist policies are actually welfare programs and state regulation . This is what we call social democracy, which is still capitalism. Socialism is differentiated more by who owns the means of production, how the economy is organized, and what class is in control of the state. That aside, socialists think social democracy is insufficient to curb the problems of capitalism because you don’t remove the roots of the problem. Most of the successes of social democracy in addressing wealth disparity and living standards are the result of countries trying to stave of socialist revolutions at home due to their workers seeing the success of nearby socialist republics in improving the quality of life of their people. These are capitalist concessions and if you look at the social democracies that exist in Europe, you’ll see that all of these concessions started getting rolled back AFTER the fall of the USSR. They were temporary relief (at home, not in their colonies), but the profit motive always demands more. If capitalism can’t steal enough from the global south, it will turn inward and eat itself like the US and UK are currently doing.
On entrepreneurs…most of the time people want to show the benefit of entrepreneurs, it is in terms of innovation and small businesses, so I’m assuming this is your point? Innovation and entrepreneurs do not disappear under socialism, but the way they function does. Innovation does not always need to be driven by profit motive as demonstrated within the USSR, but there is arguably some room for profit motive driving innovation in a mixed economy like China’s. The main benefit of socialism is that innovation is not at the whims of the market, which tends to act as if it is allergic to innovation, ultimately stifling it rather than nurturing it. Small businesses (and thus entrepreneurs) still exist in many socialist countries and will not be nationalized unless they grow quite big or become central to controlling an important part of the economy. In some ways it can even be easier to start a thriving business because you are less at risk of being stamped out by the “health competition” of a mega-corporation with a monopoly on an entire industrial sector. Those get nationalized, fixing the money attracts more money problem. If you remove the profit motive, this power can no longer be abused for profit. Corruption can happen under any system and has to be handled case-by-case, but you’ll find socialist countries have much harsher penalties for corruption to prevent it, unlike a paltry fine that is the cost of doing business. Jail time or up to the death penalty can be applied based upon the severity and circumstances of the crime. Vietnam and China have applied this last one to large-scale corruption within the last year whereas in liberal democracies, multimillion or even billion dollar fraud cases are widespread and normal with little to no repercussions. In some cases, it is even legal!
On education…if you want more, there are many sources available in many formats. I suggest Dessalines’ crash course of socialism and his reading list but there are plenty of others on here who provide lists worthy of mention (but their links are harder for me to look up). Prolewiki is like Wikipedia for socialism by socialists. Search a topic there that you want to know more about. You can also ask for resources on specific topics in lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, and hexbear.net and you will probably get more resources than you care to consume in a year, so long as you approach them in good faith. People in these communities will only troll you if they think you are trolling them. The efforts some of them will go to in order to educate others is ridiculous (in a good way).
I hope this helps.
Entrepreneurs are usually known as useless scammers in my line of work
How do you determine where an "extreme " is on a circle? Democracy was considered extreme once
No system has ever worked at scale. Capitalism is literally destroying the planet we live on, Feudalism wasn’t any better, and no other system was ever applied at such a scale.
Maybe the scale is the problem, and the Anarchists were right all along.Anarchists would still have to deal with scale in terms of trade, production and centralization - after all, not every commune would be able to produce penicillin, insulin, chips, phones, steel, etc as a hobby. In other words, they would still have to replace capitalist system to a decent enough extent to be able to meet all their needs.
(most) Anarchists don’t have a problem with scale, just with hierarchy. We can have democratic and free associations at any scale.
You can’t force your system onto every society and culture on earth, as Capitalism has done, when your system is Anarchism.
That’s true. Imperialist ideologies like capitalism or the state socialism of the CCCP have an advantage in spreading their influence globally. But there’s nothing in principle standing in the way of one world, one federation, a million tribes. Anarchism does scale quite the well in that regard
The USSR was not Imperialist, rather, it supported liberation movements against Imperialism and Colonialism.
I’m sure the Ukrainian free soviets where happy to be liberated, or the sailors of Kronstadt. I’m sure the Spanish workers were glad to be shot in the back in the name of the party. The people of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were without a doubt thrilled to be occupied. The land grab in Finland liberated plenty of people, they were welcomed with open arms, yes? Communists leaders around the world felt so liberated, in fact, they bonded together in third-worldism to escape the influence of the СССР.
There’s a lot of complexity tossed aside here, and it hurts your point, more than helps it. When pulling the Krondstadt “trap card” out of your deck and using it as evidence of Soviet Imperialism, for example, you are making several unstated approvals that demand interrogation:
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The Krondstadt Revolt was led by Stepan Petrichenko, an “anarcho-syndicalist” that tried to join the Tsarist White Army a year prior to the revolt. He did not care for progress, he would have rather reinstated the Tsar than help the Soviets establish a Socialist State.
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The Krondstadt Rebels carried a critical port in the midst of an extremely chaotic civil war. Their demands could not be met without drawing away too many resources in war time, they used their privledged position in order to seak favorable treatment.
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If we assume that you call the Bolsheviks traitors for crushing the Krondstadt Revolt, this implies you wish they conceded. What would have happened? In all likelihood, the Soviets would have lost the Civil War and the Tsarists would have reinstated the Tsar. This would mean you support the Tsar over the real popular working class movement.
This general obfuscation of the real struggles for quick “gotchas” applies to all of your examples, such as the Spanish Anarchists who were supported by the Soviets alone, or when you uphold Makhno, who was targeted by the Soviets after raiding them:
The Makhnovists were one of several guerrilla bands that had allied with the Bolsheviks and became units of the Ukrainian Soviet Army in 1919. “Makhno’s forces were assigned a strategically vital section of the Red Army’s Southern Front facing the counter-revolutionary White Army of the former Tsarist general Denikin.” [18] But even during his time as a commander of the Ukrainian Soviet Army, Makhno deliberately stole from and undermined his Bolshevik allies. The historian Arthur Adams writes that “Makhno supplied himself, sometimes by commandeering entire Bolshevik supply trains meant for the Southern Front… Soviet food collectors and political institutions found it impossible to function in the region under his domination.” [19]
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia all have unique histories with nationalism that would be even more oversimplified than what I had to do for the others to drive a point, so I won’t waste time doing so and simply say you can’t just state a country and claim it was Imperialized. Perhaps @[email protected] would like to weigh in.
Further, you erase the liberatory role the USSR played in Cuba, China, Korea, Angola, Algeria, Palestine, and numerous other countries. Each would also need its own deep investigation, but your one-sided comment erased them entirely.
Even further, occupation is not Imperialism. Imperialism is a mechanism of extraction, the USSR drove its economy internally, rather than externally as the Western Powers did. That was my original point to begin with.
Really, you need to do more multi-sided research.
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I used to want a one world federation. Then G W. Bush happened and I saw potential problems with that. We never got a one world federation, and djt happened and I see the problems with this spreading, despite lacking a one world federation. I’m not sure what the answers are, but it is becoming saliently clear what they aren’t.
no capitalism keeps declaring war on it, the road towards it however… Massive Ws in the soviet union, the prc, dprk, east germany, just tremendous achivements
Capitalism is a global system, it is based on exchange value and things being produced and sold for a profit, not for use (which is known as commodity production), and if you want to trade internationally, you have to follow this capitalist mode of production. Communism, on the other hand, aims to abolish the production of commodities (money included) and instead produce goods for use. Notice how these two systems differ so much, international trade between actual communist and capitalist countries becomes impossible given how differently they value things.
Now consider how today’s capitalist nations are so dependent on trade, and it’s because trade allows nations to prosper, to grow, to have increased standards of living and gives the nations access to materials they otherwise couldn’t have produced within their local borders. If a nation goes full isolationist, it loses access to all of that and the nation becomes crippled.
So there’s three ways for communist countries to go about the global capitalist system:
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Go full isolationist, which would cripple a country substantially.
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Participate in the capitalist market, meaning the country would be forced to produce commodities and participate in capital exchange which would make them, in one definition or another, capitalist. This also heavily risks the country to fall into full capitalism with time (as seen historically).
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Support worker movements internationally en masse and hope they succeed with achieving their revolutions. If they succeed, only then can exchange value be safely abolished, goods be produced for use instead of profit, and international socialist/communist trade can actually happen with people having their needs met.
It’s clear that international communist revolution is pretty much the only viable way forward, and the only opportunity to do so failed (with Spartacist uprising, Hungrarian Soviet Republic, etc being crushed, leaving USSR standing pretty much alone).
So to answer your question with all this nonsensical wall of text in mind, no. Actual communist/socialist mode of production has never existed (therefore whether communist ideology works hasn’t been proven), as any experiments so far had essentially been capitalist.
This isn’t quite accurate. If you maintain public control over the large firms and industries, and the proletariat controls the state, you remain on the Socialist road. Markets themselves are not necessarily Capitalism.
Communism must be global, but we can’t make a fully publicly owned economy simply by declaring private property illegal, the USSR didn’t even manage to do that.
If you maintain public control over the large firms and industries, and the proletariat controls the state, you remain on the Socialist road.
Agree, there has to be DOTP directly after the revolution which has to retain some capitalist features, mostly for economic survival purposes.
However, once the military struggle against capitalists are over and economy is sufficiently reorganized, a country has to quickly abolish the value form and actually turn to a socialist mode of production, else it risks either backpedaling to capitalism and/or turning revisionist. This is precisely what happened to USSR, given how they couldn’t transition to socialist mode of production due to their peasant problem + Stalin’s delusions of “Socialism in one state”.
If there’s an active maintenance in post-revolutionary period of capitalist mode of production, then the country is capitalist even if the production is nationalized or owned by workers.
Markets themselves are not necessarily Capitalism.
Historically markets predate Capitalism, so yes, but they’re never socialist or communist given how socialist mode of production does away with commodity production. If commodity production is abolished, then commodity exchange (markets) can no longer exist. This does mean that market socialism is capitalist as commodity production remains, the law of value remains, all that’s different when compared to Capitalism is that the state regulates it which doesn’t magically make it socialist.
I think there’s a problem in analysis of time scales, and the fundamental role contradictions play, dialectically.
If, by “millitary struggle against Capitalists” you mean the immediate revolution and establishment of the DotP, there is then a long and protracted process of building up to a fully publicly owned economy. You cannot achieve this through fiat, it must be developed towards, and markets remain the most effective method of moving from low to high levels of development. You cannot simply abolish the value form with a stroke of a pen, black markets emerge for that which is not provided. Erasing the commodity form is a material and historical process, not a legalistic one.
Socialism in one country is undeniably correct. Had Trotsky’s permanent revolution been adopted, ie abandoning the buildup of Socialism domestically in favor of exporting revolution abroad, we would have had more failed revolutions and the USSR would have been crushed due to a lack of development. The very foundation of Permanent Revolution is on the assumption that the peasantry can only temporarily align with the Proletariat, which ended up being proven false when the Soviet system solidified, rather than fell apart in the first few years.
The biggest issue here, however, is your adoption of the “One Drop Rule.” I wrote a post on the subject, but to simplify, the concept that if some degree of Private Property exists the entire system is Capitalist goes against all notions of Dialectical Materialism and throws away the entire Materialist basis for Socialism in the first place. Just as Public Property in the US is not Socialist, Private Property in a Socialist system does not mean the system is Capitalist.
All systems have contradictions. What matters most is which class is resolving the contradictions via the State, the Proletariat, or the Bourgeoisie. If the large firms, key industries, and State are firmly in the hands of the Proletariat, the system is on the Socialist road. We cannot abolish the small manufacturer or firms, we must develop out of them. The process of building towards Communism through Socialism is through the continuous resolution of these contradictions, as by necessary laws of physics they cannot be resolved legalistically, or with the stroke of a pen.
The idea that the Socialist Mode of Production is unique among all in that it is the only Mode of Production judged by purity, rather than the principle aspect, is an error in classification that ignores the real trajectories we observe in Socialist states like the PRC, which are increasing in Socialization of the economy over time. Rather, we can look all the way back to Marx for evidence to why this is true:
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
I want you to look at the bolded word. Why did Marx say by degree? Did he think on day 1, businesses named A-C are nationalized, day 2 businesses D-E, etc etc? No. Marx believed that it is through nationalizing of the large firms that would be done immediately, and gradually as the small firms develop, they too can be folded into the public sector. The path to eliminated Private Property isn’t to make it illegal, but to develop out of it.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital;[43] the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
This is why, in the previous paragraph, Marx described public seizure in degrees, but raising the level of the productive forces as rapidly as possible.
China does have Billionaires, but these billionaires do not control key industries, nor vast megacorps. The number of billionaires is actually shrinking in the last few years. Instead, large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and small firms are privately owned. This is Marxism.
I also recommend What is Socialism? as its an excellent essay that goes more in-depth on the topics I went over.
this.
adendum: in some “primitive” societies, there was no private property of the means of production. marx and engels studied that extensively.
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Not capitalism ≠ communism (or communist ideology). Imagine an interest-free economic system. This could also work completely without communist ideology, but would get rid of the problematic core principle in capitalism that money attracts more money (which for instance might have stopped the Swasticar CEO from even becoming so powerful). This would also improve the value of work compared to just owning money. But maybe I am just delusional and instead the anarchists are indeed right. Dunno.
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Please just cut yourselves off from the fediverse already. Even replying to this drivel has lost it’s fun.
