• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      23 days ago

      I can’t speak for others, but I’ve seen nothing but death and hate under the banner of socialism: USSR, China, Venezuela, etc, the list goes on. What most non-crazy people seem to mean by “socialism” is liberalism with a strong social safety net and public services (e.g. Nordic countries, “Democratic socialists” like Bernie Sanders, etc), which is a separate thing altogether.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          22 days ago

          He really isn’t anti-capitalist, he’s against concentrations of wealth generally, but he’s absolutely in favor of our capitalist system, he just thinks there should be more rules so workers fare better. He’s not a socialist, much as the right wants to think, he’s just in favor of a large welfare system and high taxes on the wealthy. He doesn’t want to fundamentally change our economic system, he just wants to make it more fair for his definition of “fair.”

          • J Lou@mastodon.social
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            22 days ago

            I agree he is not a socialist in the 20th century sense, but he clearly says that workers should have ownership stake in companies, which is not a capitalist sentiment. He advocates for employee ownership of companies. I also am aware of who his economic advisors on these issues are and they are very much anti-capitalist

            @noncredibledefense

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              22 days ago

              he clearly says that workers should have ownership stake in companies, which is not a capitalist sentiment

              It absolutely is though. Partnerships have been a thing since pretty much forever, and a lot of publicly traded companies and some private companies hand out company stock as part of compensation. Employees owning stock isn’t socialism, it’s capitalism, and the goal is for employees’ interests to be more aligned with the company’s so overall profitability is higher.

              Sanders is approaching it from an employee outcomes perspective, but it’s still very much from a capitalist mindset.

              He’s not advocating for companies to be run democratically like they would under socialism, he’s advocating for more profit sharing without meaningfully changing ownership.

              • J Lou@mastodon.social
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                22 days ago

                I agree that giving alienable voting shares to workers isn’t anti-capitalist. It becomes anti-capitalist when the voting rights over management and corporate governance are inalienable meaning they are legally recognized as non-transferable even with consent.

                Here is a talk by people involved with Bernie Sanders politically about how all companies should be democratically controlled by the workers: https://youtu.be/E8mq9va5/_ZE

                Sanders supports worker co-op conversions

                @noncredibledefense

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  22 days ago

                  Sure, and many capitalists support socialist ownership structures within an otherwise capitalist system.

                  I’m pretty supportive of laissez faire capitalism (with caveats; I consider myself a left-leaning libertarian), and I also agree that worker co-ops are a great idea in many cases. The important thing, to me, with capitalism is that profit motive drive the decision making process in a competitive market. Sanders seems to largely agree, he just wants more of that profit to make its way to the workers.

                  Socialism (generally speaking, I know socialism is a big tent), seeks to eliminate both the profit motive and competitive markets, seeing both as waste. From what I know of Bernie Sanders, he’s not on board with that view of socialism, he just wants the average person to be better off.

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        23 days ago

        What most non-crazy people seem to mean by “socialism” is liberalism with a strong social safety net and public services (e.g. Nordic countries, “Democratic socialists” like Bernie Sanders, etc), which is a separate thing altogether.

        Exactly, and specifically for this thread this is not quite the same socialism what Bashar al-Assad has been going for.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        23 days ago

        Here’s the issue. Capitalist nations are afraid of socialism spreading, so they do everything they can to destroy them. The only ones who have every survived this pressure are authoritarian dictatorships who have isolated themselves from western influence. This creates a situation (that the media, being capitalist, spreads) where socialism always ends up as authoritarian. That doesn’t have to be the case, but it does when anything else is destroyed. It’s ignorant to think that this is the fault of socialism and not circumstances.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          22 days ago

          Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.

          And yeah, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with socialism itself, but on that transition. We see the same for other radical transitions. The problem isn’t necessarily what you’re transitioning to, but the process of transition and who is involved. Most countries in the world aren’t socialist, so transitioning to socialism will be a radical change and will attract the worst kinds of leaders. So it’s fair to criticize socialism precisely because a radical transition to it is highly likely to be fraught with authoritarianism.

          Even transitions to liberalism runs that risk, but transitioning to liberalism has had a much better track record than transitioning to socialism.

          That said, country-wide forms of socialism (arguably “pure” socialism) where capitalism is eradicated naturally come with a distillation of power in the government to control the flow of goods, and that concentration of power is what attracts authoritarians and is what’s being opposed here. So socialism has a built-in problem that lends itself to authoritarianism. Yes, I know there are theoretical anarchist forms of socialism, but they usually have a transition period from an authoritarian system (big counter is libertarian socialism, but that’s pretty “pie in the sky” IMO, as much as I respect Noam Chomsky).

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            22 days ago

            Whether socialism results in authoritarianism because of the ideology or circumstances is irrelevant, the fact is that socialism generally ends in authoritarianism. It turns out that it takes a lot of force to transition a country from capitalism to socialism, so it’s not surprising that this transition attracts authoritarians.

            The reason is because capitalists oppose it. If the world was ruled by Fascists you’d be saying we should try anything else because anyone opposed to Fascists gets undermined. It’s a fault of capitalism, not socialism.

            There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them. We can have socialist countries without any issues. It just requires capitalists in the rest of the world not overthrowing them.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              22 days ago

              There have been many elected socialist democracies, but the West undermined them

              We’re getting into very biased reporting territory.

              Let’s take Venezuela as an example. Here’s the events as I understand them:

              1. Hugo Chavez takes power in 1999
              2. Venezuela becomes rich from oil (prices increased in early 2000s) and spends a ton on populist social programs (presumably to stay in power; corruption is rampant
              3. Rapid inflation and widespread shortages starting in 2010 due to over-reliance on imported goods and exported oil (oil prices started dropping in 2007) and no spending cuts after revenue shortfalls
              4. Maduro takes over in 2013 and is even more heavy handed and doesn’t ease spending or improve anything economically
              5. Protests and unrest, which the government violently repressed, especially in 2015 when oil prices fell dramatically
              6. Sanctions due to human rights violations started in 2014-ish but really picked up steam from 2017-2019, which deepened the problems they already had, especially since the government refused to cut spending

              Western sanctions only became a thing years (more like a decade) after they were already in crisis. The crisis wasn’t caused by western countries, it was caused by mismanagement and corruption. Venezuela was held as a model for socialism under Chavez, but things only worked because of oil money.

              I’m happy to discuss other countries as well.

              • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                22 days ago

                How about Guatemala.

                Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.

                Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.

                For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  22 days ago

                  Arévalo wasn’t socialist, he was actually anti-communist and generally pro-capitalist. He had way more overlap with FDR than Stalin or Castro.

                  That wasn’t “capitalists keeping the socialists down,” it was cronyism and FUD from United Fruit Company, which Eisenhower bought into.

                  • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                    22 days ago

                    Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.

                    Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.

              • Doom@ttrpg.network
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                22 days ago

                America.

                Radical liberal George Washington and his gang of discovery daddies overthrow the just and fair and healthy rule of the king

                Now you know none of that is true, but that’s how you sound defending capitalism. All the death and destruction capitalism caused but they try to sell you on socialism being much worse. Which it is not, Capitalism has absolutely caused far more harm.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  22 days ago

                  All the death and destruction capitalism caused but they try to sell you on socialism being much worse.

                  Then you’re obviously ignoring the death and destruction socialism has caused. Socialism has only been a thing for 100 years or so, and yet it has caused nearly 100M deaths (source: a libertarian publication referencing an infographic based on WHO data):

                  Curiously, all of the world’s worst famines during the 20th century were in communist countries: China (twice!), the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

                  • Doom@ttrpg.network
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                    22 days ago

                    Lmfao

                    Capitalism has killed no one then?

                    The Atlantic slave trade, the human trafficking of today, the resource wars, the embargo and economic punishment of those who don’t submit to capitalism, the imperialistic wars, violence from police states to uphold capitalism, drug overdoses, those dying of homelessness/lack of healthcare/food.

                    Plus if we track the metric used that anyone who died under socialism died from socialism as you do, then let’s see 3 million people die a year in America multiply that by 100.

                    300,000,000 million deaths from capitalism in ONE single capitalist country over the last 100 years. (America). That’s not factoring in the other nations or the actions they’ve caused outside of their country that also applies to this total.

                    60 million people die globally a year. We live in a capitalist global economy so it’s safe to claim most of that total but let’s play it safe. Only 40 million die under capitalism a year. Multiply that by 100 and

                    4 BILLION PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CAPITALISM OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS

                    Wow sounds like socialism is the better option.

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
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      23 days ago

      To such a simple question I can offer a simple answer: Everything.

      The real answer is not that simple of course. There’s some good ideas in socialism.