Curious about how this goes but not masochistic enough to enable comment notifications...
Hope some enjoy!
Somewhere between 8 and 634 assassination attempts on Castro.
The main issue with these online communism vs capitalism debates is that people seem to always take the most extremist position of each ideology.
Marx was in favor of being paid for your hard work, and Adam Smith hated monopolies and the accumulation of wealth.
We can both agree that we hate oligarchs and dictators and find a common ground in between.
We can both agree that we hate oligarchs and dictators and find a common ground in between.
I really like this take. I pray it's the attitude we adopt for the midterms.
I wish it were that easy, but how do you find a common ground with a group that sucks Putin's dick and genuinely believes that censorship is a good thing? Can't even agree with them on the most universally agreeable concept that both are awful.
All the capitalism haters around here kill me. Ahem.
What you are experiencing is not capitalism, it is oligarchy.
Always get downvoted, never got a single answer: Tell me about your economic system where the money doesn't flow to the top.
Is oligarchy not the logical result of capitalism with inadequate restraint?
inadequate restraint
Got it in one! Same with any economic system though. The powerful will always take from the weak, will always find ways to make their own rules. Capitalistic competition works, but only in tandem with a government that reigns it in. Which democracy is supposed to have done. Impossible when our educational systems are crippled from toddler on up.
Younger people around here can't know the America I knew. We scrutinized and denied mergers. We were taught as small children that monopolies were poison. We were taught of the robber barons and of the Gilded Age, taught about the labor struggles and deadly fights to get what we got. FFS, we had a choice in banks.
The very father of capitalism warned against monopolistic behavior. Bet you won't hear Adam Smith quoted in school. Someone might read The Wealth of Nations, get anti-oligarchy notions.
I remember an 8th-grade teacher schooling us on how corrupt Mexico was because 20% of the people held 80% of the wealth. We were fucking appalled at the injustice. Imagine that. I'd kill or die for that "imbalance" in America today.
And BTW, my primary education was in Tulsa, OK. Not exactly a bastion of liberalism.
For one bright moment we had Lina Khan, Biden's FTC chair, fighting hard. My fucking hero. First thing I thought when I awoke to a second Trump win, "There she goes. Our last, best hope."
Same with any economic system though
Agreed. For years I've been saying that without well maintained controls, the end result of capitalism and socialism will look pretty much the same.
This whole exchange has been such a delight to read and agree with.
Like you, I don't think the issue is this system or that, it's the enforcement of the rules that make the whole thing work. And for decades, those rules and institutions have been sold away bit by bit for tax cuts and lobbyists.
Same with any economic system though. The powerful will always take from the weak, will always find ways to make their own rules. Capitalistic competition works, but only in tandem with a government that reigns it in. Which democracy is supposed to have done.
Yeah, so maybe use an economic system that does not allow a bunch of people to accumulate the wealth of thousands?
Its pretty clear that "democracy" wont be working when to protect it you have to put in a stupid amount of man hours by volunteers and organizers.
Which then, can and will be, wiped out in one dinner party with one of the good ol' boys.
This is working as intended.
Impossible when our educational systems are crippled from toddler on up.
Again, the issues are so much deeper, and more long standing than "toddler on up."
The defunding of education is intentional.
This is not a flaw in the system, this is not a recent phenomenon, this was planned for decades.
Younger people around here can't know the America I knew. We scrutinized and denied mergers. We were taught as small children that monopolies were poison. We were taught of the robber barons and of the Gilded Age, taught about the labor struggles and deadly fights to get what we got. FFS, we had a choice in banks.
Your oligarchs were older, more traumatised by mass leftist movements, their power was less concentrated.
Then they started out what they could get away with, and have not stopped since. They will keep taking, until there is nothing left to take, and then they will not stop.
Your schooling was propaganda. There was never any intention for the talks about freedom and democracy to amount to anything.
For one bright moment we had Lina Khan, Biden's FTC chair, fighting hard. My fucking hero. First thing I thought when I awoke to a second Trump win, "There she goes. Our last, best hope."
These are people who are at best trying to keep up appearances. But don't think at all that they want anything to be better for you.
At best they are trying to keep up appearances of that system you were taught about at school.
That system does not exist, and they hate you.
Capitalism is inherently unsustainable. It's chasing infinite growth that cannot continue on finite resources.
Yes and the US is much more socialist than the pure capitalist hell people claim it to be, while Europe’s great social democracies still run on capitalism.
There’s NO exemplar of pure capitalism or pure socialism to point to. Anything worth having is a blend of the two, and 99.99% of what is needed on this topic is to figure out how to move the US from 12% socialist to 18% socialist, while Europe contends with how it’s going to pay for 22% socialism.
Any actually helpful words on that? Anybody?! … Back to arguing about ridiculous ideals then.
I think it's a little funny that you're arguing for percentages while claiming we already have that and look how great that is.
A key element that makes it socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, we don't have close to that in any of the countries you're talking about. Social programs are not socialism
Did you really just make a purist gripe in a comment thread about how people deal too much in the extreme forms of these concepts? Funny, indeed.
No that's not what happened
But actual Marxist Communism has never existed in practice.
Marx never intended for communist revolutions to start with agrarian nations such as Russia and China. Marxism was built on the assumption of a nation that had spent centuries developing its capitalism, such as France or England.
The nations that attempted socialist revolutions were the ones that were liberating themselves from colonisation and imperialism that was performed for profit under capitalist and mercantilist systems.
Also, no large-scale modern society has ever been communist. Many have proclaimed themselves to be so, and nations like the USSR claimed themselves to stride towards it, but communism is fundamentally an ideology with an absence of the state.
He modified his views later when speaking to Russian revolutionaries such as Vera Zasulich. He entertained the possibility of an agregarian society skipping over capitalism if, and only if, it was accompanied by a socialist revolution of capitalist societies.
Marx envisioned seizing the means of production when that was a big industrial machine, an object which could be seized.
What would the “means of production” even be in a modern services economy? The workers themselves? Critical infrastructure?
Marx never intended his ideas for agrarianism, nor for modern services economies. You might conclude that the time for his ideas came and went, and those ideas never manifested as anything good during that time.
But they’ll be appealing fantasies forever.
Marxism also treats women as property
And how is capitalism working? We never want to talk about the needless wars, deaths, dictators, and literal slavery sanctioned by capitalism. Capitalism has been the dominant system for some time now: it has had every opportunity to reform itself into a fair and equitable system. Instead it exploits the global south, prioritizes profits over people, and puts a paywall on necessities that we now mass produce-- forcing the working class to generate more profits for the wealthy. It is a barbaric, corrupt, hypocritical system that forces us to sell ourselves, by the year or by the hour.
This feels like a post hoc fallacy. Capitalism is not the cause of those things, societies that organize into dominance hierarchies, regardless of economic organization, cause those things. Slavery, wars, dictators, barbarism, deaths, corruption, and hypocritical systems were present before and in absence of capitalism. The Soviet Union formed into a dominance hierarchy (bureaucrat class instead of capitalist class), and inevitably displayed the same attributes.
No, it is not a post hoc fallacy. The claim is not simply that death and dictators occurred after capitalism rose to dominance. The claim is that the economic incentive of infinite profit explains why these events happened. Specific wars were fought in to protect the interests of multinational corporations; the CIA installed dictators (e.g., South America, Africa), in order to stop the spread of socialism; there are slave laborers mining minerals in the Congo so that Tim Cook can make another billion.
If you want to get philosophical, perhaps we could agree that it is a category error to say that an economic system of commodity production caused death and dictators in the technical sense of causation. It would be better to say that these events find their ground or explanation in the incentives of capitalism. But I doubt most people care about this distinction.
The incentive is that resources are lootable, that doesn’t change by swapping out one ideology for another. We can point to the post-WWII eastern bloc, Cuba, and Afghanistan as examples of USSR installing dictators. Ideologies tend to be too myopic in their understanding of reality, all systems have a tendency to form into dominance hierarchies, that’s the core issue. Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.
I won't brush away the missteps and abuses of certain leaders. We must, however, place these injustices in their proper context.
Socialist countries faced opposition from the most economically and politically powerful nation in the history of the Earth. Given the successes that socialist economies did achieve -- in providing healthcare, housing, transportation, food, jobs, etc. -- can you imagine how much more successful they could have been had the United States helped instead of destabilized them at every turn? But the US could not peacefully allow us to develop socialist production of goods for direct consumption. This economic model is a direct threat to the capitalist's appropriation of profits.
Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.
I hope you're right, but time will tell.
So if we argue against hierarchies, we're still arguing against capitalism and still arguing for communism, just more of an anarchocommunism. Communism isn't just the countries that tried, just like capitalism isn't just the usa
No, because it would form into a dominance hierarchy. It’s the iron law of oligarchy, and communism does not have any mechanisms to prevent its formation. Unless humans evolve beyond their own nature, “anarchocommunism” is not in the realm of possibility.
Oh you're right, I have total faith in the "iron law" created by someone who went on to join Italy's National Fascist Party
That would be a genetic fallacy if you are basing validity on origin instead of content. Would you prefer the social dominance theory? It’s broader in scale but still explains the inevitability of hierarchy and concentration of power.
Yes you know all your vocab words. These are just philosophical theories that have plenty of detractors. They aren't true just by virtue of their existence. And I think the political party of the source is relevant when it's a political theory. It says a lot about the conclusions that theory leads to, and when it leads to fascist Italy then clearly something went wrong
We aren’t talking normative philosophy or metaphysics. The iron law and SDT are based on observable phenomena supported by empirical evidence. I’m not going to accept an Agrippa trilemma argument where nothing can be proven absolutely true. I understand these concepts about hierarchy may be uncomfortable to one’s ideological fantasy, but it’s not productive to minimize these things because they are uncomfortable.
Just because I don't think those theories are true doesn't mean I think they couldn't be proven true. Anarchism is also a political theory based on observable phenomena supported by empirical evidence. It is very contradictory to the theories you bring up which means they can't all be true, even though they're all published theories. We could do a big experiment to figure it out though. We'd just need to first get to a communist society, then we can see if it can sustain itself or if hierarchies naturally dominate without outside influence. I'm willing to be proven wrong, are you?
Anarchism is not feasible on a large scale, most places in the world will tend towards hierarchy. There are certain necessary conditions for Anarchism to be sustainable long-term, such as the Zomia region in SE Asia due to geography. That’s assuming these tribes are non-hierarchical, I haven’t looked that far into it.
stateless societies like "Zomia" have successfully repelled states using location, specific production methods, and cultural resistance to states.
Maybe making the rich richer will work this time
Communism is young. At this point in capitalism's history, it was all colonization, genocide, and slavery. Apples to apples, I'd rather live in the Soviet Union under Stalin than a South Asian under the Dutch East India company.
I'd rather live in the Soviet Union under Stalin than a South Asian under the Dutch East India company.
Congrats this is the dumbest and least useful take I’ve ever seen on the subject. I can’t argue with it, really. It’s so absurd I’m speechless.
Soviet Union was a colonial state. North Asia (also known as Siberia) were its colonies and continue to be colonized by modern day Russia
Show me the country that attempted communism and I'll point out why it wasn't communism.
My uncle Angus is a true Scotsman
No country attempted comunism. Communism is a type of socirty, not a regime stance. Various countries attempted socialism, with varying degrees of success. The same thing can be said for capitalism. How many capitalist countries do you see succeeded? Because if I'm not mistaken, no capitalist country that "succeded" did it without exploiting other countries. Although, to be fair, it is more easy for the later to suceed, since it is not designed to make a life worth living, just to make money for very few hands.
Exactly. “That wasn’t really communism!”
But then communism fans have another problem. Then they’re advocating for a system that’s never been tested, never succeeded anywhere, and which can’t even really be described in much detail because we have no working examples to look to.
But it’s still the solution! Capitalism is the fantasy! LOL
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