It’s not really capitalism anymore when the government keeps bailing out businesses that are supposed to fail.
This happens when capital owners get enough wealth and influence to capture government regulatory agencies. This is what any attempt at capitalism will build to.
At least the no true communism people use the actual definition of the system in their argument. What you’re describing is literally capitalist organizations acting on the incentives inherent to the system.
Yeah, ok sure.
it is when the richest people have already paid off the government to bail them out, when the time comes, with our tax dollars.
Yeah it’s called corruption. I think no matter how perfect your ideals are in your head, any idea can be ruined with a little corruption.
Which is why every authoritarian system of government leads to disaster. The fewer people are at the top, the easier it is for that corruption to take hold.
Libya was doing pretty well under Gaddafi… it’s much worse in every way now that there is more than one dude at the top lmao
neoliberal governance is an extension of capitalism, change my mind.
Child repeating what their parents and society has told them.
Vs.
Adult who has started to live the reality.
In theory, how would a different system really help?
Currently the people in power manipulate and circumvent the system, do they magically disappear?
The move from absolute monarchies ruled by kings and aristocrats to democracies made the power distribution more equal across classes.
What is needed in a new system is another step in this direction.
The biggest problem and driver of inequality in the current system is that while we have democratic control of government, the control of business is still largely autocratic.
Work and business is a huge part of our lives and making sure that the companies work for workers and consumers and not owners and investors is the next major systemic change that should be sought out.
Go join a coop 🥶. They work for workers and community
I’m saying that should be the norm.
I’m calling for systemic change. Individual people making choices to have democratic processes in their businesses is not enough.
You’re like a serf going “Go move to a republic 🥶.”
You’re like a serf going “Go move to a republic 🥶.”
Wait, what? A serf cannot move without the king’s permission. You, I, and everyone can make it a preference to join a co-op or union work place with every job move.
Are there many co-op positions available in my area and field? No. Unions? No.
Do I have a preference for them? Yes.
Maybe I will have to start one.One step at a time is better than no steps.
Sure, one step at a time is great. It’s just not a replacement for systemic change.
If you can unionize or start a co-op, do it! Any amount of worker power will help the overall cause.
Systemic change requires state violence as you have to convince the benefactors of capitalism to give up their property and powe. The only way to accomplish this state violence is with a bureaucracy and concentration of power. Tada: You created Stalinism. Again. Just like the last 20 times socialism was tried by big picture “revolutions”
I don’t think worker rebellions get you where you need, so come up with an alternate route.
I think the issue would be that currently it is not feasible for workers to start co-ops. Subsidies for worker co-ops would be a good option
Go buy a starwars
Vote with your money?
It seems your fellow voters has vote to shop at walmart
There is this belief by so many that somehow, if you create the perfect system, it will somehow overcome human nature or that humans will somehow starting acting collectively altruistic with the right political model.
In most cases, they also imagine themselves in a position of power in this new government, either up in an upper “leadership” class or somehow silently leading “but I’m not a leader”, as if somehow the idea itself is so potent that people will just, you know, execute it flawlessly without intervention.
2020s mfers be like “gather berries? Sorry, I’m too busy serving as a neuron in an intercontinental hive mind that poops abstract labor debt coupons, it’s human nature.”
In most cases, they also imagine themselves in a position of power in this new government
Where are you even pulling this from
If you had a point it got lost in this fantasy claim you’ve made up here
This is a dumb argument. There are clearly better and worse ways to organize a society. There’s no reason to believe capitalism is the best and plenty of reasons to believe it’s not.
Then why support capitalism?
The biggest way it helps is to just make it easier for the government to implement policies that help people. Under the current system something as simple as rent control is difficult to implement since you are infringing on the rights of the property owner.
And shifting away from capitalism would allow a government to focus on well being of the population without having to worry about the impacts on the stock market. Right now the stock market is so important and shifts down punishes so many people. But in reality it’s such a terrible metric just like GDP. Sometimes a higher GDP just punishes the population of the country for no good reason because inflated prices bump the GDP up even if the citizens can’t afford it.
Thats the Part where canibalism comes Info play
They gotta be forced to share.
A different system would help but humanity doesn’t know what that system would be.
We’ve known for roughly 175 years. Some no-name economist and his buddy published their ideas in some kind of manifest
Watch out you might get called a tankie instead of having an actual discussion about a system that values the common man
In a non-hierarchical system, yes they do magically disappear.
do they tho
“but some animals” etc etc
Can you give one example of a long-term, large scale, non-hierarchical system in human society?
Ya. Why won’t these fools realize that if something’s never been done before on a large scale to perfection, it’s because it’s clearly impossible. Get on your knees like the rest of us, change is never any good
It would be encouraging to see one attempt at it not to have gone to shit though
So that is a no?
I am not knocking communism. I am knocking humans.
Capitalism and communism are two sides of the same coin.
And the name of the coin is scarcity. While there is limited resources, humans will fuck over others to get more.
Both are attempts to parcel out scarce resources.
Both fail because those that have the power to apportion those resources will favour themselves and their inner circle over the rest of the society.
I think the difference is the incentive structure. Communism has incidental corruption from humans. Capitalism literally rewards it, directly, buy turning capital into a zero sum game.
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This is the first time I’ve seen someone directly admit to being in the grip of magical thinking.
This, I mean this happened in our case - we had socialism for 40 years and powerful people either stayed in power or were replaced by idiots.
It really reminds me the “Tax the rich” mindset - good in intention but completely oversimplified and naive in proposed execution
I’ve never seen an adolescents defend capitalism. They tend to be either apolitical or anarchists.
I’ve seen a lot of college kids adamant about the invisible hand of the free market solving all problems.
The communists on Lemmy are cringe as fuck and have to make up these situations to justify their positions.
Also they’re nearly all born into wealth lol
Just drop by hexbear some time. It’s fucking hilarious to read their discussion thread, because they’re all children of software engineers and shit.
hexbear
I’ve heard about them, and have no interest in dealing with them.
That’s fair
It could be a regional thing. capitalism is practically a religion in the US that parents indoctrinate their kids into.
We prime them from young ages to buy what the commercials show them
When I was in high school it was still popular for kids to be ‘libertarians’. Right-leaning area, naturally.
Same, I’ve only ever seen them be completely oblivious
This has to be a lie. I’ve never seen a single kid educated enough to even know what anarchy is. But they’re definitely dumb enough to parrot their parents.
You’ve never seen a group of adolescents punks? Have ever been outside?
Adolescent punks have zero idea what anarchy is. They just hate their dads
Actually, they have a pretty good idea of the core principle of “rejecting authority”. That’s the natural state of the adolescent already.
How you would get an adolescent to naturally align with capitalism though, is a mystery for me. Seems like shit lemmygrad would make up.
My rejection of authority is why I’m a liberal.
That makes zero sense
No, it makes total sense. What are you missing?
Because we’re indoctrinated into it from birth. You have to put up active efforts to ignore or critically examine it, in order to believe differently.
Also, hating your dad isn’t rejecting authority, and rejecting authority isn’t anarchism. It’s pretty close, though.
Nobody has any idea what anarchy is. The one tenet of the philosophy is that any time someone tries to define it in any concrete way so that it can be discussed and criticized the anarchists all come out of the woodwork to say “no, that’s not it.” They never say what it is, though, because it isn’t anything.
I can’t imagine the depths of arrogance and ignorance it requires to say that a political theory centuries in the making, with countless theorists writing lengthy tomes on the subject, has nothing to it.
I can quite easily summarise what it is, though. People self organising with no hierarchy. If you want it even simpler, anarchy is not having a ruler or leader; you can glean just just from the consteuction of the word, “an” (without) “archy” (rule), literally, “without a ruler”. There you go! I very much doubt you’ve talked to any anarchists, if you’ve never heard any say that. If you have, you certainly didn’t listen.
Mikhail Bakunin
Noam Chomsky
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Emma Goldman
Peter Kropotkin
Just a few names for you to look into, in the field that has no consistent theory, because no one knows what it is.
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Almost anything but capitalist, yes. But apperently America (USA) is different. Which also kind of makes sense.
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So you never learned what socialism and communism were… you were always a lib, and you’re a lib now lmao
Capitalism is great for handling things that are relatively unimportant. So you don’t want it for medical, education, infrastructure (including utilities), etc. Its fine for things like fashion or the various things might have around the house. Even then it must be highly regulated.
Agreed, although I’d reframe it; capitalism is a solid default, and does a good job of innovating … but it tends to operate like gravity, the more capital you have the more you get.
So, you need a mechanism to redistribute that capital, and you need to make sure that the things everyone is supposed to have enough of, don’t get distributed that way in the first place.
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people mistake cronyism for capitalism all the time. the free market can’t be said to have failed if it was never free in the first place. it’s like saying a tree has failed after it’s been cut down and turned into an unstable table.
Taxing rich people to pay for good paying jobs in healthcare, education, and utility/infrastructure maintenance would help everyone.
Economies need to be a cycle. If the rich just hoard and don’t spend then we can’t spend either.
So if they won’t pay a liveable wage, tax them heavily and start paying liveable wages with the money.
Capitalism isn’t the “best system we’ve got”, though… it isn’t even the system we are all using right now.
We’ve never operated in anything like a “purely” capitalist economy, and the socialist policies most western countries have put in place are wildly popular and few people would want to live without them.
Countries that intelligently choose when and where and what things should be operated on a capitalist basis, have better outcomes.
Healthcare? Not something anyone should make money off of. Basic housing, food, water, power… these should be immune to market forces.
At the same time, capitalism drives fantastic technological and social innovation within its swimlane. We just have to pre-define what things people should be able to make money doing.
Capitalism =/= markets.
Socialism =/= public services.
Markets are much older than capitalism, and socialism is a very simple economic idea, being the collective ownership of the means of production by the workers.
Capitalism guides innovation towards increasing profits for capitalist, hardly “innovative”. The USSR was the first to the Moon, after being a feudalistic society, thanks to socialism.
I wonder if those accomplishments were meant to happen if they hadn’t had an ideological enemy in the ‘capitalist west’.
That sounds pretty commie to me comrade.
No, you see, the only way to improve things is to wank endlessly about some grand revolution that will bring about a perfect utopia that we can’t even define much less implement. Using the tools we have available right now to make the world better just means that you’re a status-quo centri-fascist!
That’s because those people are always assuming they will be living capitalism from the CEO’S perspective after school. never from the worker’s perspective.
Can you give one example of a long-term, large scale, non-hierarchical system in human society?
Anarchism. We used it for most of human history, hierarchical societies are only 6k years old. The human species has existed for 200k years.
Are you joking? Ever heard of tribalism? Even monkeys use it.
Yes, because everyone everywhere for all of history has followed the exact same formula for organizing and defending their tribes.
Anarchism. We used it for most of human history
Total horseshit.
Name one society based on Anarchism
Instead of just one, here’s a whole Wikipedia article on the subject.
Those do not meet the criteria of what was asked.
Examples of intentional anarchical societies don’t meet the criteria of anarchical societies?
This was the actual original request
Can you give one example of a long-term, large scale, non-hierarchical system in human society?
Nothing on that page is an example of this
I spent 5 seconds during my morning routine to look this up. Would you rather I spend 3 hours writing a dissertation on all of the indigenous communities that have existed since prehistory that are structured in an egalitarian and anarchical way? You’re also allowed to look this shit up. I recommend Andrewism on youtube, he pulls a lot of examples from anarchical indigenous societies
And where are they today?
Can you give one example of a long-term, large scale, non-hierarchical system in human society?
Long-term =/= Permanent
Humans have existed much, MUCH longer than our current structure of civilization.
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Polynesians strike me as a good example. Those motherfuckers were the first to sail around the world, thousands of years before Columbus.
The title of the article actually disproves your assertion.
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Teenage anarchism ideologies basically boild down to “So I won’t have to go to school and read anymore”. If they actually knew what anarchism is, they’d be surprised to learn that there is a lot of reading to do in order to fully understand an anarchist society or one of its many sub-structures.
Anarchy doesn’t necessarily mean chaos without structure, as many believe. However, chaos without structure is one of the variants of anarchy.
Anarchy literally means feudalism within a generation
Most laws that exist serve to protect private property. An anarchist society wouldn’t have private property, so most laws that exist would be to punish transgressions between individuals. Political anarchy is not “do whatever you want, whenever you want, no exceptions”. It’s a direct democracy without hierarchy, with elected stewards to manage the shared property in a library economy.
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Tell us you’re not listening without saying you’re not really listening
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Yep, not actually listening at all
Lol your entire argument deflated when he responded actually knowing what he’s talking about
anarchism does not have to mean absence of law
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Anarchism means without rulers, not without rules
sorry but you’re wrong, it’s a lot more complicated than that
Anarchism is not the absence of law.
So why don’t YOU take your teenager education and learn more?
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The world might be ending but at least I have expensive things!
It’s almost like having a job that pays okay is still A) Not making me happy and B) contributing to the Earth’s destruction.
I love working the majority of my waking life just to scrape by, what a wonderful system where the only escape is being born privileged or working yourself even closer to death and taking advantage of other people to start a business
But we evolved away from it as our societies and needs became more complex. Maybe it worked when we were hunter gatherers living in caves but modern society requires a heriarchy to organise and maintain it.
Many complex societies were egalitarian eg Cucatenia Trypillia, IVC etc.
We didn’t “evolve” away from egalitarianism because complexity yada yada yada. Hierarchy just won because it’s more oppressive and violent.
Why do we need hierarchy? Are you unable to make decisions?
To organise and manage. Who’s going to set and control healthcare? The economy? Utilities? Infrastructure? Defence?Education? Justice? Social care? I don’t have the time nor will to make informed decisions about every single policy or law. I’d imagine the vast majority of people are ere same. We have representatives to make these decisions for us.
All of those “problems” are predicated on the ideas that private ownership of the means of production is necessary, that borders are a natural phenomenon, and that the social ills under capitalism are facts of life experienced by everyone in every era. None of that is true. Why don’t you have the time or energy to help organize and be involved with your community? Is it because of work? We’ve made tremendous strides in automating the means of production, but what has that meant for us? More people unemployed and unable to pay for the necessities in life, while we maintain the 40 hour work week to do the same work in one day as a 100 hour work week in 1900. We don’t need to move at this breakneck pace to make someone else billions of dollars.
I don’t think any of the things I listed have anything to do with who owns the means of production. They’re all public (well maybe not in every country) services. And policy and regulation has to be set for them as time goes on.
Honestly, I don’t want to be much involved in my community. It just doesn’t interest me, I’d rather spend time with my family or spend time on my hobbies.
I disagree on that, but I don’t have the mental health capacity anymore to elaborate.
That’s understandable too, and we should have the ability to do so without a pursuit of wages. The coercive nature of work prevents you from enjoying the things you want to enjoy. Personally, I consider the theft of our free time cruelty. I want to have time to see my friends and family that live hours away. I want to work on the apps I started in college. I want to go fishing. I want to be a contributing member of my community. I can’t do any of that, because I need to pay for food, rent, electricity, vehicle maintenance, my education loan, and more. A system that forces us to suppress our desires in favor of seeking a wage is unjust, and does far more harm to people as a society than anything an individual could do on their own. I don’t want to turn those personal apps into a “side-hustle”, I just want to make something in the hopes that at least someone finds it useful and can enjoy it. I want a society that encourages our kindhearted, social, and generous nature, not one that purely emphasizes our greedy side.
Tribalism.
I don’t like to think that I or we really can’t imagine a better system but I don’t think it’s completely unrealistic to say something like best we got. I say this only because things like communism and all their promises can only really come about through a revolution and the price in blood is jaw dropping. So much killing. It also almost certainly means people materially worse off for a long time if not the rest of their lives in the wake of this revolution even if over generations it manages to eventually deliver.
I’m all for substantial reform and leftist/liberal politics but it’s difficult for me to ignore the great peril and huge gamble of revolution. Some times a society successfully manages to make things so bad that there’s so little to lose that it can seem a realistic option but I think everybody considering that option should weigh it very carefully. It’s very possible to sacrifice everything including your own life and thousands of others’ only for the whole thing to get derailed by opportunists and to make a bad situation so much worse.
I say this only because things like communism and all their promises can only really come about through a revolution and the price in blood is jaw dropping. So much killing. It also almost certainly means people materially worse off for a long time if not the rest of their lives in the wake of this revolution even if over generations it manages to eventually deliver.
These same arguments can be used to ward off a revolution against a dictatorship or absolutist monarchy, though. Or even against slavery.
It’s true.
You say this as if capitalism isn’t responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions or more of deaths
It is not, if anything capitalism for preventing billions of deaths
This is one of the three big problems of communism for me, though I believe that long term there’s no other way forward than by using violence. The few that are powerful got there by willing to play dirty and please the rest of the bourgeoisie instead of the people, and anyone that enters that scene hoping to make a change will either be forced to play that game or to be kicked out. It’s a endless circle that only force or technology can break, and I don’t bet on technology making things better for us.
The other two are:
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Realistically the proletariat can’t all run a state together simply because there’s too many voices, so there always ends up being a few that rule over the many. Some have proven to believe in the cause and not use their newfound power for a new bourgeoisie to arise, but eventually they will pass away and someone has to take their place. How do you make sure that no one ends up betraying the people leading to either reviving the old system or a new bloody revolution?
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The late stage withering of the state is a nice concept that does make sense assuming that society completely changes after a long time of living in an equal system, but it hasn’t been seen in practice. Of course it’s unfair to rule it away since it wasn’t inefficiency that killed communism but outer interferences from capitalist countries that feared communism like the plaugue (which makes sense given that the rulers of those countries don’t want to become one with the proletariat and definitely don’t wan’t to be imprisoned, exiled or executed).
This is the first time I’ve seen this mentioned on lemmy, and it’s always been my fundamental concern with communism. We’ve never made it to the end state of communism - to date, it has always stopped at the authoritarian stage, which is supposed to be temporary and transitional.
Arguments can be made that this is a product of foreign interference, and there’s definitely merit to that, but it’s not the whole picture. No matter what political system you have, highly concentrated power is not easy to dismantle and socialize. It doesn’t magically get easier just because you ousted the old guard and put new people in that position. So long as there is benefit to being the leader, you’re generally looking at people who want those benefits, not the responsibility of carrying the project forward.
Technology could address some of the difficulties involved in direct democracy (which, imo, is THE fundamental thing required in communism - hell, democratic capitalist countries would benefit too), but there are many ways to manipulate a populace so that it almost wouldn’t matter.
I’m not going to pretend I have any answers here, or that communism as a political system is inherently bad, but the draw of power is a fundamental source of corruption no matter what your stated intent is.
Communism is simply an economic framework, not a political one. I dont agree with the notion that authoritarianism is a prerequisite for communist society.
At the very least the existence of anarcho communism points towards that.
Fair - I did wonder about inappropriately conflating things around this point - but a transitional ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is definitely a stage of development in communism. For what it’s worth, what I’m reading on the subject right now is this (only started reading after commenting, prior comments based on previous knowledge/discussions of communism): https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
Admittedly, perhaps not all flavours of communism, but it’s hard to argue with this showing up in history. The question becomes: is it really a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or a separate political class using that language and ideology to justify their position?
I will be the first to admit I’m not up-to-date with my communist theory, nor aware of the dominant strains of it in contemporary good faith discourse. So I’m happy to be presented with rebuttals or different positions on this - the more you know and all that.
You seem well intended, no worries.
Just for an example, Im a libertarian communist. I believe in a Democratic communism where a direct democracy makes larger political decisions.
Somewhere between anarcho communist and socialist. My view on governments, communist or otherwise, is that they should be only big enough to help the people. It should serve effectively no other purpose but to run social programs and to stop greedy people.
The dictatorship of the proletariat originally, in Marx’s work, did not mean a literal dictatorship, but a democratic government run for the workers with the effective exclusion of other potential power centers. He refers to capitalist democracy in turn as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, for reference.
Marxist-Leninists are the big offenders here, because two of the major ‘innovations’ to Marxism introduced by Marxist-Leninists (at least, two which are relevant here) are that of the revolutionary vanguard (that you need to give power to a small number of people who are really well-read on theory, and THAT’S what will save the revolution), and the idea that you can ‘skip’ over capitalist democracy and go straight to socialism if you just try really hard and shoot a lot of people who think wrong.
Marx was long-dead by the time Marxism-Leninism came about.
Communism is an entire social philosophy, not just an economic model.
I fully agree, it’s refreshing to find someone open minded that can have an actual discussion over politics without going all agressive and insane
Communism IS fundamentally bad. Why? Because it’s inherently authoritarian, oppressive, and violent. The utopia is just that, a fantasy. We’ll never achieve an a perfect society. Therefore, this ideology will always be permanently stuck in it’s authoritarian, oppressive, and violent stage. The authoritarians in power will never voluntarily give up their power, they’ll never stop oppressing and killing people, and they will never agree that the utopia arrived. The communist utopia will always be just around the corner.
The few that are powerful got there by willing to play dirty and please the rest of the bourgeoisie instead of the people, and anyone that enters that scene hoping to make a change will either be forced to play that game or to be kicked out
This is conspiracy-theorist nonsense.
Real “drain the swamp” energy
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In the face of capitalist derived climate catastrophe, I’m not sure if we have any options.
All you need to do here is show that non-capitalist systems won’t consume fossil fuels, which I find to be extremely unlikely.
Communism doesn’t incentive excess production or planned obsolescence. Historically they also had good public transportation.
Im saying there is a lot of energy waste in capitalism that leads to tons of emisions
Its no coincidence that the the US is one of the highest emitters of carbon.
Energy waste like heating homes, powering hospitals, and getting food from point A to point B?
Considering the Holodomor maybe that last point I can concede
What exactly are you arguing?
Are you suggesting communist societies don’t have heat, hospitals and transport?
Are you suggesting there aren’t green methods to achieve those?
That list in particular , yes they can be covered by renewables
Im am of the belief that we cant maintain our current lavish lives on renewables alone though.
Personally I think scaling back mixed with renewables is the answer. Less priority for the meat industry (of which I am a partaker), more work from home, more low emmision public transport.
There is no one silver bullet in the fight against the climate change. It will take an amalgamation of methods.
No. The exact opposite.
I think you clearly are misinterpreting my argument.
Capitalism produces MORE emissions. That’s all im saying. I never said Communism produces zero emmisions.
Those aren’t wastages. Also…
Lmao I can’t believe you actually linked some shit-ass YouTube video saying the Holodomor was fine, actually.
some shit-ass YouTube videoA thoroughly researched essay on the subject
saying the Holodomor was fine, actually.saying the Soviet famine was a fucking travesty, and Stalin should be shot, but there is no indication it was a deliberate policy
At least watch the first 10 seconds, ya fucking goof
Why? Production would be drastically lower, because there’s no need to flood the market. Democracy would dictate what gets produced, so an educated population would object to polluting industries, and thus not support them, leading to their demise.
Because people love to not die, and suddenly ending our use of fossil fuels would kill a fuckload of people.
Dude think for half a minute
First off, I disagree with that assessment. But secondly, are you implying climate change won’t kill people?
No I’m responding to the idea that communists won’t use fossil fuels, which they did, and would.
How do you think Venezuela affords their socialism?
This is just the dumbest take possible.
Where did I say communists don’t use fossil fuels? I do maintain they use objectively less though. There just less need less production all around.
Hell, your knowledge about. Venezuela is even incorrect. Its categorically a failed socialist state, not a communist one.
No one said communism “doesn’t use fossil fuels”, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to disprove that
It doesn’t need to end fucking immediately, because of that very reason.
Think for just a second, friendo.
Weird that you’d want economic conditions that don’t contribute to new tech rather than economic conditions that do contribute to new tech, then.
Also I’m not your friend.
Source? Do people just not go to school or have ambitions to improve the world, simply because their basic needs are met? You think no one dreams of tech in communism? That a social order based on cooperation and mutual aid would not engender exactly that?
The only people who will actually “suffer” or have anything to lose from such a revolution are the owning class
These sob stories you hear from people who “fled communist oppression” are just people who lost untold privilege. We call them “communists stole my slaves” stories
this is an unhinged reply if you actually think that. ask people from Poland or some post soviet countries what they thought about living under totalitarian communism.
People loved their totalitarian boot-on-face experience and anyone saying otherwise just believes propaganda, comrade.
That’s why all those people were weeping instead of celebrating when the Berlin wall was torn down
I’d ask them, but they’d have no frame of reference. They never lived under communism. They definitely lived under socialism, though.
Pretty sure there are people who lived under communism still alive in that country.
Hell, probably about 50% at this point (depending on birth and death rates).
So there are literally millions of people who have the experience to ask.
Not a single one.
What do you think communism is?
Look up its definition. Compare that to the political system found in the USSR. See they are not the same.
Lenin started a path towards it, called socialism, but by the time Stalin was in power, revisionism was in full effect oriented toward market reforms.
Do you ever actually get outside your bubble and realise you been fed a bunch of horseshit or do you just plug your ears going nanananana naaaa I can’t hear you?
Because you are on some wierd tankie shit.
Yes, in fact, that is how i learned this “tankie shit”. So ironic. I had to get out of my bubble to stop believing in liberalism.
Do you think society shelters and fosters socialist beliefs? No. It forces liberalism down our throats from the day we’re born.
The projection lmao, have you maybe thought about the fact that you’ve been fed BS all your life and here you are now spewing it without actually knowing what you’re talking about
It would take only the most cursory examination of documented revolutions, communist ones as much as any other to immediately see that that’s not the case. Millions get swept up in it. People starve, civil and international wars are fought and combatants die, civilians become collateral damage, power struggles emerge within the ranks of the revolutionaries and loyal partisans are swept aside so ambitious people can ascend. Revolutionary zeal leads to countless cases of misidentification of suspected ‘reactionaries’, economic turmoil creates desperation leading to violence and crime and then further violence in the attempts to restore order. In the chaos and lawlessness of the initial stages of a revolution people will take the opportunity to settle old scores. Individuals who previously held no power now take up new roles in the new society and wield even tiny petty amounts of power yet still more than they could have dreamed of before and turn out not to be responsible with it and others still manage to claim masses of it.
And this is only the people who you would hopefully agree didn’t ‘deserve’ it, but for me on a personal level, though it does make me rather useless I suppose, I’m not in to killing, so even those who arguably did ‘deserve’ it, the ‘ruling’ classes, I may be glad to see them stripped of the privilege and influence but I don’t want to see them or anyone strung up. And in the period of re-defining and re-shaping society after the revolution the new order will seek to identify just who counts as ‘ruling class’, this has, in the past included people who owned a shop, people with ‘bourgeois’ jobs in the former government, teachers accused by students of being ‘reactionaries’.
It might just be that communism really can, if not de-railed create a utopia on Earth and it might just be that all that happens above really is actually what just needs to happen for us to get there, but I’m not sure I could stomach it.
I don’t agree with such extremes, such as the executions of landlords etc.
This, I have to admit, is my one sticking point in actually calling myself a communist. This one question has tortured me for a long time:
What do you actually DO about the reactionaries and counter revolutionaries?
The USSR sent them to gulags. That seems harsh, but it’s something. Mao’s China killed them, and I’m sure similar things happened in Cuba.
There has to be an option that doesn’t scare people or cause horror in general, but I don’t think I personally have a perfect answer. I could say, “the average person won’t be mistaken for a bourgeois,” but I don’t know how convincing that will be. The revolution would have to be truly perfect for that to happen.
What I can say, though, is that Marxists of the present day recognise and condemn these actions, and the Marxist tradition teaches us to constantly reevaluate our methods, in the scientific discipline of observation, experiment, reflection and so on. It’s a cold way to put it, but the mistakes of the past have been carefully studied to ensure they can’t happen again.
That doesn’t mean new mistakes can’t happen. We are only human, and even democratic will can run foul. But we can use our knowledge of material conditions to measure our approach. Only ever what the people want - and what we want is justice for all.
You could have saved yourself some typing and just written “I’m selfish and wilfully ignorant”
First - educate yourself on communism, you clearly know nothing about it, but the fact that you’re against it because “bloodshed” yet are openly in support of capitalism makes you nothing more than a wilfully ignorant hypocrite.
Capitalism has and continues to kill hundreds of millions (at least, in all the time it’s existed) for profit in war, with hunger and restricted access to water, with homelessness and poverty, with preventable disease, all created and excused with the myth of artificial scarcity, with climate change, with immoral laws and entire systems designed to keep large segments of the population as slave labour, which is what they used to gain their power and wealth to be in the position to impose all of this in the first place. And all that just off the top of my head, there is so much more violence that is inflicted on us daily, they’ve just got most people, yourself included obviously, convinced that’s just life, when it really really isn’t. And those who actually benefit are never just going to give all of that up.
You keep mentioning the potential “sacrifice” which tells me just how privileged you are, but don’t be mistaken - that privilege will only keep you safe for so long, and you not giving a shit about those of us who don’t have it and are already suffering and dying under the system you’re so eager to defend despite openly admitting to not understanding it (and displaying no understating of the alternative either), doesn’t change the fact that said system is destroying the planet and everything on it, and no amount of bootlicking will save you from that.
First - educate yourself on communism
Wow, this is such a shit 😀 So everyone got it wrong, that’s why it failed everywhere.
But you know what, go for it. It fucked up my country but I’m sure this time it’s gonna be different, this time you get it right 🙂 I just grab my popcorn and enjoy the show
Many many capitalist societies have failed, but we let survivorship bias cloud our judgement.
We’ve only really attempted communism a couple of times.
Heck, all of the communist societies were built from the ashes of capitalist ones.
Heck, all of the communist societies were built from the ashes of capitalist ones.
I mean, Soviet Russia and China were really built on the bones of feudal societies, and that’s something that Marx warned against.
Saving this liberal-killer comment
Go for it.
I have loads more links saved, but these come in handy most often:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
https://blacklikemao.medium.com/how-liberalism-helps-fascism-d4dbdcb199d9I wonder what excuse they’ll use next to make sure they don’t have to read anything that might challenge their bias.https://libcom.org/article/capitalist-democracy-illusion-choice
Thank you very kindly. These will come in useful for future arguments against libs and reactionaries.
Linking a site titled “blacklikemao.com” will not win you any arguments and will get you laughed at
Maybe by people like you, but that doesn’t concern me.
I would be the person you’d be arguing with, so yes.
Do not use those links because rather than be “lib-killing” they are “lib-amusing”
Young workers doing shit work don’t like their jobs.
News at 11.
So when do people typically start enjoying their work?
According to some research, the switchover is at around $250k a year or thereabouts.
Retirement
Generally, but not always, the difference is the same as the difference between a job and a career.
Some people really do like their jobs though. Just need to hunt around for one you like.
For me, it was when I began my career
Generally, but not always, the difference is the same as the difference between a job and a career.
Some people really do like their jobs though. Just need to hunt around for one you like.
For me, it was when I began my career.
Capitalist systems produce bullshit jobs that people don’t like.
More news at 7.
Is there a system that only creates jobs that’s perfect for them?
Yes, but it’s still better than being in the exact same position but having to join a ten year waiting list for a Lada.
the difference between a capitalist bread line and a socialist bread line is that when you get to the end of the capitalist line, you have to pay for the bread.
I love the smell of false dichotomies in the morning!
Then you must love Lemmy. You can’t move a millimetre around here without someone saying that if you don’t support a bloody, violent revolution to implement a system that has been an unmitigated disaster every time it’s been tried then you’re a capitalist boot-licker.
The problem with suggesting that capitalism isnt the best system is in its contrary. If I suggest someone name me a great socialist state nobody is going to say Laos, Vietnam or Cuba. You can ask someone from those places and they would say they would rather be in the US or EU than in their home country. So why the constant larp?
Haha where’s the panel for the communist work camps? The people there would kill for a job flipping burgers.
Also life pro-tip: Fast food is and never was supposed to be a career. If that’s the only way you can find a job, that’s no one’s fault but yours.
Capitalism has it’s flaws but still better than communism.
who even mentioned communism? it’s okay to criticize capitalism as it is today. We’re destroying the planet, destroying society but whenever anyone criticizes capitalism all these edgelords come in to flip it to communism
I criticized capitalism. I know it’s not perfect.
But what other economic system would be the alternative if not communism? The meme doesn’t make any constructive suggestions like I did, which is to make yourself valuable so you don’t end up in a dead-end job. Failure to provide individual value is not a fault of capitalism, that’s a personal failure.
Dude… “make yourself valuable” is not a constructive suggestion. A person flipping burgers IS providing value for their employer because their employer sells those burgers for profit. If a company needs people to perform labor for profit, no matter how menial or unskilled you think that labor is, they should pay those people a fair wage.
And no, fast food is not “meant to be a career”. But that’s not an excuse to exploit the labor of the people who take those jobs. Especially not when corporate profits are through the roof.
I have personally worked in jobs that facilitated millions of dollars in profits for my companies, and not a single one of them paid an actual living wage. The funny thing is that those jobs also tended to be a lot easier and require less actual skill than the customer service jobs I’d had.
Then you have my early boomer dad. One of his first jobs was pumping gas and washing cars at a gas station. That’s not “skilled labor” nor is it “supposed to be a career”. He was still paid well enough he could afford his first apartment.
But what other economic system would be the alternative if not communism?
[Do you honestly believe those are the only options?] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system#List_of_economic_systems)
“make yourself valuable” is not a constructive suggestion
Getting an education or skill isn’t a ‘constructive suggestion’?? You clearly have a point to make and it’s not based on logic. BTW you can call it whatever you want, there are only two classes of ownership - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Economic_Systems_Typology_(v4).jpg
I’m going to point this out for anyone else reading this: Flipping burgers is an ‘unskilled labor’ type of job. Yes flipping burgers provides value, but it’s not much and you can be replaced easily, which is why the job doesn’t pay very much. When you have an education or skills you can provide much more value to your employer and so they pay YOU more in return. In fact with enough skills they will fight to hire you, or if you want even more of the cut you can be a consultant.
Capitalism provides these opportunities through the open market. Something communism doesn’t have. You are sent to whatever job they want you to do under communism.
If you don’t like it, then go, move to Russia. They’ll be happy for you.
Russia is a capitalist oligarchy, but like a real oligarchy, not like when people say the US is an oligarchy.
It is explicitly the opposite of what these people want.
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