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Average Lemmy user
Neither of those are what leftists say. Capitalism doesn't work because of the structure itself, you have problems like the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and the inherent exploitation within. You cannot have Capitalism without exploitation, and you can't have Capitalism with democratization of production, even if you had a perfectly selfless Capitalist, it still wouldn't be democratic and would still have the same structural issues.
Similarly, Communism isn't "people working for the common good," it's people working to improve their own material conditions. Just because production is democratized doesn't mean it depends on people working for absolutely no reason.
There are non-strawman arguments you could make, but this ain't it.
Communism isn't "people working for the common good," it's people working to improve their own material conditions.
Same goes for capitalism. Why is it called communism then, if your definition doesn't even contain any reference to anything communal? At the very least, it would have to be "people working together to improve their own material conditions", but that's perfectly acceptable in capitalism as well.
Come on now, if you want to have a debate about this, at least try to make argument that doesn't fall apart at the slightest breeze.
Does your understanding of communism stop at semantics? If you’re going to be strongly opposed to something you should at least know what it is. Otherwise your arguments are limited to being the slightest breeze.
No, I’m merely pointing out that I would be wasting my time arguing with people who do not even care enough to make a semantically coherent argument.
... what do you think Communism is? It's a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society achieved via abolition of Private Property. That doesn't mean everyone suddenly becomes hippies working in communes or tribes.
Capitalism certainly can have cooperation, it just happens to encourage competition, monopoly, and exploitation of Workers for the sake of profit.
What's your point, exactly?
If capitalism encourages or favors competition, how come there is such a thing as companies? Those generally require some level of cooperation. If everyone works against each other, they would simply fall apart.
Also, why do we often see companies getting bigger and bigger, sometimes even by means of two competitors merging together? If capitalism encourages competition, shouldn’t they both be better off staying separate?
Because the Workers aren't competing, they don't give a shit. The Capitalists are competing for an even larger share of the pie. Instead of everyone cooperating, you fragment everyone into companies, which are like little factions.
Some factions doing well enough to create new kings like Bezos or Musk is also not a feature, given that there's no democratic control.
Really not sure what you're getting at. Why are you even on a platform rejecting Capitslism, rather than Reddit, if you're so sure that leftism is a bad thing?
Really not sure what you're getting at. Why are you even on a platform rejecting Capitalism, rather than Reddit, if you're so sure that leftism is a bad thing?
Does Lemmy as a whole reject capitalism, or is it just individual servers like this one? Because I really don't get nearly as much hate on any other ones, it's always here.
Also, I find it very interesting that if Lemmy or the Fediverse in general are leaning rather left, why did they choose to implement a federated model? This makes every server owner king of their own personal fiefdom, able to allow whatever content and apply whatever rules they please. Therefore, it is impossible by design to enforce that everyone had to reject capitalism.
Yes, there is some measure of democratic control in the defederation mechanism, which allows the community as a whole to somewhat isolate and contain those who don't want to adhere to the common rules, but it doesn't get rid of them entirely. And it certainly enables some amount of competition among instances getting a share of the total userbase.
A for-profit company could even take the codebase and spin off their own reddit clone absolutely for free. This has actually happened at least twice with Mastodon — both Gab and Truth Social are using it internally (of course both are defederated islands, but rather large ones compared to the average server size).
If this is real communism, then perhaps it's accurate to say that previous attempts such as the UdSSR were all failures, and communism by dictatorship doesn't work at all. But perhaps then that also implies that some level of internal competition is healthy and normal, and it is by no means required that EVERYONE has to be on the same page in order for it to work.
Lemmy is a decentralized, FOSS platform built by a Communist explicitly as an answer to Reddit. The people on Lemmy trend leftward, obviously, but that's because the very foundation is a rejection of Capitalism. If you want Capitalist Lemmy, there's Reddit.
FOSS itself is leftist, and a rejection of Capitalism. The ability for the users to simply fork off if they don't like the way something is heading is precisely an advantage of leftist organization, which is impossible with Capitalist Reddit.
Truth Social and Gab are built on Mastadon, yes. FOSS itself is a rejection of Capitalism, Capitalists going in and taking advantage of existing leftist infrastructure doesn't mean the infrastructure itself is Capitalist.
Your last paragraph is a complete non-sequitor. Much of the USSR was indeed a failure, there was a ludicrous amount of corruption at the Politburo level, and the further up you went the less democratic it was, as only local Soviets were purely democratically accountable to the Workers. With each rung you went up, it was less accountable to the Workers. However, absolutely none of what you say about competition, the USSR, or otherwise follows logically.
Communism itself doesn't depend on everyone following in lock-step, Capitalism does.
FOSS itself is leftist, and a rejection of Capitalism. The ability for the users to simply fork off if they don't like the way something is heading is precisely an advantage of leftist organization, which is impossible with Capitalist Reddit.
Again, I find such statements very interesting, especially given that you so firmly rejected competition as inherently capitalist and undesirable. Because being able to just take something and fork it actually encourages competition. If I don't like where a project is headed, and I can take their code and make my own version, and if I do a better job at it than the original maintainers, I could even outclass them. Isn't that exactly the type of stuff you hate about capitalism?
Truth Social and Gab are built on Mastodon, yes. FOSS itself is a rejection of Capitalism, Capitalists going in and taking advantage of existing leftist infrastructure doesn't mean the infrastructure itself is Capitalist.
No, but it isn't inherently anti-Capitalist either, and that was my point. Also, they're both playing by the rules and making their source code available as required by the GPL, although AFAIK it DID take some legal threats before they complied. Commercial exploitation of FOSS is something that's explicitly allowed by most licenses, and Lemmy's is no different. They could have chosen one that forbids such things, but they did not.
Your last paragraph is a complete non-sequitor. Much of the USSR was indeed a failure, there was a ludicrous amount of corruption at the Politburo level, and the further up you went the less democratic it was, as only local Soviets were purely democratically accountable to the Workers. With each rung you went up, it was less accountable to the Workers. However, absolutely none of what you say about competition, the USSR, or otherwise follows logically.
Your style of argumentation and tenuous grasp on logic never fails to baffle me. So you agree that Soviet Russia was an abject failure and had nothing to do with "real" communism, and you also seem to agree that the Fediverse is a much better representation of it, but then you simply reject all my other conclusions without feeling the need to even explain that at all. Sorry, but I find this entirely unconvincing.
Communism itself doesn't depend on everyone following in lock-step, Capitalism does.
But if everyone ISN'T in lockstep then there might be... dare I say it... competition? And I thought that was a capitalist concept entirely.
I don't hate competition for the sake of competition. The goal of FOSS is cooperation until something becomes less than desirable, as the goal is a good product. With Capitalism, the goal is profit, and as such destabilization and competition are required. With FOSS, a new fork is only done for a better product, not for profit-seeking.
Commercial exploitation of an anti-Capitalist option does not mean the option is not anti-Capitalist. FOSS is a rejection of IP a la Capitalism, and a rejection of the profit motive.
I understand that trying to argue with sound logic is difficult for you, after all, nothing you've said has logically followed. Enough of being cheeky, though. The USSR was a specific model of Marxist-Leninist Socialism, they never reached Communism as Communism is a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. They did many things right, like giving workers far more control, and providing free Healthcare and education. They also had many huge problems, like massive corruption at the Politburo level, and atrocities committed by government officials like the Katyn Massacre and Stalin's Purges. As such, I believe the USSR provides a wealth of information on what aspects did work, and what aspects were terrible. I do not want to recreate the USSR, nor use it as a template. I want to learn from it and create something far better.
You're confusing market competition for Capitalism. Capitalism requires competition and rejects cooperation, Socialism has both when it needs to. Capitalism cannot function without competition.
I understand that leftist theory can be hard to understand if you aren't at all familiar. I suggest reading leftist theory before trying to talk about it on social media as though you're saying something profound. It only comes off as profoundly ignorant.
"Capitalism does not work because people are selfish, and selfish people are incentivized to harm their fellow man by capitalist structures. Under socialism, selfish people will work toward the common good because working toward the common good is the easiest way to earn recognition and status"
"People are selfish, and it is in 99 percent of peoples self interest to overthrow capitalism in order to improve their material conditions"
So you admit then, that in order for socialism to work, people have to overcome their own selfishness first and learn how to cooperate with others?
You can cooperate with others toward selfish ends. That's literally how pack animals like humans work.
Right now it is in everyone's self interest except for the bourgeoisie to stop capitalism and create a more equitable system. If you just want to be on top, that is being selfish and not understanding how odds work, not being selfish.
It's funny because most communists seem to want to be the ones on top by trying to impose communism on everybody else.
Why not start at the bottom and learn how to cooperate with people there? Make some friends at work and see if they can help you get a better job. Put that philosophy into practice in the here and now instead of dreaming of some grand utopia where everyone willingly cooperates with everyone else everywhere and all the time.
It’s funny because most communists seem to want to be the ones on top by trying to impose communism on everybody else.
According to who, capitalist media? Have you ever actually exposed yourself to what communists think and believe, or are you afraid of a spectre?
Why not start at the bottom and learn how to cooperate with people there?
The communists, infamous for avoiding rank and file and mass line strategies, as well as other strategies that relied heavily on creating popular support
Make some friends at work and see if they can help you get a better job.
I'm already super cushy in my job, I dont want involuntary homelessness to exist, and I also don't want homeless people to be killed. I want kids to be able to go to bed and not be hungry. That isnt possible under capitalism.
Put that philosophy into practice in the here and now instead of dreaming of some grand utopia where everyone willingly cooperates with everyone else everywhere and all the time.
We don't think it will be utopia. We don't think everyone will willingly cooperate all the time. If you think this is what communists believe, you haven't read a lot of communist thought. It feels like you are just throwing cliches at the wall and trying to box with a strawman, and it is kind of weird to watch.
Do you understand the notion that people will generally cooperate when it is in their mutual selfish interest to cooperate? Does that make sense to you? Or do you reject even that notion?
According to who, capitalist media?
According to history.
Have you ever actually exposed yourself to what communists think and believe, or are you afraid of a spectre?
I'm being exposed to it on Lemmy nearly every single day.
I'm already super cushy in my job, I dont want involuntary homelessness to exist, and I also don't want homeless people to be killed. I want kids to be able to go to bed and not be hungry. That isnt possible under capitalism.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate to a homeless shelter, etc.
Do you understand the notion that people will generally cooperate when it is in their mutual selfish interest to cooperate? Does that make sense to you? Or do you reject even that notion?
Yes, that totally makes sense. But in my experience, this works best when people freely choose to cooperate because they realize it's in their own self-interest, instead of having cooperation imposed on them by force.
According to history.
Who's history?
I’m being exposed to it on Lemmy nearly every single day.
Okay, then explain the difference between scientific and utopian socialism, what what differentiates labor from labor power in the context of surplus labor value extraction?
The low bar there is my fault though, I should have asked if you were educated on what communists believed.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate to a homeless shelter, etc.
Put a bandaid on a gunshot wound while you're at it.
Yes, that totally makes sense. But in my experience, this works best when people freely choose to cooperate because they realize it’s in their own self-interest, instead of having cooperation imposed on them by force.
That has literally happened, can you name any successful socialist revolution that didn't involve education and the creation of mass popular support?
Who's history?
World history.
Russian communism: ~5M dead in the Holodemor
Chinese communism: ~15-55M dead in the Great Famine
Cambodian communism: >1M dead in the Killing Fieldsinb4 not real communism
Okay, then explain the difference between scientific and utopian socialism, what what differentiates labor from labor power in the context of surplus labor value extraction?
Muh "you can't criticize socialism because you don't understand THEORY". You probably don't understand capitalism either outside of socialist critiques of it. Then how can you be so certain of what capitalists believe?
Put a bandaid on a gunshot wound while you're at it.
"I can't help EVERYONE so I'm just not gonna help ANYONE".
*goes off and tries to convince people to follow an ideology that only works if everyone believes in it.
can you name any successful socialist revolution that didn't involve education and the creation of mass popular support?
Can you name one socialist revolution that hasn't involved massive amounts of murder and violence?
Russian communism: ~5M dead in the Holodemor
Chinese communism: ~15-55M dead in the Great Famine
Even with these inflated numbers, they are no match for the numbers of people intentionally killed by capitalism and feudalism, let alone starvation under capitalism and feudalism.
Plugging the book "late Victorian holocausts"
Cambodian communism: >1M dead in the Killing Fields
inb4 not real communism
If you believe the Cambodians were communists, you have to believe that the nazis were. Except in Pol Pots case, he only claimed to be socialist for a few years of their decades long operations. I am choosing you believe you're not that gullible so I must assume you are ignorant of their history.
Muh “you can’t criticize socialism because you don’t understand THEORY”. You probably don’t understand capitalism either outside of socialist critiques of it. Then how can you be so certain of what capitalists believe?
Literally took years of capitalist economics in high school and college, it is one of the reasons I'm a communist.
“I can’t help EVERYONE so I’m just not gonna help ANYONE”.
More like "the issue is systemic and requires systemic solutions, not charity"
*goes off and tries to convince people to follow an ideology that only works if everyone believes in it.
Chinese feudal landlords didn't believe in socialism, that didn't stop the communists from doing land reform.
Can you name one socialist revolution that hasn’t involved massive amounts of murder and violence?
By definition revolutions involve violence. Are you condemning the capitalist revolutions that threw off the monarchies? The status quo involved comparatively massive amounts of violence then, and it does now.
But also, an example of socialists gaining power through the ballot box was in Chile. The US ended up funding, training, and equipping right wing death squads to kill (and worse) Chilean communists, teachers, trade unionists, indigenous people, and random people. Chile became an extraordinary violent right wing capitalist dictatorship.
Permanently Deleted
I don't think most people are selfish to the point of it being harmful. I think the problem is that a small number of people are, and those are the people who are in charge of things, where their selfishness can do way more harm.
As others have mentioned, though, a lot of behavior is heavily influenced by the incentive structures people live within. This can apply in very obvious ways: for example, when trying to get from point A to point B, people will use the mode of transportation that makes the most sense for that trip, which is heavily dependent on the infrastructure that exists between those two places, and that's why the Dutch will bike five miles, the Spanish will catch a train across the whole country, and people in Houston will drive across the street. It can also apply in more subtle ways, though, and that's where capitalism comes in. To pick one example, companies that are owned by their workers are more stable and better places to work than traditional privately owned or shareholder-owned companies, but it goes far deeper and gets far more complex than that, too.
People are responsive to economic incentives. If the incentives favor doing good things, then good things happen. Otherwise, you get what we have now.
I think that's both fairly accurate, and seems to be more or less the norm across all cultures for most of history. Regular people are mostly benign, those in power tend to get worse the more power they have.
This poses an interesting question: what if this is in fact the most self-stable and therefore sustainable solution in the long term? And is it actually fair to assume that those in power benefit asymmetrically, or do they pay for it in ways that people without such means or ambition cannot even fathom?
If you live a normal, unremarkable life and generally get along with others, you probably won't have much excess material wealth, but you will also have relatively few enemies. The more you try to compete for the position of the top dog, however, the more you have to watch your back. Is it really preferable to sleep in a palace surrounded by armed guards because you are worried about assassins, just so you can own 50 nice cars you'll barely ever get to drive?
In other words, people who envy the rich and powerful always only ever look at the benefits, never at the price they pay for their privilege.
This poses an interesting question: what if this is in fact the most self-stable and therefore sustainable solution in the long term?
Then humanity is fucked.
Is it really preferable to sleep in a palace surrounded by armed guards because you are worried about assassins, just so you can own 50 nice cars you’ll barely ever get to drive?
Oh, boo hoo, won't someone think of the poor rich people, having to pay extra to keep their disgusting riches safe from the people they fucked over to get them. I'm sorry, I've been trying not to contribute to the toxicity I see in these threads, but come the fuck on.
Besides, I don't think people envy the rich and powerful the way you're describing, I think people envy the idea of being able to maintain a good standard of living without having to work themselves to the bone to do it, and they begrudge rich people's wealth and power on the grounds that they use it to influence politics and deny a decent standard of living to the working class. I don't want a mansion and fifty nice cars, I want an apartment in the city in walking distance to transit and stuff to do, and then to also save more money at the end of the month than I did at the start. Most people are similar: their specifics might be different, but the broad strokes are the same, especially the last bit.
I don't think people envy the rich and powerful the way you're describing, I think people envy the idea of being able to maintain a good standard of living without having to work themselves to the bone to do it.
But do the extremely rich really get to rest and enjoy their spoils the way you think? Just look at someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk, they just keep working even though they already have far more than they can spend. Gates is especially funny because he’s working full time on figuring out how to spend his fortune. Almost like having all that money just became another problem that now requires solving.
Yes I’m sure it helps not having to worry about the rent or the grocery bills, but everything else is likely just another unnecessary luxury that’ll quickly lose its appeal once you’ve had it.
I don't want a mansion and fifty nice cars, I want an apartment in the city in walking distance to transit and stuff to do, and then to also save more money at the end of the month than I did at the start.
Okay, see what you just did there? You went from “being able to maintain a good standard of living without having to work themselves to the bone to do it” to having an apartment in the city in walking distance to transit, and I’m willing to bet you’re not thinking of living next to skid row either. And then you want to be able to save money on top of that, too.
Basically, you blew up your expectation of maintaining an acceptable standard of living without too much stress, which is likely more achievable than you think if you’re flexible, to something that’s far out of your reach, all by inflating the meaning of “good”.
Do you NEED that apartment before you can be satisfied with your standard of living? Or is it something that would be nice to have, but not essential?
But do the extremely rich really get to rest and enjoy their spoils the way you think? Just look at someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk, they just keep working even though they already have far more than they can spend. Gates is especially funny because he’s working full time on figuring out how to spend his fortune. Almost like having all that money just became another problem that now requires solving.
Bro, I LITERALLY just said I don't give a shit about rich people problems. You can fuck all the way off trying to get me to sympathize with them. "Oh but it's hard to spend all that money!" Then don't fuck over the working class to accumulate so much money you have to work to spend it all! Or do the ethical thing and let the working class eat you. I might keep arguing with you but this is the last this particular stupidity is going to be dignified with a response.
Okay, see what you just did there? You went from “being able to maintain a good standard of living without having to work themselves to the bone to do it” to having an apartment in the city in walking distance to transit, and I’m willing to bet you’re not thinking of living next to skid row either. And then you want to be able to save money on top of that, too.
Ah, I should have clarified. American cities are built wrong and need a redo. Please refer to this educational content. I do sometimes forget that not everyone is on board with the reality that cars and car-centric infrastructure is destroying our mental health, our finances, our cities, and our world, so that's on me. The point is, what I described is a reality in several of the dozens of places that aren't the USA, and the fact that it's not a reality here is the direct result of the actions of people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and just to throw another one in there, Charles Edwin Wilson. Look him up if you don't know him, but he ranks just under Henry Kissinger in terms of worst people in American history. Just to reiterate, if your goal is to get me to feel sympathy for the owner class, give up now.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Please refer to this educational content.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Ah yes, I get it. You want to have a satisfactory lifestyle, but you want to stay mad at the same time.
Good luck with that LOL
It's very clear that you've never actually bothered to learn what leftists actually believe.
Well, it’s not like I haven’t tried, but the problem is that if you ask two leftists what they believe, you tend to get three different opinions, and they’re all based on theory.
Also, few of them can hold an argument, as soon as you present a criticism, they feel personally attacked and tend to become hostile.
Eh, there’s plenty of socialism in practice. But English speaking discourse is dominated by fans of dictators that actively hunted socialists in twentieth century.
aww, sounds like somebody misses reddit
I wonder if this meme still applies to those who have fled communist countries?
Its kind of ironic that Lemmy was created to take away centralized power, but the same people want to create a communistic society which will...centralize the power?
It doesn't matter whether communism is good or bad, capitalism is still terrible.
That's a fair criticism, we do need to find a better way
The Nords found it because they keep their capitalism restrained as it should be to serve the interests of the people in their societies instead of the reverse as it has become here.
The problem, of course, is the market crony hyper-capitalists that spawned mostly out of the US are using their power/capital to do what they did here everywhere else in it's insatiable quest for growth/metastasis. The UK has already fallen to the faustian bargain of "YOU can live large, just sell out your fellow citizens." Germany is getting on board, France's people are fighting but losing. Unrestrained capitalism high on its own greed is absolutely cancerous and deadly.
Capitalism CAN when tightly, tightly straight jacketed, be used to incentivize labor as communism cannot, but it must be tempered by the heaviest of taxation for the commons. Being a doctor or a lawyer should yield better rewards than a janitor, but within fucking reason/sanity.
Should a Doctor be able to afford a bigger house and a nicer car than an average worker for their effort? Sure. Should they be able to afford 3 houses to the janitor's studio apartment in a bad neighborhood? No, both provide essential services to society after all.
There needs to be a drain for out of control capital acquisition or that capital will eventually be used to propagate greed and capture the regulatory bodies meant to keep the sociopath that is capitalism sedated and restrained. No individual should possess enough capital to have more power over socetal structures than their single vote allows.
In exchange for not allowing greed to run absolutely rampant as it does here, they go to college based on merit, get healthcare when they need it, don't end up homeless in hard times, don't sweat job security, on and on...
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/
At least until the global markets find enough greed driven traitors in those societies to "turn the bull loose" there too. Because once they get a foothold, that's the ball game until collapse. Once that happens, they start using their for profit media machines to propagandize division within the citizenry, ensuring no meaningful counter movement, they use their power over government to indoctrinate children through education to call greed "rational self-interest," deify profiteers as "job creators," to feel hatred rather than empathy towards those that are struggling(herp derp those evil powerless homeless people are lowering my property values! If they can't/won't work, why won't they just die?), etc. That's why the US will need to collapse under the weight of its own corruption before things can even begin to improve. We're too far captured.
The whole Nordic system is built on brutal exploitation of the global majority. They simply outsource the worst horrors of capitalism where their people don't have to look at them. Here's the reality of enlightened capitalism https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us
Because there isn't a global regulatory body to handle workplace relations. Norway, Sweden and Denmark cannot exactly tell developing countries how they should treat their workers; no more than the US could tell Swedish unions to shut up and submit to Tesla's low pay demands.
We could have a global regulatory body.... oh wait... most people around the world don't want that because "'muh sovereignty."
The actual reason is that the west colonized these countries in the most brutal fashion, murdered millions of people who opposed western imperialism, then put in despotic regimes in place that serve western interests. You're evidently utterly ignorant of how the world actually works. Here's a book you should read that explains the reality of things https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
Oh wow, India and South Korea are still to this day under somehow subservient of Western imperialism, despite their own government implementing neoliberal policies after the Cold War! Somehow BJP, the ruling right wing party of India that deregulated the country, is a CIA stooge despite rebuffing sanctions on Russia. Gee, I wonder why? Thank you for your most enlightening, educated take! I am now so woke and class conscious like yourself!
Dude, this isn't the 20th century. Your communist utopia did not work and will never work, old fart. Countries have their own agency. Have you met people in Asia and Africa and asked them if they will want communism? Just like you never asked any former gulag members, yes? Take your meds called.... reality....old wanker.
You do realize that the US has control of South Korea's military during time of war, correct? It's an explicit part of their structure. South Korea quite literally does not have complete agency, despite what you're saying.
And you do realise that South Koreans wanted that set up to begin with, because they get more out of this security structure more than the US does? Why do you think that is? Who is South Korea's neighbour to the north, do you think? The peaceful West Korea? Both parties delayed handover of wartime control of ROK army numerous times, for reasons that should be obvious to those who are student of geopolitics. https://isdp.eu/publication/not-a-sovereignty-issue-understanding-the-transition-of-military-operational-control-between-the-united-states-and-south-korea/
Amazingly well put. Capitalism is necessary. Unrestrained capitalism is deadly. The unfortunate reality of capitalism is that even as it is in the process of burning everything to the ground, it looks for all the world like glorious success. And it is glorious success, if you don't compare it to what could be in a system where it was properly restrained.
Capitalism is in no way necessary. It's a poison, a cancer, a virus which at all given times threatens to destroy the fabric of society, all for the next quarter's profit.
Capitalism isn’t necessary; a new economic system that takes some aspects of capitalism is necessary. If you have to strip capitalism of all of its core features to make it work, you’re no longer dealing with capitalism but rather a different economic model.
I agree. People who say, "nuhuh, capitalism works!" are 99% of the time thinking of the basic concept of markets or money. Which ... Very specifically, are NOT capitalism.
They are used (and abused) by capitalists, but they are not inventions of capitalists.
Reason 1 that I'm happy to ditch reddit for Lemmy completely is watching these ideas explained by other people, every day.
Not having to explain the difference between capitalism and commerce feels 😩🔥
So what’s the difference between capitalism and markets? I would have thought the freer the market the more capitalistic it was, not so much that there’s a separation of the two.
Ownership of Capital. Capitalism has markets, but not all market systems are Capitalist.
Market Socialism, for example, has competing worker-owned entities like Co-operatives in a market system, with no Capitalists.
Capitalism is a relatively new phenomena in the grand scheme of things.
Thank you!
In their pure forms, I see capitalism and communism as extremes specifically with regards to human nature.
Communism starves our human impulses to succeed and grow, but capitalism gluts and force feeds our worst impulses exclusively, selfishness, unhealthy competition, jealousy, schadenfreude, sociopathy, self-delusion, narcissism, dehumanization, on and on, which is why I see it as the greater evil of the 2 in a vacuum.
A successful communist society would be very difficult to grow, but maybe that would be a good thing on a planet of finite resources that can take finite finite pollution. That's why the answer lies somewhere in democratic socialism, imho.
That's all academic though. The rigged market hyper-capitalists own this fucking place and have an iron grip on it. Plus communism would have kept the population low, as it should have been. It wouldn't be able to accommodate the needs of our ridiculously massive human population as it is. That ship has sailed unless we want billions to starve to right it and live within sustainable means in this finite habitat.
Communism starves our human impulses to succeed and grow
Nothing about communism forces human impulses to be ignored, unless you mean the impulses we already suppress as sentient beings, such as fucking everything that moves or eating until we literally die.
We are socially competitive animals, just as you can observe in other evolutionarily programmed creatures. We compare ourselves to others, we want to impress mates, etc.
Equality of economic outcome regardless of effort goes against that, which is probably necessary on a planet of finite resources and the scale of our waste, but it does go against that large aspect of our nature.
For the record, I'm probably closer to you ideologically than you think. I think unfettered capitalism does more damage to humanity and the planet than communism ever could, but if you think communism lacks any drawbacks and is perfect, you are mistaken.
There is no such thing as perfection, especially any construct made by mankind. That's coming from someone who is all for going Old School French on Wall Street and socializing entire economic sectors for the good of the citizenry.
We are socially competitive animals, just as you can observe in other evolutionarily programmed creatures. We compare ourselves to others, we want to impress mates, etc.
All of which can be achieved in a communist system, only instead of "look at my huge paycheck", it'd be "look at all these skills I've acquired thanks to free public education and more free time". People would stop mindlessly showing off innane manufactured waste and start actually acquire useful knowledge.
Sorry, but you're highly wrong about your misconceptions of Communism. Communism in no way starves human impulses to succeed or grow any more than Capitalist success does. Communism eliminates the profit motive, yes, but that is historically a highly flawed motive in general.
Socialism/Communism/Anarchism are not fairy-tale Utopias where everyone magically gets a pony, people still work to produce goods and services. However, this production is democratized, in opposition to anti-democratic privatized systems.
This made up thing you call communism sounds really terrible.
Have you ever actually read any communist theory that was not written by anti communists?
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I can’t tell if this is ironic sarcasm, it is right.
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What do you mean "we allow" bribery of government officials. Mate, we aren't the one who make that decision, not under capitalism.
We don't have the power to make that a death penalty felony.
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Yeah, but how are you going to get that iron fist?
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Sounds like you may need some kind of vanguard
You can be some kind of dictator, but for the proletariat!
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No. That's a wrong take.
While Communism is a centralisation of power, it is also decentralisating the decision of what the power does.
Ideally, Communism is like a democratic monopoly. However, in reality, communism has been abused to create a non-democratic monopoly. This is unfortunately very much like what capitalstic non-democratic monopolies do too - albeit more slowly.
Lemmy, like other fediverse projects, is not challenging the democratic or non-democratic part of it. It's challenging the monopoly part.
If we spread out the functional part of systems, nobody will be able to create a monopoly of power, neither through communism, capitalism nor democracy. This is because the power is not centralised at all.
It's not anarchy or chaos though, because each party is capable of embracing or rejecting any other parties, based on their own choice of government. People who run fediverse servers can choose by votes or not which other parties to include or not. Some servers are democratic, others are not. Some might be communist, others might be fascists, but they're not a meaningful power without users, so it'll inevitably be up to the users to decide.
Hey you may want to learn a thing or two about communism, because you seem very ignorant about it.
Communism is, at first, Socialism. You're confusing Communism with Monarchism, or Oligarchy, when in reality Communism and Socialism are primarily about democratization and decentralization.
Compare 2 factories.
Factory 1 is Capitalist. It is owned by a businessman, and he employs workers to use said factory to produce commodities for sale on the market. The largest forms of voice the Workers have is Unionization, or, failing that, working somewhere else, if available.
Factory 2 is Socialist. The Workers are the Owners, and as such elect a manager to represent them in worker councils.
Looking at the 2 structures, Socialism is more democratic, and more decentralized, in theory. We must take this theory and see why or why not historical examples have measured up to this, from a practical, Materialist perspective. Tools aren't mystical, they don't corrupt the minds of those who share ownership of them.
It's easy to see why Lemmy, a platform based on decentralization and a rejection of the Profit Motive, has far more leftists.
Workers as the owners?
Apparently, not so in the soviet union: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_the_Soviet_Union
But there is a similar (but not identical) concept currently being implemented in Germany. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
The Soviet Union was anti-trade union, and pro-Soviet, ie worker councils. The Soviet Union had numerous problems, especially with beaurocracy, but fundamentally it was a Worker state, owned and run by the Soviets, and thus can be considered Socialist (regardless of my personal issues with it).
There are several attempts at replicating some form of Worker Democracy in Capitalist countries, but ultimately short of ownership none of this functionally makes a massive difference. Definitely a step in the right direction, but without worker ownership it is more to appease workers and uphold Capitalism, than actually giving workers control.
Don't misunderstand this comment to say that codetermination is bad, it's good, just not as good as it could be.
I think the germans working under codetermination have it a bit better than any soviet ever did under their workers' unions. the missing ingredient being a democratic representative government in place of an authoritarian single party system.
The Germans working under codetermination also have it far better than Germans under the Kaiser. Comparing a 21st century first world developed nation with a 20th century developing country sure is a win, I guess?
Secondly, although the beurocracy was incredibly corrupt, the Soviet Democracy by which local Soviets reported to higher Soviets that reported to higher Soviets was fundamentally democratic, even if flawed.
I don't really think you've said much of anything. The Soviet form of Democracy was indeed flawed, but it was still Democratic, and I think it's obvious to anyone that living in a modern developed country would be better than living in a developing country from last century.
I'm comparing political systems, not nations. If we're talking about the WW1 era, then I'd say the soviets still had it worse as they went through a war, invasion, then a civil war, and famine and consequent brutal dictatorship. But the germans made it out quite well off, given they basically started the war with their unequal treaties and rapid militarization. Despite this, the treaty of Versailles was relatively lenient compared to what happened Austria-hungry.
It was not democratic. It was a single party system in which the party selected a candidate, (after some research I learned this part is false),
and the populace was forced to vote for said candidate under threat of imprisonment.If the people wanted to oust a candidate they didn't like, they'd have to coordinate with everyone in secret to cooperatively abstain from voting for the candidate so he would lose his job and the party would select a new candidate.
Political systems don't determine quality of life nearly as much as development.
Your second point isn't correct, anyone could be voted on. They couldn't vote on the next level, only their representative could. I'm not sure where you get this new idea from.
If you're talking about the Politburo, yes, and that's part of my problem with it. But, at the local level, you voted on whoever you wanted, then your rep votes on who they want, and so forth. There were lots of shady deals that solidified power higher up, yes, but the process was Democratic in nature, even if highly flawed.
I think political systems affect development, although geography plays a big role in that as well. How a country uses its available resources is predominantly determined by its economic and political system.
They gave you a ballet with only a party member candidate on it which you'd simply drop in the ballet box in front of everyone, and if you wanted to vote for an independent, you had to go behind a curtain and write it in.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union
"However, in practice, before 1989, voters could vote against candidates preselected by the Communist Party only by spoiling their ballots, whereas votes for the party candidates could be cast simply by submitting a blank ballot."
I wouldn't call that democratic in nature.
Economic systems absolutely affect development, but again, you're comparing a country that was a backwater nation completely undeveloped come the start of the 20th century with a country that has always been at or near the top of the list of industrialized nations. The starting points aren't even in the slightest.
Secondly, the banning of alternative political parties was indeed antidemocratic, but the party didn't select who you could vote for. Factions were banned by Lenin, supposed to be temporary, but this continued until 1989.
Historical accounts actually disagree with you saying candidates were preselected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy Pat Sloan in particular mentions that anyone could be elected, at the local level. Perhaps what you're referring to is that those above the local Soviets were made up of those elected at local Soviets, and thus people couldn't directly run for higher Soviets? Either way, definitely flawed, but not the same as what you're saying.
Democracy is a sliding scale, I would say the Soviet Democratic model was still democratic, but less than many other countries. The US is technically more democratic, but many absolute positions cannot be voted on, such as the Supreme Court. There isn't a currently existing country with fantastic democracy, unfortunately.
the populace was forced to vote for said candidate under threat of imprisonment.
No
After some more digging, I conscede that you're right on this point. I misremember that. they were not forced to participate.
As opposed to capitalism, which evenly distributes power and everyone gets a fair shot.
Well yes and no. There are communist systems that centralize power (mostly to establish a system without it) but there are a lot of different ways to do it other than that. Anarcho Communism for example is the complete opposit which does not want to go the authoritarian way even short term. Because well that did not quite work out. Authoritarian states still are authoritarian states. And i myself dont like/want those ^^
Because well that did not quite work out.
Worked out better than any anarcho communist project ever did.
Not in my opinion. I dont think forcing yourself upon others and establishing totalitarian states is a success. If you mean working as becoming the main party then sure but i think working is establishing its principles. And there are anarchistic projects that worked quite well im that sense. They never lastet but they did often change a lot. For example the spanish civil war, the paris kommune. Those are the biggest ones. But anarchistic principles were always important. Many "primitive" cultures were egalitarian ones, which they did a lot to keep it that way.
Communism is not dictatorship Capitalism is not democracy
A lot of the people exiled from communist countries were the ones doing slavery and fucking over the working class max
I love how you can state basic facts, and a bunch of ex reddit libs swarm in to downvote.
I was thinking more so about the ~7,000 - 8,000 doctors since 2006 that defected from Cuba as soon as they were able to.
Are you referring to the loosely defined "kulaks" (wealthy peasants) that were exiled/killed when the Soviet Union was created?
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Did you read that link you posted? Lmao
If you get past the first paragraph, suddenly there's really no praising and they talk about how bad health care is in Cuba and how many try to defect as they are forced into horrible conditions.
From that article:
"He said, “We were placed in slums with a high level of violence, under constant monitoring by the Bolivarian brigades [political police], who are supposed to offer protection but also report any suspicious activities and assure that we carry out our `revolutionary' duty, indoctrinating our patients to vote for Chávez. If we refuse to do so we are sent back to Cuba.”"
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I wouldn't doubt if a percentage were. But is Cuba keeping itself isolated to where people have to defect despite no active war or combat? The US has probably closer to a million doctors from outside the US. The US relies on immigration to survive with slowing population growth and an aging population.
It's very misleading to say that "Cuba is keeping itself isolated". Each year the UN votes to end the embargo/isolation imposed on Cuba by the US, with the vast majority of countries voting in favour of ending the blockade each time.
In the latest vote, in November, only Israel and USA voted against ending the blockade. Ukraine abstained. 187 member states voted in favour of ending the blockade
Make no mistake, the US is what has kept Cuba unjustly isolated for the past decades. Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112
The US sees anything that could shake their narrative of the world as a threat, even when that 'threat' is unfounded, and they massively abuse their economic and military power around the globe to keep others in line.
Are you saying I said what you quoted?
Because I am implying what you are saying by asking about the Cuban embargo being imposed on Cuba.
I'm not a native English speaker, so there may be some nuance I miss out on. But as far as I can tell, the implication of what you wrote was
- "Cuba is isolated because it wants to be"
- "Doctors are fleeing Cuba in large numbers"
- "Conditions are bad in Cuba"
- "The US gets alot of doctors from abroad"
I have good knowledge on point 1, limited knowledge on points 2&4, and somewhat decent info about point 2. I'm not disputing points 2,3&4.
Some real death of the author type shit. I said only number 4 and I agree with your positions. I'm sure you know that questions aren't statements.
I am disagreeing with them about Cuban doctors. I think the Cuban embargo is an atrocity and a disgrace and that the US (as an American) has many doctors from different nations so why does the small number of Cuban doctors matter.
Again, the only implication you listened that's true is number 4 and that's because it's not an implication, I actually said that.
How about anarcho-syndicalism?
But the absence of classes and states surely is the same as the dictatorship of the proletariat /s
I grew up in a communist country, and I absolutely feel this way. Next question.
Everyone who upvoted the person before you, downvoted you.
Perfectly balanced