But imperialism is really cool if you’re on the benefiting end of it
This question is being posed to centrists and conservatives, right?
Liberals too, I would imagine. Maybe even SocDems.
Oh time for my link
Frame Canada
Wendell Potter spent decades scaring Americans. About Canada. He worked for the health insurance industry, and he knew that if Americans understood Canadian-style health care, they might… like it. So he helped deploy an industry playbook for protecting the health insurance agency.
I want to kick the dude in the face
Not from “the west” from “the rich”. There are rich people in every type of economy that use their money to gain more power. One of the many ways that is done is with propaganda to convince those with less that the rich in power are not the problem.
Just look at the oligarchs in Russia.
Not every economic system, economic systems that place significant barriers against ballooning of individual wealth off exploitation see less disparity, and thus less of an impact of money on politics. Beaurocracy becomes a new kind of power currency, which is why much of the Politburo in the USSR was corrupt, though its worth noting that their disparity levels were lower than currently in the Russian Federation.
The Russian Federation’s “Oligarchs” are a spooky word for Capitalists that dodges the fact that they are Capitalists that took advantage of the collapse of the USSR to gain massive outsized power and wealth. The Russian Federation is Capitalist, not Socialist.
Not every economic system, economic systems that place significant barriers against ballooning of individual wealth off exploitation see less disparity, and thus less of an impact of money on politics.
You say not every economic system, but then you say less disparity, less impact.
Less disparity means there is still disparity. Less impact means there is still impact.
Because like I said, as long as there are human beings who want more power, there will be a struggle in any economic systems to prevent disparity.
That is because it isn’t the economic system that deregulates or undermines protections.
It is those who seek more power who deregulate and undermine protections.
And those people exist in all types of economic systems.
Even capitalist America had a point in history where disparity was low and the middle class and lower class thrived.
That is no longer the case because of those who removed regulations and changed the laws to suite themselves. And again, those people exist in every type of economy.
I did not say you could not eliminate the influence of money on politics, did I? You did. I countered it, and now you’re implying that it’s impossible to completely get rid of.
You can account for bad actors and power-seekers woth egalitarian distribution of power and a prevention against gaining in power.
You can account for bad actors and power-seekers woth egalitarian distribution of power and a prevention against gaining in power.
How? Without stating how this is accomplished, you’re response is only really saying,
‘you can account for bad actors and power-seekers by living in a perfect world where bad people don’t exist’
If there were an economic system that achieved that it would be a utopia. I don’t know of any utopias on earth.
Equal ownership of the Means of Production. Socialism.
There are still hierarchies in socialist economies. Thats why there is still disparity in socialist economies.
Do you have an example of one of these socialist societies where everyone has equal power?
What hierarchy? Statist hierarchy? That’s why the goal of Socialism is Communism, and nobody has reached Communism yet. Do you think we live at the end of history?
Hey, that meme looks familiar…
It’s true, but with Russia or China in charge, it would be even worse.
Removed by mod
I hate to be the one to break this to you but the Berlin Wall fell. Russia is capitalist.
Russia always was capitalist, that’s kind of the point of Animal Farm. If you look at the company towns of the Kentucky Coal Miners historically, it’s the same structure as the Soviet Union: the company (or the state) owns everything and enslaves the workers. One used debt, the other pretended to represent the proletariat, but the ruling class extracted labor from the workers and only supplied them the minimum necessary to survive. Lenin was a reactionary pretending to be a revolutionary.
Wouldn’t really call what Putin or Xi has going on communism though, would you? They both operate stock exchanges and broadly private enterprise that systematically subjugates their working class while they constantly feel the need to expand their territory and purview of economic sway abroad. To me that sounds a lot like what we do when we talk about our capitalism.
Xi yes, Putin no. Both are Authoritarian on the Y axis, but Xi does actually dictate a Communist country on the X axis.
Xi kinda killed the illusionary pooch (diplomatic and economic) by shutting down Hong Kong.
Do you guys even understand XY axis over on solarpunk or do you just think that refers to sex?
I kinda wonder.
The political compass is literally a propaganda tool created by right wing “libertarians.” It’s complete bullshit.
Well that answers that at least. Found the new lemmygrad.
Lemmygrad is tankies, which is exactly the point. You can’t tell the difference between anarchists and the people who murdered them. The political compass exists to create that confusion, equating “libertarianism” (by which, they mean right wing “libertarianism”) with the original definition of libertarian socialism.
Even the choice of “libertarianism” as a name was intentionally chosen to confuse things, to steal a word and destroy it’s meaning. IIRC, Murray Newton Rothbar literally said that he was intentionally stealing the word “libertarian” for the right. The whole thing is about propaganda and confusion, and the political compass is part of that.
its a dictatorship pretendintg to be an oligarchy pretending to be a democracy. i would call it ‘captured democracy’.
but its just a dictatorship with extra steps.
It’s what I expect from these kind of people. Everyone in leadership is there for power, and they are all surrounded by others who benefit from them being in power. Almost all of them are not good people with good hearts.
Humble people with good hearts don’t seek these positions in life. So the conclusion must be that humanity will always be under these kind of leaders.
Or we could not have leaders. You know, if leaders are all bad people, let’s get rid of them
Every day I stray closer to being an anarcho-communist
Join us. We have knitting circles and cookies. It’s great. You get all the existential dread of knowing what the fuck is wrong with the world, with the added full knowledge that the things that could fix it will likely never happen because we missed our chance at a revolution before the people in power had nukes, and now even if you convince everyone that it would be better that way, those in power will straight up nuke their own people before allowing them to govern themselves, destroying whole swathes of the planet, along with unreplaceable history and culture.
Plus, there’s a nifty æsthetic, and a range of really good music from folk to metal.
Hi, just checked your profile and first blog entry. How enchanting! ;-) what does joining do? Allow us a blog space?
Aww. You may be the first person to actually read my blog. Lol. What is your question about joining?
You’ve very helpfully put your finger on exactly what holds me back. If I found myself believing in a lost cause, I couldn’t bear to go on. I am too close to despair as it is, so I will spare myself the small indulgence of certainty.
The trouble is knowing that it isn’t likely doesn’t stop it from also being true. I’m also of the opinion that just because full communism isn’t likely doesn’t mean we shouldn’t advocate for it, because any move toward liberty, freedom, equality, and the general principles of anarchism and socialism are good things. You don’t come to the table with your compromise, you come to the table with what you know you can’t get, and negotiate to something possible.
Do I believe communism is possible within my lifetime? No. Do I believe it possible at all? Absolutely, not only in the sense that if we did it it would work, but that we can and likely will do it, eventually, if we survive long enough. Do I believe it’s worth fighting for, even if I’ll never see it? Yes. Because the work itself is enough to improve lives, and the more people who throw their lot in with the far left the more likely we are to see real, substantive change for the better, even if it is incremental.
Also, sorry for the 4am wall of text. Haha
Lol, european here from country that got buttsexed by ussr back in the day. Fuck off with communism. Period.
However. Socialism is something hella important and should baselined across the world. People need safety net in their lives.
Funny thing is, if you say “socialism” where I live a lot of people will bare they fangs at a commie. But shorten it to social and all people think of is said safety net. Suddenly no problem. Heh.
Socialism is not “Social Safety Nets,” and if you were knowledgeable about what you were talking about, you would hate Socialism and attempts at Communism. Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and the USSR was a Union of Societ Socialist Republics.
The USSR of course isn’t the only form of Socialism, and isn’t the only method to achieve Communism, but what you just said makes absolutely no sense.
You do realise your aversion to communism is just the same as Americans, right? Like the USSR has more in common with the Nazis than any actual implementation of a classless, hierarchical less, stateless system.
Shit, like the name is literally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
To quote Stalin himself from a 1936 interview with Roy Howard
Our Soviet society is socialist society, because the private ownership of the factories, works, the land, the banks and the transport system has been abolished and public ownership put in its place.
[…]
Yes , you are right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society.
Re-think your fear of the word communism and wonder why you’re fine with socialism despite it literally being what the country you rightfully dislike called and viewed itself as.
tl;dr: Communism good. USSR bad.
It fit USSR interests to say that they were the standard bearer of communism back in the day. It fit US interests to say exactly the same. Neither had any reason to think about how the word was used prior to the USSR and if it actually applies at all.
It’s no wonder that people who lived behind the Iron Curtain have just as bad an understanding of communism as people in the US. The USSR certainly didn’t want you reading theory outside of Marxist-Leninist material.
It’s similiar, not the same. From what I recall, Americans didn’t have their country violently buttfucked behind a curtain, something that is still visible where I live - thankfully less so in the country itself, but it’s still embedded into people. And I don’t fear communism. I despise it. I do admit, maybe unjustly. Hard to feel otherwise though, seeing effects of one of the greatest, or at least highest scale shots at it’s implementation.
However, yeah, my definition of socialism must be fucked, will educate myself further before making fool out of myself again. :|
I’d quite happily argue that the USSR never tried to implement it in the slightest.
Can you imagine the politburo actually fighting to give up their privileged position? I can’t.
To be quite honest, it seems to me - and I can be wrong - that it simply substituted power of wealth for power of position. Where I live I know that during occupation people were deemed as important based on where they worked - because where they worked dictated what they could
stealobtain, be it items, access or favors.There always will be someone on top, one way or the other. In capitalist society, it’s the guy who has the most money. In co- … socialist…? society it’s the guy with most connections.
Because there is not a way for communism to work… sounds great on paper but always ends the same.
There’s no way for people to work together without someone at top benefiting?
X.
You can doubt it all you want, but communism’s fatal flaw is humans. They will always want more.
Why is it bad for people to want more in Communism? Do you think once a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society would be reached, people would want to regress?
Communism has never existed. What about it sounds good on paper but is separate from reality?
I don’t agree with you, but I just wanted to give you kudos for reading another viewpoint and admitting you could be better educated on the subject. This is the internet I want to see.
The problem is that people point to the problems of the USSR and say it’s because of communism, but when the USA does similar things, it’s just them fucking up, not because they’re capitalist. It’s a double standard hinted at by OP.
The problem with the USSR was not that they were communist. I think that communism worked well for them, which magnified both their successes (beating nazis, reducing poverty, increasing literacy, getting to space, etc), but also magnified their mistakes (suppressing religion, art, etc).
Like the USSR has more in common with the Nazis than any actual implementation of a classless, hierarchical less, stateless system.
What’s your point exactly? I’m not reading some poorly written 10,000 word essay to try to figure out what you’re wanting to say.
So it’s actually a pretty interesting read but I think this paragraph gets the idea across pretty well:
(Obv out of context)
Most current antisemitism in Eastern Europe is closely related to these debates, as nationalists strive to “fix” their nations’ collaboration (or in the case of the Baltics and Ukraine, participation) in the Holocaust with revised paradigms that equal everything out. One of the poisons of ultranationalism is the perceived need to construct a perfect history (no country on the planet has one of those). Another is hatred of local Jewish communities who have memory, or family, or collective memory, of nationalist neighbors turning viciously on their neighbors in 1941, and of the Soviets being responsible for their own grandparents or parents being saved from the Holocaust. In America, this would be akin to someone hating African Americans for having a different opinion of Washington or Jefferson because they were slaveholders.
Okay, now I’m just confused as to the relevance of it being commented in response to my comment.
Hey man I’m just a third party don’t look at me
A Jewish linguist/historian/activist talking about how equating the Soviets and the Nazis is rhetoric used to justify current and past antisemitism including holocaust collaboration.
Ah, so it’s being used as chud fud.
My comparison of the two stems from their harsh authoritarian/totalitarian nature as seen from an anarchist lens, nothing to do with genocide.
Yeah so the thing is you’re still doing it, the whole “authoritarian” thing is another way of doing a false equivalence between the two.
If you want to do an anarchist critique compare the USSR to bourgeoise democracies, it is a closer comparison.
To do so would be to ignore the worst elements of the USSR, so I don’t know why I would do that.
Believing that the Nazis, who systematically gassed millions as a part of their ideology, is at all akin to any of the atrocities committed under the Soviet Union is historical revisionism in order to downplay the crimes of the fascists and, what you can clearly see in this thread already, foster anti communist sentiment with barely a reason why.
I don’t think about this at all. My parents are from the former Soviet Union and I actually heard from them how life there was (mostly not great).
Also I think tgat fearing socialism is a very American thing.
What was not great about it?
LOL! “What was not great about the Soviet Union?”
That’s the sort of thing I might expect to hear from a teen with broccoli head syndrome.
For me the main problem with the USSR was that they abused beautiful dogs to create cyborg creatures out of them, in a horrifying attempt to create cyborg soldiers.
The USSR was a developing country, and generally lacked luxury commodities, and depending on era, had a mostly unaccountable Politburo and a lack of food in the early stages.
By metrics, the Russian Federation has relatively recently surpassed life expectancy of the USSR, and now has more open travel and access to western commodities like smartphones, but you’ll find many older people in Russia who wish the USSR never collapsed (the majority, in fact), though again that’s also partially due to nostalgia for being an important global power.
I was asking them what their parents didn’t find so great about it.
I’m not OP, but I can certainly give you my story from Hungary. Not USSR in name, but USSR enough for the distinction to be moot.
Story starts with parents and grandparents. They were around when the soviets put Rákosi into power. He installed communism - everything belongs to the people! Including our fucking house. My grandparents often retold how police came one night, told them their house now belongs to another family, and they were told to get lost by morning. They could bring whatever they could carry with them, but they had to leave all the farming equipment, all the animals, pretty much all their belongings behind. The few hectars of land and our animals all belonged to the Producer’s Union anyway, we lost all rights to them virtually overnight.
Not that it mattered. The things you produced? Since everything belongs to the people, police would come and take away whatever quota the party set that year. Even if we produced it, it’s not ours after all. We may or may not got some of it back, depending on what the allocations were set. Usually not - famines got common, becuase noone cared too much about their work if it got taken away anyway. It got so bad that the good communist people people revolted against Rákosi.
Then came Kádár. I actually lived in that system. Shortages were commonplace. At the start things were strictly planned (later on they opened up to allowing people to work for their own benefit… strictly after they put in their required hours at their workplace, though). There were five year plans, though for what I know, those were mostly for propaganda. But since there wasn’t a free market, the planning bureau would decide how many tractors, shoes, bread etc would be produced. Well, this never worked out well. If you wanted to buy fruits, toilet paper, anything, you would need someone to tell you when the shipment would come. Then you got in line early and hoped the stock wouldn’t run out by the time you got your turn. And you bought whatever you could, because if you had excess toilet paper and your neighbour had none, you could barter for something you needed.
We wanted a car. So we applied at the state car dealership (Merkúr). We paid upfront, waited a year… and got a totally different brand of car in a different colour. We were furious, so we demanded our money back and purchased a second hand Lada Samara from someone in town. It still wasn’t what we wanted, but I’d have rather burnt my money than give it to Merkúr at that point. Turns out the Lada Samara 1300S was a great car though, I shouldn’t have sold it like twenty years later :(
We wanted to build a house. Only everything was in short order. We had to drive three-four towns away, buying bricks and ceramic tiles left and right until we had enough that we could start construction. We didn’t build what we wanted; we could’ve paid for it, but we had to build whatever we managed to find in stock around.
Now I know people called us the “happiest barracks” because say Caucescu in Romania was way worse… but people who are so fond of actual socialism should remember that our people were risking getting shot to escape this system.
Fair enough, haha.
All the time
While I like the idea of socialism to an extent, it hardly has an appealing track record.
How so? Do you think tools turn people evil or cease working if they are owned by the collective?
What track record are you looking at, the one I’m seeing is a much lighter shade of gray than the capitalist track record.
Canadian here: socialism has been a part of culture since the outset. Even Americans have social systems in place to support the population. Many don’t recognize it as such, but it’s there.
One of the many outstanding examples of this is fire fighting. Everyone just assumes that the fire department is there and normal, but it’s socialist. In the early days, fire departments were more privatized and several may show up at a blaze to basically quote the property owner to put out the blaze. This was widely inefficient at a time when spending more time to discuss the business of firefighting would take away precious minutes from the job of firefighting and it would put lives and property at risk for every minute the start of firefighting activities were delayed.
It was pretty much unanimously acknowledged that putting out a fire is more important than figuring out who is going to pay for it, or do the job; so social infrastructure was made common for fire fighting. Given that it would risk not only the structure and lives of those involved in the blaze but also that of the surrounding structures and the lives of those who lived/worked in those structures, is obvious why government/social fire departments exist. They are there to save the life and limb of those involved in a blaze and do their best to prevent as much property damage as possible from such an event.
It’s very nature is socialist, by the people, for the good of the people, paid for by the people. This is, however, still more of less unanimously agreed upon as a necessary thing.
Canada has extended this to healthcare, since doing an emergency, like a life threatening wound or condition (cardiac issues are a common one to cite), time is essential. Going to an “in network” hospital, like the Americans may need to do, could add minutes or even hours of travel time between getting to the patient and getting them to the care that they desperately need. That time could mean the difference between living through it, and dying on route. So we have socialized healthcare too, no matter where I am in Canada, or what the closest hospital is out who administrates it, I can get the help I need immediately, at no cost to me. This saves lives, but it mainly saves the lives of people who would otherwise not be able to afford healthcare, or to have a healthcare package that allows for any hospital to provide care. This has been extended, in Canada, to cover more than just emergency situations. So pretty much all my basic care is covered.
This is socialist and one of the things that America seems to be very strongly opposed to. This leads me to believe that the fire department situation is less about saving lives and more about saving property. To put it crudely: “I don’t want my (thing) to be damaged by the fire happening with your (thing).” (Kind of mentality)… At least on the part of regulators. They’re okay with fire departments since fire can spread and create a bigger problem, including a problem for those who control the government. Meanwhile with healthcare, the problem is your problem and they don’t want any part of paying for your ability to resolve it. In this assertion: property > lives.
Most liberal/left/communal focused people (myself included) are more focused on the greater good for all, not just for you, or your loved ones. We want what’s best for the majority of everyone. The people on the right are usually very capitalist and focused on what benefit do I get? above all else. They get no immediate benefit if you’re in good health or survive a major medical issue. There are long term benefits from having a healthy, educated public, but it’s all long term thinking that seems to escape most capitalists. “Why pay for something now hoping for a benefit later?”
Additionally, the benefits are a paradox, that you’ll certainly get the benefit, but usually in the lack of long term costs, so the benefit is forged in the form of not losing money in the future, which, quantifying a lack of losses that didn’t happen is nearly impossible. This was recently demonstrated in the analogy of rat poison, which some of you may be familiar with: “why do we have all this rat poison around? I haven’t seen a rat in years! Stop putting out rat poison, it costs us money and serves no benefit” then later: “where did all these rats come from?”
You continue to pay for and cover people for their safety and security, and you don’t have to deal with replacing them. You don’t suffer those negative effects of not having their help, and that’s a hard thing to prove when it didn’t happen.
Capitalists, from my experience, lack this kind of theoretical thinking, only benefiting from the experience of making a bad decision to remove the rat poison, only to have their entire company overrun by rats causing a more significant loss than if they had simply continued to pay for the placement of the poison. That experience and thinking is dangerous when it comes to policy, as many people need to die before the losses are realized.
The recent loss of a large portion of the population due to this same short term thinking during COVID, is going to have ripple effects on the job market for decades. People who would otherwise be alive, well, and ready to work, are either suffering with life long illness, or a serious case of death, and it creates a worker shortage.
Workers who were happy to keep their jobs at a minimal pay increase are now being replaced by people who are demanding better conditions and pay. Which only serves to emphasize the struggle between companies and their employees. That struggle has been ongoing for decades or more.
I’ve seen rather poor job postings for my line of work, go unanswered for weeks because the company is offering too little for too much work, and have a reputation for overworking their employees. An extreme example of this is from Amazon. They’re facing a shortage of people who are willing to cope with their insane working conditions. They’re burning through the workforce at an unprecedented rate by demanding too much and providing too little. Their own internal analytics have identified this as a problem, and they’re not doing enough, quickly enough, to curtail it so they don’t end up with nobody who is willing to put up with their shit for what they’re paying (specifically referring to warehouse and delivery workers here).
It’s an ongoing problem and it’s borne from the extreme capitalist way of doing things: burning through willing workers until none remain, all in the pursuit of profits in the short term.
The only way that Amazon has curbed the issue is in contracting out their delivery system, bringing on dedicated delivery contractors, and professional delivery companies like FedEx and UPS (or similar) who can “pick up the slack” for not being able to hire enough drivers to fulfill their orders.
Amazon is a good case study on capitalist business practices and the values of capitalists. But I digress.
Social services, and social/socialist philosophies will always be better at/for long term planning, while capitalist systems will be better in the short term. The two will always butt heads on what’s important because they focus on wildly different things. Many capitalist Americans bring this business philosophy home with them; they don’t, and will never support something that doesn’t have a clear and direct benefit to them, and will continue to advocate for personal responsibility of anything that doesn’t and cannot affect them directly, believing that doing otherwise will unreasonably increase the costs of the systems they use for those benefits and unreasonably benefit those they see as competition on their imaginary “ladder of success”, which will, to them, unreasonably and unjustly elevate those who have not earned it, to a better position on the success ladder, which may, as a side effect, cause their position to become weaker as a result. They’re better than those who can’t afford what they have, and they’ll fight with every tool they have to ensure that those whom are less than them, know that they are less. That may be in the form of denying them healthcare that they need but cannot afford, or wages that they cannot otherwise earn because of either job scarcity (or simply the scarcity of jobs offering more), or that they don’t have the education to earn such a position.
They’re “better” than others. Those that want stuff that doesn’t benefit them are idiots and their “lessers”, and should be “put on their place” to them.
This is, at its heart, thinly veiled classism, driven into the masses by propaganda, and reinforced by the ruling class, aka celebrities, the affluent, and government officials. The “Elite” class has convinced their lessers to fight the fight for them.
IMO, the only way to break someone of this thinking is to attack the root cause of the thoughts, that you’re not better than your neighbors and the people you would consider to be less than you are. That we’re actually all part of the “masses” and we, as the “masses” are in a sustained and ongoing fight with those that consider all of us to be their lessers, aka, the “elites”. Only when they recognize that we’re not fighting eachother or vying for some imaginary “rank” in an objectively unfair system, will they ever understand that social services are not only good for everyone, but a requirement for everyone. We all will have slightly more or slightly less than everyone else, and those slight differences are nothing compared to how much more the affluent “elite” class has by comparison. Having 0.01% vs 0.009% of the wealth of any one of these “elites” isn’t significant enough to divide us in terms of purpose. We are the people. The government is supposed to serve the people. It isn’t. Stand up and take action.
That’s fine, I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.
Have a good day.
I’d like to point out that the majority of people on Lemmy 100% think about this. Hence how many up votes it has :p
“Most powerful empire the world has ever known”
Lol Americans
The Romans conquered the known world with pointy sticks and diplomacy.
The US hasn’t been on the winning side since ww2 despite having nukes and spyplanes.
Even the British Empire spanned the globe, and all they had was cannons, rum, and syphilis.
But if they fought I’d bet against the pointy stick guys and the syphilis guys.
Are you claiming that Victorian England could take modern America in a fight?
Did they have taco bell tho
Rome wasn’t the most powerful empire, merely the third longest lasting; the Assyrians and Egyptians had a run that puts Rome to shame, and the Khans wielded far more power than any individual emperor.
The US is just the only world power left in modern time that could deploy anywhere within 24 hrs with more than just a strike force (and they can do so far far harder than any previous “empire”). The US “empire” is based on deployment potential, banking, and diplomacy. Nukes are just the key required to gain entry to the table so you don’t get wiped at deployment.
Bricks is literally the alliance trying to match US power and still hasn’t. This is mostly a barrier to entry problem rather than personal power, but it does stand that no previous empire could match the modern US in millitary, finance, or diplomacy.
But hey give it 50 years we are doing our best to shit on two of those.
Yeah they may not incorporate other countries like previous empires, but their sphere of influence is undeniable unfortunately.
By “socialism”, are we talking:
A. Worker-controlled economic system, or
B. What American liberals think is socialism, ie just a capitalist state with welfare.
Aka socdem vs demsoc
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism[1]
[1] Eatwell & Wright 1999, pp. 80–103; Newman 2005, p. 5; Heywood 2007, pp. 101, 134–136, 139; Ypi 2018; Watson 2019.
1 ↩︎
In practice, social democracy takes a form of socially managed welfare capitalism
Today I learned that Socialism is when you do Capitalism in a nice way.
Oh wait, no I didn’t, because Capitalism and Socialism are completely different modes of Production.
No, they’re not.
They’re economic systems, not modes of production.
Today, you’re still refusing to accept reality.
It’s right there before your eyes. You’re too brainwashed to see it.
In your own words, they are economic systems. What do you call a system built on Capitalism, but with a slightly larger welfare net? Socialism? No, you call it Capitalism.
You’re calling me brainwashed for correctly pointing out that Capitalism is Capitalism, even if you dress it up nicely?
“system built on capitalism”
You still don’t even understand what I mean when I say you’re conflating “capitalism” and market economies.
You think when people buy and sell things, that’s “capitalism.”
Is Finland a social democracy? Yes
And what does this say about what school of thought does social democracies belong to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
#Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism[
“wää wää wää no it’s not socialism, it’s capitalism, but I refuse to believe it and I don’t have to explain myself”
- you
Please define socialism for me.
Because this an official definition
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or REGULATED BY the community as a whole. “we want a real democratic and pluralist left party—one which unites all those who believe in socialism”
Even the US has socialist policies, because “pure” capitalism is completely unworkable, because it kills the economy stone dead
Believe me, I’m not conflating Capitalism with markets. Capitalism is a specific form of market economy by which individual Capitalists buy and sell Means of Production, or Capital, by which they can pay Workers to use and create commodities via wage labor.
Examples of Socialist market economies include Market Socialism, a form of Socialism built on competing worker-owned co-operatives.
Examples of Socialist Market Economies do not include Capitalist Social Democracies, because the primary defining feature of Social Democracies is Capitalism with generous social safety nets, a kind of “human-centric” Capitalism.
You on the other hand are making the misconception that Socialism is simply when the government does stuff. You’re wrong, of course, as countless people here have pointed put.
Capitalism with regulation is still Capitalism. Socialism is when Workers share ownership of the Means of Production, simple as.
OP is definitely in camp B…
Why? OP clearly states “worker controlled systems,” it’s not difficult to see what they’re talking about.
Neolibs are very easy to spot, comrade.
I agree, but nothing in this post is calling for deregulation and privatization, rather the opposite.
Worker-controlled economic system
“Worker-controlled” isn’t a requirement.
Socialism is wheb and the government owns or regulates the means of production.
Which brings me to your “B”.
No, we Nordics aren’t “capitalist systems with strong welfare policies”.
We’re socialist nations with strong market economies. Market economies =/= capitalism.
We have stronger regulation of the means of production. We’re also social-democrats which is a school within socialism.*
There are specific definitions and I’m sticking to them. If your economy has capitalists controlling companies with workers trading their labor for a wage underneath them, then it is capitalist, full stop.
Unless your economy is full of co-ops or something. I don’t know the common typical structure for a nordic company.
You haven’t even read a single “basic definition” my man.
Here’s one :
Socialism
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages
socialism
noun a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned OR REGULATED by the community as a whole.
If your economy has capitalists controlling companies with workers trading their labor for a wage underneath them, then it is capitalist, full stop.
Youre refusing (or unable, lol) to understand that “capitalism” does not equal market economies.
Selling things doesn’t mean capitalism. Trading goods doesn’t mean capitalism. Owning a company doesn’t mean capitalism. Having companies with workers doesn’t mean capitalism.
Jesus fucking God I’m tired of explaining concepts that my 8 year old niece could google and learn by her self in five minutes
“unless you have a planned economy you’re not socialist”
Yeah, exactly the point I’m making. Brainwashed morons think socialism means full planked economy, when it’s no such thing.
Fucking spend 2 min on Google, is it so much to ask?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
Fucking perpetuating shitty 70’s red scare propaganda mf sides are hurting.
I said nothing about a planned economy, now you’re putting words in my mouth.
Ever hear of libertarian socialism?
“I never said anything about a planned ecnoomy”
Unless your economy is full of co-ops or something. I don’t know the common typical structure for a nordic company.
You’re really pretending that talkign about cooperatives isn’t referring to communism? What are you, 12?
And what, you think co-ops didn’t have hierarchies?
What the fuck are you smoking, because I want to be equally fucked up.
If you’re going to continue to insult me and gaslight me, we are done here. Have a good day.
How am I “gaslighting” you?
You literally said “Unless your economy is full of co-ops or something [it’s not socialist]”.
You’re referring to the collectives of the Soviet union. A distinct feature of PLANNED ECONOMIES.
“I never anything about a planned economy.”
Yes, you did. And now you’re pretending you didn’t. Like pretending reality isn’t what it actually is. Trying to convince me something that happened didn’t happen. Is there a word for behaving like that…?
How is fascism in your country btw? Seems that capitalism has it fine to me.
Nope.
Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.
The Nordic Countries are in fact Social Democracies, not Socialist Democracies. Social Democracy is Capitalist in nature.
Wrong wrong and wrong.
Honestly, why won’t you do 30s of Googling to check what you’re saying?
Communism is when the state owns the economy and you have a planned economy.
Socialism is the ownership OR regulation of the means of production.
Yes. We are social democracies.
But no, social democracies aren’t capitalist, dingdong. Let’s look at the very first sentence here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
#Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism[1]
#WITHIN SOCIALISM
You’re just conflating market economies and capitalism, like I already explained
Your greatest source is misinterpreting a line in Wikipedia? You think that means your Capitalism is actually Socialism despite relying on Capitalism, because the welfare net is larger? Lmao
“I refuse to look or acknowledge any data on the subject, so I’m correct”
Is the little kiddo having to backpedal and ignore the facts because he made a bit of a boo-boo in his rhetoric?
Please do elaborate on how I misunderstood something such as: “Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism” to mean what it says. Im sure you’ve a really good reasoning on how it ACTUALLY means that “social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within capitalism”
Your data is Wikipedia. That’s it. Read perhaps any Socialist literature and you’re immediately debunked.
If Social Democracy was truly under Socialism, then the Workers of your country would own the Means of Production.
A more accurate reading of what you are claiming is that Social Democracy takes influence from Marxism while rejecting the conclusions and thus the necessity for Socialism, instead relying on Capitalism.
Tell me, plainly, how you can have Socialism with Capitalists and Capitalism. Or, does Nestlé not exist in the Nordic Countries?
“yOuR dAtA iS wIkIPeDiA”
No, it isn’t.
Here’s my source: Eatwell & Wright 1999, pp. 80–103; Newman 2005, p. 5; Heywood 2007, pp. 101, 134–136, 139; Ypi 2018; Watson 2019.
Want to go and read those books? No? I’m schocked.
The information from those books is listed on Wikipedia, yes. Are you so childish that you’ll now pretend “you can’t find real information on wikipedia”?
Weirdly enough, you don’t have ANY sources for the things you pull out of your arse. Almost as if you didn’t know what you were talking about and didn’t HAVE any sources for your faulty claims, because like I said, you’ve conflated market economies and capitalism and think socialism equals communism, because you don’t understand communism is just one form of socialism.
“How can you have socialism with capitalism”
Since I’ve already explained you keep conflating “capitalism” with “market economies”, the question is then translated into “tell me, plainly, how can you have socialism and market economies”, for which the answer is really quite simple for anyone literate. However, since you also conflate “socialism” with “communism”, then the question becomes “how can you have communism with market economies”, to which the answer is “you can’t, since communism relies on planned economies instead of market economies”.
That’s where your confusion comes from.
Due to our good regulations because of our social demoractic, well governed economies, capitalist companies can participate, but they can’t do the shenanigans they can do in less regulated markets. The degree of regulation is the question. Even the US doesn’t have “pure” capitalism. Things like the antitrust laws are by definition socialist policies, but this doesn’t mean the US is socialist in any way. It just means even they understand the necessity of regulation over “pure” capitalism, because “pure” capitalism is unsustainable as it leads to monopolies which then kill the economy.
This is why for example I can actually drink my tapwater and eat raw eggs that don’t even have to be refrigerated. This is why the quality of all products here is higher, and why it’s more expensive for companies like Nestle to try their bullshit here, which is why they mostly aim for developing countries. To avoid the regulation that comes with properly functioning social democracy.
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