'Communist' party
has nothing to do with communism
'Democratic' party
has nothing to do with democracy
Republican fits too, but Democratic is more obvious.
schwifty_squanch 18 points a month ago
Yes... China is state capitalist... Meanwhile, here in the Burger Reich, corporations routinely get bailouts from Uncle Sam paid for by the taxes of the workers.
If China is State Capitalist, what do you consider the USA?
Signtist 12 points a month ago
Yeah, if the response to "this system doesn't work" is "neither does yours" then we agree that neither system works, and need to find one that does. And if no system will ever work, we need to find some way to live safely and securely without systems.
hanrahan 17 points a month ago
And if no system will ever work, we need to find some way to live safely and securely without systems.
one just has to look to anthropology, we know what works, the Khalari Bushmen lasted 100,000 years, The Australian Aborigine lasted 60,000 gears, we won't last another 50.
We won't go back voluntarily but we will go back
for example
Up until then, it was widely believed that hunter-gatherers endured a near-constant battle against starvation, and that it was only with the advent of agriculture that we began to free ourselves from the capricious tyranny of nature.
When in 1964 a young Canadian anthropologist, Richard Borshay Lee, conducted a series of simple economic input/output analyses of the Ju/’hoansi as they went about their daily lives, he revealed that not only did they make a good living from hunting and gathering, but that they were also well-nourished and content. Most remarkably, his research revealed that the Ju/’hoansi managed this on the basis of little more than 15 hours’ work per week. On the strength of this finding, the anthropologist Marshall Salinas in Stone Age Economics (1972) renamed hunter-gatherers ‘the original affluent society’.
mattyroses 2 points a month ago
that's the only kind there is
BlameTheAntifa 1 point a month ago
👆🏽
psx_crab 12 points a month ago
If China is State Capitalist, what do you consider the USA?
State capitalist with no tooth. The enemy of your enemy isn't always your friend, stop defending the bad of the other camp just because you hate the bad from this camp.
kkj 5 points a month ago
Fascist with some vestigial elements of liberalism (or maybe liberalism rapidly descending into fascism if you're feeling generous). In state capitalism, the state controls the corporations. In fascism, the corporations control the state.
mattyroses 1 point a month ago
going to quibble just because fascism is a reaction against a threat of a worker's movement.
That has been totally crushed in the US currently.
FlyingCircus -1 points a month ago
You are missing class context. In China, the working class control the state, and through them the corporations. In the US, the capitalist control the state and the corporations, and do fascism to prevent the workers from gaining any control over anything.
mrbutterscotch 2 points a month ago
How exacty is the working class controlling the state in China?
Plastic_Ramses 3 points a month ago
Do you... do you really think china isnt capitalist?
mattyroses 1 point a month ago
So why doesn't the US adopt their system, which is doing much better?
SirLeToet -9 points a month ago
Most hatred for 'capitalism' is specificly for "American capitalism". Even though the problem isnt the economic system, as in reality they all suck arse. Capitalism just sucks the least.
Capitalism in Europe is quite social in comparison.
mobyduck648 1 point a month ago path: 0 25829648 25833843 25834899, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
A404 1 point a month ago
yes for all the wrong reasons
mattyroses 1 point a month ago
you mean the kind that was constrained by the threat of communism?
FlyingCircus 9 points a month ago
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Marxism. While a communist society is indeed classless, it can only be achieved when there is no need for a state to defend the people from capitalist reaction, ie when communism is the globally dominant system. Until then, communist counties practice socialism, where the state is controlled by the working class, with the goal of increasing global worker power and eventually achieving the conditions where communism can exist.
Doomsider -2 points a month ago
Marxism has never existed outside of mental exercise. Every single time it has been imposed it has failed to do anything but act as a rhetoric for power and control. We desperately need something modern to look up to and we should drop Marxism in the dustbin of failed historical movements. A great idea for its time.
FlyingCircus 1 point a month ago
Ahistorical and incorrect. Marxism has never been more relevant.
Cosmonaut -1 points a month ago
Failed as in transforming lives of billions of workers and giving them path towards liberation of mankind
Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is scientific and hence it is the TRUTH.
Doomsider 4 points a month ago
You are speaking of it being more along the lines of religion. I reject this. He had some interesting things to say for his time and that is about it. We desperately need something modern and frankly Marxism fanatics are never going to move the needle.
balsoft -3 points a month ago
A nation guided first and foremost by Marxist philosophy (with a lot of modern development for sure) is currently #2 by GDP and is poised to be the main driver of human development in the next half-century at least. But sure, it's only a mental exercise.
Doomsider 1 point a month ago
Oh fuck, I hope to God your not talking about China who has pumped out more billionaires than the US for the third straight year. The one that used a planned economy to corner the global markets. They are so far from Communism or Socialism it isn't funny.
solidus 27 points a month ago
Its so obvious when progressive candidates are starting to get momentum. We immediately get back to the red scare except this time with a nice helping of Islamophobia sprinkled on. The playbook is exhausting...
DarkFuture 24 points a month ago
We are a deeply unserious joke of a nation.
Change my mind.
CitizenKong 4 points a month ago
Oh no, it's very serious, like end of the world serious.
Hueristic_Autistic 3 points a month ago
That one time when that one dude uhhhhhh 🤔. Nahhh you right!!!!!
UltraGiGaGigantic 2 points a month ago
No
Lushed_Lungfish 15 points a month ago
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 3 points a month ago
how far the line are you drawing that choppy? are you chopping the head off the piss boy? i think he got sold into servitude. you only get one point choppy.
CrimeIsLegalNow 3 points a month ago
Always gotta keep an eye on those popular generals
frisbird 1 point 21 days ago
Not really. It was a successful liberal revolution, just like in the US. It's just that liberalism trades out the hereditary aristocracy for the mercantile and financial aristocracy
Smaile 1 point a month ago
Not really, it just got out of hand later but it did make demonstratsble change in the system, even if it was under napoleon. The revution did its base job or removing the original ruleing base.
CrabAndBroom 3 points a month ago
Yeah I've been saying this for a while, I think like a lot of other animal species we have a certain way we like to arrange ourselves as a group and we pretty much always stick to that, just with different names. Essentially, we just naturally seem to end up with a figurehead leader and a little group of powerful people surrounding them, while everyone else just does their best under whatever system them impose.
Democracy = a president/prime minister and a senate/parliament.
Monarchy = A king/queen, and a bunch of lords.
Dictatorship = A dictator, usually with a small group (often a military junta or something similar) surrounding them.
Communism = A chairman and the party heads.
The Vatican = A pope/cardinals.
Businesses = A CEO and then the rest of the C-suite people/a group of shareholders.
Army = General/Sergeants or whatever
Even families tend to often have a kind of matriarch/patriarch figure, and sort of arrange themselves in the same way.
It's not a complicated system and it makes sense why we do it, I just think it's kind of interesting that we pretty much always arrange ourselves in the same pattern without even really thinking about it. It might also explain why some things like anarchism don't often tend to work out in the longer term, they don't really fit the pattern.
Even things like the internet, which started out with most websites having a more-or-less equal footing, we've gradually arranged it over time so that there's usually one big 'main website' for each thing, with a bunch of slightly less powerful but similar sites orbiting them.
thethunderwolf 1 point a month ago
communism isnt a structure of government like these
NABDad 18 points a month ago
The Republicans seem to be stumbling around helplessly trying to explain why they should get votes, but they keep using descriptions that could be turned around on them.
I'm thinking of Vance's comment at President Pedo's, circle-jerk-a-thon:
"The contrast in this election, ladies and gentlemen, it's not about this or that policy. It's about the party of common sense vs the party of the crazies."
He's 100% correct there.
uriel238 12 points a month ago
Helen Cox Richardson notes that accusation of socialism have been levied by the owner class as far back is the antebellum plantations, arguing the working class are not stakeholders and even basic infrastructure such as roads, schools and libraries were blasphemous.
The red scare started as early as Wilson, as soon as the Red Army beat the White. Wilson petitioned the league of nations to embargo the USSR simply because the ideology was a threat to capital driven industry.
I think the US public needs to deliberate if our intention is to be a public-serving government that holds everyone equal under law and values human rights over property rights. Or, if our intentions are for something else.
Right now the federal government is captured by a movement that does the opposite, with a propaganda machine propping up pro-business (anti-person) ideology, using socialism and communism as scare words.
We're seeing the end result of this as corporations have captured regulatory bodies, they are left to govern themselves as top-down feifdoms, and the working class is left choking on data center fumes, monitored by mass surveillance and unable to afford fuel and food at the same time.
(We're also seeing the US state, representing the US public to the international community, getting played by its national rivals, and our military misused and abused.)
Even when it benefits businesses to support the working class (and increase productivity, therefore profitability) businesses fall down, driven by the owner class' pure resentment of their own workforce. (This is what drives the AI dream of full automation.) To business, the economy is for them, and if they can shut out the workforce to languish on their own and starve, no sleep will be lost over the tragedy.
So the people of the US, if they don't want this outcome, need to consciously and deliberately choose to create a society that serves the people unconditionally in favor of the businesses. The public-serving infrastructure, the social safety nets, the investment into education and liberal arts, the clear establishment and enforcement of civil rights, the regulatory institutions that protect workers and consumers from the neglect and antagonism of the owner class, all follow naturally.
And that said, it means we are going to have to take business influence on government and excess hoarding of wealth extremely seriously.
And the end result may look a lot like socialism or communism, whether or not we're working towards adopting either specific ideology.
uriel238 2 points a month ago
The intentions of the corporate class, the (captured) government class, and the plutocratic class are all about world domination while, yes, including notions of liberty, freedom and representation in their propaganda rhetoric. (Or at least using them as buzzwords. I'm not sure if the typical MAGA knows what liberty or freedom is.)
But this is the reason we need to organize at the grassroots level. The goal I suggest in the US is organizing twelve million Americans under a common manifesto. It's tricky: we'd need some legal and government scholars to write it up and make it accessible to the public (and annotate it so that they understand it).
The thing is, the US seemed to (more or less) be trying to do this in the postwar economy (that is, post WWII), in which business was tightly regulated, unions were strong, the owner class was taxed heavily, and antitrust enforcement was robust. It started deteriorating in the 1970s (right around when we went off the gold standard, and Lewis Powell wrote his (now notorious) memorandum. Jerry Falwell discovered the single-issue voter, the southern strategy became full on dog-whistle racism, and Reagan won in a landslide (with a little help from Iran). The economy went K-shaped, and corruption in government increased exponentially from there.
I think most Americans want the US to be a pluralistic liberal democracy. Some people might be so sheltered as to believe it already is. (Looking at you, Kavanaugh.) But maybe we need to commit to the notion that is is what we want, but isn't there right now, and is in stark jeopardy of never being able to become it ever again (without the US turning into another thing, another iteration of society).
How to make it happen is well beyond my pay grade, but I might be able to find language that is effective for a mission statement.
Doomsider 1 point a month ago
I like what you have to say and I do think there is a way forward. We have to convince the wealthy to relent by offering them something worthwhile to trade for their wealth for. Perhaps social status or some scheme that works for them on a basic psychological level.
There are going to be winners and losers in every policy decision, the trick is making it palatable for the loserss. This is ultimately what must be decided for the current wealthy class. Ideally it should be mostly voluntary with minimal coercion. It will require new thinking outside our current common paradigms.
EffortlessGrace 10 points a month ago
No matter the political or economic system, what is to be avoided is the concentration of power, both "soft" and "hard". Alas, I'm more convinced than ever before that this is a feature of homo sapiens, and not a bug.
ExtraJudgement 8 points a month ago
I agree that social hierarchies are a feature of homo sapiens, hence why any good form of governance should be based on restricting our worst instincts. That's what the original liberalism improved with the separation of political power into executive, legislative, and judicate branches. Unfortunately, the same was not done for economic power, which - most liberal democracies - allowed to keep concentrating with few to no safeguards.
FlyingCircus 4 points a month ago
The entire point of liberal “democracies” is to provide the conditions so that capitalists could concentrate wealth and power without meddling from the nobility class of feudalism.
Doomsider 1 point a month ago
This is not a bad take, but I think there is no point other than propaganda for the simple structure of those who have the most get to get the most.
A great example of this is the French revolution that just transferred wealth and power from one ruling class to another. Democracy and Liberty is just a window dressing to this reality, a way to placate the masses if you will.
frisbird 1 point 21 days ago
Not exactly. Liberals are very consistent in what they define as liberty, it's just that this definition of liberty only matters to the wealthy. If you're not wealthy you will suffer immensely under Liberalism. This is different than what came before Liberalism. Before Liberalism was monarchy and hereditary aristocracy. They knew they were concentrating wealth and therefore they had to provide public welfare for the peasants (nobilesse oblige). But Liberals wanted that wealth to be more fluid, to change hands, and to become a form of competition where the best could win their fortune and do what they pleased with it. They really did think that not being able to buy a castle for cash was a reduction in liberty and an affront to universal human rights. But they also thought that nobilesse oblige was also an affront to individual autonomy. They wanted all peasants to be "free" to work for whoever would pay them the most, and whoever paid them would have zero obligation to them at all.
And that's what they got. The rich and the poor alike are free now. Free to sleep under a bridge or to buy a private island. Free to trade their labor for a wage or free to invest their fortunes in weapons manufacturing and hedge it with commodities in oil, gold, and food. Free to send their children to enriching experiences all over the world or to have them working two jobs and failing school to help the family survive. Free to work in coal mines or uranium mines or to buy and sell coal mines or uranium mines.
Freedom. Liberty. Achieved. Liberalism actually really believes that.
But yes, they also used it as propaganda to get the peasants to fight on their behalf.
mobyduck648 6 points a month ago
Distributism is interesting on this front I think, it's sceptical of power and wealth being concentrated by anyone public or private and instead advocates widespread ownership of the means of production.
igmelonh 4 points a month ago
I've been listening to The Dawn of Everything, a New History of Humanity the past couple weeks and it's been quite interesting. Particularly relevant to this topic is how many societies we have evidence for — through actual contact and documentation or through archaeological findings and anthropological research — that either consciously did not develop or later abolished a ruling class, whether as devolved cultural groups or even in cities of tens of thousands. Examples are given for cities in Mesopotamia, Yucatan, iirc north of the Black Sea, and other areas.
Lots of interesting stuff on personal freedom, collective decision-making, community care, agriculture and conscious lack thereof, etc.
Equinox1289 1 point a month ago
This is why you have to insure the alignment of direct stakeholders and not overly broaden it above those who are directly impacted. You never want the same guy selling your food to be the same guy that verifies that it is safe.
A Stakeholder Socialist system, I think, is that ideal as it utilizes coöp commonwealths, democratic workerplaces, muti-stakeholder and syndicated ownership models, and federated levels of oversight such that power only escalates for things necessary and narrowly at that scope like interconnected grids or safety in international food trade.
frisbird 1 point 21 days ago
The fundamental problem with stakeholder socialism isn't the ideas, it's the reality that the ideas need to supervene on. If you tried to apply this model to the USA today, there would be such a massive disparity in what we can do versus what we actually need that you would need some way to collate all the information and plan a path towards sustainability. And that's a central planning function. Remember that Marx wasn't advocating central planning because it was inherently good and exactly what socialism is. He was advocating for it because it's what is necessary to get us from where we are today to where it becomes to apply a distributed, dynamic, horizontal system like you're proposing. We all know the problems with horiontalism - existing imbalances will threaten equilibrium and horizontal attempts to address them will create systemic oscillations that will threaten the entire system's stability. Most horizontal systems collapse into a perverse vertical system with the power elite being defined by those who were sociopathic enough to destroy the horizontal system for their own benefit.
Instead, a centralized system needs to be designed and adapted over time to manage the extant imbalances in society, and indeed between the society and the larger world, until such time as the imbalances become small enough in magnitude to horizontal power structures can remain stable. But since we have literally never seen a stable sustainable horizontal system work at the scale of a single society for a couple centuries, we don't even have good theories as to what makes them stable and how they can fail and what we can about those failure modes. We need to test these horizontal systems out, gather analyses, and get empirical data about failure modes. And to do that? Yup. Central system. Unless of course we're OK with one of the failure modes being a return of sociopathy qua state bring out a new form of megalomaniacal fascism and forcing everyone back into a arms race for survival. I'm not, which is why I support a centralized governing function.
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor 10 points a month ago
WRONG.
In Magastan there are NOT two classes. There's just rich people and some subset of human waste that apparently think of themselves as people with rights (that doesn't make them people in the eyes of the only class existing there).
BlackLaZoR 8 points a month ago
And then you wonder why Trump won...
JustPlainDave 6 points a month ago
I'm curious as to why you think he won.
BlackLaZoR 5 points a month ago
He won because his promises were better aligned with voter demands. In short: Dems neglected large part of voters and he simply targeted that neglected population.
You can be cynical and say he was a better liar. Which is fair, but truth doesn't really matter in this race. It's all about promises and appearences.
edible_funk 6 points a month ago
He targeted stupid hateful people with stupid hateful bullshit. No matter how you look at it, that he won once nevermind twice is an absolutely damning indictment of the average US Americans ignorance and belligerence.
BlackLaZoR 3 points a month ago
Avg American isn't much smarter or dumber than European or Asian. Have you considered that there might be some other factors?
waterwasamistake 2 points a month ago
I think it goes deeper than that. We have a problem with hierachical thinking in general. We expect our kids to follow their leaders, without question, there is little room for kids to participate in society in a meaningful way.There is no way for them to change anything.
Than they get to an abitrary age and we expect them to suddenly transition to involved voters.
I don't believe that people raised to question why a system works how it works, who were allowed to argue , whos curiousity got rewarded, who simply had a real voice in their upbringing, would have fallen for him.
They would have learned that things are more complicated and they would trust themselves more to be able to change society than they would trust authority to fix things for them.
TenTonTruck 2 points a month ago
He won because they cheated. You can look at the results of Rockland county election where a democratic majority voter demographic did not report one single vote for Harris. "The anomalies in the presidential race include multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, but where zero voters selected the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris...." (smartelections.us)
In addition- "Plaintiffs additionally presented the Board with the first in a series of inquiries including questions about modem, Wi-Fi, or cellular connections to Rockland County's election systems; whether the county was using either Starlink's Direct to Cell service, or a program known as Ballotproof[1]; and if any irregularities in the 2024 election were reported or investigated." (smartelections.us)
It's statistically impossible and hundreds of voters from the district indicated voting for Harris. The case went to the State Supreme court and is currently on appeal. Should have been a front page story post election, relegated to the bone yard to all but those who saw it for what it was. Nevada elections (and most swings states) had similar anomalies.
Get rid of machines and hand count no matter the cost or time.
BlackLaZoR 1 point a month ago
He won because they cheated.
If cheating the elections is even remotely possible then you have much bigger problem than Trump. But there's a due process to ensure elections are fair, right?
GoofSchmoofer 1 point a month ago
I don't think it's being reported for a few reasons one of which is trump poised that well with his 2020 election fraud. Now I think there are too many people that are scared they are going to sound just as crazy as trump when they bring up 2024.
JustPlainDave 1 point a month ago
If people were dumb enough to believe him there's not much anyone can do about it other than hope they figure out they were duped.
BlackLaZoR -2 points a month ago
How about this revolutionary idea: They aren't all dumb.
DarkFuture 3 points a month ago
A fatal mix of bigotry and stupidity.
UltraGiGaGigantic 3 points a month ago
When you artificially limit the number of political parties to two, people are forced into voting against things, rather then for them.
Also it limits heavily the competition in the electoral system, which leads to incredibly weak leadership and a stagnation of new ideas and people.
Replacing First-past-the-post voting with a more representative voting system would give voters the freedom to transfer their vote if their preference doesn't win. No spoiler effect
This keeps the feet of larger political parties in the fire, lest they are replaced with more representative political parties.
But this was all stuff that should have happened decades ago. The horses have escaped the stable and the barn is on fire. None the less, this is all something to keep in mind when new countries are formed out of the ashes of what was.
Strap up and stay frosty out there strangers. Peace.
GoofSchmoofer 3 points a month ago
My guess is your intimating that trump and musk rigged the election? Because I don't think it's that far fetched of a theory.
JustPlainDave 3 points a month ago
I'm not saying they did, but I will say I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
GoofSchmoofer 4 points a month ago
Not being suspicious of a man who is notorious for cheating, lying, stealing, etc... try not to cheat, lie and steal an election that puts him in a very powerful position, I feel is lazy and dangerous.
fisch 7 points a month ago
I don't like communism. I don't like capitalism. I don't give a fuck about your petty squabbles and philisophical debates.
But I do find the imbalance of wealth power concerning and I'm supporting whoever will do something against it.
rumimevlevi 14 points a month ago
But I do find the imbalance of wealth power concerning and I'm supporting whoever will do something against it.
This is an issue related to the political and economical system that you said you don't care about
fisch 0 points a month ago
You don't understand.
80% of people will think you're an idiot if you advocate for communism.
60% of people will think you're an idiot if you advocate for capitalism.
90% of people will agree with you if you tell them the growing power of elites and the gap between the rich and the poor is a problem.
If you're trying to convince people that communism is a great idea, you're fighting a lost cause. If you use either the word communism or capitalism, you have already lost the argument and people's attention. On the other hand, if you address actual problems, people will support you. Language matters!
(Btw, I pulled these numbers out of my ass. But you get the idea.)
rumimevlevi 4 points a month ago
The majority of people a century ago though you are stupid if you support women voting. It is a shame that most people has no principle anymore and abondon easily when something is too hard
InvalidName2 6 points a month ago
It's horrific, but also amusing in its own way: So many people in the USA think socialism and communism are the same thing and use them interchangeably. It's also amusing that the administration and party that's "fighting" so hard to drum up another communism scare because of the DSA and a push for single-payer healthcare is also promising everyone a $5,000 check ... just because -- free money!
herculeskan 2 points a month ago
I think that Trump promise $5,000 to everyone due he is not gonna make It
TankovayaDiviziya 5 points a month ago
It's two sides of the same coin.
Anarchism is the best solution for everyone but i think this is only feasible in a planet where everyone shares the same values, customs and norms. To allow mutual trust and respect not to pilfer and attack each other. The best example is in Dune with the Fremens. Each communities still have local quirks and there is slight cultural differences between the Northerners and Southerners but they all aid each other and identify as one people. The threat is from outside Arakkis. So, even anarchist values would have to extend universal wide for anarchism proper to work.
TankovayaDiviziya 1 point a month ago path: 0 25835315 25841560 25841944, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
TankovayaDiviziya 0 points a month ago
Why do you take the word of someone whose ideology collapsed under its own weight? Cope.
TankovayaDiviziya 1 point a month ago
Cope
ZILtoid1991 4 points a month ago
In Hungary, healthcare privatization got called "communism" every time someone thought about doing it. Even Fidesz got called "communist" for not doing what the Reagan-era capitalism was in theory, but what the Reagan-era capitalism was in practice.
FlyingCircus 0 points a month ago
Yes, and fortunately in communist countries the “everybody else” is just the former bourgeoisie and other reactionary elements — a tiny fraction of the population.
mechoman444 -1 points a month ago
I stand against communism and socialism in general, but not remotely for the same reasons Republicans do.
The Republican and right-wing practice of using “socialism” the same way it was used as propaganda during the Red Scare of the 1950s has seriously run its course. Of course, the problem is that many of the people who continue to vote for these politicians still genuinely believe the United States is facing some kind of communist takeover. That is precisely why this rhetoric continues to work.
Just in case anyone is wondering, I oppose socialism and communism based on the principles and practical merits of those systems, not because someone told me to fear the word “socialism.” I fully support things such as social democracy and a democratic mixed economy. What I do not support is replacing a democratic, market-based economy with a centrally planned socialist economy and coupling that with an authoritarian communist government. Historically, that combination has produced some very serious economic and political failures.
At the same time, I do not support using “socialism” as a political scare tactic to advance someone else's agenda. Morally, I see little meaningful difference between Stalin using communist propaganda to serve his political objectives and a modern politician using distorted anti-socialist propaganda to serve theirs. Propaganda is reprehensible regardless of whether it is coming from the political left or right.
I can oppose an ideology on its merits without turning the word itself into a political weapon.
skibidi 5 points a month ago
What I do not support is replacing a democratic, market-based economy with a centrally planned socialist economy and coupling that with an authoritarian communist government.
You're conflating a capitalism with market commerce. Markets long predate capitalism, markets function in socialist paradigms. Capitalism does not mean democracy, authoritarian regimes coexist just fine with capitalist economics.
Communist government is itself an oxymoron because communism is, by definition, stateless.
I don't think many people would, in good faith, support a transition to a centrally planned authoritarian state - but also no one would, in good faith, be able to call such an end goal socialism or communism.
balsoft 4 points a month ago
Capitalism does not mean democracy, authoritarian regimes coexist just fine with capitalist economics.
In fact capitalism as it currently exists is the antithesis of democracy. It takes control, in the form of money/capital, away from the people and into the hands of the few business owners.
mechoman444 2 points a month ago
I definitely understand how you could interpret the two as being antithetical, but I think you're conflating the system of government with the economic system. Those are two separate things, and there are a tremendous number of combinations that can exist between the two.
In fact, democratic capitalism is one of the dominant political-economic arrangements in the world. And some of the countries that combine capitalism with the most extensive welfare states are the Nordic social democracies. They maintain market-based, capitalist economies while using taxation, regulation, labor protections, and extensive social programs to constrain some of capitalism's more destructive effects. The OECD explicitly describes the Nordic model as demonstrating that a strong welfare state can coexist with strong economic growth.
That's where I think democracy becomes particularly important. In principle, democratic institutions should give the public the ability to regulate and rein in the excesses of capitalism rather than allowing economic power to become so concentrated that it begins to dominate the political system.
And that's ultimately the concern I have with the United States: not capitalism itself, but what happens when concentrated economic power becomes sufficiently influential that it begins to undermine the democratic mechanisms that are supposed to regulate it.
UltraGiGaGigantic 2 points a month ago
And that’s ultimately the concern I have with the United States: not capitalism itself, but what happens when concentrated economic power becomes sufficiently influential that it begins to undermine the democratic mechanisms that are supposed to regulate it.
This is the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. People who support capitalism are like that crazy guy who lived with bears. It doesn't have a happy ending no matter how good it is to have cute bear pets.
For example, Glass Steagall was an important regulation that capitalism eventually removed from itself through the capture of the government by the 1%. This is not a solvable flaw. The best you can do is make end stage capitalism your child/grandchild's problem. It isnt very nice of you to treat your future decendants like this IMO.
balsoft 1 point a month ago
I think you’re conflating the system of government with the economic system
I am not. An economic system can also be democratic or non-democratic, same as a political system, depending on who it is primarily controlled by. Both are intertwined and influence each other. Capitalism is not a democratic economic system on its own (since "the people" definitionally do not control the economy), and it is also incompatible with a stable democratic political system.
In fact, democratic capitalism is one of the dominant political-economic arrangements in the world.
What you are describing is usually called a "liberal democracy".
In principle, democratic institutions should give the public the ability to regulate and rein in the excesses of capitalism rather than allowing economic power to become so concentrated that it begins to dominate the political system.
This is precisely what Marxists call "contradictions of liberalism".
The social tenets of liberalism preach equality before law, human rights, the rule of people, and consent of the governed. To be clear, all good concepts necessary for true democracy.
The economic tenets of liberalism (a.k.a capitalism) establish the primacy of private property, including private property over capital. (there are other tenets as well, such as a "free market" but they are not as important to this discussion)
The two are simply incompatible. Private property over the means of production definitionally gives control over economy to those who own that property. This is fundamentally antithetical to the social tenets of liberalism, and this contradiction can not be totally resolved within the framework of a liberal democracy. Even ignoring imperialism, "regulated capitalism" is an unstable equilibrium even within a closed society, a band-aid that will eventually have to be torn off one way or another; for as long as a society upholds private property as its economic model, those who control capital will be able to accumulate it exponentially, eventually being able to simply brute-force their way into politics through corruption or nepotism to remove whatever limits may be set on their power — even one slip-up can be enough to disturb the equilibrium and start the downward spiral into fascism, see the socio-political effects that Nixon had in the US.
Thus, for a society to achieve a stable political democracy, private property must be eschewed and relegated as a secondary mode of production, at least initially. Whatever that system would be, it would not be capitalism.
mechoman444 1 point a month ago
Agreed.
But I am definitely not saying that capitalism equals democracy I'm simply saying that I would be opposed to replacing the system that we currently have with socialism as a market I specifically did say that I support social democracy and by extension Democratic socialism.
So not entirely sure what it is that I'm completing here.
Zensate 2 points a month ago
It's funny because no ideology will work if the people are corrupt, and no ideology will fail if the people have character.
They're using divide and conquer to make us fight each other over concepts, when what we all really want is people in power with character and accountability - which is the one thing they won't give us regardless of system.
I'll take a good man with a bad ideology over a bad man with a good ideology any week in any era.
mechoman444 1 point a month ago
I think George Carlin said it best garbage in garbage out.
pirate2377 -2 points a month ago
Don't most communists claim they want to eliminate class though? Capitalists enbrace it while communists pretend that their government gets rid of class, so this framing is misleading.
0x0 6 points a month ago
What happens is that authoritarians wrap their fake promises in "communism" because it's what actually appeals to most people, only to drop their facade once in power.
Then idiots point and say Ha! See? Communism evil!
pirate2377 -1 points a month ago
Kinda an inevitably under communism though. If the people who run a communist government stops actually believing in communism after being a couple generations removed from the revolution, what is exactly going to oppose them when they absolute power over their citizens?
Thus why the communist governments we've seen end up being contradictory. You could argue that we try to achieve communism by establishing a stateless society like marx adovcated for, but then how is communism going to be enforced without a state? With a state though, they end up being the very upper class that communism seeks to eliminate but this time with a centralized force of power.
pirate2377 0 points a month ago
I dunno, it seemed like the post was arguing in favor of communism to me, but I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time I misintrepreted something and got everyone to turn on me, lol
captainlezbian 1 point a month ago
Capitalist ideology sees class as unavoidable and so it strives to make it meritocratic and unstable. This was a radical idea in an era of nobility or castes, but ultimately resulted in the merchant class basically seizing control of society.
Communism strives to eliminate it entirely, but you wind up with some leaders being insincere or incapable of letting go of power. But you also have the fact that it's difficult to completely eliminate class.
stenAanden -5 points a month ago
Do not delude yourself into thinking the class divide in the US is as bad as in the east block countries.
stenAanden -2 points a month ago
Nah, because there are plenty of powerful middle class in between him and a homeless person.
Furbag 0 points a month ago
What power do you think the middle class wields? Our paltry life savings can't buy us a politician or a judge, but to the billionaire elites, it's pocket change to do so.
There are only two classes in America. The Owner/Donor class, and everyone else. If you aren't one of the upper echelon, any power you wield is illusory and can be revoked at any time as soon as it is no longer convenient for you to exercise it freely.
stenAanden 0 points a month ago
And you think this difference is on the level of the USSR
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Most governments with the Communist in the name, are just state run capitalists
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