Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
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labor vouchers
Or as normal people call it, “money”
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So every company remodeled after REI, got it.
How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
I, a socialist don’t. I think however they should be tightly regulated. And kept away from basic necessitys.
Markets have proven time and again to only serve oligarchs, or create oligarchs to serve. When left to their own wont. If we can choose to participate or not in the markets. Then there is no issue with markets. When we’re slaves to the markets as we currently are however. No one is free.
Markets have lots of issues; you just named a bunch. Markets are subject to all kinds of hidden information manipulation contrary to prompting non cooperation and solving for individual maximums via exploitation like you literally outlined. Your wish to magically regulate them is just going to be corrupted.
Which is why I specifically mentioned decoupling from necessities. Regardless it seems like we are both blocked from the community LOL. But it’s not like I expected more from the community based around memes
Cool, what is your preferred replacement and does everyone in this thread agree? You have managed to continue criticism but not offer a replacement yet again.
The ole can have criticism without perfect solutions response. Cool, how useless and pointless of you.
I’m confused, isn’t criticism without alternatives itself useless and pointless?
No, it broadens and deepens understanding.
Alternatives come from that understanding. Criticism is the fundamental step towards alternatives.
No, it broadens and deepens understanding
How exactly do you come to that conclusion?
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
“thing has specific shortcomings” is a useful criticism.
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Did… did I say they couldn’t? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
So ah… What’s the issue then? You can have what you want under capitalism. Attacking the system is forcing your own on others. This is unironically what makes socialism unpopular in the context of history.
Did I attack the system in my comment or did I give a bare bones breakdown of what socialism is?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892938
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892727
Maybe even check my other posts in this thread to get a better idea of my opinion on this instead of jumping to conclusions.
They said it in the first comment
they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
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You’re asking people with little to no resources to take on people who have all the resources.
You don’t seem like you understand modern capitalism.
People will donate a significant portion of their wages to ineffectual radical politicians but won’t bother to consolidate capital to support co-ops. That’s the actual system I see.
What poor people do you think are donating wages to “radical politicians”? Have you ever met any poor people?
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Wanna loan me $850,000 so I can start my own business? If it works I’ll pay you back in 20 years.
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Banks frequently do.
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I don’t have access to the same network of third world slaves that Starbucks does.
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You do realize that coffee beans grow in the tropics… right?
They aren’t growin em in fuckin Seattle.
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Typically they will want collateral such as your home for a large loan.
You know the great majority of people don’t have any such collateral, right? Holy privilege, dude
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Own outright? Or have a mortgage?
Even if, hypothetically, 65% of people owned their homes outright, that’s still over a third of the population who can’t even consider getting a loan like you described.
And for those that COULD, they’re betting their entire life on it. People with money can afford to take risks. It’s not an even playing field, at all.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
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Ok now I know you’re a troll. And a liar.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
Ergo, troll.
I’m done talking with you.
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Do conservatives on lemmy ever do anything but whine that they’re not immediately worshiped for their opinions?
Conservatives seem to do that everywhere, no matter where they are. Just look at the website formerly known as Twitter… All it has is right wing shitheels and they’ve turned on each other for not worshipping each others opinions. Hell Musk just blocked Catturd2.
Hey,… blocking “is” disabled.
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They (the trolling kind) definitely had a system going on Reddit, they haven’t figured it out yet here though.
On reddit, they whined until the mods started protecting them and every “civility” rule became a “don’t sass the nazis” rule.
Hopefully lemmy’s mods are better than that.
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Do conservatives
on lemmyever do anything but whinethat they’re not immediately worshiped for their opinions?Fixed
Wtf is an uncorrupt government?
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
Serious question. Is it possible to do this with very large populations? It seems like it might get inherently more complicated with several tiers of government (federal, state, county, city, etc…)
It definitely feels like Dunbar’s Number is a gate to keep this from being effective in large communities.
If we can’t view more than a finite amount of other humans as being “real,” how do we begin to get massively large groups of humans to care for one another? This is a question I don’t have the answer to.
Honestly I believe this to be a way more important issue to discuss than the whole capitalism vs socialism vs communism vs whatever else argument. If your ideas can easily be perverted by corruption then it won’t work.
I have some ideas but I’m just some idiot on the internet. I think you need checks and balances. Have at least two groups with similar power at odds with one another. One example is corporation vs government. But I don’t think just 2 groups is good enough. Ideally you probably want 3 groups at the very least. I know many governments around the world already uses this sort of structure internally (eg different branches of government), but I don’t think these solutions take into account the existence of mega corporations that can act across country borders.
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“Military Intelligence”
Two words combined that can’t make sense 🎵
I think you will find any place thats well moderated and cracks down on bigotry and hatespeech will skew left.
Weird how that is, huh?
Most would agree with your point - right up until you suggest that having an “uncorrupt government” is remotely possible.
Pretty much the same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
There, now I’ve pissed off everyone lol
Edit: Except, I guess for the hardcore capitalists, but I assume those guys are all too dumb to read, so no point, really 🤷
Edit: Except, I guess for the hardcore capitalists, but I assume those guys are all too dumb to read, so no point, really 🤷
same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism from authoritarianism.
Capitalism is not “when you have markets.” I totally agree that it’s important to have well regulated markets. But capitalism perverts democracy with bribery and lobbying. Democratic Socialism is when you have a democratic government and a democratic economy.
Democratic socialism and capitalism can coexist. As long as the former significantly neuters the latter. Capitalism is (supposed to be) an economic organization, not a political one. It’s just captured the government in the US and other places.
It’s just captured the government in the US and other places.
That is a core function of capitalism, not some crazy coincidence. There are market economy models separate from capitalism.
There’s only one kind of democratic economy and we already have a word for it - it’s socialism. If the means of production isn’t owned by the workers it’s not democratic. It’s not socialist.
And when democratic government turns into direct democracy socialism turns into communism
Exactly markets aren’t the distinction, communist and socialist democracies all have markets. A really interesting model of that was Allende’s Project Cybersyn in Chile before the US sponsored fascist coup that put Pinochet in charge. There’s highly regulated markets within capitalist countries as well, bulk energy is largely very “designed” and regulated markets.
The Marxian view of socialism would consider it as a transition state between capitalism and communism. While someone may be ideologically communist, they will likely have more political opportunities catering to socialist policies in capitalist democracies with a “left” party. Revolutionaries don’t believe this is possible, and argue capitalism’s structure won’t be threatened by socialist policies unless a revolution occurs, and might even consider comrades who support socialist parties as “not real” communists. Germany’s socialist party supporting ww1 is often used in forms of this argument.
Ultimately in a lot of these capitalist democracies, there are individual leftists but no real political power, this is certainly the case in the US. Working to raise class-consciousness and labor organizing is basically the front of whatever left exists there. It’s a bleak time to be on the left, and sometimes I wish I could have the enthusiasm of the self-righteous liberals who naively think that if everyone regardless of identity was distributed equally in the capitalist system everything would be right and fair.
There are hardcore liberals around here too. That’s what you get when there isn’t an algorithm to promote fascists.
My experience has been the opposite. I’ve found that the majority of users tend to lean towards neoliberal and center-right ideologies. I guess most of them are probably American, so their warped worldview has them considering these ideologies as ‘left-wing’ instead 🙃
Where are these people you’re talking about, because all I see is a sea of red.
Because those of us that are center-right/right believe in less government. I wouldn’t trust the US government with my dogs health, let alone my own.
Cumming to my relentless trust for insurance agency middlemen.
You don’t have to worry about that if you have a good job with premium health insurance.
America is a sink or swim country and there’s no life gaurd on duty. If you want socialism/communism, just move to China, Russia, North Korea, or Cuba because that shit ain’t gonna happen here.
Sorry
The fact that public healthcare probably won’t happen is different from the argument that we should trust predatory insurance companies.
Plus you don’t have to go to China for public health care. You could go to Canada or the UK, obviously. And they’re capitalist as fuck. Although capitalism will likely get rid of their public healthcare eventually, they haven’t succeeded yet.
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The problem is that a middle class, can only be a middle class if it’s in between an upper class and a lower class. It’s in the name: MIDDLE class.
I wish it was just “towards the left”.
I’m very much on the left socially and left of center economically, but even I feel like every other comments section on here reads like some insane tankie commune.
It’s always a weird flavor, too. Like “I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT.”
For some reason it just makes me think of Dennis on 30 Rock. “Fiscally liberal, socially conservative.”
I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT
Where did you see that?
It’s a bit of hyperbole, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear aren’t far off.
A lot of their users believe that Russia is a communist state, not some crony capitalist society that would make Bezos blush. They also seem to really love Trump for some reason.
Where did you see someone saying Russia is communist and where did you see some unironically loving Trump?
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I just really dislike the whole left/right tribalism. Politics is a lot more complex than left/right and just marking someone as either just increases polarisation…
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Thats just economics, and there is more to it than simply socialism vs capitalism.
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You’re actually the one infantilizing the divide in this case and I’m saying this as a socialist myself.
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“Both sides bad” is a bad take when applied to economics. In that area, one side is clearly superior. However, when it comes to politics as a whole, specifically social values, the other commenter is right. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m crazy about the right’s social values or anything, but I am very critical of some of the stuff the left is promoting lately (and no, I don’t mean just chronically online liberals).
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There is not such thing as middle class, pure sophistic. There are
only2 classes, proletariat and bourgeoisie.The statement in the image is just loaded with terminology that comes with a lot of baggae. It’s no surprise people tear into it. Can’t speak to whether that makes them leftist or just poly sci students.
“Uncorrupt” misunderstands the nature of corruption. How do you envision resolving the interests of the forces that give validity to said government while still keeping a capitalist structure?
“Generate wealth” presupposes a specific kind of wealth created by the government and given validity by the capitalist structure. You win at the rules of the game you made up. “Middle class” has a similar problem. “Prosperity” to a nation starving under the global capitalist regime might look quite different. Why use one benchmark over the other? Because of the game you want to choose.
Imma be honest bro I don’t understand most of your comment
.ml? I always thought it was for Marxist lenninist.
But that could have been tongue in cheek
I related ML to Machine Learning, since tons of ML tools hosted in .ml, it turns out that it was just a free domain from Malasia.
Mali but yeah. I thought it stood for machine learning too.
There’s Marxist-Lenninists, and there’s Lenninist-Marxists, and both groups hate each other… Much like the Monty Python sketch…
I’m lower-left quadrant but always cop a fair amount of shit from others on ‘the left’ (nebulous term though it is) for my feelings on capitalism. The people I speak to have never seen anything but corruption, and have a combo of zero faith and utter hatred for it.
My personal feelings are that with strong, enforced checks & balances, capitalism can be combined with socialist policies to create a fantastic standard of living (see Norway), without it becoming cancerous. Unfortunately most of our western political systems (and capitalism is strongly influenced by political systems) seem to be run on a wink and a nudge, an assumed sense of ‘fair play’ which we all know has been shown to be worthless in recent years.
Strong unions; an educated populace; politicians who actually give a shit; this is what we need. But, capitalism has an absolute stranglehold on the populace of most western countries via print / tv media. The foxes are in charge of the henhouse and the hens are getting shit on.
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Yeah yeah two parties bad we fuckin know but talk to us when both sides start hard shoving for the removal of human rights. Talk to us when Republicans stop gerrymandering voting maps because they know it’s the only way they’ll get elected.
It’s not fucking both sides it’s one side actively shitting all over the country while the other side gets blamed for it. Meanwhile half our citizens have been so dumbed down that they can’t remember any Republican scandal longer than 5 god damn minutes.
bUt HeR eMaIlS!!
BuT hUnTeR bIdEn!!
bUt TrUmPs DiCk Is So TaStEy!!!
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I’m not from USA, but from the outside in, it’s pretty obvious what Biden can, and can’t do. You have to take his achievements (which there are many of, unfortunately the dems don’t seem to be very good at trumpeting their actual good works) with the pinch of salt that they haven’t had the control in the senate they need to enact the policies they like. Enough people vote for 3rd party or feel fatigued / despondant like you, that they didn’t get the actual control of senate, and lost the house in midterms.
Whether it’s slow walking (or blocking) appointments, fake dems like Sinema, dems that have to be stupid-capitalist to maintain power (Manchin), they’ve just not had the numbers.
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My quality of life improved dramatically when I moved away from Republican led areas and into Democrat-led areas.
Ergo, you are wrong.
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I moved to California, so, almost another country.
But I was speaking more of the state and local governments, which have more of an impact in my direct life.
However I think anyone who was able to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition would probably say a Democrat president has directly helped their quality of life, possibly in that they would have no life at all without that Democrat president. Just for one example at the federal level.
except our bad two party system.
Well, and the corporate owned media with a hypercapitalist agenda, all the lobby organisations, the lack of proper public education for centuries, red-blue-whitewashed historytelling, the oppression of the black minority, a deeply flawed election system, the imprisonment crisis, and related the opiod crisis, gerrymandering, not enough unions, the fucked up healthcare situation itself…
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Luckily, I live in Europe. I got free healthcare, free education, have okay workers rights and not so much rising facism than you gals and guys overseas.
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What logic?
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You can have socialist policies without being a socialist society. Our (UK) NHS is a socialist policy, free healthcare at the point of use. My country is decidedly not socialist!
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I said free healthcare at the point of use, not free healthcare. And it’s nothing like your US systems, I was personally charged £0 for my emergency appendictomy surgery, £0 for the ambulance ride, and £0 for the hospital stay.
What matters is the ability the allocate resources according to the needs of us all and that people have confidence in future resources to be happy. Private ownership is contrary to the first; it helps with the second. That is any “capitalism” must be limited to pertonal needs.
