cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10351845
This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/
Most people know about the end states. How you get there is way more important. Gotta get to communism without becoming a dictatorial hell scape like ussr or China.
The two main avenues are slow change through existing means and violent revolution. The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
Look at Project 2025. That’s a fascist takeover plot that has a plan for future government. No one really takes it seriously, unfortunately since it could happen. so even fewer will take other plans seriously.
The two main avenues are slow change through existing means and violent revolution. The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. (…)
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of Russia. (…)
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the Man of To-morrow.
- Emma Goldman, Afterword of My Disillusionment in Russia
That’s brilliant. I’m going to save this.
prefigurative politics!
this is why i like syndicalism, it’s sort of a hybrid of the two resulting in a fairly fast soft and nonviolent revolution if enough people join in.
unionize, have the unions take over the businesses, stop running things for profit, bish bash bosh socialist state.
dictatorial hell scape like ussr or China
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia is a great book that goes into this, a lot of the terror during that period was not Stalin personally going around and shooting every peasant who had more than 5 rubles to his name (during the rare moments he wasn’t personally eating everyone’s grain). Rather it was the people using the new system to settle old scores or for personal advancement.
The book doesn’t cover the period between 1917 and 1923, or the Hundred Flowers Campaign in China, but you can see similar sentiment in transcripts and letters when Lenin, Mao, et al look at how many people had gotten into the party entirely for the purpose of abusing their positions for personal gain.
At a very general level, we can infer any socialist country is more democratic after the revolution based on the fact that the government pursues the interests of the people more than it did before the revolution.
In Cuba for instance, their last constitutional referendum had a 90% approval rating. Do you think that happened by chance, or that you are simply unaware of/trained not to recognize how the people determine the actions of the state?
Rather it was the people using the new system to settle old scores or for personal advancement.
Lenin, Mao, et al look at how many people had gotten into the party entirely for the purpose of abusing their positions for personal gain.
How was that allowed to happen? Did they build a system of oppression that was ripe for takeover by petty tyrants, some of whom became actual, fully fledged tyrants, whilst simultaneously shutting down the mechanisms by which workers could have power over their own lives?
This isn’t about whether Stalin personally gets into heaven, plus the absurd strawman that people think he did anything personally shows a complete lack of systemic thinking, which was ironically one of Marx’s great contributions to political thought. It is about whether the systems we build are liberatory or oppressive.
I’m not watching a youtube video.
Did they build a system of oppression
No, such a system already existed, evidenced by the famines, massacres, etc that happened almost yearly in China and Russia before the revolutions.
What I’m getting at is that while the post-revolution states weren’t utopias, they were far better than what came before. Telling people otherwise only serves to prolong the status quo.
Also they kinda did have a government ready to go in the case of the USSR, the Soviets.
simultaneously shutting down the mechanisms by which workers could have power over their own lives
Except they had and used those mechanisms, as evidenced by the massive improvements to the average person’s lives after the revolution.
the absurd strawman that people think he did anything personally
Apologies, typically when I see people doing anti-communism use the term dictatorial, they mean a single person exercising absolute power. Though I don’t understand why you’d consider a dictatorship of the working class “hell”.
There was no dictatorship of the working class. They defanged the Soviets - you know the workers’ councils that the USSR was named for.
You don’t have to watch a video, here’s the script text for the entire series:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary
MLs love reading, don’t they? Oh but wait, that’s anarchism. Go ahead, tell me it’s beneath you and I should read On Authority. I have. It was underwhelming to put it nicely.
And yes, the system they built was on the back of and patterned after the authoritarian monarchist regimes they followed. That’s not a favourable light to put that system in. Was it marginally better than a monarchy? Sure, why is that relevant to anything? We live under neoliberal regimes of which none to my knowledge has ever been toppled by an ML revolution.
That ideology is centuries out of date. Anarchists saw its downfall before it started. It’s failed.
Even if you’re combatting some bizarre strawman about absolute dictators, it’s equally bizarre that your response is to attempt to rehabilitate Stalin’s character. That puts you squarely in tankie territory.
MLs
?
thx
Assuming you’re trying to ask what that term means, it’s short for Marxist-Leninist, it’s a polite way of referring to tankies, where you accept their rebranding of what is effectively Stalinism. It was after all Stalin’s term to coopt and puppeteer the legacy of two dead men to give legitimacy to his reign of terror. They will try to tell you there are principled MLs but if they think there is any merit in the concept then they are doing the same kind of historical revisionism that all tankies do.
And you can see this person was in fact clearly trying to defend Stalin, if only indirectly.
Edit: Also look at the username - they’re from lemmy.ml, where the .ml is the Mali country code but in this case it definitely also stands for Marxism-Leninism. It’s a tankie instance.
been spending too much time reading about machine learning sorry but ty for the (now obvious) explanation.
probably time for bed.
I’m not watching a youtube video.
Why not?
The way they feed you information is patronizingly slow, and while I’m not expecting a widely cited academic paper published in a reputable journal, Youtube essays are one step below shitposts on internet forums in trustworthiness and academic rigor.
Guess we’re watching different video essays, then. Most are edutainment at best, true. But there are *soy many with cited sources on youtube.
I gave them the text as published on the anarchist library, but they didn’t seem to appreciate that either. It’s almost like they just don’t want to learn history that isn’t their revisionist version of it.
The latter all but guarantees an autocratic takeover if the revolutionaries don’t already have a new government ready to go. Which is not something I’ve ever seen even touched in when people talk revolution.
The expectation that revolutionaries aiming for a future without hierarchy, states, or class should have a plan for exactly those ready to go is how you actually get the autocratic takeover - because you’re maintaining the existing systems of power for the sake of taking comfort in the familiar (or worse - as a deliberate ploy by those presenting themselves as “in charge” to grab power).
The whole point of a revolution, from an an-com point of view anyway, is to start building something new from the bottom up, horizontally, abolishing hierarchy and power structures, not just replace the existing ones with our own.
The fact that people can’t even begin to imagine a different way of living, even though our existence under kings and masters has only been a blink in human existence and civilisation, just goes to show how well the indoctrination works, but better is possible once you start unlearning constructs you’ve come to accept as facts.
am open to social democrat processes that have provided many EU countries with worker rights, health care, education etc.
not really liking the tankie / biden genocide / climate indifferent takes.
these things are not the same.
A few things to address:
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There is plenty of room between “Social Democrat” and “Tankie”; and social democracy is still capitalism. I don’t know exactly what idea you have of Europe, but we’re not free from corporations.
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I don’t know if that is what you are implying, but accusing Biden of supporting genocide does not make someone a tankie. Plenty of countries have condemned Israel and accused Israel of genocide or “committing genocidal actions”, are all of them “tankies”?
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Republicans are (for the most part) Liberal Conservatives, the Dems (for the most part) are Liberal Progressives. They are all capitalists. Biden vs Trump has nothing to do with this conversation.
and social democracy is still capitalism
Literally the first sentence on social democracy:
#“Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism”
##“within socialism”
Maybe keep reading:
By the post-World War II period and its economic consensus and expansion, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to orthodox Marxism. They shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform as a compromise between capitalism to socialism.[108]
In Britain, the social democratic Gaitskellites emphasized the goals of personal liberty, social welfare, and social equality.[111] The Gaitskellites were part of a political consensus between the Labour and Conservative parties, famously dubbed Butskellism.
You can also look at European countries which are social democracies, and you will see they are all capitalist countries. Here, also from wiki. I can tell you here in Portugal we have 2 parties which, according to the wiki, are also Social Democratic parties, and they are also the only two parties who have ever been in power. I can tell you first hand, I live in a capitalist system. According to the wiki, the UK’s Labour Party “is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as being an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists”, do they seem socialist to you? And before you claim that they are because “they also have democratic socialists”, that would mean that by transitive property, USA’s Dem party is a socialist party. I guess the USA is socialist after all!
Maybe actually try to understand what you’re reading?
You have this idiotic notion that all socialism is somehow government-planned economies and that all market economies are automatically capitalist.
I honestly can’t express my sincere disappointment at how common that shit is.
You can also look at European countries which are social democracies, and you will see they are all capitalist countries.
I’m Finnish, and we are a socialist country, by definition. This isn’t even a remotely controversial thing to say in Finland, but weirdly when one engages people on mainly American forums, the black-and-white “no that’s communism, you’re capitalist countries” red-scare garbage comes out. And yes, I understand you’re Portuguese, but that doesn’t prevent you from having these asinine notions.
You’re literally arguing that the very first sentence on the Wikipedia article on this exact subject, “social democracy”, is not only wrong, but in fact the truth is actually the polar opposite of what it says. I… I just fucking can’t with you people.
Here are literary references to back up the statement in economical theory literature that social democracy is indeed a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism:
Eatwell & Wright 1999, pp. 80–103; Newman 2005, p. 5; Heywood 2007, pp. 101, 134–136, 139; Ypi 2018; Watson 2019.
Now I’ll wait for you to source your “social democracy is capitalism” bullshit, which you won’t, because there are no sources for anything remotely confirming that.
ou have this idiotic notion that all socialism is somehow government-planned economies
Imagine saying I don’t understand what I’m reading, and then accusing me of having “this idiotic notion that all socialism is somehow government-planned economies” when I never came close to saying that. I’m a Libertarian Socialist, jackass. Please go be disappointed at yourself.
Sounds like you don’t even know the basics of what capitalism and socialism are. Do people in your country work for private companies? Do the people who own them make all executive decisions, reap profits, and pay (as little as they can) for other people to actually work? Are people able to use capital to buy into those companies and be in charge and reap the profits? Then that isn’t a socialist country. Having social welfare and regulations doesn’t make it a socialist country.
You are arguing that “socialism”- something that has always stood in opposition to everything I just mentioned - can be used to describe a country that operates like a capitalist country because an article on Wikipedia has one sentence that says so.
Here are literary references to back up the statement in economical theory literature that social democracy is indeed a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism:
Eatwell & Wright 1999, pp. 80–103; Newman 2005, p. 5; Heywood 2007, pp. 101, 134–136, 139; Ypi 2018; Watson 2019.
You literally just copied those from the previously linked Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is your source, I don’t believe you’ve read a single word from any of those works - nay, from any of those people. My sources: Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto, The Conquest of Bread, and others, but above all, the real fucking world I live in. Edit: oh, and I guess I’ll also add the others parts from that same Wikipedia article, the ones I quoted previously and you ignored.
“I never came close to saying that”
The fact that you don’t understand your own implications is pretty much the problem here. Whether consciously or not, you conflate the terms “market economy” and “capitalism”, which is quite as silly as thinking cell growth = cancer.
I’ve read actual literature on this, and I’ve this exact “discussion” literally hundreds of times. Stomp your foot and cry all you want, that’s not going to change the actual literature of economic theory.
Are people able to use capital to buy into those companies and be in charge and reap the profits?
See, this is exactly the implication that all socialism is somehow some authoritarian communism. You just can’t understand how poorly you’ve perceived this. So you write things which argue that using currency makes a place capitalist in some way? That’s the real name for what people used to buy things; currency. Not capital, as when you’re living from paycheck to paycheck, you don’t have capital.
“My source, Communist Manifesto”
Your source for what? The modern definition of social democracy? You’ve never even held a copy of Das Kapital let alone have read it. I can assure you, Marx does not write “oh and social democracies are forms of capitalism, bruv”.
Because they aren’t. And you’re arguing that modern actual literature on the subject, which is quoted on the very first sentence on the article about social democracy actually don’t matter, but your haphazard pretentious Lemmy comments should be taken as fact?
Thanks for the laughs, big guy. :D
I’ve read actual literature on this
Sure, yet all you could do was copy past the wiki sources. You sound very well read!
I’ll make simpler so you can understand - hell, I’ll even play the wiki game with you!
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2] as opposed to private ownership.
Here are all the sources for that according to the wiki:
spoiler
Busky (2000), p. 2: “Socialism may be defined as movements for social ownership and control of the economy. It is this idea that is the common element found in the many forms of socialism.”
Arnold (1994), pp. 7–8: “What else does a socialist economic system involve? Those who favor socialism generally speak of social ownership, social control, or socialization of the means of production as the distinctive positive feature of a socialist economic system.”
Horvat (2000), pp. 1515–1516: “Just as private ownership defines capitalism, social ownership defines socialism. The essential characteristic of socialism in theory is that it destroys social hierarchies, and therefore leads to a politically and economically egalitarian society. Two closely related consequences follow. First, every individual is entitled to an equal ownership share that earns an aliquot part of the total social dividend… Second, in order to eliminate social hierarchy in the workplace, enterprises are run by those employed, and not by the representatives of private or state capital. Thus, the well-known historical tendency of the divorce between ownership and management is brought to an end. The society—i.e. every individual equally—owns capital and those who work are entitled to manage their own economic affairs.”
Rosser & Barkley (2003), p. 53: “Socialism is an economic system characterised by state or collective ownership of the means of production, land, and capital.”;
Badie, Berg-Schlosser & Morlino (2011), p. 2456: “Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.”
Zimbalist, Sherman & Brown (1988), p. 7: “Pure socialism is defined as a system wherein all of the means of production are owned and run by the government and/or cooperative, nonprofit groups.”
Brus (2015), p. 87: “This alteration in the relationship between economy and politics is evident in the very definition of a socialist economic system. The basic characteristic of such a system is generally reckoned to be the predominance of the social ownership of the means of production.”
Hastings, Adrian; Mason, Alistair; Pyper, Hugh (2000). The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford University Press. p. 677. ISBN 978-0198600244. “Socialists have always recognized that there are many possible forms of social ownership of which co-operative ownership is one…Nevertheless, socialism has throughout its history been inseparable from some form of common ownership. By its very nature it involves the abolition of private ownership of capital; bringing the means of production, distribution, and exchange into public ownership and control is central to its philosophy. It is difficult to see how it can survive, in theory or practice, without this central idea.”
Interesting, uh?
Wiki says Soc-Dem = Socialism
Wiki says all parties that have governed my country are Soc-Dems
Wiki says Socialism = socialy owning the means of production, opposed to private ownership
In my countrie most companies are privatly owned, and the government has actually privatized previous national companies
It’s almost like you have to use critical thinking and can’t just take things you read on Wikipedia at face value!
I’d say thanks for the laughs as well, but arguing with extremely ignorant but simultaneously extremely arrogant people is anything but fun.
Now, quit acting like you’ve ever read anything other than the Wiki, and go to your local library to pick up a book. I’ma ignore you from now on, because there’s clearly nothing left to be gained for this conversation.
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I relate to this, but I keep trying to tell people that we need to get a clear diagnosis of the problem and figure out how we’re going to get out of this bind.
Ultimately, Biden is currently on track to lose. He’s been losing in the polls all year, and alarmingly, he’s insisted that he isn’t going to make changes. He’s staying the course.
Those of us who want to avoid a Trump dictatorship need to find a way to change this dynamic, and I don’t see any way that complaining about Biden’s disaffected base fixes this. I don’t think complaining about Biden fixes it either. I think he’s made peace with losing. So what will?
The Democratic establishment – the campaign managers and staff in particular – can largely tolerate a Trump dictatorship more than the loss of status. “Leaders of the Resistance” is okay with them. “Collaborators” or “nobodies” isn’t. If Jill Stein hits 15% in the polls and starts drawing major crowds, I thik this would be such a painful shock to the self-image of Democratic campaigners that I think this could dislodge the race and force Biden to reconsider his approach, and hopefully campaign for president the way he did in 2020.
If you don’t want Trump, don’t blame the left. They aren’t the primary source of his polling collapse. That’s coming from moderates who see no vision or benefit. And the Democratic party’s most popular agenda items are all leftist anti-corporate stuff. So criticism is all that I see saving us from Biden’s terrible judgement.
Ultimately, Biden is currently on track to lose.
If you don’t want Trump, don’t blame the left. They aren’t the primary source of his polling collapse.
See, your premise is faulty so your conclusions - built upon this fault - are doomed.
Polling is fucked. Literally, the polling we’re seeing (and saw in 2020) is worse than useless in so far as it doesn’t inform the public and deliberately distorts the ground game.
If Jill Stein hits 15% in polls we’ve wandered into bizzarro world and all bets are off anyway.
. So criticism is all that I see saving us from Biden’s terrible judgement.
…?
- like when he cut insulin to $35, literally saving lives?
- saving the economy,
- forgiving school loans,
- stood up for unions & labor (FIRST PRESIDENT TO EVER WALK A PICKET LINE),
- increased overtime for millions,
- ended federally subsidized discriminatory mortgage lending,
- went after airlines, cable companies, phone companies, concert ticket sales and hotels for their fucking ridiculous hidden fees!,
- brought back net neutrality,
- he’s gonna try to tax billionaires!
Look I don’t like the old shit, I’ve never been a fan and would prefer bernie but this is where we’re at: if you can’t look at that list and admit that holy shit the old squint seems to actually have some handle on the situation you’re disregarding reality.
And if you think Jill fucking Stein would do better you need to stop huffing gasoline Charlie Kelly.
Bruh.
Your arguments are totally wasted on me. I’m not saying he hasn’t done good stuff. I’m saying that he’s running a losing campaign, and so far has been totally unwilling to change.
Regarding polling: I don’t know how to get through to you that he’s losing. If you’re not accepting reality, then we’re fucked. Are you going to reject the election results too? It’s not really even in the margin of error most weeks, he isn’t even close to having the votes he needs in the states he needs to win. I can’t believe we’re replaying 2016 when we’ve already been through it. Wake up: we’re on a collision course and need to change direction NOW.
Regarding his achievements: These are largely great. Which just makes it so much more painful that no one knows about them. He’s never been a skilled candidate, and unfortunately getting older has not done him favors. If he had a really strong campaign, he could certainly win, but if you give a guy who isn’t good at the fundamentals of running bad support and bad guidance and a muddled, poorly delivered message, we’re going to wake up under President-for-life Donald Fucking Trump.
Did people forget that he was president? He won. It’s like I’m in groundhog’s day, and no one knows that we already ran this simulation, and the result was terrible.
If Jill Stein hits 15% in polls we’ve wandered into bizzarro world and all bets are off anyway.
We are already in bizzarro world! The leading candidate is a known fascist/rapist/felon, and the current incumbent is the most unpopular president in contemporary history.
People don’t even remember that Trump was found guilty of rape last year, because it’s not even newsworthy because he keeps quoting Hitler. And he is CURRENTLY IN THE LEAD.
Smash the glass and pull the alarms! All bets ARE off! This is a god-damned crisis, and repeating why BIden SHOULD be winning is pure copium. Put down the pipe and put on a pair of comfortable shoes, because saving America is going to need actual organizing work! And that starts with accepting that we have a problem.
I’m not saying that we need to make Jill Stein president, but we need something to convince Biden to either let someone else take the nomination or start running like he means it. He (and you) need the loudest possible wake-up call or mark my words: Trump WILL win.
I don’t know how to get through to you that he’s losing.
show me some facts. show me what will override women saying “FUCK THIS” re: ROE and vote them out, like they did in the midterms. I don’t think you’re looking at the entire picture
remember when the polls all promised a red wave? yeah
Smash the glass and pull the alarms! All bets ARE off!
ah yes, let’s panic and run around having a last-minute candidate change lol, that’ll fucking help. or they can continue to let trump be trump while he rapidly implodes.
edit: bruh shut the fuck up right quick didn’t you?
You know, Bertrand Russell might say that in the present moment, you’re the one who needs to demonstrate some facts, but I’ll oblige.
National polls: Losing, consistently.
Key state polls: Biden is losing, in some states by shocking margins.
The midterms: The polls were dead on. A red wave was predicted by pundits who ignored the polls. This was easier to do because a lot of elections were close, and hundreds of close elections make predicting the overall breakdown in seats very hard, but the specific polls were all historically accurate. Polling the presidential outcome in key states is much less unclear. In all the most important states, he’s either losing badly or it’s a toss-up, favoring Trump. I don’t know of any precedent for a polling error massive enough to explain polls like this without Biden being significantly behind. That could change, but it won’t as long as Biden and his enablers keep denying the reality of our dire situation.
The effect of Roe: the polls already capture this. It isn’t like people answer polls without factoring in Roe, and then suddenly remember it at the voting booth. Biden IS already getting the benefit of Roe, and the current terrible poll numbers are how he performs WITH this benefit. He’s historically unpopular. If he were running in 2016 against a conventional candidate, he’d be getting Carter or Bush numbers. These numbers are WITH his advantages.
Here is a question for you: WHY??? Obama had a tough election because he had a brutal economy. HOW is Biden not a runaway favorite to win? Why in a time of low unemployment, following the passage of highly popular bills, against a reviled opponent is Biden even struggling? Even if you don’t think he’s losing (again: it’s really not subjective, he’s objectively losing right now), explain to me why it is even close? What story do we tell ourselves to make sense of the obvious wrongness of all of this? He is doing worse than Hillary in 2016 by a lot. I don’t know how anyone can claim that this is not an absolute catastrophe in the making. Expecting Trump to implode is crazy. He just went through a primary, and he mopped the floor with everyone. Everyone already knows that he’s a monster. What do folks think there is to learn? He’s a historically despised fascist who tried to seize a second term by violence on live TV. If that were going to work, it would have worked by now. That isn’t a strategy that is going to work without Biden either reinventing himself or stepping aside.
This should be a five-alarm fire. Please don’t get mad at me for trying to sound that alarm. Wake UP and figure out what we’re going to do about it (suggestion: demand a new candidate).
aw, did the bidenman scare you son?
jfc, did you really link to 538, a polling org, about the veracity of it’s polling? ok, allow me to retort:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/2022-predictions-i-got-wrong/
dude. have some self respect. Meanwhile, a wider search reveals it’s not nearly as cut and dry as you portray.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/us/politics/polling-election-2022-red-wave.html
https://people.com/politics/why-midterm-polls-falsely-predicted-red-wave/
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3731665-did-the-polls-get-it-wrong-again/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-the-media-got-right-and-wrong-covering-the-2022-midterms
https://nul.org/news/why-pundits-and-junk-polls-got-midterm-elections-wrong
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/03/opinion/why-are-presidential-polls-wrong-biden-trump/
https://theweek.com/politics/2024-election-polls-accuracy
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-the-biden-campaign-running-on-false-hope
THIS IS A THEME WITH YOUR GARBAGE:
You’re consistently misrepresenting the “OVERWHELMING” evidence and kinda acting like a whiny little bitch who’s angry EVERYONE WON’T PANIC RIGHT NOW with you.
Go huff into a paper sack, you’re gonna have a fit kid.
Gonna block you now, have a great life. I’m sure no matter how the future turns out, you’ll predict the worst so probably be kinda ok with whatever happens lol.
Mojofrododojo isn’t going to see this, because he won an argument so hard he had to block me.
But if anyone else is reading this, I just want to state that being a dick to political allies because they’re upset by a cold hard reality that you reject is not only a shitty way to build successful political movements, it’s just a straight up a shitty way to treat people.
Oh well.
This is out of touch with the problem.
The long term problem is that we don’t have a political economy that actually represents the public.
But the short term problem is that Trump is currently on track to win, and the people who don’t want that to happen are sticking their heads in the sand.
We need to (1) reengage the Democratic base. Biden’s victory in key swing states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia in particular – was built on the backs of grass-roots door knocking campaigns by Bernie supporters. His campaign was absolutely reliant on the support of people who didn’t really like HIM, but really wanted to get Trump out of office. Those people will probably still hold their nose and vote for him, but that turnout operation is shattered, and I don’t see a way he can match his close victory in 2020 without it.
If progressives find a champion in Jill Stein, it’s possible that they start dreaming of something better, and if Biden turns things around, they’ll have the drive to rebuild that critical lefty turnout machine.
(2) Biden needs a metaphorical slap in the face. He won last time because Bernie’s team wrote half his platform in a reconciliation committee. This time, there was no primary, so Biden has reverted to all his instincts, and they are TERRIBLE. He’s trying to win Haley voters as if that’s not like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football. If Stein gets momentum, maybe it’ll knock sense into him.
This is all aside from the fact that voting Green builds party infrastructure and ballot access for a meaningful third party. There are lots of complicated reasons why voting Green has long-term strategic benefits, but I’m not even getting into those. I’m just talking about how we save Biden from himself. Sorry if it sounds like 4D chess, but polls already show Biden losing and he’s not taking note, so I think seeing popularity for a left alternative is the only thing I can think of that will rescue this thing.
Until we replace first pass the post with something like ranked choice, voting green does fuck all
This is absolutely a myth.
Green party candidates can run and win many tickets other than President, but it’s very, very hard to get ballot access, public funding, or voter awareness. In any state that isn’t a swing state, voting Green most likely has more actual consequence than voting for one of the two major parties. This builds infrastructure that lets Greens organize the way parties do in other countries: doing actual outreach between elections instead of just threatening people every time they need votes.
The Green party is also often the only way to actually challenge the duopoly when both parties are taking the same pro-corporate position. What they do in a race is break a cartel dynamic, which forces Democrats to actually adopt popular positions which they can then be pressured to act on.
Vote strategically: if you’re in PA, MI, or NC, by all means stick with a Democrat, but in about 40 states, you actually have a lot more voice and potential impact voting Green than you do otherwise.
Yeah don’t try to shoehorn some dictatorial bullshit into the democratic process and we can talk.
Problem is that any regulation proposed to rein in the slide towards capitalist dystopia is suddenly labeled as anti-democratic commie socialist dictators trying to crush the free market.
Make no mistake, corporations are dictatorships. They do need to be held in check.
Because no viable alternatives have been shown to work.
Unregulated capitalism is untenable, but regulated capitalism is and remains the best system we’ve been able to come up with.
I’m all for new ideas, but you’ve got to show some kind of precedence of it working in order to change the largest system in the world.
Because no viable alternatives have been shown to work.
Capitalism has proven it definitely doesn’t work, we’re careening toward ecological collapse.
Humans existed without state, and therefore with (likely multiple coexisting) informal economic systems for hundreds of thousands of years, I’d say that has been show to work.
There was nowhere close to the number of humans or level of complexity that there is today when those systems were in place.
That doesn’t mean those methods or some form of them can’t work, you just assume this is true because you’ve been given that message by those who need us to believe this for them to maintain power.
And let’s say no non-state method can possibly work at our scale, is that to essentially throw up our hands and say, “well, since intelligently shrinking our population and economy to a size that can be sustainably managed and is appropriate sized for our planet (i.e. “degrowth”) is unspeakable, and other methods we sorta tried for a bit don’t seem to work, we’ll just go ahead and continue with this known broken method until it all collapses from overexploitation” ??
Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “I want human society to exist in 100 years and for that to happen, we need to learn to live within the bounds of our planet”?
I love this logic because capitalism has made it its job to
kill any competitionprove the alternatives nonviable. Chile was trying something truly revolutionary, a fully democratic based socialism, and the CIA aborted the attempt and installed a capitalism friendly dictatorship.You won’t catch me simping for Authoritarians or anything, but when the only other mode of operation is a military strong enough to resist the CIA, there’s going to be a bias towards Authoritarian based alternatives. Convenient, if you’re trying to paint the alternatives as nonviable.
That’s kind of a straw man, though, isn’t it? Governments of capitalist countries have worked hard to suppress non-capitalist movements within and without their country, but that’s just what governments do. The Soviet Union was communist (as pure communist as the US is pure capitalist, which is to say, not very), and that also suppressed any alternatives. It’s not a function of the economic system; it’s a characteristic governments repeatedly demonstrate, regardless of their economic ideology.
I agree with the grandparent argument: capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best thing we have so far. Personally, I don’t believe communism can work, mainly because I think it goes against human nature. Except for clan behavior - altruism to your family, friends, neighbors - people are generally selfish, and communism requires us to be altruistic at our own expense to people who we not only don’t know, but who may talk differently from us, look different from us, have different culture from us. And even at the clan level, communism struggles. There were hundreds of attempts at building communes in the US in the 60’s, and I honestly believe most died out not because they were subverted by the government, but because people are selfish and they collapsed under their own internal conflicts. Very few of those remain, and when you look at them, they have fairly rigid internal structures that re-enforce the commune.
Maybe if we can make it to post-scarcity, we’ll be able to afford to be communist, because then it won’t depend on altruism. But right now, when times are hard and food is scarce, most humans will look to feeding their own children first, and the priorities of the commune tear like tissue. Capitalism endures because it’s built upon greed and selfishness, and those come easy to humans. When times are hard, we tend to fall back on barter, which is capitalism.
Anyway, saying that the US suppression of communism in Latin American countries says less about capitalism than it says about the US government, and their perceived interests. The proof is in the parallels in Soviet and communist (Mao era) China regional actions.
I mean, that’s why I’m here using a p2p alternative. Since Napster and Bittorrent, they’ve proven that the most reliable way to resist their violence is to decentralize.
Man I love state sponsored terrorism!
So do you have a functional alternative or do you just want a functional alternative?
(We ALL want the functional alternative)
Se can’t have a functional alternative if we don’t try and experiment dysfunctional ones and improve them. No system arises perfect. The argument that there is no alternative good enough is a tool to abot the creation of a good enough alternative through the improvement of not so good altemratoves.
We don’t requite perfection from capitalism, but require from it’s alternatives. Why? To block the possibility of a alternative, as all systems have problems, and initial experiments are problemsl ridden.
How can we try anything new if everything has to have a precedence.
If the alternatives dont work then why does the ruling class work so hard to squash them?
Has anyone tried lottery? I wanna bet that picking leadership completely at random would be better representation than rich assholes like Biden and Trump. That’s how we do things with QA testing and statistical analysis. It’s how we try to eliminate bias.
Nice! We gotta do that Athenian business!
Read up on the Paris Commune, read Homage to Catalonia by Orwell, read up on the anarchists from Manchuria. Those are just the bigger ones I can think of from the top of my head, but there are plenty more (usually smaller scale) examples. Also, read David Graeber’s work, especially The Dawn of Everything like another user suggested.
The common point of failure for those, was being a smaller entity that was surrounded and attacked by imperialist forces; some of which received help from other, more powerful, imperialist forces that had a vested interest in these groups failing.
I’m trying to remain cordial and nice, but it’s quite difficult when it seems like usually the people claiming “no viable alternatives have been shown to work” have never actually looked into any alternatives; it hardly feels like good faith argumentation.
take a look at The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber
Socialism is defined as the government owning or regulating the means of production.
When there’s an actually well regulated market, like say, we have here in the Nordics, you’ll tend to see other socialism alongside it. We have good social security and labour laws. Exactly because it’s regulated market economy we utilise.
Capitalism does not have aa monopoly on market economies.
Capitalism is to market economy what cancer is to cell growth.
Even the US employs socialist policies. As in the policies themselves are socialist in nature. Antitrust laws. Because without them, capitalism would fuck over the economy in a heartbeat.
If something has been shown to not work it’s capitalism.
Capitalism is the antithesis of a well regulated market and will always fight regulation in any form, because it’s harder to make profits if you can’t sell unsafe garbage and exploit workers to their death.
Unregulated capitalism has never been tried and it’s probably the solution to all the problems with our current system.
I’m good having regulations
If my boss could literally own me I know he would
If your current boss tried to literally own you wouldn’t you just move to a company that treats you better?
There might not BE a better company. In the system you describe we’d end up with even more strictly defined economic classes, because the wealthy would have the ability to collectively decide policy without interference. You’d just be creating an oligarchy.
The idea is there is no policy, just companies competing for customers and employees and giving them both the best value or the customers and employees would move on to a better company.
Why compete when you can destroy the other companies without restrictions?
Imagine Walmart buys the local water company then cuts water off to their competitors by charging them an exorbitant amount? Or the local power company? What’s to stop them?
They can just absorb the local utilities and start intentionally giving their competitors terrible or no service and drive them out of business.
It just turns to feudalism.
Someone else will supply the water and power to the people for a reasonable price and the customers will flock to them.
How would they get the capital together (a massive undertaking) or the equipment together (again a massive undertaking) as Walmart buys up the entire supply chain to provide the pipes and power lines?
Oh you want to hire an electrician for grid work? Walmart won’t sell you or rent you the equipment. Want to hire a plumber for grid work? Walmart won’t sell you the required equipment to set it up.
Not even that but what’s to stop them from corporate espionage? Sabotaging their competitors. “Oh we trap rain water and truck it to people. Lately people have been getting really sick from our water but not Walmarts water.”
The established supplier would just buy the new competitor. If they don’t sell, the established supplier would pricedump and eat the loss, since they’re already estabished, until the new competitor agrees to be bought.
But their only customer would be the one store Walmart is shutting down. Why would you lay millions of dollars of pipes and more millions of dollars in purification infrastructure just for one money strapped store?
Why compete for customers? They could form a monopoly to make sure you need to pay their prices, or just threaten you into only buying their products. Unregulated markets eventually stop being markets.
There wouldn’t be barriers to new companies opening up to compete as there are now.
The current system we use encourages monopolies through the regulations.
Want proof? Look at the monopolies.
There would be the monopolies with private armies and more money than God to shut down new competition. They can lower prices for years to run at a loss locally to run the newcomer out of money, or just do a hostile takeover.
oh you sweet summer child
Arguing with an ancap is just a waste of time.
It seems you’ve come from a time line where we got rid of the food regulations and you’ve injested far too much lead.
What’s with the personal attacks?
Can you not find a problem with my solution and have a discussion instead?
Insulting you is really unnecessary, SatansMaggotyCumFart.
Unregulated capitalism would result in the right of the richest and you could use your power to prevent others from getting as rich.
When you allow corporations to run unregulated you get to see the inherent decency of capitalism showing itself.
The rich will help the less fortunate up to become rich themselves.
That’s not how capitalism works.
that’s a consequence
Nope.
Companies with company town usually paid their employees with a company issued money that was only good at the company stores.
They usually sold with inflated prices.
This isn’t pure capitalism.
What makes you think unregulated capitalism won’t result in these monopolies?
And the Sturlungs?
That’s not capitalism. Not in the slightest.
Sure they’re not. ;)
Russia post-Soviet Union is what you’re looking for
The oligarchy system is not what I’m looking for, it’s a small group of people given control of companies as favors not organically growing by being the best.
oligarchy is the natural result of unfettered capitalism – capitalism rewards profit, not merit
Unregulated capitalism is impossible by definition, because capitalism requires private property, and private property only exists because the state enforces that status.
This sounds like insanity. You think the Jeff Besos’ of the world are going to play fair when capitalism has no regulations?
If the people decide they don’t like Bezos’ company they would use a new one and he wouldn’t have a leg up on the other ones like he does now.
How would they go to a new one if he uses the massive power he has to absorb and destroy the competition?
How would they get there if the roads no longer connect to other areas because Bezos bought all the construction companies and makes the cost too high to maintain those roads?
Not all companies will sell to him and new construction companies will form and charge reasonable rates to maintain the roads.
Walmart has enough capital on hand to work at a loss for a long long time before it’s an issue. How would their competitors compete when they can’t beat Walmarts prices?
Walmart has already done this with grocery stores in areas in the modern day. Lower their prices to the point of operating at a loss locally to drive the competition out of business and once their gone then bring the prices back up.
They got to this point with the current system.
With our current levels of regulations.
Less regulations would only make things worse not better.
a yes, the unregulated capitalism mindset that cause the great depression
The Great Depression was caused by the stock markets failing, not a lack of regulation.
Happy cake day.
Lol the yanks are giving it a good go, and look at the trouble they’re in.
They have individual states where the economy is bigger than full European countries.
I’d say they are pretty successful at it.
Yeah but their people all live in misery.
