The Democracy of the founding fathers was Greek Democracy, predicated upon a slave society, and restricted to only the elite. This is the society we live in today, even with our reforms towards direct representation. The system is inherently biased towards the election of elites and against the representation of the masses. Hamilton called it “faction” when the working class got together and demanded better conditions, and mechanisms were built in (which still exist to this day) that serve to ensure the continued dominance of the elite over the masses. The suffering of the many is intentional. The opulence of the wealthy is also. This is the intended outcome.
The only part of this statement that is flawed is the part that states that the only course of action is to dismantle the system. It is also possible to reform the system so that it doesn’t produce It’s previous flaws.
Really? Where has this happened? Which countries have been able to reform away the exploitation and coercion inherent in the capitalist economic structure whilst maintaining it?
Where has dismantling worked without giving way to exploitation and coercion?
Exploitation and coercion exist now. So, that would be a maintanence of the status quo, not “giving way” to it. But we can look at the by every single measure that we have objectively better lives of the vast majority of people in countries where they have dismantled capitalist systems. The average life expectancy in pre-revolution Russia was less than 30 years. Before the Communists started their labor struggles, the average work weeks was over 100 hours. The average literacy rate was among the lowest in the world, as was the education attainment rate.
They by any and all measures reduced exploitation by entire orders of magnitude. They reduced coercion, especially on women, by granting equal rights(5 decades before the us even attempted to do so, btw), and by making housing, food, and education legal rights that ALL citizens are entitled to. When your basic needs are met, then and only then are you even capable of laboring without coercion. Meaning, coercion is already a driving force behind our entire economic system, and exploitation is literally, not figuratively, LITERALLY the entire basis upon which capitalism rests. The extraction of profits is known as the process of exploitation.
Good points
Thanks, it means a lot coming from you, Mr. Pants. Seriously though, your username is great.
I’d say dismantling the German Reich was a great improvement albeit the successor states weren’t without exploitation.
Same for dismantling the US confederation, all the independence wars against colonizers, many revolutions and so on.
You cannot demand dismantling to only lead to a perfect solution, while any form of reform is okay with even the most miniscule improvement.
Both have their place and time. But you will always need to dismantle, when the problems are intrinsic to the system.
Those were both dismantling from the outside. Outside powers prevented power vacuums from forming which could be exploited by the least scrupulous people. I can’t think of many times where government has collapsed that didn’t lead to enormous turmoil.
we’re conversing via a communications system where at least the very top portion is free of exploitation and coercion. probably lemmy.tf is hosted on an operating system also free from that coercion. not to be all techbro, but it’s kinda like we’ve achieved this in one specific niche and completely failed to apply it to anything real/useful (i.e. “the stuff that could kill you in its absence”).
i used to contribute a LOT to the 3d printing space ten years ago: at the time it seemed like the way to bridge that (half the parts in my machine were built with a friend using his machine). i still think there’s something “there”, that we can build parallel systems that won’t be captured or killed by the existing powers rather than solely embracing destruction, but it’s just a long game. how long has the capitalist system had to develop? anything else has to endure nearly that same amount of catchup until it can provide for us in any way you would embrace.
3d printing is cool, and i agree, it is great for reclaiming things from the capitalist profit incentive structure. I print pretty much everything I can instead of buying it, and it’s great for fixing things that manufacturers don’t want you to fix.
It’s not really much in the way of reducing the exploitation of the working class though, nor its reliance upon coerced labor in order to maintain basic human living conditions. It’s also primarily being used by corporations to further increase profit margins.
There’s not many Vorons or Prusas. There’s a lot more profit seeking printing services than there are Print it Forward programs. This is inevitable under our current system. The resources available to those seeking to help humanity are far fewer than those seeking to exploit it.
Technology itself is not a solution. Technology only matters as much as how you use it. If the dominant forces in society are utilizing technology for profit, rather than to increase human dignity and freedom, then what you get is what we have; Machines that do the work of 1000 men, not so that 1000 men can focus on other things, but so that ONE man (or realistically, a group of shareholders and board members) can extract super profits from those workers. If technology was used in service of humanity, the majority of humanity would be working very little, and things like starvation and homelessness would only be possible under unexpected circumstances like droughts and after wildfires.
If technology was used in service of humanity, the majority of humanity would be working very little, and things like starvation and homelessness would only be possible under unexpected circumstances like droughts and after wildfires.
this i agree with, but i don’t take that all shapes of technology are equally susceptible to serving profit instead of people. in our case, the factory systems which allow for 1000:1 production are huge and costly and beyond the reach of the average individual or family or community. but that same technology in a different form could be made to be within reach of smaller communities.
If the dominant forces in society are utilizing technology for profit, rather than to increase human dignity and freedom, then what you get is what we have;
if a machine within the reach of your everday person could have that same 1000:1 production factor, then you don’t need the dominant forces in society to be directed at human dignity. you just need them to be tolerant of benign alternatives, and only 0.1% of society needs to go along with you to allow that alternative to be reality. the bigger thing is that we’ve had 100+ years in which technology has been developed for that factory system with far less development catering to any alternatives, so the alternatives available legitimately do not have that same 1000:1 production. there’s no way to get that outside of factories without playing catchup on the technology front. but catchup is possible without destruction because factorized production does incidentally create generalized tools that make the alternatives easier (your typical hammers and saws and all that).
Why does it matter that these machines are in factories? They should still be used for the benefit of mankind, or at the very least, the benefit of the workers at the factory. Currently, we have no democracy in the workplace, and no say in how new technologies are implemented.
A machine costing a lot of money, only matters when most of the money is hoarded by a few individuals. Had we workplace democracy, those same machines, in those same factories, would be used for the good of the workers, rather than the good of the shareholders.
The factory is part of the community. It’s emissions effect the community, it’s output and profits effect the community, it’s size effects the community, it’s investment or lack of investment in the community effects the community. In fact, I can’t think of a single aspect of a factory that does not directly rely upon or impact the community immediately surrounding it. And yet, people in suits a thousand miles away in board rooms in skyscrapers, get to determine how that factory effects that community, and the community gets no say, because “private property”.
We don’t need to take the machines out of the factory to make them help people. We need to return the factories to the people and allow them to help themselves.
alright, you’ve made a pretty solid case there. one single nit:
A machine costing a lot of money, only matters when most of the money is hoarded by a few individuals.
“power corrupts”, as it goes. if there’s a single lever that could be pulled to enrich the few, then they will try, and the many have to remain vigilant. better many small levers than a handful of large levers where possible, since that’s just more difficult for any small self-interested group to control. but i’ll take democratic workplaces over the existing.
so: how to get there? like, what do you or i do, aside from just considering these things as we navigate our careers? if someone else has done a good job with the deeper writing here before, i’ll take a book rec. there’s space on my non-fiction shelf.
Well, I’m not sure this will get a good response, but I highly recommend reading the works of successful revolutionaries. Guevara, Lenin, Mao, Nkrumah, etc.
Those peoples books fucking blew my mind. They enacted revolution, and then spent a long time reflecting upon them. There’s decades of works from each, except Nkrumah :(
I’d say the first thing to do is to join a local socialist organization and get active in organizing in your community. Direct action groups are good too, but mostly serve to cauterize wounds inflicted by capitalism, rather than actually healing them, so they’re best used in tandem with direct organization. Unionize your workplace if you can. If we get massive union movement again, those unions can collaborate to massively extend our power. A hundred individual unionized factories mean little, but 100 unionized factories acting as one, that will get some movement. You can look to the UAW for the power of collective unionism. It’ll be even more powerful if we become so unionized that we can use solidarity strikes regardless of the oppressive laws against it.
Know that nothing will be won without blood though. You cannot ask a man to give up his immense privilege without expecting him to try to stop you. People died to win us the 40 hour week. People died to win us Overtime. People died for the 8 hour day and unemployment insurance and an end to company scrip. We will have to be willing to make that same sacrifice in order to win our current battle. Nothing will be won tomorrow either. This is a struggle. Every day, for as long as it takes. Take the concessions when you win them, but do not be satisfied, for they are only that, concessions, and concessions can be taken away as easily as they were given. We must continue through, until we reach the finish line. And once we do, the real race starts. We have to avoid the mistakes of movements in the past like the CNT, and USSR, and various other countries, while still looking to their successes with a clear mind.
Cheers.
Quite frankly, first of all, that’s not the statement being discussed.
The statement in the meme is that if a system deprives people of something necessary for life it should be dismantled. Doesn’t even mention capitalism.
A system that deprives people of what they need was say the healthcare system, but it was reformed to better provide people what they need instead of being dismantled. In the abstract, the idea that every broken system, or system producing a non-perfect outcome needs to be dismantled is one rooted in simple minded black and white thinking, instead of understanding the system at play.
If you want to make a separate argument that capitalism is a system that resists change and that it thus cannot be changed or reformed to produce the outcomes you want, then you can make that argument, but ‘no one has done it yet’ after a generation or two of half hearted trying, is not a convincing argument that it’s an impossible task.
Capitalism has been dominant for over 4 centuries, and has murdered hundreds of millions of people in that time to maintain its dominance. It’s not only resistant to change, it actively kills those who try to change it for the better.
The healthcare system despite its centuries of reforms still serves the needs of the wealthy over the needs of the many. Even in countries with socialized healthcare but capitalist economics, elites are able to use their wealth to purchase higher quality of care than the average persons. Not to mention that those systems are being strangled to death the world over by governments in service of wealth, including the biggest success stories, the UK, and Canada.
In my country, it was never even reformed, and millions of people still have absolutely no way to receive healthcare without bankrupting themselves.
The concessions won are slowly taken away, bit by bit. We installed the 40 hour week and minimum wage as a de facto living wage and maximum working time. How many people work 60 hours today and still don’t have living wages? Because the concessions were just that, concessions, and as such, they can and are taken away as soon as it inconveniences the ruling class. Child labor laws are being stripped, because they’re inconvenient to those who seek to profit off of it. Socialized Healthcare systems are being dismantled, because they’re inconvenient for those who wish to profit off of it. Every area where we have won concessions has experienced a rollback when those concessions are maintained by a capitalist run state.
Its naive to think that you will be able to reform a system predicated on mass exploitation for most and orgiastic privilege for others to somehow be equitable while maintaining the private property systems at the root of all of the issues with it.
Thank you for saying this. ❤️
I do not understand people apologizing for capitalism ever.
It’s been around for four centuries as the dominant form of resource allocation and is thus also responsible for most of the western world’s relatively high standard of living, and increasingly the rest of the world.
Im not defending it whole hog, but it’s absurd to not be able to understand it’s appeal.
Capitalism was an important development in humankind that indeed increased the productive capacity of the world in many meaningful and positive ways. It has outlived its usefulness though, and now serves to prevent the kind of meaningful change needed to tackle 21st century problems.
How the hell do you have the time for this? If you add together all your comments, you’ve basically written an essay arguing with strangers on the Internet.
Get a hobby, FFS.
I have multiple. I work out for an hour a day, learn Chinese for an hour a day, do martial arts for 3 hours a week, read around 100 books a year, play every new video game that I want to, hike about twice a month, woodwork, 3d print and design my own 3d models to print, solder professionally as a side job, and all this while working a full time job in robotics and helping to take care of my young family members. Maybe you just have poor time management skills.
How the hell do you have the time for this? If you add together all your comments, you’ve basically written an essay arguing with strangers on the Internet.
Get a hobby, FFS.
You posted the same comment twice.
And?
Just letting you know, since it’s typically considered a faux pas.
Dismantle is a euphemism that can also include reform. It’s used more to imply that every modern document of government is written in blood and to change it requires a blood sacrifice of a generally unwilling nature.
Even prohibition and especially prohibitions repeal have a body count, it’s just how you change people’s minds because we’re dumb animals.
The principles of economic choice and voluntary exchange are paramount to a functioning free market. If the alternative to a purchase is death, then the free market doesn’t function as such, it approaches racketeering.
This sounds like some right libertarian capitalism apologia, is that what it is meant to be?
He’s basically agreeing with you.
In a way, I can see that. But, his use of free market ideology reflects a vast gap between our actual messaging. “Free markets” inevitably result in monopolization. It’s not just critical industries, every industry is inevitably drawn towards monopolization under capitalist economics.
We can fight it off temporarily with reforms and regulations, but those too, inevitably will be co-opted by the monopolies and used to their advantage. (And then it’s not a free market…)
The idea of a free market is that there aren’t any regulations or laws regarding enterprise, so monopolies would be more difficult to establish because there aren’t any legislative or regulatory hurdles that a newcomer has to overcome. If the monopoly still manages to survive despite competition, then the monopoly is earned because the company is obviously still able to maintain a stranglehold on the market despite competitors popping up.
Ignoring the ramifications it’d have on healthcare and food quality, on paper this isn’t the worst idea that’s ever been had, because while it does allow for monopolies, it also means that companies can’t claim patents, copyright, trade secrets, or strangle the competition with regulatory or legislative capture.
In reality it requires an educated consumer that always does their research before buying a thing. That’s not realistic as the average consumer wants to be able to just walk into a supermarket, buy some groceries, and walk back out again. Unsurprisingly, no one wants to go through three search engines and a bunch of research papers from their local library to figure out whether or not their frozen waffles contain asbestos.
If the monopoly still manages to survive despite competition, then the monopoly is earned because the company is obviously still able to maintain a stranglehold on the market despite competitors popping up.
In practice, the dominant player in the industry can operate at a loss to drive the upstart competition out of business, buy their assets for pennies on the dollar, then jack their prices up again when there are no alternatives. Or, if you don’t like that one, choose any of the numerous anti-competitive strategies in use today.
If people collectively saw that behavior and said “We’re not buying from you anymore”, they could put that company out of business, but that simply isn’t realistic when dealing with such a large number of individuals. So it continues to work.
Without regulating anti-competitive behavior, monopolies are inevitable and competing without an initial bankroll capable of operating at a loss for as long or longer than the existing monopoly is impossible.
The idea is cool in theory - that anyone who doesn’t like how the current monopoly is operating can simply open their own competing business, be more consumer friendly, and steal the market share - but that’s simply not the reality we live in.
“Free market” have USA too big to fail and PPP.
What’s wrong with a monopoly if people are satisfied with it’s service? In Canada, the government has a monopoly on healthcare and generally people don’t complain.
By definition, publicly owned services cannot be a monopoly. That’s because it’s publicly owned. Capitalism and monopoly arise from private ownership.
Your definition doesn’t seem to be correct. This article mentions government granted monopolies (i.e hydro) and states monopolies (i.e healthcare).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-granted_monopoly
Contrary to what I said earlier, residents of certain provinces have been complaining that the quality of their healthcare has been substandard, and are upset that there are no alternatives available as the law forbids private doctors from even setting up shop there.
a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm
That is not public healthcare. That would be like the US only allowing Mayo Clinic to operate. Public healthcare is provided by the government.
that seems kinda revisionist. if i think i have a better way in which to provide healthcare, am i allowed to pursue that alongside others who consent? if “no”, then something has monopolized healthcare — be it a private entity, public, or some combination.
the libertarian refrain is “government is the monopoly on violence”, and that seems broadly true, even if the police force is publicly directed… no?
That’s not a libertarian refrain, just one that they stole from the left. Like the name Libertarian itself, which actually means communist essentially.
I see that mental trap of yours. Without getting into the weeds, I’m a type of anarchist. I don’t believe the state should exist in the first place, healthcare belongs to the commons. You’re trying to suggest that private healthcare is your “better way”, so no, it shouldn’t be allowed. As long as the state exists, that argument will be used. Therefore we should eliminate the hierarchy that justifies ownership over the means of production.
Because everyone owns it, their own money in the form of taxes working for them. Guard it viciously.
was what i understand too, idk i’m too dumb for this site lol
Why would anyone grow food for a living if they couldn’t sell their produce at a profit?
If a person would rather allow land to go fallow purely because of profit incentive, and that fallow land will result in the suffering of others, the only moral thing to do is dispossess them of that land. They weren’t using it anyway apparently, in this hypothetical.
the only moral thing to do is dispossess them of that land.
And give it to who? Who’s going to farm that land when they’re not allowed to make a profit from it? It’s not easy work.
Maybe some of the millions of people who are currently unable to even afford adequate food for themselves because of the profiteering of these very landholders, who engage in such sabotage as mass slaughter and burial of animals to prevent price drops. You know, profits are after wages, right? Profits aren’t wages. You only make profits after you pay wages and costs. So… you pay wages.
When you place economic decisions from a profit driven one into the hands of the politician, you get just as perverse incentives. What’s even worse is that the government cannot fail so the system just gets progressively worse until the entire system collapses. I’m good with a liberal system as is with some moderate reforms to account for externalities.
I will just copy and paste part of my comment that I made to another, because your final argument is the same.
I get it, suffering is okay if it’s the status quo, but if it happens in service of doing better, that’s not okay, so we should just be happy with the status quo, where the vast majority suffer daily indignities and violences, and are forced into exploitation by coercive structures.
You benefit from the current system, so the suffering of the many NOW is less real to you than the potential suffering of yourself in a situation that when enacted had objectively raised the quality of life for the vast majority of people who live in the societies where it was enacted, by all objective measures. Is that it?
This is exactly why the dismantling of capitalism in a post authoritarian world has so far always resulted in starvation. You have no sufficient answer to this question that addresses actual human behavior. It inevitably results in forced labor and oppression in the name of humanity.
Lmaoo. Mass starvation happens in this world under capitalism The Israelis are purposefully inflicting it upon Palestinians. The US is purposefully attempting to inflict it upon Cuba. So when starvation is the intended outcome, it’s okay? But when it is an accidental consequence of industrializing a nation of uneducated peasants with a less than 30 year life expectancy, and is followed by decades of life expectancy increases and increases in quality of life and equality of rights, that’s not okay?
I get it, suffering is okay if it’s the status quo, but if it happens in service of doing better, that’s not okay, so we should just be happy with the status quo, where the vast majority suffer daily indignities and violences, and are forced into exploitation by coercive structures.
You benefit from the current system, so the suffering of the many NOW is less real to you than the potential suffering of yourself in a situation that when enacted had objectively raised the quality of life for the vast majority of people who live in the societies where it was enacted, by all objective measures. Is that it?
Mass starvation happens in this world under capitalism The Israelis are purposefully inflicting it upon Palestinians.
That doesn’t really have anything to do with capitalism.
Settler-colonialism is a capitalist ideology. It has everything to do with capitalism.
I don’t think that’s an inherent truth. Just look at Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad. After WW2 the local Germans were expelled and the city and adjacent lands were completely resettled by Russian settlers. You could try to justify it in a million ways, although I don’t know if ethnic cleansing can ever have a justification, but that’s what happened in the end, in Communist USSR, under Stalin. The reason why today’s old Prussia is Russian instead of German, or Polish or Lithuanian.
And the USSR did the same thing in many other places like Poland, DDR, Moldova, Ukraine etc. Settler-colonialism has nothing to do with capitalism or communism. It has more to do with power and controlling the land.
I appreciate that insight, and while I don’t agree, it does give me something to chew on for a while, and another excuse to read the soviet archives to see what they were discussing internally at that time. That archive is a godsend, it’s how you can prove definitively that the Holodomor was not intentional, and that attempts were made to not only ease it, but to preempt it from happening. Attempts which were sabotaged by a class of people who wanted to keep their privileges and place above the ordinary people.
This is retribution for an attack and massacre of civilians, not colonialism. Israel doesn’t want Gaza.
Then why do they have over 500,000 settlers illegally living in what is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory? Why are they bombing the exact escape routes they demanded that Palestinians use? Why are they bombing the West Bank, where Hamas has no presence? Why has literally the entire world called this a genocide except for two countries: the US and Israel? Why did the Israelis kill 248 Palestinians, 40 of which were children, just this year, and just prior to the attack? Why do they call their periodic bombing campaigns “mowing the lawn”? You have to be literally delusional to think that THE ENTIRE WORLD EXCEPT FOR YOU is wrong. There’s only two countries that support this horrific genocidal campaign, and one of them is committing it, the other is arming them to commit it.
Edit: The big one, why have the Israelis prevented adequate amounts of food aid to enter Gaza to ensure healthy nutrition? They literally control how much food and water Gaza gets, and have for decades. They control how many building materials get in, they control the border and don’t let people leave. It’s literally called the “largest open air prison” in the world, by international watchdogs and its being called a genocide by holocaust survivor genocide awareness groups.
I don’t think you realize how quickly things devolved into starvation under the Soviet Union or early CCP. They then very quickly shifted to centralized planning. This isn’t a question of scale or perception. It was immediate and required a change very quickly.
Yes, centralized planning is significantly more efficient both materially and in terms of labor. Thus why most modern mega corporations are run as planned economies within themselves. There’s entire books about it, if you care to read them. The first one I read on the subject is called “The Peoples Republic of Wal-Mart”.
Yes, take out the checks on power inherent within private corporatism and you get full on communism. It’s not better. Add in racism and you make genocide extremely efficient as the state controls all resources.
Tell me what’s happening in Gaza again?
What economic system do the countries currently perpetrating genocide have again?
But when it is an accidental consequence of industrializing a nation of uneducated peasants
I bet you are thinking of the great leap backwards, in which tens of millions died of hunger due to that little accident in judgment, all the while Mao kept insisting that the uneducated peasants on the brink of starvation were hiding all their surpluses from the state.
But that’s not the only example. The Holodomor comes to mind, the artificial result of Soviet rule in Ukraine, where millions died of starvation and the main authoritarian government pushing for the collection of non-existent “surpluses” apparently hidden by the starving peasants. Or the North Korean famines, explained perfectly in this video by asianometry.
North Korea/South Korea is an interesting case study, where after the war the North found itself near the two biggest communist powers and still managed to struggle to get basic products like food, while South Korea, an ocean away from their main ally and on terrible terms with all local powers (still hated Japan and at war with China) still managed to rebuild and, since the end of the dictatorship, managed to grow an impressively big economy.
That’s an objectively false read on the holodomor and can be easily verified by simply reading the first hand sources from the time, such as the letters from Stalin where he urged the Ukrainian SSR that the Russian SSR believed that the grain shortage was far worse than they were admitting, or the one where he sent massive food aid. Or that there were a class of people who in order to attempt to maintain their privilege and position in society were actively destroying grain.
You know what also gets left out in that conversation, is that the western power had made a unified pact that no one would accept ANYTHING from the USSR as payment for industrial products except grain. Actually, first it was grain, and lumber, but when they realized that grain shortages were coming to the USSR, they restricted it to grain only, as an attempt to prevent the industrialization of the USSR.
North Korea /South Korea is an interesting one. But, I would like to know where you’re getting your information, because despite 98% of all buildings in the north being bombed by the US (we dropped more bombs on Korea than were dropped in all of WWII), the North was more developed until the 80s.
It’s also funny, how the country the US sided with was a military dictatorship for decades, while the north had human rights exceeding those present in the US, including the right to food, shelter, and education, and despite being blockaded by the western world, STILL managed to outdevelop the South who was backed by the US (on the order of billions a year for multiple decades straight).
I bet you don’t know that their nuclear program was a direct result of the Axis of Evil speech by Bush, did you? They didn’t have one before that, and if they hadn’t started one then, they’d have ended up like the other two countries in the “Axis of Evil”. It’s funny how the Axis of Evil was two countries that hate each other and one on the opposite side of the world, huh?
I didn’t say it was an intentional policy by the USSR or Stalin, but that, in the end, the famine was artificially caused by the reckless policies of the USSR. It’s not a coincidence that it happened just after the first five year plan was implemented in the whole USSR and the famine propagated throughout the whole union.
the western power had made a unified pact that no one would accept ANYTHING from the USSR as payment for industrial products except grain
Please provide sources, I couldn’t find any. Also, talking about the “western powers” before WW2 is just an historical inaccuracy. In the 1930s the soviet union did indeed export large quantities of grain to pay for heavy machinery, but afaik there was no coercion in this. Among other trade commodities exported by the USSR there were oil, timber, furs, minerals and other raw materials, which were traded primarily with Britain and Nazi Germany (culminating in 1940 with the German-Soviet commercial agreement)
North Korea /South Korea is an interesting one. But, I would like to know where you’re getting your information
What information? That the SK economy is doing a lot better than the NK one? By the way, while NK was cut off from western trade and western aid, it did have full access to the other communist and third world countries, including China and the USSR, which sent significant aids after the end of the war to help reconstruction, canceled or postponed their debts and gave lots of money and equipment. On the other hand SK was also heavily propped up by the US and at the same time was cut off from communist trade and aid. The USSR recognized SK only in 1990, before collapsing and China only did so later in the 90s, with trade happening some time before that in the 80s.
And in all of this I’m not saying that the US were always right in their actions or judgement, or that their form of rabid capitalism is the ideal economic policy, far from it. But from there to say that communism is great or even the answer to societal problems is really misguided. Communism as predicated by communist countries wasn’t really that great. Also it always regressed to some form of authoritarianism.
Which countries do you think did to do communism really well and should be an inspiration for other countries to follow?
If we look at the material conditions of people living in what became communist countries before and after revolution, every single one has been a success. Life expectancy in pre-soviet Russia was under 30. Similar in pre-CPC China. Hell, even NK under its blockade as a tiny country has increased the life expectancy of its citizens by over 20 years. The average working hours in Russia were more than cut in half, and wages more than quadrupled. Wages in China have quadrupled in just my lifetime. At the time of the revolution Russia had one of the least educated populations in the world, and now have one of the highest, even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hell, to this day there are still more women as a percentage in science than in my own country.
China was by definition the poorest country in the world at the time of its revolution, and now it is legitimately the number 2 superpower, and outputs more STEM grade a year than any other country. There is not a single objective metric by which you can measure either country that would reveal anything other than a success, and not only a success, a massive success.
If you’re genuinely interested in learning what the USSR was allowed by capitalist powers to export, the soviet archives are exceptional, but I can also see if I can find a video or something for you, no promises, I read most of my information.
You also misread, my post said that NK was more developed than SK until the 80s, not that it’s economy is doing well now. It’s been under a brutal embargo for decades after that Axis of Evil speech, but still somehow has life expectancy trending up, which would be definitionally impossible if things were half as bad there as my news says.
I definitively live under authoritarianism capitalism. Maybe you don’t notice it because you have some privileges I don’t, whether that be your race or class, but I do. I am harassed every time I see a policeman. I’ve been pulled over and held at gunpoint because I looked like some other brown person. I’ve seen my friends houses raided and families harassed because they dared to report police brutality. I’ve been held in a chokehold by the police until I passed out for the crime of playing Pokémon go after dark and refusing to provide my ID. I have had friends murdered for being brown in public, and other friends who were beaten for the same. Thousands of people are in jail without being charged as we speak.
I think the obsession many westerners have with “authoritarianism” is extremely telling of their privilege. We live in authoritarianism capitalism. Authority exists, and currently it is primarily used to oppress the working class and minorities. It will continue to exist, and just because you are in a position of privilege doesn’t mean that hundreds of thousands if not millions of others do not suffer nearly daily abuses at the hands of the system, just within the U.S, but if we include the rest it is billions every single day.
The US the HIGHEST PRISON POPULATION IN KNOWN HISTORY, BOTH AS A PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION AND AS RAW NUMBERS.
What myself and other people want is that authority to be vested in service of the people, rather than in service of capital. We want a government that, instead of restricting the rights of their people or encouraging abuses of minorities, uses it’s power to oppress the oppressors. So put the Walton kids in prison, and return their ill gotten goods to the people. They deserve it, genuinely, so do many many other horrifically sick people who predate on the working class in order to line their already huge pockets.
China arrests their billionaires and executes them for exploiting the working class, we name colleges after them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Nailed it.
My government actually pays mostly corporate (but not all) farmers not to produce or actively destroy their products, rather than buy it and have communities freely disperse it.
Farming requires a lot more than land
You’re right, it requires people! It’s too bad there’s not an army of people underemployed in exploitative jobs that do not meet their basic needs along with an army of unemployed and often even unhoused people… We could just… pay them living wages to farm… there’s an idea!
Excellent, so we’ll need some profits on that food then, to pay them?
Let’s keep going with this thinking. We’re inventing a system from first principles
Profits aren’t wages, you obviously haven’t read much economics. Profits are what’s left AFTER wages and costs.
You’re failing to differentiate between gross and net profits.
Ever run a business?
How is everyone going to afford this food if you’re selling it for a gross profit? I believe that was your original point.
Yes, I have run a business haha. Profit doesn’t mean either gross or net profits, it means, and I quote from the dictionary,
“Profit: The amount by which revenue from sales exceeds costs in a business”. Profit: a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
That is profit. Now, people can break it down further, but, when someone is referring to profits, you should assume they mean the dictionary definition of profits.
Farm machinery isn’t free
You not understanding why someone might want to do good for others simply for the sake of doing good, and/or never being able to bring yourself to do so, doesn’t mean no one else does.
As always with bootlickers, it’s projection all the way down…
You are simply ignorant of human nature, I think.
That’s the excuse people always give. Human nature is a lot of things. Greed, avarice, jealousy, definitively part of that. Just as much a part though, are empathy, caring, and selflessness. Human nature isn’t a fixed predetermined set of rules. If it was, there would be no variability in humanity whatsoever. Human nature as used here is just another thought terminating cliche designed to stop intelligent conversation.
The material conditions within a given society determine the most likely expressions of human nature within that society. Of course a society structured around elevating greed, violence, misogyny, etc, would see that reflected in its institutions and among its people. Materialism is a science, “human nature” is pop culture.
Are enough altruism-motivated do-gooders able to support everyone in a large society? Or would people starve?
Just maybe the other person is referencing the selfish tendencies of humanity rather than being a projecting bootlicker.
I suspect if we banned the ability to earn profits from farming, there wouldn’t be many people who would want to farm. Personally, I’d rather choose an unprofitable job that was less exhausting, like being a starving artist.
So something that always sort of happens in these conversations is when someone says “we should remove X” people go “well then X would be removed!”.
Like you’re right, if nothing else changed and tomorrow we just said to farmers “grow food or don’t lmao up to you” that wouldn’t work. But we’re not saying “abolish capitalism and then do nothing” we’re saying “we need to abolish capitalism and replace it with a more humane system”.
That means some things like that farming would need to look different, the horribly alienating and environment destroying model of farming largely driven by debt would indeed not make the transition. That doesn’t mean nobody has ideas on how to grow food.
There are all sorts of models from everyone having rotations in hard jobs, to giving people certain privileges for doing them (e.g. farmers are honoured with a festival holiday after harvests etc). Societies have found ways to get people to do hard work that aren’t just predicated in violence.
Lots of people aren’t opposed to doing hard work, we generally enjoy feeling useful and helping our communities. What makes hard work unappealing is stuff like “do this for me, I won’t ever respect you for it, and if you try to stop you will be starved or shot”.
Say it again from the rooftops!
you seem cool. From one earthling to another: thanks for advocating for a softer world.
Cheers. I had a bit of an epiphany lately, and can no longer stand by idly while such atrocities happen. I now actively seek to spread information and make myself well known as a communist, even knowing the dangers if the nascent fascist movement wins in the US.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
-Karl Marx
We don’t have to hide who we are like the fascists, who take various names (libertarians, anarchism-capitalists, national socialists, etc etc) specifically to hide their true nature. As communists, we know our solution is not only right, it is inevitable. As Rosa once said, “It is socialism, or barbarism.” And we’re approaching the breaking point. So I’m done being subtle, slowly radicalizing people. It’s a successful venture, but it takes too long. We don’t have the time anymore. The best time to organize was 10 years ago, the second best time is now.
Join your local orgs. If you’re anarchist, food not bombs has always been great for me, but I encourage you to look into local socialist parties, and attempt to help them where they need. Direct action is important, but so is class consciousness and learning how to effectively organize mass movements. I was an anarchist for decades, only recently making the switch to communism, I still empathize with most of anarchism, and I think anarchists have an important part to play in our liberation struggle.
Unfortunately where I live has basically no anarchist tradition. Food not bombs petered out about 20 years ago and I’m not the one to restart it.
A local book store though has become a bit of a gathering point for refugee activism and the owner there is an anarchist so some community interest is spinning up and maybe we can get stuff off the ground.
Australia, where I live, has generally been deeply conservative aside from Gough (but the usa couped us so :( ). Our cities are designed without public squares to prevent convict uprising for example. Organising has always been difficult.
However there are a lot of people deeply hurt and confused right now over the rejection of the indigenous voice to Parliment. A terribly tragic thing, but it does represent a good opportunity to spread different ideas as people look for ways of finding a way forward and healing together after being shocked by the racism and hatred the right mobilised on.
Individual farmers do tend to lose money. It’s a lifestyle, not a job. It’s hard, in extreme weather, and day off? Those are days you’re mending and tending to things you didn’t have time to on your working days. And yet they do it. And survive with theirs and neighbors products, and some subsidy in some form of other, perhaps not always legal. Kinda like any other wage slave that actually likes what they lucked into doing to survive.
Exactly, farming is hard work, and very few people would do it when they could do something easier for the same reward.
While you seem to be ignoring a significant consideration that sometimes oppression, violence and dominance is a natural human instinct, I do applaud your mindset as a cornerstone of how civil society continues to uphold its virtues, we shouldn’t forget that goodwill and faith, no matter how much of it we have in a society, will always be limited and not nearly as contagious a disease as many often hope for it to be, which is why ads, internet memes and newsfeed algorithms have been developed simply to spread such positive messages.
You said it yourself: for a living.
Growing food with a main goal of profits in a private enterprise rather than just sustenance or profit through government grants without private market interference has a lot of downsides, including to farmers themselves.
For example, optimisation for profit means a lot of waste:
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Perfectly healthful produce with aesthetic faults has to be left to rot on the ground as it won’t sell and nobody’s going to collect it for those that need it but can’t afford to pay the “market price”
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If you have an exclusive deal with a grocery store or other intermediary, the excess of an unexpectedly good crop yield will likewise in most cases have to be destroyed because the buyer can’t receive all of it and you’re not allowed to sell to their competitors.
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Likewise, any excess of a particular good harvest across a crop will also be destroyed to avoid losing money on the market value of the crop dropping due to increased supply.
All of this while a few megacorps sit between farmers and consumers paying the same or less to farmers and charging much more of consumers while the cost of living and business expenses of farmers keep rising, making it harder and harder to make ends meet if you’re not the aforementioned megacorps.
And that’s not even mentioning all the issues of long hours and some of the worst working conditions of any industry, all to save a buck or two to stave off bankruptcy and eventually starvation for a little longer while the megacorps and their billionaire owners and executives gobble up almost all the value of what you produce.
I’m perfectly happy not spending 90% of my time and energy feeding my family. You may think that would be a better life but industrial farming does have a lot of benefits, through either command or liberal economics. It’s there that the liberal system shines bright as a command economy requires local production to motivate workers for the above reasons.
Jesus christ, you people and your text walls.
Be Concise.
You asked a question that couldn’t be answered both concisely and accurately so I chose accuracy.
I’m sorry right wing thought can be put down into 3 words for a sound bite, and actual thoughts and explanations take longer. I guess reading beyond 6th grade is communism now.
You saw 4 paragraphs and decided to not even try ? Education really got bad
I could, I just don’t want to.
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The problem isn’t the profit per se rather it’s the maximization of profit favoring capital over human beings that’s the problem. The meme strikes me as extreme.
I’m fine with discussing politics here, but I’d rather the post be funny. There’s plenty of jokes you could make about this, but this post is just a wall of text.
Ok. Well I’ll be sure to change what I’ve been doing for months to cater to your desires. Thanks for letting me know!
You cannot even define the difference between capitalism and fascism. I do think you should change what you are doing.
Go simp for more genocidal masters, I’m sure they’ll never turn it against you.
Bro, I’m a primary source. Have fun not impacting the world at all.
There’s only one side in this conflict claiming death to one side and it’s not Israel. When a group tells you who they are, you should believe them.
Their former UN envoy is on record saying Palestinians are animals. Not hamas. Palestinians. If you don’t see what they’re trying to do, you don’t have your eyes open.
I’m not familiar with that record but I’m sure that if it is true it has something to do with the former title. People get emotional sometimes. That doesn’t make it policy.
Yep. When the Israelis say their intention is to push all palestinians in Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula, I believe them. Which is by definition genocide.
Scumbag zionists using Hitler tactics.
Yeep. If they’re really a “primary source” (read: Israeli Colonizer), they’re likely personally harmed Palestinians if they’re old enough for their mandatory service.,
Got a primary source for that?
Several. I have spoken to many family friends, one of whom is an Israeli journalist. Do you have a complex perspective or just meaningless grandstanding based on your own infallibility. This is what this has always been, horny trans memes with a heavy tilt against systems of oppression and genocidal governments. This is not equatable to supporting those systems, because one hurts people and one offends you. Hamas is not Palestine, civilians are not militants, only one group here has been occupying land and displacing innocents for generations.
Are we discussing politics* in r/196? Is this a new low?
You haven’t been here long, and weren’t in the old 196, because I’ve been discussing politics in 196 for at least 2 years, 6mo of that here, and the old 196 was 85% political memes, mostly trans positive and pro left content. In fact, this meme came from 196, as did every other one I’ve posted in here previously.
Theres a reason why 197 was created, full of specially people in 196
Yeah it was because of Horny posting.
Politics? In my political shitpost lemmy? It’s more likely than you think.
Yeah farmers shouldnt profit, they’re our food slaves!
The government should pay them.
A profit?
Profit is revenues after wages and expenses. PAYING SOMEONE WAGES ISNT PROFIT. Jesus fucking Christ. At least read the rest of the thread where this has already been addressed. Or just google the definition of profit.
I understand. What’s wrong with farmers making a profit?
That they engage in tactics such as mass slaughter and burial of pigs and destruction of food in order to ensure prices maintain a level that is profitable for them.
That they prioritize crops that ensure good returns rather than prioritizing crops to ensure healthy diets.
That profit driven agriculture is the primary reason for mass industrial monocultures, which are inherently destructive to the environment.
And that profit driven agriculture relies on massive infusions of petroleum products in order to maintain production levels and prevent crop failures due to depleted soil. Issues which regenerative and sustainable permaculture do not have.
Small farmers typically don’t really profit per se. They make enough to maintain their farms through federal subsidies because the federal government at least recognizes the importance of having a steady food supply, regardless of market prices. It just doesn’t take the logical next step and recognize the importance of everyone having adequate nutrition, and so we’re in the situation we are now, where 25% of US children don’t have access to adequate nutrition.
So you’re telling me work as hard as a farmer my whole life and I don’t get to retire with millions in the bank account?
Pass
That’s already how it happens, unless the farmer sells the land, which usually actually happens when he dies, because their kids don’t want to be farmers. Most farmers aren’t rich Lmao, corporate industrial farms make big bucks, but Billy’s Lima Bean Farm isn’t raking in millions in profit. Millions in revenue, maybe, but margins for individual food producers are pretty damn low already.
Even those who retire and have savings to live off aren’t necessarily profiting. Ensuring the ability to retire is part of a living wage.
I don’t give a damn if you become a farmer or not. It’s not like we have a shortage of people already working on these farms for exploitative and sometimes even slave wages and living in plantation style housing on the farm. Those people wouldn’t say no to a living wage, they’re already doing all the actual hard work on the farm, they might as well be entitled to the full value of the products. Cutting out the billionaires and rent seekers in the middle, they’d be able to raise their wages to sustainable levels.
I mean, yeah. They’re farmers, they provide a necessary service. Their labor should be rewarded. That’s not mutually exclusive with food being provided to citizens for “free” (I.e. Paid for with taxes).
Farmers are already food slaves under the current system
https://modernfarmer.com/2020/11/study-finds-1-percent-of-farms-own-70-percent-of-worlds-farmland/
So let’s make ANY chance of profit, what, illegal?
How about we don’t base policy on propaganda cartoona
How about we spread out the work and spread out the profit among people who do the work.
How about we definitely never do commie shit or we’ll end up like Russia
Individual Farmers often don’t profit. They survive through subsidy. The grocers who hold monopoly on supply chains and corporate industrialized farms with near-slave immigrant laborers make the majority of the profit. Also, paying yourself a wage isn’t profit. They can pay themselves a living wage that allows them to thrive, no one is calling for enslavement lmao.
The problem isn’t necessarily entirely capitalism, but rather capitalism that is heavily skewed in one direction with regulatory capture, therefore it’s no longer true capitalism. Large corporations have the protection of numerous governments to shield them from a truly free market.
In other words, a local farmer selling his reasonably sized crop yields for fair profit is fine. A large multinational food corporation that manipulates food prices for greedily high profit margins–and this same corporation gets laws passed to ensure smaller farmers are kept under thumb–is not.
True large scale socialism is a pipe dream. It mostly works in small groups, but it most certainly does not when that group consists of millions of people. A balanced approach of moderate, well regulated capitalism and social democracy is the best solution, in my opinion.
Edit: The first few sentences appear to have been poorly worded and many are mistaking me for someone advocating for true/unregulated capitalism, but that is not the case. I’m simply remarking that even if our system was meant to be completely capitalist originally (which is still bad), it’s not even that anymore. It’s a bastardized version of it where corporations no longer have to compete fairly, as they’ve made themselves keys to the kingdom to ensure no one can potentially challenge them, so to speak.
My last paragraph of my original comment is essentially my point. True socialism isn’t possible at scale, but a mixture of it and capitalism is.
Brain dead take, capitalism always ends in the consolidation of capital and power. It naturally flows resources into fewer and fewer hands as the only goal is to make more and more profit. We’re living in it and you’re denying it. Take a look around you.
Apparently you didn’t actually care to read what I wrote and comprehend what I meant. I am specifically calling out the system we’re currently living in.
I did. The true long term goal for our species should be eliminating our reliance on monetary systems. Money is just a tool for inequality at this point.
I don’t necessarily disagree, I just don’t think it’s realistic for a long, long time. Humans will require an evolution of sorts for anything like that to occur. You’d need the vast majority of humans to stop being selfish/entitled. That’s never going to happen without dramatic change. In small pockets of society, e.g. communes? Sure. At scale in places like NYC, Delhi, London, etc? No way.
You’re ultimately right. Though, as you said in current mentality, if there is a way to be more equal someone will do it. Civic centers like that would have to be reformed after whatever new way lf things comes next. I’d imagine our descendants will have to squat in our ruins before that also happens.
Power always accumulates within capitalism. Large corporations don’t usually start that way, Walmart and Target started as single stores that got lucky. Capitalism is reliant on the state. We have a name for the system where capitalism existed without reliance on the state; it’s called feudalism. A competition will always end with one winner and several losers, so free market competition results in a monopoly and several failed businesses. To prevent this, governments make rules to prevent the competition from ending, which results in more wealth and capital to influence government even more and break down those rules. In capitalist society, it is the ultimate goal to become the international megacorporation that manipulates markets and suppresses worker rights to maximize profit. So, I’ll ask you, what’s the difference between corporate capitalism and this ‘true’ capitalism?
You misunderstood what I meant. What I’m saying is that corporations have taken over the governments that are supposed to be regulating them and now write the rules that benefit themselves, a.k.a. regulatory capture. This is bad. Thus why I wrote what I wrote.
Capitalism isn’t inherently bad. Unchecked capitalism will eventually become corrupted, this is known. I’m not advocating for true capitalism, I was merely making a remark about the current situation. If you read my last sentence, I’m a proponent for well regulated capitalism that’s run by a system of social democracy.
Regulatory capture was predicted well over 100 years ago. It is in inevitable outcome of the liberal Democratic capitalist model.
So while you might say, that many of our problems would be solved if we just stopped this damn regulatory capture, to do so, would reflect a lack of understanding of the inevitability of actors gaining enough capital to influence and even overpower the state. You cannot fix it through capitalism. Even soft social changes like syndicalism would only result in syndicates capturing regulatory processes , rather than corporations.
It was predicted over a 100 years ago? Lol, a 100 years ago we were trying to climb out of the Robber Baron Era, the definitive era that showed how rotten unbridled capitalism could become… until some key events, politicians, and laws helped put a stop to their total control (and then of course the Great Depression came crashing in). This is in the context of the US, anyway.
Anyway, I’m done arguing with you. Keep dreaming of the impossible, I agree it is a nice dream but I promise you it will never happen at scale until humans evolve and/or modern societies have been reduced to ash.
1867 to be exact.
Indeed, and that is around the time that the Labor Revolution started to mobilize in the US. By then, there were already the beginnings of major monopolies that would continue to snowball to their peak by the end of the 1800s/early 1900s.
I will leave off with this: I don’t entirely disagree with you. Certain industries should absolutely have no profit motive: Healthcare, basic utilities, basic infrastructure, etc. should 100% be publicly owned, funded, and operated. In the US, we’ve seen firsthand what has resulted from privatizing these goods and services (i.e. it’s been very bad).
However, in my opinion, humans are still fairly primitive animals and motive is heavily driven by immediate/short term reward. I think it would be amazing if we could abandon that short sighted thinking/ambitions and strive for a harmonious utopia of pure socialism. But I just don’t see how it’s possible when you’re dealing with billions of animals, much of whom have generational trauma that drives much of our destructive behavior. You’d need to address that trauma, cease all violence, and provide basic needs to everyone so that people can live comfortably and without fear for generations. Good luck getting the vast majority of folks on board with that goal.
socdem is a perfectly good intermediary to a socialist society, so I won’t bad talk it. However, none of the problems we currently face as a civilization can be solved through capitalism.
That’s why Capitalist nations always win hard to ensure socialism can’t work! That’s why Juan fu i got mine is teaching at a Florida college, amirite?
No country on Earth is practicing true socialism. Nor has any actually attempted it in full earnest. Practically ever government is a bastardized version of ideals left to fester.
Yea yeah no true Scotsman. Where is this “true capitalism” in existence? Or is this another “homo economicus “ that definitively can never exist?
Large scale socialism has worked, multiple times. Do you not think industrializing a peasant society, more than doubling lifespan, cutting working hours in half, I could go on but I’ll leave it there, are things successful countries do? What determines success?
Arguably the most capitalist societies were probably nomadic hunter gatherers where everyone was always on the move, every man and woman was out there for themselves. Not really everyone’s cup of tea let alone particularly enjoyable to be fair
Sounds like somebody needs to take an anthropology course or two. You are badly confused. You’re not even wrong, you’re just light years off base and clearly speculating with a kind of pure almost childlike ignorance of the subject.
There’s no evidence of any time when humans were “Out there for themselves”. History shows definitively that humans have actively collaborated in social arrangements in every instance that we have found.
You have a very generous definition of the word “worked.”
It’s just a simple fact that managed or hybrid capitalism produces by far the best results for the most people. I will never understand the need to see the world in black and white terms when it’s quite obvious to nearly everyone that mixed economies provide the best allocation of resources together with the highest quality of life. This is a subject that mainstream economists see as largely settled, apart from the details.
I can’t believe I’m seriously arguing with a communist. Maybe this is enough Internet for me for today.
No I have a rather defined definition of worked. It is “improved the lives of the vast majority of citizens”. Which socialism did, and does.
25% of American children don’t get enough food to sustain proper development. And that’s a proper allocation of resources to you? Millions of Britains rely upon food banks because the resources are so unevenly distributed that a few individuals hold the majority of it, and that is a proper allocation of resources to you?
Nearly a million people are homeless (40% of which work full time) in the US. Is that a better allocation of resources than providing housing as a human right?
Me when I had to go to 3 gas stations last night to find one with a functional air pump for my tires, and the one that was working was not automated, and it even cost me 2 dollars for the privilege of reading that stupid analogue gauge in the dark.
The broken free ones were automated.
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Amen
Why use Finn without a mention to scrat scrobblin?
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