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Very interesting how all those "pretend socialists" only exist in the third world, and all the "real socialists" existin the west. Yet all the successful revolutions have been done in the third world by "pretend socialists", and the so called "real socialists" in the west have accomplished nothing. Their biggest success of the "real socialists" in the west being capitalist welfare states or social democracies that rely on old school imperial relationships to fund their welfare in a select few areas.
No Eurocentrism present to this line of thought here at all...
What do you think of Nelson Mandela OP? He was a very good leader, right? You know that he considered Cuba an ally and supported their revolution as Cuba sent troops to fight against the apartheid government in the border wars, took inspiration from Mao and called the Chinese revolution a miracle, thanked the Soviets for giving unending support in the fight against apartheid while receiving the a Lenin Peace Prize? So is Nelson Mandela now a fascist according to your meme?
"Authoritarian" is completely drtetmined by
Western left anti-communist only like the socialists who lose
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All governments are authoritarian. Its a meaningless term. Its usually thrown at any state opposing the US as part of the xenophobic rhetoric used in western propoganda toward its enemies.
Lumping nazis and other fascists in with communists is a technique used to smear socialism and make nazis look less bad. Its nazi apologia
All governments are authoritarian.
Goddamn Authoritarian governments threatening me to put me in jail if i dont use my seatbelt
China, a famously white country...
Slavs were not white historically and fascist Germany wanted to exterminate them for being inferior
You exposed their ass
Hexbear in shambles
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So many words to tell us you’ve read zero theory…
Also, how on earth is “Fuck cars” a successful “socialist experiment”? The biggest action anyone associated with that movement is flatten a few tires from SUV’s
socialism is when I listen to NPR. capitalism is when I go to my parent's house for Christmas. communism is when I get to program the radio presets in mom's Honda Odyssey. social democracy is when I go to Starbucks. liberalism is when I look through the LL Bean catalogue.
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You don't understand socialism then, it's not "when the government does something"
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Would you use a monarch’s definition of democracy to define democracy?
Do you think that definition would be fair or even accurate?
Because you are using a capitalist definition of socialism, which is just as unfair and inaccurate.
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Yeah, that's definitely a usage of the word socialism I have heard, but it is not generally a definition most socialists or socialist parties would use and it has some issues in my opinion.
This is such a broad definition of socialism as to make it almost meaningless, as this definition fits every nation on earth today and most through history. ancient Rome used public money to fund public roads, subsidized grain for the poor, public entertainment and land grants for veterans, public aqueducts, and other public programs, yet this was 2000 years before the concept of socialism was really invented and I don't think anyone is holding up ancient Rome as an example of a socialist society.
I would define socialism by two characteristics. One is control over the political economy by the proletariat (workers), as opposed to the bourgeoisie (capitalists/financiers/business owners). In a bourgeois run capitalist state, there is still publicly funded services, but they generally set up to benefit privately run industry (public highways, government subsidized research, police) or they are concessions won by the proletariat through class struggle (universal healthcare, social welfare programs).
The second characteristic is economic organization around common need, rather than around the pursuit of profits. This would require taking the means off production (factories, businesses, utilities, etc) out of the hands of the bourgeoisie.
socialism can be understood as the transitional state between a capitalist mode of production and a communist one. the US government is a 100% certified capitalist state, any project they have undertaken has nothing to do with socialism
Okay, you're incorrect
Sorry mate, socialism isn't that. Here's a good place to start learning about what socialism is. check out Richard Wolff, a economics professor, on YouTube for some interesting lecturers about how it works in reality if you want to go a bit further.
As far as I've ever been aware, socialism is the use of tax dollars to provide goods or services
I've seen others comment but I'll add my own two cents. You don't know what socialism is, and that's not a criticism of you, it's just a fact.
What you're describing is social democracy wherein governments allow a capitalist relationship to the means of production to exist while providing social programs and investing. Socialism and Capitalism are about the worker's relationship to the means of production. Under capitalism Capitalists take money generated by worker's surplus labor as profits and use these profits to create a government that will protect their power to continue stealing from their workers. Under socialism profits are not held privately but publicly, by worker's or socialist governments that exist to redistribute the ill gotten wealth of the Capitalists.
It's not about how many programs a government does or the taxes it collects, it's about the workers relations to the means of production. The problem with social democracy, which Lenin pointed out over a hundred years ago in State and Revolution, is that by letting Capitalists exist they will not allow workers to take away their wealth and power democratically, they will use fascism to secure their wealth. Another problem is that these programs cannot exist for long because Capitalists are parasites and will do everything they can to privatize them and milk as much profit out of them as possible, for examples of this look at nearly every government program that exists in Europe and point to me one that works better now than it did 30 years ago before Capitalists had time to take cuts out of it, it's a really big problem typically with healthcare programs in these countries.
Interstate Highways and similar systems are "successful" socialism, as far as I understand socialism
I must be blunt here: socialism is not about taxation. At all. Socialist communes don't even require taxes or money to exist. Socialism is about workers' relationship with work.
as far as I understand socialism
Even by you'd definition of "socialism" being public infrastructure spending, how is the US highway system more successful than the Chinese High Speed Rail system?
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Lines losing money is implying that the point of the lines is to make money. That is so staggeringly uninformed and capitalist minded it blows me away.
I will shock you by informing you most fish are bad at flying.
Turns out, that’s not what they were made for.
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My brother in Christ, China has urbanized faster than any society in human history. They build entire cities and then move people in once they’re finished.
The people pay to maintain the rails through taxes, failing to “recoup the maintenance” just means the lines are subsidized.
By that logic if they charged no fee to use them, it would be infinitely wasteful…
Which, by the way, have you noticed most highways are free to use? Does that not make them money losers?
So are parks, and sidewalks.
I’ve never seen them criticized as wasteful. The point is not to make money with them.
but as it is the Chinese high speed rail system is indeed a successful socialist(?)/socially-funded(?) intercity transit system.
It's funny to call America's highways socialist and then hedge your phrasing against China's rail system.
More genuinely, would you like me to go through the Marxian conception of socialism in a non-combative way? It looks like you're doing your best but just aren't familiar with the topic.
"far as I understand socialism" We got a lot to unpack here.
Youbtalked about how all the post soviet states crumbled into disrepair. They are cpaitlaist. That is cpaitlaism. When they were not capitalist things got better. When they were cpaitlaist. Things got worse. This is basic stuff here.
Not even just "crumbled". They were crumbled
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There are lies, and then there are statistics, and trying to do living standard calculations about this shit with a 10% cutoff that's including the feudal warlords who owned literally everything and were spending fuckoff amounts of money on fucking glass eggs is just dancing around the actual point here.
They went from a feudal partially industrialized backwater to space in the span of ~30 years, with a catastrophic war right in the middle. They operated for decades under siege from the rest of the world outside their relatively small and poor sphere.
I don't like capitalism or hate socialism. I hate that the universe works in such a way that my lifestyle - no car, living with my parents, and writing on a modern computer with fiber internet access for a living, with no possessions individually worth more than $5000 and a net worth of basically zero - is not fair under capitalism AND impossible under the kind of world YOU want to live in.
You want to live in a world where my only niche in life is too luxurious for everyone else? Fuck you, I'll just commit suicide.
Socialism is when no electronic treats? those devices you're so protective of are almost definitely made in China or nearby already, what do you think the anti-China warmongering is going to result in if not a disruption of your treats?
your life sounds pretty miserable under capitalism, wild how we have a system which prioritizes the right of property owners to extract rents from people in perpetuity.
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I'm trying to say, this isn't about a fucking political compass to me, and I don't have a position on that compass.
The compass shit is bullshit anyways
revolutions ALWAYS fail.
They have succeeded in the past, and it was often disabled people fighting the hardest for socialist revolution- because the status quo was killing them. Helen keller was a socialist.
My life is miserable because I have a disability that means I have to rely on others and was literally been screwed out of a happy childhood by my own government from 2001-2002. I can barely trust my government to give me enough to live on (~$20,000 CAD a year), and full-bodied lasseiz-faire capitalism would view me as human vermin, while all attempts at communism has proven to be endemically-afflicted with an authoritarian existence that would have me exterminated as "useless".
You are in full-bodied capitalism, it's just that it's the people outside your national borders who are the 'human vermin' getting exterminated by your countries military, along with its allies. You get some meager existence in the meantime and lots of treats to enjoy.
You seem pretty worked up about this, but don't seem to have an understanding of what socialists even want. You also don't seem interested in learning.
I work with people who are unhoused living on the streets with far less toys than you have, I've know many people that didn't make it through the last few years. You can eat my shit and hair.
while all attempts at communism has proven to be endemically-afflicted with an authoritarian existence that would have me exterminated as "useless".
This is completely false. Socialist states aren't the ones doing eugenics and killing the disabled. That's fascist and liberal states doing it (I'm sure you see how MAiD is sinister). Socialist states, while not always prioritizing the issue of disability, have sought to help the disabled so that they can help in the ways they can rather than waste away in a hovel as they were left to in feudal society.
This is almost as good as when my roommate tried to tell me that the fact that SSI lets you buy sauces to cook with is socialism
Highways aren't socialist. The government building infastructure is not what socialism is.
You are politically illiterate, yet very confindent. You don't know what socialism or communism is and yet you pretend to have this all fugured out.
Did it ever occur to read any of the many books or pamphlets written by actual socialist thinkers that explain what we believe?
Yes, the highways that serve as the beacon of Capitalist freedom are also socialist; they're funded by taxes.
Socialism is when the government does stuff
Socialism is an aquarium within which the communist fish (communist nations) are dead but the capitalist fish (corporations) are the tiny fish feeding of the remaining government fish (the modern globalized nations of the world, regardless of stability, technology or form of government), which vary in health and size but are generally bigger and healthier than the capitalist fish... Except day by day the government fish get thinner and weaker and certain corporate fish get fat off the blood they leech. The blood is tax-funded resources like health care, and the capitalist fish which aren't growing fat off the government fish are the charities, unions and the average persons who collect food for and pick parasites off the skin of the government fish.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?Permanently Deleted
Socialism is an economic system defined by production of goods and services according to their need, in contrast to capitalism where they're produced for profit. Two totally different, incompatible systems
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Worker control of production, or production according to need?
These end up being the same thing, that is sort of the point of capitalism going away. The profit motive is disconnected from human utility.
Yea i kinda forgot the workers control part whoops
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Honestly, why not just peg the value of 100 of a a currency to the energy used to create a loaf of bread? Then bread will always cost close to 100 and other products will be priced according to energy and not speculation.
Markets aren't that efficient compared to planning. There is a reason why firms nowadays work off of a bastardized descendent of Cybersyn.
but you're asking to replace the entire capitalist economy so I can only hope you understand a revolution doesn't come without risk and has never truly succeeded yet for anyone ever.
Tell that to Cubans, who had a longer life expectancy than people than the US even with the blockade before Trump intensified the blockade.
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That might work. Really it isn't that hard. Most societies through history have practiced some form of social production. Without the fear and lie nation of capitlaism the desire to do good and not live in a bad place has been drive enough to make things work.
Socialism is when the government does stuff.
Uh, yeah?
You are literally saying something that is so thoroughly absurd it is a well known meme used to make fun of people who don't know what they're talking about.
Clip of the most famous example of the meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgiC8YfytDw
Lecture the clip is from (that you could learn a lot from): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysZC0JOYYWw
Look, ignorance is not a crime. But you really are painfully ignorant about the topic you are claiming to explain and you would do well to learn more before presuming to educate "extremists on both sides." Your comments are so lacking in self awareness and so cringe that I'm half convinced this is a bit.
Edit: So after a refresh of the thread I read more of your comments and I'm glad to see you're willing to learn and discuss. Here is another good introduction point that's been well received by a lot of people beginning to look beyond the buzzwords and genuinely learn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpKsygbNLT4 Actually, the same could be said for about every video on that channel (Second Thought).
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https://piped.video/watch?v=ysZC0JOYYWw
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I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Uh, yeah? Socialism is a product or service provided by a government agency at a reduced or waived price. The products and services in question don't just happen.
no it isn't. socialism is worker control of the means of production.
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The historical reality is that the word’s meaning has changed over time and the meaning currently being used by GreenTeaRedFlag has also changed words. There used to be “social democrats” who would be more recognizable as Marxists nowadays and who bear little resemblance to what we call them nowadays.
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That’s fair. For what it’s worth, I don’t know any socialist schools of thought which define socialism as equivalent to government social spending.
No need to reply since you’re ducking out, but if you don’t mind me offering a couple videos on the subject of central planning, these are well done and measured analyses in my opinion:
- Cybersocialism: Project Cybersyn and the CIA Coup in Chile (just over an hour long)
- Former Socialism’s Faults (whole video is good, but relevant bit is 16:05-17:45)
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https://piped.video/pDSZRkhynXU?si=QriJLFRzciVLZvGd
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Good bot
Trying to explain the world economic state to the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum.
Your Aquarium analogy might actually be the most obtuse, word salad-y, revisionist nonsense I’ve read in years; and your definition of socialism is just flat out wrong
I acknowledge that 'socialism' is a vague term with dozens of definitions, but this strange strictly-American idea that publicly-funded infrastructure is socialist isn't a useful definition, nor a common one. It will really just confuse people.
Historically and presently, socialism is a labour movement which, despite all the variations, had the common goal of the workers controlling their means of production, rather than the owning class. Almost every political dictionary and socialist will back that up, and also Wikipedia (for something we can check right now). It's not about whether something is private or public.
Paying taxes and voting in a (systematically broken, throroughly corrupted) government representative democracy isn't really accomplishing this. We are arill beholden to the owning capitalist class. How I spend my working hours is still governed by a bourgeois board of directors, I don't own the tools I use, I don't have meaningful power to make democratic decisions about my work or my society governance.
You are correct that socialism exists (present tense! see: Zapatistas) without planned economies. But if you want to see what socialist modes of organisation look like within capitalism, it would be a workers cooperative.
Anti-car movements are not socialist nor socialism. They are good and pro-society, but are completely incidental to the socialist movement.
Collectively-funded operations like roads, police and our military airstriking hospitals aren't socialist nor socialism. We have no control over the use of our money and labour; even if voting was democratic power in practice, a campaigning platform isn't a guarantee of policy, they can completely ignore that once elected. And also, no matter who you vote for, your tax money will still go towards anti-socialism!
As for the parts about communism, well, no. The definition you've invented wildly conflicts with both theory and historical events. You're gonna have to start from scratch on that one, even just looking at the Wiki article will provide a much better base. Very popular ideologies like anarcho-communism just completely contradict all that.
Is this a bit? Or are you really doing the "Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does the more socialist it is." Bit.
You are unironically suggesting an act that forced more car infrastructure is the greatest socialist experiment ever undertaken?
are you fucking INSANE?
A good example of western socialism is the "Fuck Cars" movement
A good example of western socialism is the "Fuck Cars" movement
Don't bother friend. I know from long experience that they will insist on defining the terms of the discussion on their own, as if some whack job fringe theorist is somehow to be accorded the final word in adjudicating our use of language.
The problem therein is of course that when your opponent gets to set the parameters of meaning and discussion, you aren't really exchanging ideas on an intellectually even playing field.
I've pointed this out many times over the years, but it still hasn't taken with your true believers/idiots.
Long story short; don't waste your time; you aren't arguing with good-faith interlocutors.
They are playing semantic games and have no interest in honest discussion.
To them. You and I are simply uneducated morons who have yet to receive the true message.
Noted fringe theorists no one ever heard of Marx and Engels.
I'm sure people have tried to define basic terms like socialism to you because you're politically illiterate. Thats not a scam to "define terms" to win an arguement it is a literal defining of terms, of actual words, that you don't know the meaning of
Don't bother friend. I know from long experience that they will insist on defining the terms of the discussion on their own, as if some whack job fringe theorist is somehow to be accorded the final word in adjudicating our use of language.
Ahh right, why should adherents of an ideology have any say in how that ideology is defined and how terminology specific to that ideology means?
The problem therein is of course that when your opponent gets to set the parameters of meaning and discussion
Your opponents shouldn't get to set the definitions, but the opponents of socialism should get to set the definition of socialism. Makes sense.
you aren't really exchanging ideas on an intellectually even playing field.
Correct, thought the intellectual disparity clearly cleaves in the opposite direction to what you believe.
as if some whack job fringe theorist
Fringe figures like Marx
Nelson Mandela was not a great man. At least not great enough to be so admired while F.W De Klerk had his funeral protested (F.W De Klerk helped end Apartheid).
Nelson Mandela did no more besides be a figurehead and help make a constitution that no one (not even when he was in power) follows. The ANC is corrupt to this day
I'm South African, I know who F.W de Klerk is. Don't lie about what he did, there's a reason he was unanimously booed while receiving his joint noble peace prize. He didn't help end apartheid, he was forced into a position where it was the only viable option. Pure pragmatism. He was a member of the NP for many years, he willingly joined that organisation at the height of apartheid in 1972. If he was actually interested in ending fighting apartheid, he would have joined a liberation movement, not the apartheid party.
de Klerk was an apartheid president that was so corrupt he ordered the incineration of evidence of his, and his parties, corruption and crimes against humanity to be carried out by industrial steel smelters. Not to mention what he did with all the "third force" shenanigans towards the end of apartheid that almost caused civil war. It's been revealed that he knew all about it. Or all the racist things he said later in life that revealed his true character, such as refusing to call apartheid a crime against humanity. Yes, I also used to be a liberal that thought de Klerk was a good guy that helped end apartheid, that was until I actually decided to do some research into the matter. Nelson Mandela said it best when it comes to de Klerk:
"Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator...He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation."
Yes the ANC is now extremely corrupt, it was effectively couped by corporate interests in the late 90s and early 2000s. Remember the move from RPD to GEAR? Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel? Ramaphosa running away to make money in McDonalds and mining instead of succeeding Mandela? Leaving the door open for Mbeki to become president, a self described Thacherite who instituted austerity measures, underfund Eskom and give South Africa it's first bout of load shedding, and denied that HIV causes AIDS, killing hundreds of thousands in the process? This all paved the way for Zuma's corruption and ineptitude, and for Ramaphosa to come back, even after his shameful involvement in Marikana. Yes the ANC is shamefully corrupt, incompetent and useless, and it's interesting to look at exactly how it got to that position.
Nelson Mandela was not a great man.
Im going to come by your homestead with a handgun past midnight and make you feel true fear, Afrikaner maggot
Based
that has been marauding around the world for the last century murdering brown people