this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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Just going to keep posting this every time it comes up.
We could reduce energy and materials cost of global production worldwide to 30% current capacity by planning production instead of leaving it to the market, and greatly increase the standard of living for everyone on this planet. But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7n1POfYMo1I3kcy0oqSm6l?si=8ikYVJN8TIupvjoaCMRssA
All strains of Socialism are democratic, it's a bit redundant to include unless you're trying to emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system.
Glances nervously at the ultra-nationalist strains
Some are more democratic than others, certainly.
It is exhausting to hear people smuggly denounce AES states as dysfunctional, by citing their trend towards nationalizarion of capital and popularization of policy. Particularly when the same folks will scream bloody murder if you don't continue to mechanically endorse their brand of corporate liberalism.
I genuinely am not really sure what you're getting at, here. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, I am stating that AES is democratic as is Marxism in general, and am saying that liberals often use the nebulous, ill-defined term of "Democratic Socialism" as an AES cudgel.
I see liberals try to equate any kind of public sector combined with a national election system as Democratic Socialism. Which gets you the Nordic Model - a collection of petrostates with an egalitarian veneer and a white supremacist underbelly - labeled "Democratic Socialism" on paper.
Meanwhile, actual social democracies in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia are denounced as authoritarian every time the Neoliberal (or outright reactionary) local politician loses an election.
Marxism is Democratic in theory. Leninism is more popular than democratic, as Leninists aren't wedded to electoralism like their liberal peers.
But the critique I see most often among liberals is that markets are democratic. And therefore every AES state that fails to sufficiently privatize the economy is definitely facto authoritarian.
That's the real definitional divide between Marxists and Liberal Democrats.
Yes this is what I believe as well but to many people Socialism is synonymous with authoritarianism. Many of those people are amenable to Socialist ideas if not able to be won over completely as you and I have been.
Also, (not to begin the debate about AES) but I think its fair to say that where many socialist projects have failed is in the arena of democracy. Maybe its just a feature of the tradition I come from, but to me that commitment to democracy has to be constantly renewed. Not bourgeois democracy but worker democracy. The working class has to learn real democracy in order to engage in political struggle in preparation to overthrow the ruling class.
Lenin was constantly stressing and renewing his commitment to democratic process, which was one of the reasons he was able to create the revolutionary party after 1905 that was able to seize power in 1917. And while he had no illusions about the limitations of democratic process within his historical moment, he always "bent the stick" in that direction which in my opinion was one of the things that made him such an effective leader prior to and up through the civil war period ending in 1921.
So I will always stress the importance of democracy, not only for the historic necessity and precedent but also because it is not enough to be good materialists (and there certainly has been a history of bad ones) but also good dialectitians, which means contextualizing our project through unificatiokn of the subjective and objective; and to fail to do so is to fail to be dialectical Marxists. If I have to work and debate with some Harringtonites in the process well that is just a necessity of the historical moment.
That's fair, but can backfire and delay radicalization, giving rise to "left" anticommunists that ultimately help contribute to antisocialism more than they do to pro-socialism, as their anticommunist views are magnified by bourgeois media. Chomsky, for example, is guilty of this.
This is where idealism and practical realism need to reach a balance. Unfortunately, in the face of international Capitalist and Imperialist dominance has forced stronger measures.
Yep, but Lenin also banned factionalism. He tried to combine worker participation and democracy with unity. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, of course, I just want to stress that even Lenin made concessions, and had to.
I understand, I just want to stress that you risk playing into anti-Marxist hands, which is the entire reason for DemSocs.
Honestly I find this comment irritating, as you're basically accusing me of being a crypto-reformist, when I explicitly call for an end of capitalism. As if I'm not constantly educating myself, And others to guard against this tendency of anti-marxism. Because I used the term "democratic socialism", regardless of the fact that I acknowledge the wrongheadedness of the reformist strains, still you say I might fall into anti Marxism. If that happens it won't be because I acknowledge democracy; and the fact that you think so little of my actual irl work because of my use of this term is insulting.
I'm going to refrain from criticizing you point by point, as you pedantically have done to me, and insist that I'm actually a good comrade, and hope you'll come to the realization that the movement needs us both. Otherwise we are just going to in-fight, which if I wanted to do that I would debate within the org that I work with, where I might be seen as a human, rather than online where the medium itself encourages back-biting, factionalism and elitism by design.
In other words, cut me a break comrade.
I didn't say you were anti-Marxist, just that the term "Democratic Socialism" carries the notion of Reformist Socialism, so some may interpret it that way. I was pointing it out because I believe you're well intentioned, comrade, not to pick a fight. I apologize if it came off in that manner.
I appreciate the clarification and good will, comrade.
In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the "socialist" movement or party. And they don't really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics...
It's almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
There are numerous reasons for this. Stability in protecting revolution and genuine popular support are among the larger and more important reasons.
Neither are Capitalist states, and neither was Marx. Combatting international Capitalist influence was and is key for retaining Socialism.
Not true at all, actually. Those controlling the media want you to think it though.
I agree with a lot you are saying. No state can stay stable without some form of control and censorship as soon as it starts threatening the stability of the system. Capitalism does this as well. And they have a very effective propaganda machine.
I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don't have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn't exist.
The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn't agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).
Also please don't misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.
This is a massive confusion. Capitalism doesn't "appeal to human nature," aspects like greed are more expressed under it as they form the superstructure that reinforces the base. The base is the Mode of Production, which creates and reinforces aspects like ideology, politics, art, culture, etc which reinforce the Mode of Production in turn. Capitalism isn't natural, humans don't have an inherent draw to hierarchy, and Socialism doesn't requore empathy nor intelligence to implement.
Pol Pot explicitly rejected Marxism, and was stopped by Vietnamese Communists. Your ideas surrounding Mao and Xi Jinping are also unsupported.
You've already found them, it's AES countries. They use what they need to survive in a world currently dominated by Capitalism. Over time, the state will wither away more and more, but there's a reason that there are very, very few largish scale Anarchist projects.
Have you ever visited any of the AES Countries? They have a few rich and powerful families running everything and sucking up to daddy china. I have visited Laos and Vietnam and talked to the working people. They are suffering, barely making ends meed and are fed up with the people in power taking everything for themselves and living in luxury. And if they talk too much about it they get "visitors". These people in power over there are not working class. There is also absolutely no basic healthcare. If you get sick you die. I am sorry but for me a socialist country does not have an elite living on luxury and it doesn't have people dying of poverty and lack of healthcare.
Look at trendlines. This is a figure for the USSR, which often also gets slandered as you have done.
Vietnam and Laos are Socialist, and remain to be so. Socialism isn't defined as "everyone is pleased," it's a transitional state to Communism. Look at metrics over time, don't analyze immediate snapshots.
What are you trying to say with this graph? That distribution of wealth is better when it is distributed amongst less than 1% of the population of they call themselves proletarian? Or that it is somehow better if standard of living goes down for everyone just because the then nonexistent ressources are shared equally?
In a perfect world a whole cake is shared equally by all 8 people. But if you smash half the cake, give a quarter to one person and the remaining quarter to the remaining 7 it is not better than 2 ppl having half a cake and letting the other 6 have the other half. Maybe not the best example but I hope you get my point.
If not having equal but good standard of living, what is it we are strivong for?
I suggest this link as a good read. Because I think just strictly defending the existing socialist countries is actually hindering progress towards a both fair and high quality of life society.
https://queer-bolshevik.medium.com/the-aes-doctrine-wrong-then-wrong-now-a8666de371da
You haven't interpreted the graphs correctly. That the share of the top 1% got reduced during USSR times is what the graph is showing, and it was much greater before and it's much greater after. The remaining population had a bigger share of the total wealth of the country during socialism than they did before or than they do after. Please re-read the graphs.
But that's not what happened, and you would know if you had read about the topic before making claims out of your ass. The wealth of the USSR and its citizens grew MASSIVELY during its existence. The country went from a preindustrial, almost feudal backwater, with 80+% of population being farmers working the fields with manual labor, to the second world power. The gains in living quality for citizens were absolutely massive. Free healthcare, education and public retirement pensions for everyone, millions of living units were built yearly, and were rented to families for an average of 3-5% of their income making homeless disappear, everyone was guaranteed to have a job available if they wanted to work with the average time to finding a job being 2 weeks, real consumption rose, during the worst years, at a rate of 3% per year... If you really want to study the evolution of soviet quality of life, I recommend you the book "Human Rights in the Soviet Union", by Albert Szymanski. Please, refrain from making false claims about the material living conditions in other countries that you patiently haven't made any effort to inform yourself about.
Where on Earth did you get those ideas? I am saying AES countries have dramatically reduced wealth inequality and have been very progressive forces. Read the graph.
You're right, that isn't the best example, because it's entirely non-applicable and horrible for representing the reality of AES states. Even then, the idea that resources should be shared equally is anti-Marxist, Marx specifically wanted resources distributed by needs in upper stage Communism, which is an extremely advanced form of Socialism. You're fighting ghosts.
We are striving for continued improvements for the Proletariat. Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
This link is left-anticommunist nonsense that is utter idealism.
You're coming off as an ulraleftist that doesn't understand Historical and Dialectical Materialism, I have no idea what you're advocating for nor how you plan on achieving it.
Funny how you just disregard the information without actually going into it at all.
Coming off as someone blindly following another form of oppression by a bourgeoise elite claiming to be proletarian.
I was hoping for some actual insights.
Nothing you said had any substance. Can you explain exactly what you mean by "another bourgeois elite claiming to be proletarian?" What do you believe makes someone bourgeoisie? You have no analysis and lack critical understanding.
China has the 2nd most billionaires in the world and they are tied to "state owned companies". And you try to tell me it's a socialist country. Billionaires should not exist in a socialist country. If the economic gains of labour land in the hands of a few billionaires, this makes them bourgeoisie. Even though they claim to be socialist. But you seem to be as blinded by their propaganda as you claim the western people to be of capitalist propaganda because you can't seem to grasp what's wrong with these so called socialist countries.
"State Owned Enterprises" is the term. Anyway, is this actually true? My impression was that the billionaires had private companies (Alibaba, etc.) and SOEs did not produce them.
Read China Has Billionaires. The fact that the PRC has a bourgeoisie class does not mean it is not Socialist.
"Q: Will it be possible for Private Property to be abolished at one stroke?
A: No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity."
-Engels, The Principles of Communism
Why not? I agree that wealth disparity is a bad thing, and can be dangerous if it is allowed to alter the course of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but you need to actually make a claim for why. Socialism isn't good because it follows an arbitrary condition of ideals to meet definitions, but because it elevates the proletariat as its focus.
Not necessarily, nor is this true of what the distribution of production looks like in the PRC. The PRC does have a bourgeoisie, but this does not mean it isn't Socialist. By your logic, the US is Socialist because the Post Office is state run.
I am bombarded by western propaganda every single day, the idea that eastern propaganda, of which I am exposed to very little, is the driving factor of my analysis is absurd.
Read theory.
We can do different than the last times. I don't believe we'll get not even close to a moneyless society until... God knows when, but the system has to change before we end up in a new feudal world where we all burn alive.
Democratic socialism (DemSoc) is a specific term (not to be confused with SocDem). Unless your point was that DemSoc is a bad term?
DemSoc itself is a bad term. It either is used to refer to Reformist Socialism (which is an impossibility and thus akin to astrology) or to pretend Marxist Socialism isn't democratic, advocating for factionalism and other possibilities of Socialism itself being destroyed by international moneyed interests and domestic wreckers.
Are you some kind of maximalist?
In what manner?
Democratic centralism is generally anti-democratic. The most charitable view is it's technocratic, but mostly it just involves power politics.
Democratic Centralism just means the decisions democratically made are binding, it's still democratic.
whoa whoa whoa
slow down there Karl Marx /s
Speed up there Marx!
Sure, because that's one thing socialist / communist systems are great at, making goods people want.
The capitalist class is no longer able to run society the way that they have. They will run nations into the ground, they will destroy this planet, they will kill millions systematically (as happened recently during the utter failure to deal with covid), they will enslave nations to produce those "goods" an ironic name for the incredible evil done with sweatshop labor. Unemployment is created by the system, which in turn causes the unemployed to suffer and starve in order to keep wages low.
There are no rules that say luxury goods couldn't be produced for consumption, except for the rules made up by the capitalists who do everything they can to destroy the government of socialists, to put them under embargo and sanction, affecting the masses of innocents more than anyone else. They have and will push their country's leaders to invade the country, killing hundreds of thousands or millions if necessary, so that their workforce can be exploited to produce their commodities. They have and will back mass murdering warlords, repressive religious fundamentalists and genocidal fascists to preserve the economic and political system that benefits them. If nations trying to provide support, housing and education for their people are under constant threat and attack from capitalist nations, how exactly are they supposed to dedicate a large part of their consumption to luxury goods? If they can't import goods either then yes it becomes difficult to access luxuries. That doesn't take a genius to understand; but to ignore it and still criticize a socialist nation for it takes a determination to misunderstand. I'm troubled by it and I think you also should be since you are the one who are so determined.
Too much is made, most of it is wasted. We are forced to drive cars while public transportation is dismantled, adding massive waste and pollution to our environment. There are thousands of train derailments every year, too many of them leaking carcinogenic chemicals into water supplies and neighborhoods. Industrial plants leak or dump pollutants into water supplies, making many people sick or worse, and do extensive lobbying and hire big law firms to protect against legislation and prosecution by affected communities. Cops whose job is to protect the private property of capitalists, that should belong to the workers, will beat and terrorize you for speaking out against genocide that your country pays for, all so that countries with mineral and oil resources are destabilized and hence easy pickings for finance and industry, that as I've explained pollutes, exploits, destroys the population of the affected nation.
All for your consumer "goods," your fucking treats. You don't even understand where they come from, you don't understand how the system you defend works, or for whom. I urge you to educate yourself about this, and take seriously the threat of climate catastrophe and likely collapse. I've included a podcast that features an economist where you can begin.
Workers must seize this system and destroy the old structures that underwrite their continued exploitation. I stand with the workers, the planet, the people. You stand with the very rich who exploit you and steal your time, health, energy, freedom. And why do you? I'm very curious.
You're on the right track, but the issue isn't "the capitalist class", it's "humanity". Slavery existed long before capitalism. Waste existed long before capitalism. Getting rid of capitalism won't suddenly make people better humans.
You don't seem to even understand what a luxury good is. A luxury good isn't a great bottle of wine, or a designer handbag. A luxury good is something that is rare and expensive and coveted for those reasons. Luxury goods are older than capitalism, they go back millennia. Important people in stone age groups had "luxury goods" that the rest of the people didn't have access to.
Yes, because it's extremely hard to figure out what people want. Markets (which are much older than capitalism) are the best way we've found to figure out what people want and to meet those needs. You can't get rid of markets, you can only drive them underground. When the USSR was meeting people's needs by giving them the goods that the government decided they should have, the black markets were famous because the things people wanted were not the things that the government had decided they needed.
If the "workers" are as idiotic as you, they'll probably die because they simply have no idea how the world works. I'm not defending capitalism, I'm defending markets, which are much, much older than capitalism. An idiot like you thinks that you can magically replace markets with magic, when the fact is that every system that has tried to replace markets since the dawn of time has failed.
If it makes you feel better to call me "idiotic" then I worry about you, because that is not the sort of thing that people say to each other when they are secure and confident in themselves. I only want to help educate people and challenge them to question the narrative that keeps us unable to change our living conditions. One of the things I would like to challenge is this tendency to otherise people who disagree with us. Its okay for people to have disagreements and lively debates to help each other see and educate. But if you're not used to it it can be stressful and cause people to lash out, blame and name call. So I'm sorry if this has caused you stress. I have discussions like this all the time, and you might not really be used to it, or feel like I'm trying to make you look stupid with my response, which is why you retaliate by calling me idiotic. I'm not trying to do that.
Moving on from your subjective impression of my response, there are several things that I feel need to be addressed. One is your tendency to hate and blame "humanity" as if there aren't incentive structures built into our political economic system. For one, capitalism is a system of forced competition, it pits people against each other, from the bottom to the top of the class hierarchy. This can cause people to behave in extremely self interested ways, when modern anthropology has demonstrated that we are innately social creatures, who are creative in nature. This idea that humans behave in self interested ways without any encouragement by the system that we need to interact with in order to live, is the result of alienation caused by capitalist social relations. This is a topic of incredible complexity and I don't trust that you are acting in good faith in this discussion, however of you would like me to explain more I would be happy to. But to put it succinctly, misanthropy is no substitute for history.
Secondly, slavery is one form of production, feudal serfdom is another, capitalist exploitation is another, and socialism is yet another. The engine of all human history is our historical mode of production, which generates classes of humans that exist in conflict with one another. Markets are not capitalism. Mercantilism certainly predates capitalist primitive accumulation by hundreds of years, but mercantilism is not capitalism even if it served as a historical precursor. Markets do not create new value, value is created under capitalism when capitalists pay workers less to produce goods than what they can sell it for in a marketplace. Markets can exist in transitional stage socialism, and probably will, for a time at least. But the means of production will be controlled democratically by the workers, not individual capitalists. The thing that made capitalism historically progressive is that it socialized production. Rather than a single craftsman making something to sell on a market, capitalism industrialized the economy, breaking each step of the production process down so that many workers are used to mass produce one part or step in the production process. However the value of this production process is privately owned. This is an inherent contradiction. Socialism will also socialize production, but it will socialize the fruits of that production for common enrichment. This contradiction is what makes capitalism extremely wasteful and inefficient, despite it being more efficient than feudal forms of productive tithing, which was individual producers giving goods to their nobles. Please look up "anarchy in production" if you want to learn more.
Also capitalism isn't able to meet human needs, it can only generate profit. If cancer medicine can be sold to some rich lady's cat then it will be, whereas under socialism it would go to the people who actually need it, so that they can continue to be productive. Also a great deal of productive labor is unpaid -- capitalist production would never be able to reimburse people for housework, despite it being a necessity for workers to remain healthy and continue to produce goods at their job. And before you say it, anthropologists and sociologists such as Silvia Federici have shown that at various historic times, housework was compensated for, just not necessarily with money (which is a stand in for value and merely allows for the slight of hand that makes these toxic social relations inherent to capitalism practically invisible to the individuated, alienated worker.)
And wrt the Soviet Union, if you would like to debate the conditions which created black markets, then I urge you to sharpen your pencil as I have studied the history of the fSU and other socialist experiments in great detail. Im not a youtube socialist, i have a decade of organizing experience and education, and surround myself with others who make that seem meagre. So don't think you are going to be able to get away with flattening an entire 70 year history of a dynamic, productive albeit deeply flawed attempt at socialist productive social relations, with some hand waving. If anyone is guilty of magical thinking in this regards it is you, I'm afraid.
But please limit our discussion to one topic at a time, as pursuing too many threads will not resolve some of the misunderstandings you have about historical production and socialist experiments in the 20th century. A big reason I study these movements is to understand what mistakes were made, when and why, and who was partly responsible. Indeed I am not without criticisms of the fSU and many 20th century experiments, but I'm not satisfied to just take the word of the people who benefit most from this tragically unjust system, as you seem to be. I have more curiosity and discipline than that. I hope you can be persuaded to take it upon yourself to try to become educated in these matters, or at least be open to the actual history in all its complexity and contradiction, and not just the cliff notes version furnished by wealthy elites and their toadies in the media. Also please limit the insults. I won't be goaded, you will not get off easy. I haven't insulted you as I have no beef with you, I have beef with the system and the fact that you defend it is illustrative of your confusion, which is not your fault but the fault of centuries of concerted effort to obscure these relations and demonize the resources you might access to try and understand them better.
idk what your reference point is, but ime people want homes
But almost everybody wants something different in a home.
Nearly everyone would like a roof, heat/cooling (climate dependent), beds of some kind, etc. I don't give a shit about seasonal decorations for a portion of the population until everyone who wants those gets them.
If i could guarantee my kids will have enough food and medical care for the rest of their lives unconditionally, only having to give up on my material belongings i will do so in a heartbeat.
If that means sleeping on straw and not owning any electronic devices but i get to keep living under the same roof with small garden i will still consider that a very cheap price to pay.
There is no point in all this luxury if we suicide our fucking species to create such.
You may be privileged right now, you may have it personally very good but your survival is just as dependent on society at large. If we don’t take action you too will be impacted sooner then you realize. And the more privilege you are used to the harder a time you will have.
It's easy to be a hero in your own imagination. The real world shows that most people don't actually do that.
The real world does not provide it as a realistic choice. You cannot do what i said. If one tried their family would just die with them.
Are you really arguing that your materialistic goods are worth more then the lives of future people? Because that is how your words appear. If so that is repulsive.
Parents have made much tougher sacrifices for their kids all over history, people leaving everything they have behind for a better future is a norm that continues to repeat conflict after conflict. Self-Sacrifice may be rare but to deny its existence is naively hateful.
If we don’t change our ways we wont even have a place to flee towards when climate conflicts arrive at home.
In your imagination, I bet you have big muscles.
That is one way to make it obvious your not acting in good faith.
You either didn’t bother to read or your reading comprehension is broken.
In your imagination I bet people clap when you say things like that.
Ever heard of Tetris?
Thats fair, advertising and marketing departments traditionally tend to fair far better under capitalist systems.
We're not talking about "capitalist systems" though, we're talking about "the market".
"The market" existed long before capitalism. It's an essential feature of human trade. Buyers offer goods for sale, sellers choose what they want to buy. People voting with their dollars, or with their cowrie shells provides a signal for what's in demand and what producers should make more of.
Every system that has tried to get rid of the market has failed, and the market always pops up anyway, often in the shape of a black market.
Thanks for explaining what a market is.
Its a good job we have such a thing to tell us that what we really want is to work most of our lives, mostly for someone else benefit, to endlessly produce things to a point that it destroys our planets ability to sustain life. Without such a devine oracle, we might have to ask difficult questions about what we're doing and for whos benefit.
Its a good to know there must be such a high demand for inequality too. Without the justification of the invisible hand, we might have to think about morals and other gross stuff.
But, as you make such a good point about not being able to get rid of something and just making a black market for it, as justificationfor keeping the market in its current state
Well, that and slavery of course. If the argument works for one it works for both.