• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Yeah, of course I have.

    In particular, I’ve noticed how the pro-capitalist people don’t seem to realize that we’re not living in a pure capitalist system. Instead we’re living in a mixed economy where key elements are socialist: road building, firefighting, postal services, food and drug safety testing, old age pensions, even ambulances (except for one minor exception).

    A 100% socialist (a.k.a. communist) system might not be possible (at least not yet) due to human nature. The few times that it has been tried, at least in theory, it has quickly become an authoritarian system instead. But, AFAIK, it’s so obvious that 100% capitalist would fail completely that no society has even bothered to try it. Hundreds of years ago there were brief experiments with things like capitalist fire services, and Pinkertons as police, but they failed so spectacularly that nobody even thinks of going back.

    So, instead we quibble about “capitalist” vs “socialist” when we’re really just arguing about whether the mix should be 80% capitalist, 20% socialist or 60% capitalist, 40% socialist.

    • AaronMaria@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what socialism and capitalism are. Simplified it’s who owns the means of production, that is basically the “capital” in the name “capitalism”, in socialism these means of production have a shared ownership. Now you can have a discussion of what that means, if state ownership counts or whatever but as long as individuals own the means of production it’s not socialism no matter how much you tax them(it would still be an improvement to tax them more it’s just not socialism)

      • J Lou@mastodon.social
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        10 months ago

        This understanding of capitalism is a misunderstanding that both Marxists and neoclassical types share. It is not capital ownership that gives the employer the right to appropriate a firm’s whole product. The employment contract is what gives them that right. Sure, capital ownership affects bargaining power, but the root cause is that contract. Abolishing the employment contract while still having individual ownership is possible (i.e. a market economy of worker coops)

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Is the US socialist because nVidia is a public company, therefore the shares are owned by the public? Is it a socialist country because most workers have 401(k) plans containing index funds, so they own a tiny portion of every major company? The ownership of the company is shared, so it must be socialism, right? I’d say no, because it’s not shared evenly.

        What if a single individual owns a single “mean” of production, but everything else is owned by the state, is that whole system capitalist? To me, it’s clearly not. You could argue that it’s mixed, but I’d say if it’s 99.9% not capitalist, it’s not capitalist.

        Modern economies are mixes of socialism and capitalism. The people (through the government) own certain things, and individuals own other things.

        • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          Is the US socialist because nVidia is a public company, therefore the shares are owned by the public? […] The ownership of the company is shared, so it must be socialism, right? I’d say no, because it’s not shared evenly.

          How did you mess up this badly? A “public company” [sic, the correct term is “publicly traded company”] is a regular private company where the owners are hundreds or even thousands of individuals. A publicly owned company is one where every single citizen owns the company simply by being alive or every single worker owns the company simply by working there.

          What if a single individual owns a single “mean” of production, but everything else is owned by the state

          I don’t even understand what you mean by this…

          Modern economies are mixes of socialism and capitalism. The people (through the government) own certain things, and individuals own other things.

          No, they’re not, and this shows a very serious hole in your knowledge of economic and social systems. While, informally, it’s sometimes said to be the case, that’s strictly an oversimplification to communicate a different idea. Countries like the US simply use a government-assisted capitalist model. Places like the Nordic countries have a more transitional system, but are ultimately still just capitalist.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            10 months ago

            Of course they are. How can you be so confused. Countries like the US are a mix of socialist and capitalist systems. Some things are owned and run by the government (socialism), other things are owned and run by private individuals (capitalism). No society has ever worked where it was 100% socialist or 100% capitalist.

            • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              Are you illiterate? I specifically pointed to why that’s not the case…

                • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  You couldn’t specify your breakfast if you were in the middle of eating it. Grow up.

    • Omniraptor@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Pinkertons as police, but they failed so spectacularly

      uhh you might want to brush up on your history there, the pinkertons are still around, still quite closely tied to the government, and still being used (among other things) to suppress union organizing at places like amazon and starbucks! Kinda ridiculous to hear that our government is somehow ‘socialist’ when it does stuff like this.

    • J Lou@mastodon.social
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      10 months ago

      Socialism is not when the government does stuff, so those institutions are not examples of socialism. Anti-capitalists are arguing for the complete abolition of exploitative capitalist property relations that violate workers’ human rights.

      This is a false dilemma. There are other alternatives to capitalism besides communism. It is entirely possible to have a non-capitalist non-communist system (e.g. an economy where every firm is democratically-controlled by the people that work in it)

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Socialism is not when the government does stuff

        Socialism is when the “means of production” are owned by the people as a whole rather than individuals. Capitalism is when the “means of production” are owned by individuals. Every modern state contains a mix of both.

        If the US is 100% capitalist, then explain how the fire department is a capitalist institution.

        • J Lou@mastodon.social
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          10 months ago

          Capitalism is not just when the means of production are owned by individuals. For example, in an economy where all firms are democratically-controlled by the people that work in them, the means of production can be owned by individuals, but such an economy is not capitalist because exploitative property relations associated with capitalism are abolished

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Oh there are people who dream about going back. Mostly people who would profit and/or gain power.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      What “Human Nature” goes against the idea of sharing tools, rather than letting wealthy people hold dictatorial control over them?

      • Rinox@feddit.it
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        10 months ago

        As humans, we are greedy by nature. Not always, but when push comes to shove, we are.

        • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          This is nonsense. Communal sharing and common property was absolutely vital for survival for most of human history.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          What part of that goes against sharing tools, rather than letting wealthy people hold dictatorial control over them? Doesn’t your point mean that we shouldn’t have Capitalism at all?

          • Rinox@feddit.it
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            10 months ago

            In any society, some people will be leaders, some will be followers, this is natural. You cannot have a society without someone organizing the work and setting the course.

            Of those who are naturally leaders, some will be much greedier than most. Some will also be ambitious, corrupt, two faced etc.

            These people will do their best to gather wealth and power for themselves, be it in a capitalist or communist system. In the capitalist system they’ll become entrepreneurs if they also have good business acumen. In the communist system they’ll become managers and state officials if they can also navigate politics well.

            At the end of the day, the same people will get to power and will hold dictatorial control over the means of production. In communist countries a literal dictatorship seems inevitable, while capitalist ones usually favor democracy (can be better for business) but they can also descend into dictatorship.

            If you disagree, show me an example where all this is not the case. I’m honestly curious

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              Capitalists aren’t leaders, but owners.

              Secondly, you are just tying Socialism and Communism with dictatorship without proving why you think it’s necessary. It’s purely vibes for you.

              Tell me this: why do you think a system where Workers have no say, only Capitalists do and serve as mini dictators, is more democratic than a system where Workers vote on how to run production?

            • J Lou@mastodon.social
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              10 months ago

              Capitalism is the opposite of democracy. In a capitalist firm, the managers are not accountable to the governed (i.e. workers). The employer is not a delegate of the workers. They manage the company in their own name not in the workers’ name. Managers do not have to have dictatorial control. It is entirely possible to have management be democratically accountable to the workers they govern as in a worker cooperative.

              Capitalism v. Communism is a false dilemma. There are other options.

          • AaronMaria@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            Exactly, this argument is so weird, even if the assumption was true. “People are naturally greedy so we should have a system that allows them to do as much damage as possible”

            • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I don’t think the poster who was down voted meant anything of the sort. They were just elaborating on their view of human nature.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Why do chimps kill chimps from other groups that come into their territory? Why do some chimps use aggression against other chimps to manipulate them, while other chimps use grooming?

        A certain degree of sharing is part of our human / animal nature, but so is a certain degree of claiming ownership over things, and certain individuals have more sway over decisions than others. Flat hierarchies with nobody in command seem to work in theory, but in practice it’s different.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          That’s the Naturalistic fallacy at work, though. We aren’t chimps, nor is doing what humans did in the past necessarily better than what we do now. By that chain, you would be an Anarcho-primitivist.

            • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              You’re a mammal, a rat is a mammal - should we just consider you the same as a rat?

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              But we aren’t chimps, and you shouldn’t judge the effectiveness of economic structures on what chimps do.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                10 months ago

                Nor should you pretend that we’re not apes, and that ape behaviour has no relevance to humans.

                • Gabu@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  It has about as much relevance as the behavior of any other mammal, circling back to my comment about rats.

                • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  We could study what various apes do, and try to use that to guess at possible human behaviour - or we could literally just look at human behaviour directly. Surely the direct observations of what humans do is going to give us a more accurate and useful model of human behaviour compared to observations of other species.

  • slimarev92@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I don’t think about this at all. My parents are from the former Soviet Union and I actually heard from them how life there was (mostly not great).

    Also I think that fearing socialism is a very American thing.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        The USSR was a developing country, and generally lacked luxury commodities, and depending on era, had a mostly unaccountable Politburo and a lack of food in the early stages.

        By metrics, the Russian Federation has relatively recently surpassed life expectancy of the USSR, and now has more open travel and access to western commodities like smartphones, but you’ll find many older people in Russia who wish the USSR never collapsed (the majority, in fact), though again that’s also partially due to nostalgia for being an important global power.

        • Grayox@lemmy.mlOP
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          10 months ago

          I was asking them what their parents didn’t find so great about it.

          • nevemsenki@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            I’m not OP, but I can certainly give you my story from Hungary. Not USSR in name, but USSR enough for the distinction to be moot.

            Story starts with parents and grandparents. They were around when the soviets put Rákosi into power. He installed communism - everything belongs to the people! Including our fucking house. My grandparents often retold how police came one night, told them their house now belongs to another family, and they were told to get lost by morning. They could bring whatever they could carry with them, but they had to leave all the farming equipment, all the animals, pretty much all their belongings behind. The few hectars of land and our animals all belonged to the Producer’s Union anyway, we lost all rights to them virtually overnight.

            Not that it mattered. The things you produced? Since everything belongs to the people, police would come and take away whatever quota the party set that year. Even if we produced it, it’s not ours after all. We may or may not got some of it back, depending on what the allocations were set. Usually not - famines got common, becuase noone cared too much about their work if it got taken away anyway. It got so bad that the good communist people people revolted against Rákosi.

            Then came Kádár. I actually lived in that system. Shortages were commonplace. At the start things were strictly planned (later on they opened up to allowing people to work for their own benefit… strictly after they put in their required hours at their workplace, though). There were five year plans, though for what I know, those were mostly for propaganda. But since there wasn’t a free market, the planning bureau would decide how many tractors, shoes, bread etc would be produced. Well, this never worked out well. If you wanted to buy fruits, toilet paper, anything, you would need someone to tell you when the shipment would come. Then you got in line early and hoped the stock wouldn’t run out by the time you got your turn. And you bought whatever you could, because if you had excess toilet paper and your neighbour had none, you could barter for something you needed.

            We wanted a car. So we applied at the state car dealership (Merkúr). We paid upfront, waited a year… and got a totally different brand of car in a different colour. We were furious, so we demanded our money back and purchased a second hand Lada Samara from someone in town. It still wasn’t what we wanted, but I’d have rather burnt my money than give it to Merkúr at that point. Turns out the Lada Samara 1300S was a great car though, I shouldn’t have sold it like twenty years later :(

            We wanted to build a house. Only everything was in short order. We had to drive three-four towns away, buying bricks and ceramic tiles left and right until we had enough that we could start construction. We didn’t build what we wanted; we could’ve paid for it, but we had to build whatever we managed to find in stock around.

            Now I know people called us the “happiest barracks” because say Caucescu in Romania was way worse… but people who are so fond of actual socialism should remember that our people were risking getting shot to escape this system.

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        LOL! “What was not great about the Soviet Union?”

        That’s the sort of thing I might expect to hear from a teen with broccoli head syndrome.

        For me the main problem with the USSR was that they abused beautiful dogs to create cyborg creatures out of them, in a horrifying attempt to create cyborg soldiers.

  • Grayox@lemmy.mlOP
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    10 months ago

    Lol at the person who said Lemmy doesn’t have many comments.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
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    10 months ago

    While I like the idea of socialism to an extent, it hardly has an appealing track record.

    • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      What track record are you looking at, the one I’m seeing is a much lighter shade of gray than the capitalist track record.

  • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Lol, european here from country that got buttsexed by ussr back in the day. Fuck off with communism. Period.

    However. Socialism is something hella important and should baselined across the world. People need safety net in their lives.

    Funny thing is, if you say “socialism” where I live a lot of people will bare they fangs at a commie. But shorten it to social and all people think of is said safety net. Suddenly no problem. Heh.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Socialism is not “Social Safety Nets,” and if you were knowledgeable about what you were talking about, you would say Socialism and attempts at Communism. Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and the USSR was a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Communist party had stated goals of reaching Communism, a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, by using Socialism. They never made it to Communism.

      The USSR of course isn’t the only form of Socialism, and isn’t the only method to achieve Communism, but what you just said makes absolutely no sense.

      Do you think that maybe people begin to understand what you’re talking about if you refer to Social Safety Nets as Social, not Socialism, because Social Safety Nets are not in fact Socialism?

      As a side note: terrible choice to use rape as a casual term for doing something bad. Be more empathetic.

    • Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      You do realise your aversion to communism is just the same as Americans, right? Like the USSR has more in common with the Nazis than any actual implementation of a classless, hierarchical less, stateless system.

      Shit, like the name is literally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

      To quote Stalin himself from a 1936 interview with Roy Howard

      Our Soviet society is socialist society, because the private ownership of the factories, works, the land, the banks and the transport system has been abolished and public ownership put in its place.

      […]

      Yes , you are right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society.

      Re-think your fear of the word communism and wonder why you’re fine with socialism despite it literally being what the country you rightfully dislike called and viewed itself as.

      tl;dr: Communism good. USSR bad.

      • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        It’s similiar, not the same. From what I recall, Americans didn’t have their country violently buttfucked behind a curtain, something that is still visible where I live - thankfully less so in the country itself, but it’s still embedded into people. And I don’t fear communism. I despise it. I do admit, maybe unjustly. Hard to feel otherwise though, seeing effects of one of the greatest, or at least highest scale shots at it’s implementation.

        However, yeah, my definition of socialism must be fucked, will educate myself further before making fool out of myself again. :|

        • Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          I’d quite happily argue that the USSR never tried to implement it in the slightest.

          Can you imagine the politburo actually fighting to give up their privileged position? I can’t.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Because there is not a way for communism to work… sounds great on paper but always ends the same.

              • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                You can doubt it all you want, but communism’s fatal flaw is humans. They will always want more.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  Why is it bad for people to want more in Communism? Do you think once a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society would be reached, people would want to regress?

          • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            To be quite honest, it seems to me - and I can be wrong - that it simply substituted power of wealth for power of position. Where I live I know that during occupation people were deemed as important based on where they worked - because where they worked dictated what they could steal obtain, be it items, access or favors.

            There always will be someone on top, one way or the other. In capitalist society, it’s the guy who has the most money. In co- … socialist…? society it’s the guy with most connections.

        • iain@feddit.nl
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          10 months ago

          The problem is that people point to the problems of the USSR and say it’s because of communism, but when the USA does similar things, it’s just them fucking up, not because they’re capitalist. It’s a double standard hinted at by OP.

          The problem with the USSR was not that they were communist. I think that communism worked well for them, which magnified both their successes (beating nazis, reducing poverty, increasing literacy, getting to space, etc), but also magnified their mistakes (suppressing religion, art, etc).

        • Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          What’s your point exactly? I’m not reading some poorly written 10,000 word essay to try to figure out what you’re wanting to say.

          • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            A Jewish linguist/historian/activist talking about how equating the Soviets and the Nazis is rhetoric used to justify current and past antisemitism including holocaust collaboration.

            • Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works
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              10 months ago

              Ah, so it’s being used as chud fud.

              My comparison of the two stems from their harsh authoritarian/totalitarian nature as seen from an anarchist lens, nothing to do with genocide.

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                10 months ago

                Yeah so the thing is you’re still doing it, the whole “authoritarian” thing is another way of doing a false equivalence between the two.

                If you want to do an anarchist critique compare the USSR to bourgeoise democracies, it is a closer comparison.

          • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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            10 months ago

            So it’s actually a pretty interesting read but I think this paragraph gets the idea across pretty well:

            (Obv out of context)

            Most current antisemitism in Eastern Europe is closely related to these debates, as nationalists strive to “fix” their nations’ collaboration (or in the case of the Baltics and Ukraine, participation) in the Holocaust with revised paradigms that equal everything out. One of the poisons of ultranationalism is the perceived need to construct a perfect history (no country on the planet has one of those). Another is hatred of local Jewish communities who have memory, or family, or collective memory, of nationalist neighbors turning viciously on their neighbors in 1941, and of the Soviets being responsible for their own grandparents or parents being saved from the Holocaust. In America, this would be akin to someone hating African Americans for having a different opinion of Washington or Jefferson because they were slaveholders.

          • whogivesashit@lemmygrad.ml
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            10 months ago

            Believing that the Nazis, who systematically gassed millions as a part of their ideology, is at all akin to any of the atrocities committed under the Soviet Union is historical revisionism in order to downplay the crimes of the fascists and, what you can clearly see in this thread already, foster anti communist sentiment with barely a reason why.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        10 months ago

        It fit USSR interests to say that they were the standard bearer of communism back in the day. It fit US interests to say exactly the same. Neither had any reason to think about how the word was used prior to the USSR and if it actually applies at all.

        It’s no wonder that people who lived behind the Iron Curtain have just as bad an understanding of communism as people in the US. The USSR certainly didn’t want you reading theory outside of Marxist-Leninist material.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    By “socialism”, are we talking:

    A. Worker-controlled economic system, or

    B. What American liberals think is socialism, which is just a capitalist system with welfare.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Worker-controlled economic system

      “Worker-controlled” isn’t a requirement.

      Socialism is wheb and the government owns or regulates the means of production.

      Which brings me to your “B”.

      No, we Nordics aren’t “capitalist systems with strong welfare policies”.

      We’re socialist nations with strong market economies. Market economies =/= capitalism.

      We have stronger regulation of the means of production. We’re also social-democrats which is a school within socialism.*

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Nope.

        Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.

        The Nordic Countries are in fact Social Democracies, not Socialist Democracies. Social Democracy is Capitalist in nature.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Wrong wrong and wrong.

          Honestly, why won’t you do 30s of Googling to check what you’re saying?

          Communism is when the state owns the economy and you have a planned economy.

          Socialism is the ownership OR regulation of the means of production.

          Yes. We are social democracies.

          But no, social democracies aren’t capitalist, dingdong. Let’s look at the very first sentence here:

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

          #Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism[1]

          #WITHIN SOCIALISM

          You’re just conflating market economies and capitalism, like I already explained

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            10 months ago

            Your greatest source is misinterpreting a line in Wikipedia? You think that means your Capitalism is actually Socialism despite relying on Capitalism, because the welfare net is larger? Lmao

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              “I refuse to look or acknowledge any data on the subject, so I’m correct”

              Is the little kiddo having to backpedal and ignore the facts because he made a bit of a boo-boo in his rhetoric?

              Please do elaborate on how I misunderstood something such as: “Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism” to mean what it says. Im sure you’ve a really good reasoning on how it ACTUALLY means that “social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within capitalism”

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                10 months ago

                Your data is Wikipedia. That’s it. Read perhaps any Socialist literature and you’re immediately debunked.

                If Social Democracy was truly under Socialism, then the Workers of your country would own the Means of Production.

                A more accurate reading of what you are claiming is that Social Democracy takes influence from Marxism while rejecting the conclusions and thus the necessity for Socialism, instead relying on Capitalism.

                Tell me, plainly, how you can have Socialism with Capitalists and Capitalism. Or, does Nestlé not exist in the Nordic Countries?

                • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  “yOuR dAtA iS wIkIPeDiA”

                  No, it isn’t.

                  Here’s my source: Eatwell & Wright 1999, pp. 80–103; Newman 2005, p. 5; Heywood 2007, pp. 101, 134–136, 139; Ypi 2018; Watson 2019.

                  Want to go and read those books? No? I’m schocked.

                  The information from those books is listed on Wikipedia, yes. Are you so childish that you’ll now pretend “you can’t find real information on wikipedia”?

                  Weirdly enough, you don’t have ANY sources for the things you pull out of your arse. Almost as if you didn’t know what you were talking about and didn’t HAVE any sources for your faulty claims, because like I said, you’ve conflated market economies and capitalism and think socialism equals communism, because you don’t understand communism is just one form of socialism.

                  “How can you have socialism with capitalism”

                  Since I’ve already explained you keep conflating “capitalism” with “market economies”, the question is then translated into “tell me, plainly, how can you have socialism and market economies”, for which the answer is really quite simple for anyone literate. However, since you also conflate “socialism” with “communism”, then the question becomes “how can you have communism with market economies”, to which the answer is “you can’t, since communism relies on planned economies instead of market economies”.

                  That’s where your confusion comes from.

                  Due to our good regulations because of our social demoractic, well governed economies, capitalist companies can participate, but they can’t do the shenanigans they can do in less regulated markets. The degree of regulation is the question. Even the US doesn’t have “pure” capitalism. Things like the antitrust laws are by definition socialist policies, but this doesn’t mean the US is socialist in any way. It just means even they understand the necessity of regulation over “pure” capitalism, because “pure” capitalism is unsustainable as it leads to monopolies which then kill the economy.

                  This is why for example I can actually drink my tapwater and eat raw eggs that don’t even have to be refrigerated. This is why the quality of all products here is higher, and why it’s more expensive for companies like Nestle to try their bullshit here, which is why they mostly aim for developing countries. To avoid the regulation that comes with properly functioning social democracy.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        How is fascism in your country btw? Seems that capitalism has it fine to me.

      • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        There are specific definitions and I’m sticking to them. If your economy has capitalists controlling companies with workers trading their labor for a wage underneath them, then it is capitalist, full stop.

        Unless your economy is full of co-ops or something. I don’t know the common typical structure for a nordic company.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          You haven’t even read a single “basic definition” my man.

          Here’s one :

          Socialism

          Dictionary

          Definitions from Oxford Languages

          socialism

          noun a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned OR REGULATED by the community as a whole.

          If your economy has capitalists controlling companies with workers trading their labor for a wage underneath them, then it is capitalist, full stop.

          Youre refusing (or unable, lol) to understand that “capitalism” does not equal market economies.

          Selling things doesn’t mean capitalism. Trading goods doesn’t mean capitalism. Owning a company doesn’t mean capitalism. Having companies with workers doesn’t mean capitalism.

          Jesus fucking God I’m tired of explaining concepts that my 8 year old niece could google and learn by her self in five minutes

          “unless you have a planned economy you’re not socialist”

          Yeah, exactly the point I’m making. Brainwashed morons think socialism means full planked economy, when it’s no such thing.

          Fucking spend 2 min on Google, is it so much to ask?

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism

          Fucking perpetuating shitty 70’s red scare propaganda mf sides are hurting.

          • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            I said nothing about a planned economy, now you’re putting words in my mouth.

            Ever hear of libertarian socialism?

            Edit: I get the feeling we are talking about the same thing using different terms…

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              “I never said anything about a planned ecnoomy”

              Unless your economy is full of co-ops or something. I don’t know the common typical structure for a nordic company.

              You’re really pretending that talkign about cooperatives isn’t referring to communism? What are you, 12?

              And what, you think co-ops didn’t have hierarchies?

              What the fuck are you smoking, because I want to be equally fucked up.

                • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  How am I “gaslighting” you?

                  You literally said “Unless your economy is full of co-ops or something [it’s not socialist]”.

                  You’re referring to the collectives of the Soviet union. A distinct feature of PLANNED ECONOMIES.

                  “I never anything about a planned economy.”

                  Yes, you did. And now you’re pretending you didn’t. Like pretending reality isn’t what it actually is. Trying to convince me something that happened didn’t happen. Is there a word for behaving like that…?

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          Today I learned that Socialism is when you do Capitalism in a nice way.

          Oh wait, no I didn’t, because Capitalism and Socialism are completely different modes of Production.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            No, they’re not.

            They’re economic systems, not modes of production.

            Today, you’re still refusing to accept reality.

            It’s right there before your eyes. You’re too brainwashed to see it.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              In your own words, they are economic systems. What do you call a system built on Capitalism, but with a slightly larger welfare net? Socialism? No, you call it Capitalism.

              You’re calling me brainwashed for correctly pointing out that Capitalism is Capitalism, even if you dress it up nicely?

              • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                “system built on capitalism”

                You still don’t even understand what I mean when I say you’re conflating “capitalism” and market economies.

                You think when people buy and sell things, that’s “capitalism.”

                Is Finland a social democracy? Yes

                And what does this say about what school of thought does social democracies belong to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

                #Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism[

                “wää wää wää no it’s not socialism, it’s capitalism, but I refuse to believe it and I don’t have to explain myself”

                • you

                Please define socialism for me.

                Because this an official definition

                a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or REGULATED BY the community as a whole. “we want a real democratic and pluralist left party—one which unites all those who believe in socialism”

                Even the US has socialist policies, because “pure” capitalism is completely unworkable, because it kills the economy stone dead

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  Believe me, I’m not conflating Capitalism with markets. Capitalism is a specific form of market economy by which individual Capitalists buy and sell Means of Production, or Capital, by which they can pay Workers to use and create commodities via wage labor.

                  Examples of Socialist market economies include Market Socialism, a form of Socialism built on competing worker-owned co-operatives.

                  Examples of Socialist Market Economies do not include Capitalist Social Democracies, because the primary defining feature of Social Democracies is Capitalism with generous social safety nets, a kind of “human-centric” Capitalism.

                  You on the other hand are making the misconception that Socialism is simply when the government does stuff. You’re wrong, of course, as countless people here have pointed put.

                  Capitalism with regulation is still Capitalism. Socialism is when Workers share ownership of the Means of Production, simple as.

        • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          In practice, social democracy takes a form of socially managed welfare capitalism

  • letsgo@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Maybe, but they’ve also been well assisted by those countries which are shining examples of SC&L but have failed to get their messages across the world. Perhaps replies to this comment could indicate which countries those are, for some independent research.