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
But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
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.
All strains of Socialism are democratic
Glances nervously at the ultra-nationalist strains
Some are more democratic than others, certainly.
emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system
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.
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.
I am stating that AES is democratic as is Marxism in general
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
There are numerous reasons for this. Stability in protecting revolution and genuine popular support are among the larger and more important reasons.
And they don’t really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics…
Neither are Capitalist states, and neither was Marx. Combatting international Capitalist influence was and is key for retaining Socialism.
It’s almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Pol Pot explicitly rejected Marxism, and was stopped by Vietnamese Communists. Your ideas surrounding Mao and Xi Jinping are also unsupported.
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.
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.
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.
There are no rules that say luxury goods couldn’t be produced for consumption
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.
Too much is made, most of it is wasted.
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.
Workers must seize this system and destroy the old structures
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.
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.
The last panel should have an and, not an or
I misread this as “this country has always been ruled by the lich”.
And yeah, tbh, yeah.
That would explain a lot of policies…
And Dick Cheney.
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Just putting it out there that “property owning” is not the class deliniator! I “own” my house/property and the only differences are that i pay rent to a bank instead of a landlord, and i can knock holes in the walls if i want to.
I’m still pretty much paycheck to paycheck, squarely in the working class.
We dont want your toothbrush dude
Eh?
Tis the difference betwixt private and personal property, we don’t want your toothbrush but your toothbrush factory however…
Of course you’re working class. It’s about the owners of Capital property. Does your house that you own (which I doubt since you imply you have a mortgage) make money for you?
It’s us versus a very small number of them.
Well technically thanks to the rising housing cost crisis I’ve gained about 50k in equity in the past 3 years. Does that count?
I would say no.
do you get to spend that money and keep your house?
🥲
If you’re paying rent to a bank, you don’t own your house, at least not yet.
No. Rent and mortgage are two different things. One is a fee for service and one is a loan.
If your home that you own doubles in market value and you decide to sell it, you pay off the mortgage (loan) and keep the profit (capital gain). If you are renting and the home is sold, you gain nothing.
If your home that you own burns down, you still owe the bank the money you borrowed for purchase (mortgage). If you are renting the home that burned down, you don’t owe anybody money. There is to service to pay a fee for anymore.
Like sure, fuck capitalism. But we don’t need to misrepresent how these systems work.
Yes of course there are actually a lot of differences, being a homeowner after renting for years I am very aware. My comment, partly in jest, was focusing on practical day-to-day differences. But also, getting equity in your house is actually not that big of a windfall if you sell, because you still have to live somewhere and the other houses/rentals have all gone up in cost to match. I suppose if I was to move in with someone… but I dont plan on doing that ever.
But anyways yea fuck capitalism
It’s not about stopping climate change anymore. That ship has sailed and sunk.
Now its about surviving long enough to witness very bad things happening to very bad people.
There is still time to change course, however carbon sequestration is becoming a more important part of climate action. Doomerism just acts as an excuse to not take action.
witness very bad things happening to very bad people.
Yeah, not gonna happen in this life. Karma is a happy accident, not a rule
I honestly hate this rhetoric (nothing personal). Thing is, it gets worse and worse, the less we do, it’s not binary, and while the planet will not be able to support close as many people as of now, humanity will survive. But it’s very dependent on the actions we do now, how many will…
Whether humanity will survive really is an open question. Despite all the rhetoric and protests and promises the annual CO2 emissions have continued to increase steadily. It’s wishful thinking to imagine that we are going to do anything about this before the consequences of our choices force our collective hand. Any report or scientific paper that includes a phrase like ‘there is still time’ is just not accepting the reality of the situation. A year ago James Hansen published Global Warming in the Pipeline where he wrote “Equilibrium global warming for today’s GHG amount is 10°C”. A 4–7 degree rise over 5000 years ended the last ice age, Ocean levels rose 400 feet. A 10 degree rise in a century or so would be way too fast for most species to adapt. It would inundate the majority of our most populated cities. I could go on, but I get depressed writing about this.
If anything, society collapses and the very wealthy carve out fiefdoms for themselves and re-create medieval feudalism. They tell people they have a God-ordained to rule over the “small folk” and they continue on living like kings, albeit in a post-apocalyptic setting.
20 years? Jamie pull that up.
Well it was 25 years in 2019, and I’d round down since we’re in September so yeah, 20 to go.
Damnit, Gritty!
20 years? Not 25? I thought 2060 was when things would really crumble due to climate change is we continued business as usual (which is what we’re doing).
Does it matter? Ultimately, these are estimates. Educated, data backed estimates, but still estimates.
One larger than expected volcanic eruption, coral reefs dying faster than expected, whatever, all it takes is one or two things to not go the way they’re expected and everything speeds up.
20 years or 25 years, the point is we’re all kinda fucked unless we do something about it.
What we need to do has been and will continue to be debated ad nauseam, but we know we must do something.
Covid ended any hope I have. We couldn’t get people to put on a fucking mask or get vaccinations when the disease was right in front of us killing millions of people.
There’s absolutely no way we’re gonna get people on board with fighting the climate disaster. Humanity will be lucky if it survives itself.
The west is not all of humanity though.
20 years before we die from climate change? Given the hellish climate we’re enduring here in south america, 10 years would be more believable
Simple solution: take power, ban the right-wing parties and their financers, if they protest use acid cannons, blackmailing and censorship towards them and coup every country with a right-wing government.
How do you plan to take power? And if you manage, how do you plan to stay in power long enough? The average voter is a moron being fed propaganda for years. You will not take power democratically. And you will not stay in power democratically.
That’s the point bruh. Fuck democracy, right-wingers need to be treated like Pinochet treated socialists at this point. Censorship at max until we get out of this mess.
If you come at things from such a completely misanthropic point of view, you firstly are unlikely to get off the ground, but even if you do, you’ll just be creating what liberals think socialism is (a very bad and ineffectual thing)
What part of “far-righters get their ass open wide and rich people get their assets seized and if they complain Secret Services will “talk” to them in a “calm and mannered way”” isn’t socialism?
It’s a form of socialism in the broadest sense of the term, but what you’re describing has nothing to do with socialism as it has ever existed in the world and not something that should exist. Socialism must be democratic or it’s just a holding-state for fascism and, as you describe your “system,” an engine of gleeful murder.
Bro, you people are the first to want to eat the rich alive and when I propose a government that actually does that you all go “no, man, democracy is the way, peace and love”? Fuck that, I want revenge for this shitty world I’ve been given and a better world in the meantime, and the elite who caused this must pay dearly.
I guess I’ve discovered an “unreconstructed” socialist. I think an autocracy is bad even if it kills rightists, but that doesn’t mean I want to make peace with the rich. If the government isn’t bound by a popular mandate, then it’s just guided by the whims of whichever assholes are in charge, and you’ve basically reverted to monarchy.
Mao’s purging of the landlords was a great achievement, but it only worked because he left it up to the people rather than having the PLA go to every plot of land and dictate what is to be done with it. Likewise, it was also a great achievement that he was able to rehabilitate Puyi, the last Emperor of China, rather than resorting to killing him. Turning people into productive members of society is always the most preferential option, it’s just that it often simply isn’t viable.
Revenge is an idealist notion that doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s just sadism and leaves justice completely aside. Sometimes it is correct to kill people (and in times of war, unfortunately frequently so), but that is for the material difference that makes (e.g. diffusing threats) rather than because it rights some imaginary cosmic ledger.
Yes, we must seize power from the reactionaries, and that will require incredible violence and lead to lots of purging, but if we are separate from the people, we are just a military dictatorship like any other.
All countries have always been governed by the property owning class. With all its faults, capitalism has resulted in “peons” having the most say they’ve ever had. It’s not a lot, but it’s sure better than under classical democracy, feudalism, monarchy, theocracy, and “communism” at least as practiced in the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and China.
(Capitalism is a) brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian - where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone - is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc.
Edit: In this they take on the posture of a severely depressed person who views hope as a dangerous delusion.
Capitalism and modern western democracy suck. But, life has always sucked for those without power. Life is/was much worse for people under “communism”. It was much worse under fascism. It was much worse under feudalism. It is/was much worse in a theocracy.
Also, this idea that “existence is evaluated in terms of money alone” is a silly caricature of capitalism. People with power have always been the ones to make the rules. It doesn’t matter if that power is in the form of money, or absolute control over anyone who lives on a certain bit of land, or in terms of absolute control due to being the representative on earth of a god’s will.
The first paragraph is literally the same “I can’t justify capitalism but the others are worse” argument again.
The society we live in is an employment based, market fundamentalist society. It just used to be a different kind of fundamentalist theocratic rule is all.
Instead of lashing out and calling it a silly caricature, you can just say “I just plain don’t like that.” It would have had the same effect.
That being said, how much money would it take for you to change your mind about existence being measured in terms of money alone being a silly caricature? Even if you were the type to give it all away, eventually, we would find a number. Not only that, you’d be a multi millionaire and, as such, on that basis alone, your existence would be judged as an inherently good one.
The first paragraph is literally the same “I can’t justify capitalism but the others are worse” argument again.
Which happens to be true. Maybe in the future there will be something better, but so far it hasn’t been found.
The society we live in is an employment based, market fundamentalist society.
Sure, ok. And it’s better than a feudalist society where you’re tied to the land, or a slave-based economy where you’re property.
Instead of lashing out and calling it a silly caricature
I’m not lashing out. I’m just describing it as a silly caricature, which it is. Capitalism is fundamentally about owners of capital competing to make more money by investing in capital and selling goods at a profit. People who don’t own capital have to work in that kind of a system. Similar to how peasants were tied to land they had to work under feudalism, or slaves were required to do whatever their owners demanded in a slave state, but it’s less brutal. Workers can change employers and their bodies are not owned.
Is it fair? Of course not, but no socioeconomic system that has ever existed in reality has ever been fair.
That being said, how much money would it take for you to change your mind about existence being measured in terms of money alone being a silly caricature?
No amount of money would make me change my mind. There would probably be an amount of money where I’d be willing to lie, but what does that prove? You’d lie too if you were offered enough money. That’s human nature, not capitalism. If this were a feudalist system you could be bribed with land. If it were a theocracy you could be bribed by religious titles.
I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. Capitalism is bad, but other systems are worse. There are purely theoretical systems that would be better, but none of them has ever survived an encounter with reality. But, that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Eventually we’ll find a way to improve on capitalism, just like capitalism improved on feudalism.
What is also true is that its the mentality of a depressive who views hope as a dangerous delusion, as had been said a fair few times now.
It is lashing out, as you can’t refute it or engage it.
Dismissing a legitimate observation of our society as a silly caricature is a far more silly caricature of someone who just doesn’t like what they’re hearing.
Existence is measured in money, under capitalism. Why would you lying about it and not meaning make any difference? As long as you’re doing what you were paid to do, it would have the same appearance and the same effect. I would take the money too, as its the most important thing in society and existance is measured in it. Thats the point here. Why would I care what was in your heart of hearts?
No, none of the other systems survived an attack by a system that cannot tolerate any alternatives to live unmolested. Had any of them failed of their own accord, you might have a point there. You can’t shoot someone in the leg and then declare that their claims of being able to run didn’t survive an encounter with reality.
Trying to improve capitalism has never survived an encounter with reality. All it did was make the rich richer.
Capitalism didn’t improve feudalism. Firstly, capitalism grew out of merchantislism. Secondly, merchantislism had to be forced on people who had been robbed of their homes and were facing starvation. Had they any other option than starving, they would have stuck with feudalism.
That’s wildly ahistorical. It has allowed the creation of Labor Aristocracy, Proletarians that benefit from the fruits of Imperialism, but Socialist countries like the ones you listed did far more for the working class than Capitalist countries have. You should read Blackshirts and Reds.
Double thumbs up for the point made and link to libre epub.
A comrade here, Edie, manages the site. It does great work!
6·3 months agoHey Comrade, please use it/its.
Will do! Corrected.
And yet despite your copium, we have less than 20 years to take control of our economic system before we all die from climate change.
Capitalism is fuelling climate change. The feudalism and classical democracy and communism of yesteryear aren’t the fossil fuel portfolio heavy ideologies that match the destructive power of capitalism.
we have less than 20 years to take control of our economic system before we all die from climate change
Yeah… sure. “We all die”.
The earth isn’t going to be hit by an asteroid, it’s just going to have more and more catastrophes. If the earth reaches a tipping point with the melting of the polar icecaps, it will still take centuries for them to melt. The tipping point just means that it won’t be possible to stop it. Humanity will survive, because killing off humanity would be as difficult as killing off mosquitoes or cockroaches. What will happen, not suddenly in 20 years, but gradually over the next few centuries, is that life will get more and more unpleasant. There will be more famines, more disasters wiping cities off the map. More wars over resources. But, some humans will keep living, and they’ll have children, and those children will grow up in a terrible world where survival is a struggle. But, humans will survive, though it might be a very brutal, primitive existence.
As for “capitalism”, it’s not “capitalism” that’s at fault here, it’s humanity. It’s not like North Korea is a bastion of carbon-neutral utopian living. Humans are unable to think and act on a global scale. They’re selfish, and always have been. The difference is that now there are billions of humans, and technology has enabled each selfish human to have a massive climate footprint. Human brains were evolved to exist in small groups on the savanna. The thinking that allowed humans to thrive in that environment has meant destruction now that technology has massively amplified the impact each human now has.
The solution isn’t some random change to a different economic system or a different political system. It’s either destroying most technology so that each human can no longer have such a massive impact, or it’s fundamentally altering the human brain so that people use that technology wisely and with a tiny footprint. Neither of those is likely, so we’re almost certainly doomed.
We’re going to ALL be dead from climate change in 20 years? lol
“communism” at least as practiced in the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and China.
What are you talking about? Research how many rights women and lgbt people lost when the GDR fell for an example of how wrong-headed this line of thinking is.
For those who want light reading, I highly recommend “Why women had better sex under socialism, and other arguments for economic independence”
I remember an anecdote from an East German woman after the Berlin Wall fell saying West German women were just now beginning to advocate for what the East German women already had.
I’m not arguing for the BRD and how not fucked LGBTQ rights were. I’m arguing against a picture that the GDR had better rights in general when in fact most people who didn’t strictly follow the party line were heavily suppressed and observed.
That’s nice, but the issue was whether they were part of the governing class. The rights the women were given in the GDR didn’t include the right to pass new laws. As for choosing new representatives, look up the term “Wir gehen falten”.
You’re claiming that capitalism is better on having elected women officials? First off, no. GDR and west Germany had similar rates of women in leadership, and women had political organization through the democratic women’s front.
Second off the framing is bad: I care less about smashing the glass ceiling than I care about not being hatecrimed in a rampantly misogynistic culture. I care about having the economic independence to leave abusive relationships, and to date for love and pleasure and not financial security.
No, I’m saying western democracies are better because you got to vote.
You get to vote in socialist democracies like China, Cuba, USSR, etc. You’ve been told you can’t. Who told you this?
If you don’t believe me, look up the process for how the Cuban 2019 constitution and 2022 family code were drafted. Socialist democracy is more advanced and democratic than liberal democracies.
You get to vote in socialist democracies like China, Cuba, USSR, etc
Sure you do, as long as you vote for the candidate that the state prefers. Again, look up “Wir gehen falten”.
Sure you do, as long as you vote for the candidate that the state prefers.
That isn’t how soviet style democracies work. For example, the municipal assemblies of Cuba have multiple candidates for each seat, which are not chosen by the party. They then choose a national representative for their municipality, which is confirmed by a popular vote.
Again, look up “Wir gehen falten”.
Link to what you’re referring to please, I didn’t find anything interesting in the search.
Yes these rights rights were lost, but this paints the GDR in a positive light regarding regarding civil rights when in reality people who showed a smidge of dissent were persecuted.
Yes these rights rights were lost, but this paints the GDR in a positive light regarding regarding civil rights
Because they were, especially compared to West Germany.
I’m not arguing for the BRD and how not fucked LGBTQ rights were. I’m arguing against a picture that the GDR had better rights in general when in fact most people who didn’t strictly follow the party line were heavily suppressed and observed.
when in reality people who showed a smidge of dissent were persecuted.
Look up how the stasi dealt with lgbt dissidents after being told to solve the issue and then come back here and say that with a straight face.
Dissidents for “hey we need to fix the problems of socialism” or dissidents for “we have to dissolve socialist democracy and let the capitalists pillage us” were treated very differently.
And the ones arguing for dissolving socialism got what they wanted, and the result is justification enough for their oppression tbh. Better to suppress right wing dissidents than let them oppress vast swathes of the population.
Dissidents for “hey we need to fix the problems of socialism” or dissidents for “we have to dissolve socialist democracy and let the capitalists pillage us” were treated very differently
Do you seriously tell yourself the GDR was a democratic socialist country? The GDR not being democratic was exactly it’s problem and why it couldn’t reform its problems. And yeah, the people only wanted to get oppressed by capitalists when they protested in Leipzig and Berlin. If you really believe that I don’t know what to tell you. Are you some Wessi who doesn’t know shit about life in the GDR?
And the ones arguing for dissolving socialism got what they wanted, and the result is justification enough for their oppression tbh.
Man, they wanted something better than the shit show that their life had become. They had many ideas about how they could reform their country. A new socialist constitution, a emancipated reunion with the West etc. All they knew was that it couldn’t go on with the current SED clique.
How did the SED respond? Fucking off with the last money. They left their population with no help when they negotiated with Kohl. But hey, to you that’s just capitalist propaganda probably. Now it’s the people’s fault that they got screwed by the capitalists pfffff
Better to suppress right wing dissidents than let them oppress vast swathes of the population.
Holy shit bro. Do you think Hohenschönhausen was filled with right wingers and capitalists and that your beloved party didn’t oppress the population? First of right wing networks were left alone all over the country. What we see now in Thüringen and Sachsen didn’t just hop over from the BRD after the wall fell. It merely got reinforced. Second, do you really think only right wing dissidents got suppressed? My father got in trouble because he stepped into the voting booth, NOT casting his vote openly for the SED. Democratic my ass bro, righteous suppression of right wingers lol. 100k Stasi agents 200k informants just for right wing dissidents, yeah right
Countries are defined by land-hoarding class, because the nomadic people define themselves by their group instead of the land on which they live.
Without hoarders (landlords), we wouldn’t need to put as much effort towards regulating land use, instead we could focus on regulating behaviours. Ex: “this land is a national park, you are not allowed to trash it. Go next door, there you are allowed to pour the trash from your industrial process into the ground, because it’s your private land”
Highest pollution generating countries are communist 😂
Per Capita?
Are you referring to China? Because that would be an exceptionally bad example.
Yep, taking one of the most populous countries on the planet and judging it by total emissions is ludicrous, plus the PRC is drastically improving solar panel production and infrastructure. If the world was set to the same environmental standards as the PRC we wouldn’t have nearly as much worry.
Honestly I think China will be the only country actually reaching their carbon emissionsl targets set in Paris. All these preaching democratic nations are failing theirs year after year.
Yep, hopefully their solar production forces mass adoption among other nations and we can get back on track to mitigate environmental damage.
Not just that, but pretending China isn’t capitalist is wrong.
China is Socialist. The overall system is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, categorised as a largely Market-based economy carefully pruned, planned, and controlled by the government. The state ideology is Marxism-Leninism, and Xi Jinping Thought.
The notion that China must be Capitalist because it has markets could be applied to say the US is Socialist because it has a State-Run Post Office. What’s important is the class that retains power.
In the US, private banks, large businesses, and exceedingly wealthy individuals direct the state. The state is run in their interests, and this guides policy more than anything.
In the PRC, the Proletariat is in control via the CPC. Capitalists are firmly kept in check and dealt with if they step out of line, there are large public infrastructure projects, real wages for the Proletariat are rising, and there aren’t large privitization projects.
If you don’t have a strong understanding of Marxism, it’s easy to misanalyze whether or not a system is Socialist.
April 15th 1989
“Pick Me” vibes
Nope, just being right about the CPC.
Tianamen Square was not about pollution so is unrelated.
The Hillsborough disaster?
We could be nuked today
I agree, we should focus more on climate change, though.
Climate change cannot be sufficiently addressed without oveethrowing capitalism. China built more solar capacity last year than the entirety of American installations and both American candidates support fracking.
Join a local socialist org!
Lol they also built more coal plants than the rest of the world combined in 2023
I swear you tankies are a hilariously ignorant bunch.
China did not start industrialization until 1949. Climate Change effects have been known since 1896 or 1824 depending on how you look at it. China literally did not start the fire 🔥
Lol China didn’t start the fire, but they’re literally pouring gas on it… it’s those damn western capitalist faults.
Yes, they are rapidly developing and increasing percentages of their overall power comes from renewables, especially Solar, which they have invested tons of money into R&D to make scaling that economical.
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote. I said they installed more solar power than the US’s entire history, not a single year.
China is fulfilling its internationally-agreed climate commitments while the major imperialist countries do not.
You should find a more sustainable way to fulfill whatever drive makes you seek out this level of pointless smugness and guesswork gotchas.
The fuck are you talking about, they get 70% of their power from coal, they built 6 new plants in 2023. What the hell makes you think they’re going to fullfil their agreements?
It sounds like you have made no attempt whatsoever to understand. I will wait for you to tell me that you have spent five minutes looking for the relevant information. If you can’t, just tell me you couldn’t fins it and I will gladly show you.
What type of response is that…if you have proof from a factual source, then post it. Stop talking like you’re some wise tankie jedi.
Actually this is a very low bar but you managed to not clear it. This has confirmed a simple fact: you are here to fight and have no interest in the truth or learning. Obviously this was implied from the prior bad faith responses, but now we have cut to the chase.
Why should I waste my time?
China
socialist
LMAO SRSLY?
Do you think you have fairly characterized my comment?
Yes, they have a Dictatorship of the Proletariat that carefully manages and plans a market economy in a transitional socialist state.
Yeah the proletariat are making the decisions in China. They’re a dictatorship of Xi.
You should read up on Whole-Process People’s Democracy.
I love well managed ghost cities woah!
Do you think that is a real thing?
Developing for the future, what a wild concept!
I didn’t say that. Wrong comment chain.
I’m a communist. You guys came to debate yourselves.
?
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of-worlds/
I don’t remember the quote directly but it’s somewhere in the area of that;
We have gotten so used to living in the shadow of annihilation that we’ve forgotten to fear the constant threat of global destruction that nuclear war is.
This podcast really gave me some perspective on that.
Nuclear war didn’t happen and climate change is.
I see no reason why we can’t have both.
I don’t want any, that’s the point.
C’mon where is your sense of adventure.
I. don’t. want. bad. things. I. Want. A. Good. Life.
Fair enough. I hope you get it.
