Still think something between communism and capitalism would be the best. Both show a lot of problems but both have benefits. A well regulated and equal competition with linear growth(not like capitalism with its exponential growth that produces musks and bezos’) sounds right to me. I think UBI would be exploited so just give them the basics in food, shelter, internet access, etc. But of course in the hellscape called modern politics everyone has to be an extremist so only hardcore capitalism, hardcore communism, genocide, etc are represented.
Market economies are actually pretty great for a lot of things. The problems we have in capitalism are 1. the capitalist class, who make their living without contributing anything by min-maxing wages and prices, and 2. the privatization of necessities.
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A market economy for non-essentials would work splendidly so long as the income of each business was distributed to the people who actually did the work. The problem is non-working shareholders. Every worker should be a shareholder, every shareholder should be a worker. Market socialism is the way.
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Market economies cannot work efficiently for essentials. If the alternative to a purchase is death or serious injury, it ceases to be a voluntary purchase, the downward pressure of abstinence vanishes, and prices skyrocket. We’ve seen this in healthcare and housing. We need a public option for both.
This is the way
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
There’s also a lot to be said about financial norms and systems, for instance regardless of the organization of labor the way we measure GDP is fundamentally a very flawed and arbitrary approximation of “wealth” yet it is the driver behind so many political decisions. My (admittedly unqualified) understanding is thst we could significantly improve quality of life and market efficiency by addressing some of these flaws.
Market Socialism would be a great improvement in stability and quality of life, but it wouldn’t solve enshittification outright, because the profit motive is still there. Ideally that would be phased out.
Every improvement is incremental, a stable system is developed by individual steps in the right direction. Overly ambitious changes tend to regress back to the last point of stability.
Profit motive still forces enshittification, unfortunately.
I think if we can steer this burning trash pile into a regulated coop-based economy, with a star-based voting system (I’d settle for ranked choice at this point), whose economy isn’t propped up by the cheap exploitation of developing foreign nations, I’ll be much happier. While we’re at it, solving homelessness and developing more sustainable infrastructures would be great.
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Also there’s nothing inherently wrong with extreme ideology as a concept. It’s only a call for radical change to the current social order. Liberalism which is to say our modern “democratic capitalist” structure would have been considered extremism during feudal times.
The extremist boogie man is a lie peddled by those who benefit from the status quo to insure those who don’t are too scared to change it
Extremism usually relies on wishful thinking tbh. Also see this handy chart:
The problem is that some of them don’t have to wait for society to collapse, sometimes society is destined to decay into a specific form. The final stage of capitalism is fascism
Yeah no, just because a socialist philosopher said it doesn’t make it true. Every economic system will eventually collapse for some reason, but the reasons for the collapse and the circumstances matter much more for predicting the future after the collapse than the system that collapsed. If you don’t believe that look at the many ways societies changed when feudalism collapsed.
Marxist philosophy isn’t just a prediction of what will be it’s also a analysis of how we ended up where we are and where we are headed. If you’re interested in learning about how Marx processed the world it’s worth reading into dialectical materialism. Marxism is much more complex than a simple capitalism eventually fails and socialism comes next.
In short, dialectical materialism is a philosophy that emphasizes the effects of material conditions and opposing interests on social relations. It is not specifically an economic philosophy but it is a very useful toolset for understanding the intricacies of socioeconomics. It also suggests that the best way to resolve contradictions is to restructure society so that those contradictions are eliminated. While that last bit sounds really obvious there’s been a lot of fighting about it, I’d elaborate but Hegelian dialectics is fucking gibberish if you aren’t familiar with the terminology.
So basically yeah some guy saying something doesn’t make it true but it’s worth checking when that guy has had his work holds up after being scrutinized and expanded upon for 2 centuries
Some of the og stuff
Yeah no, Marx’s predictions were wrong. The most obvious one is he thought the workers revolutions would come from industrialized nations, that was completely wrong. But, with many of his other claims, those who support his ideology will twist any event happening to fit their narrative, just as a christian may twist any event into fulfilling a biblical prophecy.
Oh fuck I forgot, Marx did get one thing wrong. I guess the entire philosophical and logical scientific analysis developed by 100s of scholars is just trash, my mistake
Capitalism is very clearly not a one-size-fits-all solution…but if there’s one thing capitalism hates, it’s competition.
Why not something like market socialism?
Isn’t market socialism literally just a form of capitalism? Like if you still have markets and a profit incentive then you’re not really socialist
Not saying that’s bad, just thinking really it has always seemed to me like capitalism with a strong social safety net. Which to me seems ideal, just want to know if I’m missing something?
I think you’re confusing social democracy with market socialism.
In market socialism the working class owns the businesses they work for, possibly in conjunction with the government or their customers. There are no people who became shareholders by buying shares, and starting a business doesn’t mean you get to own all of it. It’s essentially a society where all businesses are worker co-ops.
It has nothing to do with a social safety net. In practice one would probably exist anyway, but it’s not a strict requirement of this sort of system like it is in social democracy. Technically you wouldn’t have to have free universal healthcare either.
It helps to know that the definition of socialism I am using is based on the marxist one: a society where the workers own the means of production.
Edit: Profit still exists in this system but it’s shared more or less equally between the workers of that business. This means workers actually have a concrete incentive to work well, not just the vague possibility of a promotion. It also means you will probably see less short term profit making and less overwork hopefully.
Market postcapitalism with worker coops doesn’t mean the workers own the means of production. That idea of what postcapitalism looks like is Marxist baggage that needs to move into the dustbin of intellectual history. A worker coop can, for example, lease means of production from another worker coop or individual without violating the workers’ inalienable rights to workplace democracy or to get the fruits of their labor @lemmyshitpost
What idea needs throwing in the dustbin? The “workers own the means of production” part? What exactly is wrong with that idea?
There is no reason why only workers should own the means of production nor why the means of production a firm uses must be owned by the workers of the same firm. Leasing out means of production to other firms is a perfectly valid way for worker coops to exchange products of labor. What is illegitimate is the employment contract as it violates inalienable rights. There are distributive justice and efficiency arguments for common ownership of capital, but that includes non-workers
Aren’t workers not owning means of production the reason surplus value can be extracted from them? Workers owning means of production is the definition of socialism for a reason. How can you guarantee the workers won’t be exploited without this?
How do you get your initial capital to start the co-op? Like you can’t have investors, so is every worker required to buy in the the initial venture?
By the way you are entirely free to structure companies this way under a social democracy
By the way you are entirely free to structure companies this way under a social democracy
You can set that up in any capitalist society, not just social democracy. It even happens in the US. That’s one of the major advantages of worker co-ops. It’s not true socialism though unless every business is run that way. I don’t really want social democracy. I want real socialism.
As for funding I am not sure. Real worker co-ops must get funding from somewhere I would look into that. In a full market socialist economy the government could have a role in that. After all the current scheme of needing Capital to start a business isn’t fair at all.
Right, but why do you require every person in the country to work under a co-op? Is it not enough to let them choose?
In your socialist society if a group of people agreed that they would like to set up businesses under a different model what would you do?
And further, if you’re calling for an enormous change to the way we structure our economy then shouldn’t you be able to articulate how that system will work?
The requirement that all firms be worker coops is to protect workers’ inalienable rights to democracy and to get the positive and negative fruits of your labor. An inalienable right is a right that cannot be given up or transferred even with consent. These workers’ inalienable rights flow from the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match. A group of people agreeing to it is not sufficient for validity because responsibility can’t be transferred even with consent
Right, but why do you require every person in the country to work under a co-op? Is it not enough to let them choose?
Look around you my guy. Capitalism doesn’t work. Most people who have the money needed to start or invest in a business are only in it to make themselves richer and to exploit others. My system prevents all of that.
In your socialist society if a group of people agreed that they would like to set up businesses under a different model what would you do?
I imagine the same thing we do now with people who have illegal businesses or businesses that go against regulations.
And further, if you’re calling for an enormous change to the way we structure our economy then shouldn’t you be able to articulate how that system will work?
You have never talked to marxists before have you? They don’t even know what economic system they want to use most of the time, because they don’t consider that detail to be important and think we can figure it out after or during the revolution. If I started asking them these questions they probably wouldn’t give me a straight answer and it would probably turn into an argument.
Meanwhile I am missing a couple of small details. Ones you can find yourself if you are willing to do more research than I have.
There can be investors in market-based postcapitalist society. They just can’t hold voting shares, so they hold non-voting preferred stock.
Freedom to structure one’s own company as a worker coop doesn’t undo the systematic violations of workers’ inalienable rights in all the other capitalist firms. The only way to fix that would be turn those firms into worker coops as well
See that isn’t very consistent is it? If you hold non voting stock you can’t vote on company decisions. But the company does now need to pay you a dividend, which according to you would be immoral as it would mean a third party is profiting from their labour correct?
The problem isn’t the fact that the investors get some value. It is that the employer gets sole property right to the produced outputs and holds all the liabilities for the used-up inputs despite the workers’ joint de facto responsibility for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. This mismatch violates the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Worker don’t create output ex nihilo. They use up inputs. Dividends help satisfy those input liabilities @lemmyshitpost
Capitalism ruins itself.
Serious question not trying to troll here: Isn’t everyone stuck in this hellish capitalist system part of that class?
No. Classes are determined by how you get your money and by how comfortable you are.
If you are working for a paycheck, you do not touch capital.
If you are working for a paycheck, you do not touch capital.
Ok so I have my beef with capitalism, for sure, but this is inaccurate. People all over the country own property, shares in public and private companies, shares of government utilities, just to name a few examples.
Ownership of things does get distributed through capitalism. As manipulated as it is, that’s the concept of the stock market.
I’m not rich, but I do own a small amount of capital. My net worth far, far exceeds what I have in my bank account when you account for my car that I’ve paid off, small investments that have appreciated over time, stuff like that.
Now the top of the capitalist class? They have SO MUCH cash, and so many resources to draw on that they can manipulate stock prices and company values at will. That’s where the whole system starts to break down.
If you work for a living, and being unemployed indefinitely would threaten your survival, you are part of the working class. Owning a few crumbs of capital is a nice cushion, but does not define your class.
If your income is passive, and you could live your whole life off the returns from your investments without ever actually working, you are part of the capitalist class.
'Ownership of things DOES get distributed…"
Uhhhh, no? Are you dumb? Owning stock in a company is far, FAR removed from owning any part of a company’s assets.
Ok, so are we talking about assets or capital?
Capital is not money, capital can be represented by money but it is not inherently money. Capital is something you use to buy someone’s labor. More specifically it is the social relationship between wage labor and profit. Assets (private property) used to produce profit (surplus value) are capital
Capital is “the characteristic the means of production acquire when they are used to hire labor and generate surplus value”
“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”
You do not get any access to the company’s resources. There is no dollar sitting in company coffers for your dollar of investment. You don’t get to decide what that money does what so evwr, and its value is speculative on the performance.
That is far, far, far removed from owning or controlling any part of a company’s capital.
Idk what definition of capital you used to determine this but I will be using the Marxist on because capital is a Marxist term.
Capital is private property used to create surplus value usually involving the purchase of wage labor. It can be the money a capitalist uses to pay their employees, the land their workers use to produce surplus value for them, and/or the machinary required for their workers to produce surplus value as a few examples. Buying stocks does not mean you own the means of production in any significant way. You may have stake in how those means of production are use but you do not control them and you do not use them to produce surplus value nor do you purchase wage labor, you only profit off someone who does.
Furthermore your personal possessions like your car are not capital.
If you sell your labor to someone who possesses the means of production you are proletariat
I wish it was just by how comfortable you are. Because that way in world scale I’d be Croesus
It’s not quite so black and white, though.
My spouse and I both work for a living, and we’d be in a hard spot if either of us lost our jobs. We also own 3 rental properties, and I have a military pension. We also own a farm where we raise 6 cows and enough chickens to have some eggs to sell.
So, we get most of our money from our labor, the rental properties pay for themselves most of the time but we don’t pool that with our personal money…it’s for the mortgages, taxes, maintenance and to cover for when we don’t have renters (which is almost never…weird how that happens when you aren’tcharging exploitative rents).
We sell eggs and make a small profit on those, but not enough to support ourselves…same with the beef…it’s mostly for us and family to eat (because fuck factory farming) but if we don’t have the freezer space we’ll sell the extra as well. That makes us both labor and capital… and my pension and military retirement benefits are basically as close to socialism as we’ll get in the US anytime soon, the biggest difference being I had to earn it.
Congratulations, you’re one of an extreme few still living in the middle class.
Now realize how minority your experience is.
Based on my definitions. Owning the 3 rental properties makes you owner class as that is private property, also when you pay off the mortgages you are going to be in a great spot right?
Farms are weird, if you only had the farm and have hired nobody else to help you run it then working class. If you hire people, well then you are owner class.
You both also have jobs on top of running a farm? Out of curiosity how do you have the time to manage your farm and work at the same time?
My BIL lives on the farm and takes care of feeding the livestock and keeping the pasture cleaned up. Otherwise, it’s just family helping family. We’re in the middle rebuilding part of the chicken coop now on the weekends. I say farm, but it’s more a ranch… we only grow hay and its only about 10 acres, so it’s not a huge burden with all of us working together.
The landlord side of it is the murkiest imo. You having a military pension doesn’t mean you’re in the bourgeoisie, it just means you’re getting paid for having given time from your life. Similarly, selling the surplus from your own agriculture doesn’t place you in the class of controlling capital because you aren’t using others’ labor; you’re creating something through your labor and when faced with having a surplus, are distributing your goods. Yes you sell them, but it’s not fair to criticize you for trying to offset your costs while living under a capitalist system so long as the price isn’t exorbitant.
Imo being a landlord is usually the scummiest, but if you’re charging rent at a price set to maintain the buildings and ensure that your tenants still have housing, then I don’t think you’re exploiting anyone. Imo the more profit you take from your rental properties, the more it moves out of the grey area. It sounds however like you don’t take profit or take a very minimal amount, and that you price your property so that it’s self sufficient but not much more. In that case then you aren’t really exploiting your tenants. Are they still being exploited? Yes, by the system that forces them to pay for housing. Do you have a hand in that exploitation purely by being their landlord? Yes, however if you aren’t trying to extort them for money so they have housing, then I wouldn’t say you’re exploiting them more than just owning their housing. Theres a reason that leftists tout that theres no ethical consumption under capitalism; even in trying to help people or do the right thing, you are still feeding into a system of exploitation and extortion. That doesn’t mean you still aren’t trying to do the right thing or be genuinely helpful, it just means that unless we find an alternative system then we will all continue to exploit each other and be exploited. This is why the proletariat must be unified as otherwise, we will never shake the binds of our collective oppression.
Ok you defined this way better than I did.
there is no capital without labour
Then maybe labor should organize its own capital and not some entitled prick of a class.
That’s literally what socialism and communism are
Yes, I am a great proponent of those things. Why did you assume otherwise?
I’m too used to seeing people say “we need another way instead of capitalism”, completely (willfully?) ignoring that socialism and communism, that I assumed that’s where you were going. Sorry for the tone I put in my comment
The definitions are tricky based on how you read them, but no. Your role in society is to perform labor (I’m assuming), and the fruits of that labor are then forfeited to those above you for a wage. Thus they have the capital and would belong to the “capitalist class.”
The actual specific class you belong to can be tricky because there are sub-classes and shit like that but generally speaking you can simplify class dynamics into the owning class (bourgeoisie) and the working class (proletariat). If you own the means of production, the actual property such as land or machinary required to produce things, and you buy others labor to produce these things that you then sell, you are bourgeoisie. If you sell your labor then your are proletariat. You’ll find that the interests of these classes are in opposition; the bourgeois wants to increase profit through any means so as to provide for themselves and for investors while the prole wants a better standard of living, a safe work environment, and less work hours among many other things I need not name. These interest come into direct conflict when the capitalist runs out of ways to externally increase profit controlling a certain market niche, there is only so much demand. When this happens the capitalist looks inward at their company and wonders if they can increase profit through other means like cutting pay, skirting around safety regulations, finding ways to get around providing benefits, cutting pensions, etc etc. The really big bourgeoisie also look towards the legal system, if it only cost them 60mil of lobbying to change a law that makes them billions then that law is dead. The profit motive kills
How does this work for the modern world though? Many of the people who make the financial decisions for the company that I work for are also normal people with a normal income. Their job is to maximize profit for the company under certain constraints, but it’s not like they directly get that money for themselves. The image of the proletariat working ungodly hours in dangerous factories while a few rich fat capitalists claim all the money is often quite far from reality in my experience, apart from the ultra-rich CEOs like Musk and Bezos. And I don’t disagree that we should regulate the income disparity or anything, I just think that these classes don’t really make that much sense anymore
“But it wasn’t real socialism”. Other attempts to create socialist government.
But that is almost universally said in response to people pointing to things that were in no way socialism or communism. They have actual definitions.
The glorious democratic people’s republic of korea is literally none of those things and no one is stupid enough to fall for a name there, but it happens all the time something like China.
And there is no single definition of socialism or communism, it’s all a matter of debate. Some definition of it could contradict each other. I’m willing to support some social democrats, but when it comes to Marxist-Leninists or Maoists, well… treat them the same way fascists are treated.
Except there is exactly that: socialism is where the working class owns the means of production.
Anyone who suggests otherwise is normally a right wing or centrist nutjob. People who debate if the USSR are debating how well it meets that criteria, not what the criteria actually is.
Also there are loads of people who are socialists but not MLs. Not all communists are MLs or Maoists either. Anarchist communists, libertarian marxists are communists that don’t fit into that group. Anarchists in general are socialists that don’t agree with MLs or Maoists or authoritarian regimes like China or the USSR.
Stop going around spouting centrist nonsense and actually read socialist theories if you want to legitimately criticise it. You can’t criticise such a broad range of systems without first understanding what they are and what they have in common.
Bruh, I just wrote that there are different types if socialists. MLs think that whatever they did is workers owning the means of production. It just so happens that this ML ideology is the state ideology of the wast majority of “socialist” states.
I clearly wrote that I have no problem with liberal leftists by giving socila democrats as example of socialists I would support. Is not liking MLs a centrist nonsense?
And I have no problem with any leftists until they do not start to oppose the democratic system with checks and balances. Which they, especially ML types, often do.
So basically anyone left of a social democrat you don’t support? As far as I am concerned social democrats aren’t real socialists but support hybrid economy.
Out of curiosity do you have any problem with anarchist communism, market socialism, or any other true socialist ideology that is pro civil liberties?
Also MLs do want a democracy, it’s called democratic socialism (which are different from social democrats, yes it’s confusing). As far as they are concerned the democracy we live in now isn’t real, and I tend to agree with them on this as do many other leftist groups. Just to be clear I haven’t been an ML in a while.
I basically disagree with any left or right wing person that want to destroy, through revolution or any other means, democratic system with it’s checks and balances. Basically if your desired political system implies that there is no separation of power, I consider it authoritarian. And of course freedom of press, respecting human rights and not persecuting opposition is also an important part of it.
How can a society without a state - anarchism - possibly be authoritarian? There are no police or military to enforce any authoritarian policies is many forms of anarchism. What you are saying doesn’t make sense.
I actually agree with you that MLs can be authoritarian. That’s part of why I left those ideologies behind. What I don’t agree with is painting all socialist ideologies with the same brush. Some are based on direct democracy which is always going to be more democratic than representative democracy, weather you think that’s a good thing or not.
I also don’t believe we live in a true democracy as it’s controlled through political and economic corruption including lobbying, as well as the two-party system created through FPTP voting systems. Not to mention manufactured consent. So to me those checks and balances aren’t that effective, especially compared to real direct democracy.
Edit: also MLs believe in checks and balances last I checked. The USSR was full of bureaucracy for this very reason.
Couldn’t I just say what you point to as a failure of capitalism is in no way a free market?
Markets ≠ capitalism
Even an idealized capitalist market economy found in economic models violates workers’ inalienable rights. The only way to fix that problem is Economic Democracy where all firms are structured as democratic worker coops @lemmyshitpost
Capitalism doesn’t have a founder, it has no one to write what it’s core tennants are. So yeah of course you can redefine it to be whatever you want and I could do the same. That’s why it’s more useful to be more precise, which is why I said it’s not a free market, which I suspect you also oppose. But again, no country is anywhere near a free market, just as no country was anywhere near Marx’s communism.
I am not redefining Capitalism. I am defining it the way capitalists do. Even in the idealized economic models of fully free market capitalism, capitalism is still wrong. Fully free market capitalism would still inherently violates workers’ inalienable rights.
Depends on what is meant by a free market.
Marx’s communism is not the only alternative to capitalism. There are market-based alternatives to capitalism as well
Who says Socialism isn’t Socialism?
You doubt the existence of people who think that any self-proclaimed socialistic country is not socialistic? Really?
I doubt the existence of people who deny every Socialist state as Socialist. I agree with people who say the Nazis weren’t Socialist despite calling themselves as such, because they were fascists that relied on privitization and Capitalism, but I’m sure that wasn’t your point.
I’m eager to read what countries do you think are actually socialistic. Give me a list please.
Why? You just trying to pick a fight? Kinda cringe. No matter what I’d answer you’d start shit.
You tried to accuse me of equivocating Nazis with socialists. Now urn saying I am the one who is trying to pick fight?
I asked the list of countries in order to provide with socialist critics of that specific countries.
Nah. Just state what you actually mean by your first comment, and we are good to go.
*and the same
It was the system, not the individuals, all along?
[surprised pikachu face]
This also works with cops.
holy shit, bad apple
The idea of there being a form Capitalism which is not corrupt is about as ill-informed as the idea that there can be a World were everybody has the same as everybody else for ever and ever (i.e. the Utopia called Communism, which is not at all the same as the political bullshit out there called thus) and for the same reason: human Greed.
For there to be Capitalism there have to be Laws (the bare minimum being Contract Law and Property Law, and if you want things like ownership of ideas then also Intellectual Property Laws, plus indirectly the whole edifice of Criminal Law to make sure that violence is not used to force some for the profit of others).
Laws have to be made and ajusted as times change as well as appropriate punishments defined; there has to be Oversight to see if Laws are abidded by or not; there has to be Judgement of people’s actions with regards to those Laws; there has to be enforcement of the punishments for breaking the Law. Lets call the people who do all this Lawmakers and Law-enforcers.
How can anybody expect that Lawmakers and Law-enforcers, at the very least when such things impact profit making, under Capitalism where “Greed is Good” and wealth is the most important measure of a man, to not serve their own personal greed first and foremost, which in such positions often means being corrupt?!
Even if magically we started with squeaky clean Lawmakers and Law-enforcers, many people outside who are not squeaky clean and are looking to enrich themselves would be attracted to such positions were they can sell their control of the powers of law-making and law-enforcement to the highest bidder so you would always end up with corruption in Politics and the Judiciary as the crooked replaced the honest.
It’s frankly hilarious to expect that in Capitalism everybody would be looking out for numero uno except for those responsible for making and enforcing the framework of Laws that is the only difference between Capitalism and Anarchy, with those people expected put first and foremost the interests of Society above their own (in other words, be Socialists).
In summary: Capitalism naturally breeds corruption because maintaining and applying the very framework of rules that supports Capitalism without becoming corrupt would require in the right places a special group of impeccably honest people not influenced by the very Capitalist Spirit that pervades the rest of Society, along with a system making sure any replacement for those people are also of the same kind, all of which is impossible.
I agree to disagree. This place has too many communists.
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