this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Capitalism isn't the "best system we've got", though... it isn't even the system we are all using right now.
We've never operated in anything like a "purely" capitalist economy, and the socialist policies most western countries have put in place are wildly popular and few people would want to live without them.
Countries that intelligently choose when and where and what things should be operated on a capitalist basis, have better outcomes.
Healthcare? Not something anyone should make money off of. Basic housing, food, water, power... these should be immune to market forces.
At the same time, capitalism drives fantastic technological and social innovation within its swimlane. We just have to pre-define what things people should be able to make money doing.
Capitalism =/= markets.
Socialism =/= public services.
Markets are much older than capitalism, and socialism is a very simple economic idea, being the collective ownership of the means of production by the workers.
Capitalism guides innovation towards increasing profits for capitalist, hardly “innovative”. The USSR was the first to the Moon, after being a feudalistic society, thanks to socialism.
Imean, the USSR wasn't even good socialism. They still used money for quite a large set of things, businesses were very much NOT worker owned in many places, people could be killed by the whims of authorities and a dictator... Yep, not even good socialism got to space first.
I mean, not having money is a communism thing, not socialism.
But most businesses in the USSR were co-ops or state-owned.
I’m not in the “the dictatorship of the proletariat is identical to collective ownership” camp, but I mean, that is in the end a difference of ideology regarding what socialism really is.
And…. What dictator? I mean, all that “there’s no freedom in the USSR, if Stalin thinks you’re ugly you go to the gulag” is 100% propaganda, right? I mean the CIA admitted in their secret reports that not even Stalin was really a dictator, but that disclosing that wouldn’t be politically favourable to the US.
And like… I don’t think the USSR killed anymore people than the US or Europe lmao
State owned is EXACTLY NOT "worker owned".
What dictator? As if people couldn't or weren't put to death at Stalin's word over simole paranoia??
I would agree, but many socialists wouldn’t.
And man… please don’t come with this Stalin bullshit. If you really think he was “le big evil gulag no food man”, please for the love of god read a bit more, from non Empire-propaganda sources.
I say this strongly as a non-communist (in the USSR sense).
I don’t have any “labels” like that but I more strongly align with anarchism. I also believed Stalin, Mao, Lenin etc were big evil men. But bro, 90% of it really, truly, is propaganda.
Lol, you say that but... Guess you started the gulag system? You guessed it, Lenin! Who brought it to it's apex? Staline! Does it continue to this day? Yes!
Here's another great example of Stalins legacy:
The Road of Bones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway
This article has pictures:
https://www.rbth.com/history/333033-road-bones-kolyma-gulag
Side note: we have a family friend who had half of his family sent to the Soviet gulags in the 1950s. Most of them died there. He's Polish.
Hum… and? Outside of the propaganda, yea gulags and? I don’t see the point.
Are you saying prisons are bad? I agree, I’m fully a prison abolitionist. But I don’t see how saying “look prisons!” is any argument against the USSR in particular.
Prisons have existed for a long time everywhere. And many times and in many places were much worse than the gulags.
Just keep in mind that again, 90% of what you read on gulags is literal Cold War and Nazi propaganda…
You're full of bullshit. Cite your sources that Gulags were like a typical prison, because they are obviously not.
Exporting 18 million people to the middle of fucking nowhere where it reaches -53C to work camps outside resulting in millions of deaths is definitely not normal.
“there’s no freedom in the USSR, if Stalin thinks you’re ugly you go to the gulag” is 100% propaganda, right?
Sure buddy. That was just a psyop that the MAN wants us to believe so we don't revolt and bring back communism.
Oh no, I’m brainwashed! Lmao
Sure buddy. Go back to believing everything your school textbooks and journalists on TV have been saying since the Cold War.
We can appreciate the achievements of the USSR and still accept its failures
And I do do that. But any discussion or discourse on this is muddled with Nazi propaganda talking points, and it’s impossible to truly praise and truly critique the USSR without people calling you a “tankie”…
You're almost there buddy.
I think I’m already there friendo.
I wonder if those accomplishments were meant to happen if they hadn't had an ideological enemy in the 'capitalist west'.
Your point isn't completely invalid, but it's a circular argument. Whatever the external force was, the system had the ability to complete the objective.
One could actually argue that sending a person to the moon didn't directly achieve anything for the people, so that wouldn't necessarily have been a goal by itself anyway and was a waste of resources.
What’s the point? If there was no space race the USSR would likely just invest even harder on cybernetics and information technology, as they were also pioneers in these areas, for example.
The Soviet Unions industrial development was ironically funded by American capitalists during the 1920s through the 1940s. Without that massive influx of knowledge, technical expertise and capital, the Soviet Union would never have industrialized at the rate that it did. It might not even have succeeded. However, I am not an expert in Soviet history either.
Albert Khan was a American industrial architect who was responsible for designing and building American car, tractor and other factories for heavy industrial equipment in the United States. Starting in the 1920s, he traveled to the Soviet Union and designed and lead co instruction of ~500 massive state-run industrial plants using American equipment and machines. This is also similar to how Japan industrialized following the end of the Tokugawa shogunate during the Japanese civil War.
https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/built-in-the-u-s-s-r---by-detroit-.html
No, you see, the only way to improve things is to wank endlessly about some grand revolution that will bring about a perfect utopia that we can't even define much less implement. Using the tools we have available right now to make the world better just means that you're a status-quo centri-fascist!
That sounds pretty commie to me comrade.
Totally agree. Capitalism is an amazing tool that allows corporations and nation states to leverage capital to tackle major projects, like infrastructure and technology development.
The capitalism at its end state is a rent-seeking endeavor that destroys and consumes its own market creations.
Therefore, it seems the best of both worlds is to allow capitalism to operate in a sandbox, while providing socialism in the form of universal health care, education and infrastructure to everyone else. Let the rich get rich, but tax the wealth at a certain point to prevent them from getting too rich and then redistribute that to bring the bottom 50% up to middle class standards.
How do you feel about democracy in the workplace, though?
It makes sense if it's intelligently constructed and clearly defined.
The world has basically settled on mixed economies being the best possible system. The debate is now really about what the mix should be.
We've collectively decided healthcare should be public-owned, the US is just the one dissenting voice that hasn't yet fully switched over yet. We've also decided that food production, distribution and sales should be largely capitalist, but with socialist supports for the production because food production is too essential to be allowed to fail completely. We've decided that research into medicine and drugs should have both private and public components, but that the government must investigate and regulate any new things, so we don't get tricksters selling snake oil.
No society is seriously considering a fully socialist or fully capitalist system because it's clear how badly they fail. But, disputes over just how much socialism is too much or too little will go on for a long time.
So you are saying I can't build a house as I like it and then sell it? Nor can I invent some type of food, prepare it and sell it? Becuase only the government is allowed to do that?
You're taking to the extreme. But you know what we see right now in the world? People dying of hunger or living on the streets because they're not profitable. The situation they are in doesn't produce enough capital. Honestly, fuck that. This should not be like this.