this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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You literally told me that my message listing actions Biden has taken was unnecessary.
Can I do this too? If someone posts a message I disagree with, can I say they're punching me, and silencing dissent, and "uhmm, askhusally"ing my message, and counterproductive?
Dude. I disagree with you. It's allowed. Stop trying to imply that it isn't, and either engage with what I'm saying, or don't. It seems like you finally are engaging now, so maybe it's late for me to be saying that, but it's just irritating me that you're trying to find so big a variety of words to use to imply that I shouldn't be allowed to say a viewpoint you don't agree with.
Quick unrelated question: What's your feeling on the war in Ukraine?
What would be a good end state, to you? Like what would be a good American system, if you had the perfect politicians in office and could set up the economy and the structure of government exactly as you wanted?
People do not need to hear from you to know what Biden has done. You can discuss individual actions, sure, but you provided a list you believed was good for the purposes of showing why you believe Biden is good.
You can disagree, I just find it condescending that you seem to imply you see things others aren't.
As for Ukraine, what specifically are you asking? Do you think opposing US imperialism must mean I support Russia, or something? My "feeling" is that war is bad and unjustifiable. Violence is purely justified against oppressors. I believe in Nation's right to self-determination.
I want Socialism, and eventually, Communism. Worker ownership of the Means of Production. Democracy of, by, and for the Proletariat. Do you have any specific questions? We could be here all day otherwise and I am not sure there would be a point.
Okay, so it's not punching left or silencing dissent if I disagree? Just want to get that clarified. You can call me condescending, that's fine; I probably am.
Should the US send weapons to them? Or is that more imperialism? I am just curious; you brought up imperialism, so I'm curious what that means.
I'm just curious about what your viewpoint is. Not sure why that's a problem when arguing back and forth with hostility wasn't, but you can stop any time, if you don't like it.
What's a country which has implemented the model you'd like to see in the US? Or would this be the US doing it for the first time that it's been implemented on a big scale in the way you'd like to see it implemented?
My point is that bringing up the stuff Biden has done, without intention to discuss it or any prior relevance to the conversation, is just sealioning.
As for sending US weapons or not, I fail to see how that relates to Imperialism. You're being extremely dishonest right now, because you don't actually have any points.
If the people of Ukraine want weapons, then sure. If the people of Ukraine don't want weapons, then no. Like I said, whatever the people on the ground want, I support.
Sure, countries have had similar structures. None have been exactly what I want, so I'm not sure why giving an example is important or relevant. Every country is going to have a unique path to Socialism and then Communism.
You're clearly fishing for a "gotcha!" Because you can't actually argue any longer, lol.
I'm not into the idea of just "yes it is" "no it isn't" 'yes it is" "no it isn't." It's a waste of time. I feel like I understand your viewpoint on Biden at this point, and I've pretty much said what I had to say on my side. We don't have to keep going back and forth until someone "wins." If you want to call that me not being able to actually argue any longer, then sure.
I feel like we've arrived at the crux of me understanding the deeper seated issue, though, in that you just feel that any candidate who's okay with capitalism is going to be the enemy, and we have to overthrow the capitalist system completely in order to make real progress. So anything short of that that Biden does is going to make him the enemy to you.
I don't agree with that viewpoint either, but I don't really understand the details of what you think on the deeper viewpoint side. So me asking where what you want has been implemented is, one, yes starting to tee up reasons why I might not think it's realistic or why I might not agree. But, also, I'm genuinely just curious about the details of what you believe. Like if you said China is the model, or Cuba is the model, or it hasn't really been implemented in the way you'd like to see it but X, Y, and Z are how it would be different this time in the US, then those are very different things which could all go under the heading of "Communist."
Alright, I'll answer these, now that you've explained plainly what you're actually looking for and why, rather than beating around the bush.
The United States is Imperialist. By this, I mean Late Stage Capitalist, whereby Capital has been exported to the global south to super-exploit for super-profits. This is a natural end point of Capitalism, Capitalists will seek new markets and manners to increase rates of profit as the overall tendency is toward the fall of the rate of profits. This fall is unavoidable as long as automation improves, so Imperialism is also unavoidable.
This Imperialism inflates living standards within the US by way of unequal exchange, which is the driving cause of fascism itself! As the working class benefits from this unequal exchange, much of the proletariat is turned against itself, rather than against the ruling class. It is in this manner that continuing Capitalism must be opposed.
If I were to vote for a party that best aligns with my interests, I would vote for PSL. However, I also believe that leftist change is impossible in the US via electoral manners as long as Imperialism continues to exist. That is why I am chiefly anti-sectarian. Building up a working class movment is the only way off of this trajectory. Electoralism is impossible because the parties in power must capitulate to the class with power to maintain their own, so the interests of Capitalists will always be supported first and foremost.
As for "the model," I cannot claim to own the leftist movement. China as it stands now is both better than under the fascist KMT before the PRC, and yet also highly flawed. The same is true of Cuba, far better than under fascist Batista, but can also be better. Historical Materialism looks at history as a result of class conflicts, viewing it in this manner Cuba and China are moving forward, but have far to go as well.
For the US, the number one issue is eliminating Imperialism, as this is the method by which fascism gains hold and the third world brutally exploited. This can be accomplished only via outside worker pressure. If anarchism is leading the movement, then Anarchism I will support! If Marxism is leading the movement, then Marxism I will support! Currently, there is no unifying movement, except against genocide, so I will continue to advocate for solidarity and unity against Capitalism, rather than infighting.
This is just my uneducated viewpoint on it:
I don't think capitalism is as tied directly to imperialism as you're saying here. The USSR was plenty imperial, and they were (nominally at least) Communist. There are also plenty of capitalist countries in the world that don't have empires.
I think imperialism is mainly a function of power, and how the human beings who tend to gravitate to power and wield it, tend to operate. That can happen with or without capitalism or a US-style governmental system. I actually think, for all the terrible evils of US capitalism, that the US governmental system does a better than average job of reining it in. I think if it were any other country on earth that had the type of money and military power the US does right now, they'd be doing much much worse things than the (already pretty bad) things the US government and corporate system is doing with them.
Again, that's not to say I disagree with you on reining in capitalism or American empire. On that part we're fully on the same page, believe it or not. But I think the best way to do that is actually to preserve the US electoral and governmental system and overall position in the world (maybe with some major reforms e.g. on lobbying, media ownership, and the electoral system). I think simply tearing down the American empire is probably going to be a gateway to something much, much worse, because the whole problem all along wasn't an "America problem," it was just a general money and power problem that's worldwide (or universal, as a function of how people and systems of power operate).
I actually think that if your primary goal is undoing American empire, you should be advocating for Trump, because him fucking things up to the point that the US loses its imperial position is a way more realistic way that might happen than anything that's realistic as an "on purpose" outcome within American politics (electoral or otherwise).
But I also think that the new reality (both inside and outside the US) if that happened would be much, much worse than Biden or Hillary Clinton or Bush 2 or any of these already very bad outcomes we've been seeing so far.
Again, just my take on it, based on what you said.
The USSR was expansionist, but not Imperialist, as I have explained. Expansionism isn't necessarily a good thing, but what I am referring to is the Imperialism as an end state of Capitalism. Again, this isn't to say that Expansionism is good, but is a separate concept from what I am referring to as Imperialism, if that makes sense.
Imperialism as I described it is important not just because it is the right thing to do, but because as I demonstrated previously, it is the number one obstacle in enacting Leftist change.
Yes, there are plenty of Capitalist countries that have not yet developed to late stage Capitalism, ie Imperialism. Imperialism is a necessary consequence of highly developed Capitalism.
For your point on the US, it doesn't need to be expansionist, after all. It's not that the government does a good job of reigning expansionism in, it's that the government does a fantastic job of facilitating the type of Imperialism I am describing, and expansionism is largely unnecessary for the US.
As for Trump, what you described is an Accelerationist take, which is fringe among Leftists. I personally am not an Accelerationist, as I believe sabotaging worker movements for the sake of building a larger worker movement off of "punishment" risks far more than necessary. While Trump would indeed weaken the Empire, and would likely result in a more unified left against Trump, the danger to leftists this directly would present is highly risky.
I guess I just don't see a huge difference in level-of-evil between imperialism and expansionism. I get that they're not the same thing but I think most of what I said could be applied to one or the other or to both and the point remains pretty much the same.
The difference is clear if you look at cause and effect, rather than the immediate moral consequences.
Imperialism is caused by declining Capitalism, exploits the less fortunate in the global south, creates the path for rising fascism, and prevents the move towards Socialism.
Imperialism is the method by which the US prevents or slows the third world from developing, and deradicalizes the workers of the US against overthrowing the Capitalist order. At the same time, it increases nationalism, which opens the gate for Fascism.
Trump is not a rare example of an exceptionally fascist person, rather, the material conditions within the US have pointed to allowing a fascist candidate to take power.
Are you familiar with Dialectical and Historical Materialist analysis?
Why wouldn't the immediate moral consequences be the main thing to look at? Like I say, I see the difference. I don't see that one or the other is, like, harmless, or not a bad thing.
Absolutely agree. We need to reform the explicitly normal-person-hostile policies that in ways that are honestly too numerous to even list out have created the space where Trump can flourish.
Not even slightly.
That's a fantastic question. I am not being sarcastic at all, it's legitimately the main question among leftists. This naturally leads to Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
Note: this is a vast simplification.
Materialism is the belief and natural conclusions that come from the idea that matter and environmental conditions are what create thought. Ie, a painter knows blue because they percieve the sky and thus can envision beyond that. People are more products of their environment than anything else.
Dialectical Materialism is a logical method that looks at matter as a trajectory. Everything is not what it was, the river of yesterday is not the river of today. Everything is changing and nothing is static. Within everything is the element of that which it can change to, ie an apple contains within itself the fuel for it to rot.
Historical Materialism is the combination of those ideas with the central idea that just as the environment shapes human thought, so too in turn do humans reshape their environment, which in turn reshapes human thought again! This is the driving force of change in history.
Circling back to Imperialism, we must analyze the following:
Why does Imperialism exist, and did it always exist in the manner it does?
What are the consequences of Imperialism?
What are the consequences of the consequences of Imperialism?
To answer:
Imperialism exists because of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. This tendency exists as a fundamental for Capitalism. As competition persists, Capitalists seek to gain profit by lowering costs via automation, but as competitors also automate, prices lower. This race to the bottom is held back by worker wages, which must be at subsistence + replacement to persist. After enough time and monopolization, you cannot explpit further, so you must seek new methods to exploit, so Capitalists export Capital and import profits from third world countries, thus super-exploiting for super-profits.
The consequences of this are that Third World Countries experience a drain in value, entire countries function as Capitalists and entire countries function as Workers. It's a sort of nation-scale Worker-Owner exploitation, if that makes sense. Thus, the Material Conditions within the Third World climb slowly while a sort of Labor Aristocracy appears in the first world, where workers have inflated lifestyles on the backs of third world workers.
The consequences of the consequences of Imperialism is that this form of international Capitalism creates wretched exploitation of third world workers and prevents workers in the third world from rising against their own exploitation. This opens the door for fascism and prevents the door to progress to Socialism from opening. This works against progress. However, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall still exists, and thus exploitation of the third world rises, and revolutions occur against said imperialism. That's why the US swoops in and stomps this out.
That was a long explanation, and not nearly thorough enough, but should help. Essentially, we must analyze the trajectory of systems and the cause and effect of systems. Expansionism can happen for many reasons, but is often tied to Imperialism, which itself is the natural development of Capitalism to its most brutal and unequal stage.
Building on this cause I like the philosophy, and we're like fifty comments deep so probably nobody will attack me for it. But this is sort of like. The dialectic, here, is the idea that within everything, is the thing which causes it's own undoing, or, it's own opposite. Everything exists in a kind of paradoxical state. If you think about old philosophy, it tries to kind of, conceive of fundamental laws which govern everything, and those laws don't really deal with change. Like those old timey greek philosophies that are like, water composes everything, because water, water can freeze, become solid, water can become liquid, steam, you look upwards into the sky and you see a kind of vast ocean of blue, all life requires water, etc. So it sees water as like this most fundamental of all elements, this kind of, ultimate truth. You get similar stuff with like, the four elements, right, water, earth, air, fire, states of matter. Naturalist philosophy, these philosophies concerned with fundamental truths. Folk philosophy.
The dialectic is concerned with change. You have the thesis, right, the idea, the truth, that the sky is blue, right. But then within that is the antithesis, the sky is black, right, and I hear you say well no that's impossible. But then we have the nighttime, the change imposed by time, imposed by the context, sort of. the sky turns from blue to black because of nighttime, and back again in the day. The sky turns red in the evening, the sky turns purple, turns pink, turns green maybe even, and then through that process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or, sky blue, sky black, sky black and blue, we arrive at truth more generally. We integrate these new realities with our previous realities, we integrate these contradictions, and we arrive at truth. It's sort of like a basis for the scientific process. You postulate a truth, you go out and attempt to contradict yourself, then you come back in, and change the truth you postulated to fit what it is that you've found out in the world. Hopefully, maybe you just do p-value hacking or whatever, I dunno.
And then at some point the postmodernists come along and fuck everything up for everybody with schizo language games, but nobody has any time for that and I don't really understand it even though I probably do, because it's fucked up eldritch shit, so, I won't get into it unless I'm maybe pressed a little bit. And then there's like wittgenstein rolling in on a holy chariot, and then dying after he gets thrown off when a rock hits the wheel or something, I dunno.
Yeah, all makes sense.
So what I'm getting at, is not like disagreeing with any of that. I'm just saying that, for example, it's relevant that the USSR starved millions of people in the territories it expanded into when their agricultural policies failed. So if we're going to say "We have to fight capitalism!" (which, yes, we do, or at least limit its bad effects) by saying "We need to install communism!", it's a relevant question to ask, okay what are the details, how do you plan to prevent that even-worse-than-capitalism outcome from happening again (which, I'm not saying that's every communist system, just that it's a relevant example to bring up as why "this isn't capitalism" isn't a sufficient or safe reason to switch to any particular other-than-capitalism system as the new answer).
Surely that makes sense? Or no?
The people in the USSR largely starved during the transition from feudalism to Socialism. It's worth noting that famine was common and regular before Socialism, and ended after collectivization was completed. Obviously, collectivization was largely botched, however we must also recognize the results. We can learn from their mistakes to prevent such tragedies from repeating.
I say this, because the USSR skipped past Capitalism to Socialism. It wasn't a "worse than Capitalism" situation, they eliminated the mass starvations that were taken as normal under Feudalism, especially as they were undeveloped.
The US is completely unique in comparison to revolutionary Russia. The modern US produces a mass excess of food, and people still starve. You would have to explain why you think collectivization would lead to starvation in the US, no?
Largely, Marxism has 3 major components.
English Economic theory - Marx built the Law of Value off Ricardo and Smith. His analysis of Capitalism explains how Capitalism is exploitative and cannot last forever.
French Socialism - Marx built his visions of Socialism off of French labor movements towards collective ownership, a what to replace Capitalism with.
German philosophy - Marx distilled Dialectical Materialism from Hegel's Dialectical Idealism, and looked at History through that vision. This is the why of Communism.
All 3 elements are inseperable and united.
Does that answer your question?
Not completely, no. The more fundamental question I am trying to ask is this: It sounds like you're saying Biden is bad because we need to convert to communism and he's capitalist and so you can't support him regardless. Right? Or no?
And so I'm saying, if you're saying capitalism is so bad we need to replace it, then what are you wanting to replace it with, that any leader who doesn't want to replace it with is unworthy of any support? I realize that's a very very broad question which may not even have a single specific-at-the-outset answer, but I tried to narrow it down by asking, like what country would be the model? Or would we be doing something that was never done before?
It sounds like maybe the answer was the second one, right? Or no? I'm just trying to understand what it is that you're saying, in concrete terms, at this point. Like would we still have congress, or the electoral college? Would we be able to own private property? Would the economy be centrally managed by the government as in USSR and China? That kind of thing.
That's not quite what I am saying. "Communism" is not something you can jump to from Capitalism, Socialism is.
Either way, if we understand Capitalism itself to be a constantly declining system, efforts to merely patch it up without replacing it with some form of Worker Ownership will continue that decline and will continue Imperialism. We can support Biden over another, terrible pick, but Biden is still a block towards progress.
As for asking what I want, the answer is Socialism, of some form, as this eliminates both Imperialism and Capitalism's largest issues. Socialism has been tried in different manners with different results.
Fundamentally, the US is entitely different from the USSR and PRC, so even if we copied them 1 to 1 we would have vastly different results. We cannot predict exactly what it would look like, and in the end we need to understand that it must be a democratic, worker-focused change, so whatever is capable of building a unified-front in the US will be what Socialism will look like.
To answer your listed questions:
Congress and the Electoral College would likely be replaced by worker councils, with democratic representatives.
Private Property would eventually be removed, personal property would remain.
Some level of central planning would almost certainly be employed.
Got it. Do you have examples of places this approach has been employed and worked well during the 150 years or so of socialism/communism being around?
What do you mean by "working well?" What metrics do you want to see?
My entire point is that you cannot simply copy a country that had a different historical development and expect the same results, so I don't know why you're asking me which country I want to copy.
I mean I think you probably see what I'm getting at -- I'm suspicious of how this will work out in practice. In particular, I'm suspicious of the idea of shutting down private property, or centrally managing the economy; it sounds like a solution for the ills of capitalism but I'm aware of a couple of big examples where the way it's been implemented has turned into a living nightmare, and not produced the economic happiness it was supposed to produce.
Surely it's fair to ask how it's worked out in practice? You know, the metric being good standard of living, happy people, press freedom, basic necessities being met, that kind of thing. I'm not saying you have to copy another country exactly but surely it's relevant to look at examples. No?
Not saying you have to copy another country but also, like, if we were going to replace all the cars in a country with some other mode of transportation, it's fair to ask, okay where do they use that and how does it work? If it works well then cool, that's an indication of good things, and if not then maybe some lessons we can learn about how to implement it better here. Doesn't that seem fair?
Care to share the examples, and the metrics by which you call them failures?
"Good standard of living, press freedom, and basic necessities met" hasn't been achieved anywhere IMO, especially if you consider the global context. If you can give specifics, we can look beyond vibes.
Sure, USSR and China are the big countries which converted to communism, and then in both cases millions of people starved. You said famines were common even in the feudal system in Russia, I think, but that's not fully accurate -- I mean, they happened, but not with anything like the same frequency, under the same technological-efficiency backdrop, or for simple reasons of management (there was generally some external reason like a drought). And the USSR had trouble providing basic necessities to its people for all its existence, even worse than the failures the US has to provide basic necessities. And they both have much more barbaric prison systems even than the US's fairly barbaric prison system.
China's different because at this point it's working "well" economically, but at the cost of personal individual freedom and working conditions -- I mean, the exploitation that the US is doing of global work force (which is very real) is often happening to workers inside China, so you can't really say that enacting China's system here would be a solution to the problems of the US. All it would do is import the exploitation of Chinese workers to happen to American workers too (i.e. much worse than their already pretty significant level of exploitation.)
(I realize all that is huge oversimplification, and those might not be the models you would choose, which I why I keep asking over and over again for details of the model you would choose.)
Agreed. I think the closest that's been achieved was probably the New Deal-era American economy (such as it was available to white people) up until around the 1960s. Basically, a strong organized working class backed by unions, exerting control over a democratic government to push back against the control that capital wants to exert over the levers of power.
Basically what I would think is the next step would be to extend that to all races, get back to unions as a unit of political power instead of political parties and a whole specialized class of lobbyists and consultants that work in Washington providing change "from above," reform some of the worst evils of money in politics and barbaric foreign policy, and see where that gets us. Because even that is far far away from where it should be. But that to me seems like a more sensible step than trying to make a more centralized economic structure, and assuming that the issues of who winds up in charge of the central planning will take care of themselves.
(Not that I'm saying that that last is what you're advocating -- just talking about my sort of stereotype view of what "getting rid of capitalism" as a solution might look like.)
You're making the mistake of looking at countries and systems as static snapshots, rather than as developments on what was before. Both the PRC and USSR ended famines as compared to the Nationalist Agrarian KMT and Tsarist Russia. That's why life expectancy doubled under Mao and in the USSR, they managed to industrialize and end their respective regular famines.
Comparing to the US is additionally strange, the US was a superpower and both the USSR and PRC were developing countries, that's like comparing an adult to a child. If one starts off on a much higher foot, why compare at the same point in time, rather than the same point in development?
Either way, with respect to what you're saying, you are ignoring why New Deal America crumbled. Capitalism will erode safety nets over time as Capitalists fight the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and this too results in Imperialism. It's unavoidable as long as you allow dictators like Capitalists to exist, rather than democratic production.
Additionay, Capitalism cannot be democratic, nor can the press be free, nor can everyone's needs be met. Capitalists influence the media, thus choosing who can be elected, and requires safety nets be insufficient so the workers have to work.
Like I said, oversimplifying, yes.
The PRC killed somewhere from 15 to 55 million people in a multi-year famine, around 1960. It's widely regarded, says Wikipedia, as one of the greatest man-made disasters in all of human history. What KMT famine are you talking about? I searched "KMT famine" and found nothing.
The Russian famines I think I already addressed. You're free to pretend I didn't, and simply claim that the USSR didn't cause a massive man-made famine unlike anything that happened under the Tsars, that has a specific name and still is talked about to the present day in the affected areas almost a hundred years later.
I mean, technically true.
I'm open to the idea that things would never have happened the same way in China or Russia without the revolutions. On the other hand, I'm also open to the idea that it would have happened in exactly the same way, because of the advances in medicine and public health that ramped it up over pretty much the same time period in the US, even without a centrally managed economy that killed millions of people and enacted a barbaric system without many of the daily freedoms that I consider essential to a decent life, which even the US manages to provide in some reduced form.
Not true. Outside a handful of notable cities, the US in 1900 was a lawless and unelectrified wilderness with a life expectancy of 46, that none of the mighty established European empires took all that seriously. In the late 1800s, labor began battling for control of the US in a big way, and around 1930 a pro-labor government got powerful enough to tackle some big reforms, and all of a sudden, some things changed between 1900 and 1950 that catapulted the US onto the world stage in a way where it became the dominant power and has remained there into the present day. And, for white people at least, the conditions inside the country transformed into a sort of paradise life.
(The war was a big part of the US becoming a world power, of course, but the course of the US's/China's/USSR's contrasting economic developments leading up to the war are kind of hard to ignore as a factor.)
Also, the USSR crumbled and collapsed from its dominant position on the world stage into now being a backwards little land of tinpot gangsters and alcoholic misery that can't even effectively invade its direct neighbor which it outnumbers by at least 10 to 1. Surely that's relevant? If you're saying (and I'm not saying you are, just saying if) that you want to replicate parts of the Soviet model in the US?
Agreed. I think this natural tendency always exists within capitalism, and we're living in the dystopian results right now. I think we're just disagreeing about what counterbalancing factors need to be introduced to more effectively combat the cancer.
Searching for "KMT famine" won't give you much. Look for historical famines in China before becoming the PRC.
As for the Great Famine under Mao, we need to analyze why it happened, no? It started with great overpopulations of rice eating birds and pests. When Mao ordered the birds killed, the pests exploded in population. There was also drought, and mismanagement.
Definitely a failure, but why would that happen in the US? Why hasn't it happened again after that?
As for the US, it started the 20th century as industrialized and Capitalist, while Russia was a rural backwater. This isn't even close to comparable.
The USSR collapsed, yes. It was flawed, and corrupt, life got far worse after liberal economic reforms and then it collapsed.
Some parts of the Soviet Model I would absolutely copy. Free education, healthcare, high house ownership from public investment, huge literacy rates, lower retiremeng ages than the US, large scale public infrastructure projects, absolutely. Others didn't work too well, like rejecting computers in favor of planning by hand, rejecting interacting in the global market, and failing to combat corruption.
I don't think the failures of the Russian Federation should be blamed on Socialism, no? Most in Russia seek the return of Socialism precisely because Capitalism is failing them.
To skip to the end, I will turn your question back on you: what do you want, and why? Maybe there's a disconnect beteeen you and me there, or maybe a union.
I think I said it -- basically, return to the conditions of the New Deal and shortly after, just as applied to all people instead of only white people. I think it requires a lot of the same things that led to the New Deal -- strong labor unions directly exercising political power, a lot less power in the hands of political parties and professional politicians, but still keeping intact the main structures of US government on the government side.
In the short run, key steps would be big reforms to the things that are causing corruption in the US: Lobbying and campaign finance, broken and archaic voting systems, poor education and media that lead voting to be more or less a media-driven popularity contest that can be exploited by the wealthy to sideline any real progress.
I think a lot of the economic problems are intertwined with political problems. I don't think either of the two can be solved in isolation, and in particular I think that trying to solve economic problems by centralizing government so the government can "fix" the economic system to be more fair, is likely to be counterproductive, as turns out to be more difficult to prevent assholes from seizing control of it than it might at first appear.
That's the short answer, at least.
How do you propose preventing the slide back from the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, and stop Imperialism? I agree that life would improve, but exploitation would remain, so would Imperialism, and it would likely slide back.
I don't think you can, in the long run.
I mean, I think the slide towards exploitation happens a lot more broadly than just exporting exploitation abroad because of falling profits. There's also exploitation at home, there's also corruption of the agencies that would prevent pollution or other externalities, things like that -- I think the tendency for powerful people to hijack the system and try to exploit everyone else any way they can will happen with or without falling profits, and it's pretty much constant. More or less you could say that any system that can exercise power, and that's made of people, will tend towards evil if you don't watch it and keep it in check.
I feel like the American system resisted the slide for a couple of generations after FDR. I feel like China and the USSR got hijacked by the evil elements almost instantly, though -- I don't feel like pointing to the evil of the US and then saying we'll do a communist system will fix it is demonstrated to be the answer. I feel like the problem is the evil, not like "oh we'll set up the system according to X Y Z system and then we won't have to worry anymore, because it won't be evil." People will always find a way over time.
How you prevent that, I have no idea. Maybe education is part of the answer (which is why co-opting education is priority 1 for almost any evil takeover of a previously ok government), maybe having a steady flow of immigrant population so that people don't get complacent after multi generations of existing in a system that's set up for them, and think they don't have to worry. I don't really know the full answer though.
You beat it with Socialism. By changing production from a profit motive to a needs motive, and collectivizing ownership, you can democratize industry.
I'm curious why you think Socialism is more prone to corruption than Capitalism.
Okay, my response to that would be circling back to my earlier question about, when has it worked out that way? In what country has this been tried and had a good impact?
I'm not trying to just keep asking over and over even though it seems like you don't want to answer that question -- so you can treat it as a rhetorical question, I guess. It's just that that's the way I look at things. As you said, if the theory doesn't match the practice, then one or the other is wrong. I do think you have to look at the practice. In socialism or communism or capitalism, there are generally big elements of the practice that don't match the theory.
I didn't say socialism was more prone to corruption than capitalism. I said that the USSR and China showed themselves way more prone to takeover by non-benevolent forces than the US. It wasn't a general statement about socialism in general... probably, if you look back in history, you'll be able to find examples of when socialism and communism were set up well and worked well. I mean, a lot of FDR's things were socialism (big government programs to employ people, so that the "ownership" of the entity doing the production was a democratic government instead of private industry, and then providing health care to people according to their needs instead of what they can afford). And look, it was fuckin fantastic. But I'm asking you what elements or models you would like to use. It's not a gotcha. I mean, I am kind of trying to make a point, yes. But also, partly, I'm genuinely asking, and you seem like you're treating it as some kind of hostile or irrelevant question.
It seems like you're holding up the theory of communism, according to communists, and comparing it to the practice of capitalism. Of course capitalism's gonna look way worse, because capitalism has some big problems. I am saying, we should look at the practice (and, sure, the theory) of both and find things that work and then do those things, and also see if we can improve on them, instead of only the theory. And in particular, I think that history shows that setting up a centrally-controlled economy, because then the ultimate-authority central planners can make sure everything's set up fairly for everybody, has oftentimes worked out way worse than even the pretty significant evils of unchecked capitalism. Would you agree with that, or you think it didn't happen that way?
In general, it has worked like that when it has been done. You already agreed that the USSR and PRC were vast improvements on their previous systems, even if they were highly flawed.
Can you tell me what specifically you mean when you say Communist practice has not met the theory?
I would personally say that the US was always more of a Capitalist dictatorship and was founded on state-endorsed genocide, it's a settler-colonial project. I would say the USSR and PRC, though obviously not free from tragedy nor atrocity, were not founded in the same manner.
I disagree with your analysis that central planning has worked out way worse than Capitalism, and want to know why you say that.
What? When did I say that? I didn't say that.
I think that the standard of living increased dramatically in both, as scientific advances that provide standard of living became more widely distributed worldwide, and I think their previous systems were pretty abysmal. But I think they chose the wrong model for how to centralize a strong government and create an economy that works for all their people -- the benefit of any central planning that accelerated their industrialization was dwarfed by the nightmare of having a single strong central government that can kill millions of its people at the drop of a hat or throw them in prison for literally just a single sentence when they spoke the wrong thing.
I don't think that the fact that they came from feudalism and so therefore there were aspects of coming into the modern world and some form of modern government, that were good things, means that the model they chose was at all the right one, and I don't think that's a good argument for moving the US from its current state to a similar model.
I didn't say central planning has always worked out worse than capitalism. Like I said, a lot of FDR's reforms were centrally planned, and they were great.
The specific examples I brought up were how it's worked in the only two huge countries like the US that have tried a fully communist economic model (and the central control of the country that necessarily seems like it goes along with it). What they got was gulags, cultural revolution, Tienanmen, great firewall of China, mass starvation in both countries (because of mismanagement, which is very very different from the earlier mass starvations that were caused by crop failures or war), modern Russia after the total unsustainability of the USSR system led to a total collapse, Uyghur re-education camps.
Yes, the US does lesser versions of all of the above that are still to a level that's horrifying. I think we should fix those things when the US does them. But I think treating those even worse outcomes as non-events, because in theory the system that produced them has some good features, is a mistake.
What.
The US did the same thing when it was industrializing, they just weren't counted as citizens. Even at the peak of the USSR's incarcerations, they were lower in number both per capita and in total than the US Prison system.
Explain why you believe Capitalism would have been better. Secondly, I did not say the USSR is what the US should copy, I explained the issues with Capitalism and how Socialism solves them.
And yet the US is worse.
Explain why you believe the US did lesser versions of the above when they have been higher in total quantity and per Capita.
This is just vibes, lol.
…
0.7% of the US population is in jail or prison, which is a shockingly high percentage unworthy of a modern wealthy country, and a testament to the barbaric nature of our system.
The Gulag in 1950 housed 2.5 million people, after it received a huge influx of returning veterans whose only crime was having been exposed to the reality of the western world which the USSR didn’t want the population to be allowed to know about. They got sentences like 10 or 20 years. The total population of the USSR at the time was about 178 million, meaning the Gulag housed 1.4% of the population.
And this was a type of imprisonment which was sadistic beyond the wildest wet dreams of Joe Arpaio or Stephen Miller. Of the 18 million people who ever interacted with the Gulag during its full implementation lifetime, almost 10% died there, or shortly after their release.
Idk what’s going on at lemmy.ml to give you the picture of the world you have received, but they have done you a disservice. Idk dude. I tried.
Yes, so at the absolute peak of the Gulag system, right after an influx of imprisonment from returning POWs being imprisoned (which I never claimed to support), the US currently does not imprison as much. Wow, what a shocker!
The vast bulk of deaths in gulags came from starving POWs after the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the USSR's breadbasket. The reality is that just like American prisons, the USSR had vastly different conditions depending on severity of crime and location.
All this digging and still not a single point about why the atrocities that happened in the USSR are necessary for Socialism or supported by Socialism. It's clearly all vibes-based analysis from a lifetime of Anticommunist propaganda and an unwillingness to look at systems within the context of trajectory and as built upon from previous conditions.
This you?
I'm honestly not fishing for a gotcha. I'm fishing to talk some sense into you.
I think you're making statements without caring whether they're true (just basing them on whether they feel right to you), and shifting your definitions around, and refusing to clarify what you mean or the details of what you're advocating. IDK, man, if me trying to pin you down on what you mean or poke holes in what you're saying comes across as hostile, then I apologize. That's just kind of my way of speaking sometimes.
But overall, I think you have succumbed to this sort of groupthink that makes you think that things make sense when they don't or when there are significant flaws in them. Now you're falling back on accusing me of saying it has to play out like the USSR, when I said multiple times that it doesn't, and I guess implying that I don't like socialism when I listed some great socialist things already. I think you don't want to "lose" the conversation and are just kind of twisting things around to be able to accuse me of being wrong.
IDK man. Like I say, I tried. Good talk.
It's pretty clear by my wording that I was referring to when they were contemporaries, not the peak right after WWII to modern US, lol. Again, silliness.
Here's a mirror, lol. You haven't answered my questions and constantly duck and weave.
Here, I'll extend an olive branch. I can list several things, and you can tell me where you disagree.
Capitalism has the following flaws:
Ownership of Capital by individuals results in a class conflict between Workers and Owners, resulting in a tumultuous society
Production of commodities for profit rather than use results in products designed to make profits rather than fulfill uses, ie enshittification
Capitalism cannot exist forever because of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, which leads to Imperialism and eventually fascism and collapse
Oh -- and I'm really trying not to get caught up in this extended back-and-forth over individual details because super fine details are not the point, but saying the USSR's incarcerations at their peak were lower than contemporary US imprisonment is even sillier. In 1940, the US had 0.2% of its people in prison, which is an actually-reasonable level for a decent country, and lower than the USSR's before-WW2-fucked-the-demographics level of 0.7% (1.5 million in prison out of 194 million people), which is equal to the US's peak of 0.7% and lower than its current level (I was wrong - it's dropped to 0.5% now, which is still of course way too much).
The skyrocketing of prison population from 0.2% to 0.7% happened pretty quickly, from 1980 to 2008, under the great neoliberal enfuckening of the country that was the end of the millennium. It's been going back down, slightly, since then.
I would like the system in the US to be back again more like the one that had the 0.2% that had lasted for 204 years up until that point, and work from there to make more justice at home and abroad. You could say that Reagan and Clinton are inevitable final stages of the system that no amount of safeguard can prevent, and there's no way to improve it within its parameters. I mean, maybe. But I still think it's reasonable to ask, okay even in that case what is the system we will do instead, that will prevent Reagan or Clinton from being replaced with a new Stalin (or, because of lukewarm support for the liberals from "pure" leftists, a Trump -- which is exactly how it happened in pre-Nazi Germany that led to Hitler) who will then make the days of "welfare to work" and 0.7% in prison look like wonderful happy days.
This is some spicy historical revisionism, haha. Liberals sided with the fascists in Nazi Germany, not the other way around.
Mind sharing some numbers?
Hm? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Here, look, I'll cite my super professional research.
Etc etc and so on. I don't think that there exists a far left in recognized US politics in the same way there was an official communist party in Germany. But I definitely see parallels between Lemmy leftists who don't want to support the Democrats against Trump, and German Communists who wanted to pick fights with the SPD (and, sure, vice versa) instead of uniting with them against Hitler.
The SPD, at least, united towards the end with the Center Party and the DVP to support Hindenburg for chancellor as a last attempt to stop Hitler, but by then it was sort of too late anyway; the main damage had already been done. Hindenburg's death hastened the process of Hitler taking over, but it was pretty much in the cards one way or another from 1932 on.
Are you talking about the SPD supporting Hindenburg as siding with the fascists? I think they only did that because the alternative would be Hitler. Or what do you mean?
Sure.
So the Social Democrats did side with the Nazis instead of leftists, got it.
Thanks for the numbers, again though the vast majority of deaths were due to mass starvation during WWII aftet Ukraine was invaded by the Nazis.
What are you talking about?
Rather than joining up with the leftists, they sided with the fascists. This was after the SPD had sided with the Kaiser and had constantly made an enemy of the KPD.
By the way, you were mistaken about what happened after WWII, you may wish to read more.
They did battle with the fascists in the streets, and once the Nazis were clearly on the verge of seizing power, they allied with their enemies in government to get behind Hindenburg to try to stop it from happening.
The "rather then joining up with the leftists" part of it is accurate. Of course, the converse is also true -- rather than joining up with the SPD, the leftists did battle with the SPD, called the SPD the main enemy, and even as late as the presidental election in 1932, were still running their own candidate, splintering off 13.1% of the vote away from Hindenburg, meaning that Hindenburg squeaked into office on a weakened mandate and Hitler was the de facto man in charge even before Hindenburg's death. And, all the while and after, the KPD kept insisting that it was all the SPD's fault.
It was the last election many of the far left people saw, since they died in the camps before the next election came, years and years later under allied occupation. It is of course impossible to know whether the ones who died in the camps still felt it was the SPD's fault.
If you live in the US, you might get a chance to see how this all operates firsthand, from inside whatever the modern version of the camps is. You can of course argue that it's someone else's fault, and they should have compromised with you, instead of the other way around. Who knows, there's an argument that you'd be right (and that Biden shouldn't have alienated all the anti-genocide people). Of course, if that happens, your argument of course won't mean shit in terms of saving you (or saving any Palestinian population which is suffering ten times worse under Trump's administration than it was under the one you're currently criticizing, although your criticism has perfect validity.)
I have spent as much time as I want to spend trying to talk sense into you.
The SPD was the KPDs biggest enemy because the SPD betrayed the revolution, laying the groundwork for fascism in the first place. The SPD broke the line.
I agree with you, there's a good chance I will end up in a US death camp. You already know I told you I plan on voting Biden, I just believe that unless we can overturn this system, within the next few presidencies this will happen regardless of party.
I have spent as much time as I want to spend trying to talk sense into you.
Have I not answered questions? What haven't I answered? I'm happy to go back and address things if you feel like I evaded something.
Sure.
Agree
Agree
I mean, a building can't last forever because of its tendency to decay and fall apart, but then if you maintain it properly, it's fine, for long enough to be useful.
I think this is the core of our disagreement: I would agree about the tendency, but not the inevitability. Like I said, I think that particular elements (strong labor unions and a strong-in-practice democratic government) can constrain capitalism to where it functions well and gives a good world to the people connected to it, but doesn't take over and become a destructive force (as it is today to a large extent).
It sounds like you're saying that the flaws are unfixable and so capitalism has to be rejected in order to make a good system. Which, I mean maybe, but in my mind that's unproven.
It also sounds like you're saying that because of these flaws, we need to replace capitalism specifically with communism or socialism and asserting that it'll be better. Which again, I mean maybe, but it seems like you're being consistently evasive about the details of what that would mean (either through details or a historical example), which makes it conveniently easy to hold up the theory of how wonderful it could be, against the actual reality of how capitalism is in practice, and assert that of course it would work better than capitalism in practice, because capitalism has these problems.
You're on the right track, but haven't taken it to the logical conclusion. The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall happens beause of competition, and the floor is subsistence. The less labor constitutes the overall value of commodities due to automation, the lower the profit. That's where Imperialism comes in, and as the global south also automates, rates of profit crumble. There's no scenario where Capitalism is maintained.
Socialism gets rid of that issue by abolishing competition and the profit motive. Rather than for exchange, goods are produced for use.
I feel like we're going in circles
Yes, I understand
My question is (1) why can't labor unions fight back against that tendency indefinitely, if given enough power to demand a reasonable share of the extra value of their labor (2) why is socialism guaranteed to get rid of that issue in practice; where has this been tried and worked out that way in reality to make sure it matches the theory
Unions can't fight back against competition being a thing. I think you're confusing RoP with wages.
The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall has been absent from every Socialist country.