this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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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.