Just going to keep posting this every time it comes up.
We could reduce energy and materials cost of global production worldwide to 30% current capacity by planning production instead of leaving it to the market, and greatly increase the standard of living for everyone on this planet. But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
The capitalist class is no longer able to run society the way that they have. They will run nations into the ground, they will destroy this planet, they will kill millions systematically (as happened recently during the utter failure to deal with covid), they will enslave nations to produce those “goods” an ironic name for the incredible evil done with sweatshop labor. Unemployment is created by the system, which in turn causes the unemployed to suffer and starve in order to keep wages low.
There are no rules that say luxury goods couldn’t be produced for consumption, except for the rules made up by the capitalists who do everything they can to destroy the government of socialists, to put them under embargo and sanction, affecting the masses of innocents more than anyone else. They have and will push their country’s leaders to invade the country, killing hundreds of thousands or millions if necessary, so that their workforce can be exploited to produce their commodities. They have and will back mass murdering warlords, repressive religious fundamentalists and genocidal fascists to preserve the economic and political system that benefits them. If nations trying to provide support, housing and education for their people are under constant threat and attack from capitalist nations, how exactly are they supposed to dedicate a large part of their consumption to luxury goods? If they can’t import goods either then yes it becomes difficult to access luxuries. That doesn’t take a genius to understand; but to ignore it and still criticize a socialist nation for it takes a determination to misunderstand. I’m troubled by it and I think you also should be since you are the one who are so determined.
Too much is made, most of it is wasted. We are forced to drive cars while public transportation is dismantled, adding massive waste and pollution to our environment. There are thousands of train derailments every year, too many of them leaking carcinogenic chemicals into water supplies and neighborhoods. Industrial plants leak or dump pollutants into water supplies, making many people sick or worse, and do extensive lobbying and hire big law firms to protect against legislation and prosecution by affected communities. Cops whose job is to protect the private property of capitalists, that should belong to the workers, will beat and terrorize you for speaking out against genocide that your country pays for, all so that countries with mineral and oil resources are destabilized and hence easy pickings for finance and industry, that as I’ve explained pollutes, exploits, destroys the population of the affected nation.
All for your consumer “goods,” your fucking treats. You don’t even understand where they come from, you don’t understand how the system you defend works, or for whom. I urge you to educate yourself about this, and take seriously the threat of climate catastrophe and likely collapse. I’ve included a podcast that features an economist where you can begin.
Workers must seize this system and destroy the old structures that underwrite their continued exploitation. I stand with the workers, the planet, the people. You stand with the very rich who exploit you and steal your time, health, energy, freedom. And why do you? I’m very curious.
But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
All strains of Socialism are democratic, it’s a bit redundant to include unless you’re trying to emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system.
In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the “socialist” movement or party. And they don’t really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics…
It’s almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the “socialist” movement or party
There are numerous reasons for this. Stability in protecting revolution and genuine popular support are among the larger and more important reasons.
And they don’t really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics…
Neither are Capitalist states, and neither was Marx. Combatting international Capitalist influence was and is key for retaining Socialism.
It’s almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
Not true at all, actually. Those controlling the media want you to think it though.
I agree with a lot you are saying. No state can stay stable without some form of control and censorship as soon as it starts threatening the stability of the system. Capitalism does this as well. And they have a very effective propaganda machine.
I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don’t have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn’t exist.
The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn’t agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).
Also please don’t misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.
We can do different than the last times. I don’t believe we’ll get not even close to a moneyless society until… God knows when, but the system has to change before we end up in a new feudal world where we all burn alive.
Yes this is what I believe as well but to many people Socialism is synonymous with authoritarianism. Many of those people are amenable to Socialist ideas if not able to be won over completely as you and I have been.
Also, (not to begin the debate about AES) but I think its fair to say that where many socialist projects have failed is in the arena of democracy. Maybe its just a feature of the tradition I come from, but to me that commitment to democracy has to be constantly renewed. Not bourgeois democracy but worker democracy. The working class has to learn real democracy in order to engage in political struggle in preparation to overthrow the ruling class.
Lenin was constantly stressing and renewing his commitment to democratic process, which was one of the reasons he was able to create the revolutionary party after 1905 that was able to seize power in 1917. And while he had no illusions about the limitations of democratic process within his historical moment, he always “bent the stick” in that direction which in my opinion was one of the things that made him such an effective leader prior to and up through the civil war period ending in 1921.
So I will always stress the importance of democracy, not only for the historic necessity and precedent but also because it is not enough to be good materialists (and there certainly has been a history of bad ones) but also good dialectitians, which means contextualizing our project through unificatiokn of the subjective and objective; and to fail to do so is to fail to be dialectical Marxists. If I have to work and debate with some Harringtonites in the process well that is just a necessity of the historical moment.
Yes this is what I believe as well but to many people Socialism is synonymous with authoritarianism. Many of those people are amenable to Socialist ideas if not able to be won over completely as you and I have been.
That’s fair, but can backfire and delay radicalization, giving rise to “left” anticommunists that ultimately help contribute to antisocialism more than they do to pro-socialism, as their anticommunist views are magnified by bourgeois media. Chomsky, for example, is guilty of this.
Also, (not to begin the debate about AES) but I think its fair to say that where many socialist projects have failed is in the arena of democracy. Maybe its just a feature of the tradition I come from, but to me that commitment to democracy has to be constantly renewed. Not bourgeois democracy but worker democracy. The working class has to learn real democracy in order to engage in political struggle in preparation to overthrow the ruling class.
This is where idealism and practical realism need to reach a balance. Unfortunately, in the face of international Capitalist and Imperialist dominance has forced stronger measures.
Lenin was constantly stressing and renewing his commitment to democratic process, which was one of the reasons he was able to create the revolutionary party after 1905 that was able to seize power in 1917. And while he had no illusions about the limitations of democratic process within his historical moment, he always “bent the stick” in that direction which in my opinion was one of the things that made him such an effective leader prior to and up through the civil war period ending in 1921.
Yep, but Lenin also banned factionalism. He tried to combine worker participation and democracy with unity. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, of course, I just want to stress that even Lenin made concessions, and had to.
So I will always stress the importance of democracy, not only for the historic necessity and precedent but also because it is not enough to be good materialists (and there certainly has been a history of bad ones) but also good dialectitians, which means contextualizing our project through unificatiokn of the subjective and objective; and to fail to do so is to fail to be dialectical Marxists. If I have to work and debate with some Harringtonites in the process well that is just a necessity of the historical moment.
I understand, I just want to stress that you risk playing into anti-Marxist hands, which is the entire reason for DemSocs.
Honestly I find this comment irritating, as you’re basically accusing me of being a crypto-reformist, when I explicitly call for an end of capitalism. As if I’m not constantly educating myself, And others to guard against this tendency of anti-marxism. Because I used the term “democratic socialism”, regardless of the fact that I acknowledge the wrongheadedness of the reformist strains, still you say I might fall into anti Marxism. If that happens it won’t be because I acknowledge democracy; and the fact that you think so little of my actual irl work because of my use of this term is insulting.
I’m going to refrain from criticizing you point by point, as you pedantically have done to me, and insist that I’m actually a good comrade, and hope you’ll come to the realization that the movement needs us both. Otherwise we are just going to in-fight, which if I wanted to do that I would debate within the org that I work with, where I might be seen as a human, rather than online where the medium itself encourages back-biting, factionalism and elitism by design.
I didn’t say you were anti-Marxist, just that the term “Democratic Socialism” carries the notion of Reformist Socialism, so some may interpret it that way. I was pointing it out because I believe you’re well intentioned, comrade, not to pick a fight. I apologize if it came off in that manner.
Glances nervously at the ultra-nationalist strains
Some are more democratic than others, certainly.
emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system
It is exhausting to hear people smuggly denounce AES states as dysfunctional, by citing their trend towards nationalizarion of capital and popularization of policy. Particularly when the same folks will scream bloody murder if you don’t continue to mechanically endorse their brand of corporate liberalism.
I genuinely am not really sure what you’re getting at, here. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I am stating that AES is democratic as is Marxism in general, and am saying that liberals often use the nebulous, ill-defined term of “Democratic Socialism” as an AES cudgel.
liberals often use the nebulous, ill-defined term of “Democratic Socialism” as an AES cudgel.
I see liberals try to equate any kind of public sector combined with a national election system as Democratic Socialism. Which gets you the Nordic Model - a collection of petrostates with an egalitarian veneer and a white supremacist underbelly - labeled “Democratic Socialism” on paper.
Meanwhile, actual social democracies in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia are denounced as authoritarian every time the Neoliberal (or outright reactionary) local politician loses an election.
I am stating that AES is democratic as is Marxism in general
Marxism is Democratic in theory. Leninism is more popular than democratic, as Leninists aren’t wedded to electoralism like their liberal peers.
But the critique I see most often among liberals is that markets are democratic. And therefore every AES state that fails to sufficiently privatize the economy is definitely facto authoritarian.
That’s the real definitional divide between Marxists and Liberal Democrats.
DemSoc itself is a bad term. It either is used to refer to Reformist Socialism (which is an impossibility and thus akin to astrology) or to pretend Marxist Socialism isn’t democratic, advocating for factionalism and other possibilities of Socialism itself being destroyed by international moneyed interests and domestic wreckers.
Just going to keep posting this every time it comes up.
We could reduce energy and materials cost of global production worldwide to 30% current capacity by planning production instead of leaving it to the market, and greatly increase the standard of living for everyone on this planet. But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7n1POfYMo1I3kcy0oqSm6l?si=8ikYVJN8TIupvjoaCMRssA
Sure, because that’s one thing socialist / communist systems are great at, making goods people want.
The capitalist class is no longer able to run society the way that they have. They will run nations into the ground, they will destroy this planet, they will kill millions systematically (as happened recently during the utter failure to deal with covid), they will enslave nations to produce those “goods” an ironic name for the incredible evil done with sweatshop labor. Unemployment is created by the system, which in turn causes the unemployed to suffer and starve in order to keep wages low.
There are no rules that say luxury goods couldn’t be produced for consumption, except for the rules made up by the capitalists who do everything they can to destroy the government of socialists, to put them under embargo and sanction, affecting the masses of innocents more than anyone else. They have and will push their country’s leaders to invade the country, killing hundreds of thousands or millions if necessary, so that their workforce can be exploited to produce their commodities. They have and will back mass murdering warlords, repressive religious fundamentalists and genocidal fascists to preserve the economic and political system that benefits them. If nations trying to provide support, housing and education for their people are under constant threat and attack from capitalist nations, how exactly are they supposed to dedicate a large part of their consumption to luxury goods? If they can’t import goods either then yes it becomes difficult to access luxuries. That doesn’t take a genius to understand; but to ignore it and still criticize a socialist nation for it takes a determination to misunderstand. I’m troubled by it and I think you also should be since you are the one who are so determined.
Too much is made, most of it is wasted. We are forced to drive cars while public transportation is dismantled, adding massive waste and pollution to our environment. There are thousands of train derailments every year, too many of them leaking carcinogenic chemicals into water supplies and neighborhoods. Industrial plants leak or dump pollutants into water supplies, making many people sick or worse, and do extensive lobbying and hire big law firms to protect against legislation and prosecution by affected communities. Cops whose job is to protect the private property of capitalists, that should belong to the workers, will beat and terrorize you for speaking out against genocide that your country pays for, all so that countries with mineral and oil resources are destabilized and hence easy pickings for finance and industry, that as I’ve explained pollutes, exploits, destroys the population of the affected nation.
All for your consumer “goods,” your fucking treats. You don’t even understand where they come from, you don’t understand how the system you defend works, or for whom. I urge you to educate yourself about this, and take seriously the threat of climate catastrophe and likely collapse. I’ve included a podcast that features an economist where you can begin.
Workers must seize this system and destroy the old structures that underwrite their continued exploitation. I stand with the workers, the planet, the people. You stand with the very rich who exploit you and steal your time, health, energy, freedom. And why do you? I’m very curious.
whoa whoa whoa
slow down there Karl Marx /s
Speed up there Marx!
All strains of Socialism are democratic, it’s a bit redundant to include unless you’re trying to emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system.
In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the “socialist” movement or party. And they don’t really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics…
It’s almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
There are numerous reasons for this. Stability in protecting revolution and genuine popular support are among the larger and more important reasons.
Neither are Capitalist states, and neither was Marx. Combatting international Capitalist influence was and is key for retaining Socialism.
Not true at all, actually. Those controlling the media want you to think it though.
I agree with a lot you are saying. No state can stay stable without some form of control and censorship as soon as it starts threatening the stability of the system. Capitalism does this as well. And they have a very effective propaganda machine.
I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don’t have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn’t exist.
The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn’t agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).
Also please don’t misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.
We can do different than the last times. I don’t believe we’ll get not even close to a moneyless society until… God knows when, but the system has to change before we end up in a new feudal world where we all burn alive.
Yes this is what I believe as well but to many people Socialism is synonymous with authoritarianism. Many of those people are amenable to Socialist ideas if not able to be won over completely as you and I have been.
Also, (not to begin the debate about AES) but I think its fair to say that where many socialist projects have failed is in the arena of democracy. Maybe its just a feature of the tradition I come from, but to me that commitment to democracy has to be constantly renewed. Not bourgeois democracy but worker democracy. The working class has to learn real democracy in order to engage in political struggle in preparation to overthrow the ruling class.
Lenin was constantly stressing and renewing his commitment to democratic process, which was one of the reasons he was able to create the revolutionary party after 1905 that was able to seize power in 1917. And while he had no illusions about the limitations of democratic process within his historical moment, he always “bent the stick” in that direction which in my opinion was one of the things that made him such an effective leader prior to and up through the civil war period ending in 1921.
So I will always stress the importance of democracy, not only for the historic necessity and precedent but also because it is not enough to be good materialists (and there certainly has been a history of bad ones) but also good dialectitians, which means contextualizing our project through unificatiokn of the subjective and objective; and to fail to do so is to fail to be dialectical Marxists. If I have to work and debate with some Harringtonites in the process well that is just a necessity of the historical moment.
That’s fair, but can backfire and delay radicalization, giving rise to “left” anticommunists that ultimately help contribute to antisocialism more than they do to pro-socialism, as their anticommunist views are magnified by bourgeois media. Chomsky, for example, is guilty of this.
This is where idealism and practical realism need to reach a balance. Unfortunately, in the face of international Capitalist and Imperialist dominance has forced stronger measures.
Yep, but Lenin also banned factionalism. He tried to combine worker participation and democracy with unity. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, of course, I just want to stress that even Lenin made concessions, and had to.
I understand, I just want to stress that you risk playing into anti-Marxist hands, which is the entire reason for DemSocs.
Honestly I find this comment irritating, as you’re basically accusing me of being a crypto-reformist, when I explicitly call for an end of capitalism. As if I’m not constantly educating myself, And others to guard against this tendency of anti-marxism. Because I used the term “democratic socialism”, regardless of the fact that I acknowledge the wrongheadedness of the reformist strains, still you say I might fall into anti Marxism. If that happens it won’t be because I acknowledge democracy; and the fact that you think so little of my actual irl work because of my use of this term is insulting.
I’m going to refrain from criticizing you point by point, as you pedantically have done to me, and insist that I’m actually a good comrade, and hope you’ll come to the realization that the movement needs us both. Otherwise we are just going to in-fight, which if I wanted to do that I would debate within the org that I work with, where I might be seen as a human, rather than online where the medium itself encourages back-biting, factionalism and elitism by design.
In other words, cut me a break comrade.
I didn’t say you were anti-Marxist, just that the term “Democratic Socialism” carries the notion of Reformist Socialism, so some may interpret it that way. I was pointing it out because I believe you’re well intentioned, comrade, not to pick a fight. I apologize if it came off in that manner.
I appreciate the clarification and good will, comrade.
Glances nervously at the ultra-nationalist strains
Some are more democratic than others, certainly.
It is exhausting to hear people smuggly denounce AES states as dysfunctional, by citing their trend towards nationalizarion of capital and popularization of policy. Particularly when the same folks will scream bloody murder if you don’t continue to mechanically endorse their brand of corporate liberalism.
I genuinely am not really sure what you’re getting at, here. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I am stating that AES is democratic as is Marxism in general, and am saying that liberals often use the nebulous, ill-defined term of “Democratic Socialism” as an AES cudgel.
I see liberals try to equate any kind of public sector combined with a national election system as Democratic Socialism. Which gets you the Nordic Model - a collection of petrostates with an egalitarian veneer and a white supremacist underbelly - labeled “Democratic Socialism” on paper.
Meanwhile, actual social democracies in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia are denounced as authoritarian every time the Neoliberal (or outright reactionary) local politician loses an election.
Marxism is Democratic in theory. Leninism is more popular than democratic, as Leninists aren’t wedded to electoralism like their liberal peers.
But the critique I see most often among liberals is that markets are democratic. And therefore every AES state that fails to sufficiently privatize the economy is definitely facto authoritarian.
That’s the real definitional divide between Marxists and Liberal Democrats.
Democratic socialism (DemSoc) is a specific term (not to be confused with SocDem). Unless your point was that DemSoc is a bad term?
DemSoc itself is a bad term. It either is used to refer to Reformist Socialism (which is an impossibility and thus akin to astrology) or to pretend Marxist Socialism isn’t democratic, advocating for factionalism and other possibilities of Socialism itself being destroyed by international moneyed interests and domestic wreckers.
Are you some kind of maximalist?
In what manner?