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submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.

Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.

They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.

So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.

[-] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's not a socialist state. It's a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you're describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.

You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:

Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.

Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.

Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

This just made China's system click in my mind. Thanks Awoo

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Representative "democracy" alienates the common man from the political process while maintaining a semblance of democracy. For this reason it is the ideal political form for capitalism, an economic system which alienates power from the masses and concentrates it in the hands of a few.

Class interests are the primary axis on which all political activity turns. Getting the working class to vote does not help them, it helps those in power.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Representation is necessary as a matter of scale, though. There are other issues with small r republicanism that are more specifically nefarious, like the legalization of bribery, the tilting of power towards land owners via the senate, etc.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

With modern technology I wonder how necessary representative style governments really are. Electronic voting already exists and works quite well, and is probably the most secure form of voting as long as it can be audited. Of course, at some point administration has to come down to individuals, but as long as those individuals are held accountable in some way then it seems that the actual democratic step (i.e. voting on policy) need not be mediated through representatives as is oft repeated to justify the status quo.

You might have been referring to this with republicanism, but there are different types of representation, too. Parliamentary democracies are not obligated to obey the wishes of their subjects, whereas soviet (council) democracies are a form of direct democracy, where representatives are merely delegates and are obligated to obey/communicate the wishes of their subjects. In my comment above I had in mind the parliamentary type, since that is the kind in which there is a buffer between citizens and political institutions which is used by the bourgeoisie to suppress changes which would undermine capital.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

...and so what do you have instead?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

First step is abolishing wage labor and private property. Transitional political forms take on some form of direct democracy, probably something similar to soviet councils.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

What about the absolute lack of “representative democracy” we experience under capitalism?

I’d argue that the capitalist system is more at odds with representative democracy than other systems mentioned. Most workers have no say in what is produced, who produces it, how they are paid, how much products are sold for, etc. Instead, we end up with figurehead CEO’s and nameless investors making all of those decisions, and of course they do everything to minimize costs, maximize profits, and disempower workers so that they can collect billions of dollars at the expense of the workers who actually make their companies run. If we had representative democracy do you think we’d have billionaires?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Literally "whataboutism".

I'm not interested in how the current system is broken. That's obvious. What do you have in it's place?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Whataboutism is a meaningless brainworm which the user invokes in order to ignore their own cognitive dissonance and inconsistent standards. You cry "whataboutism" when @[email protected] was correct to point out your own double standard. "All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy" implies that you believe genuine democracy is something we currently stand to lose.

What you need to understand is that Marxists are not interested in imposing utopian futures on the world. "What do you have in its place?" is the wrong question. Better questions: What currently prevents genuine democracy? What are the material conditions which both produce and maintain it? Then you get to work on changing those material conditions and removing the real basis which produces the problems.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Richard Wolff, a prominent marxist academic, talks often about a socialist system where democracy is employed in the workplace. He focuses less on reforms or abolition at the state/government-level, and instead emphasizes the bottom-up changes that giving workers power and agency (i.e., making it so workers at all levels are involved in the decision-making process of the companies that require their labour) provides. He has a youtube channel and podcast called "Democracy at Work" that provides great introductions to how he views things, and he has worthwhile podcast appearances on other podcasts like Lex Fridman's, for example.

Consider how impactful countries like Wal-Mart or Amazon are in our daily lives. Their economic throughputs are larger than all but a few countries in the world, and their workforce populations are also larger than many countries. Clearly they aren't organized as representative democracies?

Another question I wonder related to this, is what exactly makes "representative democracy" the gold standard? Is it even the gold standard?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

What specifically is at odds?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I would guess they're reacting to the idea of "repressing" capitalists

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it's nature, creates a "ruling class", the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.

...and I don't feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it's not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.

Hence, what political system is required for a truly equal society?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it's nature, creates a "ruling class", the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.

No, that's just our government/s. You can have representative democracy where representatives are beholden to their constituents, and where they are easily recallable if they do not follow those interests to a T. This is one of the many reforms socialists want to make to the democratic process.

...and I don't feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it's not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.

Genuinely no offense but this is a position born of ignorance. Under a democratically run state economy the representatives only get rich through corruption. Under capitalism the owners get rich through the extraction of surplus labor value and the politicians in their pockets get rich through corruption.

Corruption is a drop in the bucket compared to surplus labor value theft. Compare how wealthy Pelosi is to how wealthy Jeff Bezos or Elon musk are. And people like Pelosi are only that rich because of insider trading, which couldn't exist under socialism.

[-] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago

I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.

Consider for 3 seconds that what you "learned" about the world is a product of the system that produced it

Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it

[-] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

Socialism is also an economic system.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we've seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We've seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It's not sexy, though.

[-] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

As opposed to the corrupt oligarchies liberal states are.... I guess you just don't call it corruption when it's working as intended.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual

Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties

Communism is where everything is owned by the state

[-] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is not correct, I encourage you to do some more reading about how coats are made if you'd like to understand this better.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

best way I've seen to tell someone to read capital lmao

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You are impressingly wrongSocialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta stuff it's communism <- This is you, but unironically. Educate yourself on the subject of which you claim knowledge.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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