In re: some conversations I've had in other places (real and online)
A lot of people in leftist circles seem to begin conversations on step 8 and are surprised when the person they're talking to isn't receptive.
Ya gotta start on step 1.
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There's a whole host of good people out there who - believe it or not! - are still using cold war vocabulary. They have not read the theory and whipping out "capitalism bad" freaks them the fuck out.
They usually want the same thing as you do, but it's your job to help them see it. And it starts with meeting them where they're at. Step 1.
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@TechConnectify I read an interesting article that basically says look, authoritarians are concerned about preserving "us" versus "them" and the way to tackle things is to expand "us" to include "them"
https://www.scottsantens.com/the-hidden-reasons-authoritarianism-is-growing-and-how-to-reverse-it-ubi/
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@TechConnectify this idea, oddly enough, aligns with something I put out a few weeks ago. https://publish.obsidian.md/egg82/Thoughts/One-dimensional
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@TechConnectify
I'm waiting. Unless you are redefining terms, "capitalism bad," is just ignorant.
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@BobCollins so, to answer earnestly, what people mean when they say that is usually "power structures which form through unchecked greed and hoarding of wealth" but instead they just say capitalism.
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@BobCollins and if I may be so bold, the problem as I see it is that to some people,
capitalism = commerce
or
capitalism = markets
or
capitalism = unplanned economies
and leftists are usually speaking about the outcomes of unchecked capitalism - literally having a different conversation without considering what the other person understands the word to mean.
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins See also: "We call it 'privilege'" jazzhands
I mention this one here because skipping these definitions (step 2 or 3) is both common, and the most common thing that keeps "normal" people out of "the discourse."
(The humanities' insistence on abusing single normal-ish words to describe very specific and complicated structures, instead of actually spelling it out in two or more words, is infuriating. It's the "terribly named global variable" of human languages.)
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@xek @TechConnectify
I guess that I haven't spent enough time with humanities people and their redefining of words.
In the present case, I don't think the term "unregulated capitalism" is that wordy. ;-)
Is this 8 step process online somewhere?
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins @xek when leftists speak of "capitalism bad", we don't just mean unregulated capitalism (though regulated capitalism is certainly better than unregulated)
we mean that the following are fundamentally flawed systems:
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins @xek (the above points may vary, leftists can't agree on jack shit, but those are the broad strokes)
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@Qyriad
My thoughts exactly. Even if hard to scale at a nation level, it's better than the usa living off the backs of every poor exploited nation so that 50 ppl can be multi billionaires.
@TechConnectify @BobCollins @xek
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@xek @ChemicalTribe @BobCollins @TechConnectify I'd bet money on it scaling better than capitalism is so far. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely logistical issues to work out, but remember that socialism ≠ planned economy. I'm sure the human race'll keep refining it for centuries to come though
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins The problem is that the US doesn’t have capitalism. It has monopolies, cartels, government supported restrictions to trade. In capitalism you have lots of competition. The US is designed to avoid competition. Competition with one another. Competition with companies elsewhere in the world. You end up with Oligarchs. Its not a free market economy. Every time mickey mouse ages out Disney gets the copyright laws extended. Edison was great at getting patents, others did the inventing. None of this is capitalism as you would see in an economics book.
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins Oh and I live in a Western European country. I would describe us as capitalist as its a land of small businesses, stocks, shares, property and so on. But we also have universal healthcare, public transport that works, over 50% green energy on a good day. The US is like an extreme. Nothing that Harris proposed wasn’t capitalist. It was just a bit more normal.
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@cyberspice @TechConnectify @BobCollins
Correlates to the quite nice essay of Cory Doctorow: "Capitalists hate Capitalism" - https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/
As for "capitalism bad" saga, it mostly boils down to the differing assumptions about the meaning of the words; it always bring a smile to my face to be reminded of Alice in Wonderland scene:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
Soooo true 😃
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@TechConnectify
OK, my observation that meets that is "unregulated capitalism is bad." In fact, Adam Smith considered regulation necessary.
The problem with saying all "capitalism is bad," flies in the face of actual history.
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@BobCollins just so you understand, this is not the argument that I'm having right now.
Leftist discourse generally just uses the word capitalism to mean unfettered, unchecked capitalism. They tend to skip a lot of steps... which is kind of my point.
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins
Solution: If you mean unregulated capitalism, say unregulated capitalism. Otherwise, people will think you mean capitalism when you say capitalism.
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins have you not yet run into someone who believes wholeheartedly that capitalism inevitably becomes unchecked?
That's a sincere question. That belief is what allows reduction to "capitalism bad"
I personally don't think framing the conversation around "capitalism" is helpful at all: I'd much rather see discussion on specific aspects of it and thus specific actions to take. But that conversation doesn't happen. It's what I'm trying to encourage, though.
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins
Sure, I've met those people, but they're wrong. Fedi is full of unironic hammer-and-sickle communists who think that the USSR was a paradise that the West undermined.
I agree that capitalism isn't the issue. We had a choice between someone who supports well-regulated capitalism and a fascist who wants capitalist oligarchy. That's the distinction that matters.
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins Saying capitalism is good, communism is bad is ridiculous too. That was cold war propaganda, just the other side of those who said communism is good, capitalism is bad.
USSR was hell, but the USSR wasn’t communism. Just another form of capitalism (state capitalism), that was pretending to be communism. Today China is pretending to be communist too, it’s absolutely not in practice. Cuba isn’t either. A lot of people are still believing that communism = USSR, China, Cuba…
In fact, there are no states that are entirely communist or capitalist (although the US is not far from the latter), even through history. Instead, it’s often capitalist/socialist/communist measures, mixed at differents levels.
The health system of France for example was set up by the communist party, and is being destroyed by the neo-liberal capitalists. Nordic European countries are mixing a lot of socialism with capitalism, and have globally better education and health systems too.
Historically, most social progress has been made in spite of capitalism, not because of it. Through unions, strikes and revolts.
That said, some technical progress could be attributed to capitalism, but without a proper distribution of the gains it brings, that's not always a good thing. And there's nothing to say that this technical progress wouldn't have happened under a different economic regime: it has never been tried.
Now, Keynesian capitalism for example, or simply a little more socialism on top of capitalism without becoming entirely socialist, or things like Georgism, or juste better regulating like you said could bring enormous progress without leaving the capitalist system, and that would already be a first step.
But many people think that real communism (and not the USSR, but things like a universal income¹ for example) might be even better. It has never been implemented on a large scale, so we don't know whether it would work or not, but in principle there's no reason why it shouldn't: there are enough material and human resources to provide a decent living for everyone, the problem is the distribution of wealth and work.
¹ : I’ll use that as an example: one expected result of a universal income is that many jobs would be of much higher quality. Indeed, today's priorities are housing and food. So we'll take any job we can get, including a job whose purpose is pointless, and wastes resources, because we can't choose - it's that or death, literally. And even in useful jobs, managers will tend to push short-term profit to the detriment of safety, quality or working conditions. With an universal income, all these constraints disappear: we can decide to do our job properly. Some fear that no one will work anymore, but many people would enjoy working. Just not on the same things or under the same conditions. As for jobs that are short of manpower, we'd be able to attract people with higher salaries: in exchange for less pleasant work, we'd get a bigger reward.
The balance is to be found between basic income, and the wages of these unpleasant jobs, so that the reward is sufficiently interesting for enough people to do it, but that nobody die of hunger or cold whatever happens (a society where this kind of thing happens is not functional), but it should be tried and adapted according to the results over time. And obviously it isn’t that simple in reality, there is a lot of things to change beside it so it can work, it’s just an example.
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@breizh @TruthSandwich @BobCollins Communism was tried on a small scale in Kibbutzes: The most idealistic communist Jews bought up land in Palestine and formed settlements there, in which everything was shared, everyone was equal, everyone took turns doing every job, and children were raised by the community as a whole, not by their parents.
The result? Most people born in Kibbutzes chose to leave and live in capitalist Israel.
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@wolf480pl @breizh @BobCollins
Yeah, that essay I linked to even lists three pre-Marx attempts at communism, all of which failed.
That's the point: it always fails, and then people pretend that it didn't count because it wasn't "real" communism.
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@TruthSandwich @wolf480pl @BobCollins Capitalism may not have failed, but it has not yet succeeded either. If it fails in two centuries, it still a failure.
It will succeed when there is no more misery (if people die of hunger or cold, it is not a success), and sustainable (without relying on infinite resources). We are still far from it.
The world is changing, capitalism is on track to fail violently (due to lack of natural resources, and because of the upcoming climate disasters). We’ll have to find a solution. If your way to fix this is simply to regulate capitalism, go ahead: for me it will be already much better than the current neo-liberalism.
And finally, we should look at other countries. The US are really, really far behind some other countries on a lot of subjects (education, transportation, healthcare…).
Even if we do not change radically the system, as long as we don’t do as well as the best countries in each category, we can do better, they are the proof of this (some will say that it is impossible and that it is not always comparable, which I would reply that this is why the examples of past "communism" are not comparable either. The world has changed in the meantime).
And as I said before, it’s not really communism vs. capitalism, but a whole bunch of measures that can be individually classified as one or the other, with different proportions.
Maybe the solution is not 100% capitalism or 100% communism but 50/50? Or 80/20?
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@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
Again, we literally have no viable alternative. We've gotten capitalism to work by regulating it.
The solution is 100% capitalism with 50% regulation and 0% socialism.
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins @wolf480pl Congrats, you’ve reached the TINA point.
And… 🤣 about 0 % socialism. Some European countries are the proof that socialism mixed with capitalism have much better results. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than 0 % socialism. They should be the minimal target, with the long term objective to be even better than that. I don’t see why we should settle for less when we know that we can do at least as good as them.
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@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
I've already refuted this. Do pay attention.
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins @wolf480pl Oh? I’ve seen your messages about old failed communism aptempt, but not about actual socialist countries (like Norway, Sweden, Denmark…).
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@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
None of them are socialist. Ask them: they'll tell you that they're capitalist.
The big lie is that socialism is Sweden; the truth is that socialism is Cuba.
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins @wolf480pl They’re capitalism mixed with socialism. Like I said it’s not binary. You can mix it at differents levels.
Cuba I don’t really know where to place it, it’s still a dictature. And the embargoes on them distort the results.
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@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
They're 0% socialist: there is no attempt to create communism.
Cuba is trying 100% to create communism and it's a great success. So great that you need to make excuses for its failure.
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins @wolf480pl Well, anyway, call them like you want, that was not really my point. My point is that we should try to do at least as good as them.
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@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
We should regulate capitalism well; this has nothing to do with socialism.
However, it's not that simple to match Sweden's results: a monoculture is more resistant to fascism.
https://truth-sandwich.com/2021/01/09/why-arent-we-sweden/
[#]uspol #sweden
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@TruthSandwich
Oh boy, if socialism fails so much why did the usa have to destroy it every time it came about?
Please.
@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
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@ChemicalTribe @breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
Right, because it was going so well in the USSR before we "destroyed" it. Grow up, commie.
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@breizh @TruthSandwich @BobCollins you don't know you can do at least as good as us Europeans.
US is bigger, and every problem is bigger in the US, plus I heard you have some unique problems that noone else had to deal with yet.
What works in a small ethnically homogenous post-soviet country, or in a low-density oil-rich country in Scandinavia, might not work in the US.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
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@wolf480pl @TruthSandwich @BobCollins Yeah, so if another country join the European Union, it’s suddendly too big and everything will fall appart.
You can apply things at a state scale, your states are about the size of european countries.
Then join them together.
Of course, everything can’t work exactly the same, but for transportation for example, US have no excuse (well, they have: the car industry demolished the US, with lobbying and money, but it’s not a size problem).
Public healthcare could work too. It’s probably even simpler, since it equalizes the risk on more people (whereas a small country is more likely to have significant irregularities).
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@breizh @TruthSandwich @BobCollins
your states
Whose states?
I'm not from the US.
If you're not from the US either then why the hell are we talking about the US?
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@wolf480pl @TruthSandwich @BobCollins Because the start of the discussion was about the US ^^’
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@breizh @TruthSandwich @BobCollins
ok so since we both live in countries that are doing better than the US, I think we should be happy, and/or think how we can improve things here, until someone from the US asks us for help.
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@wolf480pl
We have an entire political party that demonizes socialism. But in typical conservative fashion, they have absolutely no problems with socialism. They just want it only for them, and brutal capitalism for everyone else. Like, they'll take gov money, but fight to stop biden from forgiving bad student loans.
@breizh @TruthSandwich @BobCollins
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@TruthSandwich @breizh @BobCollins
what do you mean by socialism?
Centralized redistribution of resources?
Non-private ownership of means of production? (if so, what model of ownership?)
Something else?
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@wolf480pl @breizh @BobCollins
This:
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@TruthSandwich @BobCollins then that word is useless.
@breizh what do you mean by socialism?
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@wolf480pl @BobCollins @breizh
Socialism is, as Lenin explained, the attempt to create communism. Literally nobody knows how to do that, of course, so it turns into totalitarianism.
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@TruthSandwich @wolf480pl @BobCollins What if we don’t agree with Lenin on the definition of socialism… but yeah, by this definition, you’re right I guess. It’s not the one I use personnally.
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@breizh @BobCollins @wolf480pl
It's the one the communists use.
Look for any of the depraved hammer & sickle accounts on Fedi and ask them: they'll all agree with Lenin because they're commies.
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@TruthSandwich @breizh @BobCollins well then fuck those guys and their definitions. We can do better than that.
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@wolf480pl @breizh @BobCollins
We can't. The communists get to define socialism. If you want regulated capitalism, say so. Don't call it socialism, because that's something else entirely: something that doesn't work.
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@TechConnectify
As a leftist that literally defines their position just as 'anticapitalist' even I know that you can't get people to support a position simply by telling them they should oppose its opposite.
Too many leftists aren't willing to put in the effort and instead take the losing position of "it's not [their] job to educate," but nobody can be convinced without knowing why or what they should do instead.
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@TechConnectify
Quick question
Is the USA from day one
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@BobCollins @TechConnectify Capitalism is bad, Bob
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@TechConnectify @BobCollins
Part of the problem is that, for most people and almost certainly including you, “capitalism” denoted a grab-bag of mutually incompatible ideas.
Capitalism as it actually exists, which is how its proponents intend it to exist, is an atrocity.
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@TechConnectify Conservatism is a spectrum that goes from "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work" to "murder everyone who is different", just like socialism goes from "public goods should be owned by the people" to "collective farms and gulags". People on both sides fail to appreciate this and paint each other as extremists.
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@TechConnectify Amen. The corollary is that they’re (usually) not taking their position because they hate something.
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@TechConnectify This is why I focus on liberal arguments against capitalism and liberal anti-capitalism. It helps to make arguments within the framework and intellectual tradition most people on the center-left are familiar with
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@TechConnectify
I find that, for every 1000 people who express a hatred for capitalism, 999 struggle to define it and express an actual, specific objection to it.
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@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @TechConnectify@mas.to The wealth in the current American capitalism is failing to reach the lower class and poverty keeps squeezing the middle class out of existence. I dislike that companies like Google, Amazon, Tesla, Etc know more about my walking and commerce patterns than I do and Theres no way to tell them no. I dont use their products to begin with but because those around me do they can still build a profile on me.
You happy? What else do you need?
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@jame @TechConnectify
I'm generally pretty happy, yes. Could you please define capitalism?
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@AlexanderKingsbury @jame @TechConnectify
Ok so I know you're going for an easy gotcha, but I'm going to take the time to respond anyway. The reason why nobody can give you a good answer to that is essentially because your way of phrasing the question comes from a philosophical tradition that is very different from the one that the term "Capitalism" comes from.
I'd guess that your background is probably in the anglo-saxon tradition where usually you will go at a problem by precisely defining every term and then going through them step by step, like a logical puzzle. In that kind of tradition, a discussion ends up looking like a game of chess, where each player lays out their deductions one after the other until one of them gains the upper hand and demonstrates why their definitions and logical connections are better able to explain reality than the ones of the other person.
The tradition that terms like Capitalism come from is nothing like this. Many of the early leftist authors were author-activists. Their reason for writing was because they couldn't bear the political and economic situation in their countries and the violent abuse they saw people suffer at the hands of bosses and the police. So the term Capitalism arose to try to find a framework in which to make sense of why suddenly all of the serfs were being forced to move to the cities and thefactories, why the Kings were losing power to the men who owned the factories, why what used to be taken care of by custom and tradition was suddenly more and more integrated into the market, etc. etc. It was a change that was obviously happening at the time they were writing about it, not just a theoretical term tothrow into a discussion for clout. They developed the term to claim that all of those things are connected, and they attempted to explain in what way they are connected. And in many ways that is still what leftist theory is trying to do now.
So then what we talk about when we talk about Capitalism are the consequences of this broad historical shift in how society is structured. And that manifests in myriad ways, but the point is that something definitely is up. And so if you ask "how do you define capitalism" there's really no cut-and-dry answer to that. Because we're not just talking about something that can be circumscribed within a simple 5 point checklist. Which, granted, makes us horrible at discussions, haha. I hoped that helped somewhat.
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@random_regret @jame @TechConnectify
No, I am not "going for an easy gotcha". That's a totally baseless accusation to make, and suggests that you are not approaching the conversation in an honest, mutually respectful manner. It's ad hominem, plain and simple.
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