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'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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@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 @BobCollins @wolf480pl It’s not simple, but we should try. And not only Sweden. For transportation, the target should be Netherlands, Swiss or Japan (even China in some cases…).
For the healthcare, it should be what the France used to have.
For education, Norway and Finland are good examples too.
(even Cuba has good ideas, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism )
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