| ▲ | foobarian 6 days ago |
| If only Marx et al. knew that the end game of capitalism is communism! Would have probably slept much better at night. |
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| ▲ | dragonwriter 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > If only Marx et al. knew that the end game of capitalism is communism! Using "end game" as it seems to be here -- for the natural ultimate result -- Marx argued that as a pretty central thesis of his work (through the mechanism of capitalist development -> proletarian class consciousness -> socialist revolution -> socialism -> <stuff mostly left as an exercise for the reader> -> withering of the state -> communism.) OTOH, a single entity run for the benefit of a narrow group of stakeholders employing all labor, supplying everything, and effectively enslaving everyone through private control of the means of production is not Communism, or even socialism (defined by proletarian control of the means of production) but just monopolistic capitalism (and, yes, this is where a major non-Leninist Communist criticism of Leninism, and its descendants like Stalinism and Maoism, that feature totalitarian control of a command economy by a narrow self-perpetuating party elite stems from.) |
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| ▲ | dumbledoren 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > and, yes, this is where a major non-Leninist Communist criticism of Leninism, and its descendants like Stalinism and Maoism, that feature totalitarian control of a command economy by a narrow self-perpetuating party elite stems from. People always criticize that, and yet those systems delivered: They raised the Soviet citizens from mud huts to apartments within one generation. One thing that is prominent in the stories about the fall of the Eastern Bloc and its aftermath is how the Soviet citizens never thought that they could lose 'staples' like free education, healthcare, childcare, housing, food, paid vacations, maternity leave, guaranteed jobs etc in capitalism. They thought that they would have everything that Leninist socialism gave them in the USSR and an additional consumer economy. They were dumbfounded to find out that wasnt the case. | | |
| ▲ | paulryanrogers 5 days ago | parent [-] | | It can be argued those systems 'delivered' in spite of their cruel, indifferent, and centralized nature. Not solely because of them. | | |
| ▲ | dumbledoren 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > cruel If the US killing people when they cant pay for healthcare or pushing the homeless outside city centers in the winter to have them freeze to death does not make capitalism 'cruel', then those systems werent cruel either. Doublespeak poisons the mind. | | |
| ▲ | paulryanrogers 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not trying to defend capitalism here, so not sure where you think you see doublespeak | | |
| ▲ | dumbledoren 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The 'cruel' adjective. If capitalism is not cruel, then such a criticism cannot be made against socialism, communism etc. And if one would bring up 'political persecution', capitalism persecutes the politically non-compliant harder than any eastern bloc country - and did so both in the 1950s and still does it today. |
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| ▲ | rfrey 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Genuinely confused... How is anything in this scenario at all related to communism? |
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| ▲ | tdb7893 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not to be overly pedantic but what he described isn't communism, monopolistic private corporation is pretty much the exact opposite of communism. |
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| ▲ | fsckboy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | price discovery through invisible hand, competitive markets are the the opposite of communism. crony capitalist monopolies are more like fascism vs communism | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 5 days ago | parent [-] | | “Crony capitalist monopolies” are a prominent feature of the real world system for which socialist critics coined the name “capitalism”. They do have a lot to do with “Communism” if by that you mean Leninism and its derivatives, all of which are state-capitalist systems in practice (in theory as a transitional developmental phase to socialism, but few ever transitioned out except a few like China that transitioned to something like the fascist form of corporatism, which is in many ways, as an economic system divorced from the rest of fascism, a midway point between private capitalism and state capitalism.) | | |
| ▲ | fsckboy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | the real world critics of crony capitalism also coined the term socialism and then set about forming sociopathic totalitarian states and started slaughtering, torturing and starving people. what's your point? and by socialism i mean the 4th international, the 3rd international, et al, whence were spawned many socialist parties that called themselves socialists, but which are in full agreement with what casual observers would call communism and or marxism. it's all distinction without difference. source: i used to be an active communist | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > the real world critics of crony capitalism also coined the term socialism and then set about forming sociopathic totalitarian stat No, they didn't; the people who did the latter were different people, decades later than the former, who, despite claiming ideological continuity, departed radically from the theory of the former. The original critics saw capitalism as (like socialism, but prior to it) an imperfect but necessary developmental stage on the road to the end-stage of communism, while the people who built the totalitarian dystopias saw it as a thing to be avoided entirely, adapted Marxist theory to bypass it, etc. > and by socialism i mean the 4th international, the 3rd international, etc., Obviously, the 3rd and 4th international were not the people who wrote the original critiques in which capitalism was named > but which are in full agreement with what casual observers would call communism and or marxism “Casual observers” are called that for a reason. > source: i used to be an active communist Not at all surprised; you seem to still deeply hold to the propaganda of one of the Leninist-derived branches, even having abandoned it as an ideology/identity. | | |
| ▲ | fsckboy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | no Leninist would every acknowledge the 4th international. i won't argue the rest of the flaws in your response because you are clearly a bitter-ender |
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| ▲ | timewizard 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| So you're acknowledging that the best way to make a population powerless and then rob them blind is Communism? |
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| ▲ | mystified5016 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, because we aren't even doing that the best way. Can't even fail successfully. | | |
| ▲ | timewizard 6 days ago | parent [-] | | So real "capitalism devolved into communism" has never been tried before? | | |
| ▲ | shadowgovt 5 days ago | parent [-] | | We've watched communism devolve into capitalism. That's modern Russia. What are they up to these days? |
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| ▲ | shadowgovt 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't know, capitalism seems to be doing a pretty good job of it right now. I'd have to see some hard numbers on efficacy. Has anyone done a normalized any% speedrun to breadlines on these two fierce contenders? Can monarchy get in on this? | | |
| ▲ | milesrout 5 days ago | parent [-] | | We are wealthier than we have ever been so I fail to see how capitalism has made us poor. Poor compared to what? The past when we were poorer? | | |
| ▲ | shadowgovt 5 days ago | parent [-] | | You can hide a lot of bad experiences behind averaging over 300+ million people. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... ... And, to be blunt, if things are better than ever, why is the US sliding straight into fascism? | | |
| ▲ | astrange 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Mostly because of covid trauma causing people to forget who was president in 2020. | |
| ▲ | milesrout 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It isn't. Just like it wasn't sliding into fascism under Reagan, or Bush, or Clinton, or Bush 2, or Trump the first time, even though all the same people claimed that at the time. | | |
| ▲ | shadowgovt 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Oh, good. I must have misunderstood the whole "disappeared to an El Salvadoran prison without due process" story. ... And you've gotten very close to the point without touching it. The country has been sliding, this whole time. Reagan arguably started the ball rolling. It just takes a long time to break down the democratic norms in a country this big. But they're broken down now. | | |
| ▲ | milesrout 4 days ago | parent [-] | | You did misunderstand it. Applying the law of the land as it has stood and been applied for hundreds of years isn't fascist. If anyone thought the Alien Enemies Act were fascist they could have repealed it at any time since the 18th century. Nobody is being "disappeared". The word you are looking for is "deported". Deportation isn't a new idea or a new thing. >The country has been sliding, this whole time. Reagan arguably started the ball rolling. No it hasn't. The US became freer under all of those presidents, except George W. Bush and his surveillance programmes. None of them are fascists. In no case did the country end up closer to fascism after they were in. The US is nowhere near fascism. The fact anyone thinks it is near it is just more evidence of how uneducated Americans are about the rest of the world. Trump hasn't damaged or broken down any "democratic norms". Yeah he claimed his election loss was illegitimate. So did Hilary Clinton! (It was all just a Russian hoax remember? Trump is a Russian agent--all the debunked Russiagate claims). It isn't like he started a civil war over it, unless you're one of those people that believes the absurd propaganda that claims he instigated an attempted coup by giving a speech where he didn't tell anyone to do anything, suggest anyone do anything, or or in any other way encourage or instigate anything. I'm sorry your preferred candidate lost. I get it. It happens to us all. It isn't the end of the world. Presidents are allowed to act in accordance with the law--including their own stretched interpretations of it until they get kicked back by the courts--and that includes all the things Trump is being accused of. | | |
| ▲ | shadowgovt 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They snatched somebody off the street. Put them on a plane to El Salvador. Without any due process . Then definitively said they made a mistake. And he's not back. This isn't about preferred candidates losing. I've had preferred candidates lose multiple times in my life for various positions. This is the culmination of the process that has been rolling through America responding to an attack on our home soil by creating a Department of Homeland security. This is the last chance for it to stop getting worse. There isn't another step beyond "They can disappear you from the street and drop you in a prison in El Salvador with no trial." > the Alien Enemies Act ... Is for wartime. It's "Enemies" as in the phrase "Enemies at war, in peace friends". Who are we at war with right now? If you believe "terrorism," you have understood my point. | |
| ▲ | computerthings 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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