In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. This is it, we will forever live in a social-democracy state. I wonder who promotes this idea.

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OKRainbowKid 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And it seems like the winners capitalism brought about don't actually care all that much about both "social" and "democratic" aspects of "social democracy", if they stand in the way of ever increasing wealth and power.

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AlexandrB 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism.

It didn't just "lose", it killed millions of its own people in the process. Having been born in a communist state, I'd rather clean toilets in American than do anything else in the USSR.

Edit: It's basically impossible to communicate the day-to-day misery and deprivation of late stage Communism without sounding like a crazy person. My parents were both university-educated professionals but we lived in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment with occasional hot running water and only newspaper for wiping after the bathroom. This was considered a rather affluent existence.

To find something similar in today's America you'd have to go to the worst, most impoverished parts of town and even then...

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singleshot_ 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the most impoverished part of my town (just kidding, in every part of my town) people live in the culverts that fill up with water when it rains. I am not sure what they do when it rains.

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harimau777 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What about all the places where that didn't happen? E.g. the Nordic countries where social democracy has been extremely successful.

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hootz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But why is it successful? Where did their money come from? How sustainable is it? The core issues from capitalism still exist there, but they have more money with a smaller population.

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AlexandrB 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it helps to draw some distinctions here. Nordic countries have strong social welfare systems, but private property and free enterprise are still a thing. This is not at all the same as communism where everything is ultimately state owned and operated.

China is an interesting example too because it's basically capitalist with strong government oversight. So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing wealth as long as you don't oppose the overall goals of the government. We'll see how long they can keep it running - the problem with most authoritarian systems is that they're only as good as their current leadership, and when that changes things tend to fall apart.

	▲	6AA4FD 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think basically capitalist oversimplifies a bit, both because private business holds no monopoly on exploitation of labor in any society, and because many of their large businesses are wholly owned by the state with the CEO appointed by the party. Here is an interesting interview on the subject with a relevant timestamp. https://youtu.be/e297mEZ479E?si=ASV_u9ZoN36wI4M5 The nuance that capitalist businesses do not hold an exclusive interest now or historical pioneering of labor exploitation is valuable to keep in mind because no matter how far the project of labor power spreads, all we workers must keep in mind that we have a primary and vested in empowering the most diminished of our society.
	▲	NickC25 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing wealth as long as you don't oppose the overall goals of the government Or get TOO big. You can get a few billion here and there, but don't think that you're bigger than the government. And don't act like it, either.

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rexpop 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ok, but you're not exactly a research sociologist, are you? It's not like you've made a study of poverty in America—let alone poverty on the imperial periphery, like El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras where we've been undermining democracy and labor rights in order to keep outsourced wages low. Now there are the places you can see real poverty that makes your Soviet austerity seem downright cosy.

So it's just not fair, your comparisons. You're not looking at the whole picture.

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hootz 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We are currently killing millions of our own people. Communism is not stuck in time with the USSR.

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AlexandrB 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> We are currently killing millions of our own people.

What do you mean?

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pocksuppet 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think they mean, the USA (or capitalism in general) is currently killing millions of our own people.

We know how many people communism killed, but has anyone done the same math on capitalism? Maybe they're both very bad, and we have to find a third way.

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salawat 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps you haven't been paying attention to the skyrocketing prices of fuel, food, and healthcare... Or did you just think all those people just above the poverty line disappear when the livable income floor gets hydraulically jacked up?

	▲	AnimalMuppet 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm aware. What I don't see are the millions of dead bodies that hootz says are currently being produced.

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rexpop 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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goatlover 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fair criticism of the USSR, but some the United State's success comes from taking a large chunk of land from the native populations and then using it's resources and geography to build an economy and military capable of enforcing it's policies in the Americas and eventually around the world. Some of which was sanctioning communist countries and fighting an expensive cold war against the USSR.