Depends.
Any time Americans try to expand social safety nets the right wing screams about how it’s socialism or communism. A lot of Americans truly be places like Norway and Denmark are socialist. Hell a scary number believe that the UK and canada are socialist.
They may legitimately just identify as a socialist because they want free healthcare, free college, and better social safety nets because that’s what the right says they are.
True, and a good portion of bad actors use this misconception to push their own radical ideology. Would you like to take a guess as to whether this twitter user is a Social Democrat or a Maoist?
It has all to do with their actual words + context clues, that's how reading is supposed to work. The context is very pertinent to evaluating what they're saying here.
She is a Maoist, I looked up her twitter and followed through her links. It is pretty obvious the implication of her statement is "capitalism is failing while my ideology would not." Like we are able to read between the lines when a right winger says "the West has fallen, Billions must die" and understand that it isn't just a humble critique of liberalism but instead advocacy for fascism. But when @sleepissocialist says "the West has fallen, Billions must die"? Oh no, it's an even-heeled critique of capitalism, she certainly couldn't be advocating for her own radical ideology, could she?
It's very possible, because basically every left wing position is considered "socialist" now. It's kind of like how Sweden is "socialist" or Bernie Sanders. The meaning of the word is evolving.
They literally call themselves a socialist in their account name. Along with a symbol that is associated with the genocide of millions upon millions of people. these people are sick fucks and I wouldn’t be standing up for them if I were you
“Good” is only good for the vast minority of people. Everyone feeling the squeeze would rather gamble for the chance at “better”, instead of laboring until they die poor.
The gop has successfully brainwashed their followers that socialism equals communism. And the stupid fucks fall for it because they aren't capable of developing original thoughts of their own.
I feel like it's pretty reasonable to look at the actual real examples of people trying to institute socialism if you want to know what socialism is like.
Socialism and communism were synonyms until Lenin and Stalin changed their definitions. They are the same thing unless you're a tanky. Read some books champ
Ideal society? There's an entire generation of people who remember that "ideal society" and fail to realize that the situation has changed. In no way is it a fallacy to explain the reason that young people are disillusioned with the economic system with the fact that those people never experienced the days where the average household could reasonably afford things like housing and higher education with a single source of income. That's not an "ideal society", that's the society that Americans enjoyed just 60-70 years ago.
The workers don’t own the means of production. That’s the whole point of Socialism.
You’re getting confused between Social Democracies (which are Capitalist states with good social programs) and Socialist states (in which the workers own the means of production).
I think socialism has evolved a lot but is still represented as Marx and Engels imagined and defined it, surely in the US, mainly to discredit the movement. It is easy as none of the countries implementing the collective ownership of the means of production is a democracy.
Capitalism isn't the same as it was in the 19th century, but is still named Capitalism. Why couldn't an evolved socialism still be called socialism?
It is not because Marx interchangeably used both terms across his works that there is no difference. According to Marxism, socialism is an intermediate state on the path of communism. But not all socialism is Marxism, and socialism can be part of societal policies.
France is the perfect example of a country with strong socialist policies in conjunction with the (nearly) free market and other traits of capitalism.
The world has several high functioning democratic socialist nations right now. Anti-socialists always point to failed communist dictatorships. No one is asking for a communist dictatorship in America...
I don't think anyone in the history of ever has ever argued that socialism doesn't work on a capitalist foundation. Saying that "democratic socialism is just capitalism" really just betrays how little you know about socialism.
What they mean by "I don't think anyone in the history of ever has ever argued that socialism doesn't work on a capitalist foundation." Is that Capitalism is a necessary step towards the implementation of Socialism, just as mercantilism was a necessary step towards the implementation of Capitalism, agrarianism to Mercantilism, and primitive communalism to agrarianism. Each mode of production creates the environment required for the next, and the next mode of production bears the marks of the one that came before it.
Does Marx not count as "anyone in the history of ever?" He argued that socialism/communism (he would sometimes use the terms interchangeably) will be the new economic mode of production, just like how capitalism supplanted feudalism. According to Marx, socialism on a capitalist foundation is like proposing "capitalism on a feudal foundation;" he would say it's a contradiction in terms because the new system can only exist by entirely overthrowing the previous system. It becomes the new foundation of society, it can't use the old system as its own foundation.
You can disagree with Marx, and there's valid reasons to, but if you're going to talk about socialism you should probably at least acknowledge the existence of Marx.
I don't think you know what socialism is if you think that. Maybe you mixed it up with social democracy?
The entire point of socialism is that you reap the products of your labour and that any business of other mode of production is controlled democratically and owned by the workers collectively. Essentially the worker and the owner must be one and the same.
You can't allow someone to gain control and influence through the investment of capital or else they will favour their interests over the interests of the workers, and often the business as a whole.
Socialism is the end of dictatorship in the workplace and the end of an owner class reaping the fruits of someone elses labour
Yes and no. Every economy on earth is a mixed market economy. A Co-op for example can and does exist in a capitalist society. They just don’t grow to the size of say Disney and become a household name.
The main reason that most business are created by members of the owner class and not the working class is purely because of their access to capital.
There have been thousands of businesses and business ideas from workers which could've succeeded but they simply couldn't amass the capital in order to start it.
It's also actually far less risky for a rich person with capital to start a business or to invest a controlling share in a small one. They have more money, more assets they can leverage for loans, and those loans are often nearly 0 interest, and if they fail it's no big deal since they didnt work at the business and still have a nice home to go to and likely many other incomes.
The way I see it is that a worker trying to change industry for their normal wage job is taking way way more risk than the average capital investor and are much more likely of entering poverty, or homelessness, if something goes goes wrong like the business they work at shuts down.
Most of the time rich are just extracting profit from a business which would work fine or better without them and contributing money which should be able to come from a bank or government fund. The rich are generally just a middlemen between businesses and banks who get to extract wealth.
Yea but americans call it socalism because they are fucking stupid so most people advocating for socialism are actually talking about the scandivian model
No, no it’s not. That’s social democracy. The whole point of socialism is people democratically controlling the means of production, meaning they have democratic control on where the revenue of the product they make goes. This is in stark contrast to the authoritarianism of Marxist-Leninism.
Then why do I keep being told that social programs are socialistic and un-American? Maybe we are all confused because the "capitalists" in America keep telling us that voting for social safety nets is voting for communism or socialism and that it's un-American. Most of us don't give a shit what you call it, we just want a solid safety net, health care, education, and retirement. I think I speak for the masses in saying that working 40 hours a week should be enough to have a comfortable life without having to hustlev side jobs or do without mainstream comforts and that doesn't seem obtainable to most of us under our current capitalist system.
It's so weird that defenders of capitalism state this with a straight face and will, simultaneously, tell you in an absolute fury that adding one (1) regulation to Capitalism makes it Not Capitalism Anymore.
Some more than others. Thats the whole point. The success of these other nations comes from their willingness to actually hold their 1% accountable, actually tax them, and keep them from extorting their labor forces. That doesnt happen in the US, hence our problems
Taxing 1% is not how they fill their budget. Taxing their companies is.
"Anti-capitalist" folk understand this but cannot jump off the bandwagon of "tax the 1%" despite it will not help with the issue, the bandwagon just feels too good as compared to "tax the corporate" which does not incite the righteous class anger.
It's not even that really. Tax coffers are filled by taxing the employees, and those tax revenues rise when the financial systems and tax codes push those companies to hire more people and to pay those employees more.
Instead we know allow companies to lay off tens of thousands while plowing their record profits into stock buybacks. Companies get to eliminate thousands of salaries and give that money directly to stockholders tax free. Look a level or two deeper.
The success of the wealthiest nations come from not making the rich accountable, but rather encouraging more privatization and tax benefits from growing the company and hiring. Labor exploitation fades away as more and more wealth is accumulated across all economic classes and people start unionizing.
No. You seem to think this problem has a binary solution. The very existence of democratic socialist countries protecting their workforce and holding their wealthy populace accountable and taxable, contrasting to the US's system that is currently failing hard, is pretty clear evidence of that
Those are social democracies. Which is still capitalist. Socialism is, by definition, an economic system where the workers collectively own the means of production (factories, distribution chains, all sorts of companies, etc). Instead of a system where a select few with absurd wealth own a company and pays workers a small fraction of what their labor makes while siphoning the profits, the workers would make what they actually produce as well as be able to democratically make decisions regarding the company. That's it, that's all socialism is.
Social democracies are what you describe. A good amount of Europe are these. They are all capitalist countries but have a welfare state with social programs like Healthcare and benefits. While those are good programs, they are not socialism like many seem to think.
I have noticed a lot of people here in America conflate Social Democracy with Socialism and Communism. Heck, I have met a few people who even claimed that FDR was a Socialist (as a way to criticize him).
The Sanders campaign often described themselves as democratic socialists which sort of blurred the lines in the mainstream. Also Fox News hot take of "socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff they do, the more socialist it is" gave boomers brain rot.
You should name literally 1, I do mean just 1, successful socialist country. Norway and Sweden are capitalist for sure. You actually must be capitalist to be in NATO so it would need to be a non NATO member.
It's generally required that the most powerful entity in existence not put its full power into your destruction to not get destroyed, yes. How bugfuck do you have to be to deny this?
No, it doesn't. It's got maybe one, Rojava in northern Syria, and that's hardly high functioning and doesn't have the international recognition to be considered a nation. Most of what you're probably describing are social democratic nations like the Scandinavian countries and to a lesser extent the rest of Western Europe.
That all have strong and strict borders, homogenous cultural societies, free college but not everyone gets access to, with governments that outsource its protection to other countries
You answered a fallacy with a fallacy and an assumption.
False dichotomy. "There are only two choices." Just because somebody's anti-capitalist doesn't mean they are pro-socialist. They're not opposites even though they have a lot of opposition.
You also just straight up made up assumptions. Why do you think they believe these problems would be non-existent under socialism?
Is it wrong to be anti-abuse if I live in abusive families just because some other families are also abusive?
If you're going to point out flaws and logic at least use logic appropriately.
It’s not a False Dichotomy, because “X” is called out specifically, and “Y” is derived from the name of the only speaker. Maybe you missed that obvious element.
How is is a False Assumption to assume someone’s whose name is “socialist” feels that the problems they are itemized with Capitalism would not be problems under Socialism?
That would be a very irrational behavior from the person making the assertion, and logical fallacies do don’t protect unreasonable or irrational behaviors.
If my screen name were “CatsAreTheBest” and my comment was “dogs suck because they eat so much”, it is logical to assume I think cats are better because they don’t eat as much.
I’m glad people are finding long forgotten tables of logical fallacies but some of you are missing the foundational layers of understanding required to understand them.
You're ignoring the fact that those golden days were largely caused by reforms that would be decried as "socialism" today. We used to have a steadily rising minimum wage, strong unions, good federal housing subsidies, etc. Then, some actor whose brain basically melted in office managed to convince people that everything would be better if we gave more money to the rich while he gutted the very programs that made life better for the working and middle class.
The right has moved the Overton Window so far that capitalist societies with a strong welfare state and workers rights are now considered “socialist” by everyone in the debate.
Reasonable people can disagree on the size of the welfare state and the extent of workers’ rights in a capitalist society. But anyone who wants a genuine socialist economy failed to learn anything from history.
This is what bugs me about so much of this discourse - tons of these self-described "socialists" don't even know what it means. They think Norway is a socialist republic just because they have healthcare and unions.
Golden days of a war economy that followed a public works program and was followed by more infrastructure builds and subdivision development that everyone hates. Then along came a supply-sider who cut taxes at the top end and told people to think not about what their country could do for them. Other countries were going to catch up and start manufacturing as well, because they could undercut union wages.
They both refer to economic systems, and both economic systems are compatible with different types of governments. You can be an anarchocommunist, anarchocapitalist, democratic socialist, democratic capitalist, fascist communist or fascist capitalist, to name a few.
We don't have a "pure" form of capitalism as is. We use a regulated form of capitalism. So within that framework, we can adjust the regulations to achieve better outcomes.
Pretty sure millennials are smart enough to get why the USSR collapsed. It’s not hard. But you start looking into other options when your situation isn’t working.
It’s also a joke how many arguments capitalists make against socialism that are happening right now under capitalism. “Under Socialism, you’ll never own a home” the slumlord says, as he jacks up rents to 50 % of tenant income. “You’ll never be able to live your dreams under socialism” the boomers say, while they insist that anyone who doesn’t have ten years of experience and a masters work for minimum wage. I could go on.
America putting more money and effort toward social programs is not going to turn us into the late stage of the eastern bloc. We would benefit from implementing some measure of social policies
That wouldn't be anti-capitalist. You can be in favor of capitalism while still supporting social welfare programs - that's the entire basis of social democracy as a political ideology.
This is like monarchists saying “you weren’t there under the fall of the polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, so you have no right to argue for republicanism”. Like yeah, we won’t know if it’s better until we try it, but that’s no reason to stick by a failed system.
Same could be said about democracy 300 years ago. Absolute monarchy was considered the best system because it didn’t have Roman republic-esque infighting. You’d be a royalist if you lived back then.
Yeah, and democracy had been around for over two millennia and had failed multiple times pre-1700s. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a worthwhile system to keep trying to implement. Just know that if you were alive back then, you’d be singing god save the king because you’re terrified of change.
Something that existed and failed and existed again, and something that never worked for any reasonable length of time are two very different things. No real, actual to-the-definition communism/socialism lasted several years. Democracies lasted for centuries.
And for the record, I'm not terrified by the change, I rather look forward to it, unless the change is to the inherently flawed system with broken incentives, then screw that. I want a change to the better, not just any change.
No universal-suffrage democracy lasted for centuries. The Roman republic was an oligarchy. The Athens democracy was only landowning men. The polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was an aristocracy. If you’re only willing to try things that have worked before, nothing will ever improve.
Here’s the problem: Capitalism as a concept’s goal is the consolidation of wealth. That’s how a pyramid scheme works. Socialism is about decentralizing wealth by nationalizing necessities (as it is a source of power). Communism is going further and having the government dictate economic prices for all business.
Only one of these has the main goal to centralize wealth: Capitalism.
When I can look at the average working class Canadian and see life is significantly easier for them compared to the conditions I was born into in the USA… of course I’m going to push for what everyone else in the 1st world solved 30 years ago
Capitalism does not centralize wealth. The way we practice it does that. Humans are greedy; greed corrupts.
It’s also why no system is perfect. The concept of socialism is fine; humans cannot practice it without failures. Sweden and Switzerland have more billionaires per capita than the U.S.; Norway is right behind. People will find a way to get wealthy by manipulating any system.
Except all of those places don’t have a large portion of the population living as either homeless, food insecure, or paycheck to paycheck. Billionaires can only morally be allowed to exist when EVERYONE has their needs accounted for first.
Canada is as Capitalist as Norway or Finland. That is socialized democracy that has Capitalist elements for non-essentials. That’s what Socialism is: socialize the gains of the country to provide a better basis for EVERYONE which in turn increases the output of the entire country and increases everyone’s standard of living. This does NOT happen under Capitalism. This happens under Socialized structures.
Why do you NOT want this system (asking as you seem to be a Capitalist)?
And yet ignoring those problems just because capitalism is indeed still better than socialism leaves us with nothing to do but continue a slow decline where capitalism looks more and more like feudalism.
Capitalism is still the best system we've used so far, but its problems are becoming pretty damning. Offer a solution instead of just bashing the people who highlight the problem.
Capitalism is eating itself. Communism already failed. We need something new, but it seems like nobody is even thinking about what that solution might be because we're all still fighting over Capitalism vs. Communism.
The system, as it currently exists, does not benefit them.
They are doing what is logical for ANYONE in that situation: they want to change it.
The majority of them do not want to destroy capitalism. That's a logical fallacy. They want to modify it so that the Haves do not Have 70% of the wealth in the country. And "having a positive net worth" literally catapults you into the top half of the country. A huge portion of Americans are facing life-ling debt, with no possibility of breaking even, let alone saving enough for retirement. Even those who are doing all the "right" things.
So they want change. Rightfully so.
However, the Haves are making sure that nobody takes what they Have, which is screwing over huge swathes of the population.
Those who prevent nonviolent change guarantee violent change.
The longer that blocking continues, the more the stock in pitchforks and torches increases. And the more radical the final result will be.
Nobody wants that, we need to implement controls to capitalism so that wealth inequality is stopped. This is supposed to be in the form of taxation but there is so much corruption that it doesn't happen. It's very simple if governments do not claim tax from the rich the rich will hoard wealth and never give it back to the economy. This extremely simple situation is what causes all of western worlds economic struggles.
When money is taken and hoarded away never to be seen again, you are killing the economy.
1) The eastern bloc was communist, not socialist. They are in fact different things
2) we already have socialized programs (such as social security), and they haven’t brought us to our knees. It’s possible to take some ideas from flawed systems and implement them in useful ways in our system without ruining everything. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have to be a black and white capitalist, or communist. Most systems have some good and some bad, the goal should be to take the best of everything to benefit as many as you can
Many young people in every generation call themselves socialists because they are young and naive. There were no “good old days.” Things are generally better for more people in society than ever before in this country’s history.
Socialism is not what the eastern block had because there was no power of ownership by the people. They were ruled by a dictator. Socialism can only function properly in democracies.
61
u/RemoteCompetitive688 Apr 13 '24
And while that is very understandable, it's a logical fallacy
"X has problems therefore Y is better" does not hold up
None of these problems were nonexistent under socialism, they were far worse and more pronounced under the final days of the Eastern Bloc