Can you point me to a real first world developed country not run by a dictator that doesn’t have capitalism? I need a reference to see that the alternative is better. Genuinely asking.
The catch here is that in the west, we label anyone anti-capitalist a dictator. You can be the very definition of dictatorial, but if you align with western interests, you’re just a “president” or a “leader” or something. But start nationalizing your oil industry and 🚨 dictator! dictator! 🚨
So yeah, within the bounds of the narrative that capitalism is the only way, you’ll find that capitalism is the only way, unsurprisingly. But the fact that this narrative is baked into us from childhood doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s aligned with reality.
At anything bigger than city scale, it’s pretty much impossible to implement any “real” alternative without fuckloads of work - we’re talking 10+ years. Making a commune on a farm with ~15-ish people is easy (lots of hard work, but doable, there are historical examples of success), but even that group has to participate with the capitalist mother state whenever they need to get stuff they can’t produce themselves. If the commune grows too much, it becomes impossible to keep things running smoothly because, well, there’s just too many people involved now.
No, because we live in a global society where if you don’t participate in global trade (especially with the USA in the past couple hundred years), your country will fail.
The USA has played a massive part in making communist experiments fail, most notibly the USSR.
The closest thing that the western world has is the nordic countries’ social democracy, which is still capitalist by nature. They only implemented it, though due to communism being literally right around the corner (USSR)
I don’t think you can get to communism where there’s a relatively small group in power tasked with dividing the means of production. That power will be abused like oligarchs do now.
Yeah, I agree with that. Mass centralization is bad regardless of the situation IMO. We need collaboration instead.
I’m personally a fan of Prof Wolff’s idea to force all corporations to surrender ownership to their workers, converting them into worker-owned coops. This would largely mitigate the ability for extreme wealth concentration to happen to begin with, especially if combined with other wealth-limiting regulations.
I’m sure fighting a global proxy war for most of a century has absolutely nothing to do with the (state) failure of the USSR.
Now, excuse me, I have to go to the ER because of all the compounded brain damage it takes to both think that and say anyone that believes otherwise is a tankie.
But don’t worship it. Make it work for the nation, don’t make the nation exist for the sake of the economy. This is what we do in America, and it’s fucking wrong.
Can you point me to a real first world developed country not run by a dictator that doesn’t have capitalism? I need a reference to see that the alternative is better. Genuinely asking.
The catch here is that in the west, we label anyone anti-capitalist a dictator. You can be the very definition of dictatorial, but if you align with western interests, you’re just a “president” or a “leader” or something. But start nationalizing your oil industry and 🚨 dictator! dictator! 🚨
So yeah, within the bounds of the narrative that capitalism is the only way, you’ll find that capitalism is the only way, unsurprisingly. But the fact that this narrative is baked into us from childhood doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s aligned with reality.
At anything bigger than city scale, it’s pretty much impossible to implement any “real” alternative without fuckloads of work - we’re talking 10+ years. Making a commune on a farm with ~15-ish people is easy (lots of hard work, but doable, there are historical examples of success), but even that group has to participate with the capitalist mother state whenever they need to get stuff they can’t produce themselves. If the commune grows too much, it becomes impossible to keep things running smoothly because, well, there’s just too many people involved now.
No, because we live in a global society where if you don’t participate in global trade (especially with the USA in the past couple hundred years), your country will fail.
The USA has played a massive part in making communist experiments fail, most notibly the USSR.
The closest thing that the western world has is the nordic countries’ social democracy, which is still capitalist by nature. They only implemented it, though due to communism being literally right around the corner (USSR)
I don’t think you can get to communism where there’s a relatively small group in power tasked with dividing the means of production. That power will be abused like oligarchs do now.
Yeah, I agree with that. Mass centralization is bad regardless of the situation IMO. We need collaboration instead.
I’m personally a fan of Prof Wolff’s idea to force all corporations to surrender ownership to their workers, converting them into worker-owned coops. This would largely mitigate the ability for extreme wealth concentration to happen to begin with, especially if combined with other wealth-limiting regulations.
What would be the motivation then to even start a company/corporation if every time it happens, it is seized and given away?
The USSR didn’t fail because of the USA…the fuck is with you tankies.
I’m sure fighting a global proxy war for most of a century has absolutely nothing to do with the (state) failure of the USSR.
Now, excuse me, I have to go to the ER because of all the compounded brain damage it takes to both think that and say anyone that believes otherwise is a tankie.
Democratic socialism is not unheard of…
Democratic socialism without the support of capitalism is truly and completely unheard of.
Capitalism is a tool, use it and beat it back into submission when it fails.
But don’t worship it. Make it work for the nation, don’t make the nation exist for the sake of the economy. This is what we do in America, and it’s fucking wrong.
There is more than one alternative and some of them involve having capitalism…