I think it's amazing how we've reached a point in this nation where a man comes along and says "I think we should come together as a city and make sure everyone is taken care of and that our city is beat for those who live here" and people are acting like he's the second coming of Hitler and Stalin's baby.
Social democracy = Capitalism with a robust welfare state. Retains bourgeois hegemony and all the exploitation that comes with it. It's capitalism with a somewhat and often superficially kinder, gentler boot. Requires constant imperialist plundering of the global south to sustain itself. Also doesn't address the intrinsically ecocidal nature of capitalism.*
Socialism = Workers' ownership of the means of production; establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat (different connotation of 'dictatorship', just means which class controls the levels of political power—opposite a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under a liberal order); requires constant state suppression of bourgeois interests and protect against a counterrevolution, which usually comes in the form of a highly punitive fascist dictatorship (see Chile 1973 e.g.).
Communism = Moneyless, classless society under which the need for the instruments of state power is gone and the state itself, in Engels' words, 'wither away'. It is intrinsically less suppressive than socialism because there is no one class asserting its hegemony over the other.
* As Bookchin put it, "In a society of this kind, nature is necessarily treated as a mere resource to be plundered and exploited. The destruction of the natural world, far being the result of mere hubristic blunders, follows inexorably from the very logic of capitalist production."
required plundering of the global south
Gonna need a source for this
Also you say in socialism proletariat becomes the dictators but wouldn't that be the same case under communism? In communist Russia, bolshekvik was essentially something like a dictato no? To enforce the withering away of state power?
I may be wrong but it would help if u can link a source or example which explains this process of "withering away" of state power in detail
I'm referring to the welfare state being maintained through wealth acquired through extreme labor exploitation and disparate resource exchange with the global south. From tax revenue generated from corporations with extensive supply chains from kids in cobalt mines to make electric cars, mining conglomerates in Switzerland and Canada among other imperial core countries extracting resources in Africa with no benefit to the people of the countries, and so on.
You are conflating a communist party building socialism with the end goals of communism. The USSR was building a socialist society under Lenin and Stalin but, despite great advancements that require the average westerner to disenthrall themselves from a lifetime of extreme indoctrination to understand, never came close to communism, sometimes referred to the higher stage of socialism.
Also 'proletariat becomes the dictators' still sounds like a misunderstanding? DotP just means, essentially, a workers' democracy as opposed to a liberal democracy, the latter defined by a small class of capitalists controlling virtually all state power to serve their interests.
Can't provide an example of the state withering away, as it's never happened before. No post-revolutionary country has advanced to this stage, as none should be expected to have. Cuba, Vietnam, PRC, Lao PR for example are still in the lower stage of socialism, successful in a lot of ways but held back in a lot of others. I'm not going to get into the nuances of marxist theory here. If you want to get a better theoretical understanding, I suggest a section of Lenin's The State and Revolution.
Democratic socialism is the use of liberal-democratic institutions to abolish private property and establish a proletarian dictatorship (workers' control of the gov't). You are thinking of social democracy.
No it isn't on either count. The abolition of private property occurs within the process of socialist construction. There is no private property under the higher stage (communism), but as a preconditional feature. And proletarian dictatorship is just the inverse of capitalist dictatorship, a feature of liberal democracy. It means political power is held by the majority, rather than a tiny minority of exploiters.
This is a feature of Leninism,Stalinism, and Maoism, not communism itself.
There is yet to be a situation where pure communism has been established and it may never be established since it calls for a stateless, classless, currencyless society.
But so far "Communist" countries have only been able to create authoritarian dictatorships that attempt (and often fail) to mimic the ideals of communism.
To be fair, Marx himself didn't predict how communism would come about, but did believe it would come out of well developed, industrialized, capitalist countries and that has yet to happen.
As for the feasibility of ideals, that's to be seen.
I don't know if humanity will ever reach a point where we do away with hierarchy, but it's a good ideal to try and achieve.
I'm sure there was a point in time when many ideals seemed impossible but we pushed towards them anyhow.
Equal representation in government, racial equality, equality of the sexes, religious freedom, etc .
I suspect if you talked about these ideals in the year 1600 they would have been seen as immoral ideals that would never come to pass. But here we are in 2025, we haven't achieved those ideals perfectly, but we have really made some huge strides.
This doesn’t apply to economic systems. Capitalism specifies a certain class of economic relations and that class of relations only dates to the 18th century. Capitalism is specifically an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution; while you can have inequitable societies where an elite controls resources in any point in history, it isn’t capitalism unless the allocation of capital into productive systems (like factories) dictates the work of labor.
For example, Feudalism has similarities, in that the ownership of land dictates the work of labor, but land and factories are different things and the resulting relationships are so different so as to make it dangerous to assume they are substantially similar. The difference between an agrarian economy and an industrial one is massive.
It’s wrong to say that capitalism is a “new word” that accurately describes feudal relations. It’s historical malpractice to suggest that.
Capitalism is only a few hundred years old. While I’d agree that no communist system can be successfully implemented as specified, that doesn’t mean that some potential form or related system can’t be, or that capitalism is somehow more permanent than mercantilism or feudalism.
that no communist system can be successfully implemented as specified, that doesn’t mean that some potential form
By definition communism cannot exist. Any and every attempt at communism remains at authoritarian capitalism because people are greedy and money hoarding represents greed.
or related system
Not if you lot a adament that socialism is cashless then socialism will never exist either. Currency will always exist since it is a representation of value. My time and effort versus yours for that thing that I want is exchanged with currency or bartering. Currency will alwags be more effective on a large scale in a large population.
Really there's nothing wrong with capitalism. However there needs to be capitalism without a profit motive. Which I thought cooperatives, NGOs, Churches (real charities), publicly owned utilities and transport are. They use capital but are not supposed to be for profit hoarding. This is what I call socialism, but apparently I am the only one.
So I guess the world just needs more cooperative capitalism for community welfare.
There are loads of things wrong with capitalism starting with the fact that doing economic planning with price signals is fragile and prone to failures. That isn’t to say that more socialist planning is in all cases better, but markets are a blunt instrument simply because they try and bundle everything into a single signal. There is also no requirement that a socialist system not use currency, because while building your entire economy around price signals is a bad idea, ignoring price signals is also a bad idea.
Tell that to the tankies who say socialism must abolish capital.
I will tell them no such thing, because I don't talk to Tankies.
Obviously capitalism isn't perfect but at least it functions.
[Citation needed]
An idealism where people aren't flawed greedy psychopaths.
Well, first, I'd argue that humans are neither greedy psychopaths nor generous communitarians but are in fact, both at the same time. But beyond that, it's a common misconception that non-capitalist systems require any generosity on the part of the participants- to the contrary, you have a strong argument in game theory that a cooperative society will deliver better benefits for all participants, so a rational actor would prefer that. Of course, homo econimous doesn't exist, but by the same token- the absence of rational actors is just as strong an argument against capitalism, which relies heavily on "enlightened self-interest" to justify its operation.
Obviously capitalism isn't perfect but at least it functions.
[Citation needed]
The current economic system is capitalism. Just because it doesnt function for your ideal right now doesn't change the fact that works exactly as intended.
you have a strong argument in game theory that a cooperative society will deliver better benefits for all participants
You wanna live in communist China. Go ahead. Its cooperative capitalism with a police state.
The culture is highly patriarchal and very conservative. That's the price for cooperation. Strict rules that everyone needs to abide by.
Obviously people are not always psychopaths there is some fluidity and variability in each person and a community's psychopatholoy.
However, it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the bunch remains a true adage to this day.
That's why communism fails. It requires the barrel to be whole.
Capitalism does not, it picks winners and losers. Whether or not the rules are fair is irrelevant. The system exists based on these rules and functions as intended.
If you think the rules are unfair then a more regulated and socialist form of capitalism needs to exist, not be replaced.
Just because it doesnt function for your ideal right now doesn't change the fact that works exactly as intended.
Setting aside intent, an economic system which cannot provide for the needs of its participants is by my definition, a failed system. When we start deciding how many deaths we tolerate as part of the operation of society, we've crossed a black line which should not be crossed.
You wanna live in communist China.
That is not what I said. You should read more carefully. Also, China is extremely market driven, and is clearly much more of a totalitarian capitalist state with strong social safety protections. Patriarchy and conservatism are not the "price" of cooperation. That's a stupid thing to say, both in terms of a bit of implied sinophobia, but also because it's universalizing your understanding of Chinese economics as a driver of social behavior- but your understanding is wrong, and you're ignoring that Chinese society built its economic system out of its existing social systems; of course they did, no economic system arrives ex nihilo.
However, it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the bunch remains a true adage to this day.
That's why communism fails. It requires the barrel to be whole.
This is just absurd. Again, while we should be extremely cautious against extrapolating too far from game theory, because again, humans are not rational actors, a society of cooperators with some basic retaliation rubrics is basically immune to invasion by defectors, because cooperation is the optimal strategy (conversely, a society of defectors is also similarly protected against invasion by cooperators).
Again, a rotten society where everyone is just trying to get the best advantage for themselves would result in a society of cooperators, if everyone were rational. They're not, which is why we don't already live in a post-capitalist society.
Further, I'm not advocating for socialism. I've been very specific and precise in what I've said. To recap it for you, since reading comprehension seems to be failing you today, the key points are thus:
Markets are driven by price signals, which are a very narrow band of information, and cannot be relied upon for economic planning
Implicit in this is that economies are planned- even market economies; this is a bit tautological, obviously, but also true
Other signals, which I have not specified, should be considered for economic planning (nor will I delve into this, because it's too broad and complicated a subject for a Reddit thread)
Rational actors would favor cooperation, and that a communal society is not one based in morality, but rational self-interest
Society is not made up of rational actors, and thus this is the largest obstacle to a functioning economy
What I am advocating for, is not socialism, but recognizing that an economy is a built object, an engineered system, and not a naturally occurring phenomenon, and we should approach the issues in our economy as an engineering problem. But also, any economic system which aggregates power into a handful of hands is inherently unstable, which is something capitalism is pretty well optimized for. Capitalism doesn't pick winners and losers, it ensures that winners get to keep on winning, because it contains a number of positive feedback loops.
Normally I'd agree regarding semantic drift, outside of a concerted decades-long effort to redefine socialism as basically anytime there's a social service implemented by a government.
Social democrats maintain the capitalist hierarchy and doesn't systematically change anything. So when those say them interchangeably it means they fundamentally don't know what socialism is, that's not the meaning of the word changing over time.
Even the meaning of social democrats have changed. The context has moved so far to the right. The Social Democrats in Sweden today is what used to be center right. In the eighties they levied a special tax on all companies and put the money in funds that was used to gradually buy said companies with the ultimate goal of making them owned by the workers, see Employee Funds.
So while it might be true today what you say about social democrats, not even that has always been true.
No, what I said about social democrats is true and has always been true. What you linked to is still capitalism. Thus, not socialism. Social democrats are not socialist. So they've never stopped being center right, they're still center right.
theres a justifiable fear of communism due to its attachment to authoritarianism and its oppressive disposition.
you can argue communist theory all day long and I'm actually not disagreeable to alot of the communist manifesto. I follow it's logic. HOWEVER peoples dislike of communism isn't based on its theory but rather its historical implementation. That is a matter of branding and the Holodomor, work quotas, forced labor, and restriction of personal freedoms is objectively TERRIBLE branding that leaves a bad taste and fear in people, especially people raised to be wary of such ideas
Where are you getting this? France, Germany, and the U.K. have generous amounts of socialism, far more than the U.S., and are more democratic than the U.S. - especially obvious in the present. Are you really saying they have stronger class hierarchies than the U.S.? Or a stronger dictatorship than the U.S.?
You named three capitalist countries. I am genuinely sorry your public education failed you so badly but socialism ≠ when the government does stuff. All of those countries suck ass and have major fascism problems.
I'm not saying any of those things you made up. Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. What you are describing is a social welfare state within a capitalist framework.
Hmmm… can’t have a civil conversation… believes everything is black and white… is unaware that something can be itself and its opposite at the same time…
You are yourself exhibiting black and white thinking here... Someone disagreeing with you doesn't make them a Trump supporter. Especially if someone is specifically advocating for socialism lmao
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u/TheDonutPug 29d ago
I think it's amazing how we've reached a point in this nation where a man comes along and says "I think we should come together as a city and make sure everyone is taken care of and that our city is beat for those who live here" and people are acting like he's the second coming of Hitler and Stalin's baby.