You’ve explained to me your philosophy on what these words mean and how they apply a sufficient number of times; I don’t need to hear it again. I am asking a specific factual question. Just firmly repeating your worldview is not going to lead me to suddenly start to agree with it. You must normally have these discussions with very suggestible people or something if you expect it to work that way.
What specific policies has Biden done that made specific factual things in the world worse? This isn’t like a gotcha; I’m expecting there to be a real and somewhat-valid answer. I have my list of good things he’s done, but I wanted to hear your list first and genuinely hear you out. I thought that you were engaged enough in the topic that we’d actually be able to talk about it with that as the starting point, but I’ve given you a couple of chances now and you’ve just been trying to berate me with your worldview instead, so maybe not.
What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
Let’s start over, we are clearly talking past each other. I’m going to list a set of assertions that I believe, as a leftist, that are common among leftists.
Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
Following the previous 3 statements, we can look at Biden. Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
I’ll add: I advocate for voting for the lesser evil. What my original comment was about, however, was getting liberals to understand and accept that they face a fundamentally different set of electoral issues from right wingers. Right wingers are fascists, and have openly fascist candidates to vote for. The GOP is actively appealing to the far-right. The DNC, however, is appealing to the center-right, and feels entitled to the votes of leftists because they aren’t as far-right.
That’s the key! Because the DNC is content with maintaining the Capitalist status quo, in the eyes of leftists, the DNC will always be a lesser of two evils. Even an extremely competent DNC would still be an extremely competent liberal Capitalist party, and would still be the lesser of two evils.
Yeah. Pretty much everything in your second part, I agree with. In particular:
Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
Pretty much this, I would agree with, and I think we’re on the same page in terms of needing to vote for him as the lesser of two evils while urgently trying to find some kind of better solution for the future before the end of the world comes (or, comes more than it already has).
Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
So this is a significantly bigger discussion… I actually don’t think capitalism itself is bad. The fire analogy is actually really good, to me. Capitalism is a powerful tool, you need it in order to do things that are useful to get done, but if it gets out of control it’s incredibly dangerous. You need to have strong protections to keep it contained so it can do its job without taking over. Right now, in the US, it’s not contained, so a lot of the harm you’re talking about (increasing disparity) is entirely accurate.
Probably that viewpoint is gonna be popular with more or less nobody, and maybe you will reclassify me again as a liberal because of it, but you asked what I thought so that’s what I think on a sincere basis.
I think most people in government in DC are corrupted by corporate money. The Republicans have sort of lost the plot of even trying for coherent governance that’s good for anybody, rich or poor, but most of the Democrats are working diligently on behalf of the rich people. It’s a massive damn problem. I don’t think that’s because of “liberalism” in any abstract sense, any more than the Republicans are working for “small government”; I think it’s just open corruption. I think you would have to fix the influence of money in politics to even be able to talk about governance in terms of systems of belief or principle. Which is probably a lot of what you mean in terms of tearing down the systems of liberalism that are currently in charge of everything, so I suspect there’s a lot of overlap between how we see it on that score too, although maybe the labels are different.
Why does anyone need capitalism to get anything done? Are you saying nothing got done for all of human history before the 19th century? How does that work?
In addition to weapons and suffering, the huge capitalist economies of the modern first world produce vaccines, computers, abundant food, and so on, and I wouldn’t want to throw that away. My personal belief is that the development and modern production of those things can’t be wholly separated from the power and breadth of the market economies where they happened. In its current incarnation, it also involves a lot of suffering to create it, but to me that’s not inherent to the system, it’s just how we currently do it. You might disagree; if so, where would you point to as a good example of where and when it’s been done well (fully non-capitalist economy that produced good quality of life for all of its citizens)?
Tweaking the system so that everyone (of every race i.e. not like we did it before) is living what white people experienced during the New Deal or the post-WW2 US sounds great to me. I realize that that’s purchased with the blood of a lot of miners and labor activists during the late 1800s and early 1900s, but I think once that system was created, it worked great for the citizens, better than did a lot of countries that went further from there full-on into a complete Communist overthrow. No?
They happen to be capitalist and they do produce a lot. But they don’t produce a lot because they are capitalist. Those things have no clear relationship.
Soviet Russia had industry. Soviet Russia had research and science. Soviet Russia made vaccines and was very prolific about vaccinating their population. Soviet Russia wasn’t capitalist, or even communist for that matter. So how were they able to do that without capitalism? Everything that applies to Soviet Russia applies to China the same btw.
So, clearly it has nothing to do with capitalism. And funny you mentioned the new deal. The last time the United States bucked capitalism for socialist policy. Republicans/fascists/capitalists were literally plotting to kill/overthrow FDR over his new deal policy. We literally didn’t get there because of capitalism. We got there in spite of capitalism.
Suffering and inequality are inherent to capitalism. That doesn’t mean capitalism wasn’t better than mercantilism or feudalism. It was. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or the best system humanity has created does it?
Also, post world war II there was no communist overthrow anywhere. Russia, China and Korea aren’t communist and never have been. They’re Leninist. Most communist despise Leninist almost as much as capitalists. Russia was as communist as the Nazis were socialist. Which is not in any meaningful sense.
They happen to be capitalist and they do produce a lot. But they don’t produce a lot because they are capitalist. Those things have no clear relationship.
You or I could theorize about the causality, but I would say it’s very hard to deny that there’s a correlation. That’s most of my argument here – not philosophy, but how it seems like it works out in practice. The way it works in practice (evil capitalism producing better-run businesses than worker-owned factories with buy-in from everybody) actually doesn’t make sense to me philosophically. I don’t understand why capitalist systems + big-government intervention seem like they produce almost everything that needs producing in the modern world. I’m just saying that to me (and you may disagree), it seems like evidentially that’s how it is.
Soviet Russia had industry. Soviet Russia had research and science. Soviet Russia made vaccines and was very prolific about vaccinating their population. Soviet Russia wasn’t capitalist, or even communist for that matter. So how were they able to do that without capitalism? Everything that applies to Soviet Russia applies to China the same btw.
The Sinovac vaccine was very different from the Moderna vaccine – it worked fine, but it wasn’t the same step forward in vaccine technology. Soviet computing and heavy industry was far behind the West for the whole of the USSR. We didn’t have millions of people dying of starvation, for one. I’m not saying command economies are always worse at everything than quasi-fascist-but-sorta-free-if-you-have-enough-money economies like the modern US. China in particular is better at solving certain types of governmental problems that tend to hamstring the US. But, you can’t possibly be saying Soviet Russia was the equal of the West in terms of the well-being of their people. Are you?
If you’re saying USSR and China don’t count, what does count? Where has what you think would work better in the US been done on a big scale, and worked well? That’s not some kind of rhetorical question, I really want to hear what the answer is.
So, clearly it has nothing to do with capitalism. And funny you mentioned the new deal. The last time the United States bucked capitalism for socialist policy. Republicans/fascists/capitalists were literally plotting to kill/overthrow FDR over his new deal policy. We literally didn’t get there because of capitalism. We got there in spite of capitalism.
Yeah. That’s what I mean – I like Bernie Sanders, I like FDR even if some of the business leaders at the time thought he was Josef Stalin come to life in a wheelchair. That, to me, is a good economy. If that’s not left enough for you and you want to go further, I think it’s fair to ask where that system has worked well before I really agree that it’d be a good idea to completely overturn the US system in favor of it, that the result is clearly going to be better.
You or I could theorize about the causality, but I would say it’s very hard to deny that there’s a correlation.
You’ve yet to point out any correlation. I specifically pointed out how there is no correlation. Which you just ignored or hand waved away completely.
The Sinovac vaccine was very different from the Moderna vaccine
Yes but it’s hard to know where to start with the problems with this statement. First that’s not a creation of the Soviet Union since it hasn’t existed since the early 90’s. Further the efficacy of a vaccine is non sequitur. You said it was capitalism that gave us vaccines. Yet non capitalistic systems make them too. So you move goalposts claiming they aren’t as effective. If you’re going to make an argument stick to it.
Soviet computing and heavy industry was far behind the West for the whole of the USSR
Again not relevant. They shouldn’t have had any at all if it was capitalism that gave them to us. The fact they were making their own in any capacity disproves your statement.
We didn’t have millions of people dying of starvation, for one.
At that exact moment? Maybe not. We’ve had our own famines however. And starved an uncounted number of people. Even then, those famines were not caused because communism. They had nothing to do with communism. They were naturally occurring famines. Made worse by unanswerable ignorant authoritarian leaders. Unwilling to listen to actual experts or those with experience. It had nothing to do with any actual social or economic policy inherant to socialism/comunism. But if you disagree please point out where in Marx’s writing the fault lies. Engles is a spiteful lunatic who’s musings and philosophy have caused untold damage to the ideology as a whole. But even his philosophy didn’t cause the famines. But if you disagree please explain how “because communism”.
If you’re saying USSR and China don’t count, what does count?
I’m not saying that. They do. Naming something Communism or Communist doesn’t make it that. There are specific points that make something communism. Which none of those countries really have had. Specifically they’re Marxist-Leninist. Though Lenin’s ideology runs counter to a lot of Marx’s. Making that label an oxymoron more than anything. Regardless, marxist-leninism wasn’t and still isn’t communism. It’s goal was to develop the infrastructure to the point that somehow. Through hand wavy magic the powerful autocrats in charge would magically give up their power and control, switching everything to communism when the time was right. Yes, it’s stupid magical, and irrational thinking. But not communism
Where has what you think would work better in the US been done on a big scale, and worked well? That’s not some kind of rhetorical question, I really want to hear what the answer is.
Most the rest of the industrialized world. No really. Most have single payer. It works well. Scandanavian taxation, regulation, and governing philosophy. It’s not perfect, but far better than what we have in the US. Not to mention their public central heating. Austrian style public housing. It’s comfortable, affordable, and many of their celebrities even choose to live in it even. Public high speed rail and mass transit like Europe and much of the rest of the industrialized world. The sort of stuff capitalists and capitalism keep us from. Not because they don’t work. But because there’s no money in it for them.
Alright, thanks for the good-faith response. You’re correct, your belief in Capitalism being a useful tool that needs to be harnessed and contained, over actually needing to transition to a Worker-owned economy, is what separates what I am referring to as leftists and yourself. You can consider yourself a leftist, but I would probably classify you as a liberal or a Social Democrat (probably closer to a SocDem than a liberal, which is essentially a centrist).
The fundamental difference here is that leftists (as I am referring to, and will further refer as italicized to save time) have analyzed Capitalism and believe it to be fundamentally unsalvageable, only band-aids and stop-gaps to slow the fundamental issues like The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or fundamental exploitation.
Your viewpoint is extremely common among Social Democrats, and that aligns very well with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Definitely far more preferable than liberalism, but it’s also important to realize that leftists consider Bernie to be a compromise at best, and not an actual restructuring of the economy.
What you analyze as money corrupting in politics being the root cause of issues, leftists would also point to rising disparity even in Social Democracies like the Nordic Countries. It’s slower there thanks to Worker Empowerment via strong unions, but still continues to rise. You agree with leftists that money in politics is bad, but you seem to believe this is a policy issue, and not a fundamental consequence of Capitalism, which is what leftists tend to believe.
Is this a fair explanation? If we look at your view of liberalism and Capitalism in general, we can see that, yes, Biden is more in line with what you want than what leftists want. For you, Biden is more of a question of competency, than direction, whereas for leftists, the direction itself is bad.
The fundamental difference here is that leftists (as I am referring to, and will further refer as italicized to save time) have analyzed Capitalism and believe it to be fundamentally unsalvageable, only band-aids and stop-gaps to slow the fundamental issues like The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or fundamental exploitation.
Fair enough. But also, fire fundamentally spreads uncontrollably to the point where it destroys everything; that’s it’s nature. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to heat your home.
I get what you’re saying and I think we’re pretty much in agreement on the facts; how to assign the labels isn’t to me a critical back-and-forth to have. I get what you mean. I guess my big substantive question would be, what would be examples of society where your vision of leftism has been implemented? When I talk about capitalism being a useful tool, I mean that I like having vaccines, supermarkets, computers, all the stuff that’s the the fruit of having a massive organized economy. Obviously the current system isn’t the only one imaginable that can produce that stuff, but I think if you’re going to point to the problems of the dystopian US economy (which are very real) and argue for throwing the whole thing away, what are you going to replace it with? A semi-command economy like China, or libertarian everyone-do-whatever-they-want-with-their-business system, or back to individual farming, or what? Like where is a society that has implemented what you’re talking about wanting to do and how has it worked out?
You don’t need to heat your home with fire, you’re tying heating to fire just like you’re tying production and infrastructure to Capitalism.
What I personally want, is what all leftists want at the core: worker ownership of the Means of Production, rather than individual. This has been expressed numerous ways, from Worker Co-operatives in developed nations, as a quick example.
When you attribute vaccines, supermarkets, computers, and so forth to Capitalism, you’re stating that in order to have those, there must be individuals owning and controlling production dictatorially, rather than democratically.
Again: I’m advocating for Socialism. Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. This isn’t throwing away infrastructure, just the concept of individual ownership. The economy would be massive and organized, just democratically rather than dictatorially.
you’re stating that in order to have those, there must be individuals owning and controlling production dictatorially, rather than democratically
I didn’t say that. I actually specifically said “the current system isn’t the only one imaginable that can produce that stuff.”
I’m just saying that it’s highly relevant to me that the societies that have produced this stuff have been largely very capitalist. I know it’s not fully a free market; there’s always a heavy component of government “intervention” i.e. funding for basic research and picking winners and giving subsidies and whatnot. It’s not an argument from philosophy; I actually don’t really know why it is that you don’t see a ton of worker-owned collective businesses outcompeting the privately-owned ones. It seems like they should; the workers would be happier and the quality of the goods would be better, and they should get support from the community wanting to buy their stuff instead of the EvilCorp stuff. I’m saying that whatever the reason (which, again, I genuinely don’t know or really have anything better than a guess about), that’s a highly relevant piece of information.
That’s why I’m asking, can you give some specific examples? You mentioned worker co-operatives, but that’s very different from a whole country organized along non-capitalist lines, and you’re arguing for overthrowing the entire system to make that (right? or have I misunderstood?). I’m asking, where is a place where that whole country has run along those lines and it’s worked well?
It’s not like a sarcastic or rhetorical question, I’m genuinely asking for an example of what you mean. Worker-owned collectives sound great, and I do think our country would be much improved if they replaced a lot of the privately-held businesses. But that’s very different from wholesale changing the large-scale aspects of the system.
You directly tied vaccines, supermarkets, and computers to “massive, organized economies” and tied that to Capitalism, so if I misunderstood what you meant by that then fair enough. However, what follows in your comment is not evidence for belief in superiority of one economic system over the other.
Your first major paragraph talks about how, in your vision, highly developed countries tend to be Capitalist, while despite the obvious benefits of Worker Co-operatives, they seem to be rare in these developed countries. I’ll answer each bit individually.
Capitalism is a system of exploitation, whereby owners suck up the value workers create. As the world gets increasingly complex, the farther away from the top you are, the more exploited you are. In the modern era, this expresses in totally imperialist control of the global south. Nestle, for example, uses child labor and brutal working conditions to extract necessary resources and profit immensely, despite being headquartered in Nordic Countries, where the quality of life and development are some of the highest in the world. This is by no means an exception, it’s the rule.
What drives quality of life is not what economic system you have, but the level of development, largely. Reducing disparity is fantastic as well, but primarily, development determines quality of life. Tying supermarkets, vaccines, and computers to Capitalism, rather than to developed nations, is a bit of a misattribution: The tools and goods present in a country do not care who owns tools, all they care about is investment in industrialization and development.
As for why Worker Co-operatives are not more common, it’s fairly simple. Despite being more stable than Capitalist entities, and providing greater worker satisfaction, Co-operatives are more difficult to start than Capitalist entities. As we have previously discussed, it is in Capitalist’s interest to keep it that way, and prevent the system from incentivizing these better structures, so that they can maintain power.
Next up, your request for a “specific example” at a country-scale of what I am asking for. The shortest answer is that there isn’t one, at least not yet, but that by no means discounts the possibility of its existence in the future, you’d have to explain why you think it impossible. The longer answer is that there have been several examples with radically different structures that modern leftists have all learned from, but none of which were 1 to 1 what leftists seek to replicate. What do I mean? Well, some examples include the EZLN and Revolutionary Catalonia, which are/were Libertarian Socialist and Anarcho-Communist, respectively. They have their own shortcomings, notably the modern lack of existence of Revolutionary Catalonia due to its inability to defend itself, and the EZLN for being very slow at developing, though it works for the people who live there.
There are other examples of more statist countries, organized along the lines of Marxism-Leninism. These include places like Cuba, the USSR, and China. While the latter 2 did manage to skyrocket quality of life with huge investments into development, ultimately the Politburo is unaccountable to the masses, and as such the governments of each have committed atrocities. Cuba is a bit of a unique case, it’s nearly completely locked out of global trade, and as such it has had severely stunted development.
So far, I wish to recreate none of those examples, but each has provided extremely valuable information on how to build a future Socialist society. You appear to be rejecting the idea of analyzing the mechanics of Socialism and Capitalism and applying the results of that analysis to the real world, and instead you appear to be in favor of simply “copying whatever country has a higher quality of life,” without looking at trends or cost. Again, leftist believe that Capitalism itself is unsustainable and brutal, and therefore needs to be replaced with Socialism. This is not because of vibes, but genuine mechanical analysis.
I have a question for you, if you’ll oblige: what is the extent to which you have read leftist theoretical texts, such as from Marx, or even Anarchists like Kropotkin? If none, would you be willing to read?
Capitalism is a system of exploitation, whereby owners suck up the value workers create. As the world gets increasingly complex, the farther away from the top you are, the more exploited you are.
Agree
What drives quality of life is not what economic system you have, but the level of development, largely.
Massive agree
The tools and goods present in a country do not care who owns tools, all they care about is investment in industrialization and development.
Agree
Next up, your request for a “specific example” at a country-scale of what I am asking for. The shortest answer is that there isn’t one, at least not yet, but that by no means discounts the possibility of its existence in the future, you’d have to explain why you think it impossible.
I didn’t say at all that it was impossible. In this and a lot of your following argument, you seem like you think I’m saying the outcomes I talk about are inevitable as an absolute. I’m perfectly open to the idea that a non-capitalist society would work better. What I’m saying is that, in the observed real world I have observed so far, it seems like it has significant drawbacks. That doesn’t have to be the end of the story but it does seem relevant to bring to the table if someone’s going to argue that the US needs to change itself to a totally non-capitalist society. No?
I think we’ll probably agree very hard that the current US system is too capitalistic and exploitative. It’s out of control plutocracy or borderline feudalism like the US at the turn-of-the-20th-century, or if you wanted to oversimplify a little, like China or Russia before their revolutions. My argument is that the labor movement in the US, leading to massive reform like the New Deal within a still-capitalist framework, worked way better for the quality of life of the people in the US than did the full-on transition to non-capitalism in Russia and China.
What do I mean? Well, some examples include the EZLN and Revolutionary Catalonia, which are/were Libertarian Socialist and Anarcho-Communist, respectively. They have their own shortcomings, notably the modern lack of existence of Revolutionary Catalonia due to its inability to defend itself, and the EZLN for being very slow at developing, though it works for the people who live there.
Surely these outcomes are relevant? Again, I’m not saying it’s impossible for it to work if done right, or that the US’s currently-hypercapitalistic-to-the-point-of-black-comedy system needs to stay the same.
These include places like Cuba, the USSR, and China. While the latter 2 did manage to skyrocket quality of life
…
Millions of dead of starvation people in both countries would disagree with you
I think this is very important to keep in mind, when talking about the (absolutely wholly unacceptable I agree with you) level of hunger and misery in the United States, is that it can also get much much worse.
ultimately the Politburo is unaccountable to the masses, and as such the governments of each have committed atrocities. Cuba is a bit of a unique case, it’s nearly completely locked out of global trade, and as such it has had severely stunted development.
Yeah. There’s a certain amount of realpolitik involved, that the US and the West in general like to “punish” socialist countries economically or militarily and then use their suffering as a way to claim that socialism doesn’t work. Cuba’s a really interesting example because even under the boot of significant oppression under that philosophy, it still does some things really well (education and medicine), arguably better than some of the countries doing the oppressing.
That’s a counterbalancing factor against a whole lot of what I’m saying, I recognize, yes. There’s a book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” where someone closely involved in that system explains it in absolutely horrifying living color.
You appear to be rejecting the idea of analyzing the mechanics of Socialism and Capitalism and applying the results of that analysis to the real world
Not at all at all – like I say, I’m not at all closed to the idea that they can work. I just think too much analysis purely based on theory without looking at instructive examples is a bad idea. The current world is not the end of the story but you do need a balance of both.
what is the extent to which you have read leftist theoretical texts, such as from Marx, or even Anarchists like Kropotkin? If none, would you be willing to read?
I have basically read none; for what reason I honestly don’t know. Sure, I’m open to it.
You’ve explained to me your philosophy on what these words mean and how they apply a sufficient number of times; I don’t need to hear it again. I am asking a specific factual question. Just firmly repeating your worldview is not going to lead me to suddenly start to agree with it. You must normally have these discussions with very suggestible people or something if you expect it to work that way.
What specific policies has Biden done that made specific factual things in the world worse? This isn’t like a gotcha; I’m expecting there to be a real and somewhat-valid answer. I have my list of good things he’s done, but I wanted to hear your list first and genuinely hear you out. I thought that you were engaged enough in the topic that we’d actually be able to talk about it with that as the starting point, but I’ve given you a couple of chances now and you’ve just been trying to berate me with your worldview instead, so maybe not.
What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
Let’s start over, we are clearly talking past each other. I’m going to list a set of assertions that I believe, as a leftist, that are common among leftists.
Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.
Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?
Following the previous 3 statements, we can look at Biden. Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.
I’ll add: I advocate for voting for the lesser evil. What my original comment was about, however, was getting liberals to understand and accept that they face a fundamentally different set of electoral issues from right wingers. Right wingers are fascists, and have openly fascist candidates to vote for. The GOP is actively appealing to the far-right. The DNC, however, is appealing to the center-right, and feels entitled to the votes of leftists because they aren’t as far-right.
That’s the key! Because the DNC is content with maintaining the Capitalist status quo, in the eyes of leftists, the DNC will always be a lesser of two evils. Even an extremely competent DNC would still be an extremely competent liberal Capitalist party, and would still be the lesser of two evils.
Does this make sense to you?
Yeah. Pretty much everything in your second part, I agree with. In particular:
Pretty much this, I would agree with, and I think we’re on the same page in terms of needing to vote for him as the lesser of two evils while urgently trying to find some kind of better solution for the future before the end of the world comes (or, comes more than it already has).
So this is a significantly bigger discussion… I actually don’t think capitalism itself is bad. The fire analogy is actually really good, to me. Capitalism is a powerful tool, you need it in order to do things that are useful to get done, but if it gets out of control it’s incredibly dangerous. You need to have strong protections to keep it contained so it can do its job without taking over. Right now, in the US, it’s not contained, so a lot of the harm you’re talking about (increasing disparity) is entirely accurate.
Probably that viewpoint is gonna be popular with more or less nobody, and maybe you will reclassify me again as a liberal because of it, but you asked what I thought so that’s what I think on a sincere basis.
I think most people in government in DC are corrupted by corporate money. The Republicans have sort of lost the plot of even trying for coherent governance that’s good for anybody, rich or poor, but most of the Democrats are working diligently on behalf of the rich people. It’s a massive damn problem. I don’t think that’s because of “liberalism” in any abstract sense, any more than the Republicans are working for “small government”; I think it’s just open corruption. I think you would have to fix the influence of money in politics to even be able to talk about governance in terms of systems of belief or principle. Which is probably a lot of what you mean in terms of tearing down the systems of liberalism that are currently in charge of everything, so I suspect there’s a lot of overlap between how we see it on that score too, although maybe the labels are different.
Why does anyone need capitalism to get anything done? Are you saying nothing got done for all of human history before the 19th century? How does that work?
In addition to weapons and suffering, the huge capitalist economies of the modern first world produce vaccines, computers, abundant food, and so on, and I wouldn’t want to throw that away. My personal belief is that the development and modern production of those things can’t be wholly separated from the power and breadth of the market economies where they happened. In its current incarnation, it also involves a lot of suffering to create it, but to me that’s not inherent to the system, it’s just how we currently do it. You might disagree; if so, where would you point to as a good example of where and when it’s been done well (fully non-capitalist economy that produced good quality of life for all of its citizens)?
Tweaking the system so that everyone (of every race i.e. not like we did it before) is living what white people experienced during the New Deal or the post-WW2 US sounds great to me. I realize that that’s purchased with the blood of a lot of miners and labor activists during the late 1800s and early 1900s, but I think once that system was created, it worked great for the citizens, better than did a lot of countries that went further from there full-on into a complete Communist overthrow. No?
They happen to be capitalist and they do produce a lot. But they don’t produce a lot because they are capitalist. Those things have no clear relationship.
Soviet Russia had industry. Soviet Russia had research and science. Soviet Russia made vaccines and was very prolific about vaccinating their population. Soviet Russia wasn’t capitalist, or even communist for that matter. So how were they able to do that without capitalism? Everything that applies to Soviet Russia applies to China the same btw.
So, clearly it has nothing to do with capitalism. And funny you mentioned the new deal. The last time the United States bucked capitalism for socialist policy. Republicans/fascists/capitalists were literally plotting to kill/overthrow FDR over his new deal policy. We literally didn’t get there because of capitalism. We got there in spite of capitalism.
Suffering and inequality are inherent to capitalism. That doesn’t mean capitalism wasn’t better than mercantilism or feudalism. It was. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or the best system humanity has created does it?
Also, post world war II there was no communist overthrow anywhere. Russia, China and Korea aren’t communist and never have been. They’re Leninist. Most communist despise Leninist almost as much as capitalists. Russia was as communist as the Nazis were socialist. Which is not in any meaningful sense.
You or I could theorize about the causality, but I would say it’s very hard to deny that there’s a correlation. That’s most of my argument here – not philosophy, but how it seems like it works out in practice. The way it works in practice (evil capitalism producing better-run businesses than worker-owned factories with buy-in from everybody) actually doesn’t make sense to me philosophically. I don’t understand why capitalist systems + big-government intervention seem like they produce almost everything that needs producing in the modern world. I’m just saying that to me (and you may disagree), it seems like evidentially that’s how it is.
The Sinovac vaccine was very different from the Moderna vaccine – it worked fine, but it wasn’t the same step forward in vaccine technology. Soviet computing and heavy industry was far behind the West for the whole of the USSR. We didn’t have millions of people dying of starvation, for one. I’m not saying command economies are always worse at everything than quasi-fascist-but-sorta-free-if-you-have-enough-money economies like the modern US. China in particular is better at solving certain types of governmental problems that tend to hamstring the US. But, you can’t possibly be saying Soviet Russia was the equal of the West in terms of the well-being of their people. Are you?
If you’re saying USSR and China don’t count, what does count? Where has what you think would work better in the US been done on a big scale, and worked well? That’s not some kind of rhetorical question, I really want to hear what the answer is.
Yeah. That’s what I mean – I like Bernie Sanders, I like FDR even if some of the business leaders at the time thought he was Josef Stalin come to life in a wheelchair. That, to me, is a good economy. If that’s not left enough for you and you want to go further, I think it’s fair to ask where that system has worked well before I really agree that it’d be a good idea to completely overturn the US system in favor of it, that the result is clearly going to be better.
You’ve yet to point out any correlation. I specifically pointed out how there is no correlation. Which you just ignored or hand waved away completely.
Yes but it’s hard to know where to start with the problems with this statement. First that’s not a creation of the Soviet Union since it hasn’t existed since the early 90’s. Further the efficacy of a vaccine is non sequitur. You said it was capitalism that gave us vaccines. Yet non capitalistic systems make them too. So you move goalposts claiming they aren’t as effective. If you’re going to make an argument stick to it.
Again not relevant. They shouldn’t have had any at all if it was capitalism that gave them to us. The fact they were making their own in any capacity disproves your statement.
At that exact moment? Maybe not. We’ve had our own famines however. And starved an uncounted number of people. Even then, those famines were not caused because communism. They had nothing to do with communism. They were naturally occurring famines. Made worse by unanswerable ignorant authoritarian leaders. Unwilling to listen to actual experts or those with experience. It had nothing to do with any actual social or economic policy inherant to socialism/comunism. But if you disagree please point out where in Marx’s writing the fault lies. Engles is a spiteful lunatic who’s musings and philosophy have caused untold damage to the ideology as a whole. But even his philosophy didn’t cause the famines. But if you disagree please explain how “because communism”.
I’m not saying that. They do. Naming something Communism or Communist doesn’t make it that. There are specific points that make something communism. Which none of those countries really have had. Specifically they’re Marxist-Leninist. Though Lenin’s ideology runs counter to a lot of Marx’s. Making that label an oxymoron more than anything. Regardless, marxist-leninism wasn’t and still isn’t communism. It’s goal was to develop the infrastructure to the point that somehow. Through hand wavy magic the powerful autocrats in charge would magically give up their power and control, switching everything to communism when the time was right. Yes, it’s stupid magical, and irrational thinking. But not communism
Most the rest of the industrialized world. No really. Most have single payer. It works well. Scandanavian taxation, regulation, and governing philosophy. It’s not perfect, but far better than what we have in the US. Not to mention their public central heating. Austrian style public housing. It’s comfortable, affordable, and many of their celebrities even choose to live in it even. Public high speed rail and mass transit like Europe and much of the rest of the industrialized world. The sort of stuff capitalists and capitalism keep us from. Not because they don’t work. But because there’s no money in it for them.
Alright, thanks for the good-faith response. You’re correct, your belief in Capitalism being a useful tool that needs to be harnessed and contained, over actually needing to transition to a Worker-owned economy, is what separates what I am referring to as leftists and yourself. You can consider yourself a leftist, but I would probably classify you as a liberal or a Social Democrat (probably closer to a SocDem than a liberal, which is essentially a centrist).
The fundamental difference here is that leftists (as I am referring to, and will further refer as italicized to save time) have analyzed Capitalism and believe it to be fundamentally unsalvageable, only band-aids and stop-gaps to slow the fundamental issues like The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, or fundamental exploitation.
Your viewpoint is extremely common among Social Democrats, and that aligns very well with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Definitely far more preferable than liberalism, but it’s also important to realize that leftists consider Bernie to be a compromise at best, and not an actual restructuring of the economy.
What you analyze as money corrupting in politics being the root cause of issues, leftists would also point to rising disparity even in Social Democracies like the Nordic Countries. It’s slower there thanks to Worker Empowerment via strong unions, but still continues to rise. You agree with leftists that money in politics is bad, but you seem to believe this is a policy issue, and not a fundamental consequence of Capitalism, which is what leftists tend to believe.
Is this a fair explanation? If we look at your view of liberalism and Capitalism in general, we can see that, yes, Biden is more in line with what you want than what leftists want. For you, Biden is more of a question of competency, than direction, whereas for leftists, the direction itself is bad.
Do you see what I’ve been saying now?
Fair enough. But also, fire fundamentally spreads uncontrollably to the point where it destroys everything; that’s it’s nature. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to heat your home.
I get what you’re saying and I think we’re pretty much in agreement on the facts; how to assign the labels isn’t to me a critical back-and-forth to have. I get what you mean. I guess my big substantive question would be, what would be examples of society where your vision of leftism has been implemented? When I talk about capitalism being a useful tool, I mean that I like having vaccines, supermarkets, computers, all the stuff that’s the the fruit of having a massive organized economy. Obviously the current system isn’t the only one imaginable that can produce that stuff, but I think if you’re going to point to the problems of the dystopian US economy (which are very real) and argue for throwing the whole thing away, what are you going to replace it with? A semi-command economy like China, or libertarian everyone-do-whatever-they-want-with-their-business system, or back to individual farming, or what? Like where is a society that has implemented what you’re talking about wanting to do and how has it worked out?
You don’t need to heat your home with fire, you’re tying heating to fire just like you’re tying production and infrastructure to Capitalism.
What I personally want, is what all leftists want at the core: worker ownership of the Means of Production, rather than individual. This has been expressed numerous ways, from Worker Co-operatives in developed nations, as a quick example.
When you attribute vaccines, supermarkets, computers, and so forth to Capitalism, you’re stating that in order to have those, there must be individuals owning and controlling production dictatorially, rather than democratically.
Again: I’m advocating for Socialism. Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. This isn’t throwing away infrastructure, just the concept of individual ownership. The economy would be massive and organized, just democratically rather than dictatorially.
I didn’t say that. I actually specifically said “the current system isn’t the only one imaginable that can produce that stuff.”
I’m just saying that it’s highly relevant to me that the societies that have produced this stuff have been largely very capitalist. I know it’s not fully a free market; there’s always a heavy component of government “intervention” i.e. funding for basic research and picking winners and giving subsidies and whatnot. It’s not an argument from philosophy; I actually don’t really know why it is that you don’t see a ton of worker-owned collective businesses outcompeting the privately-owned ones. It seems like they should; the workers would be happier and the quality of the goods would be better, and they should get support from the community wanting to buy their stuff instead of the EvilCorp stuff. I’m saying that whatever the reason (which, again, I genuinely don’t know or really have anything better than a guess about), that’s a highly relevant piece of information.
That’s why I’m asking, can you give some specific examples? You mentioned worker co-operatives, but that’s very different from a whole country organized along non-capitalist lines, and you’re arguing for overthrowing the entire system to make that (right? or have I misunderstood?). I’m asking, where is a place where that whole country has run along those lines and it’s worked well?
It’s not like a sarcastic or rhetorical question, I’m genuinely asking for an example of what you mean. Worker-owned collectives sound great, and I do think our country would be much improved if they replaced a lot of the privately-held businesses. But that’s very different from wholesale changing the large-scale aspects of the system.
You directly tied vaccines, supermarkets, and computers to “massive, organized economies” and tied that to Capitalism, so if I misunderstood what you meant by that then fair enough. However, what follows in your comment is not evidence for belief in superiority of one economic system over the other.
Your first major paragraph talks about how, in your vision, highly developed countries tend to be Capitalist, while despite the obvious benefits of Worker Co-operatives, they seem to be rare in these developed countries. I’ll answer each bit individually.
Capitalism is a system of exploitation, whereby owners suck up the value workers create. As the world gets increasingly complex, the farther away from the top you are, the more exploited you are. In the modern era, this expresses in totally imperialist control of the global south. Nestle, for example, uses child labor and brutal working conditions to extract necessary resources and profit immensely, despite being headquartered in Nordic Countries, where the quality of life and development are some of the highest in the world. This is by no means an exception, it’s the rule.
What drives quality of life is not what economic system you have, but the level of development, largely. Reducing disparity is fantastic as well, but primarily, development determines quality of life. Tying supermarkets, vaccines, and computers to Capitalism, rather than to developed nations, is a bit of a misattribution: The tools and goods present in a country do not care who owns tools, all they care about is investment in industrialization and development.
As for why Worker Co-operatives are not more common, it’s fairly simple. Despite being more stable than Capitalist entities, and providing greater worker satisfaction, Co-operatives are more difficult to start than Capitalist entities. As we have previously discussed, it is in Capitalist’s interest to keep it that way, and prevent the system from incentivizing these better structures, so that they can maintain power.
Next up, your request for a “specific example” at a country-scale of what I am asking for. The shortest answer is that there isn’t one, at least not yet, but that by no means discounts the possibility of its existence in the future, you’d have to explain why you think it impossible. The longer answer is that there have been several examples with radically different structures that modern leftists have all learned from, but none of which were 1 to 1 what leftists seek to replicate. What do I mean? Well, some examples include the EZLN and Revolutionary Catalonia, which are/were Libertarian Socialist and Anarcho-Communist, respectively. They have their own shortcomings, notably the modern lack of existence of Revolutionary Catalonia due to its inability to defend itself, and the EZLN for being very slow at developing, though it works for the people who live there.
There are other examples of more statist countries, organized along the lines of Marxism-Leninism. These include places like Cuba, the USSR, and China. While the latter 2 did manage to skyrocket quality of life with huge investments into development, ultimately the Politburo is unaccountable to the masses, and as such the governments of each have committed atrocities. Cuba is a bit of a unique case, it’s nearly completely locked out of global trade, and as such it has had severely stunted development.
So far, I wish to recreate none of those examples, but each has provided extremely valuable information on how to build a future Socialist society. You appear to be rejecting the idea of analyzing the mechanics of Socialism and Capitalism and applying the results of that analysis to the real world, and instead you appear to be in favor of simply “copying whatever country has a higher quality of life,” without looking at trends or cost. Again, leftist believe that Capitalism itself is unsustainable and brutal, and therefore needs to be replaced with Socialism. This is not because of vibes, but genuine mechanical analysis.
I have a question for you, if you’ll oblige: what is the extent to which you have read leftist theoretical texts, such as from Marx, or even Anarchists like Kropotkin? If none, would you be willing to read?
Agree
Massive agree
Agree
I didn’t say at all that it was impossible. In this and a lot of your following argument, you seem like you think I’m saying the outcomes I talk about are inevitable as an absolute. I’m perfectly open to the idea that a non-capitalist society would work better. What I’m saying is that, in the observed real world I have observed so far, it seems like it has significant drawbacks. That doesn’t have to be the end of the story but it does seem relevant to bring to the table if someone’s going to argue that the US needs to change itself to a totally non-capitalist society. No?
I think we’ll probably agree very hard that the current US system is too capitalistic and exploitative. It’s out of control plutocracy or borderline feudalism like the US at the turn-of-the-20th-century, or if you wanted to oversimplify a little, like China or Russia before their revolutions. My argument is that the labor movement in the US, leading to massive reform like the New Deal within a still-capitalist framework, worked way better for the quality of life of the people in the US than did the full-on transition to non-capitalism in Russia and China.
Surely these outcomes are relevant? Again, I’m not saying it’s impossible for it to work if done right, or that the US’s currently-hypercapitalistic-to-the-point-of-black-comedy system needs to stay the same.
…
Millions of dead of starvation people in both countries would disagree with you
I think this is very important to keep in mind, when talking about the (absolutely wholly unacceptable I agree with you) level of hunger and misery in the United States, is that it can also get much much worse.
Yeah. There’s a certain amount of realpolitik involved, that the US and the West in general like to “punish” socialist countries economically or militarily and then use their suffering as a way to claim that socialism doesn’t work. Cuba’s a really interesting example because even under the boot of significant oppression under that philosophy, it still does some things really well (education and medicine), arguably better than some of the countries doing the oppressing.
That’s a counterbalancing factor against a whole lot of what I’m saying, I recognize, yes. There’s a book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” where someone closely involved in that system explains it in absolutely horrifying living color.
Not at all at all – like I say, I’m not at all closed to the idea that they can work. I just think too much analysis purely based on theory without looking at instructive examples is a bad idea. The current world is not the end of the story but you do need a balance of both.
I have basically read none; for what reason I honestly don’t know. Sure, I’m open to it.
caging kids at the border, for one.
allowing russia to invade ukraine isn’t exactly a highlight.
he lied to me about a $2,000 check
he broke a union strike
i don’t follow everything the man does because frankly i think electoral politics are a sham, but you can’t possibly think he’s made the world better.