Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
There is no rule that states they have to sell squat in a marketplace. They could, but they also couldn’t. That’s the whole point of the workers owning the means of production - the workers involved makes those deicisions, not a capitalist or bureaucratic parasite class.
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labor vouchers
Or as normal people call it, “money”
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I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
Cool, what is your preferred replacement and does everyone in this thread agree? You have managed to continue criticism but not offer a replacement yet again.
The ole can have criticism without perfect solutions response. Cool, how useless and pointless of you.
I’m confused, isn’t criticism without alternatives itself useless and pointless?
No, it broadens and deepens understanding.
Alternatives come from that understanding. Criticism is the fundamental step towards alternatives.
No, it broadens and deepens understanding
How exactly do you come to that conclusion?
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
“thing has specific shortcomings” is a useful criticism.
I, a socialist don’t. I think however they should be tightly regulated. And kept away from basic necessitys.
Markets have proven time and again to only serve oligarchs, or create oligarchs to serve. When left to their own wont. If we can choose to participate or not in the markets. Then there is no issue with markets. When we’re slaves to the markets as we currently are however. No one is free.
Markets have lots of issues; you just named a bunch. Markets are subject to all kinds of hidden information manipulation contrary to prompting non cooperation and solving for individual maximums via exploitation like you literally outlined. Your wish to magically regulate them is just going to be corrupted.
Which is why I specifically mentioned decoupling from necessities. Regardless it seems like we are both blocked from the community LOL. But it’s not like I expected more from the community based around memes
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Yes. Do you not?
So Christmas gifts are a market?
No because I don’t give you a gift only if you give me one. It’s not a transaction. They are gifts.
…but you turned it into a semantic point. If I farm sheep and you bake bread, it’s a market when I trade you wool for bread. If trade even as basic as this can’t occur then you’re relying on everyone to be self-sufficient.
The alternative is you’re expecting everyone to put everything they produce into a kitty which is distributed to all, and I think that is a sure fire recipe for everyone to go hungry and for society to stagnate. There’s little incentive to be productive, and no incentive to be inventive.
Hunger is such a poor motivator.
So every company remodeled after REI, got it.
How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
If worker-owned workplaces still operate within a market, there will still be pressure to compete with other companies. People can still come up with new ideas to compete and change can still happen.
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
I trust my average coworker much more than the average CEO.
Highly depends on your coworkers. My current coworkers? Yeah they’re great, we have two electrical engineers on my team, buncha geniuses.
My last job? Oh man I wouldn’t trust those guys as far as I could throw em.
And how did you feel about upper management at that job?
Untrustworthy but at least smart.
Some of the workers may be managerial. But the managerial workers don’t own a disproportionate amount of the company, and they’re not considered the “superior” of any other workers.
You must need a better job. I’ve had plenty of workplaces where I could count on everyone around me.
You know, the hiring manager usually has something to do with the quality of people hired. Maybe you could talk to them instead?
If I made my hiring manager worried more about quality I wouldn’t be hired
That doesn’t really change the overall point. People are stupid. It’s the single biggest sticking point in democracy, socialism, communism, really anything except dictatorship/technocracy/oligarchy/etc. Any system where you cede power to the masses runs the risk of the masses being utterly stupid.
I think it’s worth it, because stupid is better than evil, but it’s still a point worth considering.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks
I guess you haven’t met many CEOs, then.
Didn’t say they run it. The person who runs it can be simply another employee. It’s just there are no outside investors and everyone has a vote on the board. You put someone in charge you trust but everyone as a whole has a say in big picture stuff with the person at the top being day to day and being held accountable to employees and not investors.
Capitalism fundamentally changes the relationship between workers and their work. One takes the value they create and gives it to someone else. One doesn’t.
You must be a joy to work with.
I’m great to work with. No one has to worry if the task they assign me is going to be done right and on time.
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Did… did I say they couldn’t? I think this continues to be a misunderstanding of what socialists believe.
So ah… What’s the issue then? You can have what you want under capitalism. Attacking the system is forcing your own on others. This is unironically what makes socialism unpopular in the context of history.
Did I attack the system in my comment or did I give a bare bones breakdown of what socialism is?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892938
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2892727
Maybe even check my other posts in this thread to get a better idea of my opinion on this instead of jumping to conclusions.
Good luck here lol
The western left doesn’t agree on one form of socialism to align around so it is both impossible to criticize with any specificity and serves as a catch-all in opposition to the current system. It breaks down when they suddenly have to align on specific policies.
That’s a good thing; socialism is a fledgling idea. It needs discoure and experimentation. The attack that lack of exact details and perfect cohesion is an empty one.
Wanting to burn down the system without a coherent and specific approach to replace it only hurts people.
They said it in the first comment
they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market
Nothing stops them! except shitty wages that are not enough to pay your absurdly high bills for housing, utility and shitty food plus competition which does not treat their eorkers fair and is therefore much more profitable and can easily destroy your worker-friendly cooperative, which they totally will do because CAPITALISM
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You’re asking people with little to no resources to take on people who have all the resources.
You don’t seem like you understand modern capitalism.
People will donate a significant portion of their wages to ineffectual radical politicians but won’t bother to consolidate capital to support co-ops. That’s the actual system I see.
What poor people do you think are donating wages to “radical politicians”? Have you ever met any poor people?
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You do not.
Wanna loan me $850,000 so I can start my own business? If it works I’ll pay you back in 20 years.
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Surprise, when there are obstacles standing in the way of your goals, people may mention those obstacles when asked about progress towards their goals. What an absolute flaccid take.
Only in the most technical of technical senses. Much like “there’s nothing stopping someone who’s born poor from becoming a millionaire”. Legally? No. Practically? Yes, there’s so freakin many barriers to such a thing happening, it’s almost statistically impossible. It’s so rare that when it happens it makes national headlines.
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Ok now I know you’re a troll. And a liar.
Poor people who became millionaires exist, but they’re a rounding error. I don’t think you’re one of them, though I bet you tell yourself that. Having daddy pay for your tuition or whatever is just conveniently left out.
Actually, I bet you’re not even a millionaire.
Whatever it is, the point is that what you’re claiming is so statistically rare, I don’t believe you. And then you’re also claiming it’s common.
Ergo, troll.
I’m done talking with you.
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Banks frequently do.
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I don’t have access to the same network of third world slaves that Starbucks does.
As someone in the industry, I can say you actually do. It’s scary how easy it is to buy coffee harvested by literal or effectively slaves.
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You clearly know nothing of the coffee industry. Don’t speak on a topic if you literally know nothing. Third wave coffee exists because of the inherent abuse of the workers who actually harvest coffee. That you’re so naive to even think that the person behind the counter is the end of who is part of Starbucks is shockingly sad considering how much you’re trying to fight for something that is dependent on you needing a much better understanding of what you’re talking about.
Literally everything this person has said about how the coffee industry works has been wrong.
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What do you think coffee is? Do you think people with colored hair just magically conjure coffee out of the ether?
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You do realize that coffee beans grow in the tropics… right?
They aren’t growin em in fuckin Seattle.
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but the workers could do it if they wanted
Yeah, and a third party candidate could be voted into every seat and the presidency, but it’s so stacked against it occurring, it’s effectively impossible.
The state of the economy today is what’s stopping a vast majority of people from doing so. You can open a coffee shop and survive, but you could never compete against Starbucks. You would not even dent their bottom line. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars to realistically compete. Capitalism has brought us to a point where a majority of folks need to sell their idea to investors, further separating most workers from the value of their work.
Edit: I’m really tired of the naive and childish defenses most people put up for capitalism. “Nothing is stopping you.” Yeah and “nothing” is stopping a transgender women from becoming our next president by the same definition of “nothing”. Might as well say nothing is stopping you from passing through walls as quantum mechanics says it’s possible.
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Dutch brothers by revenue is essentially a drive through energy drink stand, not a coffee company and Peet’s is owned by a holding company that got rich off of Nazi work camp labor.
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You seem to think to compete, you have to grow larger.
You need to at least meet inflation, if not outpace it. Moreover, you’re not competing if you aren’t actually trying to battle. Competition breeds innovation. If you do not compete and do not get better or try to improve, society would degrade and regress. Come on. Before you respond next time, just think about what the consequence of what you’re saying is before.you actually hit the button. It saves us a lot of time.
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Typically they will want collateral such as your home for a large loan.
You know the great majority of people don’t have any such collateral, right? Holy privilege, dude
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Own outright? Or have a mortgage?
Even if, hypothetically, 65% of people owned their homes outright, that’s still over a third of the population who can’t even consider getting a loan like you described.
And for those that COULD, they’re betting their entire life on it. People with money can afford to take risks. It’s not an even playing field, at all.
Wtf is an uncorrupt government?
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
Serious question. Is it possible to do this with very large populations? It seems like it might get inherently more complicated with several tiers of government (federal, state, county, city, etc…)
It definitely feels like Dunbar’s Number is a gate to keep this from being effective in large communities.
If we can’t view more than a finite amount of other humans as being “real,” how do we begin to get massively large groups of humans to care for one another? This is a question I don’t have the answer to.
Because you don’t have to view them as “real” to know that caring for others can make things better for you too.
I don’t think the issue is the being able to care, the issue is the arseholes turning groups against each other for their own gain.
“I only do the right thing because God will punish me if I don’t” vibes lol.
Why can’t you just operate from a principle of making things better for everyone?
Exactly. We could also eliminate carbon emissions by moving everything via unicorns and fairy dust.
“Military Intelligence”
Two words combined that can’t make sense 🎵
Never older than like 12 hours
Wtf is an uncorrupt capitalist society? We have to try to keep both in check and will never be perfect.
Honestly I believe this to be a way more important issue to discuss than the whole capitalism vs socialism vs communism vs whatever else argument. If your ideas can easily be perverted by corruption then it won’t work.
I have some ideas but I’m just some idiot on the internet. I think you need checks and balances. Have at least two groups with similar power at odds with one another. One example is corporation vs government. But I don’t think just 2 groups is good enough. Ideally you probably want 3 groups at the very least. I know many governments around the world already uses this sort of structure internally (eg different branches of government), but I don’t think these solutions take into account the existence of mega corporations that can act across country borders.
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Do conservatives on lemmy ever do anything but whine that they’re not immediately worshiped for their opinions?
Conservatives seem to do that everywhere, no matter where they are. Just look at the website formerly known as Twitter… All it has is right wing shitheels and they’ve turned on each other for not worshipping each others opinions. Hell Musk just blocked Catturd2.
Hey,… blocking “is” disabled.
They (the trolling kind) definitely had a system going on Reddit, they haven’t figured it out yet here though. Don’t count on them not figuring out here, they’re a wily bunch and have still stirred up quite a bit of trouble too much of the time.
They (the trolling kind) definitely had a system going on Reddit, they haven’t figured it out yet here though.
On reddit, they whined until the mods started protecting them and every “civility” rule became a “don’t sass the nazis” rule.
Hopefully lemmy’s mods are better than that.
I think it depends on each one and the instance you’re on. But yeah, I hope it doesn’t go that route too far.
Do conservatives
on lemmyever do anything but whinethat they’re not immediately worshiped for their opinions?Fixed
I think you will find any place thats well moderated and cracks down on bigotry and hatespeech will skew left.
Weird how that is, huh?
Most would agree with your point - right up until you suggest that having an “uncorrupt government” is remotely possible.
Pretty much the same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
There, now I’ve pissed off everyone lol
Edit: Except, I guess for the hardcore capitalists, but I assume those guys are all too dumb to read, so no point, really 🤷
Luckily an entirely uncorrupt government is not necessary, since that is indeed quite unlikely to ever happen. It is enough to have low corruption, which is much more achievable.
Edit: Except, I guess for the hardcore capitalists, but I assume those guys are all too dumb to read, so no point, really 🤷
same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism without it turning into authoritarianism.
same level of unrealistic idealism as folks who think it’s remotely possible to transition a state to communism from authoritarianism.
Why do you want a middle class? So you have a class to aspire to and a class to denigrate? Why do you want classes?!
Profoundly internalized hierarchy all over this thread.
Classes will always exist if there are limited resources. Which there currently is and always will be for the foreseeable future. The gaps, size, number of, and mobility between them can vary though. But scarcity will always create at least two classes.
Did you know we throw away more food than it would take to feed the hungry? That there are more empty homes than homeless people? Capitalism incentivizes scarcity, so it is artificially created. The only thing stopping us from achieving post scarcity immediately is working out the logistics, but those in power don’t want that to happen, as they are currently high up in society.
As an extension to this comment, digital media is a perfect example of pure artificial scarcity. You can at least imagine a world where food or homes are scarce, it’s not our world, but it can be imagined. The same is not true of distributing digital media, and yet it’s still artificially scarce.
Without scarcity in capitalism things lack value. That is extremely problematic.
I mean, basic necessities? Sure. But the logistics on homes is far from just “we need to work it out.” On top of that, beyond food and shelter, there are a ton of other things that are indeed scarce. Even land is scarce and I don’t mean to just own. Like there are plots of land that are more desirable than others and people want those places. There’s no logistics that will solve “everyone will live where they want.” And let’s even just look at computer chips. They’re literally scarce. There’s so much more than just feeding people enough to survive (cause I’m doubting everyone wants to be vegan cause that’s the kind of food we have more than enough of, and not even for a well balanced diet, just to not starve to death).
So no, some things are “manufactured” scarcity. But there is plenty beyond just that shallow level of thinking that is actually scarce.
“post-scarcity” in this context doesn’t mean “everyone gets everything they want whenever they want it”. Maybe I want to own a planet, but there aren’t enough planets to go around, and nobody actually believes in a future where everyone can get their own planet.
When talking about these things, it’s best not to assume the most ridiculous interpretation of what the other person is saying. e.g instead of reading “post-scarcity” to mean “everyone gets everything all the time no matter what”, read it to mean “everyone gets what they need”.
also for what it’s worth, I’ve been an ethical vegan for several years after being a die-hard meat eater and literally convincing people close to me to move away from veganism/vegetarianism exactly for health reasons (I had the same misconception you did about veganism). After actually going vegan, doing absolutely no meal planning, no exercise, no calorie counting, still eating mostly frozen food and pickup, my blood pressure as a lean 6’1 mid 20s male has gone from pre-hypertension to normal levels. I get my blood checked regularly and I’m far healthier than I was when I was downing popeyes, jersey mikes, and five guys several times a week. And I’m not just eating salads or whatever, I’m usually having vegan buffalo “chicken” or beyond burgers.
I don’t advocate veganism based on health benefits (veganism is an ethical philosophy), but vegan diets are baseline much healthier than the baseline for non-vegan diets. You can’t go as wrong with them as the vast majority of Americans do with their diets.
Class will always exist but it’s been proven that a strong middle class is a sign of a bountiful economy that actually works for it’s workers.
The shrink of the American middle class is exactly what’s caused most of the economic issues in America.
We allowed our middle class to be destroyed in an attempt to raise a few of those people to the top. Because upper middle class people were duped into believing they were closer to being rich than they were to being poor
Class should absolutely be something we strive to abolish. The idea that some people deserve to benefit disproportionally from the workings of our society is nonsense.
I think they’re arguing that the bigger the middle, the better. It seems like you two might be arguing the same thing. Making everyone middle is functionally equivalent to removing classes
Yeah but striving for a “middle” class implies the existence of an upper and lower class. If you’re already in fantasy land (uncorrupt government) why not make the fantasy as ideal as possible? Answer: for conservatives the ideal is having an upper and lower class because conservatives seem to inherently think they deserve more than other members of society, even if the reality is that they’re lower class, they need the existence of an upper class so they have someone’s boots to lick. Since they’re just one big idea away from being upper class obviously.
Yeah but striving for a “middle” class implies the existence of an upper and lower class.
There is, and always has been. You’re putting the cart before the horse. We are so far removed from removing class, it’s not worth discussing. Expanding the middle class is an achievable goal, and works towards what you’re talking about.
It’s about as realistic as magically removing corruption in a capitalist government…
Sure, but you can work towards reducing corruption.
Why are you arguing with me? I just tried to clarify the misunderstanding between you two
Didn’t mean to seem argumentative and my response was probably better meant for the parent of your comment but yours had some things I wanted to mention too. Sorry if it seemed aggressive.
Wholesome AF. Enjoying the discussion.
I want a middle class so strong everyone is in it. In fact let’s get rid of the upper and lower classes
Class will always exist
A good reminder that liberalism is based around unfounded assumptions and charlatan, unimaginative predictions of the future. Everyone used to think kings were inevitable, too.
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Democracy has existed since ancient Greece and Rome
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Kings are still necessary in the sense that we need someone in charge
- Democracy is alien to western civilisation
- Democracy : «A gouvernment of the people by the people for the people»
The amazing historical and political analysis of the liberal, everyone.
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Markets don’t “create wealth”. People’s work creates wealth. Banks don’t create wealth, they create debt and allow more money to go into circulation than actually exists.
Regulation isn’t only desired, it’s crucial for any market economy to work, lest they devolve into corrupt, abusive monopolies and oligopolies. Granted, bad regulation can be equally abusive and real cases are plentiful.
Just as important as regulation is taxing who has more money, because generating wealth won’t automagically distribute it in any ideal manner. The worst problem nowadays is just how easy it is for rich assholes to legally evade taxes no matter which country they’re from.
I agree! Let me know when you find an uncorrupt government or uncorrupt corporation.
My experience has been the opposite. I’ve found that the majority of users tend to lean towards neoliberal and center-right ideologies. I guess most of them are probably American, so their warped worldview has them considering these ideologies as ‘left-wing’ instead 🙃
Capitalism is not “when you have markets.” I totally agree that it’s important to have well regulated markets. But capitalism perverts democracy with bribery and lobbying. Democratic Socialism is when you have a democratic government and a democratic economy.
Democratic socialism and capitalism can coexist. As long as the former significantly neuters the latter. Capitalism is (supposed to be) an economic organization, not a political one. It’s just captured the government in the US and other places.
It’s just captured the government in the US and other places.
That is a core function of capitalism, not some crazy coincidence. There are market economy models separate from capitalism.
There’s only one kind of democratic economy and we already have a word for it - it’s socialism. If the means of production isn’t owned by the workers it’s not democratic. It’s not socialist.
And when democratic government turns into direct democracy socialism turns into communism
Exactly markets aren’t the distinction, communist and socialist democracies all have markets. A really interesting model of that was Allende’s Project Cybersyn in Chile before the US sponsored fascist coup that put Pinochet in charge. There’s highly regulated markets within capitalist countries as well, bulk energy is largely very “designed” and regulated markets.
The Marxian view of socialism would consider it as a transition state between capitalism and communism. While someone may be ideologically communist, they will likely have more political opportunities catering to socialist policies in capitalist democracies with a “left” party. Revolutionaries don’t believe this is possible, and argue capitalism’s structure won’t be threatened by socialist policies unless a revolution occurs, and might even consider comrades who support socialist parties as “not real” communists. Germany’s socialist party supporting ww1 is often used in forms of this argument.
Ultimately in a lot of these capitalist democracies, there are individual leftists but no real political power, this is certainly the case in the US. Working to raise class-consciousness and labor organizing is basically the front of whatever left exists there. It’s a bleak time to be on the left, and sometimes I wish I could have the enthusiasm of the self-righteous liberals who naively think that if everyone regardless of identity was distributed equally in the capitalist system everything would be right and fair.
There are hardcore liberals around here too. That’s what you get when there isn’t an algorithm to promote fascists.
Market != Capitalism. You can have a free market without capitalism, and capitalism without a free market.
The hexbears will attack me for saying that a regulated free market is good and a planned economy is bad. The others will attack me for saying that capitalism is bad and that we should have market socialism instead. But if we can’t have that, a capitalist free market has proven much less bad than any planned economy, as long as it’s regulated enough that it stays free.
The problem is that a middle class, can only be a middle class if it’s in between an upper class and a lower class. It’s in the name: MIDDLE class.
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Some could still like capitalism and ditch Reddit for Lemmy, because it’s about the customer’s choice and “voting with the money”. Reddit is no monopoly on its category of application (or else Lemmy wouldn’t exist), but it’s pretty big. But, for the ones that still use Reddit… Let’s say that they like being stepped on by corpos when they can just leave
It’s weird. It’s almost like educated people skew left. So very weird…
