this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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So many words to tell us you’ve read zero theory…
Also, how on earth is “Fuck cars” a successful “socialist experiment”? The biggest action anyone associated with that movement is flatten a few tires from SUV’s
socialism is when I listen to NPR. capitalism is when I go to my parent's house for Christmas. communism is when I get to program the radio presets in mom's Honda Odyssey. social democracy is when I go to Starbucks. liberalism is when I look through the LL Bean catalogue.
I must be blunt here: socialism is not about taxation. At all. Socialist communes don't even require taxes or money to exist. Socialism is about workers' relationship with work.
You don't understand socialism then, it's not "when the government does something"
Would you use a monarch’s definition of democracy to define democracy?
Do you think that definition would be fair or even accurate?
Because you are using a capitalist definition of socialism, which is just as unfair and inaccurate.
Yeah, that's definitely a usage of the word socialism I have heard, but it is not generally a definition most socialists or socialist parties would use and it has some issues in my opinion.
This is such a broad definition of socialism as to make it almost meaningless, as this definition fits every nation on earth today and most through history. ancient Rome used public money to fund public roads, subsidized grain for the poor, public entertainment and land grants for veterans, public aqueducts, and other public programs, yet this was 2000 years before the concept of socialism was really invented and I don't think anyone is holding up ancient Rome as an example of a socialist society.
I would define socialism by two characteristics. One is control over the political economy by the proletariat (workers), as opposed to the bourgeoisie (capitalists/financiers/business owners). In a bourgeois run capitalist state, there is still publicly funded services, but they generally set up to benefit privately run industry (public highways, government subsidized research, police) or they are concessions won by the proletariat through class struggle (universal healthcare, social welfare programs).
The second characteristic is economic organization around common need, rather than around the pursuit of profits. This would require taking the means off production (factories, businesses, utilities, etc) out of the hands of the bourgeoisie.
socialism can be understood as the transitional state between a capitalist mode of production and a communist one. the US government is a 100% certified capitalist state, any project they have undertaken has nothing to do with socialism
Sorry mate, socialism isn't that. Here's a good place to start learning about what socialism is. check out Richard Wolff, a economics professor, on YouTube for some interesting lecturers about how it works in reality if you want to go a bit further.
Okay, you're incorrect
I've seen others comment but I'll add my own two cents. You don't know what socialism is, and that's not a criticism of you, it's just a fact.
What you're describing is social democracy wherein governments allow a capitalist relationship to the means of production to exist while providing social programs and investing. Socialism and Capitalism are about the worker's relationship to the means of production. Under capitalism Capitalists take money generated by worker's surplus labor as profits and use these profits to create a government that will protect their power to continue stealing from their workers. Under socialism profits are not held privately but publicly, by worker's or socialist governments that exist to redistribute the ill gotten wealth of the Capitalists.
It's not about how many programs a government does or the taxes it collects, it's about the workers relations to the means of production. The problem with social democracy, which Lenin pointed out over a hundred years ago in State and Revolution, is that by letting Capitalists exist they will not allow workers to take away their wealth and power democratically, they will use fascism to secure their wealth. Another problem is that these programs cannot exist for long because Capitalists are parasites and will do everything they can to privatize them and milk as much profit out of them as possible, for examples of this look at nearly every government program that exists in Europe and point to me one that works better now than it did 30 years ago before Capitalists had time to take cuts out of it, it's a really big problem typically with healthcare programs in these countries.
Even by you'd definition of "socialism" being public infrastructure spending, how is the US highway system more successful than the Chinese High Speed Rail system?
Lines losing money is implying that the point of the lines is to make money. That is so staggeringly uninformed and capitalist minded it blows me away.
I will shock you by informing you most fish are bad at flying.
Turns out, that’s not what they were made for.
My brother in Christ, China has urbanized faster than any society in human history. They build entire cities and then move people in once they’re finished.
The people pay to maintain the rails through taxes, failing to “recoup the maintenance” just means the lines are subsidized.
By that logic if they charged no fee to use them, it would be infinitely wasteful…
Which, by the way, have you noticed most highways are free to use? Does that not make them money losers?
So are parks, and sidewalks.
I’ve never seen them criticized as wasteful. The point is not to make money with them.
It's funny to call America's highways socialist and then hedge your phrasing against China's rail system.
More genuinely, would you like me to go through the Marxian conception of socialism in a non-combative way? It looks like you're doing your best but just aren't familiar with the topic.
"far as I understand socialism" We got a lot to unpack here.
Youbtalked about how all the post soviet states crumbled into disrepair. They are cpaitlaist. That is cpaitlaism. When they were not capitalist things got better. When they were cpaitlaist. Things got worse. This is basic stuff here.
Not even just "crumbled". They were crumbled
This is almost as good as when my roommate tried to tell me that the fact that SSI lets you buy sauces to cook with is socialism
Highways aren't socialist. The government building infastructure is not what socialism is.
You are politically illiterate, yet very confindent. You don't know what socialism or communism is and yet you pretend to have this all fugured out.
Did it ever occur to read any of the many books or pamphlets written by actual socialist thinkers that explain what we believe?
Socialism is when the government does stuff
I acknowledge that 'socialism' is a vague term with dozens of definitions, but this strange strictly-American idea that publicly-funded infrastructure is socialist isn't a useful definition, nor a common one. It will really just confuse people.
Historically and presently, socialism is a labour movement which, despite all the variations, had the common goal of the workers controlling their means of production, rather than the owning class. Almost every political dictionary and socialist will back that up, and also Wikipedia (for something we can check right now). It's not about whether something is private or public.
Paying taxes and voting in a (systematically broken, throroughly corrupted) government representative democracy isn't really accomplishing this. We are arill beholden to the owning capitalist class. How I spend my working hours is still governed by a bourgeois board of directors, I don't own the tools I use, I don't have meaningful power to make democratic decisions about my work or my society governance.
You are correct that socialism exists (present tense! see: Zapatistas) without planned economies. But if you want to see what socialist modes of organisation look like within capitalism, it would be a workers cooperative.
Anti-car movements are not socialist nor socialism. They are good and pro-society, but are completely incidental to the socialist movement.
Collectively-funded operations like roads, police and our military airstriking hospitals aren't socialist nor socialism. We have no control over the use of our money and labour; even if voting was democratic power in practice, a campaigning platform isn't a guarantee of policy, they can completely ignore that once elected. And also, no matter who you vote for, your tax money will still go towards anti-socialism!
As for the parts about communism, well, no. The definition you've invented wildly conflicts with both theory and historical events. You're gonna have to start from scratch on that one, even just looking at the Wiki article will provide a much better base. Very popular ideologies like anarcho-communism just completely contradict all that.
Is this a bit? Or are you really doing the "Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does the more socialist it is." Bit.
You are unironically suggesting an act that forced more car infrastructure is the greatest socialist experiment ever undertaken?
are you fucking INSANE?
A good example of western socialism is the "Fuck Cars" movement
A good example of western socialism is the "Fuck Cars" movement
Don't bother friend. I know from long experience that they will insist on defining the terms of the discussion on their own, as if some whack job fringe theorist is somehow to be accorded the final word in adjudicating our use of language.
The problem therein is of course that when your opponent gets to set the parameters of meaning and discussion, you aren't really exchanging ideas on an intellectually even playing field.
I've pointed this out many times over the years, but it still hasn't taken with your true believers/idiots.
Long story short; don't waste your time; you aren't arguing with good-faith interlocutors.
They are playing semantic games and have no interest in honest discussion.
To them. You and I are simply uneducated morons who have yet to receive the true message.
Noted fringe theorists no one ever heard of Marx and Engels.
I'm sure people have tried to define basic terms like socialism to you because you're politically illiterate. Thats not a scam to "define terms" to win an arguement it is a literal defining of terms, of actual words, that you don't know the meaning of
Ahh right, why should adherents of an ideology have any say in how that ideology is defined and how terminology specific to that ideology means?
Your opponents shouldn't get to set the definitions, but the opponents of socialism should get to set the definition of socialism. Makes sense.
Correct, thought the intellectual disparity clearly cleaves in the opposite direction to what you believe.
Fringe figures like Marx