EDIT: LOL, downvoted faster than the post could have been read, with zero rebuttals. Achievement unlocked: KICK HORNET’S NEST.
(America-centric post because that’s where I’ve spent my 54-years and know the most about.)
Capitalism ain’t the problem. Capitalism for the economy and democracy for the government is the best we humans have figured out. Problem being, money has been funneled to the top. The top took our vote via lack of education, media control, and union breaking, and their power has been snowballing for the last 20-40 years. Now we’re too ignorant and misled to vote in our own best interests, no unions to back us. We’re seeing the end game, the end game of any unregulated system.
Said many times, almost every evil of capitalism gets nullified when the government disallows and breaks monopolies and megacorps. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, argued vehemently against monopolies. Couldn’t find a succinct quote because he explained the evils in depth. Sorry, no sound bite for this one.
Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, I am stunned by what is allowed. A handful of corporations own and control our health, food, entertainment, news, banking, everything. Education is the one thing that’s not wholly corporate, and the oligarchs have had that sector in their sights for decades.
And they’re not after education merely to skim more money. Education in history, math, critical thinking, current affairs, is how they can be beaten. FFS, we’re repeating the mistakes of exactly a century ago, people can’t figure when back-of-the-napkin math doesn’t make sense and can’t tell when they’re being conned. I see the latter items on lemmy, daily.
Stumping for socialism? Well, the Soviet Union failed mighty fucking hard. “But that wasn’t true socialism!” And capitalism isn’t what you are experiencing now. In neither case does the name fit the theory. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Oh, and they’re “socialist”. Want to model their system?
“But socialism gives workers the power!” As the great socialist Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Coal miners aren’t organizing to stop fossil fuels, and neither are roustabouts. Were those the workers you imagined handing power? How about insurance company employees who would be out of a job with universal health care?
We can’t let workers vote for bread and circuses. Capitalists compete amongst themselves. That competition works for everyone, as long as unions are the brake pads on that train. We took the brakes off and blamed the train conductor wanting to go fast. Well, that’s his job in this poor metaphor, hope it comes across.
Blaming capitalism is as naive as saying, “Trump did this!” We can acheive nothing but backlash from ignorant supporters. Instead say, “The GOP did this!” (politically) and “The billionaires did this!” (economically). Words matter if you want to win hearts and minds.
Capitalism is unable to regulate itself, it goes against its fundamental nature. We’ve tried multiple times and it is simply not working because the people with the most power, given to them by the mechanics of capitalism, will do everything in their power to undercut and remove anything that stops them from generating more capital.
Is capitalism really succeeding? More than 10,000,000 people die from capitalism every year mostly by starvation but also from lack of access to healthcare and capitalist caused global warming. But that’s how capitalism works, building wealth for the few at the cost of the many.
The USSR did not fail in the way that you think. It succeeded in improving the lives of the majority of its citizens. In a couple decades, it turned a largely peasant agrarian population into a global superpower that beat the USA to space. I’m not saying it was all good, but I don’t think it was significantly worse than it is here.
More importantly, socialism isn’t the goal. Communism is the goal and socialism is a way to get there. Just like capitalism, it can take many forms, some more pleasant than others. But I’m trying to fight for a world where you don’t need a salary that will get in the way of your morals.
I think your analogy is pretty apt. The conductor wants to go fast. When we have functioning brakes, we manage to keep the train at a reasonable speed. But running the engine hard while the brakes are engaged means you’re squealing the entire way and destroying the brakes in the process. Eventually they wear down and the conductor gets to run off the tracks. I personally don’t want to be at the whim of a mad conductor. I would rather the people take control of the train so we can pool our knowledge to watching the tracks and adjusting our speed to stay on them.
Well maybe right now we’re speeding down the tracks and even if we take control we’re heading straight for a cliff. Then I say it’s time to stop the train so we can build a bridge.
Who provides the brakes to The Party?
Hopefully the soviets, supported by their people. Definitely shouldn’t allow the consolidation of power Stalin was able to get away with. Though maybe it looks even less like the USSR than that. Who says we need a The Party?
The Communist Party. Who else would get the concentration of power in communism? Any concentrated power structure will have the same problems because the problem is human, not economic.
There is no power structure in communism, concentrated or otherwise. Some forms of socialism utilize a concentrated power structure, but we don’t have to.
You don’t seem to understand human nature. Predatory opportunists exist within the spectrum of human personalities. If there’s no power structure, there’s a power vacuum. Someone will always try to fill it.
I don’t believe that greed is the exclusive human nature. I don’t believe that humans require a power structure. I believe that the largest piece of human nature is cooperation which is why we created society in the first place. I believe that the popular perception of human nature is both implicitly and explicitly repeated as a way to justify capitalism when capitalism itself is the chief instigator of human greed.
Yep. That’s where you’re fundamentally wrong.
No you