partially so I can find it and reference it. My original account was @JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee
Okay looking further into the article makes me retract caring about the part I quoted. I agree that we’re heading for the societal collapse stated there. The American empire is going to fall and I’m optimistic about that. Because, like Kemp says, that often improves the lives of the ordinary citizen.
unless inequality is vanquished
No you
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.
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.
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?
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.
This is the popular opinion though. Maybe not on lemmy, but absolutely in the country
We don’t need to go anywhere, we just need to take care of each other