• dartos@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.

      I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.

        Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.

        They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.

        • dartos@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.

          So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.

            You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:

            Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.

            Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.

            Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.

            • wewbull@feddit.uk
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              1 year ago

              All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?

              • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Representative “democracy” alienates the common man from the political process while maintaining a semblance of democracy. For this reason it is the ideal political form for capitalism, an economic system which alienates power from the masses and concentrates it in the hands of a few.

                Class interests are the primary axis on which all political activity turns. Getting the working class to vote does not help them, it helps those in power.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Representation is necessary as a matter of scale, though. There are other issues with small r republicanism that are more specifically nefarious, like the legalization of bribery, the tilting of power towards land owners via the senate, etc.

                  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    With modern technology I wonder how necessary representative style governments really are. Electronic voting already exists and works quite well, and is probably the most secure form of voting as long as it can be audited. Of course, at some point administration has to come down to individuals, but as long as those individuals are held accountable in some way then it seems that the actual democratic step (i.e. voting on policy) need not be mediated through representatives as is oft repeated to justify the status quo.

                    You might have been referring to this with republicanism, but there are different types of representation, too. Parliamentary democracies are not obligated to obey the wishes of their subjects, whereas soviet (council) democracies are a form of direct democracy, where representatives are merely delegates and are obligated to obey/communicate the wishes of their subjects. In my comment above I had in mind the parliamentary type, since that is the kind in which there is a buffer between citizens and political institutions which is used by the bourgeoisie to suppress changes which would undermine capital.

                  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    First step is abolishing wage labor and private property. Transitional political forms take on some form of direct democracy, probably something similar to soviet councils.

              • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                What about the absolute lack of “representative democracy” we experience under capitalism?

                I’d argue that the capitalist system is more at odds with representative democracy than other systems mentioned. Most workers have no say in what is produced, who produces it, how they are paid, how much products are sold for, etc. Instead, we end up with figurehead CEO’s and nameless investors making all of those decisions, and of course they do everything to minimize costs, maximize profits, and disempower workers so that they can collect billions of dollars at the expense of the workers who actually make their companies run. If we had representative democracy do you think we’d have billionaires?

                • wewbull@feddit.uk
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                  1 year ago

                  Literally “whataboutism”.

                  I’m not interested in how the current system is broken. That’s obvious. What do you have in it’s place?

                  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    Whataboutism is a meaningless brainworm which the user invokes in order to ignore their own cognitive dissonance and inconsistent standards. You cry “whataboutism” when @very_poggers_gay@hexbear.net was correct to point out your own double standard. “All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy” implies that you believe genuine democracy is something we currently stand to lose.

                    What you need to understand is that Marxists are not interested in imposing utopian futures on the world. “What do you have in its place?” is the wrong question. Better questions: What currently prevents genuine democracy? What are the material conditions which both produce and maintain it? Then you get to work on changing those material conditions and removing the real basis which produces the problems.

                  • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    Richard Wolff, a prominent marxist academic, talks often about a socialist system where democracy is employed in the workplace. He focuses less on reforms or abolition at the state/government-level, and instead emphasizes the bottom-up changes that giving workers power and agency (i.e., making it so workers at all levels are involved in the decision-making process of the companies that require their labour) provides. He has a youtube channel and podcast called “Democracy at Work” that provides great introductions to how he views things, and he has worthwhile podcast appearances on other podcasts like Lex Fridman’s, for example.

                    Consider how impactful countries like Wal-Mart or Amazon are in our daily lives. Their economic throughputs are larger than all but a few countries in the world, and their workforce populations are also larger than many countries. Clearly they aren’t organized as representative democracies?

                    Another question I wonder related to this, is what exactly makes “representative democracy” the gold standard? Is it even the gold standard?

                • wewbull@feddit.uk
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                  1 year ago

                  The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it’s nature, creates a “ruling class”, the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.

                  …and I don’t feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it’s not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.

                  Hence, what political system is required for a truly equal society?

                  • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it’s nature, creates a “ruling class”, the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.

                    No, that’s just our government/s. You can have representative democracy where representatives are beholden to their constituents, and where they are easily recallable if they do not follow those interests to a T. This is one of the many reforms socialists want to make to the democratic process.

                    …and I don’t feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it’s not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.

                    Genuinely no offense but this is a position born of ignorance. Under a democratically run state economy the representatives only get rich through corruption. Under capitalism the owners get rich through the extraction of surplus labor value and the politicians in their pockets get rich through corruption.

                    Corruption is a drop in the bucket compared to surplus labor value theft. Compare how wealthy Pelosi is to how wealthy Jeff Bezos or Elon musk are. And people like Pelosi are only that rich because of insider trading, which couldn’t exist under socialism.

          • Ho_Chi_Chungus [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.

            Consider for 3 seconds that what you “learned” about the world is a product of the system that produced it

            Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it

              • Clever_Clover [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                ‘democratic’ is used today a lot of the time to describe neoliberal capitalist governments that are controlled (influenced greatly) by the capitalist class

                for example we can look at somewhere like the US and point out how the majority of people in government are all rich capitalists and how through lobbying and campaign ‘donations’ and owning the media the capitalist class controls the government

                marxists call this kind of state a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capital), as opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat (workers)

                dictatorship here meaning general ‘rule’ not the specific meaning that the word has taken on more recently

                so ‘democratic’ capitalist countries that exist today are under the “rule of the capitalist class” or “dictatorship of capital”

                so if you wanted an actual democratic (in the real sense of the word) government, you’d need a government which is controlled by the majority of people, that is, the workers, a dictatorship of the proletariat

                under such a system capitalists cannot be allowed to have influence on the government, which is something that is not really possible unless you implement tight capital controls like they do in China

                the reason being that capital flight is a very real threat to a capitalist economy, and having that power over a government lets the capitalist class dictate terms and change laws to be favorable to them despite what the majority of people might want.

                so to answer your question, the only way to have a government with a capitalist system not be controlled by capitalists is through suppression of the capitalist class, if they are allowed to have influence then you no longer have actual democracy.

                  • Clever_Clover [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    What exactly do you mean by “capitalist class”?

                    the class of people that makes a living through ownership of capital, they do not need to sell their labor, as opposed to workers which need to sell their labor to survive.

                    Is that only the people that dont work at all?

                    it is people who do not need to sell their labor to survive, they make their living through taking the surplus labor value that workers generate. (they may also choose to work, but this doesn’t change their position, they have a choice to work if they desire, unlike a worker which doesn’t have a choice)

                    And why cant those capitalists and the “working class” BOTH have power over the government?

                    because one class here has more leverage over the government, and so in a conflict of interest the government sides with the capitalist class as can be seen during any economic crisis (or crisis of any kind really) where austerity measures are immediately implemented and worker rights are rolled back.

                    how does each member of the “capitalist class” have any more influence on the government than each member of the “working class”?

                    they do on average, but you’ll easily be able to find a small capitalist that doesn’t have more power than you to control the government.

                    the thing is, here we are talking classes and class interests, if those who control the government belong to the capitalist class then the government will do things that benefit most members of the capitalist class, there doesn’t need to be direct control by every single capitalist for them to benefit from capitalist control over the government.

                    to give an example, regulatory protections to protect employees from hazardous working conditions may be removed through the direct influence of amazon or some other large corporation, but, smaller capitalist corporations also benefit from this as they stop having to take on the cost of providing a safer working environment (they can exploit their workers more fully), in this way, the government is controlled by capitalist, but not every capitalist controls the government, yet the government works for the benefit of the entire capitalist class.

          • drlecompte@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we’ve seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We’ve seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It’s not sexy, though.

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual

          Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties

          Communism is where everything is owned by the state

      • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Okay, well, I’ve studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you’re either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?

        I apologize if this is too blunt.

        • dartos@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          So I understand total capitalism as an entirely market driven economy with no government influence

          And total communism as an entirely planned and government prescribed economy

          And socialism as some of the economy is market driven and some government planned.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.

            The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.

            The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.

            The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.

          • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Okay, so extremely abridged, here is what seperates capitalism from socialism.

            Under capitalism, private individuals own the means of production, distribution, and sustenance. Workers are forced to go to one of these private individuals and exchange their labor power for a wage. Capitalist profit is generated by paying the worker less than their labor power is worth but enough to sustain workers as a class. The workers are prevented from using the means of production without entering into the wage labor model through the threat of physical violence.

            Under socialism, the means of production are managed in common, somewhere along a sliding scale of the people working in a workplace and democracy having control of how the workplace operates depending on the system

            You’ll note that these both can operate within markets, and both require at least some planning.

            Video: we need a mixture of capitalism and communism is bullshit

            Book: Explaining why markets are bad

            Edit: this is ignoring the way the state plays a role in these economic formations but Im trying to keep it simple.

          • AkariMizunashi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            To add on to what others have said, the concept that capitalism is just letting the economy do its thing with no government influence is really mystifying and innaccurate. Capitalism requires immense support from a state (some sort of apparatus with a monopoly on force) in order to guarantee and enforce property rights, contracts, the collection of debts, ensure stable currencies that are widely accepted as payment etc. Just because the state is overwhelmingly working on the side of people with capital to preserve and accumulate that capital, doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            For the record, I think before this your definition of capitalism was defensible, but then communicating clearly would require using the term “liberalism” to describe the government.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        There is a difference between being a hard opposite and being mutually exclusive. They are not hard opposites, but they are mutually exclusive, like being a plant, fungus, or animal. None of those categories are the opposite of any other, and they share many interesting commonalities, but one cannot be both.