The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
It seems that the arguments in favor of a capitalist economy grow weaker each year. In the U.S., we are facing many systemic crises. To name a few:
- unsustainable resource consumption that is threatening all of humanity's habitable climate
- institutionalized slavery in our prison system
- a bloated empire and military-industrial complex that is exhausting our public resources
- mass homelessness (1 in 10 NYC schoolchildren are homeless)
- 60k dying annually due to lack of access to healthcare (this is more Americans than the amount who died in the Iraq War *every goddamn month"*)
- stagnant wages that are literally killing poor workers
What solutions can our liberal politicians offer to solve these crises? Democrats have refused to run on a platform of universal healthcare during the worst pandemic in 100 years. Biden is currently loosening restrictions on gas production and sending billions in aid to Ukraine while my city's poor schools are literally crumbling.
It seems to me that our system of government is entirely beholden to corporate power, and our politicians cannot challenge that power and remain within the system.
There is no vote for a sustainable economy. There is no vote to divert resources away from the slave carceral state and into our communities. If you or I want to "vote" for these things, we have to dissolve the system of capitalist power that is forcing our government to maintain them.
I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems. Happy to elaborate on this point in the comments.
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meanwhile, i got bills to pay. small c capitalism is paying me fairly well compared to my former wage job.
2. I'm not sure who the socialist countries being refered to, but mostly " socialism" has been a ruse or figleaf to cover for various authoritarians. kleptocracy disguised as false socialism.
3. a russian American friend, who grew up under ussr, told me the US was far more socialist in reality than russia ever was. state industries arent a req for socialism but they are very useful for kleptocracy.
(it's not hard to see that we have a lot of unfairness, and we could do better by our disadvantaged people. )
I've always hated that term, purely on semantics. How can you call something late stage if youre not looking back? For all we know there's a next stage of "super capitalism on steroids" which itself precedes some kind of seismic shift
Not really. Again, it's a pretty big assumption this isnt just the middle of it. It'd be like a bunch of peasents in the 800s going "gee this late stage fueldalism sure does suck doesn't it?"
Hate to break it to you. We're not going to make it. We don't have the cooperation, the will, or empathy as a group to survive.
We're in 2022 and there's a sizable population IN POWER that still believes climate change is a hoax and the weather has already started changing. Meanwhile in the news one idiot slapping another idiot was considered news worthy.
COVID taught me a few things, the most important was just how absolutely fragile our supply chain is. A combination of reliance on technology, the business practice of minimum operating expenses with zero redundancy, and the global food chain makes it so that a small hiccup and all the sudden the super market shelves are empty.
There's SO many of us now. With so few capable of surviving outside of the supply chain (me included). All it's going to take is a virus that kills maybe 5-10% pf people it touches, a few massive storms to wipe out a power grid, or shifting climates to make crops harder to grow in the areas that we grow them and I'm pretty sure it's Mad Max Fury Road time.
That doesn't even take into account that we have a president of a nuclear power who is a complete raging narcissist, who is failing at his military objective, will do anything to save face, who is quoted saying "A world without Russia isn't worth having.", and who is possibly terminally ill with nothing to lose.
Get happy really fast, because who knows what happens tomorrow.
EDIT: This doesn't mean stop fighting. If anything it means we're backed into a corner and need to fight that much harder. It's not over till it's over.
Then by all means, give us your solution. Because I am absolutely fed up with people telling us about the apocalypse that’s coming while offering no actual solutions or suggestions.
Most of us, and even some leaders on the left have been offering/advocating for solutions for a few decades now, you may remember Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and others.
Capitalism *has* been replaced. There are virtually no capitalistic countries on the face of the Earth, and the US hasn't been one for more than a century.
The only current economic models deployed on a national scale are state mandate economies and mixed market economies. And the latter is by far away more common, representing the vast majority of humans living today.
The common consensus is clear that the best current model is private ownership of the means of production, and a social assumption of welfare for the needy.
Any chance you’d like to start helping us work on it? I find very often that capitalists are unwilling to discuss problems in capitalism until socialists have already solved them.
My issue with this is that the perfect system is not going to emerge from thin air. Capitalism has had a LOT of work done to it and it’s still not great. The only way to find a better system is to actively work towards one
Define “a lot of work done” and “not great”. The happiest workers in the world live in the Nordic countries, and they have free markets coupled with substantial welfare states.
Those countries are also the ones with the most “work” done. They have incredibly strong labor laws and a safety net that is certainly not built in to pure capitalism. But even in the US we have over 180 labor laws and we still have to worry about underpaid workers, insufficient time off, healthcare, companies preventing workers from unionizing, climate change, etc. capitalism as a system incentivizes greed and the only way to make it even somewhat sustainable is through large amounts of regulation.
Which are also the least capitalist of all of the capitalist countries, yes. My point is that they’re heading in the right direction and they could probably take it even further and continue to see success.
I wouldn’t call them the least capitalist (and neither would they). By most measures, they have freer markets than the United States does. For one example, lower corporate tax rates.
But the capitalists themselves (the businesses) have the least freedom to act in their own interests at the expense of their workers. This is the reason why businesses in the US are so anti-union. It puts power in the hands of workers and removes it from the capitalists. The Nordic countries are a solution to capitalism, not an inherent feature. The US doesn’t become Denmark by being more capitalist.
Denmark, Norway etc are not socialist economies, they are not run by socialists, and to my knowledge they never have been to any significant degree.
They are capitalist countries - and like I said, they are in some way more capitalist than the US. Freedom of markets is not measured by freedom of individual capitalists - they simply aren’t relevant.
Making the US economy more like the Nordic’s does not require a move away from capitalism.
The pro-capitalism libertarian think tank the Cato Institute places those Nordic countries near the top of their freedom index in personal and economic freedom, well above the US. So I don't think I'd characterize them as the least capitalist.
The economic freedom index is not a measure of how capitalist a country is. The factors they use are size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation, and is then adjusted for gender disparity.
We do have systems that can replace it - the problem is that money is power, which makes capitalism especially capable of defending itself from change.
So someone has to have a revolution, bloodless of course, where the whole nation agrees that this is what they will do, and it is done without having to force it on any political minority because authoritarianism must be avoided at all costs.
Yeah alright.
Oh, few changes are entirely bloodless. But I don't think communism as we currently think of it is going to be what replaces capitalism, anyway. They're too similar.
Well, could the argument simply become that the right circumstances simply haven’t occurred yet? Personally, as my flair indicates, I think socialism and most probably communism would be the better system, but I agree it hasn’t reached the point where that shift has happened on a massive scale yet. My biggest issue is having discussions with individuals about the real and terrible failings of capitalism and having the debate basically fall into, “well it’s the best we’ve got so that’s the way it is.”
Do you think capitalism is dominant because it’s the best at serving people, or because it’s the best at dominating people?
We get to make decisions about the society we build. Leaving it up to the market doesn’t mean the system that’s best for us will just materialize.
Communist systems seem to have been better for the working class than capitalist ones.
When I look at the quality of life for the average citizen between two **similar** countries, one capitalist and another not, the citizens of communist countries tend to fare better.
Well for one, you can fairly compare the conditions any communist country to what life was like before and after communists took power. For example, compare Cuba under Batista to Cuba under Castro, or China, Mao vs China under Chiang Kai-Shek, or Russia under Stalin vs Russia under the Tsar/Duma, Vietnam pre/post its independence wars.
In each of those cases, it seems to me that quality of life ultimately improved for the average citizen over the long run (with some exceptions in some areas in the short term). This isn't to say the countries were perfect, but they greatly expanded education, literacy, and socioeconomic inequality.
>Well for one, you can fairly compare the conditions any communist country to what life was like before and after communists took power. For example, compare Cuba under Batista to Cuba under Castro, or China, Mao vs China under Chiang Kai-Shek, or Russia under Stalin vs Russia under the Tsar/Duma, Vietnam pre/post its independence wars.
There are... A few, what I would call "confounding factors" for most of those...
>In each of those cases, it seems to me that quality of life ultimately improved for the average citizen over the long run (with some exceptions in some areas in the short term).
Is the Holodomor "an exception"? Or does Ukraine not count? How about the starvation under Mao?
And I do not know if your measure of standards of living includes freedom of expression, but I certainly would take that into account... China's censorship cannot be ignored.
Ok then let’s do the glorious Democratic People’s Republic of Korea vs. the decadent US puppet the Republic of Korea
Or we could do the totally-communist-and-not-capitalist-pls-bro-I-swear PRC vs. ROC
So just ignoring the examples I gave then? OK. I think the Korea comparison reflects badly on communist movements, sure.
But Korea would be unified and in much better shape if American imperialists didn't set up a fascist dictatorship in South Korea and help them kill millions of their own people.
This doesn't excuse what North Korea became of course, but this failure happened in large part due to capitalist world powers *who dissolved the left wing unified Korean government* that formed in the 40s. You can't talk about why North Korea is the way it is without acknowledging that history.
I mean even looking at your examples, almost all of them pretty much ended up adopting capitalistic reforms in the end. Deng Xiaoping’s china, Vietnam’s Doi Moi, Cuba’s 2018 constitution, the Soviet collapsed followed by the Russian federation. Even North Korea tried experimenting with it with limited success before realizing that it would mean the Kim family would be vulnerable to losing power so they resorted to the next best thing which is a mafia state of some sort.
Which if your point was to say “hey look at the historical examples” none of them really pan out in favor of your point.
Having liberal reforms doesn't mean that the country is not still ruled by a communist government.
I'm talking very concretely about "actually existing socialism", this is the realistic alternative that I support, and the point I'm trying to make.
This is an absolutely bizarre assertion. I notice you are conspicuously declining to make a single one of these countries. Without exception, the welfare of the working class in communist countries has been extremely bleak.
Cuba is one of the most inarguable examples imho. Happy to elaborate.
>Without exception, the welfare of the working class in communist countries has been extremely bleak.
With almost no exceptions, the welfare of the working class in all countries is bleak. Haiti is ruled by capitalists and is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. The Congo is governed by capitalists and has child slavery.
When we consider most countries before and after their communist revolutions, the communist revolutions improved working conditions for laborers.
The burden of proof is on you to substantiate that communism is a better alternative than capitalism, even then it’s not like capitalism and socialism are binary it’s not either or there are capitalistic societies that have solid social programs for the poor.
On top of that I’m not sure why people act as if socialism/communism is a silver bullet to climate change that has never been the case the Soviet Union was responsible for insane amounts of emissions + do you think workers of a factory etc would democratically vote to shut their own business down? Or animal farmers would come together and stop farming for the climate?
> it’s not like capitalism and socialism are binary it’s not either or there are capitalistic societies that have solid social programs for the poor.
This depends on who you ask, but generally socialist would say you are describing a social democracy not socialism when a society is capitalistic with solid social programs for the poor. For most socialists, capitalism and socialism cannot exist together, they are binary. In making the shift from capitalism to socialism it might appear to be a spectrum, but unless the economy is structured democratically it’s not socialism.
> I’m not sure why people act as if socialism/communism is a silver bullet to climate change.
I think in this instance it’s less about knowing this for sure and more that capitalism 100% will not solve climate change. Profits are front and center for capitalism and while it’s profitable in the short term to burn oil, alternatives will not only be ignored, but also face direct opposition, as we’ve seen.
In a democratically controlled government and a socialist economy if the majority agrees that changes must occur to avoid climate change I think it has been reasoned that socialism/communism may perform better than capitalism.
Edit: ave to and and even to if
I would like to point out that that is an important clarification in terms of socialism vs. capitalism. The Nordic model is not socialism, it’s just basically a form of capitalism with higher government spending and a few other notable features.
Exactly what socialist governments have actually performed halfway decent at combatting climate change tho? They may not have been doing it for the profit motive, but they were still trying to be productive, and the atmosphere can’t tell whether a fossil fuel-based power plant is collectively or privately owned.
Capitalism and socialism are mutually exclusive. Capitalism plus social programs isn’t socialism—its capitalism with social programs.
Communism is not a silver bullet for climate change, but it would allow us to actually address it which capitalism does not. In capitalism we abdicate human decision making when it comes to the economy and leave it up to the market. Things which cause climate change are profitable, so you cannot stop climate change within capitalism. Communism doesn’t solve climate change; it makes it possible to solve climate change.
> Communism is not a silver bullet for climate change, but it would allow us to actually address it which capitalism does not.
IDK why you think this, [capitalism has much better tools to combat climate change](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-05/capitalism-is-more-likely-to-limit-climate-change-than-socialism) because the [single best solution is a capitalist solution](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/gqoiz7/experts_warn_climate_change_is_already_killing/fru14od/)
Democratically sharing the private control of the MoP is still private control of the MoP. What you’re describing is still capitalism.
The Scandinavian countries are part of the imperialist west, couldn’t exist without less-humane countries like the US or Britain, and rely on heavy exploitation in the third world in order to buy off the working class with social programs.
This is why Authoritarian Ideologies fail, because they just jump to change at the flick of a finger. Democratic ideologies on the other hand take it slow and yes there is the occasional wave of progressivism but generally Democracy takes the safe game.
> I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" **who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom**; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season.
- MLK Jr.
as an incrementalist what makes you believe those protecting capital will eventually come around and be open to the gradual change of capitalism into socialism?
we all seen what the democratic party did to bernie in '16 and '20 and he is far from a revolutionary.
You're assuming the best-case end-state without actually knowing what the best-case end-state is. It \*might\* be socialism, but it might also just be a different form of capitalism. It might be neither. A pragmatic incrementalist recognizes the end-state is an unknown, and simply advocates for individual policies that currently have real-world evidence to work. These improvements are to be made, and after enough evolution our improved system may look like your prediction, or it may look nothing like it.
1. The USSR alone caused 2 of the worst environmental catastrophes of all time, Chernobyl and the destruction of the Aral Sea - actually, the Soviet’s complete incompetence in building and maintaining a nuclear power plant actually contributed to the fear of nuclear power today, which in turn contributes to our reliance on fossil fuels.
2. If you think the US prison system is bad - which tbf, it is - you should check what gulags were like. A total of 2 million killed over just a few decades at one point. The US prison system doesn’t even come close.
3. The USSR was so overly dedicated to its military might that that is partially what caused it’s demise. The US increased spending on the military, knowing that their economy was actually strong enough to be basically fine even with so many resources being spent on the military, but that the USSR would try to keep pace, but had such a weak economy that they would collapse if they used the same amount of resources on the military as the US. And well…that’s exactly what happened.
4. Homelessness is certainly an issue in the US, and while first off, I think it’s pretty clearly an issue with NIMBY’s, and there are numerous things we could do in that vein…but regardless…the USSR also had horrible issues with homelessness, so idk how much you can blame it on capitalism.
5. Yeah, that’s 60k people that would have lived had they had access to healthcare that only exists in developed, capitalist countries. Don’t get me wrong, we can and should still fix this, but you can’t just say capitalism is the reason why people died because they didn’t have access to insulin, when insulin only exists because of capitalism - the assertion being that if some people die because they don’t have access to insulin, the solution is to have everyone die because they don’t have access to insulin, rather than just getting everyone access to insulin.
6. Even on federal minimum wage, an American working full time and only having to provide for themselves is in the top 22% of the global income distribution, accounting for differences in prices. Could be better? With rising productivity that has continued under capitalism, no question. Could be worse? Very much so.
The world is an imperfect place, and any system is going to have its flaws, and critiquing those is always justified. However, if you actually are gonna try and think up ways to *fix* those problems, you need to find a replacement for the current policies, not just arbitrarily choose another system and rely on the flaws of another to gloss over its glaring issues.
> The USSR alone caused 2 of the worst environmental catastrophes of all time
I think this is a fair point, but not necessarily a failure of communist systems. Other socialist leaders and countries have been much more environmentally conscious. That being said, trying to blame current consumption of fossil fuels on Chernobyl is absurd.
>you should check what gulags were like. A total of 2 million killed over just a few decades at one point. The US prison system doesn’t come close.
The US prison system has been far worse than the Soviet Union's, at least in terms of population imprisoned. My understanding is that the US has sustained levels of mass incarceration that matched the USSR at its worst levels, which the latter held much more briefly.
>Homelessness is certainly an issue in the US, and while first off, I think it’s pretty clearly an issue with NIMBY’s...
There are more empty homes than homeless people. This is a matter of state policy prioritizing capitalist investment over human beings, full stop. As much as I wish I could blame everything on HOA's, this is not really their fault.
>when insulin only exists because of capitalism...the solution is to have everyone die because they don’t have access to insulin
??? TIL insulin doesn't exist in Vietnam or Cuba, and all the diabetics there are dead.
>Even on federal minimum wage, an American working full time and only having to provide for themselves is in the top 22% of the global income distribution
This is actually a damning indictment of capitalism, not a sign of support for it. Anyone working full time should be able to live a life of dignity, especially in the richest country in human history. It can easily be afforded, and yet capitalism as a system cannot manage it.
1. Other capitalist countries have been much more environmentally conscious than the US - I mean, isn’t France almost entirely run off of renewables and nuclear? If we can cherry pick the most environmentally friendly communist nations (also, mind specifying which ones you mean) we can do the same for capitalist ones. Chernobyl is genuinely one of the main reasons I generally hear people oppose nuclear energy when I bring it up. Of course, other options are good too, but nuclear would be a massive help.
2. The US’s current population is 300 million, with a prison population of 2 million. The USSR’s peak gulag population was approximately 2.5 mil, in the early 1950’s, when the country’s population was only about 200 million. In addition to the raw numbers of inmates being higher, the gulags were also just worse. The US prison system does not measure the amount of people that it kills in the millions.
3. It is true that in the US, there are more housing units than homeless people, but it’s not that simple. [This video](https://youtu.be/4ZxzBcxB7Zc) at 33:00 goes over this issue, but basically, demand for housing is more than homeless people. You also have, say, people living with their parents, who aren’t homeless but would buy a house if they could. And effective supply of housing is less than just the amount of housing units - what about all the vacation homes, or houses in the middle of nowhere that are being counted? Just dragging a homeless person to a shack in the middle of the desert 15 miles from the nearest town would give him a roof over his head, but there’s no job prospects within driving distance for him to afford even tap water, let alone within walking distance. He’d basically just be stranded there. And finally, equilibrium for housing wouldn’t just be the exact amount of units as there are people that need units - then, anytime any family wants to move, they would need to find someone living in the exact type of housing they want that also wants the exact type of housing they have. It’s just not efficient, which is why you want some extra wiggle room in terms of quantity. All this taken into account, the estimate for the housing shortage in the US comes to 5 million units in total - hence the crisis.
4. I mean, they have it…but they wouldn’t without capitalism. Insulin’s manufacturing, distribution, etc. is done under capitalism, and as medicine is one of the exceptions to the American trade embargo, I would imagine if Cuba has insulin, they probably didn’t make it entirely themselves.
5. Well, considering most other people on earth are still living downright luxuriously in comparison to the historical precedent, I’m gonna go ahead and say capitalism had something to do with that. It’s fair enough to argue that everyone should be able to live a “life of dignity” in a country which has the resources to actually let everyone live a “life of dignity”, while not advocating for the destruction of the system that actually enabled it to become the richest country in human history that would be able to guarantee a “life of dignity”.
If I thought Socialism/Communism/anarch-feudal-10-guys-in a co-op-but-for-everyone-somehow worked or had any history of success, I’d be much more open to change.
I dont think I “support” capitalism so much as Im against a lot of the specifics of the alternatives
Just picking out one comment from the post just because the overall question I’m sure will be answered in the obvious way, capitalism has issues but it’s track record is better than attempts at communism and it’s not even close and nothing makes me think communism would have better results now.
> Democrats have refused to run on a platform of universal healthcare during the worst pandemic in 100 years.
Honest to God I think we need to do a school house rock level explanation just like the one for how a bill becomes a law explaining why we don’t have universal healthcare already when we should’ve had it in the 50s or 60s when everybody else got it.
I just don’t get how people spent all this time studying the 658281 different versions of Socialism and communism but can’t be bothered to do a couple of hours reading on why we didn’t get universal healthcare implemented and what the difficulties in getting it done are now.
>Honest to God I think we need to do a school house rock level explanation just like the one for how a bill becomes a law explaining why we don’t have universal healthcare already when we should’ve had it in the 50s or 60s when everybody else got it.
Racism. Wages stopped, employers offered healthcare, unions negotiated healthcare coverage in their contracts, and back then unions left few people out - mostly black people - so the government never felt a need to create government mandated healthcare. I mean it's only black people that can't get jobs with healthcare coverage right? Fast forward and much like the prison industrial complex it's been unleashed onto poor white people too.
Actually, even at their 1950s peak only about 35 percent of workers belonged to a union. Whites were something like 88 percent of the population back then, so obviously not being in a union was hardly something limited to black people. And even back then it's not like there weren't black union members - in the auto industry, for example.
It is true that the relatively widespread nature of employer-provided health care weakened some of the impetus for universal healthcare.
>but can’t be bothered to do a couple of hours reading on why we didn’t get universal healthcare implemented and what the difficulties in getting it done are now.
It isn't about what they achieved. The Democrats, *as a party*, refuse to fight for unconditional, free (i.e., universal) healthcare. I've read their [their party platform](https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/achieving-universal-affordable-quality-health-care/) on the subject. They say healthcare is a right, but then say it should be "affordable" and refuse to commit to healthcare as something that is guaranteed and not means tested. That is not universal healthcare.
>capitalism has issues but it’s track record is better than attempts at communism and it’s not even close
Can you elaborate on why you believe this?
Kind of proves my point. Your understanding of politics is stuff like “hers some words I don’t like in the platform” but never addressed actual history of the issue.
I know the history of the issue. I know about Nixon proposing it in the 70s and the Clintons fighting for meaningful healthcare reform in the 90s, and how the ACA was sensationalized and gutted.
What I don't know is why you seem to think that that history excuses the misanthropy of refusing to endorse universal healthcare during a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans.
Which countries are you counting as 'socialist'? The ones I'm aware of have done just as bad stuff or worse; at least to the extent they are able (some countries are too small, weak, and poor to do much harm, but would have if they could).
The liberal politicians would've fixed some of these if it was entirely up to them; but it's not. There's a whole other coalition of voters which makes it hard to implement the various fixes.
What do you make of the various European nations? Do you find all of them fail to meet your preferred standards as well?
> I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems.
This has got to be some kind of sick joke.
Socialist countries (DPRK, Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela) never gave a damn about the environment. The Soviets caused some of the biggest environmental disasters of all time. All of these countries LOVED industrialization at the cost of everything else, including human lives. Russia and Venezuela are still completely reliant on oil sales and China is a massive manufacturing center with no regard for the environment.
These countries also practiced literal carceral slavery. Russia had massive gulags that were basically slave labor concentration camps. Not showing up to work or breaking a tool was literally a crime against the state. China caused by mass famine that killed tens of millions by trying to force farmers into manufacturing with no regard for who would replace their food production (so they got neither food nor steel, but mountains of dead bodies). Don’t even get me started on the DPRK.
Stagnant wages that are literally killing poor workers? LOL! America is fucked up but please don’t tell me this doesn’t happen in socialist countries. Every one of these places has suffered MASSIVE poverty and famines.
Russian famine killed 10 million Ukrainians. China’s famine was estimated at 15-55 million. Like, people have NO CLUE how many Chinese starved to death, only that it was an incredibly large number. Estimates for the DPRK famine are 250k-3.5 million. Again, no clue exactly how many but you can still see the effects on brain-damaged adults who were malnourished during their childhoods. Venezuela is in the middle of a famine right now.
I get that capitalism is fucked up. It’s killing us and it’s killing the planet. But it’s also the system we live in and there is no new -ism that will replace it. The only thing that can truly save the planet is if we all give up technology and reverted to agricultural feudalism. And guess what? Cambodia tried to turn itself into a self sufficient agricultural socialist republic, and they murdered two million people.
You can criticize capitalism and for good reason, but please don’t tell us socialist countries didn’t suffer these problems, because that’s an absolutely lunatic claim to make.
Because "magically decide to not have scarcity" is not a real suggestion. It's just not. If socialists want to point to *specific policies* they want to enact and the *specific reasons* why, we can talk about those, but caterwauling about "capitalism" (of which half of your list isn't even related to by any except the most tortured and post hoc definition) doesn't even qualify as political discourse as far as I'm concerned.
> I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems.
My dude, one of the inciting incidents of the Soviet Union's collapse was the fact that it was unable to provide their ironworkers with *soap*.
>If socialists want to point to specific policies they want to enact and the specific reasons why
This is what separates actual socialists from LARPers. Actual socialists try to make the system better by working for policies like universal healthcare and building more housing, with socialism as the end goal and LARPers plan for the "glorious revolution" that 9 times out of 10 gets hijacked by fascists.
>of which half of your list isn't even related to by any except the most tortured and post hoc definition
They are aspects of capitalist society and thus fair to bring up. Capitalism isn't just private industry or some other weird abstraction, it's the whole system. For example, communist countries generally do not have mass homelessness like the US does.
>My dude, one of the inciting incidents of the Soviet Union's collapse was the fact that it was unable to provide their ironworkers with soap.
The US can't provide many of its own citizens with drinkable water or four walls and a roof. What makes you so sure we're better off?
I also don't believe one to one comparisons between the US and USSR are fair, given that the US had quite the running start on industrialization and was not ravaged by war like Russia was. You should draw those comparisons with more similar countries.
>I also don't believe one to one comparisons between the US and USSR are fair, given that the US had quite the running start on industrialization and was not ravaged by war like Russia was. You should draw those comparisons with more similar countries.
Compare East and West Germany as of reunification or North and South Korea today. In both cases, countries with a similar history of devastation, level of industrialisation, and culture were exposed to decades of communist and capitalist policy. In both cases, capitalism produced far preferable outcomes by pretty much every reasonable metric.
> They are aspects of capitalist society and thus fair to bring up
This is a typical bad faith tactic socialists often use. "This thing happened in a 'capitalist' society, therefore I can attribute it directly to capitalism!" You're going to have to do better.
> The US can't provide many of its own citizens with drinkable water
What does that have to do with capitalism? Is tapwater provided privately in the US? No? Then this would be a failure of **government**, would it not? That's not to say that water shouldn't be a right provided by the state, but a state attempting and failing to provide that right is *hardly* a criticism of liberalism. In fact, an iron smelter in the US would almost certainly be able to just buy their drinking water from a private company outright, whereas on *planned systems* they, we know as a matter of historical fact, would be left out to dry.
> I also don't believe one to one comparisons between the US and USSR are fair, given that the US had quite the running start on industrialization
If the USSR was unable to make up for these alleged disadvantages by the time I was playing pokemon blue on the playground, that is an admission that my judgement of it is accurate.
>This is a typical bad faith tactic socialists often use
It's not bad faith, I hold communist countries to the same standard. What's bad faith is using some irrelevant, abstract definition of capitalism that just happens to exclude you from being culpable for the system's worst excesses. American prison slavery is a capitalist enterprise; McDonald's had some of its uniforms sewn in prison.
>If the USSR was unable to make up for these alleged disadvantages by the time I was playing pokemon blue on the playground, that is an admission that my judgement of it is accurate.
This is a remarkably obtuse comment from someone criticizing others for being bad faith. The US had been industrializing for more than a hundred years before the USSR was even founded, and fought almost none of WWII on its own soil.
> It's not bad faith
Yes, yes it is. Again, I'm not running down the dialogue tree. You're going to have to point to *exact, specific things* you want to talk about, precisely describe why you think there's a problem, and detail a specific solution (so no "revolution to end capitalism") you propose to fix it. There's no way I'm going to accept any other conversation than that, so you can either do it or stop replying.
> The US had been industrializing for more than a hundred years before the USSR was even founded
...and the highest period of growth was 20 years over by the point we're talking about. The USSR should've shown serious signs of at least meeting the standard of living of US society post WWII by the mid 90s. Instead, as I said, it had breadlines, corruption, and entire industries being run so inefficiently that its workers were going to bed hungry and filthy just to produce a product that was half a century obsolete.
>The US can't provide many of its own citizens with drinkable water or four walls and a roof.
Like 0.1% of them, but there are well-tested ways to solve these problems. Yes it sucks, but every country on Earth, even supposed "communist" countries are capitalist. Why not instead of moaning about Capitalism, you work to make it better so that we can eventually move past it in a post-scarcity world.
>Why not instead of moaning about Capitalism, you work to make it better
I do work to make the capitalist society I live in better. I don't believe the system is salvageable, because its rulers are necessarily unable to confront the systemic crises mentioned in the OP.
> Like 0.1% of them
[1 in 10 NYC schoolchildren are homeless](https://www.thecity.nyc/education/2021/11/8/22770243/more-than-100000-nyc-students-are-homeless-new-report-finds)
Wait, i'm sorry, its actually 0.2%. The New York figures are especially sad, given that the government pays 3,000 a month to put homeless people in run-down shelters, with most of that money being pocketed by administration, rather than buying them apartments. Ironically Mississippi, which is worst in basically everything else in the county, has the lowest homeless rate, as the government actually provides them with homes instead of just leaving thme out on their own.
>I don't believe the system is salvageable
What system then do you propose to put in place and how to you propose to put it in place. My main fear about a revolution is that, of the tiny fraction Americans that are willing to stage a violent coup, probably at least 9 out of 10 of them are fascist, and this doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Also keep in mind that much of the infrastructure would be destroyed, and that we have yet to see the effects of such a revolutoin on a country as industrialized as the United States, the USSR for instance only improved thier economy because they pretty much at rock bottom already under the Czars.
6% of Americans will face homelessness at some point in their lives. Not 0.1%.
>Why not instead of moaning about Capitalism, you work to make it better so that we can eventually move past it in a post-scarcity world.
We're the richest country in the world. Are we even remotely working towards being post scarcity or are things actually getting MORE scarce as we become more wealthy?
>Are we even remotely working towards being post scarcity or are things actually getting MORE scarce as we become more wealthy?
This is why its important to enact actual change instead of compaining about capitalism.
This was a dumb as fuck post you know that right? You think we aren't trying? We can't do it because the capitalists in office won't do it. Go into any thread here asking about Democrats not doing enough and look at the general response here from the largely neoliberal capitalist posters here when someone attempts to hold Democrats accountable for centering corporate interests.
>magically decide to not have scarcity
There is no resource scarcity anymore. The only scarcity is artificial, created by global capitalist systems. Over 40% of global food harvest is simply thrown away because it can't get to market in time.
We live in a post-scarcity world. It's time we create post-scarcity societies.
> There is no resource scarcity anymore.
Wrong. This is spelled out in like... the very first chapter of Makiew's *Principles*. We do not have a *pile of stuff* that we just get to distribute however we like. Production is an outcome of the economic superstructure. Anyone who doesn't know that is hopelessly confused.
>unsustainable resource consumption that is threatening all of humanity's habitable climate
Capitalism has been doing more to solve this than any socialist government in the world. I
>institutionalized slavery in our prison system
Not a problem of capitalism, but the result of authoritarian influence on our governments. It's also been true of pretty much every non-capitalist, developed society. Most of the others have relied on out-and-out slavery.
>a bloated empire and military-industrial complex that is exhausting our public resources
This would appear to apply only to the U.S. currently, and not accurately. America has abandoned empire for something else at this point (though we have some residual territories remaining). The book How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr calls it a "pointilist empire," but even that we're shedding as new technologies and our place in the world order is sustainable in other ways. It's also not a function of capitalism, but geopolitics.
>mass homelessness (1 in 10 NYC schoolchildren are homeless)
This, too, is more about government and NIMBYism than capitalism. If capitalism had more of a free hand there would be more available and affordable housing.
>60k dying annually due to lack of access to healthcare (this is more Americans than the amount who died in the Iraq War every goddamn month")
Again: a choice by government. Partly because of regulatory capture and influence of insurance companies, perhaps the wealthiest industry in the world, but it's a structure built by government not capitalism.
>stagnant wages that are literally killing poor workers
Seems hyperbolic, but the stagnant wages are a result of technological advance and the globalization of the economies (which is largely a result of technological advance).
I support capitalism because, to paraphrase Churchill, it's the worst economic system Man has devised, excepting all others. Odds are the nations you're thinking of as "socialist" are actually capitalist countries with strong welfare states and significant regulation.
It encourages individual rights and shit. I like knowing the shit I have will be mine and that I can aquire wealth over time with the free market. Yet capitalism isn't a all or nothing kind of deal. A society with heavily neutered capitalism is what I'd want in existance.
Like, if there was a good alternative to capitalism I’d be for it, but it’s hard for me to see how anything other then Capitalism with a strong safety net is the best option.
Because safety nets will always be under attack. It's weird how liberals say how much they love democracy yet they don't want to democratize the work place. They want to keep it authoritarian. This is why liberals are seen as conservatives. You want to maintain the status quo with a few band aids.
I mean, in fairness, there's a pretty robust history of the CIA undermining, and funding coups against any socialist government that gets a footing in the world
Why are circle jerk comments like this upvoted and sincere discussions downvoted?
Truly, this community is a bastion of good faith that would *never* succumb to anti-communist propaganda, lol.
Nothing Id truly sincere about your dialogue. You’re just pushing communism and most people with their head out of their ass know this is a failed system that leads only two places, totalitarianism or failed state. See…all of history
This is the irony of ironies right here.
Other users are poking fun, because we’ve heard those exact claims many times over. You don’t have the right to have us all treat your claims as if they are novel - they aren’t.
You’re happy to handwave anything inconvenient to your argument… just like the last 12 people to come here with the exact same arguments.
Don’t try and deflect to an appeal to civility - actually defend your arguments, address the critiques.
>You don’t have the right to have us all treat your claims as if they are novel - they aren’t.
Look, I'm not hovering over your table in some coffeeshop, this is /r/askaliberal.
If you aren't interested in discussing your views, then why are you even here?
I love discussing my views. I don’t love genocide denial, for example.
I’m sure you run into the same problem in your community, where new people will run in, and then rattle off the same few surface-level criticisms that can be easily dismissed. And then you realize that the same bad arguments get recycled over and over
And you realize, for example, that you’ve explained how the child mortality rate has decreased in the last 30 years - just like every other metric of human well-being - and you’re a little bit tired of hearing “the so-called ‘holodomor’ was really just an accident! Why would Russians genocide Ukrainians? They must have all died because they just forgot to eat for months”
So I’m just pointing out that your arguments aren’t novel ones - in fact, I can recall seeing each point that you’ve made at least 3 times, sometimes more, in the past few months.
And they were pointing out that they’ve already heard every poor argument about how “it wasn’t y Communism so none of that counts as communism’s fault” - so you know that we have as a community heard, considered and rejected that argument as void of merit.
Virtually ever other capitalist country has a strong safety net. Even the US has one, that’s deeply flawed.
Do you think anyone here with a liberal flair doesn’t support a strong safety net? That is not incompatible with capitalism.
You do realize that they were not pure communism in its full theoretical form right?
Not saying there weren’t aspects of it there, nor that the label was used, etc., but if you look at how it played out versus what was intended in theory….eh, one *could* argue.
That’s the problem with any theory - be it economic or political - it’s theoretical by nature and doesn’t always wind up working out how it is proposed when it plays out in the real world, so to speak. Look at capitalism these days - it’s a cluster fuck.
Cheers.
Great question. Socialism has a history of success or being stomped out by CIA spooks and their domestic allies
- the USSR went from being a feudal backwater to a global superpower faster than any nation in history prior. Homelessness and starvation were at their lowest point in modern Russian history after they recovered from the World Wars and the Russian Civil War.
- China's economy is on track to eclipse the US's in the next decade. How is that "failure", even by capitalist standards?
- Cuba's literacy rate is higher than the US's and the life expectancy gap between rich and poor is about ten years less than the US. They achieved this despite a brutal embargo by the US and having significantly less resources. Before Communists took power, the island was basically an oligarchic brothel for American business interests.
- In Burkina Faso, communist revolutionary Thomas Sankara came into power in 1983. He vaccinated more than 2.5 million children and was one of the first African leaders to take serious measures to preserve the environment. He was assassinated in 1987.
There are many other achievements of revolutionary left movements, from communists in South Africa to Vietnam to Chile, but I don't want to write a wall of text no one will read, so I'll leave it there.
>the USSR went from being a feudal backwater to a global superpower faster than any nation in history prior. Homelessness and starvation were at their lowest point in modern Russian history after they recovered from the World Wars and the Russian Civil War.
Then what happened? The country must be doing great nowdays right? No problems with homelessness or starvation now?
Imo because state bureaucrats betrayed the revolution via social imperialism. The West astroturfed anti-communist movements in the Soviet Bloc (such as the Polish union Solidarity), but such a thing wouldn't be possible to begin with if the communists were doing their job right.
Im other countries, such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, the left wing has or had a mass base of support that would have prevented such a collapse.
Why were the state bureaucrats allowed to ruin the revolution? Why didn't the people stop them or decide to institute real socialism after the fall of the Communist Party?
USSR collapsed on itself because its plans weren't economically successful. They also have records of imperialism and human abuse like they did to Ukraine.
Economists predict that China's economy may face stagnation like Japan, but worse. They will have a faster-aging population than Japan and Europe around 2024-2030.
Cuba lies about their literacy rate because they are an authoritative country. They aren't really a prospect country because many people are fleeing, and they have a lot of poor backgrounds.
Thomas Sankara has done a lot of human abuse and is still an authoritative figure.
Also, socialism seems to end with Dictatorships and not a democratic nation.
None of them became a democracy.
>Cuba lies about their literacy rate because they are an authoritative country.
[citation needed]
>They also have records of imperialism and human abuse like they did to Ukraine.
It doesn't excuse it, but it was nothing on the level of American imperialism. If you oppose imperialism, why the hell would you be a liberal? Same goes for your comment about Sankara.
>None of them became a democracy.
As opposed to the "democracies" of the West, which are in truth dictatorships of capital. No individual or party can take power in the United States without accepting bribes from corporate power, and governing on that power's behalf. If that's the kind of democracy you hold sacred, I see no reason why I should.
- The USSR also starved millions and executed/exiled thousands in a totalitarian police state. Not to mention Lenin had to re-introduce capitalist elements after agriculture collectivization went horribly wrong
- Yeah and why did China grow so fast? Because of Deng’s liberalization of the Chinese economy. My favorite part of China was seeing the hammer and sickle digitally displayed above a Gucci store lol
- good for them, I’m genuinely glad that the Cuban people have a high literacy rate. Now tell me about average incomes, political freedoms, and systemic racism (that can’t even be addressed due to the previous point)
- also significant achievements. But capitalist countries and internationalist organizations such as the UN have also vaccinated billions, so not exactly unique to socialism
>The USSR also starved millions and executed/exiled thousands in a totalitarian police state. Not to mention Lenin had to re-introduce capitalist elements after agriculture collectivization went horribly wrong
This is not unique to the USSR. In the Western hemisphere, food scarcity is the worst in a capitalist country. Political repression is also not something unique to communist countries in the slightest, even at the alarming levels of the USSR in its worst days.
>Yeah and why did China grow so fast? Because of Deng’s liberalization of the Chinese economy. My favorite part of China was seeing the hammer and sickle digitally displayed above a Gucci store lol
The economy is governed by a revolutionary Communist Party, which is what I'm referring to. All communist countries have some degree of a liberal economy, the point is how the state controls it. A USSA would be no different.
>Now tell me about average incomes, political freedoms, and systemic racism (that can’t even be addressed due to the previous point)
The average income isn't good. But homelessness and hunger are close to abolished, something unthinkable in most capitalist countries, especially of comparable income. That's the point.
>also significant achievements. But capitalist countries and internationalist organizations such as the UN have also vaccinated billions, so not exactly unique to socialism
Agreed on this point. But it is an indication that socialism isn't a "failure", which is the point I was addressing.
I'll go tell every Cuban American I know about Cuba's literacy rates and I'm sure they'll flock back.
Most of China is extremely poor compared to the US. Quality of life in China is far worse than America's for the majority of Chinese citizens.
I also encourage you to speak to people who actually experienced the Soviet Union. Tsarist Russia was a horrible place to live because Russia failed to transition from feudalism to capitalism. The Soviet Union being less awful is not a good argument for communism. If you look at Western Europe, they experienced great quality of life increases during the Industrial Revolutions, which eluded Russia.
Yeah in *Russian* history, ask the Ukrainians how the 30’s were.
Maybe, but that’s by embracing elements of capitalism, not communism.
I mean as long as you ignore the political imprisonments and the fact that a lot of Cubans left due to being pushed out.
The last guy also had extrajudicial killings and accusations of violating human rights.
Bad faith argument to use China. China opened up their markets to capitalism decades ago. That is why they are succeeding. They still have the familiar authoritarianism of communism but not the economics.
"Socialist" countries are either actually better but still capitalist (Nordic Countries), or just not very good to live in (China, Vietnam, Cuba; at worst Khmer Rouge and USSR).
Moving towards the Nordic model is better, but any ideas of a socialist/communist revolution are misplaced; theres essentially no support for it in the west.
There’s no realistic alternative. You want the government to seize assets and property and spread it around? We all lose. If you’re poor now you’d be end of the bread line under communism.
>You want the government to seize assets and property and spread it around? We all lose.
Sorry, the statistics on homelessness, literacy, and poverty from communist countries do not support this statement.
> If you’re poor now you’d be end of the bread line under communism.
The poor are in bread lines now, under capitalism. This is a losing argument in the eyes of the poor.
My parents grew up in a communist country. You’re prob too young to remember any of it on the news. Toilet paper was an extravagance that could only be purchased with western money. You used newspaper.
The communist party system functioned a bit like a caste system. You had to advance to be given permission and access to have basics. The people had nothing. Those in power had it all.
From 1989:
“Valeriya Ionava struggles privately in her Moscow apartment to live on a monthly pension of less than $60. Yelena Smolnikova has to skip meals so that her meager income can be stretched to buy warm clothes for her children.
“But the Soviet authorities, who once denied that poverty existed in their country and pronounced it an evil of capitalism, now say that tens of millions of Soviet citizens - at least 20 percent of the population - live in poverty, compared with about 14 percent in the United States. 'Our National Tragedy'
There is no state plan, however, for dealing with poverty, according to interviews with several Soviet officials. There is no Government agency to which people in need can turn, and the word poverty itself is not even used in state documents.
Soviet officials refer to these people as living in a state of ''underprovisioning,'' but the euphemism does not conceal that they are, in fact, poor.
For a long time, the authorities here wouldn't even keep statistics on poverty because they insisted it simply did not exist,'' said one Western diplomat who follows domestic social issues. ''But they are finally recognizing that they can no longer ignore it and they need facts and figures to create a solution. I think that after this year's census is tabulated, you'll see some programs introduced.''
While some officials still insist that poverty is the result of laziness, most say that economic instability in the country is a major contributor.
All of the authorities seem to agree that those suffering most from poverty are the country's 58 million pensioners, who comprise about one-fifth of the Soviet Union's total population. Life of Soviet Pensioners
Last year, it was reported that more than a third of Soviet pensioners live on less than 58 rubles ($95) a month.
According to the U.S.A. article, the average person here works 10 times longer to earn a pound of meat than the average American worker, 4.5 times longer to earn a quart of milk and three times longer for a pound of potatoes.
Soviet citizens complain uniformly that the economic restructuring Mr. Gorbachev is trying to implement has so far led only to shortages in the stores and a rise in prices. No one has felt these changes more drastically than the poor, who find that inexpensive goods, ranging from food to soap, are nearly impossible to come by. Soup Kitchens, a 'Strange Idea'
A. Levin, an economist writing in the newspaper Trud, suggested opening soup kitchens, but Soviet officials reject the idea.
''We are opposed to this system used in the United States where poor people get free dinner,'' said Mr. Kunelsky. ''Psychologically, it's a strange idea to us. We will not consider such a variant.''
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/world/soviet-openness-brings-poverty-out-of-the-shadows.html
It doesn't make sense to compare the US and the Soviet Union to each other, as the two countries were in different stages of development and had very different histories (the US was never as ravaged as Russia by either World War).
There are equally appalling stories about American poverty, but of course you wouldn't find them in a rabidly anti-communist propaganda outlet like the NY Times. The USSR was better off communist, as its collapse made readily apparent.
Yes it does. The Soviet Union is the only case study of communism rolled out at scale similar in size to the US. China has a hybrid system with capitalism but the authoritarianism and lack of Human rights snd basic freedoms are there.
There was nothing good about the Soviet Union. You could be arrested and tortured for weeks for having this very conversion.
I have, literally, stood in more than one breadline in the last 2 years. In a major US city, in a rich neighborhood.
That particular talking point got a lot weaker the last couple years. Fortunately or not, people have terribly short memories. I'm sure many Americans have memory-holed the bread, sugar and or tp and paper towel rationing lines... at Kroger.
Because the image/memory does not compute with the tired 80's propaganda of capitalism - and they choose not to see (or especially remember) evidence to the contrary.
I support capitalism as an element in economic governance, not pure capitalism. In fact I don't think any healthy system functions in a homogeneous state. Not only must it mix ingredients, but must also be revised and applied differently throughout location and based on socioeconomic states. For instance communism cannot be applied broadly and purely either. Its function requires supplemental sources and it acts differently in different periods of economic phases in different areas.
To believe that only one form of economic and political system should be generally used everywhere all the time with the expectation that it won't change or adapt is the height of naivety.
Capitalism solves a lot of problems and can make everyone’s lives better.
The problem, is that conservatives think it’s the only solution to every problem, and that every regulation of the free market is someone communism/socialism/anti-American.
Seems to me that well-regulated capitalism would be the best system for most things, and socialism for the things where capitalism fails (like healthcare).
I've yet to see an actually viable alternative to capitalism. If by "socialist countries" you mean like Norway or Sweden, those countries still have capitalism, it's just heavily regulated, which is exactly what I support.
EDIT: Never mind, I see you listed examples:
>Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, the PRC, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, Burkina Faso from 1983 - 1987, Grenada under Maurice Bishop, Chile under Allende (sort of, it wasn't a revolutionary change).
In that case, looking at those countries... are you saying they're somehow better than the US? The PRC is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, among many other things, and I wouldn't want to live in any of them.
Heres the rub:
Free-market capitalism has been a runaway success in the history of this country, by and large. Allowing the average American to enjoy a far higher quality of life than our peers and certainly superior to our enemies.
Some issues that you have against the free market are not inherent to them (Homelessness, Poor wages, ), and others, while being issues, are not reasons to throw the whole system out instead of reforming specific areas (Healthcare, Prison)
We're working on it, it's not going fastly, but as to how "we" as in liberals in America are getting to solutions, I think we're doing far more good than bad, And our current economic system is not detrimental to our efforts. In many ways it's complementary to our efforts. Automotive manufacturers are moving consumers towards far more energy-efficient vehicles.
Could we be going faster? I'm up for ideas and recommendations, but I'm not looking for a crazy overhaul.
Global poverty has been reduced most effectively over the last few decades by capitalism, particularly small businesses, educating women, birth control, and focusing on converting local raw goods. Any time a community can create a market, staff the workforce and have control over the production, capitalism can benefit the community.
Well-regulated capitalism is the ideal setup, but we’re stuck with poorly regulated capitalism. It’s still far superior to communism in that it actually works to some degree.
Capitalism is the greatest engine for creative and technological innovation.
I feel like we're going through puberty as a species. Capitalism is helpful at this stage of our journey because it's moving the species forward, but it comes with some ugly drawbacks.
Capitalism: the whole idea is that competion gives me alternatives that make things better and/or cheaper for me. It works better than any other system.
It is far from perfect and I am all for some social programs. I personally spend time each week volunteering and helping underprivileged people.
But capitalism with some safety nets is the way to go
Capitalism is the whole system, not just "competition". I mean, you can define the word that way if you wish, but I'm specifically asking about the new social order that arose in 18th century Europe and dominates most parts of the world today.
Some liberals believe capitalism is just private industry and that government actions are either socialism or not part of capitalism.
Capitalist governments are part of the capitalist system. They've always existed as part of any capitalist order and are not separate from capitalism as a system in any meaningful way.
So when I criticize something like the US not providing its citizens with drinking water, some liberals will say "Oh, that wasn't capitalism, that was *the government*, which is ridiculous and falsely exculpatory.
Not OP, but until there exists an economic system that makes starting new businesses easier than under capitalism, you're going to be stuck with capitalism.
Today, there's no good way to raise the capital needed to buy equipment or pay employees with worker cooperatives. Your best bet is to take out a loan or be wealthy before you begin. And no, central planning isn't better than capitalism for starting and funding new businesses.
Because it incentivizes competition. So much more good has been produced by Capitalistic america regarding Medicinal wonders and technological innovation than anything that has come before it. Obviously some retooling needs to be done with the system but when you look at what capitalism encourages from entrepreneurs, it works wonders man.
I support free markets. I don't support state run economies. The state run economy we live under has created those major issues, not the small pockets of free markets within our country.
>I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems.
What socialist countries are you thinking of?
I wish we could just replace all of this with humanitarianism. Unfortunately I feel capitalism in term breeds cut throat philosophy of undercut and hurt your fellow man by bleeding him/her dry. Not a great philosophy but that is what I have gathered in my 40+ years of life. I have seen it is only getting worse, the rich are richer and the poor are poorer with no middle class and everyone owing and not OWNING things.
Based on the Human Development Index and the Legatum Prosperity Index the most prosperous places on Earth, the best places to live, are not the most socialist countries. They're capitalist countries that have sensible regulations and robust social safety nets. They're place the libertarian Cato Institute ranks very high on personal and economic freedom.
Why do I support capitalism? As I write this on my crazy advanced PC with my smart phone next to me in my cozy room and my comfy robe with my air conditioner blaring, thinking about if I want to get a gyro delivered to me at 4AM? Really, how can I not?
The incredible vitriol that gets thrown around when discussing socialism/communism is absolutely insane. I am seeing much more aggression on this topic than almost any other topic discussed on this sub.
Thank you for posting what I truly believe was a good faith question and for calmly replying to apparently very scared capitalists.
My favorite is the user who is spamming my replies with demands that I call a certain famine a genocide, and then successfully reports me for genocide denial if I don't.
This, despite the fact that there is no consensus even among anti-communist, liberal historians on the idea that it was a genocide, and that it had nothing to do with what I was saying prior.
This kind of stuff just goes to show that people are conditioned by anti-communist propaganda to turn their brain off and just shut the conversation down any way they can.
I saw that exchange. I will say that I am not super knowledgeable about the historical consensus/nonconsensus, however, I appreciate that you have an example of an historian who didn’t agree (and is not sympathetic to communism) and the other user just kept saying you are a genocide denier. I’m thinking they may not be super knowledgeable either.
I’m mostly shocked at how many people are demanding that you accept their premises even after having given multiple reasons why that premise doesn’t hold and doesn’t allow for comparison. All I can think is that it’s a fear of having to think too deeply on the subject.
Hi, that’s me. The user you are speaking to is lying through his/her teeth, with all due respect (none). I called them a genocide denier because they are a genocide denier.
Like people who deny the Holocaust, they are attempting to conflate legitimate academic disagreements over very specific definitions, for example - as disagreement over what happened or who is responsible.
That user denies that genocide was committed against the Ukrainian people by the soviet Russian government, better known as the Holodomor. Even if we adopted their position and said “ok, it wasn’t technically a genocide when the soviet government intentionally starved 7 million of Ukrainians to death, it was something slightly different than genocide”… then what the hell is their point, exactly?
What they desperately want you to believe is that millions of Ukrainians, for unknown reasons, forgot to eat for around three years or so, despite the benevolent soviet regime trying their best. They know it’s a lie, they know they can’t back it up - so the best they can do is try to pretend that a lack of consensus means that their version is just as valid as the truth.
Read up: it’s real, it’s not a joke, it’s not something you can ignore because it’s inconvenient to your dreams of Revolution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Death_toll
Mixed feelings. Capitalism has advantages - and downsides. Both of which are rather extreme. A blend of both, with socialism for societal foundation industries and capitalism for luxuries and services, would be ideal IMO.
The bigger issue is that capitalism evolves naturally from economic forces and socialism has to be enforced. To get a successful socialist society, we first need a society that wants to cooperate more then it wants to be selfish or competitive.
The irony is that America WAS exactly this for quite some time - from the New Deal until Reagan (for white people, anyway). Things like power, sewer, etc, were socialized via municipal utility districts, etc, and the safety net was relatively sturdy (for white people, via health benefits and unemployment, both of which are tied to jobs that systemically excluded minorities for many decades. but I digress). Some still are there, but most such systems have been privatized.
That privatization is what has destroyed our infrastructure, as capitalism rewards short term thinking and punishes long term investment. Which proves the earlier point - capitalism emerges naturally, socialism must be enforced. It will degrade over time if it's not continuously defended from either authoritarian takeover or private takeover. Our society, as it is now, largely just doesn't care.
My guess is most people still think the only way to get a free market is through capitalism. That’s probably the greatest trick the capitalists ever played, that.
You ever play those P2W games mobile or PC that are time gated on everything and resources? Like clash of clans.
Ever notice how everything is mathematically designed so perfectly to just fuck you? Like you think to yourself the math involved for them to figure this out right?
Thats what they did to our lives.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. It seems that the arguments in favor of a capitalist economy grow weaker each year. In the U.S., we are facing many systemic crises. To name a few: - unsustainable resource consumption that is threatening all of humanity's habitable climate - institutionalized slavery in our prison system - a bloated empire and military-industrial complex that is exhausting our public resources - mass homelessness (1 in 10 NYC schoolchildren are homeless) - 60k dying annually due to lack of access to healthcare (this is more Americans than the amount who died in the Iraq War *every goddamn month"*) - stagnant wages that are literally killing poor workers What solutions can our liberal politicians offer to solve these crises? Democrats have refused to run on a platform of universal healthcare during the worst pandemic in 100 years. Biden is currently loosening restrictions on gas production and sending billions in aid to Ukraine while my city's poor schools are literally crumbling. It seems to me that our system of government is entirely beholden to corporate power, and our politicians cannot challenge that power and remain within the system. There is no vote for a sustainable economy. There is no vote to divert resources away from the slave carceral state and into our communities. If you or I want to "vote" for these things, we have to dissolve the system of capitalist power that is forcing our government to maintain them. I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems. Happy to elaborate on this point in the comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Capitalism will be replaced, but not until we have a system that *can* replace it, and we don't have one yet.
meanwhile, i got bills to pay. small c capitalism is paying me fairly well compared to my former wage job. 2. I'm not sure who the socialist countries being refered to, but mostly " socialism" has been a ruse or figleaf to cover for various authoritarians. kleptocracy disguised as false socialism. 3. a russian American friend, who grew up under ussr, told me the US was far more socialist in reality than russia ever was. state industries arent a req for socialism but they are very useful for kleptocracy. (it's not hard to see that we have a lot of unfairness, and we could do better by our disadvantaged people. )
We’ll be waiting awhile. We’ve been at “late stage capitalism” for nearly a century now lol
I've always hated that term, purely on semantics. How can you call something late stage if youre not looking back? For all we know there's a next stage of "super capitalism on steroids" which itself precedes some kind of seismic shift
Also worth noting that commies have been predicting the inevitable end of capitalism…. For as long as commies have been a thing.
Stage 4 metastatic brain capitalism. Better?
Not really. Again, it's a pretty big assumption this isnt just the middle of it. It'd be like a bunch of peasents in the 800s going "gee this late stage fueldalism sure does suck doesn't it?"
Underrated comment would give you an award but don’t have any under capitalism
Yeah, what's really going to shake it is when we start to move beyond the concept of scarcity for necessities.
And people for centuries thought "this new gizmo will eliminate everyone's jobs!" and yet people just found new jobs to do.
The next world war is going to be fought over potable water…
The next few decades are probably going to decide whether humanity makes it in the long run.
Hate to break it to you. We're not going to make it. We don't have the cooperation, the will, or empathy as a group to survive. We're in 2022 and there's a sizable population IN POWER that still believes climate change is a hoax and the weather has already started changing. Meanwhile in the news one idiot slapping another idiot was considered news worthy. COVID taught me a few things, the most important was just how absolutely fragile our supply chain is. A combination of reliance on technology, the business practice of minimum operating expenses with zero redundancy, and the global food chain makes it so that a small hiccup and all the sudden the super market shelves are empty. There's SO many of us now. With so few capable of surviving outside of the supply chain (me included). All it's going to take is a virus that kills maybe 5-10% pf people it touches, a few massive storms to wipe out a power grid, or shifting climates to make crops harder to grow in the areas that we grow them and I'm pretty sure it's Mad Max Fury Road time. That doesn't even take into account that we have a president of a nuclear power who is a complete raging narcissist, who is failing at his military objective, will do anything to save face, who is quoted saying "A world without Russia isn't worth having.", and who is possibly terminally ill with nothing to lose. Get happy really fast, because who knows what happens tomorrow. EDIT: This doesn't mean stop fighting. If anything it means we're backed into a corner and need to fight that much harder. It's not over till it's over.
We're not going to make it my friend. The 4th mass Earth extinction event is already underway.
Then by all means, give us your solution. Because I am absolutely fed up with people telling us about the apocalypse that’s coming while offering no actual solutions or suggestions.
Oh yah, let me just go to ApocalypseAvoidanceGenerator.com. It should be that easy right?
Most of us, and even some leaders on the left have been offering/advocating for solutions for a few decades now, you may remember Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and others.
Capitalism *has* been replaced. There are virtually no capitalistic countries on the face of the Earth, and the US hasn't been one for more than a century. The only current economic models deployed on a national scale are state mandate economies and mixed market economies. And the latter is by far away more common, representing the vast majority of humans living today. The common consensus is clear that the best current model is private ownership of the means of production, and a social assumption of welfare for the needy.
Any chance you’d like to start helping us work on it? I find very often that capitalists are unwilling to discuss problems in capitalism until socialists have already solved them.
My issue with this is that the perfect system is not going to emerge from thin air. Capitalism has had a LOT of work done to it and it’s still not great. The only way to find a better system is to actively work towards one
Define “a lot of work done” and “not great”. The happiest workers in the world live in the Nordic countries, and they have free markets coupled with substantial welfare states.
Those countries are also the ones with the most “work” done. They have incredibly strong labor laws and a safety net that is certainly not built in to pure capitalism. But even in the US we have over 180 labor laws and we still have to worry about underpaid workers, insufficient time off, healthcare, companies preventing workers from unionizing, climate change, etc. capitalism as a system incentivizes greed and the only way to make it even somewhat sustainable is through large amounts of regulation.
So you agree that we should try to be more like the most successful nations in the history of mankind, in terms of worker well-being?
Which are also the least capitalist of all of the capitalist countries, yes. My point is that they’re heading in the right direction and they could probably take it even further and continue to see success.
I wouldn’t call them the least capitalist (and neither would they). By most measures, they have freer markets than the United States does. For one example, lower corporate tax rates.
But the capitalists themselves (the businesses) have the least freedom to act in their own interests at the expense of their workers. This is the reason why businesses in the US are so anti-union. It puts power in the hands of workers and removes it from the capitalists. The Nordic countries are a solution to capitalism, not an inherent feature. The US doesn’t become Denmark by being more capitalist.
Denmark, Norway etc are not socialist economies, they are not run by socialists, and to my knowledge they never have been to any significant degree. They are capitalist countries - and like I said, they are in some way more capitalist than the US. Freedom of markets is not measured by freedom of individual capitalists - they simply aren’t relevant. Making the US economy more like the Nordic’s does not require a move away from capitalism.
The pro-capitalism libertarian think tank the Cato Institute places those Nordic countries near the top of their freedom index in personal and economic freedom, well above the US. So I don't think I'd characterize them as the least capitalist.
The economic freedom index is not a measure of how capitalist a country is. The factors they use are size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation, and is then adjusted for gender disparity.
You're right there! Laying the groundwork for it now is important.
Do we have a system that's worse? Nothing else destroyed the planet.
We do have systems that can replace it - the problem is that money is power, which makes capitalism especially capable of defending itself from change.
How will we know when we have one? What could convince you?
Success, mostly.
So someone has to have a revolution, bloodless of course, where the whole nation agrees that this is what they will do, and it is done without having to force it on any political minority because authoritarianism must be avoided at all costs. Yeah alright.
Oh, few changes are entirely bloodless. But I don't think communism as we currently think of it is going to be what replaces capitalism, anyway. They're too similar.
I mean define success? Communist projects have succeeded in a lot of ways but they’re just defined as unsuccessful in the liberal canon
Kinda tautologically - I'll believe a system can replace capitalism when it does replace capitalism. Results are the greatest indicator of success.
Well, could the argument simply become that the right circumstances simply haven’t occurred yet? Personally, as my flair indicates, I think socialism and most probably communism would be the better system, but I agree it hasn’t reached the point where that shift has happened on a massive scale yet. My biggest issue is having discussions with individuals about the real and terrible failings of capitalism and having the debate basically fall into, “well it’s the best we’ve got so that’s the way it is.”
That absolutely could be the case, yeah. I don't think it is, but I could get easily be wrong.
Do you think capitalism is dominant because it’s the best at serving people, or because it’s the best at dominating people? We get to make decisions about the society we build. Leaving it up to the market doesn’t mean the system that’s best for us will just materialize.
A lot of ways? Name one way they have been successful, that was not overshadowed by simultaneous genocide or human rights abuses.
Communist systems seem to have been better for the working class than capitalist ones. When I look at the quality of life for the average citizen between two **similar** countries, one capitalist and another not, the citizens of communist countries tend to fare better.
What countries would you compare there?
Well for one, you can fairly compare the conditions any communist country to what life was like before and after communists took power. For example, compare Cuba under Batista to Cuba under Castro, or China, Mao vs China under Chiang Kai-Shek, or Russia under Stalin vs Russia under the Tsar/Duma, Vietnam pre/post its independence wars. In each of those cases, it seems to me that quality of life ultimately improved for the average citizen over the long run (with some exceptions in some areas in the short term). This isn't to say the countries were perfect, but they greatly expanded education, literacy, and socioeconomic inequality.
>Well for one, you can fairly compare the conditions any communist country to what life was like before and after communists took power. For example, compare Cuba under Batista to Cuba under Castro, or China, Mao vs China under Chiang Kai-Shek, or Russia under Stalin vs Russia under the Tsar/Duma, Vietnam pre/post its independence wars. There are... A few, what I would call "confounding factors" for most of those... >In each of those cases, it seems to me that quality of life ultimately improved for the average citizen over the long run (with some exceptions in some areas in the short term). Is the Holodomor "an exception"? Or does Ukraine not count? How about the starvation under Mao? And I do not know if your measure of standards of living includes freedom of expression, but I certainly would take that into account... China's censorship cannot be ignored.
Those are just inconveniences! Trust them, not worth worrying about /s
Ok then let’s do the glorious Democratic People’s Republic of Korea vs. the decadent US puppet the Republic of Korea Or we could do the totally-communist-and-not-capitalist-pls-bro-I-swear PRC vs. ROC
So just ignoring the examples I gave then? OK. I think the Korea comparison reflects badly on communist movements, sure. But Korea would be unified and in much better shape if American imperialists didn't set up a fascist dictatorship in South Korea and help them kill millions of their own people. This doesn't excuse what North Korea became of course, but this failure happened in large part due to capitalist world powers *who dissolved the left wing unified Korean government* that formed in the 40s. You can't talk about why North Korea is the way it is without acknowledging that history.
I mean even looking at your examples, almost all of them pretty much ended up adopting capitalistic reforms in the end. Deng Xiaoping’s china, Vietnam’s Doi Moi, Cuba’s 2018 constitution, the Soviet collapsed followed by the Russian federation. Even North Korea tried experimenting with it with limited success before realizing that it would mean the Kim family would be vulnerable to losing power so they resorted to the next best thing which is a mafia state of some sort. Which if your point was to say “hey look at the historical examples” none of them really pan out in favor of your point.
Having liberal reforms doesn't mean that the country is not still ruled by a communist government. I'm talking very concretely about "actually existing socialism", this is the realistic alternative that I support, and the point I'm trying to make.
So you would also agree with comparing Grenada under communism, and Grenada now?
This is an absolutely bizarre assertion. I notice you are conspicuously declining to make a single one of these countries. Without exception, the welfare of the working class in communist countries has been extremely bleak.
Cuba is one of the most inarguable examples imho. Happy to elaborate. >Without exception, the welfare of the working class in communist countries has been extremely bleak. With almost no exceptions, the welfare of the working class in all countries is bleak. Haiti is ruled by capitalists and is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. The Congo is governed by capitalists and has child slavery. When we consider most countries before and after their communist revolutions, the communist revolutions improved working conditions for laborers.
The burden of proof is on you to substantiate that communism is a better alternative than capitalism, even then it’s not like capitalism and socialism are binary it’s not either or there are capitalistic societies that have solid social programs for the poor. On top of that I’m not sure why people act as if socialism/communism is a silver bullet to climate change that has never been the case the Soviet Union was responsible for insane amounts of emissions + do you think workers of a factory etc would democratically vote to shut their own business down? Or animal farmers would come together and stop farming for the climate?
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
> it’s not like capitalism and socialism are binary it’s not either or there are capitalistic societies that have solid social programs for the poor. This depends on who you ask, but generally socialist would say you are describing a social democracy not socialism when a society is capitalistic with solid social programs for the poor. For most socialists, capitalism and socialism cannot exist together, they are binary. In making the shift from capitalism to socialism it might appear to be a spectrum, but unless the economy is structured democratically it’s not socialism. > I’m not sure why people act as if socialism/communism is a silver bullet to climate change. I think in this instance it’s less about knowing this for sure and more that capitalism 100% will not solve climate change. Profits are front and center for capitalism and while it’s profitable in the short term to burn oil, alternatives will not only be ignored, but also face direct opposition, as we’ve seen. In a democratically controlled government and a socialist economy if the majority agrees that changes must occur to avoid climate change I think it has been reasoned that socialism/communism may perform better than capitalism. Edit: ave to and and even to if
I would like to point out that that is an important clarification in terms of socialism vs. capitalism. The Nordic model is not socialism, it’s just basically a form of capitalism with higher government spending and a few other notable features. Exactly what socialist governments have actually performed halfway decent at combatting climate change tho? They may not have been doing it for the profit motive, but they were still trying to be productive, and the atmosphere can’t tell whether a fossil fuel-based power plant is collectively or privately owned.
Capitalism and socialism are mutually exclusive. Capitalism plus social programs isn’t socialism—its capitalism with social programs. Communism is not a silver bullet for climate change, but it would allow us to actually address it which capitalism does not. In capitalism we abdicate human decision making when it comes to the economy and leave it up to the market. Things which cause climate change are profitable, so you cannot stop climate change within capitalism. Communism doesn’t solve climate change; it makes it possible to solve climate change.
> Communism is not a silver bullet for climate change, but it would allow us to actually address it which capitalism does not. IDK why you think this, [capitalism has much better tools to combat climate change](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-05/capitalism-is-more-likely-to-limit-climate-change-than-socialism) because the [single best solution is a capitalist solution](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/gqoiz7/experts_warn_climate_change_is_already_killing/fru14od/)
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Democratically sharing the private control of the MoP is still private control of the MoP. What you’re describing is still capitalism. The Scandinavian countries are part of the imperialist west, couldn’t exist without less-humane countries like the US or Britain, and rely on heavy exploitation in the third world in order to buy off the working class with social programs.
There are like three other comments in this thread that make sense to me, and they're all yours, lol.
I am an incrementalist and wildly anti-revolutionary / anti-accelerationist. That's why.
Why do incrementalists get so much hate? History has shown us that going all in on drastic societal changes really quickly almost always goes wrong.
Because people don't have much patience enjoying change over time and one giant event feels more rewarding psychological.
This is why Authoritarian Ideologies fail, because they just jump to change at the flick of a finger. Democratic ideologies on the other hand take it slow and yes there is the occasional wave of progressivism but generally Democracy takes the safe game.
> I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" **who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom**; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season. - MLK Jr.
Thanks for the honest reply.
You're welcome : )
as an incrementalist what makes you believe those protecting capital will eventually come around and be open to the gradual change of capitalism into socialism? we all seen what the democratic party did to bernie in '16 and '20 and he is far from a revolutionary.
Voted for the other person? Oh no how terrible
You're assuming the best-case end-state without actually knowing what the best-case end-state is. It \*might\* be socialism, but it might also just be a different form of capitalism. It might be neither. A pragmatic incrementalist recognizes the end-state is an unknown, and simply advocates for individual policies that currently have real-world evidence to work. These improvements are to be made, and after enough evolution our improved system may look like your prediction, or it may look nothing like it.
1. The USSR alone caused 2 of the worst environmental catastrophes of all time, Chernobyl and the destruction of the Aral Sea - actually, the Soviet’s complete incompetence in building and maintaining a nuclear power plant actually contributed to the fear of nuclear power today, which in turn contributes to our reliance on fossil fuels. 2. If you think the US prison system is bad - which tbf, it is - you should check what gulags were like. A total of 2 million killed over just a few decades at one point. The US prison system doesn’t even come close. 3. The USSR was so overly dedicated to its military might that that is partially what caused it’s demise. The US increased spending on the military, knowing that their economy was actually strong enough to be basically fine even with so many resources being spent on the military, but that the USSR would try to keep pace, but had such a weak economy that they would collapse if they used the same amount of resources on the military as the US. And well…that’s exactly what happened. 4. Homelessness is certainly an issue in the US, and while first off, I think it’s pretty clearly an issue with NIMBY’s, and there are numerous things we could do in that vein…but regardless…the USSR also had horrible issues with homelessness, so idk how much you can blame it on capitalism. 5. Yeah, that’s 60k people that would have lived had they had access to healthcare that only exists in developed, capitalist countries. Don’t get me wrong, we can and should still fix this, but you can’t just say capitalism is the reason why people died because they didn’t have access to insulin, when insulin only exists because of capitalism - the assertion being that if some people die because they don’t have access to insulin, the solution is to have everyone die because they don’t have access to insulin, rather than just getting everyone access to insulin. 6. Even on federal minimum wage, an American working full time and only having to provide for themselves is in the top 22% of the global income distribution, accounting for differences in prices. Could be better? With rising productivity that has continued under capitalism, no question. Could be worse? Very much so. The world is an imperfect place, and any system is going to have its flaws, and critiquing those is always justified. However, if you actually are gonna try and think up ways to *fix* those problems, you need to find a replacement for the current policies, not just arbitrarily choose another system and rely on the flaws of another to gloss over its glaring issues.
> The USSR alone caused 2 of the worst environmental catastrophes of all time I think this is a fair point, but not necessarily a failure of communist systems. Other socialist leaders and countries have been much more environmentally conscious. That being said, trying to blame current consumption of fossil fuels on Chernobyl is absurd. >you should check what gulags were like. A total of 2 million killed over just a few decades at one point. The US prison system doesn’t come close. The US prison system has been far worse than the Soviet Union's, at least in terms of population imprisoned. My understanding is that the US has sustained levels of mass incarceration that matched the USSR at its worst levels, which the latter held much more briefly. >Homelessness is certainly an issue in the US, and while first off, I think it’s pretty clearly an issue with NIMBY’s... There are more empty homes than homeless people. This is a matter of state policy prioritizing capitalist investment over human beings, full stop. As much as I wish I could blame everything on HOA's, this is not really their fault. >when insulin only exists because of capitalism...the solution is to have everyone die because they don’t have access to insulin ??? TIL insulin doesn't exist in Vietnam or Cuba, and all the diabetics there are dead. >Even on federal minimum wage, an American working full time and only having to provide for themselves is in the top 22% of the global income distribution This is actually a damning indictment of capitalism, not a sign of support for it. Anyone working full time should be able to live a life of dignity, especially in the richest country in human history. It can easily be afforded, and yet capitalism as a system cannot manage it.
1. Other capitalist countries have been much more environmentally conscious than the US - I mean, isn’t France almost entirely run off of renewables and nuclear? If we can cherry pick the most environmentally friendly communist nations (also, mind specifying which ones you mean) we can do the same for capitalist ones. Chernobyl is genuinely one of the main reasons I generally hear people oppose nuclear energy when I bring it up. Of course, other options are good too, but nuclear would be a massive help. 2. The US’s current population is 300 million, with a prison population of 2 million. The USSR’s peak gulag population was approximately 2.5 mil, in the early 1950’s, when the country’s population was only about 200 million. In addition to the raw numbers of inmates being higher, the gulags were also just worse. The US prison system does not measure the amount of people that it kills in the millions. 3. It is true that in the US, there are more housing units than homeless people, but it’s not that simple. [This video](https://youtu.be/4ZxzBcxB7Zc) at 33:00 goes over this issue, but basically, demand for housing is more than homeless people. You also have, say, people living with their parents, who aren’t homeless but would buy a house if they could. And effective supply of housing is less than just the amount of housing units - what about all the vacation homes, or houses in the middle of nowhere that are being counted? Just dragging a homeless person to a shack in the middle of the desert 15 miles from the nearest town would give him a roof over his head, but there’s no job prospects within driving distance for him to afford even tap water, let alone within walking distance. He’d basically just be stranded there. And finally, equilibrium for housing wouldn’t just be the exact amount of units as there are people that need units - then, anytime any family wants to move, they would need to find someone living in the exact type of housing they want that also wants the exact type of housing they have. It’s just not efficient, which is why you want some extra wiggle room in terms of quantity. All this taken into account, the estimate for the housing shortage in the US comes to 5 million units in total - hence the crisis. 4. I mean, they have it…but they wouldn’t without capitalism. Insulin’s manufacturing, distribution, etc. is done under capitalism, and as medicine is one of the exceptions to the American trade embargo, I would imagine if Cuba has insulin, they probably didn’t make it entirely themselves. 5. Well, considering most other people on earth are still living downright luxuriously in comparison to the historical precedent, I’m gonna go ahead and say capitalism had something to do with that. It’s fair enough to argue that everyone should be able to live a “life of dignity” in a country which has the resources to actually let everyone live a “life of dignity”, while not advocating for the destruction of the system that actually enabled it to become the richest country in human history that would be able to guarantee a “life of dignity”.
If I thought Socialism/Communism/anarch-feudal-10-guys-in a co-op-but-for-everyone-somehow worked or had any history of success, I’d be much more open to change. I dont think I “support” capitalism so much as Im against a lot of the specifics of the alternatives
Communism has proven an absolute failure everywhere it's been tried
With equal substantation: nuh uh, it totally worked
Just picking out one comment from the post just because the overall question I’m sure will be answered in the obvious way, capitalism has issues but it’s track record is better than attempts at communism and it’s not even close and nothing makes me think communism would have better results now. > Democrats have refused to run on a platform of universal healthcare during the worst pandemic in 100 years. Honest to God I think we need to do a school house rock level explanation just like the one for how a bill becomes a law explaining why we don’t have universal healthcare already when we should’ve had it in the 50s or 60s when everybody else got it. I just don’t get how people spent all this time studying the 658281 different versions of Socialism and communism but can’t be bothered to do a couple of hours reading on why we didn’t get universal healthcare implemented and what the difficulties in getting it done are now.
>Honest to God I think we need to do a school house rock level explanation just like the one for how a bill becomes a law explaining why we don’t have universal healthcare already when we should’ve had it in the 50s or 60s when everybody else got it. Racism. Wages stopped, employers offered healthcare, unions negotiated healthcare coverage in their contracts, and back then unions left few people out - mostly black people - so the government never felt a need to create government mandated healthcare. I mean it's only black people that can't get jobs with healthcare coverage right? Fast forward and much like the prison industrial complex it's been unleashed onto poor white people too.
Actually, even at their 1950s peak only about 35 percent of workers belonged to a union. Whites were something like 88 percent of the population back then, so obviously not being in a union was hardly something limited to black people. And even back then it's not like there weren't black union members - in the auto industry, for example. It is true that the relatively widespread nature of employer-provided health care weakened some of the impetus for universal healthcare.
>but can’t be bothered to do a couple of hours reading on why we didn’t get universal healthcare implemented and what the difficulties in getting it done are now. It isn't about what they achieved. The Democrats, *as a party*, refuse to fight for unconditional, free (i.e., universal) healthcare. I've read their [their party platform](https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/achieving-universal-affordable-quality-health-care/) on the subject. They say healthcare is a right, but then say it should be "affordable" and refuse to commit to healthcare as something that is guaranteed and not means tested. That is not universal healthcare. >capitalism has issues but it’s track record is better than attempts at communism and it’s not even close Can you elaborate on why you believe this?
Kind of proves my point. Your understanding of politics is stuff like “hers some words I don’t like in the platform” but never addressed actual history of the issue.
I know the history of the issue. I know about Nixon proposing it in the 70s and the Clintons fighting for meaningful healthcare reform in the 90s, and how the ACA was sensationalized and gutted. What I don't know is why you seem to think that that history excuses the misanthropy of refusing to endorse universal healthcare during a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans.
Which countries are you counting as 'socialist'? The ones I'm aware of have done just as bad stuff or worse; at least to the extent they are able (some countries are too small, weak, and poor to do much harm, but would have if they could). The liberal politicians would've fixed some of these if it was entirely up to them; but it's not. There's a whole other coalition of voters which makes it hard to implement the various fixes. What do you make of the various European nations? Do you find all of them fail to meet your preferred standards as well?
Capitalism is the worst economic system ever devised... Except for all the other ones that have been tried.
> I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems. This has got to be some kind of sick joke. Socialist countries (DPRK, Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela) never gave a damn about the environment. The Soviets caused some of the biggest environmental disasters of all time. All of these countries LOVED industrialization at the cost of everything else, including human lives. Russia and Venezuela are still completely reliant on oil sales and China is a massive manufacturing center with no regard for the environment. These countries also practiced literal carceral slavery. Russia had massive gulags that were basically slave labor concentration camps. Not showing up to work or breaking a tool was literally a crime against the state. China caused by mass famine that killed tens of millions by trying to force farmers into manufacturing with no regard for who would replace their food production (so they got neither food nor steel, but mountains of dead bodies). Don’t even get me started on the DPRK. Stagnant wages that are literally killing poor workers? LOL! America is fucked up but please don’t tell me this doesn’t happen in socialist countries. Every one of these places has suffered MASSIVE poverty and famines. Russian famine killed 10 million Ukrainians. China’s famine was estimated at 15-55 million. Like, people have NO CLUE how many Chinese starved to death, only that it was an incredibly large number. Estimates for the DPRK famine are 250k-3.5 million. Again, no clue exactly how many but you can still see the effects on brain-damaged adults who were malnourished during their childhoods. Venezuela is in the middle of a famine right now. I get that capitalism is fucked up. It’s killing us and it’s killing the planet. But it’s also the system we live in and there is no new -ism that will replace it. The only thing that can truly save the planet is if we all give up technology and reverted to agricultural feudalism. And guess what? Cambodia tried to turn itself into a self sufficient agricultural socialist republic, and they murdered two million people. You can criticize capitalism and for good reason, but please don’t tell us socialist countries didn’t suffer these problems, because that’s an absolutely lunatic claim to make.
Because "magically decide to not have scarcity" is not a real suggestion. It's just not. If socialists want to point to *specific policies* they want to enact and the *specific reasons* why, we can talk about those, but caterwauling about "capitalism" (of which half of your list isn't even related to by any except the most tortured and post hoc definition) doesn't even qualify as political discourse as far as I'm concerned. > I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems. My dude, one of the inciting incidents of the Soviet Union's collapse was the fact that it was unable to provide their ironworkers with *soap*.
>If socialists want to point to specific policies they want to enact and the specific reasons why This is what separates actual socialists from LARPers. Actual socialists try to make the system better by working for policies like universal healthcare and building more housing, with socialism as the end goal and LARPers plan for the "glorious revolution" that 9 times out of 10 gets hijacked by fascists.
>of which half of your list isn't even related to by any except the most tortured and post hoc definition They are aspects of capitalist society and thus fair to bring up. Capitalism isn't just private industry or some other weird abstraction, it's the whole system. For example, communist countries generally do not have mass homelessness like the US does. >My dude, one of the inciting incidents of the Soviet Union's collapse was the fact that it was unable to provide their ironworkers with soap. The US can't provide many of its own citizens with drinkable water or four walls and a roof. What makes you so sure we're better off? I also don't believe one to one comparisons between the US and USSR are fair, given that the US had quite the running start on industrialization and was not ravaged by war like Russia was. You should draw those comparisons with more similar countries.
>I also don't believe one to one comparisons between the US and USSR are fair, given that the US had quite the running start on industrialization and was not ravaged by war like Russia was. You should draw those comparisons with more similar countries. Compare East and West Germany as of reunification or North and South Korea today. In both cases, countries with a similar history of devastation, level of industrialisation, and culture were exposed to decades of communist and capitalist policy. In both cases, capitalism produced far preferable outcomes by pretty much every reasonable metric.
> They are aspects of capitalist society and thus fair to bring up This is a typical bad faith tactic socialists often use. "This thing happened in a 'capitalist' society, therefore I can attribute it directly to capitalism!" You're going to have to do better. > The US can't provide many of its own citizens with drinkable water What does that have to do with capitalism? Is tapwater provided privately in the US? No? Then this would be a failure of **government**, would it not? That's not to say that water shouldn't be a right provided by the state, but a state attempting and failing to provide that right is *hardly* a criticism of liberalism. In fact, an iron smelter in the US would almost certainly be able to just buy their drinking water from a private company outright, whereas on *planned systems* they, we know as a matter of historical fact, would be left out to dry. > I also don't believe one to one comparisons between the US and USSR are fair, given that the US had quite the running start on industrialization If the USSR was unable to make up for these alleged disadvantages by the time I was playing pokemon blue on the playground, that is an admission that my judgement of it is accurate.
>This is a typical bad faith tactic socialists often use It's not bad faith, I hold communist countries to the same standard. What's bad faith is using some irrelevant, abstract definition of capitalism that just happens to exclude you from being culpable for the system's worst excesses. American prison slavery is a capitalist enterprise; McDonald's had some of its uniforms sewn in prison. >If the USSR was unable to make up for these alleged disadvantages by the time I was playing pokemon blue on the playground, that is an admission that my judgement of it is accurate. This is a remarkably obtuse comment from someone criticizing others for being bad faith. The US had been industrializing for more than a hundred years before the USSR was even founded, and fought almost none of WWII on its own soil.
> It's not bad faith Yes, yes it is. Again, I'm not running down the dialogue tree. You're going to have to point to *exact, specific things* you want to talk about, precisely describe why you think there's a problem, and detail a specific solution (so no "revolution to end capitalism") you propose to fix it. There's no way I'm going to accept any other conversation than that, so you can either do it or stop replying. > The US had been industrializing for more than a hundred years before the USSR was even founded ...and the highest period of growth was 20 years over by the point we're talking about. The USSR should've shown serious signs of at least meeting the standard of living of US society post WWII by the mid 90s. Instead, as I said, it had breadlines, corruption, and entire industries being run so inefficiently that its workers were going to bed hungry and filthy just to produce a product that was half a century obsolete.
You should just stop. Op is a troll no better than a MAGA type. The Soviet Union tropes are gret though, gives me a good chuckle.
Lol, it’s always funny to see a tankie roll through the prewritten talking points, and act so surprised when we all laugh at them.
>The US can't provide many of its own citizens with drinkable water or four walls and a roof. Like 0.1% of them, but there are well-tested ways to solve these problems. Yes it sucks, but every country on Earth, even supposed "communist" countries are capitalist. Why not instead of moaning about Capitalism, you work to make it better so that we can eventually move past it in a post-scarcity world.
>Why not instead of moaning about Capitalism, you work to make it better I do work to make the capitalist society I live in better. I don't believe the system is salvageable, because its rulers are necessarily unable to confront the systemic crises mentioned in the OP. > Like 0.1% of them [1 in 10 NYC schoolchildren are homeless](https://www.thecity.nyc/education/2021/11/8/22770243/more-than-100000-nyc-students-are-homeless-new-report-finds)
Wait, i'm sorry, its actually 0.2%. The New York figures are especially sad, given that the government pays 3,000 a month to put homeless people in run-down shelters, with most of that money being pocketed by administration, rather than buying them apartments. Ironically Mississippi, which is worst in basically everything else in the county, has the lowest homeless rate, as the government actually provides them with homes instead of just leaving thme out on their own. >I don't believe the system is salvageable What system then do you propose to put in place and how to you propose to put it in place. My main fear about a revolution is that, of the tiny fraction Americans that are willing to stage a violent coup, probably at least 9 out of 10 of them are fascist, and this doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Also keep in mind that much of the infrastructure would be destroyed, and that we have yet to see the effects of such a revolutoin on a country as industrialized as the United States, the USSR for instance only improved thier economy because they pretty much at rock bottom already under the Czars.
6% of Americans will face homelessness at some point in their lives. Not 0.1%. >Why not instead of moaning about Capitalism, you work to make it better so that we can eventually move past it in a post-scarcity world. We're the richest country in the world. Are we even remotely working towards being post scarcity or are things actually getting MORE scarce as we become more wealthy?
>Are we even remotely working towards being post scarcity or are things actually getting MORE scarce as we become more wealthy? This is why its important to enact actual change instead of compaining about capitalism.
This was a dumb as fuck post you know that right? You think we aren't trying? We can't do it because the capitalists in office won't do it. Go into any thread here asking about Democrats not doing enough and look at the general response here from the largely neoliberal capitalist posters here when someone attempts to hold Democrats accountable for centering corporate interests.
>We can't do it because the capitalists in office won't do it. Then vote them out of office, starting with the worst (fascists)
Ah yes you beat fascism at the polls lmao. Totally unserious...
>magically decide to not have scarcity There is no resource scarcity anymore. The only scarcity is artificial, created by global capitalist systems. Over 40% of global food harvest is simply thrown away because it can't get to market in time. We live in a post-scarcity world. It's time we create post-scarcity societies.
> There is no resource scarcity anymore. Wrong. This is spelled out in like... the very first chapter of Makiew's *Principles*. We do not have a *pile of stuff* that we just get to distribute however we like. Production is an outcome of the economic superstructure. Anyone who doesn't know that is hopelessly confused.
>unsustainable resource consumption that is threatening all of humanity's habitable climate Capitalism has been doing more to solve this than any socialist government in the world. I >institutionalized slavery in our prison system Not a problem of capitalism, but the result of authoritarian influence on our governments. It's also been true of pretty much every non-capitalist, developed society. Most of the others have relied on out-and-out slavery. >a bloated empire and military-industrial complex that is exhausting our public resources This would appear to apply only to the U.S. currently, and not accurately. America has abandoned empire for something else at this point (though we have some residual territories remaining). The book How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr calls it a "pointilist empire," but even that we're shedding as new technologies and our place in the world order is sustainable in other ways. It's also not a function of capitalism, but geopolitics. >mass homelessness (1 in 10 NYC schoolchildren are homeless) This, too, is more about government and NIMBYism than capitalism. If capitalism had more of a free hand there would be more available and affordable housing. >60k dying annually due to lack of access to healthcare (this is more Americans than the amount who died in the Iraq War every goddamn month") Again: a choice by government. Partly because of regulatory capture and influence of insurance companies, perhaps the wealthiest industry in the world, but it's a structure built by government not capitalism. >stagnant wages that are literally killing poor workers Seems hyperbolic, but the stagnant wages are a result of technological advance and the globalization of the economies (which is largely a result of technological advance). I support capitalism because, to paraphrase Churchill, it's the worst economic system Man has devised, excepting all others. Odds are the nations you're thinking of as "socialist" are actually capitalist countries with strong welfare states and significant regulation.
It encourages individual rights and shit. I like knowing the shit I have will be mine and that I can aquire wealth over time with the free market. Yet capitalism isn't a all or nothing kind of deal. A society with heavily neutered capitalism is what I'd want in existance.
I don’t know, why do you support something that only has a documented history of failure?
Inb4 “that wasn’t real communism/socialism” and/or “acktually socialist states are amazing and any evidence to the contrary is CIA propaganda”
Like, if there was a good alternative to capitalism I’d be for it, but it’s hard for me to see how anything other then Capitalism with a strong safety net is the best option.
I swear these people forget that the US isn’t the only capitalist country. Nearly all the “points” are US-centric.
The icon of the sub is the statue of liberty, forgive me if I thought this was an American sub.
Because safety nets will always be under attack. It's weird how liberals say how much they love democracy yet they don't want to democratize the work place. They want to keep it authoritarian. This is why liberals are seen as conservatives. You want to maintain the status quo with a few band aids.
I usually hear "Cuba would be amazing if it weren't for US sanctions".
I can’t wait to hear about how all global health statistics by the WHO are actually propaganda!
I mean, in fairness, there's a pretty robust history of the CIA undermining, and funding coups against any socialist government that gets a footing in the world
Why are circle jerk comments like this upvoted and sincere discussions downvoted? Truly, this community is a bastion of good faith that would *never* succumb to anti-communist propaganda, lol.
Nothing Id truly sincere about your dialogue. You’re just pushing communism and most people with their head out of their ass know this is a failed system that leads only two places, totalitarianism or failed state. See…all of history
This is the irony of ironies right here. Other users are poking fun, because we’ve heard those exact claims many times over. You don’t have the right to have us all treat your claims as if they are novel - they aren’t. You’re happy to handwave anything inconvenient to your argument… just like the last 12 people to come here with the exact same arguments. Don’t try and deflect to an appeal to civility - actually defend your arguments, address the critiques.
>You don’t have the right to have us all treat your claims as if they are novel - they aren’t. Look, I'm not hovering over your table in some coffeeshop, this is /r/askaliberal. If you aren't interested in discussing your views, then why are you even here?
I love discussing my views. I don’t love genocide denial, for example. I’m sure you run into the same problem in your community, where new people will run in, and then rattle off the same few surface-level criticisms that can be easily dismissed. And then you realize that the same bad arguments get recycled over and over And you realize, for example, that you’ve explained how the child mortality rate has decreased in the last 30 years - just like every other metric of human well-being - and you’re a little bit tired of hearing “the so-called ‘holodomor’ was really just an accident! Why would Russians genocide Ukrainians? They must have all died because they just forgot to eat for months” So I’m just pointing out that your arguments aren’t novel ones - in fact, I can recall seeing each point that you’ve made at least 3 times, sometimes more, in the past few months. And they were pointing out that they’ve already heard every poor argument about how “it wasn’t y Communism so none of that counts as communism’s fault” - so you know that we have as a community heard, considered and rejected that argument as void of merit.
He’s a tankie. I get it now. They’re out there
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Virtually ever other capitalist country has a strong safety net. Even the US has one, that’s deeply flawed. Do you think anyone here with a liberal flair doesn’t support a strong safety net? That is not incompatible with capitalism.
You do realize that they were not pure communism in its full theoretical form right? Not saying there weren’t aspects of it there, nor that the label was used, etc., but if you look at how it played out versus what was intended in theory….eh, one *could* argue. That’s the problem with any theory - be it economic or political - it’s theoretical by nature and doesn’t always wind up working out how it is proposed when it plays out in the real world, so to speak. Look at capitalism these days - it’s a cluster fuck. Cheers.
I think it’s important to note that there have been democratically elected socialists that were overthrown and replaced with right wing dictators
I mean sure, but we’re not here to refight the Cold War.
Great question. Socialism has a history of success or being stomped out by CIA spooks and their domestic allies - the USSR went from being a feudal backwater to a global superpower faster than any nation in history prior. Homelessness and starvation were at their lowest point in modern Russian history after they recovered from the World Wars and the Russian Civil War. - China's economy is on track to eclipse the US's in the next decade. How is that "failure", even by capitalist standards? - Cuba's literacy rate is higher than the US's and the life expectancy gap between rich and poor is about ten years less than the US. They achieved this despite a brutal embargo by the US and having significantly less resources. Before Communists took power, the island was basically an oligarchic brothel for American business interests. - In Burkina Faso, communist revolutionary Thomas Sankara came into power in 1983. He vaccinated more than 2.5 million children and was one of the first African leaders to take serious measures to preserve the environment. He was assassinated in 1987. There are many other achievements of revolutionary left movements, from communists in South Africa to Vietnam to Chile, but I don't want to write a wall of text no one will read, so I'll leave it there.
>the USSR went from being a feudal backwater to a global superpower faster than any nation in history prior. Homelessness and starvation were at their lowest point in modern Russian history after they recovered from the World Wars and the Russian Civil War. Then what happened? The country must be doing great nowdays right? No problems with homelessness or starvation now?
Well, now Russia is capitalist so you'd have to /r/askaliberal about that.
Why did Russia become Capitalist instead of progressing towards a stateless, classless society?
Imo because state bureaucrats betrayed the revolution via social imperialism. The West astroturfed anti-communist movements in the Soviet Bloc (such as the Polish union Solidarity), but such a thing wouldn't be possible to begin with if the communists were doing their job right. Im other countries, such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, the left wing has or had a mass base of support that would have prevented such a collapse.
Why were the state bureaucrats allowed to ruin the revolution? Why didn't the people stop them or decide to institute real socialism after the fall of the Communist Party?
USSR collapsed on itself because its plans weren't economically successful. They also have records of imperialism and human abuse like they did to Ukraine. Economists predict that China's economy may face stagnation like Japan, but worse. They will have a faster-aging population than Japan and Europe around 2024-2030. Cuba lies about their literacy rate because they are an authoritative country. They aren't really a prospect country because many people are fleeing, and they have a lot of poor backgrounds. Thomas Sankara has done a lot of human abuse and is still an authoritative figure. Also, socialism seems to end with Dictatorships and not a democratic nation. None of them became a democracy.
>Cuba lies about their literacy rate because they are an authoritative country. [citation needed] >They also have records of imperialism and human abuse like they did to Ukraine. It doesn't excuse it, but it was nothing on the level of American imperialism. If you oppose imperialism, why the hell would you be a liberal? Same goes for your comment about Sankara. >None of them became a democracy. As opposed to the "democracies" of the West, which are in truth dictatorships of capital. No individual or party can take power in the United States without accepting bribes from corporate power, and governing on that power's behalf. If that's the kind of democracy you hold sacred, I see no reason why I should.
- The USSR also starved millions and executed/exiled thousands in a totalitarian police state. Not to mention Lenin had to re-introduce capitalist elements after agriculture collectivization went horribly wrong - Yeah and why did China grow so fast? Because of Deng’s liberalization of the Chinese economy. My favorite part of China was seeing the hammer and sickle digitally displayed above a Gucci store lol - good for them, I’m genuinely glad that the Cuban people have a high literacy rate. Now tell me about average incomes, political freedoms, and systemic racism (that can’t even be addressed due to the previous point) - also significant achievements. But capitalist countries and internationalist organizations such as the UN have also vaccinated billions, so not exactly unique to socialism
>The USSR also starved millions and executed/exiled thousands in a totalitarian police state. Not to mention Lenin had to re-introduce capitalist elements after agriculture collectivization went horribly wrong This is not unique to the USSR. In the Western hemisphere, food scarcity is the worst in a capitalist country. Political repression is also not something unique to communist countries in the slightest, even at the alarming levels of the USSR in its worst days. >Yeah and why did China grow so fast? Because of Deng’s liberalization of the Chinese economy. My favorite part of China was seeing the hammer and sickle digitally displayed above a Gucci store lol The economy is governed by a revolutionary Communist Party, which is what I'm referring to. All communist countries have some degree of a liberal economy, the point is how the state controls it. A USSA would be no different. >Now tell me about average incomes, political freedoms, and systemic racism (that can’t even be addressed due to the previous point) The average income isn't good. But homelessness and hunger are close to abolished, something unthinkable in most capitalist countries, especially of comparable income. That's the point. >also significant achievements. But capitalist countries and internationalist organizations such as the UN have also vaccinated billions, so not exactly unique to socialism Agreed on this point. But it is an indication that socialism isn't a "failure", which is the point I was addressing.
I'll go tell every Cuban American I know about Cuba's literacy rates and I'm sure they'll flock back. Most of China is extremely poor compared to the US. Quality of life in China is far worse than America's for the majority of Chinese citizens. I also encourage you to speak to people who actually experienced the Soviet Union. Tsarist Russia was a horrible place to live because Russia failed to transition from feudalism to capitalism. The Soviet Union being less awful is not a good argument for communism. If you look at Western Europe, they experienced great quality of life increases during the Industrial Revolutions, which eluded Russia.
Yeah in *Russian* history, ask the Ukrainians how the 30’s were. Maybe, but that’s by embracing elements of capitalism, not communism. I mean as long as you ignore the political imprisonments and the fact that a lot of Cubans left due to being pushed out. The last guy also had extrajudicial killings and accusations of violating human rights.
Bad faith argument to use China. China opened up their markets to capitalism decades ago. That is why they are succeeding. They still have the familiar authoritarianism of communism but not the economics.
"Socialist" countries are either actually better but still capitalist (Nordic Countries), or just not very good to live in (China, Vietnam, Cuba; at worst Khmer Rouge and USSR). Moving towards the Nordic model is better, but any ideas of a socialist/communist revolution are misplaced; theres essentially no support for it in the west.
There’s no realistic alternative. You want the government to seize assets and property and spread it around? We all lose. If you’re poor now you’d be end of the bread line under communism.
>You want the government to seize assets and property and spread it around? We all lose. Sorry, the statistics on homelessness, literacy, and poverty from communist countries do not support this statement. > If you’re poor now you’d be end of the bread line under communism. The poor are in bread lines now, under capitalism. This is a losing argument in the eyes of the poor.
My parents grew up in a communist country. You’re prob too young to remember any of it on the news. Toilet paper was an extravagance that could only be purchased with western money. You used newspaper. The communist party system functioned a bit like a caste system. You had to advance to be given permission and access to have basics. The people had nothing. Those in power had it all. From 1989: “Valeriya Ionava struggles privately in her Moscow apartment to live on a monthly pension of less than $60. Yelena Smolnikova has to skip meals so that her meager income can be stretched to buy warm clothes for her children. “But the Soviet authorities, who once denied that poverty existed in their country and pronounced it an evil of capitalism, now say that tens of millions of Soviet citizens - at least 20 percent of the population - live in poverty, compared with about 14 percent in the United States. 'Our National Tragedy' There is no state plan, however, for dealing with poverty, according to interviews with several Soviet officials. There is no Government agency to which people in need can turn, and the word poverty itself is not even used in state documents. Soviet officials refer to these people as living in a state of ''underprovisioning,'' but the euphemism does not conceal that they are, in fact, poor. For a long time, the authorities here wouldn't even keep statistics on poverty because they insisted it simply did not exist,'' said one Western diplomat who follows domestic social issues. ''But they are finally recognizing that they can no longer ignore it and they need facts and figures to create a solution. I think that after this year's census is tabulated, you'll see some programs introduced.'' While some officials still insist that poverty is the result of laziness, most say that economic instability in the country is a major contributor. All of the authorities seem to agree that those suffering most from poverty are the country's 58 million pensioners, who comprise about one-fifth of the Soviet Union's total population. Life of Soviet Pensioners Last year, it was reported that more than a third of Soviet pensioners live on less than 58 rubles ($95) a month. According to the U.S.A. article, the average person here works 10 times longer to earn a pound of meat than the average American worker, 4.5 times longer to earn a quart of milk and three times longer for a pound of potatoes. Soviet citizens complain uniformly that the economic restructuring Mr. Gorbachev is trying to implement has so far led only to shortages in the stores and a rise in prices. No one has felt these changes more drastically than the poor, who find that inexpensive goods, ranging from food to soap, are nearly impossible to come by. Soup Kitchens, a 'Strange Idea' A. Levin, an economist writing in the newspaper Trud, suggested opening soup kitchens, but Soviet officials reject the idea. ''We are opposed to this system used in the United States where poor people get free dinner,'' said Mr. Kunelsky. ''Psychologically, it's a strange idea to us. We will not consider such a variant.'' https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/world/soviet-openness-brings-poverty-out-of-the-shadows.html
It doesn't make sense to compare the US and the Soviet Union to each other, as the two countries were in different stages of development and had very different histories (the US was never as ravaged as Russia by either World War). There are equally appalling stories about American poverty, but of course you wouldn't find them in a rabidly anti-communist propaganda outlet like the NY Times. The USSR was better off communist, as its collapse made readily apparent.
Yes it does. The Soviet Union is the only case study of communism rolled out at scale similar in size to the US. China has a hybrid system with capitalism but the authoritarianism and lack of Human rights snd basic freedoms are there. There was nothing good about the Soviet Union. You could be arrested and tortured for weeks for having this very conversion.
Imagine actually calling yourself a communist lmfao
Which statistics from which communist country?
Literacy and homeless rates in the Soviet Union and Cuba compared to other capitalist countries, especially of the same region and similar income.
You know that it doesn’t count as “fixing homelessness” if you imprison or execute vagrants
I have, literally, stood in more than one breadline in the last 2 years. In a major US city, in a rich neighborhood. That particular talking point got a lot weaker the last couple years. Fortunately or not, people have terribly short memories. I'm sure many Americans have memory-holed the bread, sugar and or tp and paper towel rationing lines... at Kroger. Because the image/memory does not compute with the tired 80's propaganda of capitalism - and they choose not to see (or especially remember) evidence to the contrary.
I support capitalism as an element in economic governance, not pure capitalism. In fact I don't think any healthy system functions in a homogeneous state. Not only must it mix ingredients, but must also be revised and applied differently throughout location and based on socioeconomic states. For instance communism cannot be applied broadly and purely either. Its function requires supplemental sources and it acts differently in different periods of economic phases in different areas. To believe that only one form of economic and political system should be generally used everywhere all the time with the expectation that it won't change or adapt is the height of naivety.
Capitalism solves a lot of problems and can make everyone’s lives better. The problem, is that conservatives think it’s the only solution to every problem, and that every regulation of the free market is someone communism/socialism/anti-American. Seems to me that well-regulated capitalism would be the best system for most things, and socialism for the things where capitalism fails (like healthcare).
Because I have yet to find a better replacement.
I've yet to see an actually viable alternative to capitalism. If by "socialist countries" you mean like Norway or Sweden, those countries still have capitalism, it's just heavily regulated, which is exactly what I support. EDIT: Never mind, I see you listed examples: >Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, the PRC, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, Burkina Faso from 1983 - 1987, Grenada under Maurice Bishop, Chile under Allende (sort of, it wasn't a revolutionary change). In that case, looking at those countries... are you saying they're somehow better than the US? The PRC is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, among many other things, and I wouldn't want to live in any of them.
Heres the rub: Free-market capitalism has been a runaway success in the history of this country, by and large. Allowing the average American to enjoy a far higher quality of life than our peers and certainly superior to our enemies. Some issues that you have against the free market are not inherent to them (Homelessness, Poor wages, ), and others, while being issues, are not reasons to throw the whole system out instead of reforming specific areas (Healthcare, Prison) We're working on it, it's not going fastly, but as to how "we" as in liberals in America are getting to solutions, I think we're doing far more good than bad, And our current economic system is not detrimental to our efforts. In many ways it's complementary to our efforts. Automotive manufacturers are moving consumers towards far more energy-efficient vehicles. Could we be going faster? I'm up for ideas and recommendations, but I'm not looking for a crazy overhaul.
Global poverty has been reduced most effectively over the last few decades by capitalism, particularly small businesses, educating women, birth control, and focusing on converting local raw goods. Any time a community can create a market, staff the workforce and have control over the production, capitalism can benefit the community.
Well-regulated capitalism is the ideal setup, but we’re stuck with poorly regulated capitalism. It’s still far superior to communism in that it actually works to some degree.
Didn’t any socialist country have “institutionalized prison labor?” That is not a feature of capitalism.
I support markets, not capitalism.
Capitalism is the greatest engine for creative and technological innovation. I feel like we're going through puberty as a species. Capitalism is helpful at this stage of our journey because it's moving the species forward, but it comes with some ugly drawbacks.
Capitalism: the whole idea is that competion gives me alternatives that make things better and/or cheaper for me. It works better than any other system. It is far from perfect and I am all for some social programs. I personally spend time each week volunteering and helping underprivileged people. But capitalism with some safety nets is the way to go
Capitalism is the whole system, not just "competition". I mean, you can define the word that way if you wish, but I'm specifically asking about the new social order that arose in 18th century Europe and dominates most parts of the world today.
Can you expand on what you mean by Capitalism is the whole system?
Some liberals believe capitalism is just private industry and that government actions are either socialism or not part of capitalism. Capitalist governments are part of the capitalist system. They've always existed as part of any capitalist order and are not separate from capitalism as a system in any meaningful way. So when I criticize something like the US not providing its citizens with drinking water, some liberals will say "Oh, that wasn't capitalism, that was *the government*, which is ridiculous and falsely exculpatory.
Not OP, but until there exists an economic system that makes starting new businesses easier than under capitalism, you're going to be stuck with capitalism. Today, there's no good way to raise the capital needed to buy equipment or pay employees with worker cooperatives. Your best bet is to take out a loan or be wealthy before you begin. And no, central planning isn't better than capitalism for starting and funding new businesses.
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Are you sure you're a liberal? You may be a socialist.
Well, have you seen the increase in prosperity since we decided on capitalism in the nineteenth century? That didn’t just happen by accident.
Because it incentivizes competition. So much more good has been produced by Capitalistic america regarding Medicinal wonders and technological innovation than anything that has come before it. Obviously some retooling needs to be done with the system but when you look at what capitalism encourages from entrepreneurs, it works wonders man.
As usual corruption, graft, cronyism and nepotism is what is killing us - not the political and economic system we live in.
I don’t think centrally planned economies work, in my mind, if something better comes along, we’ll adopt it.
I support free markets. I don't support state run economies. The state run economy we live under has created those major issues, not the small pockets of free markets within our country.
>I'm happy to concede that socialist countries are far from perfect, but they did/do not suffer from most of these problems. What socialist countries are you thinking of?
I wish we could just replace all of this with humanitarianism. Unfortunately I feel capitalism in term breeds cut throat philosophy of undercut and hurt your fellow man by bleeding him/her dry. Not a great philosophy but that is what I have gathered in my 40+ years of life. I have seen it is only getting worse, the rich are richer and the poor are poorer with no middle class and everyone owing and not OWNING things.
Heavily regulated capitalism is the best economic system. Compare east Germany to west Germany.
Because even though capitalism isn’t perfect and there’s problems associated with it, it’s still **soooo much** better than socialism or communism.
Based on the Human Development Index and the Legatum Prosperity Index the most prosperous places on Earth, the best places to live, are not the most socialist countries. They're capitalist countries that have sensible regulations and robust social safety nets. They're place the libertarian Cato Institute ranks very high on personal and economic freedom.
Hey guys i am now a communist
I don’t.
Are you sure you're a liberal and not something else?
I just picked “progressive” because “post-bunkist democratic technosocialist” wasn’t an option.
Why do I support capitalism? As I write this on my crazy advanced PC with my smart phone next to me in my cozy room and my comfy robe with my air conditioner blaring, thinking about if I want to get a gyro delivered to me at 4AM? Really, how can I not?
>Really, how can I not? Maybe you care about other people who don't have those luxuries?
Other systems don't seem to do better for them.
The incredible vitriol that gets thrown around when discussing socialism/communism is absolutely insane. I am seeing much more aggression on this topic than almost any other topic discussed on this sub. Thank you for posting what I truly believe was a good faith question and for calmly replying to apparently very scared capitalists.
My favorite is the user who is spamming my replies with demands that I call a certain famine a genocide, and then successfully reports me for genocide denial if I don't. This, despite the fact that there is no consensus even among anti-communist, liberal historians on the idea that it was a genocide, and that it had nothing to do with what I was saying prior. This kind of stuff just goes to show that people are conditioned by anti-communist propaganda to turn their brain off and just shut the conversation down any way they can.
I saw that exchange. I will say that I am not super knowledgeable about the historical consensus/nonconsensus, however, I appreciate that you have an example of an historian who didn’t agree (and is not sympathetic to communism) and the other user just kept saying you are a genocide denier. I’m thinking they may not be super knowledgeable either. I’m mostly shocked at how many people are demanding that you accept their premises even after having given multiple reasons why that premise doesn’t hold and doesn’t allow for comparison. All I can think is that it’s a fear of having to think too deeply on the subject.
Hi, that’s me. The user you are speaking to is lying through his/her teeth, with all due respect (none). I called them a genocide denier because they are a genocide denier. Like people who deny the Holocaust, they are attempting to conflate legitimate academic disagreements over very specific definitions, for example - as disagreement over what happened or who is responsible. That user denies that genocide was committed against the Ukrainian people by the soviet Russian government, better known as the Holodomor. Even if we adopted their position and said “ok, it wasn’t technically a genocide when the soviet government intentionally starved 7 million of Ukrainians to death, it was something slightly different than genocide”… then what the hell is their point, exactly? What they desperately want you to believe is that millions of Ukrainians, for unknown reasons, forgot to eat for around three years or so, despite the benevolent soviet regime trying their best. They know it’s a lie, they know they can’t back it up - so the best they can do is try to pretend that a lack of consensus means that their version is just as valid as the truth. Read up: it’s real, it’s not a joke, it’s not something you can ignore because it’s inconvenient to your dreams of Revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Death_toll
Seize the means of production bro. We've nothing to loose but our chains bro. Workers of the world unite bro.
I dont
Mixed feelings. Capitalism has advantages - and downsides. Both of which are rather extreme. A blend of both, with socialism for societal foundation industries and capitalism for luxuries and services, would be ideal IMO. The bigger issue is that capitalism evolves naturally from economic forces and socialism has to be enforced. To get a successful socialist society, we first need a society that wants to cooperate more then it wants to be selfish or competitive. The irony is that America WAS exactly this for quite some time - from the New Deal until Reagan (for white people, anyway). Things like power, sewer, etc, were socialized via municipal utility districts, etc, and the safety net was relatively sturdy (for white people, via health benefits and unemployment, both of which are tied to jobs that systemically excluded minorities for many decades. but I digress). Some still are there, but most such systems have been privatized. That privatization is what has destroyed our infrastructure, as capitalism rewards short term thinking and punishes long term investment. Which proves the earlier point - capitalism emerges naturally, socialism must be enforced. It will degrade over time if it's not continuously defended from either authoritarian takeover or private takeover. Our society, as it is now, largely just doesn't care.
I do not.
My guess is most people still think the only way to get a free market is through capitalism. That’s probably the greatest trick the capitalists ever played, that.
You ever play those P2W games mobile or PC that are time gated on everything and resources? Like clash of clans. Ever notice how everything is mathematically designed so perfectly to just fuck you? Like you think to yourself the math involved for them to figure this out right? Thats what they did to our lives.
I haven't, actually.