Fuck China, and fuck the United States I live in. The nations of the Nordic region and a few other developed nations have my respect because they respect and value their citizenry. Their economy is a tool that is used to facilitate the distribution of goods and services for the benefit of their society and its citizens, what an economy is supposed to be, instead of doing it ass backwards as we do, hurting citizens to protect the beloved fucking economy and the growth/metastasis expectations of the owner class.
China/The US/Russia are the world leaders in exporting the notion that their citizens should be exploited to stoke the growth of the economy for the benefit of their respective elites. Whoever wins, their people lose.
Why should I go rah rah America when most stakeholders in our society are not meaningful institutional shareholders in the value society produces?
It shouldn’t be about saying simon says or coming out of a rich vagina or if not making perfect economic decisions and kissing ass from age 18, begging to be included and killing yourself for masters who were born into wealth for a small chance of being included in the prosperity of the prosperous nation you’re supposedly a member of.
And don’t you just love the class traitors here that come out to celebrate the failures of citizens who tried? oh you took out student loans in a subject that in hindsight didn’t pay dividends, haha loser. Oh you just started working and didnt get an education and are stuck in the underclass, haha loser. That’s what it means to be an American, rooting against one another as the owner class laughs.
I’m someone still recovering from republican/libertarian capitalist brainwashing. Would you know of a good book or two on this subject? It’s fascinating to me.
Most Americans definitely do not want socialism. People simply want things to be affordable, and be able to live with the social services we need readily available, and to have the freedom to do what they want. That’s not socialism, that’s a well functioning democracy with a strong economy.
Communists believe in abolition of capitalism through communist revolution and eventually want to reach a Communist society. Given that such vision has not actually happened yet, Communists often support Actually Existing Socialism (AES).
Socialism is some varying degree in between that and capitalism. On the one hand, there are democratic socialists like Bernie. On the other, there’s also AES countries (e.g. USSR, China).
(P.S. If any other communists see any problems, feel free to correct my mistakes.)
While democratic socialism is a variety of socialism, Bernie isn’t really a democratic socialist, but a social democrat. Social democracy is the left of capitalism, which is right of socialism in any form.
Before some moron turns up, Nazism is not socialism.
In general, I find the term “democratic socialism” to be pretty cringe. It’s like saying right up front “I’m not like those OTHER socialists!” Socialism is a liberatory project. Socialism is the auto-emancipation of the working class. THAT is what democracy looks like. Rule of the people.
Liberation comes hand in hand with revolution though. Socialism will certainly NOT be very democratic for the people who own vast amounts of real estate, productive machinery, and propaganda media empires. Those people will certainly need to end up on the wrong side of a gun for the project to succeed. The wise ones among them won’t force us to pull the trigger.
It will be a hostile take-over. It will be a break from the constitutional order. It will be a break from the “rule of law.” When the ruling class starts losing the game, they will flip over the table. All your precious civil liberties will be torn to shreds. Fascism is simply capitalism under crisis.
The Liberals commit themselves to playing by the rules even when the fascists never would. Salvador Allende (the world’s first elected Marxist head of state) tried to do this, and in three years it ended in his death and a fascist military dictatorship. There is no room for idealism in revolution. The stakes are very real. You need to crush your enemies by any means necessary. Maybe you don’t give Rupert Murdoch the freedom of speech. Maybe you don’t respect Jeff Bezos’s property rights. Maybe you stuff all the Proud Boys into a mineshaft.
A lot of people whine about authoritarianism in the English speaking left, but the English-speaking left has no power to speak of. Just a bunch of very online sectarians bickering. We run around trying to cancel internet forums which amount to little more than fucking book clubs, as if they were the embodiment of high Stalinism.
I’m gonna leave out utopian communism because it’s not what we’re talking about and isn’t really relevant.
Communists are working toward a classless, stateless society. Viewing the world through the lens of class struggle, they see the state as a tool of class repression and seek to use it to get to that stateless classless society. Its important here to recognize that communists want to use the tools of capitalism to develop the productive forces on the way.
Socialism is worker control of the means of production.
Social democracy is a set of policies enacted by bourgeois societies to keep people from revolting.
Communism entails the collective ownership and administration of all means of production and the absence of social classes, while socialism advocates for worker control over means of production within a democratic society, allowing for some individual ownership and social stratification.
In addition, there are different levels of socialism. “Some” individual ownership turns people off. “The State owns the house I worked so hard to pay off?”
You can have full private ownership of your things AND have single-payer health care, top-tier public education, reining in predatory banks, etc.
We want to be Norway, not Venezuela.
Your government is directly responsible for Venezuela’s instability. Your government’s entire foreign policy is destabilizing different parts of the world to float the Dollar as the main currency and you the citizens benefit the most from it, this is why I cringe inwardly when Americans complain of Capitalism’s adverse effects, if you enjoyed it while it was good, you must enjoy it while it gets bad.
As a venezuelan, no. What happened and still happens here was the sole responsibility of the socialist party’s government and the ultimate reason why I don’t trust leftists as they don’t own up their failures and just disregard them as “not true socialism”
The government of Venezuela isn’t blameless but to think that American sanctions didn’t affect the Venezuelan economy are the words of a true partisan. Your kind set up piano wire and beheaded civilians on motor bikes in Venezuela and I find that despicable.
It’s one thing to be a communist; it’s another to be an apologist for the CCP.
Fuck China, and fuck the United States I live in. The nations of the Nordic region and a few other developed nations have my respect because they respect and value their citizenry. Their economy is a tool that is used to facilitate the distribution of goods and services for the benefit of their society and its citizens, what an economy is supposed to be, instead of doing it ass backwards as we do, hurting citizens to protect the beloved fucking economy and the growth/metastasis expectations of the owner class.
China/The US/Russia are the world leaders in exporting the notion that their citizens should be exploited to stoke the growth of the economy for the benefit of their respective elites. Whoever wins, their people lose.
Why should I go rah rah America when most stakeholders in our society are not meaningful institutional shareholders in the value society produces?
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
It shouldn’t be about saying simon says or coming out of a rich vagina or if not making perfect economic decisions and kissing ass from age 18, begging to be included and killing yourself for masters who were born into wealth for a small chance of being included in the prosperity of the prosperous nation you’re supposedly a member of.
And don’t you just love the class traitors here that come out to celebrate the failures of citizens who tried? oh you took out student loans in a subject that in hindsight didn’t pay dividends, haha loser. Oh you just started working and didnt get an education and are stuck in the underclass, haha loser. That’s what it means to be an American, rooting against one another as the owner class laughs.
Those nordic countries are suported by a global network of unequal exchange
I’m someone still recovering from republican/libertarian capitalist brainwashing. Would you know of a good book or two on this subject? It’s fascinating to me.
Books:
Texts:
Videos:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=vyl2DeKT-Vs
https://piped.video/watch?v=oYodY6o172A
https://piped.video/watch?v=fpKsygbNLT4
https://piped.video/watch?v=hactcmhVS1w
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Like on which topic? Capitalist critiques, options for a better society, inequality?
Capitalist critiques mainly.
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (easy) A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey (medium)
Americans want socialism. This is spun as “communism” to distract and distort the argument.
Most Americans definitely do not want socialism. People simply want things to be affordable, and be able to live with the social services we need readily available, and to have the freedom to do what they want. That’s not socialism, that’s a well functioning democracy with a strong economy.
Tell me a time in history when this existed without FDR’s socialism.
And what really is the difference between Socialism and Communism?
Communist and socialist terms have been conflated for a long time.
See https://existentialcomics.com/comic/123 for an illustration.
Communists believe in abolition of capitalism through communist revolution and eventually want to reach a Communist society. Given that such vision has not actually happened yet, Communists often support Actually Existing Socialism (AES).
Socialism is some varying degree in between that and capitalism. On the one hand, there are democratic socialists like Bernie. On the other, there’s also AES countries (e.g. USSR, China).
(P.S. If any other communists see any problems, feel free to correct my mistakes.)
While democratic socialism is a variety of socialism, Bernie isn’t really a democratic socialist, but a social democrat. Social democracy is the left of capitalism, which is right of socialism in any form.
Before some moron turns up, Nazism is not socialism.
In general, I find the term “democratic socialism” to be pretty cringe. It’s like saying right up front “I’m not like those OTHER socialists!” Socialism is a liberatory project. Socialism is the auto-emancipation of the working class. THAT is what democracy looks like. Rule of the people.
Liberation comes hand in hand with revolution though. Socialism will certainly NOT be very democratic for the people who own vast amounts of real estate, productive machinery, and
propagandamedia empires. Those people will certainly need to end up on the wrong side of a gun for the project to succeed. The wise ones among them won’t force us to pull the trigger.It will be a hostile take-over. It will be a break from the constitutional order. It will be a break from the “rule of law.” When the ruling class starts losing the game, they will flip over the table. All your precious civil liberties will be torn to shreds. Fascism is simply capitalism under crisis.
The Liberals commit themselves to playing by the rules even when the fascists never would. Salvador Allende (the world’s first elected Marxist head of state) tried to do this, and in three years it ended in his death and a fascist military dictatorship. There is no room for idealism in revolution. The stakes are very real. You need to crush your enemies by any means necessary. Maybe you don’t give Rupert Murdoch the freedom of speech. Maybe you don’t respect Jeff Bezos’s property rights. Maybe you stuff all the Proud Boys into a mineshaft.
A lot of people whine about authoritarianism in the English speaking left, but the English-speaking left has no power to speak of. Just a bunch of very online sectarians bickering. We run around trying to cancel internet forums which amount to little more than fucking book clubs, as if they were the embodiment of high Stalinism.
I’m gonna leave out utopian communism because it’s not what we’re talking about and isn’t really relevant.
Communists are working toward a classless, stateless society. Viewing the world through the lens of class struggle, they see the state as a tool of class repression and seek to use it to get to that stateless classless society. Its important here to recognize that communists want to use the tools of capitalism to develop the productive forces on the way.
Socialism is worker control of the means of production.
Social democracy is a set of policies enacted by bourgeois societies to keep people from revolting.
Communism entails the collective ownership and administration of all means of production and the absence of social classes, while socialism advocates for worker control over means of production within a democratic society, allowing for some individual ownership and social stratification.
In addition, there are different levels of socialism. “Some” individual ownership turns people off. “The State owns the house I worked so hard to pay off?” You can have full private ownership of your things AND have single-payer health care, top-tier public education, reining in predatory banks, etc. We want to be Norway, not Venezuela.
Your government is directly responsible for Venezuela’s instability. Your government’s entire foreign policy is destabilizing different parts of the world to float the Dollar as the main currency and you the citizens benefit the most from it, this is why I cringe inwardly when Americans complain of Capitalism’s adverse effects, if you enjoyed it while it was good, you must enjoy it while it gets bad.
As a venezuelan, no. What happened and still happens here was the sole responsibility of the socialist party’s government and the ultimate reason why I don’t trust leftists as they don’t own up their failures and just disregard them as “not true socialism”
The government of Venezuela isn’t blameless but to think that American sanctions didn’t affect the Venezuelan economy are the words of a true partisan. Your kind set up piano wire and beheaded civilians on motor bikes in Venezuela and I find that despicable.
My kind? Thanks for the uncalled xenophobic racism.
Venezuela has been going to shit since the 2000 with Chavez.
Sanctions were stablished from 2015 and only to 7 individuals from the venezuelan government.
Keep your lies up. Maybe you will start believing them.