You can tell that this audience is primarily American because they still defend capitalism, even after being shafted by it over and over. Careful everyone, big bad socialism is going to take your kids and your wife!
Don't dare dream of something better, instead keep swallowing the propaganda of the state and its controlling elites.
Man socialism keeps sounding better and better they will even take those pesky wife and kids off my hands/s.
But in serious most Americans don't know shit about socialism our capitalism they live under. Dumb fucks look at you with surprise when you mention our highway system would be considered socialist program.
Roads and streets are funded 100% from taxs which make them a social program. I know not true 100% socialism but it's as close as the United States will allow.
Also most Americans always going on especially fucking Republicans and their voter base about how the government should be run like a business. But don't realize the government should never be ran as one.
The closest you get in America to socialism is public libraries and free school meals. And they managed to make the latter controversial and, if not, incredibly shitty.
which make them a social program. I know not true 100% socialism
This is part of the problem of people not knowing what socialism even is. Even the ancient slavery systems could have social programs (for example famed Roman grain handouts in Rome), and the first modern, universal state funded social programs were introduced in 1889 in German Empire. neither of them was by any means socialist because socialism is not when the government does stuff.
Why complain when capitalism ruins something that it created? Isn't that how it works? Something else will come along and don't better or differently and people will flock to it until it sucks too.
Communism does not have a good track record in places like Poland. After the absolute shithole that the PRL was, I dont kniw how you except people to defend communism.
Did they say communism? I don't think they said communism. In fact, I'm pretty certain they said socialism, which is not the same thing unless you're a propagandized American who licks boots.
Communism is not the only alternative to capitalism, my dude.
Depends on what you mean by socialism. All systems have upsides and downsides. Late stage capitalism in the US has a lot of downsides, but workers taking over the means of production does not have a good track record.
Because it's unsustainable and actively degenerates everything in its environment in pursuit of an insatiable need for capital growth.
Saying capitalism isn't that bad is like saying early stage cancer isn't that bad. It doesn't change the nature of the cancer and what it will become unabated.
Going with the cancer metaphor, what does "late-stage" capitalism look like? How do we know that it will happen? Are there any other possible timelines that has something resembling capitalism but is not terrible? Capitalism is a pretty broad term that can describe all types of economies from the american gilded age to modern social democracies, and while I would certainly consider various forms of extreme capitalism to be cancerous to a functioning society, are they truly representative of all types of capitalist systems?
Anti-capitalism is centered around removing power from holding capital. By tying power to capital, there is an incentive to accumulate capital in disproportionate exchange.
Anti-capitalism is NOT anti-market. Markets are an economic tool used in all economies. Socialism is offered as an alternative to shift power to collective agreement through direct vote (direct democracy) or reprentative agreement (republic). By not granting economic goverance to a democratic government, there is a limitation on the ability to keep commodities responsibly sourced and consumed.
Capitalism means that we vote with our dollar and when those with capital have more votes and those without, they control policy generation and governance.
Based on your definition of what it means to be "anti-capitalist" vs "anti-market" I think there may be a difference between the definitions of capitalism we are working under. Could you give me your definition of capitalism?
While I do understand that non democratically accountable forms of economic activity may harmful or explotative in many situations, I do also see the argument for private ownership of "the means of production", in so far as it can be beneficial to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of production and innovation. I don't think anyone can scientifically or even philosophically completely justify one economic system over the other, and that so far, a mix of the two has been what most countries have settled on.
Capitalism means that we vote with our dollar and when those with capital have more votes and those without, they control policy generation and governance.
One last thing I'd like to point out, while in capitalism, the collective choices of those with money decide what products are made and services provided, this decision power doesn't (and shouldn't!) in well-functioning democracies extend to the government. I do understand the concern of large accumulations of wealth causing large imbalances of power which then affects government policy, and I believe this is a major problem (especially generational wealth). But I do not believe it is one that cannot be prevented and protected against, nor do I believe it is a defining property of "capitalism".
The article seems to characterize efficiency solely in the context where it optimizes a process to the detriment of other useful aspects of the process (i.e. removing redundancy makes a system more "efficient" in some sense, while also making it more prone to disruption).
Putting aside the article's weird definitions, I do like the article's overall message: grow slow and sustainability rather than as "efficiently" as possible. I can see how the impulses of growth at all costs and short term efficiency gains at the cost of long term stability might be related to certain forms of capitalism, however capitalism is not defined (as in the definitions given in your other comment) by rampant disregard for caution and sustainability, (there are capitalist societies today known for their careful planning and risk management!). Capitalism as a concept is only defined via private ownership of capital, so I think my original comment still stands: capitalism is good, sometimes.
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun The state of having capital or property; possession of capital.
noun The concentration or massing of capital in the hands of a few; also, the power or influence of large or combined capital.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun An economic system based on predominantly private (individual or corporate) investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and wealth; contrasted with socialism or especially communism, in which the state has the predominant role in the economy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun politics, uncountable a socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
noun economics, uncountable a socio-economic system based on the abstraction of resources into the form of privately-owned capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
noun countable a specific variation or implementation of either such socio-economic system.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun an economic system based on private ownership of capital
Most of these definitions (with the exception of the Century Dictionary) would suggest a definition for "anti-capitalism" as primarily being against an economic system based on private ownership of capital, not the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. While these two things are compatible and perhaps even causal, they don't inherently require each other. You can have extreme wealth in a non capitalist system, or a capitalist system with strong caps on wealth accumulation. Perhaps a better description for your position would be "anti-extreme wealth" rather than "anti-capitalism"?
Who paid for the roads, fire department, police, Military, postal service, bridges, dams... Shall I go on?
You think taxing people and using that money to fund public infrastructure and services is pure capitalism that's operating without socialist principles?
Most socialist states are better after their revolutions as opposed to before. The USSR went from a borderline feudal society to putting people in orbit in 50 years. Additionaly, socialist states outperform capitalist ones in similar wealth categories.
That would be a decent question if we had examples of socialist experiments that were actually left alone to develop and not invaded 2 sevonds after america heard about them
Most socialist states are better after their revolutions as opposed to before. The USSR went from a borderline feudal society to putting people in orbit in 50 years. Additionaly, socialist states outperform capitalist ones in similar wealth categories.
Lol, enshitification of these services are happening because the owners want to extract as much money as possible from the users. Workers would do the same even if they owned it. How many people would turn down millions of dollars because users don't like the change?
Yeah I'm not sure why it's nowadays common to simplify socialism as "workers owning the means of production". It's not exactly wrong, but it is often misunderstood.
A company being owned by it's employees is not necessarily "socialism". In today's global capitalist economy, there are worker-cooperatives as well, but they too exist within the capitalist economy and have to follow its rules, which is above all the profit motive. If you don't orient yourself based on profit, you will be out-competed eventually.
Traditionally, when socialists talk about "workers owning/seizing the means of production", they are not talking about individual workers or individual businesses.
Workers means "the working class", which would be pretty much everyone ("the 99%"). Means of production means industry and the economy overall, not individual factories and businesses.
What makes FOSS special is that the software is not privately owned by anyone, not by the devs, not by a couple of programmers, not by a company. It is commonly owned, anyone can use, copy and alter the code however they want without any artificial barriers. This of course makes it a lot harder to extract money from users.
You must think that humans are inherently greedy and/or are projecting what you would do in a scenario where you're part of a worker co-op. Most workplaces aren't worth millions. Most folks who round themselves in a worker co-op would most likely try to better the operation for everyone.
In publicly-traded corporations, long term wealth extraction isn’t the goal. Getting sales up next quarter is. Employee-owned cooperatives are more likely to think long term. Plus, I’d vastly prefer to trust the average worker to do the right thing in a coop situation vs a manager doing it in a situation where they’re legally required (as standard publicly-traded corporations are) to prioritize the financial gains of shareholders above all other interests. Maybe you’ve lost so much faith in people that you think no one would ever choose to be slightly less rich for any reason. But plenty of people know there’s such a thing as enough, that there are interests as important as next quarter’s profits. They just don’t usually get MBAs.
Yah, if workers own a tiny portion of the means of production, as they do now in various co-ops around the globe, they will be either (1) required to operate on the basis of profit in order to outcompete entities that are not worker-owned, or (2) cease to exist because they get outcompeted by those who operate on the basis of profit.
This forces all existing co-ops to behave in line with capitalism as a whole. The point is to overcome that system of socio-economic relations:
When calls are made for workers to own and operate production, as in this meme, they mean that the class constituted by workers — the proletariat — should be in control of all productive means. Not just that some workers should start co-ops, for this primary reason.
The idea that owners would sacrifice their profits if their business were merely a co-op is, I agree, not necessarily true. (Though workers in co-ops who are directly connected to the point of value production would definitely be more willing to sacrifice profits for decisions that enhance social value.) The point, however, is to move beyond an economy owned and operated for profit and forge a society in which profit is not the basis for operation in the first place. If, for example, workers' needs were guaranteed, the impetus for profit-seeking would evaporate, though will not be absent, at least while the artifacts of capitalist society persist in us and our institutions.
If means of production were all owned by workers, then that means they are operating them for their own benefit and the benefit of their communities. Why? The profit motive is not quite as strong. You are no longer needing to amass wealth to live a happy life. Because those who control the local farms are part of the community. Those who control local factories are workers that are part of the community. Each of those operates the means of production to fulfill their own needs, and their community
Attention, people of Bikini Bottom! You have been cheated and lied to! The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of Mr. Krabs! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We'll saw the foundation of big business in half, even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people's will crashing through Mr. Krabs' HOUSE OF SERVITUDE!
Goes without saying. Look at the profits of the companies providing essential resources like energy. They most certainly didn't let a good crisis go to waste.
Yes, or at a bare minimum, CEO-proof everything and put more power in the hands of users of monolithic infrastructural utility products like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit
Capitalism generally allows for a range of ownership structures, including traditional privately owned businesses, publicly traded corporations, and worker-owned enterprises.
I guess an argument would be that privately owned companies are already too wealthy to allow for fair market competition, but in worker owned companies nothing is stopping them from becoming large corporations that can also do everything a private lobbyist company does. If you don't believe me, just look at your democratically elected capitalist government. Just because something is democratic doesn't mean it will be ethical or fair internally or externally.
Workers don’t give a shit about customers because that’s how the incentive system is set up. Give workers the profits, you give them a good reason to give a shit about how clients feel.
That would be an improvement actually, because the customers of these companies are not users, they are other companies looking to advertise or buy users personal data. The users of for profit social media are in fact the product, not the customers.
You skipped over the part where he says "You think I own this business? You think I own IKEA?" implying he would care if he actually had any skin in the game which he would if his job operated as a worker co-op.
Co-ops can be capitalistic and are capable of functioning under capitalism, but they would also work much the same under any market economy. Decisions and would be profits are democratized/socialized.
Or at least have them be publicly owned common good, owned by multiple countries with editorial independence from the get go and funded through taxation. That would be a start.
Communism works nice in theory, and in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. But we
e can definity re-shitproof internet based services.
Shitty people always ended up in charge and found a way to enrich themselves. Maybe in the far future once we have a true artificial intelligence, communism can truly work after they elect some unbiased AI (no skynet please) to be their leader.
Who will direct productions if someone not in charge of anything? Who stops bad actors from inciting their society into anarchy if no one wield any power to control the population?
That's very noble but sadly I don't trust humanity at current state to be able to do that. We'll probably need to genetically engineer selfishness out of humanity's gene pool before communism has any chance to success.
No, we don't need eugenics to ensure socialism. People are plenty empathetic as it is. The biggest hurdle to true selflessness at the minute is living in a society that incentivises greed. And that is the fault of capitalism.
When you say "workers" do you mean the actual workers or some vanguard party of intellectual champagne socialists who make decisions on the workers' behalf?
Actual workers. If we made a society where people are taken care of, we'd find most folks would be enthusiastic about their work. Saying "people don't want to work" is often taken at face value when the reality is that most people do want to work, because it helps them feel a sense of purpose. They don't, however, want to be exploited/work under capitalism because that is soul crushing.
Oh I agree completely with all of that. I just have been duped before by MLs saying worker ownership and what they really mean is their particular political party controlling everything. If everything is run by workers' councils with no existence of a vanguard party, that would be paradise for me.
I would also go beyond saying that labor (not "work," as IMO the word "work" implies labor under capitalism) gives people a sense of purpose in that it gives communities a sense of purpose and connectedness. When we are all sharing in common labor toward the goal of enhancing our community and generally improving lives, we feel a more collectivized responsibility for one another.
Obviously they meant the former since that's what we're literally doing here. But even the latter would do a better job managing Twitter/Reddit than what they have now.
Do you think OP is a Marxist-Leninist, posting online using a decentralized protocol ironically controlled by workers, to subtly build support for a big government-run website?
Allowing capitalist relations to persist, even if basic goods like food and homes were nationalized, enables a society in which capitalist profiteers continue to operate. History shows pretty explicitly that Capital will use the levers of power that exist, like The State, to eat away at or overturn any socialistic advances. E.g., suddenly the luxury capitalist corporation that sells idk, pearls, is lobbying (bribing) their way into privatizing beaches from which they operate. Slowly but surely the socioeconomic relations produced under capitalism foment and claw their way back to their former position. This requires a constant, indefinitely revolutionary society to keep capitalist relations at bay; that sort of momentum is not possible to sustain, certainly at the current moment.
It's necessary to abolish capitalists as a class because leaving capitalist systems of relations alone enables them to continue to re-produce themselves.
That doesn't preclude this sort of dual-economic setup from being a good thing, just insufficient.
yeah I guess from my point of view all the systems for distributing resources and power 'fairly' fail on their own. Mostly because they usually silo power in 1 or 2 mechanisms, so power concentrates and corrupts over time.
Also from a systems engineering standpoint -I dislike 'purity'. I prefer blended systems with backups and counter-measures. If I want to know which systems work best I look at what is delivering the best results and right now for me thats the nordic socialist democracies which still have plenty of capitalism.
Im not saying we've arrived at the best and should stop improving, but Im not interested in the endless hypothetical arguments about which ideology would be best if perfectly implemented. They are never perfectly implemented so best design something that can withstand reality.
TL:DR; You want to eradicate capitalists, I want to relegate them to a lower rung of society but accept they will exist
I mean, we first need to define what a luxury and what a necessity is. For some things like food, shelter, water, healthcare it's pretty straightforward. But for resources like energy or communications it's less obvious.
I'd argue that the internet is now a necessity rather than a luxury, but many people to this day still don't have or choose not to have internet access (due to geography or religion). Energy is the same way, if we take an obviously bad example, but say you're socializing electricity for everyone, what's to stop someone from mining cryptocurrency on everyone else's dime ? That person would be profiting off of the social net. Where do we put the cursor between "luxurious" energy use and "necessary" energy use ? It's a tough thing to figure out.
Furthermore, for most people you need an incentive to work, right now it's survival, which is not great, but if all of your needs basic, and more are taken care of by the state, you only work for the luxuries, which would greatly reduce the available workforce. It's again a tough balance to find.
If you're socializing electricity for everyone then you can tell when usage is far outside norms and audit usage
I also don't think money is the ultimate incentive, and most people would work whether or not they needed money to survive. Sure they wouldn't work at some crappy unfulfilling job, but people would still be productive according to their idea of productivity.
Also not having people working all these useless jobs would save energy and resources.
There's lots of study on how humans respond to incentives and money and its not a straightforward relationship at all.
Thats some high quality bruh. FOSS software and communism have very little in common. Yeah sure power for the people, but thinking that everyone should be equal in this enviroment is misleading. Lemmy like every other platform still has to have moderators that are over normal users. The ecosystem itself does not allow abuse. Eg. You can have a strict mod and then host your own instance that is true free speech or whatsoever. If u gonna post nazi stuff or smth like that then they gonna defederate. It's better in some sort because u don't have spam monkey and other extremists but still u get to choose your own poison.
This is some LibSoc thinking. See: in early USSR days when they tried more worker-cooperative based ownership they had to stop because the factory workers kept just immediately selling their factories for money now that they owned them.
The real question is, would I prefer not to pay far out the ass to live here?
What are the downsides to living in affordable government accommodation, as opposed to paying for the house over thirty years, and giving the bank a small fortune in interest?
"UBI and stripping 1% isn't communism"
Sorry, I forgot that redistributing the wealth from the 1% and providing everyone with equal opportunity is not the entire premise of communism. You're right, my bad.
There are too many downsides that are too severe and won't change unless we change the system. I suggest you research the successes of communism. The USSR accomplished a lot and there are other examples like Cuba
Lmao, social media sites would be insanely worse if the employees made all the decisions. They would all be left-wing circle jerks, as if you all haven't gotten unhinged enough.
Honestly I don't even know where to start with this, so I'll keep it simple. Enshittification of Twitter, Reddit et al. is not necessarily a result of capitalism, and likewise Fediverse doesn't exist because "workers took the means of production".
For example the disastrous YouTube monetisation policy comes in part from a desire to keep the site "child friendly" (that's why swear words and gore are banned), and in part due to a need to follow existing copyright law.
Even if YouTube was run by a worker co-op, or was a state enterprise those two factors would likely still lead to stringent monetisation rules.
Monetisation rules are a direct result of capitalism. Profits are what motivates the decision making. In a post-capitalism economy it would be the needs and wants that motivates the decision making. One of the failures of capitalism is that we assume wants/needs has a correlation with profits, when clearly the enshitification demonstrates otherwise.
In socialism nobody wants to work so good luck with your YouTube. There is a reason for proprietary software being most popular and often more feature rich. What we need is capitalism + more opensource work from us, regular people. Capitalism + opensource is way to go.
Nobody? Look to be honest there are some lazy people that dont want to work but most of us will be happy to work in a socialist economy where we the workers get compensated fairly. Capitalism and open source dont go hand by hand. People is literally creating all of this amazing products for free!! Workinf for the community thats what socialism is. And also the proprietary software is more "popular" because big companies just take open source and make it proprietary then they said they created just look at Apple and RedHat.
huge part of opensource is funded and developed by capitalistic companies. Take Linux for example.
And imagine if you wanted to open your own coffee shop. Where would you get a place for it? From the state probably. But what if they decide that there is no need for new coffee shop? You would have problem. In capitalism on the other hand you have your free will and as long as you have money you can open your coffee shop anytime anywhere. I know it's not really as easy to make money but if capitalism isn't broken by stupid regulations and other nonsense it really can work, allowing you to take cheap loans and start your own businesses.
I live in a post communist country and trust me I know how shitty socialism is
I understand your point on the coffee shop in that you are right. Thats not exactly how capitalism works , if you open a coffee shop and become very profitable then a big company comes in putting out of business forcing you to work for them or close your place. Capitalism is brutal against small businesses. I totally support small business , that's why I believe that people should have more power not corporations.
Free market is a democracy. That's awesome you support small business and if more people were doing the same thing I can guarantee that big corporations wouldn't be a problem.
Another really important factor are regulations. Capitalism right now is way to regulated which makes it really difficult for small businesses to exist. On the other hand big corporations are not regulated enough tho.
We should work on existing system, try to improve it rather than change it to totally different.
Also if you wanted to make a switch to socialism you would have to rob a lot of people from their private property
My problem with Capitalism is the profit over anything. The environment , workers , resources , quality , control over the things you bought. There are so many examples where corporations abuse their power.
the disastrous YouTube monetisation policy comes in part from a desire to keep the site “child friendly”
Sure, but the reason why they want to keep the site “child friendly” is because content for children is incredibly profitable and because advertisers don't want their ads getting related to "controversial" content.
Even if YouTube was run by a worker co-op, or was a state enterprise those two factors would likely still lead to stringent monetisation rules.
This is the reason why I don't like equating socialism with "workers owning the means of production". Worker-cooperatives can exist in a capitalist economy, which means they have to follow capitalist rules (including the drive to generate profits).
When leftists say "workers", they generally mean "the 99%" or "the working class", not individual workers. When leftists say "the means of production", they mean the economy/industry overall, not individual companies.
If youtube was owned and operated in common, it would not be bound to profitability, but to use.
We can also look at something like peertube, which is essentially a commonly owned version of youtube. Instead of being guided by profitability, it is used based on many different use-cases. There can be peertube instances that are completely private, there can be peertube instances that are used for a specific topic or community (for example kids) and there can be peertube instances which are not for children at all.
Lmao, social media sites would be insanely worse if the employees made all the decisions. They would all be left-wing circle jerks, as if you all haven't gotten unhinged enough.
Using socialism as a boogeyman by definition, is a poor argument. There are merits to many different economic systems, many of which have pros and cons, capitalism and socialism included.
The laugh, and "listen" while providing absolutely no reasoning demonstrates a certain level of arrogance, while at the same time demonstrating a lack of knowledge on the subject
That is a statement, not an argument. I could state that capitalism's final form is always kleptocracy. But that still isn't an argument either, it is a statement. I am not backing up my reasoning. Just like you did not backup your's. Also if we want to talk about human rights, Capitalism hasn't really been a bastion for that either. Just look at Nestle, or the countless US backed coups in South America. Was that for human rights? Or outnof fear that socialism was spreading?
You can tell that this audience is primarily American because they still defend capitalism, even after being shafted by it over and over. Careful everyone, big bad socialism is going to take your kids and your wife!
Don't dare dream of something better, instead keep swallowing the propaganda of the state and its controlling elites.
Man socialism keeps sounding better and better they will even take those pesky wife and kids off my hands/s.
But in serious most Americans don't know shit about socialism our capitalism they live under. Dumb fucks look at you with surprise when you mention our highway system would be considered socialist program.
Sounds interesting, what does that mean?
Roads and streets are funded 100% from taxs which make them a social program. I know not true 100% socialism but it's as close as the United States will allow.
Also most Americans always going on especially fucking Republicans and their voter base about how the government should be run like a business. But don't realize the government should never be ran as one.
The corruption already bad enough.
They should be forced to run their businesses as businesses - no more bailouts
All these big names seriously run their businesses like social programs.
Yeah, run America like Elon runs Twitter. Absolutely brain dead
The closest you get in America to socialism is public libraries and free school meals. And they managed to make the latter controversial and, if not, incredibly shitty.
And the GOP and their far right cronies are trying to get public libraries shut down.
This is part of the problem of people not knowing what socialism even is. Even the ancient slavery systems could have social programs (for example famed Roman grain handouts in Rome), and the first modern, universal state funded social programs were introduced in 1889 in German Empire. neither of them was by any means socialist because socialism is not when the government does stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq0EYo_ZQVU
Just wanted to put the clip here. :D
American here and fuck capitalism.
Hey now, that's unfair!
As à Canadian, I can attest that we also blindly defend capitalism.
We are poor and our freedoms are exploited, but at least we're free!
If I don't swallow the propaganda, I don't swallow anything. We're hungry, man.
You can swallow my 🍆 instead 😉
Why complain when capitalism ruins something that it created? Isn't that how it works? Something else will come along and don't better or differently and people will flock to it until it sucks too.
Communism does not have a good track record in places like Poland. After the absolute shithole that the PRL was, I dont kniw how you except people to defend communism.
Did they say communism? I don't think they said communism. In fact, I'm pretty certain they said socialism, which is not the same thing unless you're a propagandized American who licks boots.
Communism is not the only alternative to capitalism, my dude.
Absolutely correct.
Depends on what you mean by socialism. All systems have upsides and downsides. Late stage capitalism in the US has a lot of downsides, but workers taking over the means of production does not have a good track record.
Finnish person here to say fuck socialism.
What are your criticisms of how Finland is run?
I like capitalism. It is cool sometimes.
(Comment gets downvoted to oblivion)
Edit: would someone care to explain why there are no cases in which capitalism is cool?
Because it's unsustainable and actively degenerates everything in its environment in pursuit of an insatiable need for capital growth.
Saying capitalism isn't that bad is like saying early stage cancer isn't that bad. It doesn't change the nature of the cancer and what it will become unabated.
Going with the cancer metaphor, what does "late-stage" capitalism look like? How do we know that it will happen? Are there any other possible timelines that has something resembling capitalism but is not terrible? Capitalism is a pretty broad term that can describe all types of economies from the american gilded age to modern social democracies, and while I would certainly consider various forms of extreme capitalism to be cancerous to a functioning society, are they truly representative of all types of capitalist systems?
Edit: spelling
Anti-capitalism is centered around removing power from holding capital. By tying power to capital, there is an incentive to accumulate capital in disproportionate exchange.
Anti-capitalism is NOT anti-market. Markets are an economic tool used in all economies. Socialism is offered as an alternative to shift power to collective agreement through direct vote (direct democracy) or reprentative agreement (republic). By not granting economic goverance to a democratic government, there is a limitation on the ability to keep commodities responsibly sourced and consumed.
Capitalism means that we vote with our dollar and when those with capital have more votes and those without, they control policy generation and governance.
Based on your definition of what it means to be "anti-capitalist" vs "anti-market" I think there may be a difference between the definitions of capitalism we are working under. Could you give me your definition of capitalism?
While I do understand that non democratically accountable forms of economic activity may harmful or explotative in many situations, I do also see the argument for private ownership of "the means of production", in so far as it can be beneficial to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of production and innovation. I don't think anyone can scientifically or even philosophically completely justify one economic system over the other, and that so far, a mix of the two has been what most countries have settled on.
One last thing I'd like to point out, while in capitalism, the collective choices of those with money decide what products are made and services provided, this decision power doesn't (and shouldn't!) in well-functioning democracies extend to the government. I do understand the concern of large accumulations of wealth causing large imbalances of power which then affects government policy, and I believe this is a major problem (especially generational wealth). But I do not believe it is one that cannot be prevented and protected against, nor do I believe it is a defining property of "capitalism".
On the topic of efficiency: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/3/17/the-tragic-downside-of-efficiency
The article seems to characterize efficiency solely in the context where it optimizes a process to the detriment of other useful aspects of the process (i.e. removing redundancy makes a system more "efficient" in some sense, while also making it more prone to disruption).
Putting aside the article's weird definitions, I do like the article's overall message: grow slow and sustainability rather than as "efficiently" as possible. I can see how the impulses of growth at all costs and short term efficiency gains at the cost of long term stability might be related to certain forms of capitalism, however capitalism is not defined (as in the definitions given in your other comment) by rampant disregard for caution and sustainability, (there are capitalist societies today known for their careful planning and risk management!). Capitalism as a concept is only defined via private ownership of capital, so I think my original comment still stands: capitalism is good, sometimes.
These seem good: https://www.wordnik.com/words/capitalism
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
from The Century Dictionary.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
Most of these definitions (with the exception of the Century Dictionary) would suggest a definition for "anti-capitalism" as primarily being against an economic system based on private ownership of capital, not the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. While these two things are compatible and perhaps even causal, they don't inherently require each other. You can have extreme wealth in a non capitalist system, or a capitalist system with strong caps on wealth accumulation. Perhaps a better description for your position would be "anti-extreme wealth" rather than "anti-capitalism"?
Careful this sub is full of people who are actual communists.
I like communism too, it can be cool sometimes as well.
Is there a communism society that has succeeded? Lol
Can you name a pure capitalist state that's succeeded without socialist elements keeping it afloat?
Follow-up: Why hand money to the leeches that do nothing but own shit rather than the workers that fuel the economy?
Well I'm not starving and I can choose how to live my life.
I'm not currently dying, so that's about as much as I can ask for.
You do see how cucked you are, right?
Maybe solution is somewhere in the middle, not one of extremes?
We've already tried the middle
This
You didnt answer my comment.
If you can't point to an actual capitalist society that's succeeded, why would there be any meaning in pointing out a communist one that has?
Look around you
Who paid for the roads, fire department, police, Military, postal service, bridges, dams... Shall I go on?
You think taxing people and using that money to fund public infrastructure and services is pure capitalism that's operating without socialist principles?
😂
Most socialist states are better after their revolutions as opposed to before. The USSR went from a borderline feudal society to putting people in orbit in 50 years. Additionaly, socialist states outperform capitalist ones in similar wealth categories.
The USSR collapsed and it was later discovered that it had major internal issues
That would be a decent question if we had examples of socialist experiments that were actually left alone to develop and not invaded 2 sevonds after america heard about them
who says the only alternative to a shafting capitalism like you have in the states is pure communism?
This instance
Where?
Lemmy.ml
Most socialist states are better after their revolutions as opposed to before. The USSR went from a borderline feudal society to putting people in orbit in 50 years. Additionaly, socialist states outperform capitalist ones in similar wealth categories.
Did they get to the moon? /s
Anyway they aren’t around today without capitalism (modern russia) so your point is kind of useless
Workers should control the beans of production.
Rise up! Seize the beans of production!
Rice up*
Damn, a lot of capitalist bootlickers in this thread
Lol, enshitification of these services are happening because the owners want to extract as much money as possible from the users. Workers would do the same even if they owned it. How many people would turn down millions of dollars because users don't like the change?
Yeah I'm not sure why it's nowadays common to simplify socialism as "workers owning the means of production". It's not exactly wrong, but it is often misunderstood.
A company being owned by it's employees is not necessarily "socialism". In today's global capitalist economy, there are worker-cooperatives as well, but they too exist within the capitalist economy and have to follow its rules, which is above all the profit motive. If you don't orient yourself based on profit, you will be out-competed eventually.
Traditionally, when socialists talk about "workers owning/seizing the means of production", they are not talking about individual workers or individual businesses.
Workers means "the working class", which would be pretty much everyone ("the 99%"). Means of production means industry and the economy overall, not individual factories and businesses.
What makes FOSS special is that the software is not privately owned by anyone, not by the devs, not by a couple of programmers, not by a company. It is commonly owned, anyone can use, copy and alter the code however they want without any artificial barriers. This of course makes it a lot harder to extract money from users.
I'm realizing I may have misunderstood you, sorry! .
I think you might have replied to the wrong person?
Ah, yes, we can see it with all the communities running their own Mastodon servers and extracting the maximum of wealth from their users. /s
You must think that humans are inherently greedy and/or are projecting what you would do in a scenario where you're part of a worker co-op. Most workplaces aren't worth millions. Most folks who round themselves in a worker co-op would most likely try to better the operation for everyone.
I see you haven’t met my co-workers. Or my neighbors.
In publicly-traded corporations, long term wealth extraction isn’t the goal. Getting sales up next quarter is. Employee-owned cooperatives are more likely to think long term. Plus, I’d vastly prefer to trust the average worker to do the right thing in a coop situation vs a manager doing it in a situation where they’re legally required (as standard publicly-traded corporations are) to prioritize the financial gains of shareholders above all other interests. Maybe you’ve lost so much faith in people that you think no one would ever choose to be slightly less rich for any reason. But plenty of people know there’s such a thing as enough, that there are interests as important as next quarter’s profits. They just don’t usually get MBAs.
Yah, if workers own a tiny portion of the means of production, as they do now in various co-ops around the globe, they will be either (1) required to operate on the basis of profit in order to outcompete entities that are not worker-owned, or (2) cease to exist because they get outcompeted by those who operate on the basis of profit.
This forces all existing co-ops to behave in line with capitalism as a whole. The point is to overcome that system of socio-economic relations: When calls are made for workers to own and operate production, as in this meme, they mean that the class constituted by workers — the proletariat — should be in control of all productive means. Not just that some workers should start co-ops, for this primary reason.
The idea that owners would sacrifice their profits if their business were merely a co-op is, I agree, not necessarily true. (Though workers in co-ops who are directly connected to the point of value production would definitely be more willing to sacrifice profits for decisions that enhance social value.) The point, however, is to move beyond an economy owned and operated for profit and forge a society in which profit is not the basis for operation in the first place. If, for example, workers' needs were guaranteed, the impetus for profit-seeking would evaporate, though will not be absent, at least while the artifacts of capitalist society persist in us and our institutions.
In the case of social media, the users are also the workers.
That's not exactly how things be.
If means of production were all owned by workers, then that means they are operating them for their own benefit and the benefit of their communities. Why? The profit motive is not quite as strong. You are no longer needing to amass wealth to live a happy life. Because those who control the local farms are part of the community. Those who control local factories are workers that are part of the community. Each of those operates the means of production to fulfill their own needs, and their community
Commie memes on my front page? This place is cool AF
Attention, people of Bikini Bottom! You have been cheated and lied to! The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of Mr. Krabs! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We'll saw the foundation of big business in half, even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people's will crashing through Mr. Krabs' HOUSE OF SERVITUDE!
KRUSTY KRAB IS UNFAIR!
MR. KRABS IS IN THERE!
STANDING AT THE CONCESSION!
PLOTTING HIS OPPRESSION!
What the heck does that mean?
The problem is: capitalism.
Co-ops
What do you mean?
Co-Ops fit into the umbrella of capitalism but also give the means of production to the workers
Amazing how many people will step in to defend the ownership of everything to a small minority. They will not reward bootlicking yet yall continue.
What I learned from observation is that they tend to believe that, one day, they will be part of the "small minority". The American Dream!!!1
“It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it”
Goes without saying. Look at the profits of the companies providing essential resources like energy. They most certainly didn't let a good crisis go to waste.
Yes, or at a bare minimum, CEO-proof everything and put more power in the hands of users of monolithic infrastructural utility products like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit
Capitalism generally allows for a range of ownership structures, including traditional privately owned businesses, publicly traded corporations, and worker-owned enterprises.
I guess an argument would be that privately owned companies are already too wealthy to allow for fair market competition, but in worker owned companies nothing is stopping them from becoming large corporations that can also do everything a private lobbyist company does. If you don't believe me, just look at your democratically elected capitalist government. Just because something is democratic doesn't mean it will be ethical or fair internally or externally.
As if workers give a shit about customers.
Workers don’t give a shit about customers because that’s how the incentive system is set up. Give workers the profits, you give them a good reason to give a shit about how clients feel.
As well as ensuring those profits will keep flowing through their retirement, and you get the long term planning incentive.
That would be an improvement actually, because the customers of these companies are not users, they are other companies looking to advertise or buy users personal data. The users of for profit social media are in fact the product, not the customers.
Great counterpoint. This is what Reddit has been missing for the last 6-8 years: actual thought instead of regurgitation.
I'm reminded by that guy on TikTok
"You just lost a customer"
"Good"
You skipped over the part where he says "You think I own this business? You think I own IKEA?" implying he would care if he actually had any skin in the game which he would if his job operated as a worker co-op.
Co-ops are still capitalism.
Co-ops can be capitalistic and are capable of functioning under capitalism, but they would also work much the same under any market economy. Decisions and would be profits are democratized/socialized.
Or at least have them be publicly owned common good, owned by multiple countries with editorial independence from the get go and funded through taxation. That would be a start.
Alienation isn't limited to the workplace anymore. It has found it's way into the platforms we spend our free time on.
today I learned an important new word
common Lemmy W
No, it means that the users should own the services, which is what the F in FOSS means
Which turns the users into the workers in this equation since those services need to be maintained and contributed to.
Based meme, beautiful praxis.
Not that I disagree but please define what "should" means in that sentence.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119#section-3
Communism works nice in theory, and in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. But we e can definity re-shitproof internet based services.
Shitty people always ended up in charge and found a way to enrich themselves. Maybe in the far future once we have a true artificial intelligence, communism can truly work after they elect some unbiased AI (no skynet please) to be their leader.
If someone's in charge, it's not communism
Who will direct productions if someone not in charge of anything? Who stops bad actors from inciting their society into anarchy if no one wield any power to control the population?
The answer to both questions is the people themselves. We're stronger together. No individual can stop the collective will.
That's very noble but sadly I don't trust humanity at current state to be able to do that. We'll probably need to genetically engineer selfishness out of humanity's gene pool before communism has any chance to success.
No, we don't need eugenics to ensure socialism. People are plenty empathetic as it is. The biggest hurdle to true selflessness at the minute is living in a society that incentivises greed. And that is the fault of capitalism.
Which is precisely why the first step of the communist experiment is Class Consciousness.
ಠ_ʖಠ
I miss lemmy.ml before the reddit API changes. Not nearly as many bootlickers.
When you say "workers" do you mean the actual workers or some vanguard party of intellectual champagne socialists who make decisions on the workers' behalf?
Actual workers. If we made a society where people are taken care of, we'd find most folks would be enthusiastic about their work. Saying "people don't want to work" is often taken at face value when the reality is that most people do want to work, because it helps them feel a sense of purpose. They don't, however, want to be exploited/work under capitalism because that is soul crushing.
Oh I agree completely with all of that. I just have been duped before by MLs saying worker ownership and what they really mean is their particular political party controlling everything. If everything is run by workers' councils with no existence of a vanguard party, that would be paradise for me.
I would also go beyond saying that labor (not "work," as IMO the word "work" implies labor under capitalism) gives people a sense of purpose in that it gives communities a sense of purpose and connectedness. When we are all sharing in common labor toward the goal of enhancing our community and generally improving lives, we feel a more collectivized responsibility for one another.
Obviously they meant the former since that's what we're literally doing here. But even the latter would do a better job managing Twitter/Reddit than what they have now.
Is it obvious though? MLs mean something very different from anarchists when they say "workers" in this context
Do you think OP is a Marxist-Leninist, posting online using a decentralized protocol ironically controlled by workers, to subtly build support for a big government-run website?
THAT IS WHY I AM ASKING
That doesn't seem a little convoluted, improbable, and nonsensical to you?
THAT IS WHY I AM ASKING
I'M ASKING IF THE SKY IS RED BECAUSE I CAN SEE THAT IT'S BLUE
This is what I think every time I see this socialist / capitalist dichotomy set up:
also I know Im not using the meme right.
Allowing capitalist relations to persist, even if basic goods like food and homes were nationalized, enables a society in which capitalist profiteers continue to operate. History shows pretty explicitly that Capital will use the levers of power that exist, like The State, to eat away at or overturn any socialistic advances. E.g., suddenly the luxury capitalist corporation that sells idk, pearls, is lobbying (bribing) their way into privatizing beaches from which they operate. Slowly but surely the socioeconomic relations produced under capitalism foment and claw their way back to their former position. This requires a constant, indefinitely revolutionary society to keep capitalist relations at bay; that sort of momentum is not possible to sustain, certainly at the current moment.
It's necessary to abolish capitalists as a class because leaving capitalist systems of relations alone enables them to continue to re-produce themselves.
That doesn't preclude this sort of dual-economic setup from being a good thing, just insufficient.
yeah I guess from my point of view all the systems for distributing resources and power 'fairly' fail on their own. Mostly because they usually silo power in 1 or 2 mechanisms, so power concentrates and corrupts over time.
Also from a systems engineering standpoint -I dislike 'purity'. I prefer blended systems with backups and counter-measures. If I want to know which systems work best I look at what is delivering the best results and right now for me thats the nordic socialist democracies which still have plenty of capitalism.
Im not saying we've arrived at the best and should stop improving, but Im not interested in the endless hypothetical arguments about which ideology would be best if perfectly implemented. They are never perfectly implemented so best design something that can withstand reality.
TL:DR; You want to eradicate capitalists, I want to relegate them to a lower rung of society but accept they will exist
I mean, we first need to define what a luxury and what a necessity is. For some things like food, shelter, water, healthcare it's pretty straightforward. But for resources like energy or communications it's less obvious.
I'd argue that the internet is now a necessity rather than a luxury, but many people to this day still don't have or choose not to have internet access (due to geography or religion). Energy is the same way, if we take an obviously bad example, but say you're socializing electricity for everyone, what's to stop someone from mining cryptocurrency on everyone else's dime ? That person would be profiting off of the social net. Where do we put the cursor between "luxurious" energy use and "necessary" energy use ? It's a tough thing to figure out.
Furthermore, for most people you need an incentive to work, right now it's survival, which is not great, but if all of your needs basic, and more are taken care of by the state, you only work for the luxuries, which would greatly reduce the available workforce. It's again a tough balance to find.
If you're socializing electricity for everyone then you can tell when usage is far outside norms and audit usage
I also don't think money is the ultimate incentive, and most people would work whether or not they needed money to survive. Sure they wouldn't work at some crappy unfulfilling job, but people would still be productive according to their idea of productivity.
Also not having people working all these useless jobs would save energy and resources.
There's lots of study on how humans respond to incentives and money and its not a straightforward relationship at all.
Thats some high quality bruh. FOSS software and communism have very little in common. Yeah sure power for the people, but thinking that everyone should be equal in this enviroment is misleading. Lemmy like every other platform still has to have moderators that are over normal users. The ecosystem itself does not allow abuse. Eg. You can have a strict mod and then host your own instance that is true free speech or whatsoever. If u gonna post nazi stuff or smth like that then they gonna defederate. It's better in some sort because u don't have spam monkey and other extremists but still u get to choose your own poison.
Tell me you don't know what communism is without telling me you don't know what communism is.
This is some LibSoc thinking. See: in early USSR days when they tried more worker-cooperative based ownership they had to stop because the factory workers kept just immediately selling their factories for money now that they owned them.
Is this a communist post? I would live to see someone succeed with that idea but not realistic (see: history)
I took a look at history and see nothing but downside of capitalism: environmental crisis, homelessness, wealth inequality
But the alternative is like russia or something lol. Don’t discount the upsides to capitalism.
Capitalism is just another step in the long line of governance systems throughout history.
Before now, feudalism, imperialism and monarchism were important steps to building towards the world we live in today.
Capitalism should not be the goal, it has many flaws and is not sustainable. Like it or not, communism is inevitable.
Or it could be something else who knows
Political theory points towards communism being the best and most likely outcome.
Things like UBI are going to be necessary soon due to AI.
Now strip the 1% of their wealth. What does that sound like?
I can’t imagine you would want your house owned by anyone other than you. I certainly wouldn’t. The downsides are just bigger than the upsides.
Just saying UBI and stealing money from people (or “stripping their wealth” does not make communism? And I dont see how that could ever go well 😂.
I already live in a house I don't own.
The real question is, would I prefer not to pay far out the ass to live here?
What are the downsides to living in affordable government accommodation, as opposed to paying for the house over thirty years, and giving the bank a small fortune in interest?
"UBI and stripping 1% isn't communism"
Sorry, I forgot that redistributing the wealth from the 1% and providing everyone with equal opportunity is not the entire premise of communism. You're right, my bad.
"I don't see how that could ever go over well"
Yes.. That's the idea..
Dang I guess those are the only 2 options. It's death cult capitalism or Russia.
Never said that. Strawman
So you commented both 'is there proof otherwise' and 'never said that. strawman.' Which is it?
Is there proof of otherwise? 😂
There are too many downsides that are too severe and won't change unless we change the system. I suggest you research the successes of communism. The USSR accomplished a lot and there are other examples like Cuba
But the USSR is dead
Lmao, social media sites would be insanely worse if the employees made all the decisions. They would all be left-wing circle jerks, as if you all haven't gotten unhinged enough.
Honestly I don't even know where to start with this, so I'll keep it simple. Enshittification of Twitter, Reddit et al. is not necessarily a result of capitalism, and likewise Fediverse doesn't exist because "workers took the means of production".
For example the disastrous YouTube monetisation policy comes in part from a desire to keep the site "child friendly" (that's why swear words and gore are banned), and in part due to a need to follow existing copyright law.
Even if YouTube was run by a worker co-op, or was a state enterprise those two factors would likely still lead to stringent monetisation rules.
Monetisation rules are a direct result of capitalism. Profits are what motivates the decision making. In a post-capitalism economy it would be the needs and wants that motivates the decision making. One of the failures of capitalism is that we assume wants/needs has a correlation with profits, when clearly the enshitification demonstrates otherwise.
In socialism nobody wants to work so good luck with your YouTube. There is a reason for proprietary software being most popular and often more feature rich. What we need is capitalism + more opensource work from us, regular people. Capitalism + opensource is way to go.
Nobody? Look to be honest there are some lazy people that dont want to work but most of us will be happy to work in a socialist economy where we the workers get compensated fairly. Capitalism and open source dont go hand by hand. People is literally creating all of this amazing products for free!! Workinf for the community thats what socialism is. And also the proprietary software is more "popular" because big companies just take open source and make it proprietary then they said they created just look at Apple and RedHat.
huge part of opensource is funded and developed by capitalistic companies. Take Linux for example.
And imagine if you wanted to open your own coffee shop. Where would you get a place for it? From the state probably. But what if they decide that there is no need for new coffee shop? You would have problem. In capitalism on the other hand you have your free will and as long as you have money you can open your coffee shop anytime anywhere. I know it's not really as easy to make money but if capitalism isn't broken by stupid regulations and other nonsense it really can work, allowing you to take cheap loans and start your own businesses.
I live in a post communist country and trust me I know how shitty socialism is
I understand your point on the coffee shop in that you are right. Thats not exactly how capitalism works , if you open a coffee shop and become very profitable then a big company comes in putting out of business forcing you to work for them or close your place. Capitalism is brutal against small businesses. I totally support small business , that's why I believe that people should have more power not corporations.
Free market is a democracy. That's awesome you support small business and if more people were doing the same thing I can guarantee that big corporations wouldn't be a problem.
Another really important factor are regulations. Capitalism right now is way to regulated which makes it really difficult for small businesses to exist. On the other hand big corporations are not regulated enough tho.
We should work on existing system, try to improve it rather than change it to totally different.
Also if you wanted to make a switch to socialism you would have to rob a lot of people from their private property
Your conflicting points on regulation show that you don't actually understand the problems with capitalism.
My problem with Capitalism is the profit over anything. The environment , workers , resources , quality , control over the things you bought. There are so many examples where corporations abuse their power.
That and the cancerous need for infinite growth on a finite planet, which is destroying our home…
Not from the state. From the community. And the community would be happy for more nice stuff
They said, on a decentralized, free and open source platform, developed by socialists.
It's sad what a lack of a quality education will do to people.
Case and point, the above comment.
It's sad what a lack of a quality education will do to people.
Case and point, the above comment.
Sure, but the reason why they want to keep the site “child friendly” is because content for children is incredibly profitable and because advertisers don't want their ads getting related to "controversial" content.
This is the reason why I don't like equating socialism with "workers owning the means of production". Worker-cooperatives can exist in a capitalist economy, which means they have to follow capitalist rules (including the drive to generate profits).
When leftists say "workers", they generally mean "the 99%" or "the working class", not individual workers. When leftists say "the means of production", they mean the economy/industry overall, not individual companies.
If youtube was owned and operated in common, it would not be bound to profitability, but to use.
We can also look at something like peertube, which is essentially a commonly owned version of youtube. Instead of being guided by profitability, it is used based on many different use-cases. There can be peertube instances that are completely private, there can be peertube instances that are used for a specific topic or community (for example kids) and there can be peertube instances which are not for children at all.
Enshittification of those services is a direct symptom of capitalism.
No one is arguing that the fediverse exists because of workers owning the means of production.
You should really look into what "enshittification" means and how it's a direct result of capitalism.
Sure, but the reason why they want to keep the site "child friendly" is because youtube
Lmao, social media sites would be insanely worse if the employees made all the decisions. They would all be left-wing circle jerks, as if you all haven't gotten unhinged enough.
No, lol 😂
Listen, socialism doesn't work.
Using socialism as a boogeyman by definition, is a poor argument. There are merits to many different economic systems, many of which have pros and cons, capitalism and socialism included.
The laugh, and "listen" while providing absolutely no reasoning demonstrates a certain level of arrogance, while at the same time demonstrating a lack of knowledge on the subject
Yeah I could have given arguments in the same comment.
You had two chances here and you didn't. The platform you are on is brought to you by a communist.
That's fucking terrible. It's like if I was using a product made by people that killed a lot of people in my country.
Communism is a totalitarian system and so It's a violation of human rights.
That is a statement, not an argument. I could state that capitalism's final form is always kleptocracy. But that still isn't an argument either, it is a statement. I am not backing up my reasoning. Just like you did not backup your's. Also if we want to talk about human rights, Capitalism hasn't really been a bastion for that either. Just look at Nestle, or the countless US backed coups in South America. Was that for human rights? Or outnof fear that socialism was spreading?
What's your definition of socialiam