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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • I’ve read actual literature on this

    Sure, yet all you could do was copy past the wiki sources. You sound very well read!

    I’ll make simpler so you can understand - hell, I’ll even play the wiki game with you!

    Socialism :

    Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2] as opposed to private ownership.

    Here are all the sources for that according to the wiki:

    spoiler

    Busky (2000), p. 2: “Socialism may be defined as movements for social ownership and control of the economy. It is this idea that is the common element found in the many forms of socialism.”

    Arnold (1994), pp. 7–8: “What else does a socialist economic system involve? Those who favor socialism generally speak of social ownership, social control, or socialization of the means of production as the distinctive positive feature of a socialist economic system.”

    Horvat (2000), pp. 1515–1516: “Just as private ownership defines capitalism, social ownership defines socialism. The essential characteristic of socialism in theory is that it destroys social hierarchies, and therefore leads to a politically and economically egalitarian society. Two closely related consequences follow. First, every individual is entitled to an equal ownership share that earns an aliquot part of the total social dividend… Second, in order to eliminate social hierarchy in the workplace, enterprises are run by those employed, and not by the representatives of private or state capital. Thus, the well-known historical tendency of the divorce between ownership and management is brought to an end. The society—i.e. every individual equally—owns capital and those who work are entitled to manage their own economic affairs.”

    Rosser & Barkley (2003), p. 53: “Socialism is an economic system characterised by state or collective ownership of the means of production, land, and capital.”;

    Badie, Berg-Schlosser & Morlino (2011), p. 2456: “Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.”

    Zimbalist, Sherman & Brown (1988), p. 7: “Pure socialism is defined as a system wherein all of the means of production are owned and run by the government and/or cooperative, nonprofit groups.”

    Brus (2015), p. 87: “This alteration in the relationship between economy and politics is evident in the very definition of a socialist economic system. The basic characteristic of such a system is generally reckoned to be the predominance of the social ownership of the means of production.”

    Hastings, Adrian; Mason, Alistair; Pyper, Hugh (2000). The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford University Press. p. 677. ISBN 978-0198600244. “Socialists have always recognized that there are many possible forms of social ownership of which co-operative ownership is one…Nevertheless, socialism has throughout its history been inseparable from some form of common ownership. By its very nature it involves the abolition of private ownership of capital; bringing the means of production, distribution, and exchange into public ownership and control is central to its philosophy. It is difficult to see how it can survive, in theory or practice, without this central idea.”


    Interesting, uh?

    Wiki says Soc-Dem = Socialism

    Wiki says all parties that have governed my country are Soc-Dems

    Wiki says Socialism = socialy owning the means of production, opposed to private ownership

    In my countrie most companies are privatly owned, and the government has actually privatized previous national companies

    MFW the Wiki just contradicted it self

    It’s almost like you have to use critical thinking and can’t just take things you read on Wikipedia at face value!

    I’d say thanks for the laughs as well, but arguing with extremely ignorant but simultaneously extremely arrogant people is anything but fun.

    Now, quit acting like you’ve ever read anything other than the Wiki, and go to your local library to pick up a book. I’ma ignore you from now on, because there’s clearly nothing left to be gained for this conversation.


  • ou have this idiotic notion that all socialism is somehow government-planned economies

    Imagine saying I don’t understand what I’m reading, and then accusing me of having “this idiotic notion that all socialism is somehow government-planned economies” when I never came close to saying that. I’m a Libertarian Socialist, jackass. Please go be disappointed at yourself.

    Sounds like you don’t even know the basics of what capitalism and socialism are. Do people in your country work for private companies? Do the people who own them make all executive decisions, reap profits, and pay (as little as they can) for other people to actually work? Are people able to use capital to buy into those companies and be in charge and reap the profits? Then that isn’t a socialist country. Having social welfare and regulations doesn’t make it a socialist country.

    You are arguing that “socialism”- something that has always stood in opposition to everything I just mentioned - can be used to describe a country that operates like a capitalist country because an article on Wikipedia has one sentence that says so.

    Here are literary references to back up the statement in economical theory literature that social democracy is indeed a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism:

    Eatwell & Wright 1999, pp. 80–103; Newman 2005, p. 5; Heywood 2007, pp. 101, 134–136, 139; Ypi 2018; Watson 2019.

    You literally just copied those from the previously linked Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is your source, I don’t believe you’ve read a single word from any of those works - nay, from any of those people. My sources: Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto, The Conquest of Bread, and others, but above all, the real fucking world I live in. Edit: oh, and I guess I’ll also add the others parts from that same Wikipedia article, the ones I quoted previously and you ignored.


  • Maybe keep reading:

    By the post-World War II period and its economic consensus and expansion, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to orthodox Marxism. They shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform as a compromise between capitalism to socialism.[108]

    In Britain, the social democratic Gaitskellites emphasized the goals of personal liberty, social welfare, and social equality.[111] The Gaitskellites were part of a political consensus between the Labour and Conservative parties, famously dubbed Butskellism.

    You can also look at European countries which are social democracies, and you will see they are all capitalist countries. Here, also from wiki. I can tell you here in Portugal we have 2 parties which, according to the wiki, are also Social Democratic parties, and they are also the only two parties who have ever been in power. I can tell you first hand, I live in a capitalist system. According to the wiki, the UK’s Labour Party “is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as being an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists”, do they seem socialist to you? And before you claim that they are because “they also have democratic socialists”, that would mean that by transitive property, USA’s Dem party is a socialist party. I guess the USA is socialist after all!


  • A few things to address:

    1. There is plenty of room between “Social Democrat” and “Tankie”; and social democracy is still capitalism. I don’t know exactly what idea you have of Europe, but we’re not free from corporations.

    2. I don’t know if that is what you are implying, but accusing Biden of supporting genocide does not make someone a tankie. Plenty of countries have condemned Israel and accused Israel of genocide or “committing genocidal actions”, are all of them “tankies”?

    3. Republicans are (for the most part) Liberal Conservatives, the Dems (for the most part) are Liberal Progressives. They are all capitalists. Biden vs Trump has nothing to do with this conversation.


  • I don’t know about the situation, but from what you described that wasn’t democratic socialism, it was social democracy; social democracy is a branch of capitalism. More specifically, social democracy emerged from a compromise made by capitalists to quell socialist and communist fervor.

    In socialism, workers would be the owners of business and would distribute the profits among themselves. In social democracy, the states runs/manages some businesses with (in theory) the countries interests in mind, and creates several public support systems (i.e. public education and free healthcare) to improve overall quality of life for the average person; however the economy is still a capitalist one with free (but regulated) markets, where the only power workers have is voting on government elections.


  • Read up on the Paris Commune, read Homage to Catalonia by Orwell, read up on the anarchists from Manchuria. Those are just the bigger ones I can think of from the top of my head, but there are plenty more (usually smaller scale) examples. Also, read David Graeber’s work, especially The Dawn of Everything like another user suggested.

    The common point of failure for those, was being a smaller entity that was surrounded and attacked by imperialist forces; some of which received help from other, more powerful, imperialist forces that had a vested interest in these groups failing.

    I’m trying to remain cordial and nice, but it’s quite difficult when it seems like usually the people claiming “no viable alternatives have been shown to work” have never actually looked into any alternatives; it hardly feels like good faith argumentation.


  • For a “Solar punk” instance, this community seems to have very little of the “punk” aspect, and in these comments it sounds more like a “Solar rich liberal” place.

    The amount of slander towards homeless people, the propagating of stereotypes, and the removal of personhood in these comments really blows my mind. There are even people defending that homeless people should be sent to prison and have their life managed for them; others claim how it’s their own fault they are homeless; some cry about “private property”.

    And of course a bunch of people claiming this isn’t a final/permanent solution, and so it shouldn’t be done… as if to say, until we come up with better solutions, these people should just go without shelter. What is really a priority to them, is not having to look at homeless people.

    In a nutshell: “It’s their own fault! They’re probably all heroin addicts anyway. Someone else should come up with and implement better solutions, but in the meantime I don’t want to have to see and walk by people who don’t have a home!”. A Solar Punk Neolib community.