Senate This thread is publicly owned (marxism, socialism, and left-wing ideologies)

That avatar is nightmarish.

 

Those criticisms are what gave us Social Democracy.

 

Well not really, because social democracy actually works and exists, unlike any viable socialist or, lol, "market socialist" policies.

 

Marxist criticisms formed the basis of social democratic movements. Criticism is always valuable in improving the capitalist system.

 

Well ACKSHULLY it was more horror and disgust at what Marxist economics had done to ruin Europe that made socdems in the 1960s say "yeah, no we'll reform capitalism instead thanks."

 

It’s not an either or thing. Social Democrats are still from the Marxist tradition, but the solutions sought to the problems tend to reform the existing system in lieu of any better alternative. I’d argue it’s the primary success of Marxist criticism.

 

Socialist movements played a major role in shaping the policies that later became known under the label "social democracy" and in fact for example in Sweden there was also pressure to go further in the 70s.

 

The Second International was already abandoning Marxist economics and becoming tolerant of Capitalism in the 1920s. They just couldn't openly admit it for another half of a century.

 

"Social Democracy" isn't going to be enough to save us. When we're all 80 the planet is going to be suffering climate crisis after climate crisis because of Capitalism.

 

If we were able to develop a system of socialism which is superior to social democratic capitalism, then we're also capable to adapting capitalism to the climate crisis.

Neither are likely, especially not the former, in the next 100 years.

 

At this point, the goal shouldn't be to make a system that's "successful" based on the metrics of the capitalist world. The goal should be to make a system that's going to be strong enough to avoid the fascist takeover once the climate refugees come en masse. Because when that happens, you know that most people in the West are going to start supporting fascism. So we need to have a strong, socialist system by then to have the, uh, tools to prevent fascism. These are tools liberals and Democrats do not like, however, because they involve dirty words like "re-education."

 

Given the models which have been developed have proven particularly susceptible to 'red fascism' I'm not confident in any model which can be developed with current technology.

Yes, I think we're screwed.

 

Well, I'd like to try the system where I don't need to have my credit score checked in order to be hired for a job. I hope you understand.

 

Man, you really can't post without somehow including the word liberals in there, can you?
No matter what is happening, somehow "liberals" are to blame. With "liberals" standing for each and every stance you disagree with, regardless of whether any of the stances have anything to do with liberalism or what actual liberals think.

And no, you sure as heck don't need a strong socialist system to prevent fascism. There is absolutely nothing that even hints at such a system being good against fascism. Outside of a utopian wonderland in which the system somehow works perfectly when no other system ever has (including socialism and communism). You basically just claim that it it would accomplish such a thing, without having any data or examples that would support the theory. That's about as meaningful as stating that giving every person an apple per day would prevent fascism. When people get unhappy, they will look for those who rail against the people in charge. That applies to every system. That's the problem with your line of thinking, just because you feel something will fix all the issues doesn't mean that everyone else or even a majority will feel the same way. That leaves you with exactly one choice when push comes to shove: subjugating people who don't agree with you. Which in turn makes you basically just like a fascist, only under a different banner.

Oddly enough, fascism tended to rise at the very same time communism was on the rise as well, and plenty of people went from one end of the spectrum to the other, depending on what was more opportune or who seemed to offer the better "solution" to problems.

Needless to say, any somewhat developed nation that even remotely tried to implement actual socialism or communism had an utterly disastrous record when it came to dealing with the environment, making the idea that such a system would be needed to prevent climate change completely absurd. Under capitalism and in social democracies you got and get a range from modest attempts to fix the issue, over putting lipstick on a pig, to flat out exploiting the enviroment, especially when it wasn't your own one. While under the old communist regimes you got pure exploitation while denouncing anyone who dared to object. Just compare East and West Germany. The east was basically a dead-zone for the environment that made even West Germany seem healthy, even when West Germany really didn't bother to do anything worthwile either. Pretending that the whole issue exists only because of capitalism has nothing to do with reality. Not only would the reasons that cause climate change not vanish under such a system, but the past has shown that attempts of implementing such a system caused a large share of the problem and was even more inclined to just ravage the environment in a massive way. A "strong socialist system" doesn't slow down climate change, nor will it make people feel more at ease over climate refugees.

I for one would like to live in a sytem in which I don't have to be part of the right family or "think the right way" to do what I want to do. Straight up capitalism fails at that, all forms of actual socialsm and communism have failed at that. So far only social democracy has allowed for it in at least some form, even if not nearly as well as it should be.

 

So social democracy?

I know it’s a cliche at this point, but authoritarian socialism hasn’t had a great success rate for human rights or general prosperity. You can make criticisms of social democracy all day long, and there are those to be had, but injustices are inherent in human societies. I have not seen a system which improves (or could improve) human society beyond what a social democratic framework provides us.

 

What's considered "human rights" is not a set in stone thing. There are a lot of things I consider human rights to not be upheld in capitalism. But that's not something proponents of capitalism seem to care about.

 

I mean I never said it was. But there are human rights which are routinely not observed in authoritarian socialist countries, which I think is a pretty big problem.

I think the only way to get the enshrinement of more positive rights is technological development, which is currently only possible under a capitalist system, of which the social democratic system has the best balance of capital to worker rights.

 

Who's gonna tell him ?

 

Molotov.

 

A good 101 on why capitalism is failing.



A reminder that the largest problem with capitalism is that its inherently based on exploitation. You can't have capitalism without it.

 

Moved from the Pandemic thread:

This is why I find talk of which is the ‘chart topping’ ideology in terms of absolute deaths to be rather deceptive and pointless. A murderous ideology is a murderous ideology and where you draw the line between some ideology and another is inherently blurry (does all ideologies of the Marxist variety share responsibility for the Stalinist crimes, for example?)

 

For some reason this naive simplistic approach is always applied to communism, never to capitalism.
If it was all about scoring argumentative points, I could blame many XX century wars on capitalism, and enumerate the consequent deaths among the deaths due to capitalism.
After all, imperialism results from the need of capitalist countries to export capital abroad.
Then there are those who died because they couldn't afford health care, who are arguably victims of capitalism as well, and you'll see the number inflating rather fast.
The double standard is apparent in other contexts as well,, like economic crisis.. When a socialist country struggles it's all about their economic system, when it happens to a country embracing capitalism people want to see the details, and they acknowledge the complexity.

 

Yes, reasonable criticism is certainly warranted. All’s capitalism really needs IMO is a way to prevent corporatism or things getting too big to fail. The USA feels like 3-4 companies own everything. That’s rather suspect.

Oh and forget privatizing prisons and some of that stuff. That’s another horrible idea.

 

This all rings hollow while you vote Republican and derided people like Sanders and Warren, dude.

 

Private prisons are something that are used to distract from the true scale of the problems present in the legal/prison system