Anti-Socialism Thread

[Debate Proxy 1]

We have a similar term for it: crony-capitalism.

It's not that the right doesn't understand it exists... maybe the commies and I might be able to agree that state capitalism is a very dangerous problem.

From a marxist perspective, State/Crony Capitalism is an inevitable develop of the purely private (let's call it 'classical capitalist') mode of production. Capitalism produces crises like the Great Depression and Great Recession, and requires intervention by the state, like the New Deal or the bank bailouts, lest it collapse entirely. This will of course lead to the development of state capitalist model. Interestingly, this is same sort of model that you see in fascist regimes, with capitalist interests married to state power and vice versa.

But you also have to consider the divisions of opinion within the capitalist class, as Marx understood it. Fascism isn't good for anyone on the losing end of monopoly centralization.

Not everyone turns crony. Some of us want to reform capitalism, and the petit-bourgeoisie arguably believes practicing in those reforms for themselves. I don't really much care what you go off and do, personally.

"The bourgeoisie is only constituted as a class to the extent that it fears the proletariat." -- Karl Marx

[Auze]

This is your brain on too much John Birch, kids - makes you forget about Bill 101 and Quebec sovereigntist party politics altogether.

American Political Ideologies: Not Even Once

For that matter, let's annex Alberta too for safe Republican seats in Congress.

Peter Zeihan has entered the chat

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

The real difference between why Europe has socialism and America has a lot more capitalism is because workers in America have Second Amendment rights, and are slaves to the government in Europe and Canada.

Lol

[Debate Proxy 1]

The real difference between why Europe has socialism and America has a lot more capitalism is because workers in America have Second Amendment rights, and are slaves to the government in Europe and Canada.

Lol

I noticed your sig says you support workers' rights and the right to bear arms.

Europe and Canada steal guns from workers.

[Communal League]

From a marxist perspective, State/Crony Capitalism is an inevitable develop of the purely private (let's call it 'classical capitalist') mode of production. Capitalism produces crises like the Great Depression and Great Recession, and requires intervention by the state, like the New Deal or the bank bailouts, lest it collapse entirely. This will of course lead to the development of state capitalist model. Interestingly, this is same sort of model that you see in fascist regimes, with capitalist interests married to state power and vice versa.

But you also have to consider the divisions of opinion within the capitalist class, as Marx understood it. Fascism isn't good for anyone on the losing end of monopoly centralization.

Not everyone turns crony. Some of us want to reform capitalism, and the petit-bourgeoisie arguably believes practicing in those reforms for themselves. I don't really much care what you go off and do, personally.

"The bourgeoisie is only constituted as a class to the extent that it fears the proletariat." -- Karl Marx

The problem is that the monopolists are the ones with the actual power in society. It makes sense that they would favour measures that help to fortify and secure their power, and thus we end up with cronyism and state capitalism, possibly married to a fascistic political and social system.

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

Lol

I noticed your sig says you support workers' rights and the right to bear arms.

Europe and Canada steal guns from workers.

They have guns in Europe and Canada.

[Debate Proxy 1]

But you also have to consider the divisions of opinion within the capitalist class, as Marx understood it. Fascism isn't good for anyone on the losing end of monopoly centralization.

Not everyone turns crony. Some of us want to reform capitalism, and the petit-bourgeoisie arguably believes practicing in those reforms for themselves. I don't really much care what you go off and do, personally.

"The bourgeoisie is only constituted as a class to the extent that it fears the proletariat." -- Karl Marx

The problem is that the monopolists are the ones with the actual power in society. It makes sense that they would favour measures that help to fortify and secure their power, and thus we end up with cronyism and state capitalism, possibly married to a fascistic political and social system.

Still... I have never seen an example of an attempt at socialism that didn't have the same problem. Unless you count communes that crop up from time to time, it seems that only laissez-faire capitalism is -- as far as we've seen -- able to maintain a highly productive economy.

History tells us, as with the example of Native Americans, that stronger economic models eventually subsume weaker ones. Socialism would have to offer more than capitalism if it expects to win customers over, but there's reasons why workers' ownership is rare even when you consider the Indian fur trade.

[Magical Medical League]

Have literally any of you heard of the United Kingdom? or France? or Canada? OR ANY OF THE OTHER FREAKING ACTUAL SOCIALIST NATIONS!?!? THAT HAVE MADE TO THE "BIG LEAGUE"!?!?

None of those countries are socialist, although one might argue they are social democrat at best.

[Debate Proxy 1]

I noticed your sig says you support workers' rights and the right to bear arms.

Europe and Canada steal guns from workers.

They have guns in Europe and Canada.

And a lot of gun control. No equal Second Amendment right for all people. Only select people are allowed, in practice, to have any, and these are the ones vetted by the government and who support the existing regime.

If all Quebecers or Albertans had guns, then they would be free. Similar story in Northern Ireland, where only Loyalist paramilitaries ever are allowed gun registrations and republicans are not allowed to bear arms.

[Communal League]

The problem is that the monopolists are the ones with the actual power in society. It makes sense that they would favour measures that help to fortify and secure their power, and thus we end up with cronyism and state capitalism, possibly married to a fascistic political and social system.

Still... I have never seen an example of an attempt at socialism that didn't have the same problem. Unless you count communes that crop up from time to time, it seems that only laissez-faire capitalism is -- as far as we've seen -- able to maintain a highly productive economy.

History tells us, as with the example of Native Americans, that stronger economic models eventually subsume weaker ones. Socialism would have to offer more than capitalism if it expects to win customers over, but there's reasons why workers' ownership is rare even when you consider the Indian fur trade.

I'm not sure you can say that it is able to maintain a highly productive economy when it breaks down every decade or so. Historical socialist societies (these being societies that have claimed to adhere to socialist principles) have largely followed one model, that set out by the USSR, so it is unsurprising that they have all tended to go in the same direction. A socialist society should (in my opinion) be organised from the bottom-up along democratic lines rather than having a single centralised and hierarchical power structure.

There is evidence that worker cooperatives offer better performance within several metrics than the typical capitalist company.

[Debate Proxy 1]

Still... I have never seen an example of an attempt at socialism that didn't have the same problem. Unless you count communes that crop up from time to time, it seems that only laissez-faire capitalism is -- as far as we've seen -- able to maintain a highly productive economy.

History tells us, as with the example of Native Americans, that stronger economic models eventually subsume weaker ones. Socialism would have to offer more than capitalism if it expects to win customers over, but there's reasons why workers' ownership is rare even when you consider the Indian fur trade.

I'm not sure you can say that it is able to maintain a highly productive economy when it breaks down every decade or so. Historical socialist societies (these being societies that have claimed to adhere to socialist principles) have largely followed one model, that set out by the USSR, so it is unsurprising that they have all tended to go in the same direction. A socialist society should (in my opinion) be organised from the bottom-up along democratic lines rather than having a single centralised and hierarchical power structure.

There is evidence that worker cooperatives offer better performance within several metrics than the typical capitalist company.

The typical one, true. Brain drain will affect it. There's a reason why I support the I.R.A., despite them being socialists; they are victims of the same system we're discussing, and if you actually read what they publish, they also support local self-government, the right of the people to bear arms, and they are tired of the looters running Britain. To me, though, what you (and they) propose would seem to lead to laissez-faire capitalism instead.

The difference between a good capitalist and a badly-performing one is the mind, as Rand pointed out. Think back to the last time you called to have the air conditioner or your car fixed; now take the analogy, and ask how many people understand computer circuitry.

Linux: case in point. Its development, while helpful for freedom from monopoly, has also been slow, and few people, even in their own homes, have been able to assemble free computer circuitry itself yet. Could a cooperative do this, and retain its geniuses? That would be an experiment for you.

[Picairn]

It had stagnation after market reforms. Its economy preformed the best under the strongest central planning.

Actually no. The stagnation was what prompted market reforms from Gorbachev in the first place.

[True Refuge]

But I do want to ask, where on Earth has socialism ever managed to function well without a State above the people?

There hasn't been an actual example of socialism, perhaps beyond tiny communes that are totally ineffectual and no one really cares about outside of them. The USSR even ceased being a dictatorship of the proletariat when it began making compromises with the peasant class, and all "socialist" countries that followed were following the ideological wing of the counter-revolution, a.k.a Marxism-Leninism.

Socialism cannot exist in one country, and the one international proletarian revolution we've had in history (which was prominently represented in Russia, Germany, Poland, and Italy) was crushed. All further ones after that point were confined to solely national struggles, and thus doomed to fail.

The real difference between why Europe has socialism and America has a lot more capitalism is because workers in America have Second Amendment rights, and are slaves to the government in Europe and Canada.

Face it, capitalism is popular.

Access to arms being the sole obstacle to revolution presupposes that there is a revolutionary movement to begin with, which there isn't. The labour movements across Europe are usually capitulating, on the side of the employer, or involved some social-corporatist abomination (e.g Norway) that chokes attempts to organise effectively.

But you also have to consider the divisions of opinion within the capitalist class, as Marx understood it. Fascism isn't good for anyone on the losing end of monopoly centralization.

Not everyone turns crony. Some of us want to reform capitalism, and the petit-bourgeoisie arguably believes practicing in those reforms for themselves. I don't really much care what you go off and do, personally.

"The bourgeoisie is only constituted as a class to the extent that it fears the proletariat." -- Karl Marx

The petite bourgeoisie is by its nature politically powerless. Its pushes for reforms, at their core, are not out of good intentions. Its estrangement also does not produce passion (which the proletariat benefits from due to its struggle being one of survival). The petite bourgeoisie fears above all else being proletarianised, i.e ruined by the machinations of capital. When they attack capital accumulation, they do it because it signifies their expropriation, not out some idealist conception of the goodness in their hearts.

They also move in lockstep with the more powerful elements of the bourgeoisie when they need to. For example, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany had its beginnings in the simultaneous existence of an excess of competition among the petite bourgeoisie that small business owners wanted culled, and the Jewish population being overrepresented in the petite bourgeoisie and thus easily identifiable as the source of the class' economic woes.

The fact is, big capital rules society, and the petite bourgeoisie is doomed to be ruined by competition regardless of their attempts at reforming the system. For why this is, I'd suggest reading the first 1844 manuscript. It explains how free and fair competition, the supposed panacea for the sort of "crony-capitalism" that you talk about, actually kills itself off due to the machinations of capital accumulation.

Since the petite bourgeoisie is powerless, and its pushes for reform are antagonistic to big capital, it must hijack the proletariat, which is a terrible sign for communists. The proletariat's interest is the abolition of capital altogether, while the petite bourgeoisie wishes only to (impossibly) protect its social position within capital. There is no common ground here.

There's a reason why I support the I.R.A., despite them being socialists

Back when the IRA was actually politically significant, they were socialists only when they were trying to get people to donate guns to them. The OIRA, the Marxist-Leninist wing (the closest thing they had to an actually "socialist" faction) pulled out pretty quickly once they realized that the Troubles were effectively just ethnic gang warfare.

Could a cooperative do this, and retain its geniuses? That would be an experiment for you.

Market "socialism" is a junk ideology. A co-operative economy maintains almost all of the same problems as "regular" capitalism, with the addition of forcing the worker to regulate their own exploitation and, crucially, destroying inter-firm organisation by tying workers to their occupation (usually through stock ownership).

[The New California Republic]

Have literally any of you heard of the United Kingdom? [...] OR ANY OF THE OTHER FREAKING ACTUAL SOCIALIST NATIONS!?!? THAT HAVE MADE TO THE "BIG LEAGUE"!?!?

Lol the UK isn't socialist. Hell, there was even an article fairly recently discussing how the UK has a particularly extreme form of capitalism...

[Albrenia]

I don't think anyone really agrees on what socialism means anymore. When people are whining about it or supporting it, it tends to lose or gain characteristics.

I've seen the same people who argue that government-paid medical care is 'socialism', then deny that it's real socialism when people point to countries that use it which are not communist hellholes.

[Debate Proxy 1]

But I do want to ask, where on Earth has socialism ever managed to function well without a State above the people?

There hasn't been an actual example of socialism, perhaps beyond tiny communes that are totally ineffectual and no one really cares about outside of them. The USSR even ceased being a dictatorship of the proletariat when it began making compromises with the peasant class, and all "socialist" countries that followed were following the ideological wing of the counter-revolution, a.k.a Marxism-Leninism.

Socialism cannot exist in one country, and the one international proletarian revolution we've had in history (which was prominently represented in Russia, Germany, Poland, and Italy) was crushed. All further ones after that point were confined to solely national struggles, and thus doomed to fail.

But you also have to consider the divisions of opinion within the capitalist class, as Marx understood it. Fascism isn't good for anyone on the losing end of monopoly centralization.

Not everyone turns crony. Some of us want to reform capitalism, and the petit-bourgeoisie arguably believes practicing in those reforms for themselves. I don't really much care what you go off and do, personally.

"The bourgeoisie is only constituted as a class to the extent that it fears the proletariat." -- Karl Marx

The petite bourgeoisie is by its nature politically powerless. Its pushes for reforms, at their core, are not out of good intentions. Its estrangement also does not produce passion (which the proletariat benefits from due to its struggle being one of survival). The petite bourgeoisie fears above all else being proletarianised, i.e ruined by the machinations of capital. When they attack capital accumulation, they do it because it signifies their expropriation, not out some idealist conception of the goodness in their hearts.

They also move in lockstep with the more powerful elements of the bourgeoisie when they need to. For example, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany had its beginnings in the simultaneous existence of an excess of competition among the petite bourgeoisie that small business owners wanted culled, and the Jewish population being overrepresented in the petite bourgeoisie and thus easily identifiable as the source of the class' economic woes.

The fact is, big capital rules society, and the petite bourgeoisie is doomed to be ruined by competition regardless of their attempts at reforming the system. For why this is, I'd suggest reading the first 1844 manuscript.

Since the petite bourgeoisie is powerless, and its pushes for reform are antagonistic to big capital, it must hijack the proletariat, which is a terrible sign for communists. The proletariat's interest is the abolition of capital altogether, while the petite bourgeoisie wishes only to (impossibly) protect its social position within capital. There is no common ground here.

There's a reason why I support the I.R.A., despite them being socialists

Back when the IRA was actually politically significant, they were socialists only when they were trying to get people to donate guns to them. The OIRA, the Marxist-Leninist wing (the closest thing they had to an actually "socialist" faction) pulled out pretty quickly once they realized that the Troubles were effectively just ethnic gang warfare.

Could a cooperative do this, and retain its geniuses? That would be an experiment for you.

Market "socialism" is a junk ideology. A co-operative economy maintains almost all of the same problems as "regular" capitalism, with the addition of forcing the worker to regulate their own exploitation and, crucially, destroying inter-firm organisation by tying workers to their occupation (usually through stock ownership).

You, too, are arguing from your own interests, of course; "good intentions" are always, it should be noted, tied with interest. I should additionally note that Lenin was also petit-bourgeois, and Marx started out as such before being hit by poverty. I should note, as well, what if the proletariat wants to be hijacked, because as far as ideology goes, they'll "believe it when they see it" as far as the respective costs and benefits of capitalism or socialism?

If capitalism was as bad as you suppose, one would wonder why so few workers back when the frontier was open ever tried to leave capitalism. Yes, the pay was unequal, and especially in the frontier context when people could just up and leave their bosses, entirely a mutual arrangement and not a forced one. But if more wealth is being created during the bourgeoisie's rising stage than could be made at all without such pay relationships, you'd think workers would choose to have more.

The only way you could really make converts, I believe, is under a couple of conditions: first, that Marx noted the foundation of wage slavery was landed property. Abolish that, which I should remind readers is imposed by government laws and regulations, and workers can walk free. The pure merchant, like me, has no use for such boundaries that cause landed inequality, and which bottle people up in huge cities that lead to black holes of endless welfare taxes and bureaucratic middlemen. There is no self-reliance, and thus the social basis for an exploitative superstructure of tax bureaucrats and total wage dependency exists.

The second is that all the people would have to, somehow, learn to trust each other well enough to combine their property. I do not see anyone voting for private ownership to go away for as long as that exists, as that distrust between people is the demand driver behind all popular support for private ownership.

I'm even saying this as a land-owner. I don't see any benefit that government-imposed property boundaries give me, and a lot of benefit that abolishing them will, one of which is ending all the damned taxes, and this is why I've been so loudly saying we need to arm the working class.

I just expect human nature would result in far freer markets than have ever been established before, rather than communal living for the most part, even among the proles.

[True Refuge]

I don't think anyone really agrees on what socialism means anymore. When people are whining about it or supporting it, it tends to lose or gain characteristics.

I've seen the same people who argue that government-paid medical care is 'socialism', then deny that it's real socialism when people point to countries that use it which are not communist hellholes.

That's because no one reads the texts that clearly say what the definition is, so they make up their own version based off thirdhand accounts and their personal utopias.

[Debate Proxy 1]

I don't think anyone really agrees on what socialism means anymore. When people are whining about it or supporting it, it tends to lose or gain characteristics.

I've seen the same people who argue that government-paid medical care is 'socialism', then deny that it's real socialism when people point to countries that use it which are not communist hellholes.

That's because no one reads the texts that clearly say what the definition is, so they make up their own version based off thirdhand accounts and their personal utopias.

No one can agree on its definition, I suspect, because they are operating from different epistemic frames of mind.

My first thought, for example, is two paths that it could lead to. One is the "bourgeois socialism" (a term in the Communist Manifesto) that I often see on here, and it is very, very statist in nature. The other is the proletarian kind of socialism -- at least where it exists.

Then there's petit-bourgeois socialism. Marx noted: "the middle class only becomes revolutionary in light of its impending slide into the proletariat". Given that Marx was a middle-classer at first, he wrote from personal experience.

Everyone can at least agree that Marx was a socialist. We just have different beliefs on where Marxian socialism will head, and mine is that even if you got everything you wanted, a classless, stateless society, it would still lead back to capitalism. The bourgeois socialism, however, is much more dangerous from my point of view. It leads, instead, to Fascism, which is an economically-based system.

[Communal League]

That's because no one reads the texts that clearly say what the definition is, so they make up their own version based off thirdhand accounts and their personal utopias.

No one can agree on its definition, I suspect, because they are operating from different epistemic frames of mind.

My first thought, for example, is two paths that it could lead to. One is the "bourgeois socialism" (a term in the Communist Manifesto) that I often see on here, and it is very, very statist in nature. The other is the proletarian kind of socialism -- at least where it exists.

Then there's petit-bourgeois socialism. Marx noted: "the middle class only becomes revolutionary in light of its impending slide into the proletariat". Given that Marx was a middle-classer at first, he wrote from personal experience.

Everyone can at least agree that Marx was a socialist. We just have different beliefs on where Marxian socialism will head, and mine is that even if you got everything you wanted, a classless, stateless society, it would still lead back to capitalism. The bourgeois socialism, however, is much more dangerous from my point of view. It leads, instead, to Fascism, which is an economically-based system.

You say that a communist society would inevitably slide back into capitalism which to me seems like a very strange proposition. How exactly do you define capitalism? Because if we are working on different definitions then we will simply be talking past each other.

[Debate Proxy 1]

No one can agree on its definition, I suspect, because they are operating from different epistemic frames of mind.

My first thought, for example, is two paths that it could lead to. One is the "bourgeois socialism" (a term in the Communist Manifesto) that I often see on here, and it is very, very statist in nature. The other is the proletarian kind of socialism -- at least where it exists.

Then there's petit-bourgeois socialism. Marx noted: "the middle class only becomes revolutionary in light of its impending slide into the proletariat". Given that Marx was a middle-classer at first, he wrote from personal experience.

Everyone can at least agree that Marx was a socialist. We just have different beliefs on where Marxian socialism will head, and mine is that even if you got everything you wanted, a classless, stateless society, it would still lead back to capitalism. The bourgeois socialism, however, is much more dangerous from my point of view. It leads, instead, to Fascism, which is an economically-based system.

You say that a communist society would inevitably slide back into capitalism which to me seems like a very strange proposition. How exactly do you define capitalism? Because if we are working on different definitions then we will simply be talking past each other.

Capitalism: a system of economics fundamentally based on capital; i.e., corporation formation and contractual agreement. Such contracts inherently involve negotiations between people for how much they can agree each party to the contract is paid. Combining assets in this way produces far more leverage to afford large-scale projects, such as industrialization.

For instance, you would need to offer the industrial engineer more pay than an unskilled worker can negotiate in the common endeavor to being wealth out of the ground if you expected to retain that crucial linchpin person's interest.

[Communal League]

You say that a communist society would inevitably slide back into capitalism which to me seems like a very strange proposition. How exactly do you define capitalism? Because if we are working on different definitions then we will simply be talking past each other.

Capitalism: a system of economics fundamentally based on capital; i.e., corporation formation and contractual agreement. Such contracts inherently involve negotiations between people for how much they can agree each party to the contract is paid. Combining assets in this way produces far more leverage to afford large-scale projects, such as industrialization.

For instance, you would need to offer the industrial engineer more pay than an unskilled worker can negotiate in the common endeavor to being wealth out of the ground if you expected to retain that crucial linchpin person's interest.

Ah, there is the problem. In the Marxist sense, the phrase capitalist mode of production refers to an economic system wherein the means of production (capital) is privately owned by capitalists, who leverage their ownership of the means of production in order to extract profits from the surplus labour value of the workers. Contractual organisation is not a unique aspect of capitalism, nor is using a market-based method of resource distribution. There exist left-wing market anarchists and individualist anarchists that seem to me to be much closer to the views which you have articulated than capitalism.

[Debate Proxy 1]

Capitalism: a system of economics fundamentally based on capital; i.e., corporation formation and contractual agreement. Such contracts inherently involve negotiations between people for how much they can agree each party to the contract is paid. Combining assets in this way produces far more leverage to afford large-scale projects, such as industrialization.

For instance, you would need to offer the industrial engineer more pay than an unskilled worker can negotiate in the common endeavor to being wealth out of the ground if you expected to retain that crucial linchpin person's interest.

Ah, there is the problem. In the Marxist sense, the phrase capitalist mode of production refers to an economic system wherein the means of production (capital) is privately owned by capitalists, who leverage their ownership of the means of production in order to extract profits from the surplus labour value of the workers. Contractual organisation is not a unique aspect of capitalism, nor is using a market-based method of resource distribution. There exist left-wing market anarchists and individualist anarchists that seem to me to be much closer to the views which you have articulated than capitalism.

This is, however, a form of private ownership. Each share, and a necessarily unequal one at that, goes as the private property of individuals involved in the enterprise. The CEO, being the most expert and educated person involved, would inevitably end up having the biggest pay -- private, take-home pay -- from the profits that the endeavor yields.

By definition, that is leveraging ownership of the means of production in order to yield a profit.

[True Refuge]

You say that a communist society would inevitably slide back into capitalism which to me seems like a very strange proposition. How exactly do you define capitalism? Because if we are working on different definitions then we will simply be talking past each other.

Capitalism: a system of economics fundamentally based on capital; i.e., corporation formation and contractual agreement. Such contracts inherently involve negotiations between people for how much they can agree each party to the contract is paid. Combining assets in this way produces far more leverage to afford large-scale projects, such as industrialization.

For instance, you would need to offer the industrial engineer more pay than an unskilled worker can negotiate in the common endeavor to being wealth out of the ground if you expected to retain that crucial linchpin person's interest.

Assuming that your second paragraph is talking about the higher stage of communism (it’s unclear)If we’re starting from the presupposition of communist society having being reached (which is problematic since it is pointless to speculate on the minutiae of something so different to the current state of things), this doesn’t make sense. The law of value and exchange do not exist in communist society. “Paying” for labour power, an exchange of commodities, does not occur. The engineer is “paid” in the sense that they are fulfilled by their actions and their actions increase the overall prosperity of society.

The position of “engineer” may also imply set professions (I don’t know if you intended to imply), which is at odds with the abolition of the division of labour.

[Debate Proxy 1]

Capitalism: a system of economics fundamentally based on capital; i.e., corporation formation and contractual agreement. Such contracts inherently involve negotiations between people for how much they can agree each party to the contract is paid. Combining assets in this way produces far more leverage to afford large-scale projects, such as industrialization.

For instance, you would need to offer the industrial engineer more pay than an unskilled worker can negotiate in the common endeavor to being wealth out of the ground if you expected to retain that crucial linchpin person's interest.

Assuming that your second paragraph is talking about the higher stage of communism (it’s unclear)If we’re starting from the presupposition of communist society having being reached (which is problematic since it is pointless to speculate on the minutiae of something so different to the current state of things), this doesn’t make sense. The law of value and exchange do not exist in communist society. “Paying” for labour power, an exchange of commodities, does not occur. The engineer is “paid” in the sense that they are fulfilled by their actions and their actions increase the overall prosperity of society.

The position of “engineer” may also imply set professions (I don’t know if you intended to imply), was high is also at odds with the abolition of the division of labour.

What I'm saying is that divisions of labor are natural, or at least that there is a tendency of nature toward them. I can't continue tonight because very tired, and will have to check in another day, but basically, societies that lack them have a difficult time being economically competitive and productive. When faced with influxes of products from societies that do have them, or even the arising of one somewhere if we assumed the whole world to go classless and stateless, the people who knew how to invent rare products and organize these time-efficient labor divisions would gain (a) popular support from the introduction of that product (as the Indian fur trade showed) and (b) get people signing on for inequality because that is the only way to produce said product, or get it fixed for that matter.

You can see where that goes: initial market inequality -> eventual full capitalism.

It's rooted in genetics. Some people have better memories, intelligences, learning capacities than others, and will always find a way to leverage a position of influence or providership of inventions/reinventions to unskilled and semi-skilled labor for personal benefit, even when you hit a classless society.

[Lost Memories]

I don't think anyone really agrees on what socialism means anymore. When people are whining about it or supporting it, it tends to lose or gain characteristics.

I've seen the same people who argue that government-paid medical care is 'socialism', then deny that it's real socialism when people point to countries that use it which are not communist hellholes.

Ignorants using terms before understanding them, thus building a novel meaning to those terms based on their feels during discussion.
Nothing new.

About meaning commonly used, there was an infographic some pages back.

According to USA citizens, socialism is mainly: (% they agree that's socialism)
-utility compagnies (gas, electricity) run by the government (65%)
-free childcare by the government (65%)
-most schools are public (60%)
-restrictions on firearms ownership (63%, only "anti-socialists" think that)
-trains are managed by the state (60%)

It's odd the military being run by the government/state isn't seen as peak socialism. By that simplicist USA view.
A truly capitalist nation would allow facebook, google, apple and amazon to have their own armies. They don't? You dirty commie.


Also, for you beautiful people:

Feb 15 2019