the argument against it that I see the most is that governments are inherently corruptible and bad at managing taxpayer money and so it’s destined to become a big scam.
fair enough, to be honest
yeah but it does that shit anyway under Capitalism. XD
Asking this on Lemmy is like asking a priest “why do people hate the Church?”
Every answer is going to assume the system in question is the best and everyone is either benighted or misanthropic.
Yeah, a real failure of imagining what the socialism haters actually hate.
Points about propaganda are probably true, but none of them are very fleshed out or specific.
I think one of the reasons things are as bad as they are is almost no one engages with things with which they disagree. I’d be surprised if many folks on Lemmy had several good friends who voted (or would have) for trump.
In this case, how many folks have had a good honest conversation with someone whom they respect who also vehemently disagrees with them about socialism? Probably next to zero.
We instead substitute the worst takes from the “other” side and then generalize it about everyone with whom we disagree.
While there’s some amount of separation and avoidance, it is also interesting that we have publicly available polling (sometimes with open ended questions!) and data which is likewise ignored/not referenced. Instead we see people asking in places like this.
I think it is also worth noting that capitalism/socialism isn’t actually the biggest thing for most Trump voters. A solid portion care about very different issues, and simply do not care about the economic theory. We have a 2 party system in the US (and many places use winner-take-all elections), so any of a dozen issues could be the single issue that matters for a particular person.
capitalism/socialism isn’t actually the biggest thing for most Trump voters
Oh absolutely, especially at the Presidential level. I just meant it as a simple shorthand for folks with whom we disagree.
Though, on one that I’d argue was more a referendum on more or less socialism, I’d imagine the same was true in NYC, I’d guess the number of people who voted Mamdani and had close Cuomo voting friends would be pretty small, though I admittedly haven’t looked for much data on that.
Also, great use of polling. I just wish the Dems could take it and run on the shit with which everyone agrees instead of getting bogged down in online culture war fights.
Ah, your point is understood. Thank you. The NYC mayoral race is a good example too.
At one time I understood why no party can run on common sense in truth, though I forget the argument now. I know parties exist first to win elections, and only secondarily to change things. But I don’t see how that stops the Dems from running an extremely ‘common-sense-reform’ campaign.
Only thing I have against it is the air-headed, simple-minded take of most on lemmy. I’ve asked a dozen times how socialism stops money from funneling to the top and into the hands of a few. Never once got an answer. Look in this thread right now! There’s not one real definition, just the usual capitalism bad, socialism good, take.
Best government and economic system I’ve seen in human history is a capitalist economic model with serious guard rails and “socialism” for the government. I put socialism in quotes because the word means to lemmings whatever they want it to mean, so the term is wishy washy.
Socialism, communism, whatever other utopian ideologies, require that people be invested and actively participating in it. The way wealth stops being funneled to the top is that people are invested (and informed enough) to stop it from happening. How that would happen in a practical sense would depend entirely on how these ideologies were implemented. Anyone who tells you it’s all just very simple and easy would be lying to you. The main factor would be active participation by the vast majority of the populace. Without that, any attempts would be doomed to failure.
I’ve asked a dozen times how socialism stops money from funneling to the top and into the hands of a few.
“Without capitalism the elite won’t feel the need to enrich themselves! They’ll work for the common good, obviously!” /s because, well, this is Lemmy. I love it but…
The most common gripe I hear is that because not all labor is similar[EG: Healthcare vs Mining] there is no easy way to make sure that people are putting in the same value into the system. For people that already mistakenly believe there is a large group of “lazy immigrants” draining resources in the current system, this is a deal breaker. The internal logic isn’t too much to swallow its just a hurdle to get people to sit long enough to hear the answer. They would rather fight over the crumbs than share the whole because somehow thats more “fair”.
Are you an American ?
It’s the PR and marketing campaigns. Capitalism concentrated the wealth with the bosses so they can send a coherent message. A message people can buy into.
Socialism marketing makes it sound like a MLM scheme. The lack of centralization puts different unions against each other.
People are scared of it because every incarnation of it has been hellish shit show. No matter how many times people moralise about it that simple truth is always looming.
Just because a state self-proclaims to be socialist, doesn’t mean it is.
A lot of people mix up “socialism” with “people being good neighbors.” That’s not actually what the term means. Socialism is specifically about who owns the big stuff, the means of production. In a socialist setup, people still work jobs, they still get paid, and daily life still involves employment and compensation. The difference is that major industries aren’t privately owned by large corporations. They’re controlled collectively by the public or by the workers themselves.
Small private businesses can still exist; they’re not eliminated outright. What changes is the ownership of large-scale systems: energy, manufacturing, transportation, resources, things on that level. These are shifted away from private corporate control and toward collective control.
The fundamental issue of socialism and why it doesn’t and has not worked historically is because of human nature. A corporateocracy or a capitalist based society aligns much better to human nature than socialism does which is why it’s significantly more “successful”.
The fundamental issue of socialism and why it doesn’t and has not worked historically is because of human nature. A corporateocracy or a capitalist based society aligns much better to human nature than socialism does which is why it’s significantly more “successful”.
Except the only major sovereign socialist experiments have been either crushed by non-economic forces, or been Soviet-style totalitarianism.
The idea that capitalism is more based on ‘human nature’ ignores why capitalism actually works. You could argue, with much more validity, I would say, that feudalism is more in-tune with human nature than capitalism, yet almost no one disputes that feudalism is worse than capitalism.
Maybe the real problem is people wanting to apply one answer to all problems. I’m fine with a capitalist economy where an ethical government regulates the market to serve the people and there are socialist structures where appropriate
You’re referring to social democracy there are several social Democrats in office right now in the United States they are among the politicians I would vote for for president.
The vast majority of the hate for socialism is decades long propaganda and indoctrination, which is mostly false. Socialism is a threat to the wealthy, so they programmed people to hate it.
With socialism or socialism-like policies, the general population gets more, at the expense of the wealthy elites who would get less. The wealthy control or lobby or have a say in our education system, media, entertainment, etc.
Ask a typical American what they hate about socialism and they will perfectly describe capitalism
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If you’re going to repeat yourself, I will too. “Capitalism, at its best, benefits a few people (the capitalists) and screws over everyone else (the workers).”
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You already said to ask about the ideal. So why bring up Bulgaria? Quit arguing with yourself.
Again, we agree. Your ideal is that anyone has a chance in capitalism. Great. And everyone else, well, they get screwed. That’s your logic. Fortunately, billions of people around the world think we can do better than that, and that treating others well is a moral imperative.
Personally I don’t mind “social safety nets”.
But for me the issue is that I work hard to have, and to continue having a nice life for my family and I. I took the risk, I invested in myself, and made the right choices over and over again. There should be a reward for that.
And while I don’t think people should be homeless and starving, I’m realistic enough about the current politics (of both parties) to know that the wealthy won’t be the ones to pay for it, it will be weaponized to drive the wealth gap further apart.
Sure in a perfect world billionaires would be taxed (and actually have to pay), and we could provide all this wonderful socialism everyone here wants, but that’s never actually going to happen and I don’t feel like paying even more taxes to watch the funds disappear into the already massive (and misused) budget.
Thisnis why you have to go after the assets directly, wealth tax on fortunes over 10 million.
and we could provide all this wonderful socialism everyone here wants, but that’s never actually going to happen
lol they said the same thing about kings and empires…
I think the general idea of those against it is that they assume it is zero sum. Meaning, for everyone to be taken care of, the person must lose or have less.
Capitalism is the ideology that puts increase of the capital as the number one goal. It’s usually is the meta strategy to make more and more goods.
To rephrase, if you do something else, it’s gonna be less effective at multiplying the total wealth of society. And it might not always be a wrong thing to do, but the benefits need to outweigh the costs of scaling slower.
So, it’s not wrong. Socialists often think about having a fair share of the cake instead of thinking how to make the cake bigger.
One reason I can think is we haven’t yet seen a working socialist society, which often fail for external reasons.
For example, the socialist government in Cuba was severely undermined by the USA imposed blockade.
A more recent example is Venezuela, while you can think what you want about its current government, I don’t think USA should interfere with any sovereign nation.
There’s almost like a pattern, like someone, somewhere doesn’t like the idea of socialism to succeed.
There are plenty of surviving socialist states, and Cuba and Venezuela and Vietnam for that matter still exist despite extensive US meddling so it’s weird to call them non-surviving.
Whether you want to call China socialist is a whole different kettle of worms, but I think it demonstrates rather handily that socialism’s second greatest burden beyond the necessity of fighting off capitalists is the authoritarianism of Marxists.
I’m a total lamen but what makes Marxism authoritarian?
Marxism posits that socialism is best achieved through a command/centralized economy. There’s plenty of room for interpretation and of course being a Marxist doesn’t mean you have to agree with 150 year old socioeconomic theories on every point but generally that’s the form Marxist governments have assumed, probably because it is in the interest of the people running a government to take all the power they can.
If the government controls production from the ground up there’s just no other model to call it but authoritarian, everything within that society can only happen by their consent or by breaking the law.
China produced more billionaires than the US this year.
Sure, and they do plenty of capitalist hellscape shit in general and I’ll shitpost about that all day. They’ve also raised nearly a billion people out of poverty since 1978 and one of the original conceits of Marxism is that capitalism might be necessarily to build the industrial foundation for socialism to be viable in the first place so… We’ll see what happens as they come closer and closer to undeniably a society that could enact true socialism if it wanted to.
We do know their state has absolutely no qualms about disappearing billionaires as is. Or, you know, millions of Muslims.
This is a great perspective and it always helps me with gloom and doom. There are billions of people infinitely better off than twenty years ago in regards to access to food, electricity, and clean water.
You don’t need to wonder what will happen as China has already embraced fascism. Once wealthy individuals and their corporations gather enough power China will be no different than the rest of the world. I would love for them to prove me wrong.
Capitalism always results in the same outcome and China is no different. Such is life.
I agree, that’s why I called them non-working socialist states.
My point is we haven’t yet seen how well (or bad) could a socialist state work if left alone.
China needs Taiwan to fail because the Chinese Communist Party maintains that democracy is incompatible with the Chinese culture. Having a very successful Chinese democracy shows that Chinese culture is compatible with democracy.
In a similar way, capitalists do everything they can to scuttle socialist countries, because a working socialist country would show that it was viable. Hence endless embargoes, wars, and a steady stream of propaganda. This was true for the entire life of the Soviet Union, and continues to this day for socialist countries.
Indeed my friend… Sad state of affairs.
Some of y’all need to go live in a socialist country for a few years and learn something about how it actually works.
Spoiler alert. You don’t want any part of it.
The only professedly socialist countries at current are ML-derived totalitarian regimes that have very little to do with socialist values or practices.
What are you on about? I’ve been living in Denmark for five months now, I fucking love it.
Crime is virtually non-existent, everyone is paid a fair wage, the streets are clean, addiction rates are down, nobody goes bankrupt from medical treatment, and everybody has the option for higher education.
What’s so bad about that? Do you like living in a rural area with high rates of alcoholism, property crimes, domestic violence, crumbling infrastructure, and monopolies bankrupting your main street?
Meanwhile I’ve just walked 2 km from the flat past hundreds of small locally owned businesses on nothing but pedestrian plazas to a small farm to table cafe for brunch.
You live there and you’re still wrong.
Denmark has a free‑market capitalist economy.
Go learn what socialism is.
Oh thank fuck you know the difference between democratic socialism and actual socialism, now go ahead and tell me what you think countries are truly socialist.
I mean Denmark isn’t socialist. It’s capitalist with sane regulations to protect the people, which is ALSO something that the American right has labeled as communism, despite the fact that you do, in fact, still have a free market economy with plenty of private ownership in these countries. It is IMO the best system we currently have, because it has good elements from both socialism and capitalism. Capitalists can take risks and profit off it, but nobody has to be in poverty.
Right, I agree with you, but these knuckle draggers use Denmark, Norway, and Finland as their primary examples of socialism.
There used to be a country called the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
It was built on the principles of socialism
It turns out that actually living in a socialist state is oppressive to the point where millions upon millions were starved because that was what was needed to give socialism the chance to take off in a capitalist world.
Tell me you’re an American without telling me you’re an American.
Next up: The Nazis were socialist, it’s in the name!
Read a fucking book
Their latest comment only adds to the list of things they obviously don’t understand. I hope they have a library card.
I don’t read many books on fucking, but I read quite a bit of history.
Maybe try some.
Of course it’s easier to thump your chest on the internet if you gas light people and make ad hominem attacks.
Good idea! Books are great. Here are some great classics.
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893
https://www.amazon.com/Execution-Hunger-Holocaust-Miron-Dolot/dp/0393304167
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087
https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Farm-George-Orwell/dp/0451526341
