They're not the brightest... : politicalmemes

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Check out Marcuse's 1969 "Essay on Liberation":
"By virtue of its basic position in the production process, by virtue of its numerical weight and the weight of exploitation, the working class is still the historical agent of revolution; by virtue of its sharing the stabilizing needs of the system, it has become a conservative, even counterrevolutionary force. [...] In the advanced capitalist countries, the radicalization of the working classes is counteracted by a socially engineered arrest of consciousness, and by the development and satisfaction of needs which perpetuate the servitude of the exploited. A vested interest in the existing system is thus fostered in the instinctual structure of the exploited, and the rupture with the continuum of repression - a necessary precondition of liberation - does not occur."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1969-essay-on-liberation.html

Thanks for the recommendation!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

i like to think of the economic trifecta as a triangle.

People often tend to conflate communism and socialism down into one plane, but i don't think they're similar enough, socialism is more inverse to communism than anything. It's also more closely related to capitalism than communism (the modern western conceptualization of socialism at least)

to put it bluntly, communism is a subset of socialism.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Communism is when you get your work done, the output goes to the good of the group. It’s taken by the centralized power, then redistributed.

Capitalism is when you get your work done, you choose to sell or keep the output. Under capitalism, the scenario where someone else owns your work can only happen with your consent. It’s called “contracts”, and the consensual nature of contracts is why it’s called a “free market”.

So, to summarize:

work, have product taken by boss = communism
work, have product purchased by boss = capitalism

Any questions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I'm not sure I would call it consentual when you are strongarmed into a shitty contract because the other option is starving to death.

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[+] [email protected] -10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This tracks. Pretty much need to be a moron to think communism is a good idea, Trump supporters seem like a good match. Enjoy.

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[+] [email protected] -23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

Well capitalism is like getting a blow job, it's something that makes you feel good. Communism is more like sucking dick, like something no one wants to do. Yeah, pretty sure I got this figured out.

Edit - this is political memes and we're all very serious

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

sucking dick, like something no one wants to do

When you assume everyone else's dick is as fugly as your own

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[+] [email protected] -30 points 6 months ago (10 children)

Unfortunately it seems like those words have largely lost all meaning regardless of the political leanings of the user. So many times I see someone blame environmental destruction or poverty or warfare or whatever on "capitalism" and I wonder if they've ever heard of 90% of the history of humanity. You don't need capitalism for any of that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So many times I see someone blame environmental destruction or poverty or warfare or whatever on “capitalism”

Can't imagine what the BP Horizon rig explosion or the economic emiseration caused by prison privatization or the MIC arms export industry would have to do with capitalism.

These people are probably just on too much TikTok.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

So for example the Soviet Union never had environmental disasters, prison labor and slavery, or its own military-industrial complex?

Obviously bad stuff like that happens. The point is that it's not caused by capitalism, but by more basic and general human nature. The people who think "if only we could get rid of capitalism these bad things wouldn't happen" are being ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

So for example the Soviet Union never had environmental disasters, prison labor and slavery, or its own military-industrial complex?

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. So certainly not since then.

I'm a little surprised you didn't pivot to China. But then you might have to ask what they've been up to in the Gobi Desert or with their domestic air pollution or in pursuit of zero-emissions international bulk shipping

In fact China is one of the only countries set to OVERACHIEVE its climate goals by 2030

Obviously bad stuff like that happens.

If we're just running the numbers, we'll consistently find that privatization consistently increases the rate of pollution despite reducing gross productive volumes.

In that sense, capitalism is absolutely responsible for Net Increase In Per Capita Pollution.

It isn't merely that bad things happen. It is that in a private model, the economic benefit of production is given priority over the social cost of ecological degradation. Soviet central planned economies, operating as a holistic body, must account for waste. And while they can have a tolerance of it in pursuit of longer term goals, they cannot ignore ecological costs indefinitely. The Dengist industrial period is a perfect case in point. Although, under Lenin at least, the Russian Soviets gave ecological preservation a priority not known since at least Catherine the Great.

"Capitalism" in the functional sense is an ecological moral hazard. Westward expansion is uniformly recognized as an ecological blight, with a number of very plain incentives to wage war through ecological destruction, most notably during the Indian Wars. And plantation ecology was nearly as bad as its labor practice, with southern tobacco farming rapidly depleting the soil and causing crop failure that even 18th century rural aristocrats couldn't ignore.

These two economic systems are not the same in this regard.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Irrelevant, they were around when the things I linked to happened.

I'm a little surprised you didn't pivot to China.

I've mentioned China in one of my other comments in this thread, specifically the Great Chinese Famine. I'm not interested in making an exhaustive list when a few counterexamples prove the point fine on their own.

My point has never been that only capitalist/non-capitalist countries do awful things to the environment or economy or whatnot. My point is the opposite, in fact. There's no particular correlation, people are selfish and short-sighted regardless of what economic system they're working within. Because people remain people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Irrelevant

Might want to consult the recent history of plastics and the per capita rate of fossil fuel consumption before and after.

specifically the Great Chinese Famine.

The Last Chinese Famine? The one right before Chinese industrial agriculture ended famines in the country ever since?

My point has never been that only capitalist/non-capitalist countries do awful things

Whatever policy you have or practice you perform, privatization makes the ecological harm worse.

Once you decouple the cost of waste from the surplus of production, your industrial practices get worse.

That means capitalism is directly leading to excess waste.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, the Great Chinese Famine, in which tens of millions of people starved to death due to botched agricultural policies under a communist government. A collectivist agricultural system, in which the farms were very much not "privatized."

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

due to botched agricultural policies

The botched agricultural policies in China were the same adopted in Western states for decades.

A collectivist agricultural system

Are you seriously arguing the problem with China in 1959 was a lack of landlords?

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