A world beyond Capitalism

@BlueVeins I am aware of that. It's because Capitalism didn't break with some fundamental flaws of the systems that predecess it .

@BlueVeins It's not that capitalism causes those things (let alone [i]invented[/i] them, that's absurd), but capitalism preserves the structures that keep them in place and itself benefits from them.

The discourse around this topic is just so dishonest and full of layers upon layers of propaganda that it's basically impossible to get anywhere. Take the example of "See--Cuba and Venezuela have poor economies--that's proof socialism fails!", yet that completely ignores the role the U.S. had in tanking the economies of those countries and subverting every socialist government in Latin America...and that's not something you can even begin to talk about with most Americans. Or people in this thread saying "socailism benefits those in power", like capitalism doesn't; I don't even want to approach it. 😩

In either case, I think both capitalists and socialists insisting that their systems benefit everyone as long as they're "pure" and "uncorrupted" sort of illustrates the problem with all of this...

I'm not convinced that socialism would be better than capitalism, but I'm sure also not convinced that capitalism is "the best we can do" or somehow synonymous with "human nature".

@SW-User imo, the lesson of places like the PRC and USSR (which are much better examples of socialist movements creating state capitalism for obvious reasons) are moreso that violent revolution in particular isn't an effective method of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, and a top-down unitary government apparatus isn't effective at managing economies. All this says nothing as to the viability of market socialism.

Idk if we'll ever have a real-life socialist state, or if there's any way of organizing one that's actually effective. Hope there is, or at least that we can form some other type of societal system that's less flawed than the one we live under now. But when and if we achieve that, it's basically a forgone conclusion -- as far as I'm concerned -- that we'll still have to fight all these same social injustices in whatever new form they take. They tend to be slippery like that.

@SW-User how about democratic socialism?

@BlueVeins @Gloomy Yeah but isn't in Feudalism that predates the system at hand not socialism? Oh people can argue too but the USSR was socialist I'm like not really. Just because they tried to implement it doesn't mean they really even got off the ground with it. I like Blueveins call it state capitalism.

@BetweenKittensandRiots Do you argue feudalism was socialist?

The USSR was a mixed bag and had lots of good and lots of bad... had it more time to develop and maybe create changes within it without the cold war it could have become great.

@Gloomy I think my view of the USSR is largely that it was partially industrialized before the revolution but was MOSTLY a fuedal backwater and its experiments with Totalitariansim caused it to rapidly develop but it was at the cost of a huge degree of human suffering in a very short window of time.

and no I don't argue feudalism was socialist.

@BetweenKittensandRiots No absolutely the way the USSR came to be does not really fit into marxist theory or was the best course of action.
Rapid industrialization was needed in order to compete with western Capitalism but was a huge mistake at the same time. Probably as many people died under western industrialization as under soviet industrialization with the difference that the Soviet one took place in a few years.
Totalitarianism was a product of the first world war and a civil war that made it impossible to build a democracy in the aftermath of the revolution.

@Gloomy Yeah I tend to view marxist leninism as a distortion of marx as my view is that marx talked about how Socialism would rise from fully capitlalist society and that what leninism did was essentially just ignore marxs whole theory of how socialism would emerge, leninism just went all fuck hagel and marx and Historical Materialism, and it's sad some socialist disagree with me they're like the USSR was already along and largely captialist and it's like actually I think you over state just how much of the USSR was already developed before they took over.

So I tend to view the ideology as having broken with what marx and hagel actually said. the soviet union wasn't really ready andI think what's most sad about the whole thing ist that the result of going before they were really ready to do so means the modern world has people thinking if it happened here for instance in the good old usa it would go down the same way it did for the soviets and that's just and insane view that isn't even true, the US of course has a much better shot at actually pulling it off. if anyone could do it it would be us.

@Gloomy [media=https://youtu.be/_AvvqDk-hME]

So Leninism just violated Historical Materialism