this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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"Capitalism does not work because people are selfish, and selfish people are incentivized to harm their fellow man by capitalist structures. Under socialism, selfish people will work toward the common good because working toward the common good is the easiest way to earn recognition and status"
"People are selfish, and it is in 99 percent of peoples self interest to overthrow capitalism in order to improve their material conditions"
So you admit then, that in order for socialism to work, people have to overcome their own selfishness first and learn how to cooperate with others?
You can cooperate with others toward selfish ends. That's literally how pack animals like humans work.
Right now it is in everyone's self interest except for the bourgeoisie to stop capitalism and create a more equitable system. If you just want to be on top, that is being selfish and not understanding how odds work, not being selfish.
It's funny because most communists seem to want to be the ones on top by trying to impose communism on everybody else.
Why not start at the bottom and learn how to cooperate with people there? Make some friends at work and see if they can help you get a better job. Put that philosophy into practice in the here and now instead of dreaming of some grand utopia where everyone willingly cooperates with everyone else everywhere and all the time.
According to who, capitalist media? Have you ever actually exposed yourself to what communists think and believe, or are you afraid of a spectre?
The communists, infamous for avoiding rank and file and mass line strategies, as well as other strategies that relied heavily on creating popular support
I'm already super cushy in my job, I dont want involuntary homelessness to exist, and I also don't want homeless people to be killed. I want kids to be able to go to bed and not be hungry. That isnt possible under capitalism.
We don't think it will be utopia. We don't think everyone will willingly cooperate all the time. If you think this is what communists believe, you haven't read a lot of communist thought. It feels like you are just throwing cliches at the wall and trying to box with a strawman, and it is kind of weird to watch.
Do you understand the notion that people will generally cooperate when it is in their mutual selfish interest to cooperate? Does that make sense to you? Or do you reject even that notion?
According to history.
I'm being exposed to it on Lemmy nearly every single day.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate to a homeless shelter, etc.
Yes, that totally makes sense. But in my experience, this works best when people freely choose to cooperate because they realize it's in their own self-interest, instead of having cooperation imposed on them by force.
Who's history?
Okay, then explain the difference between scientific and utopian socialism, what what differentiates labor from labor power in the context of surplus labor value extraction?
The low bar there is my fault though, I should have asked if you were educated on what communists believed.
Put a bandaid on a gunshot wound while you're at it.
That has literally happened, can you name any successful socialist revolution that didn't involve education and the creation of mass popular support?
World history.
Russian communism: ~5M dead in the Holodemor
Chinese communism: ~15-55M dead in the Great Famine
Cambodian communism: >1M dead in the Killing Fields
inb4 not real communism
Muh "you can't criticize socialism because you don't understand THEORY". You probably don't understand capitalism either outside of socialist critiques of it. Then how can you be so certain of what capitalists believe?
"I can't help EVERYONE so I'm just not gonna help ANYONE".
*goes off and tries to convince people to follow an ideology that only works if everyone believes in it.
Can you name one socialist revolution that hasn't involved massive amounts of murder and violence?
Even with these inflated numbers, they are no match for the numbers of people intentionally killed by capitalism and feudalism, let alone starvation under capitalism and feudalism.
Plugging the book "late Victorian holocausts"
If you believe the Cambodians were communists, you have to believe that the nazis were. Except in Pol Pots case, he only claimed to be socialist for a few years of their decades long operations. I am choosing you believe you're not that gullible so I must assume you are ignorant of their history.
Literally took years of capitalist economics in high school and college, it is one of the reasons I'm a communist.
More like "the issue is systemic and requires systemic solutions, not charity"
Chinese feudal landlords didn't believe in socialism, that didn't stop the communists from doing land reform.
By definition revolutions involve violence. Are you condemning the capitalist revolutions that threw off the monarchies? The status quo involved comparatively massive amounts of violence then, and it does now.
But also, an example of socialists gaining power through the ballot box was in Chile. The US ended up funding, training, and equipping right wing death squads to kill (and worse) Chilean communists, teachers, trade unionists, indigenous people, and random people. Chile became an extraordinary violent right wing capitalist dictatorship.
I mean, Hitler very clearly wrote in Mein Kampf that he DID take inspiration from socialism, except that, like all other communist dictators before or after him, he thought that HE had found the missing ingredient to make it work.
Hah, imagine getting a "capitalist" education from people who don't have to worry about their own job security because they have tenure. Isn't that just like getting a communist education from a Wall Street CEO?
Yes. The secret ingredient was (and always is) called violence.
Okay, at least you're honest enough to admit that.
Yes, I condemn all violence, capitalist or otherwise. But I honestly don't experience capitalism as particularly violent. My biggest successes all came through non-violent means, by educating myself and improving my technical and people skills. Amazingly, it turns out that if you're willing to learn what others will pay you for, more often than not, they'll actually just hand you money without you having to make any threats about taking over their whole company.
He also very explicitly said that the nazis weren't socialist, and all of the parties policies were hard capitalist.
We live in a capitalist society. Any attempt to claim this isn't capitalism and we have a shift toward actual capitalism is an attempt to sell you fascism.
Also pretty sure most of them were adjuncts.
Yes. When they removed the secret ingredient, the landlords could not maintain their property relations with the peasants. That is correct.
Well then either you're really sheltered or you haven't been paying attention.
Oh, well if it worked for you, I guess those slave laborers can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And all those genocide victims should have just spent more time educating themselves.