So when the communist party came into power after the Bolshevik revolution, Wilson went to the League of Nations to negotiate a common embargo of the Soviet project, essentially sanctioning Russia the way we might sanction a nation for humanitarian wrongdoing.
This is to say Wilson was afraid of it actually working, which would jeopardize the industrial moguls who were already running the US.
This is also to say, the Soviet Union was doing a communism in hostile circumstances, much the way European monarchs pressured France to raise a new king after the revolution (leading to Napoleon’s rise to power, the Levée en masse (general conscription) and the War of the First Coalition (or as is modernly known, Napoleon Kicks European Butt For A While ).
Historians can’t really say, but the fact the red scare started with Wilson (and not after WWII) might have influenced events, including the corruption of the party and the rise of Stalin as an autocrat.
Also according to Prof. Larry Lessig, Boss Tweed in the 1850s worked to make sure the ownership class called all the shots in the United States, eventually driving us to Hoover and the Great Depression. FDR’s New Deal (very much resented by the industrialists) was a last chance for Capitalism, which then got a boost because WWII commanded high levels of production and distracted us with a foreign enemy. Then the cold war.
So communism was really unlucky and didn’t get a fair shake in the Soviet Union, and US free market capitalism got especially lucky in the 20th century, and we don’t really know if either one can be held together for more than a century or two. EU capitalism is wavering, thanks to pressure from the far right, and neoliberalism failing to serve the public.
In the meantime, check out what’s going on in Cuba, which isn’t perfect, but is interesting.
FYI, in the fifties the CIA wrote a memo where they stated that claims that Stalin was autocratic were largely exaggerated and the USSR largely had collective leadership.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
On one hand, i don’t trust the cia on anything. I dont even trust them to know what those words mean.
On the other; this us hilarious.
< nerd-moment rant >
CIA is a big institution, and gathered a lot of very useful data, which it shares in the World Factbook. (At least those things that can be attained by open research, which is a lot) CIA also engages in espionage not only to gain hidden and secret information but to serve state interests, typically how the state department (under the executive) defines interests of the state.
And as with most espionage organizations, CIA is not above engaging in cruel, sometimes violent shenanigans. During the cold war, CIA secured the Americas from influence of the Soviet Union (containment) but also arranged exploitation rights to US centered companies, and were often messy about it. To be fair KGB was also about trying to influence countries to sell to USSR, so there was incentive to act aggressively and escalate towards brutality.
( Incidentally, all those American interest companies are now multi-national corporations, which means they have no real allegiance to the US, and evade paying taxes anyway. )
Also during the cold war, CIA was big on SIGINT (intercepting communications and listening in) where KGB was big on HUMINT (infiltrating offices and coercing officials to report to KGB). This is not to say these are the only methods they respectively used (CIA liked finding officials in need and bribing them, often arranging for goods and services they’d otherwise not have access to), so when KGB captured (and brutally killed) a spy, it was usually the informant, not the CIA employed handler that turned them.
Also of note, the Most Brutal Spy Agency award (probably a dagger-shaped trophy) would go to… Deuxième Bureau of the French Republic, who liked exotic James-Bond-style cinematic deaths, like throwing people out of a helicopter over a body of water. KGB did feed Oleg Penkovsky into a blast furnace, but he was a mole in KGB feeding information to the US. Moles are embarrassing when uncovered and no one likes them.
Anyhow, CIA = incompetent is a mostly 21st century trope, when George W. Bush and his administration replaced all the top management with cronies at a time post-USSR Russia (and the entire Baltic region) was undergoing a lot of political upheaval. The US needed a robust intelligence sector managing foreign affairs at the time. But that was just not meant to be.
The whole Valerie Plame incident (in which the administration burned a CIA employee for political revenge – she escaped and made it home) demonstrated the meager level of respect Bush and crew had for the intelligence sector. After that, CIA, now a subdivision of DHS became reputed for torture and drone strike campaigns (which massacred fifty civilians for every killed POI), and worked with NSA to spy on Americans, under the color of looking for Terrorists.
Shit only gets worse from there. CIA would use the NSA mass surveillance program intel to create dossiers on Americans. Despite its conflicts with fourth-amendment protections, these files are used by secret courts – FISA – for secret trials, violating fifth- and sixth-amendment protections. These trials putting convicts on the Disposition Matrix (id est, Obama’s kill list ) for abduction and rendition or straight execution.
And all these resources were available for Trump when he came into office. Fortunately he got in a spat with the CIA directorate in 2017, so they weren’t as chummy with the White House early on as they were during the Obama administration. But now he has all those resources (though the upper echelons are MAGA loyalists and consequently double-plus-inept)
In the 1980s I wanted to be a spy… CIA researcher at Langley, actually, but I couldn’t handle the language requirements. Also being a field operative is really, really hard on the soul, and it’s no wonder James Bond drinks like Ian Flemming.
< /nmr >
cia is incompetent is new
Lol no. They woukd drug each other with lsd while on assignment through the whole later half of the cold war. Which, based, very cool, but not the best for winning cold wars.
most brutal
Do we include their proxies and ‘school of the americas’ grads as theirs? Because some of them also liked the helicopter trick. And worse things.
secured americans against
Sure thing sen. Mcarthy.
Really though. They said that’s what they were doing. But they’re kind of professional liars.
often messy about it
Fire is often thought of as warm
wanted to be a spy as a kid
Sure, before you learn what it really is. Try being a labor organizer; all the danger and intrigue, less language requirement and pay, plus it’s easy on the conscience.
They were always streaked with incompetent shit heads. There’s huge swathes of culture they just cant get people into, because they can’t hire anyone from those cultures, and to work there your ability to understand shit has to wear serious horse blinders.
I suggest we also collectively recall CIA can be both, given it’s a pretty big institution. It’s also been an evil fucker, presuming commercial interests based in the US count as US interests, even when those companies have become large multi-national corporations who actively avoid paying taxes.
I agree that it’s gauche that surveillance companies will pass sufficiently saucy private pictures to their colleagues for a gander (a tradition since WWII that is still carried on in NSA deep-packet scans of internet communications. (That includes sext exchanges between teenage lovers.) Playing around with LSD (on each other, as a practical joke) sounds like it falls more into this category, which, I’ll concede, is unprofessional especially for a department that has to sometimes engage in unethical action for sake of US national security, but that’s different than incompetent
If I was going to be critical of them, it would be their propensity for assassinations (botched ones on occasion) when there were alternatives, abandoning liberation forces they had sworn to support and supply and putting down developing democratic regimes in favor of US-allied dictators. Or even that they fueled their budget by supporting and participating in major drug trafficking syndicates, but these things are not incompetent, they’re immoral.
CIA’s strength (in the 20th century, at least, was SIGINT, including codebreaking, and analysis (that is, developing accurate dossiers based on limited or scattered data), and CIA did a whole lot more of that than they did killing VIPs and supporting revolutionary force.
As a young adult, I realized being a field operative was dangerous, and besides I was better at research and analysis, which I wasn’t imagining at all as a kid. Then by the time I understood the more gruesome parts of CIA history, George W. Bush was in office and they were torturing folks.
different than incompetent
I guarantee, unless you’re a mavhinery operator, your job is not effected as much by lsd as a professional liar/abuser.
they were doing torture in the bush admin
Do you mean bush2? Because, like… What do you call what they did to gary webb?
analysis, not down with torture
Hey, you know who doesnt have to do any torture? Labor organizers!
This was an internal memo not meant for the public eye, so it probably contains accurate information.
My trust is not greatly increased, and they could be manipulating released documents to form a narrative.
If, again, they know what any of those words mean.
Putting aside it is a baseless speculation, how is a system that falls into authoritarianism under a little bit of pressure a good system? If it wasn’t capitalists, wouldn’t it be something else? Drought? Covid?
I’m currently watching capitalism in America bow to authoritarianism. I fail to see what you’re trying to say
That no system is perfect but one of them lasted centuries in multiple countries and one always failed within years, if not immediately.
Also, US failing so hard is mostly the result of the two party system. That shit never really worked properly.
Throw in gerrymandering, a first past the post primary system and the electoral college and you get we’re we are today.
Sprinkle in a dose of Citizens United and the oligarchs get all the power the need/want.
exactly
America has always been authoritarian. You and I obey the authority of capital — who controls the state. US democracy has always been an illusion.
It’s not baseless speculation, and it’s not a little bit of pressure. I’m saying it was a lot of pressure. And I’m saying we don’t know what could have happened if the early Soviet Union was left alone to flourish or fail on its own merits.
I’m not sure if we can leave an experimental state to do its own thing, since it is really popular among commercial interests and aristocrats to meddle with establishment systems in order to procure more power, lather, rinse, repeat. All for freedom and for pleasure; nothing ever lasts forever
Regardless, it appears that we’re just too tempted when creating our state constitutions to lend favor, at least, to the petite bourgeoisie, who take advantage of that power to secure more power until the state collapses into an autocratic regime or factions into warlord states.
You lost me at “the Soviet Union was doing a communism”. Hard to see a dictatorship as the workers owning the means of production.
“The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated.”
— The CIA
(https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf)
And you think that describes the Soviets and isnt just a statement about the red scare?
The document linked specifically is talking about the Soviet system and Stalin.
Yeah, after the death of Stalin.
“Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership.”
It’s like the first sentence of the document dude.
Congrats you made the argument that it was an Oligarchy.
Command-economy communism is an absolute joke and a terrible idea.
It really depends. China is winning the race on sustainable energy because it’s treating it the way the US treated the Space Race after Sputnik.
And we are seeing how market economies go, the the outcome is dire.
I don’t know what works, but obviously neither do you. Neither do our elected representatives who are captured by interests to return to monarchy (which can command the economy).
So that’s, just, like, your opinion, man.
China has also been leading in increased demand for coal and petrol, and recently reversed their stance on population limiting policy.
I agree, but very large corporations (like WalMart and Amazon with high levels of vertical integration and revenue greater than the GDP of many countries) are kind of like a command-economies and “work” (for the shareholders). So, I think command-economies can work, but the question is for whom.
It’s the best system when combined with strong regulation and good social safety nets. I wish everybody would focus on those things falling down and needing to be fixed instead of pretending we’re going to throw the whole system out tomorrow.
It’s the best system when combined with strong regulation and good social safety nets.
Both regulation and social safety nets run counter to the concept of a free market and a free market is central to the definition of Capitalism.
That’s like saying “The best form of travel is unrestrained forward acceleration” with the caveat that it must be combined with the ability to break and steer.
No, it’s like saying that the best form of transportation is some form of forward locomotive force kept in check by brakes and steering. Like, you know actual cars.
Basically you’re looking at a Toyota Corolla and saying “What? Some of its parts move it forward, and some of its parts stop it from moving? That’s a total contradiction! It’s central to the definition of a car that it move forward!”
Yes regulation and social safety nets run counter, that’s the point.
There’s no one concept which makes for a good system in a totally undiluted form. Pure centralized economy: disaster. Pure capitalism, disaster.
Capitalism tempered by regulation and socialism: a balance of economic dynamism and humanist restraint.
The core of your argument seems to be that the only form of capitalism is unrestrained capitalism and we just don’t agree on those semantics. I believe a free market system can be governed and taxed to support social welfare. You believe that capitalism can only be unrestrained. Well, my version of reality is everywhere we look: both Europe and the US are examples of free market economies with some safety net and regulation attached. Europe is stronger on the latter two but the US is hardly at zero.
Capitalism is inherently about vice exploutation and getting around rukes, though. You can’t say ‘capitalism but virtuous’; that’s nonsense. ‘Capitalism but restrained’ translates to reality as ‘caputalism but only fir the first five minutes before breaking everything’.
You believe that capitalism can only be unrestrained.
I believe that the modern proponents of capitalism are fighting tooth and nail against any kind of restraint and that they are winning. I believe that the inherent premise of capitalism - that private ownership of capital and self interest will lead to market forces creating competition and the optimisation of the economy - are naive and false.
Yes, Europe has caged the leopard of capitalism with regulation and social welfare programs. It’s just silly to me that so many sing the praises of a leopard when it must be kept caged at all times and watched constantly. Still in this form, it occasionally manages to devour a face or two before it’s shoved back in its cage and the bars are repaired. Orbit gets out and rampages for a while, like is happening in the US. Clearly, powering your economy via caged leopard only way to do things.
There’s no one concept which makes for a good system in a totally undiluted form. Pure centralized economy: disaster. Pure capitalism, disaster.
If you think socialism necessarily means a centrally planned economy then you understand socialist movements about as well as you understand the superiority of capitalism.
It’s honestly just a flipping of the premises of capitalism. That public ownership of capital and a focus on collective welfare and democracy rather than self interest is a better central pillar for an economy. The premise is that private ownership of capital driven by self interest will always gain a disproportionate amount of power and work against the public good.
What’s really frustrating is that the disproportionate power granted to capitalists under capitalism has allowed them to undermined any attempts to try anything else. Every single time any government has turned to socialist values, whether by coup or peaceful elections, capitalists have used every power at their disposal to sabotage it. It reminds me of places like Haiti - the slaves overthrew their masters and the world made their lives hell for it… for generations.
If the capitalists don’t manage to outright overthrow the government of the socialist state, the capitalists band together against it to such an extent that the socialist state often turns to authoritarian tactics to try and keep it’s ideals. I’m not here to defend those tactics, just lament that the capitalist forces are so capable of preventing any real experimentation with socialism. It’s a plague to them because it threatens their power. Seriously - look up any socialist state and I’m positive you’ll find capitalist powers trying to overthrow or sabotage them.
Yes, there are also self proclaimed communist/socialist states that are closer to dictatorships. The Nazis also claimed to be socialists in order to get the support of the people. Clearly an unfortunate circumstance that muddies the water. No true Scotsman and all that.
“The best form of travel is unrestrained forward acceleration” with the caveat that it must be combined with the ability to break and steer.
That’s pretty accurate, though…
Uh, why? What’s actually good about it? Like, what dies it do well?
It’s an incredible system for moving all the money to the top 0.001%
Okay, yes, point; very good at that. Do we want that? Is it wkrtg the cost if we do?
People have a natural desire to pursue their own interests. Capitalism takes advantage of this and thereby fuels the most dynamic economies in the world. Even China’s success only took off once they started allowing entrepreneurial enterprises some breathing room.
When you’re stuck in a collective system where everyone gets the same regardless of what they do, you get a bunch of unmotivated people who don’t do much. Why should they?
This is the age old debate. Pure communism sounds like a paradise: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. So fair! So inclusive! But in practice it is a nightmare and lead la to famine every time.
In this thread we have a bunch of Americans who complain that capitalism is robbing them blind for the benefit of billionaires, but those same Americans doing all the whining are still wealthier than than 90% of the globe for 90% of history. The fact that someone is obscenely rich doesn’t take away from the fact that you are fed and housed and employed. And those things can’t just be taken for granted. Learn history. A lot of people have suffered without them.
Capitalism has ugly excesses, but they aren’t as ugly as the deprivations that communism has caused. Taming a tiger is dangerous, but I’d rather tame a tiger than try to get a dead corpse to plow the fields. In the same way, I think our best bet is to tame capitalism, even if it is dangerous and difficult. At least there’s something to work with. I mean really, look at the main problem that people have with capitalism: that it’s OBSCENE WEALTH isn’t shared equally. That does suck, but at least there is obscene wealth for us to fight over.
But it doesn’t do that. It motivates people to exploit, and we only get stuff as a side effect of scams. As the scams get more efficient, less stuff is produced, and all of it sucks more. It’s a system that literally runs on vice, but needs moral safeguards to function; it has a limited life even if you’re completely charitable to the idea.
Also, an attack on ((a straw man of) centralist authoritarian) communism is not a defense of capitalism.
when combined with strong regulation and good social safety nets
🤣 I’m not disagreeing with the sentiment but to think we’ll see those anytime soon is a bit of a sad joke. I think too many people in power have made too much money for anything but a sundering to change their minds and allow themselves to be regulated and work for the good of all, instead of themselves.
In a slightly different vein of thought, I think there is truth to the sentiment that fascists don’t cede power willingly. I get that we should focus on things we can change that aren’t unimportant, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a fascist government being voted out.
The only thing making stronger regulation impossible is self-defeating apathy.
The hard truth is that none of us here in this thread are out in the streets rioting because we are fed, housed, and have a job to get to. We talk about capitalism as if it only benefits Elon Musk but we’re all riding the same bus. He just has a better seat.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have been to local protests (and the use of the word rioting suggests you might be of a different persuasion than me, and that’s ok). And for the record, I didn’t disagree with you. I grew up under capitalism and knew a brief period where capitalism wasn’t completely fucking over the lower and middle classes but that was before the US came out of the fascist closet.
I think we’re just tried of thinking we can fix the things falling down cuz the people in charge are perfectly happy getting rich AF right now. Why change anything?
Thinking you can fix the system is kinda laughable in 2025.
Not as laughable as thinking you can throw the system out. Incremental improvement is the only thing that has ever worked, and many generations have faced challenges. This is not the first time that wealthy interests have squeezed the working class. This is not the first time that politics has been dysfunctional.
Why It’s So Hard To Imagine Life After Capitalism
That was good, thanks.
What’s the better system?
Techno fascism? No wait that’s what we’re turning into
At the very least heavy regulation to prevent unfair practices. Humans will pretty much always optimize the fun out of everything.
Take competitive video games for example, where once something becomes the meta, it’s used and abused until it gets nerfed. But people still play hundreds of games with whatever the most optimal meta is, even if it takes the fun and variety out of the game and makes it boring.
Pretty much every economic system ends up the same way, people figure out the most optimal ways to exploit whatever the system is, take the fun and fairness out of it, and ruin it for anyone who doesn’t want to play by the meta. In an ideal system, there’s strong regulatory systems in place (for example the FTC and the CFPB) that work to balance things and make sure the system works for everyone. But the people who like to optimize the fun out of things have decided they’d like the regulators out of the way so they can go crazy with their exploitation.
Any where such stupidly high wealth inequality cannot happen, or at least that doesn’t put “the economy” as the most important thing in the universe, environment, communities and individuals be damned
Maybe short term: highly regulated capitalism
But I don’t think anyone even remembers that effective regulation can exist
It’s clear we need sweeping change and an entirely different system though, I just don’t know what that looks like
Some people remember regulation exist. The problem is that bureaucracy, lobbying and corruption do their best to make good regulation take forever to be put in place
for invidiual everyday people? Probably something that involves smaller countries. I think part of the reason we have so many of these brazenly corrupt and evil administrations is because the systems are so big the temptation to go megalomaniac just trying to steer the ship is there
, Imagine being told to vote in an election when you live in Idaho or Yukon, and that ultimatley, your vote doesn’t matter because everything gets determined by a couple of population centers (in the case of Canada) or the fate of how a couple swing states vote (USA)
and then once they’re in power, there’s 10,000 mouths all crowing at the mother-bird for food. and only the loudest half get fed at all
Im making weird analogies but the point is, I think we’re looking at this the wrong way. Countries, and therfor economies and Markets, were never meant to get to the size they are today, Countries Like China, America, Russia, India, they are largely unmanagable without brutal oppression , and economically, it’s herding cats.
I think so as well, it’s so easy to hide corruption and power grabs in Kafka-esque giant machines.
Capitalism fails every 4-7 years.
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Advocates of capitalism 50 years ago: you dont understand! Caputalism is good bevause people arent, and capitalism harnesses our vices to make us productive! It turns our vices into virtues!
Advocates of capitalism today: no we dont need to get rid of it, we just need to fix it and add virtue and decency! Oh shit, i need to go out today, where’s my gas mask and iodine?
Get rid of it and replace it with what?
Almost literally anything else. You want me to just name alternatives? I’ve got favorotes but I’m not super partisan here.
best
*Least worst so far, maybe, if we’re being generous (which tends to be frowned upon or downright illegal under capitalism, so better let’s not).
Because these only happen in capitalism. Yeah, sure. Wanna buy a bridge?
