This is what’s frustrating about trying to talk to people about socialism. It’s everything that liberal capitalist democracy claims to be but isn’t. They’ve just been brainwashed into thinking it just means authoritarianism.
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Democracy: You want a government by the people, of the people, for the people? Well a system that lets the rich and powerful pour their vast resources into corrupting it doesn’t allow for that. And that’s before we even get into the explicit ways in which US “democracy” was set up to be resistant to popular influences. Also, in a less direct way, the more of society that is privatized, the less in under the preview of whatever semblance of democratic control we do have.
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Freedom: Under capitalism, your freedom is directly proportional to your wealth. Rich people and corporations can do whatever the hell they want and can often do things that infringe on the freedoms of others, but if you’re poor, or even just not super rich, your ability to make choices in life is heavily constrained by what the market offers and what you can afford. If you can’t afford to lose your job, you have to follow what your boss tells you. But hey, that’s not a government, so it doesn’t count right?
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Meritocracy: People want to be rewarded for their hard work and keep that reward? Well capitalism doesn’t reward hard work. It rewards having enough money and power to siphon the value of other people’s hard work. It doesn’t matter what people did to get to the top, they could have inherited it, they could have done crimes, etc. They could be completely undeserving of it and still be put in charge and still take your money.
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Innovation: Capitalism doesn’t promote innovation as anything more than a byproduct of a different force. ANYTHING that makes profit is incentivized, regardless of how productive it is for society. Sometimes that’s new tech, but things that are equally valid under capitalism include: Weapons, cheap plastic crap, getting people addicted to things, finding ways to offer less and charge more, suing others to try to stop them from using anything vaguely similar to what you own IP for (regardless of if you were even the ones to originally make the thing instead of just acquiring the IP) etc. Under this framework, you can even consider lobbying the government as profit generating activity. You spend some money to get the government to do things that will allow you to make more money in the future.
I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s just really hard to make the jump from having people agree with these things to realizing that the system itself is to blame and that in order to do better we need to change it.
That’s what we call a branding problem. Capitalism is also really really good at branding and it is also really really good at propagandizing in a way that makes other ways of life seem scary so we continue to do capitalism.
Its why I stopped reading The Saga of Tanya the Evil, she starts espousing about how capitalism is “gods greatest gift to mankind”…
To be fair you’re really not supposed to agree with Tanya. “Capitalism is God’s greatest gift to mankind” sounds about right for an unapologetic psychopath.
Before that you thought that the literal Nazi protagonist had good morals?
I mean, Marx went on a tear about the unleashing of productive forces under Capitalism. It’s a significant meaningful improvement over the absolute monarchies and fractured feudal territorial economies that came before.
Throwing “God” into the equation is definitely fucked. But there’s a lot to be said for the benefits of laisse-faire capitalism if the only thing you care about is economic growth. Humans fully divorced from a social code and empowered with industrial technology can make so many fucking paperclips.
They’ve just been brainwashed into thinking it just means authoritarianism.
Idk if I’d even call it “brainwashing” per say. A lot of it boils down to mass media exploiting ethnic and economic bigotries. Just stimulating the very human impulse to be afraid of other people - especially people who don’t look or speak or act like you. Then asserting that these Other People are trying to Take Over.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
For a lot of these core ideas, the very pitch-line for them is corrupted. Even removing the question of rich people having an edge, you have these core messages that only justify the status quo.
Democracy as a system of surveying the public mood and mapping policies is great. Democracy as a means of putting arbitrary lists of policies to a vote and then blithely executing the majoritarian opinion isn’t great. At some level, you have to recognize that “Two wolves and a sheep voting for dinner” isn’t going to end well for the minority, even if the proverbial Two Wolves are wearing different team jackets.
Similarly, Freedom v Tyranny is often couched within the (very deliberately mischaracterized) Ben Franklin quote “Those who value safety over liberty deserve neither”. But a better analysis might be “Freedom protects but does not bind, Tyranny binds but does not protect”. Because you need safety in order to be free. Freedom of choice is predicated on available choices not being harmful. All too often, policies that serve to protect the weakest members of society are pitched as somehow being tyrannical to the strongest, strictly because they prevent one group from bullying another.
Meritocracy is also larded up with an innate fondness for eugenics and other Social Darwinism. There’s this idea that a meritocratic society will subtly weed out the undesirables via a system that leaves no single individual culpable for social murder. “Hey, you’re homeless because you’re physically disabled or mentally ill? That’s not my fault, because I have proven myself to have merit and you clearly haven’t.” Again, even if we were rewarding hard work, we’d just be punishing the weak and promoting the strong in a Might Makes Right bureaucratic system.
So-called Innovation rewards growth at all costs. Exploitative change is championed purely on the basis that the “innovator” generates profit. Even as we do build things, we focus entirely on the upfront costs versus long-term revenues, without respect for the core function of the system or the long term sustainability of the project.
It’s just really hard to make the jump from having people agree with these things to realizing that the system itself is to blame
I think there is a general recognition that our economic system is broken. But time and again, we’re limited in the remedies we’re allowed to discuss by individuals invested in perpetuating fascist policies.
And when the contradictions of the system mount, we’re told that we must overlook them in order to defeat The Evil Outsiders - Russia, China, Mexico, Iran, Somalia… And that any effort to buck existing policies or curb fascist impulses is a tacit alliance with the Villainous Foreigners Who Want To Destroy Our Way of Life.
Those are some good points/better ways to say it.
Then asserting that these Other People are trying to Take Over.
Yeah that’s a more accurate analysis I think. When most people reject socialism out of hand, I don’t think they’re really engaging with any of it’s actual ideas, they’re just associating it with scary foreigners.
For a lot of these core ideas, the very pitch-line for them is corrupted. Even removing the question of rich people having an edge, you have these core messages that only justify the status quo.
Yeah. I do get that. There are plenty of these aspects of society that I would want to change to be more fair, compassionate, etc. But when it comes to discussing these ideas with regular people, you need some kind of starting point and using the system’s own premises against it I think is a reasonably effective tool to do that. Once we have a political and economic system free from the control of a handful of greedy people, I think it’ll be a lot easier to take the next steps.
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Or:
“What if we give it to people that aren’t like you?”
I’m a socialist! I believe all the things that socialists believe. But with one tiny caveat…
I just think only people who serve a Nationalist interest should get Socialist benefits. I’m calling my philosophy National Socialism. Thinking about shortening it.
All the while increasing the power of private business.
What a novel idea! I wonder if you grow a moustache that people will take you more seriously.
Best of luck!
I wonder if you grow a moustache that people will take you more seriously.
Only if it’s very small, just over the top lip
That is why the hegemon is controlling all language. Just saying. I don’t have a solution. But maybe teach people to understand concepts instead of going by the gut feeling of government/boss brainwash.
Then if you say it they’ll raise 1950s farming failures and blame Socialism (rather than the conman Lysenko and his Lysenkoism)…
…and then pretend gulags were death camps… Even those for the 18 million that went through the gulag system the vast majority survived (one million dead out of 18 million isn’t a death camp, even if they were political punishment camps).
Those are arguments against Authoritarianism, not Socialism!
I feel like the former is also an argument against dogmatic ideologies, being unwilling or unable to question things can lead to some pretty bad misunderstandings.
Also works with fascism, sadly.
Which fascist ideas do you think people like?
People tend to enjoy hating already marginalized people, sadly
Hating others and blaming them for the shit state of the world. See the rise of Trump in the US and Reform in the UK. Neither of which actually offer solutions for anything, but as long as somebody is getting treated worse, they’ll lap it up.
Or go on Facebook and see any of your country’s “patriotism” or “bring back the good old days” groups. Every single one a hotspot of people who were taught that fascism was a bad thing, but not what it actually is. Disagree with them and see how long it is before one of them calls you a traitor.
Or just see Starship Troopers, and see people taking it absolutely at face value. You can dress a guy literally as an SS commander and people still won’t pick up on it.
It’s just something basic within us, like a desire for sugary, fatty foods. Some of us fight it. Some of us give in.
Time for a rebranding
Nah time for people to think for themselves… But who am I kidding?
Communitism? Societism? Civilizatism? Social securitism? Social safetism?
Communitism is probably too close to communism, auditorially.
Social democracy?
Edit: on a second thought that might also not work, we might need marketing department consultation
CapitalismButBetter
Same thing if you ask MSM-poisoned people if they think ethnostates are inherently unjust and dysfunctional without first mentioning that Israel is one.
Dude, I’m not sure “ethnostate” isn’t some fucking used-car-lot buzzword like “the spend”, but I know Israel has done a lot of bad shit to everyone around them.
Maybe account for jargon?
I’m not sure “ethnostate” isn’t some fucking used-car-lot buzzword
Allow me to put you at ease, then: it’s not.
An ethnostate is a country that enforces by law the supremacy of one ethnicity at the expense of all others.
Examples other than Israel include Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, most of the former Yugoslavian Republics during the war in the 90s, as well as current day countries such as several Muslim/Arab majority countries, Hungary, Russia, Belarus, and increasingly the US.
How is that different from China, Japan, South Korea, or any of countless other countries with a dominant ethnicity and laws that try to preserve it? Heck, I would even call Quebec an ethnostate if it were independent of Canada.
What laws do they have to preserve their ethnicity?
What would you say to people like someone I know (who gets all information from fb and xitter) who insists that we arent in capitalism, we are in corporatism, and TRUE free market capitalism is the end all be all (Ancap, Basically).
I explain over and over how it DOESNT work because of capitalisms inherent nature to create monopolies and the ownership class but they just say a free market cant have a monopoly. I disagree. But theyre not really worth arguing with, lol.
Side note, they are poor and make financially stupid decisions, generally they think theyre right about everything because they watch youtube. Its frustrating.
If this person doesn’t trust you, you probably can’t get deep-seated beliefs out of them.
If they trust you, you have to make the slowly nudge them towards making the conclusions themselves. Ask a lot of questions, talk about how reigning in the corporations rather than unshackling them would be better at ending corporatism, and over time move towards more fundamental questions.
The ability to persuade someone of a viewpoint depends on how many assumptions, previously arrived at conclusions, and morals you share.
Louis Theroux their ass? (Keep asking “why?” type questions as if you’ll join their side of they can just explain it, but the real goal is to unpick their fuzzy logic by getting stupid to argue with itself)
Thatd probably work but I dont have time for that, they would argue literally all day haha
Step 1. Ask a question, and make it surprisingly genuine.
Step 2. Don’t react. Don’t retract but don’t attack. There’s only one rule from here on out. Keep. Eye. Contact.
Nobody does to be fair, other than Louis himself, and his interviews take like 5 hours
There’s too much baggage with last century’s names, call it capitalism plus.
Hear me out…
Capitalism plus plus plus plus plus
Me asking people if they like socalism without mentioning a single country that overthrew capitalism
nodding towards an AES state
“Oh, you mean the country that starved all the babies because one guy said they should? And the country that did the White Genocide so all the smart people had to leave? And the country that is governed by a Caliphate that wants to kill all the Jews?”
“But all of that is exaggeration, hyperbole, and outright falsehood.”
“Nice try you stupid fucking brainwashed Tankie. I’m not falling for it. The only way to make real change is to donate $10k to the Cory Booker campaign for President because he said he’d give everyone a 10% off coupon for insulin in 2037.”
Marketing people! Marketing!
If you want to sell things, whether it’s a spinning top or an idea, you need to find the right way to market it.
Who would like to be paid more, have better representation at their job, more safety standards observed, and plenty of vacation time? Well I have the solution right here for you, it’s called Worker’s Rights. It starts with collectively organizing together to present a unified front to your employer!
It’s almost as if capitalists have invested an obscene amount of resources on convincing people to invest against their own interests.
What if both statements are correct? People love the parts but we don’t know how to blend it into a coherent working system.
The comparison of the Fediverse with Bluesky suggests that people reach goals less efficiently without leaders and capitalist funding.
I don’t see anything in the socialist philosophy that precludes individuals in positions of leadership. And I certainly don’t see anything about excluding funds for capital improvements to the nation-state - or even the world as a whole.
The Soviets seemed to manage running a space program that routinely outpaced their American counterparts while still juggling tenants of socialist economics with a hierarchical leadership structure and significant investments in new productive output. That’s how they achieved Superpower Status in the midst of a World War while states like France, Japan, and Brazil languished for the rest of the century.
I’ll spot you that building a functional socialist system is difficult, especially when you’re battling hostile outside forces. Allende’s Cybersyn put a big fat nail through Mises’s Economic Calculation Problem shortly before Pinochet and his goons had the project terminated. We’ve had a parade of Iranian presidents attempt socialist internationalism across the Middle East, only to see their diplomats gunned down, blown up, and poisoned to death by the enemy intelligence services. Even when countries can move unfettered - as Raul Castro and Nicholas Maduro kinda-sorta did during the Obama administration - people regularly make mistakes and miscalculations, attempting to provide short term relief to an impoverished population at the expense of longer term economic development.
And then sometimes a system flat out fails - as pretty much the entire Warsaw Pact did during the 1990s - due to internal contradictions and external pressures.
Socialism isn’t infallible. Socialists aren’t immaculate. The experiment of Communism is ongoing, in the same way the experiment of American Liberalism and Saudi Monarchism and German Fascism continues apace. Part of the struggle is getting people to see enough merit in a blueprint to begin building. Nobody knows how to do anything until they try.
The Soviets ate their own propaganda and thought that the future is in space and not in technological progress. They missed the digital revolution. Being the best socialist state doesn’t help against stronger capitalist states.
Part of the struggle is getting people to see enough merit in a blueprint to begin building.
There is no blueprint for a full system. Nobody wants to repeat the leadership style of the successful days of the USSR. And as you can see, barely anybody is willing to acknowledge that void so it won’t be filled anytime soon.
The Soviets ate their own propaganda and thought that the future is in space and not in technological progress.
Aerospace has been critical for industrial scale information networks, particularly climate, navigation, and logistics. I don’t think you can overstate the impact of GPS in the modern era.
They missed the digital revolution.
They didn’t miss it because they failed to invest in technology. They missed it because Boris Yeltsin was shelling parliament while the US was sinking billions into Intel Pentium processors.
Nobody wants to repeat the leadership style of the successful days of the USSR.
The USSR leadership was born out of the military that won the Second World War. The American leadership was born out of the business executives that profited off the Second World War. I don’t think you could argue either one was terribly successful in the modern era. The American system is also in decay, with leadership that is increasingly incompetent, incestuous, and outright evil.
But because we’re swimming in US propaganda, we keep getting told “Russia Bad, America Good!” on a loop. That scares us away from any kind of rational analysis, on the grounds that questioning the status of the US is some kind of assault on American society.
The USSR failed much earlier.
In 1959, as the director of a secret military computer research centre, Kitov turned his attention to devoting ‘unlimited quantities of reliable calculating processing power’ to better planning the national economy, which was the most persistent information-coordination problem besetting the Soviet socialist project.
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-soviets-invented-the-internet-and-why-it-didnt-work
Stalin was leading before WW2.
We will see how successful American leadership is if they manage to contain China. Of course, they already threw away the opportunity to maintain earth with an intact ecological environment and we are way behind what could have been. But if they manage to end up with an AI that controls the world then they win.
The USSR failed much earlier.
And the US was studying psychics as late as the 2000s.
Stalin was leading before WW2.
Because he was a senior leader during the Russian Civil War.
We will see how successful American leadership is if they manage to contain China.
What do you even think that looks like at this point? They are the single largest and most productive export economy in human history, and we’re their biggest customer.
if they manage to end up with an AI that controls the world
Oh no, you’re one of those…
The USSR failed much earlier.
And the US was studying psychics as late as the 2000s.
What’s your point? Have you read the article? The crushed potential by ‘existing socialism’ ministers is in my opinion no less than the success of the USSR itself.
The USA did stupid stuff with an abundance of resources. The USSR blew their future by not doing crucial things. That’s the opposite.
What do you even think that looks like at this point?
Same as Japan, leave them as a stagnant economy that supplies the world.
Oh no, you’re one of those…
Those who believe that AI is possible?
For context
But because we’re swimming in US propaganda, we keep getting told “Russia Bad, America Good!” on a loop. That scares us away from any kind of rational analysis, on the grounds that questioning the status of the US is some kind of assault on American society.
I think socialists don’t try to figure out why they are not winning. So there are the people in that above mentioned loop of US propaganda, but the people outside are in another.
Let it die. The word has been exploited very publicly by some very evil people. The nazis (national socialists), ussr (soviet socialism), etc. are probably the most famous examples. But generally, when I look back on the socialism of the 1900s, it’s mostly about learning from failures. And the longer history… Should we still be clinging to concepts/vocabulary from 200+ years ago? I think the fundamentals are still relevant but the “socialist” baggage isn’t worth carrying anymore.
Instead of trying to apologize and rehabilitate “socialism”, we should learn from it and move on to concepts/vocabulary more appropriate for our times.
