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That video is dreadful. How can the producer equate owning nothing with "socialism, communism and totalitarianism" when this is the effect that we're seeing und

by djs070 5y ago

That video is dreadful. How can the producer equate owning nothing with "socialism, communism and totalitarianism" when this is the effect that we're seeing under capitalism?

wubbert 5y ago
Socialist and Communist theories are all rooted in materialism and revolve around material conditions, right? So when the material conditions of capitalism are identical to those conditions promised by Socialism and Communism, then is it really right to still call it capitalism?
- manicdee 5y ago
  Socialism is about the people owning the means of production, not the mega corporations owning the people. You have a bizarre filter on the world if you think Amazon sharing your Internet with your neighbours without your consent is anything like socialism.
  - wubbert 5y ago
    "Ownership" is an "ideal". I'm talking about material conditions. If the material conditions of a few mega corporations owning the means of production are identical to the material conditions that are said to result from the workers owning the means of production, then what is the difference?
    - monkeydreams 5y ago
      In socialism, worker-based ownership leads to better conditions. In this vision of capitalism, workers have no control over their conditions.
    - claudiawerner 5y ago
      This is a gross misunderstanding of 'material conditions' in Marx and other philosophers. 'Material conditions' does not mean simply what is - for instance, no socialist would say that the capitalist welfare state is 'socialist' because people have the 'material conditions' of receiving welfare. The 'material conditions', at least as far as socialist/communist/anarchist authors go, refers to the mode of production and the relationship of workers to the means of production. It is not 'measured' in terms of wealth, nor in terms of poverty levels. It is also a mistake to say that socialism 'revolves' around material conditions. Marx himself took swift action to point out that people being happy and well-fed is by no means a 'socialist' society. This is, after all, assuming you subscribe to the theory of historical materialism - which several prominent Marxists today (and in the recent past) do not, at least strictly.
    - manicdee 5y ago
      What do you mean by material conditions? The point of socialism is that there is no third party extracting profit from the workers’ labour, only the workers themselves. The workers decide what gets done, how it gets done, and how any profits are disbursed. A corporation owning the means of production doesn’t meet the basic definitions of socialism since the workers have no power and it is only by the grace of the employer that their voices are heard if at all. I appreciate that you love capitalism and want it to be the perfect system but it’s not, and you can’t make capitalism look like socialism by dressing it up in welfare and democracy.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    > Socialism is about the people owning the means of production It's about the state owning the means of production and the state is supposedly representing the people, so the textbook fairy tale goes. Of course, putting aside how evil socialist is in principle, in practice it does one better: socialism is the rule of the rich party officials over an impoverished and oppressed society. (And no, the Scandinavian countries aren't socialist.)
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > It's about the state owning the means of production No, its about the people (specifically, the workers) controlling the means of production. The State is a vehicle for that in some forms of socialism, but not all. There are forms of socialism that see a role for the state but not that of vehicle of control of the means of production, and there are forms of socialism (e.g., libertarian socialism) which reject statism entirely (in fact, not only does that whole spectrum exist withi socialism broadly, the entire state socialist to anti-statist spectrum exists within explicitly Marxist socialism.) Too many people’s ideas of “socialism” is a product of Leninist propaganda (often through the further filter of Western right-wing propaganda, which has a weird semi-alignment with Leninists in misrepesenting “socialism”.)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- barneygale 5y ago
  No, because capitalism creates artificial scarcity. Under socialism, a battery factory that invents a more efficient process for creating batteries can pass that saving directly to the workers - rather than working 40 hours a week they can work 20. Their leisure time is increased. This is the future Asimov and Roddenberry envisioned. Under capitalism, the benefits of such technological advancements gets pissed away into market forces and accumulate with the people who need them least. For some reason we still expect everyone to either inherit money or work a job - even a pointless job - just to survive. Why? We easily have the capacity to feed, clothe and house the world's population. Let people follow their passions! Imagine how many Eisteins, Picassos and Mozarts that are being born into the world right now who will never reach their potential. What an enormously inefficient and unjust system.
  - smabie 5y ago
    What if your passion is making a lot of money?
    - barneygale 5y ago
      You can use the Enterprise's replicators to repeatedly clone your cash, and then try to find someone who cares.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      What if your passion is acquiring a lot of royal titles?
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    >Under socialism, a battery factory that invents a more efficient process for creating batteries can pass that saving directly to the workers - rather than working 40 hours a week they can work 20. Their leisure time is increased. In socialism, you work according to your ability to the maximum society allows, and you receive according to your needs the maximum the society can provide (ideally). If you could work 40 hours before the process, there is no reason for you to work less than that now. Your labour isn't defined by your output in batteries, but in hours. Nobody in socialist countries worked less because of technology advancements, they just had higher outputs, like in capitalist countries. The benefit-er is the factory owner, ostensibly 'the people' but really the state/party officials. You are a person, not 'the people'. You don't benefit from it directly - that would be theft from the people. You don't get to keep your labour because you owe it to the people, comrade. Don't be greedy with the people's resources. Who are you to take from the people? You could be sent to a gulag for re-education, and then who would stand in line for your family to get bread?
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
Owning nothing and the shared collective ownership is a major tenant in Communism. So in this case, it's half true.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  "Workers own the means of production" is a major tenant, as well. And socialists had a lot to say about personal and productive property[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_ver...
  - ojbyrne 5y ago
    “Tenet”
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      I hate when people make this mistake and here I did it myself.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Yes, and the Party manages it for the proletariat.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      In Leninism.
  - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
    The word is TENET, not "tenant." A tenant is someone who rents space. OK, I see that someone has already pointed this out. Now let's talk about the "carrot & stick" analogy...
- claudiawerner 5y ago
  It's actually not a 'major tenet in Communism' - a quick read of any Communist literature (yes, even the Manifesto) would correct this notion. I have no idea how the feeling that communism promotes no personal property originated other than by, charitably, mistranslation and misunderstanding. Marx never said everyone will be sharing a toothbrush.
ratsmack 5y ago
In general, capitalism only exists with small mom and pop retail and other barely surviving small businesses. The majority of commerce is run by a very few corporate oligarchs that also control the majority of government.
cyanydeez 5y ago
well, these weird republican corporatism seems intent on trying to blame their future actions and false dichotomies.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  State capitalism is the flip side of state socialism. They are two roads that lead to the same destination. Also, speaking of false dichotomies, pinning this on the GOP is rather silly and plays into a false narrative. The Democratic party is just as much if not more entrenched in the halls of corporate and banking power. We live in an oligarchy (Chomsky calls it a polyarchy). They increasingly own the government and joust for the chance to assume high office.
BeefWellington 5y ago
It's almost as if the lessons of the company store have been forgotten. Capitalism works best with good regulation but sadly the last several decades have been about eroding that understanding.
- airhead969 5y ago
  The free, invisible hand will magically wave-away all of deregulation's problems using efficient markets. And then the capital will trickledown. The billionaires have been hyping their delusional libertarianism to such an extent that millions now believe "all government bad."
airhead969 5y ago
It's only pinko communism when the 99% do it.
- phone8675309 5y ago
  Privatized profits, socialized losses. Heads they win, tails we lose.
  - airhead969 5y ago
    It's funny how the rich get roughly twice the welfare that people on welfare get... even though they're the ones who really don't need it. And now Texas is about to try to criminalize homelessness yet again, which I thought was settled in the 9th Circuit multiple times. Maybe it's the old "let's see what horribly-insensitive laws we can pass to rile up that other side but will probably be struck-down by the courts." Robert Martin et al. v. City of Boise Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles
stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's more akin to facism, but they all lead to totalitarianism.

by djs070 5y ago

That video is dreadful. How can the producer equate owning nothing with "socialism, communism and totalitarianism" when this is the effect that we're seeing under capitalism?

wubbert 5y ago

Socialist and Communist theories are all rooted in materialism and revolve around material conditions, right? So when the material conditions of capitalism are identical to those conditions promised by Socialism and Communism, then is it really right to still call it capitalism?

manicdee 5y ago
Socialism is about the people owning the means of production, not the mega corporations owning the people. You have a bizarre filter on the world if you think Amazon sharing your Internet with your neighbours without your consent is anything like socialism.
- wubbert 5y ago
  "Ownership" is an "ideal". I'm talking about material conditions. If the material conditions of a few mega corporations owning the means of production are identical to the material conditions that are said to result from the workers owning the means of production, then what is the difference?
  - monkeydreams 5y ago
    In socialism, worker-based ownership leads to better conditions. In this vision of capitalism, workers have no control over their conditions.
  - claudiawerner 5y ago
    This is a gross misunderstanding of 'material conditions' in Marx and other philosophers. 'Material conditions' does not mean simply what is - for instance, no socialist would say that the capitalist welfare state is 'socialist' because people have the 'material conditions' of receiving welfare. The 'material conditions', at least as far as socialist/communist/anarchist authors go, refers to the mode of production and the relationship of workers to the means of production. It is not 'measured' in terms of wealth, nor in terms of poverty levels. It is also a mistake to say that socialism 'revolves' around material conditions. Marx himself took swift action to point out that people being happy and well-fed is by no means a 'socialist' society. This is, after all, assuming you subscribe to the theory of historical materialism - which several prominent Marxists today (and in the recent past) do not, at least strictly.
  - manicdee 5y ago
    What do you mean by material conditions? The point of socialism is that there is no third party extracting profit from the workers’ labour, only the workers themselves. The workers decide what gets done, how it gets done, and how any profits are disbursed. A corporation owning the means of production doesn’t meet the basic definitions of socialism since the workers have no power and it is only by the grace of the employer that their voices are heard if at all. I appreciate that you love capitalism and want it to be the perfect system but it’s not, and you can’t make capitalism look like socialism by dressing it up in welfare and democracy.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  > Socialism is about the people owning the means of production It's about the state owning the means of production and the state is supposedly representing the people, so the textbook fairy tale goes. Of course, putting aside how evil socialist is in principle, in practice it does one better: socialism is the rule of the rich party officials over an impoverished and oppressed society. (And no, the Scandinavian countries aren't socialist.)
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It's about the state owning the means of production No, its about the people (specifically, the workers) controlling the means of production. The State is a vehicle for that in some forms of socialism, but not all. There are forms of socialism that see a role for the state but not that of vehicle of control of the means of production, and there are forms of socialism (e.g., libertarian socialism) which reject statism entirely (in fact, not only does that whole spectrum exist withi socialism broadly, the entire state socialist to anti-statist spectrum exists within explicitly Marxist socialism.) Too many people’s ideas of “socialism” is a product of Leninist propaganda (often through the further filter of Western right-wing propaganda, which has a weird semi-alignment with Leninists in misrepesenting “socialism”.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
barneygale 5y ago
No, because capitalism creates artificial scarcity. Under socialism, a battery factory that invents a more efficient process for creating batteries can pass that saving directly to the workers - rather than working 40 hours a week they can work 20. Their leisure time is increased. This is the future Asimov and Roddenberry envisioned. Under capitalism, the benefits of such technological advancements gets pissed away into market forces and accumulate with the people who need them least. For some reason we still expect everyone to either inherit money or work a job - even a pointless job - just to survive. Why? We easily have the capacity to feed, clothe and house the world's population. Let people follow their passions! Imagine how many Eisteins, Picassos and Mozarts that are being born into the world right now who will never reach their potential. What an enormously inefficient and unjust system.
- smabie 5y ago
  What if your passion is making a lot of money?
  - barneygale 5y ago
    You can use the Enterprise's replicators to repeatedly clone your cash, and then try to find someone who cares.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    What if your passion is acquiring a lot of royal titles?
- LegitShady 5y ago
  >Under socialism, a battery factory that invents a more efficient process for creating batteries can pass that saving directly to the workers - rather than working 40 hours a week they can work 20. Their leisure time is increased. In socialism, you work according to your ability to the maximum society allows, and you receive according to your needs the maximum the society can provide (ideally). If you could work 40 hours before the process, there is no reason for you to work less than that now. Your labour isn't defined by your output in batteries, but in hours. Nobody in socialist countries worked less because of technology advancements, they just had higher outputs, like in capitalist countries. The benefit-er is the factory owner, ostensibly 'the people' but really the state/party officials. You are a person, not 'the people'. You don't benefit from it directly - that would be theft from the people. You don't get to keep your labour because you owe it to the people, comrade. Don't be greedy with the people's resources. Who are you to take from the people? You could be sent to a gulag for re-education, and then who would stand in line for your family to get bread?

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

Owning nothing and the shared collective ownership is a major tenant in Communism. So in this case, it's half true.

heavyset_go 5y ago
"Workers own the means of production" is a major tenant, as well. And socialists had a lot to say about personal and productive property[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_ver...
- ojbyrne 5y ago
  “Tenet”
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I hate when people make this mistake and here I did it myself.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Yes, and the Party manages it for the proletariat.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    In Leninism.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  The word is TENET, not "tenant." A tenant is someone who rents space. OK, I see that someone has already pointed this out. Now let's talk about the "carrot & stick" analogy...
claudiawerner 5y ago
It's actually not a 'major tenet in Communism' - a quick read of any Communist literature (yes, even the Manifesto) would correct this notion. I have no idea how the feeling that communism promotes no personal property originated other than by, charitably, mistranslation and misunderstanding. Marx never said everyone will be sharing a toothbrush.

ratsmack 5y ago

In general, capitalism only exists with small mom and pop retail and other barely surviving small businesses. The majority of commerce is run by a very few corporate oligarchs that also control the majority of government.

cyanydeez 5y ago

well, these weird republican corporatism seems intent on trying to blame their future actions and false dichotomies.

bobthechef 5y ago
State capitalism is the flip side of state socialism. They are two roads that lead to the same destination. Also, speaking of false dichotomies, pinning this on the GOP is rather silly and plays into a false narrative. The Democratic party is just as much if not more entrenched in the halls of corporate and banking power. We live in an oligarchy (Chomsky calls it a polyarchy). They increasingly own the government and joust for the chance to assume high office.

BeefWellington 5y ago

It's almost as if the lessons of the company store have been forgotten. Capitalism works best with good regulation but sadly the last several decades have been about eroding that understanding.

airhead969 5y ago
The free, invisible hand will magically wave-away all of deregulation's problems using efficient markets. And then the capital will trickledown. The billionaires have been hyping their delusional libertarianism to such an extent that millions now believe "all government bad."

airhead969 5y ago

It's only pinko communism when the 99% do it.

phone8675309 5y ago
Privatized profits, socialized losses. Heads they win, tails we lose.
- airhead969 5y ago
  It's funny how the rich get roughly twice the welfare that people on welfare get... even though they're the ones who really don't need it. And now Texas is about to try to criminalize homelessness yet again, which I thought was settled in the 9th Circuit multiple times. Maybe it's the old "let's see what horribly-insensitive laws we can pass to rile up that other side but will probably be struck-down by the courts." Robert Martin et al. v. City of Boise Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles

stjohnswarts 5y ago

It's more akin to facism, but they all lead to totalitarianism.