Considering what a monumental failure socialism has been historically why are there people who unironically support it...

What do you mean by socialism though OP?

Only richfags hate socialism, but they'll be liquidated under socialism so who cares really? I'll enjoy watching them squeal.

Socialism has, Communism hasn't.
The failure of Socialism only underscores the need for global revolution and universal anarchism. Marx and the CNT not Lenin and Stalin ok?

ObamaCare.

Is this satire?

What about Social Security? It's worth 1.2 trillion dollars. Do you consider that socialism too?

It's when the government does stuff, and the more the government does stuff, the more socialist it is.

everything is socialism.
Especially if it benefits other people.

>Roleplaying

Because capitalism is fucking awful and no other viable alternatives have been proposed.

>other people's money

Wasn't it mostly oil money and then the price collapsed? Not really other peoples money if their oil they sold.

Capitalism is literally the most perfect system ever, because it is so flexible

>capitalism is fucking awful

Why

State socialism (or state capitalism, as it is sometimes called) has been tried, an economy based on both workers' self-management and employee ownership has not been tried.

There's no such thing as a perfect system. Even capitalism has problems even though it is very productive and efficient.

...

...

>judging Aztec culture with a 19th century liberal morality

hehe

...

...

>feudalism
>bad

>ever equating glorious feudalism to the heinous jew slavery that is capitalism

>jew slavery
>bad

t. Baruch Schekelbaum

Most people don't flock to the left wing in the hope of the land of abundance anymore.
It was only in the period 1820-1960 that socialism was unironically promoted as a way to increase standards of living. Even in the 50s you had some pseud would-be aristocrat like Galbraith that were against "ridiculous" affluence.
The number one objective is to alleviate envy (collectivism being envy erected as a system). Except perhaps in a few third world countries (and even there) nobody claims seriously that going against property, responsibility and individualism will bring about the horn of plenty.

Why on earth would you even want that when ltv is bullshit and inequality would be necessary?

..and it's flexibility means that it can fix those problems. i,e negative externalities

Capitalism alleviates poverty

>not being a Syndicalist
tankies are just as bad as capitalists, muh incorruptible vanguard, muh human nature

]>ltv is bullshit
Nope

reality.gn.apc.org/econ/marxts.pdf

reality.gn.apc.org/econ/DZ_article1.pdf

>not being a Leninist
muh spontaneity, muh revolution will just happen, muh decentralised militias, muh state will dissolve and everything will be rosy

Lm-fucking-ao LTV hasn't been used since 1870. It doesn't explain prices at all.

Take Wine for instance. Mostly, wine improves with age. It improves even without the touch of a human or a machine. Also, older wine is more expensive. How can this work within the framework of the labour theory? Unfortunately it can't, not in any reasonable way. Some labour theorists would say that the increase in price of the aged wine is compensated for by the decrease in price of some other wine. This view doesn't work. If all wine were aged then it would all rise in price to some degree. This would happen even if the relative price between types of wine stayed the same. People would choose to drink the better wine rather than other drinks.
Furthermore, why do wine producers sell wine that's only 2 years old? Why don't they age it for longer? They could sell it for more money if they did. It would take longer for the profit to be realized though. This tells us that there's a time dimension to investment. This can't be explained by the exploitation theory.

Now, think about machinery. Is it true that the price of the machinery used to make a product is always factored into the price of the product? No, because of sunk costs. Suppose I design a machine to make a new type of sweet. The sweet isn't popular. Does that mean that I throw away the machine? Probably not. The scrap value of the machine would be low. As long as the price of the sweets produced is higher than the price of the inputs it's worth making them. To wise businesspeople past mistakes don't affect profit or loss issues at the current time.

For the labour theory to be true the selling price of capital goods would have to be related proportionally to their usefulness in the production process. In general, that isn't true. Capital goods are bought speculatively in the hope that they will be useful. Their practical input to the production process is often discovered later. Sometimes cheap machinery proves to be very useful just as sometimes expensive machinery proves to be less useful.

So, even if the price of capital inputs is proportional to the labour inhered in them, then the price of outputs cannot be. But, there is a chain. Capital goods are produced with other capital goods, and so on. If the proportionality breaks down at one stage then it remains broken.
So, the concept of labour value can't tell us anything interesting.

>..and it's flexibility means that it can fix those problems. i,e negative externalities

Really? So capitalism can fix overfishing for example without any regulation, even though it's a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons?

What? Why would we discard regulations? We can internalise the externality through a tax, for instance, or we can regulate it. Capitalism is a perfectly flexible system.

What about the energy that machines run on?

Elaborate

Why do people tread GDP as if its the only thing that matters? Its like IQ. An easy way to measure something that doesn't add up to much when you think about it critically.

Marxists are idiots though and think value is some metaphysical number separate from price while also being objective. It makes as much sense as voodoo and Marx only adopted an already outdated idea from Smith to quantify material alienation which is basically like taking Hegel and wiping your ass with him.

Wines are a very small aspect of production.

Ricardo dismissed this even before Marx

marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm

>Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them. There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scarce books and coins, wines of a peculiar quality, which can be made only from grapes grown on a particular soil, of which there is a very limited quantity, are all of this description. Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of labour originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the varying wealth and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess them. These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily exchanged in the market. By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour,. and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them. In speaking then of commodities, of their exchangeable value, and of the laws which regulate their relative prices, we mean always such commodities only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which competition operates without restraint.

also wine only becomes more valuable in its exchange value, not its use value

There's a very good reason why LTV was dropped in 1870. The far left like to treat it as some shill movement by economists to get away from Marxist thought, when in reality it was perfectly accepted until a better theory was put forward (something surrounding general equilibrium iirc)

Is the energy cost of running a machine factored into the cost of whatever the machine makes? Even if the energy itself was generated by a machine exploiting natural forces, way down the causality line human labor had to make something that made the whole thing possible. Sure it's indirect/abstract but everything eventually necessitated human labor.

He didn't dismiss it, he literally just ignores it. Mate, there is a reason why it hasn't been used since 1870.

You're basically just pointing out how production for profit works. Production for use is different.

Are you the guy a while ago who tried to claim that cultural/religious significance can be measured by thought labor or some shit?

The idea that the LTV isn't used is simply nonsense. Only the illusions of capitalism and the fact that we are alienated from the products of our labour makes it seem that value is subjective.

users.wfu.edu/cottrell/eea97.pdf

Yep, see how that one retard scrambles to distinguish between use value and exchange value disregarding that exchange is a form of use and it makes no sense to separate the two. It's all that moe retarded when you realize Marx describes money as a commodity.

thats because it doesnt work

...

1. Real GDP per capita is positively correlated with life expectancy and infant mortality rate
2. Low levels of GDP and high levels of corruptions are correlated
3. Poverty reduction and per capita income growth performances are correlated
4. GDP per person is correlated to rule of law
5. GDP per capita and enrolment rates in secondary education are correlated
6. GDP and happiness is correlated
7. Unemployment is negatively correlated to GDP growth

those are big feet

>The idea that the LTV isn't used is simply nonsense.
But it really isn't. Not even by Marxist economists. The dozen or so marxist economists in today's world and there has been a huge mounting defense claiming that his theories of exploitation still hold up without LTV

Economists disagree with each other, what else is new?

Many times it is nostalgia, related to nationalism. Many people from former colonial countries look fondly on the idea of their country 'taking business into their own hands' from rich capitalist owners of private companies from abroad.
Latinos like to be socialist as a way to defend against American influence and their ideologies. Same thing could be said about Yugoslavs, who were not under Soviet boot, neutral and their nationalist divisions were censored.

Nigga there is like a dozen economists who take it seriously while 99.99% of others use marginalism

>Go for a walk
>Find diamond on the ground

>Spend 3 years working working at a mine
>Find a diamond

Literally no difference in value

>analogies
Truly the argumentation choice of a simpleton

They often do, but there are claims that have broad consensus among economists (even though they are controversial among noneconomists), and one of such claims is "The LTV is wrong"

>marginalism
It's worthless for explaining long term price stability. Only useful in understanding short term fluctuations on a small scale, not the billions of decisions made every day by billions of people. Even then plenty of Marxists have integrated marginalism into their thought, like Kalecki. And some non-Marxists like Steve Keen provide a good refutation of marginal.

Rough diamonds are quite useless, as industrial material and as luxury items.

Steve keen is a fucking joke

>an economy based on both workers' self-management and employee ownership has not been tried

But that's exactly what Venezuela tried.

venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11466

nacla.org/article/communal-state-communal-councils-communes-and-workplace-democracy

nacla.org/article/communal-state-communal-councils-communes-and-workplace-democracy

It failed even harder than state socialism.

WRONG

thenation.com/article/why-is-venezuela-in-crisis/

I could replace that with anything and my point would still stand

Sure, the collapse in food distribution networks after a land reform that created agricultural communes and the founding of a worker's managed distribution company is actually the fault of CIA economic warfare.

It's part of it. the cia tried to topple chavez in 2002

What a shit fucking article
>Nationalisations
>Expropriations
>Price controls
>Not leftist, actually social democratic bro!
They also didn't have anything to do with the crisis. It's clearly the fault of the Americans that companies won't invest in a country that is literally stealing /s

>Marxists no longer use LTV

Is this a joke? It's literally a fundamental presupposition of the whole theory, and it's impossible to explain concepts like capitalist exploitation without it.

There is no evidence of CIA involvement in that attempted coup, which unfortunately failed.

A number of Marxist economists and philosophers have attempted to explain how capitalism is exploitative without it. I'd say that they are trying to resurrect a dead horse, but what do I know.

>unfortunately failed
Stay mad

I'll enjoy watching you imperialists die in labour camps

Muh CIA

>>Not leftist, actually social democratic bro!
Correct. Every country in the world intervenes in the economy, Statism isn't socialism.

>companies won't invest in a country that is literally stealing
Waaahhhh muh private property

Capitalism is theft.

>not understanding the point

T. Marxist

Lmao everything left of social democracy is completely and utterly dead in the Western world

Is this bait or do you unironically support Chavez?

>I'd say that they are trying to resurrect a dead horse

I'd say you're right.

Intellectuals support socialism because it empowers the intelligentsia.

America then, same shit.

williamblum.org/chapters/freeing-the-world-to-death/us-coup-against-hugo-chavez-of-venezuela-2002

>Socialist party is elected to transition into a socialist society, i,e seize the means of production
>Does exactly that
>Somehow socialism is absolved because no true socialismTM

>wah muh private property
Mate I was just explaining why Venezuela collapsed, learn to cop it on the chin.

U mad? His reforms saved Chile from inflation and pathed the way for long term prosperity (which they did)

Why do American leftists think Latin American lack agency and anything that goes against progressive ideology must be the fault of the CIA and the U.S. government?

By the way, if the coup succeeded, Venezuela wouldn't be in crisis and it wouldn't have become one of the most violent countries in the world. Maybe the CIA should have actually supported the coup attempt with their expertise. We would have a lot of leftists talking about how the U.S. prevented REAL SOCIALISM from happening another time, but the Venezuelan people would have fared better in the end.

For now

as an anti-imperialist yes. economically he left much to be desired, all he really did was increase welfare spending

>i,e seize the means of production
>Does exactly that
No he fucking didn't, christ. Most of Venezuela's economy is still in private hands. it doesn't even have progressive taxation, income tax is a flat 34%. State spending isn't at the level of most East European countries, let alone Norway or Finland

And no the PSUV wasn't elected to make Venezuela socialist; it was more a protest vote and tons of "socialist" parties are in power across the world while maintaining capitalism. A name means nothing.

It's barely social democratic. Welfare capitalist at best.

I'm not American. They don't lack agency but American intervenes all the fucking time when anyone dares to stand up to capitalism. America sees Latin America as their backyard to exploit and rule with an iron fist from behind the scenes, through puppets like Armas and Batista.

Just see those articles: And this

venezuelanalysis.com/news/6216

pcint.org/07_TP/005/005-venezuela.htm

People nowadays just ignore the extent Chavez and Maduro have went to transform the economy of Venezuela accordingly to actual communist theories of communal management and worker's control.

>American intervenes all the fucking time when anyone dares to stand up to capitalism

Thank you, Uncle Sam. We are now seeing what happens when America doesn't intervenes.

>countries that have accepted being American puppets
>Colombia, Peru, Chile
>fast-growing economies, reducing violence

>countries that stand up to America
>Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina
>collapsing economies, increasing violence

The gringo fist is iron, but fair.

>Anyone dares to stand up to capitalism
Ahh, because Soviet intervention is just the voice of the people

Yes, just like Salvador Allende being a KGB agent was normal, while Pinochet informing the CIA he planned a coup is proof of U.S. intervention.

Argentina liberalised in the 80s, didn't they?

In the 1990s, then they pegged their currency to the dollar and burned their reserves to maintain it for too long, the economy collapsed and commies blamed "neoliberalism".