Did 20th century socialists have a reasonable shot at toppling the global order of capital and creating a better...

Actually, they did.

Sino-Soviet split however fucked everything hard for socialism long term.

Individual ownership is an important right, but private ownership does not respond to a need, does not create wealth for those who need it, and does not favour investment. Why do you say that ?

No, Trotsky would have expanded the revolution and would have saved the ussr from isolation. About the internal structural problem, remember we are talking about Russia.

After WW1 was probably the best chance. Europe should've gone socialist, but it didn't, and fascism caused WW2.

If Trotsky tried to expand into Poland and even into Germany there is no way Churchill or the allies would defend him and his country would be destroyed.

1) THE USSR COULD HANDLE NAZIS SINGLE HANDLY DUHHHH
2) If he expanded into Poland, he wouldn't have left Hitler rise to power. The Weimar republic was unstable and the communists could have taken the power.
Also the allies didn't defend the ussr (or so little), they just fought against the same foes.

No, but I believe any such movements will have a better shot at it in the future, what with mass automation looming over our heads in the next few decades.

and these movements will fail and a new ruling elite will be established

no. because the communists were all run by oligarchs. family and connections mattered more for advancing in a communist state than merit.

high ranking party members and military elites had limos, luxurious offices, dachas for vacations, western goods, etc.

everyone else was stuffed into a commie bloc apartment. put on a waiting list for a phone. ate the same rationed domestic shit food, forever. then the police or domestic intelligence service would arrest you for complaining about the government.

Maybe if Spain and Germany felled to the socialists they might have a chance. But really it was the splits in the Internationals that really fucked them up

first post, best post
/thread

Except it's the worst. You can't just say "REEE THE FREE MARKET IS THE SOLUTION". I regret I don't have the ancap meme saying "when there are roads".

...

Bruh, I'm the first poster, and I think social democracy is better than pure laissez faire.

But eliminating markets destroys standards of living.

>limos, luxurious offices, dachas for vacations, western goods
hardly. they were very limited compared to capitalist elites. gorbachev lived in a small flat. the gap in income was at best 5:1 between the poorest and richest in the USSR. the image of communist party leaders living in luxury is a complete fabrication made up by bitter exiles who actually did live in luxury.

>But eliminating markets destroys standards of living.
Then why does socialist Cuba (surely the truest remaining socialist state) rank ahead of most countries in the region, and have a life expectancy on par with capitalist powerful states like Turkey and Brazil?

They for now and certainly were at the technological level of the 20th century. There's no reason we couldn't develop AI-managed resource allocation in the future.

Because they were wealthy to begin with, on account of high US investment.

They could have been another Bermuda or Macau if it wasn't for the insane death cult that managed to seize control of their island.

The way to resolve the contradictions of the market is to harness the markets to create effective government programs.

The way to resolve the contradictions of communism is with summary execution of anyone infected.

>Because they were wealthy to begin with, on account of high US investment.
Cuba was a shithole for the mass of the population. It was an American colony run by the mob. Most people lived in shacks, servants of the white elite.
jacobinmag.com/2015/09/cuban-revolution-fidel-castro-casinos-batista/
>Bermuda or Macau
A shitty tax haven? No thanks. That produces nothing.
>The way to resolve the contradictions of the market is to harness the markets to create effective government programs.
Cuba already has resolved the contradictions of the market just fine. Even in spite of the US embargo which has cost it billions.
>The way to resolve the contradictions of communism is with summary execution of anyone infected.
As usual with reactionaries, violence is only good when it's treading on the working class.

So Cuba is socialist now? Because when the regime confiscates everyone's boats so they can't leave, they were state-capitalism.

I consider it socialist. Some might not. Every country in the world could be classed as state capitalist to varying degrees, but Cuba adheres to Leninist principles enough for me to see it as socialist. And even if it wasn't, Cuba's anti-imperialism is enough for me to admire.

>Cuba was a shithole for the mass of the population

I just showed you that it was better off than the rest of Latin America.

The Batista meme is historical revisionism that the average gringo is too dumb to refute.

>A shitty tax haven? No thanks. That produces nothing.

It produces good lives for the people living there, and products and services that people want.

Having a country sized Caribbean Vegas doesn't sound bad, for the locals, or for the Americans.

>As usual with reactionaries, violence is only good when it's treading on the working class.

I would consider forcing tens of millions of farmers into collective farms where many of them die of starvation to be "stomping on the working class"

Communism is one of those situations where hyperbole is generally justified. They don't deserve life.

No because each attempt ended mass killings and totalitarianism.

Hierarchies are natural my dude.

>I just showed you that it was better off than the rest of Latin America.
And it still is, thanks to the socialist system. In one of those figures listed, infant mortality, it has surpassed the US. Life expectancy is on par with the US. Cuba has 5.91 per 1000 people compared to 2.3 in the US. Fascinating how everything good about Cuba is attributed to the benefits of capitalism but everything since is only testament to the evils of socialism. If Cuba had not been cut off by America for decades to spite it then it would've been even better.
>Having a country sized Caribbean Vegas doesn't sound bad, for the locals, or for the Americans.
It would be a plaything of US capital, where only capital matters and the needs of Cubans are irrelevant. What the Americans want is of no relevance. America has no right in Cuba, to dictate their socioeconomic conditions at will.
>I would consider forcing tens of millions of farmers into collective farms where many of them die of starvation to be "stomping on the working class"
They died due to a famine, if you're talking about the Holodomor, another fascist lie invented by Goebbels. Kulaks horded grain, burned crops and killed cattle deliberately because they couldn't stomach losing their privilege.
>Communism is one of those situations where hyperbole is generally justified. They don't deserve life.
Then don't complain when the gulags open.

If the first world revolutions ever took off, maybe. Namely the Paris Commune pulling through or Italy going radical Communist during Gramsci's heyday.

Honestly though I think we are living in one of the most successful timelines for third world socialist revolution, and it was clearly still not enough. Both China and Russia flipping is huge. The utterly insane comeback story of the Bolsheviks from minuscule radical faction to global hegemon probably won't be full appreciated until centuries later when emotions have cooled. It's crazy how well WWII went for them in the end, in the context of this thread. Like a 1/3 of Europe under Stalin's design.

Still, with a unified and hostile capitalist developed world, the socialists lose the long siege even under one of the most favorable defensive positions.

>It would be a plaything of US capital

Is that another way of saying "good"?

Because the US basically created Japan and South Korea out of whole cloth, and they ended up having double digit GDP growth and actual first world health care.

Being a US puppet kicks ass, if I wasn't born here, I'd be doing everything in my power to make my home country subservient to the US.

Damn, I'm willing to chat with a Marxist on economic philosophy and all, but when they try and pull things like systemic racism into the roll, I clearly see they are divorced from the reality of things.

If Nazi Germany couldn't take out the USSR, Britain certainly couldn't. They would need the combined strength of Weimar Germany (a weak state) as well as France (unreliable)

Such an apocalyptic scenario may very well have led to a socialist bloc stretching from Pacific to Atlantic.

It has its benefits for the local collaborators, sure. The sheer wealth of the US lets them buy off foreign puppets as well as domestic sections of the working class. South Korea was actually poorer than the North well into the 1970s though, and Japan was already an imperialist power that built its wealth by plundering Korea and China, so I'm not sure they fit the bill.

these "contradictions" in "capitalism" make as much sense as the ones in evolution, and take just as minimal an effort to debunk.
>if we came from monkeys, how are there still monkeys?
If capitalism leads to resource production, how are there still poor people?
>if all systems tend toward destruction via entropy, how do organisms manage to get more complex?
if the free market allows for economic and political mobility, how is there still corruption?
>look at the shape of a banana, see how it fits perfectly in a human hand? god made them for us!
Look at all the black people in prison, see how disparity runs along racial lines, that's because of systemic racism!
(which is caused by capitalism for some reason. racists don't exist or acquire power in communist countries.)

but really, in my opinion, the strongest argument for countries "organized" around capitalism is this:
in america, we have amish communes that are allowed to coexist in larger communities containing private property. pockets of communism existing peacefully and relatively unmolested by government.

reverse the situation: there can be no system operating on private property in a marxist society.
this is what happens when you prioritize "social justice" over individual freedom.

Go to Cuba and live there, then.

>how are there still poor people
the wealth of the rich is built off the backs of the poor. even liberals like voltaire knew that.

they were definitley fighting an uphill battle. i would argue that in the form that 20th century socialism came to embody in the majority of cases, and the big powerful ones especially, its chances of success were close to nil. Quite simply because Leninism and the ideologies derived from it reject political pluralism and disregard human rights.

these values have quite simply become ingrained into many populations, however poorly they execute them. thus once there were existing examples of 'socialism', actually just socialism in its leninist interpretation, convincing societies where these practices existed became essentially impossible.

that is not to say there could not have been socialist revolutions of other kinds, more in line with these values in the areas they existed. it almost happened numerous times, but the states (or lack thereof) that would have resulted from these revolutions would still have come into conflict with Leninist states.

All statistics used by international organizations are provided by the cuban government and Brazil can barely be considered a "free market" country.

a. i can't speak spanish
b. i have commitments at home
c. cuba can be best helped by other countries, it's only a small island. internally it's ok and stable

> for the people, by the people
More like by the people for the Party.

Japan built all of their wealth after they were pushed out of Korea and China.

In 1945, they were dead broke, and there were millions of families living on the streets.

Ditto for South Korea. Both countries started out under the most brutal poverty and managed to pull a 180 through large corporations and Keynesian economics.

the quickest way to destroy value is to have a committee of assholes arbitrarily decide what it "should" be based on their personal desires and not the objective free-market value.

e.g. putting "social justice" ahead of individual freedom.

"poverty sucks" is something everyone agrees with

"let's outlaw poverty by requiring houses to be free" is the absolutely retarded response that gets you widespread slums

Wealth is not built off the backs of the poor.
If that were the case, your communist society would be doomed from the beginning.
Voltaire was very smart but he can be wrong.

You're right its the fat cats on wall street make all the wealth, I never realized wow. What would happen if al the factory workers quit and you couldnt hire any more, would the man who owns the factory be as rich as he was? Think with your head, the man sitting on his ass letting capital make his billions doesn't contribute anywhere near as much to society as a car factory worker. Use your brain

>objective free-market value.
the market is not objective. it is ruled by the whims of the rich, inherently rigged, excludes the masses from influencing its direction and is ultimately dependent on human labour

Sure, but there currently isn't one that isn't fluff in the sky based on appealing to scientists to theorize, discover, and invent the prerequisite technologies first.

And in reality the resources would be better spent on improving humanity as is rather than trying to usurp all of society for a dream.

Ask yourself this.

If the shareholders own companies, and the shareholders want money, why don't they fire the executives so they can make more money?

>it's because executives are necessary to manage large enterprises, and economic coordination is a form of productive labor

Socialism in one country was a Stalinist idea, I doubt it

This, socialism without democracy is tyranny

The shareholders dont produce anything either you retard, they're still bourgeoise. Money is a representation of goods. Think. Of course economic coordination is important, managers can still be elected or any other form of coordination.

>The serfs NEED the nobles to give them land to farm, dont you understand feudalism!

>objective free-market value.

Shareholders coordinate economic activity though.

In a capitalist economy, investors serve the same function that a central planning committee does in a command economy. They allocate resources based on market pressures.

Unlike the central planning committee, an investor will lose literally everything if they fuck up, and don't get paid anything unless their idea turns out to be right.

They get paid because they took capital, which they owned, and could have spent on things for themselves, and moved their own capital back into the economy. Return on investment increases based on active management and the risk that a shareholder takes by investing.

I think financialization is stupid, but investment is literally the best invention in human history.

>If the shareholders own companies, and the shareholders want money, why don't they fire the executives so they can make more money?

do you have any idea how stocks work?

>They get paid because they took capital, which they owned, and could have spent on things for themselves, and moved their own capital back into the economy. Return on investment increases based on active management and the risk that a shareholder takes by investing.

so instead of getting a job and doing any productive work they're basically just gambling

If you have a majority of stocks, in most companies, you run the company.

Hence why you get things like hostile takeovers and activist shareholders.

If worker ownership or elected management actually worked, communism could be implemented by any trust fund baby.

You just buy a company, fire the executives, and then sell it at the increased value. Repeat indefinitely until Harvard Business School is a ghost town.

You are now aware that communism is the economics equivalent of a free energy device.

Hit the nail on the head partner.
Command economies and free markets are not the only options

Are you one of those econ brainlets who rage at Youtube celebs for not doing a "productive job" (because apparently every last man woman and child on Earth must work in the steel mill to quantify your relentless Ron Swanson worship)?

Mixed economics is still a form of free market economics.

There's quite a wide margin of successful formulas, but if you try to abolish private property, money, or banking, you're pretty much begging for state failure.

>muh third opshun

Go back to bed Strasser, adults are talking.

>Leopold 2 is my hero!!!!! He did so much hard work!!!!

Well you're missing a crucial part of the process, the reason the executives are rich and can make more money for the owners is because they make profit off of the surplus value of the worker, allowing them to perform the same amount of work (Minus the capitalist man taking his cut) but they make more money for the boss man to use to grow the company. You are now aware that capitalism is based on theft(your ready made reply "but its voluntary and sheiitt if they wanted to be rich like me they should have been born with money") But yes, there are certain companies that have done just that and are doing fine. Look up food cooperatives

You didn't answer my question.

If worker ownership is more efficient, that is, it produces more output relative to the input of capital, why is it not the standard?

Are the shareholders giving the executives their salaries out of the goodness of their hearts?

>because hierarchies are intrinsically necessary in specialized societies

>managed to pull a 180 through large corporations and Keynesian economics
well at least you're honest, unlike the neoliberal idiots who think they privatised and cut their way to glory

We must bomb the communists and vote out the neoliberals.

Only then will the true light of mixed economics shine through the hearts of men, and deliver us to the promised land.

>vote out the neoliberals
people have been trying for 40 years with no luck

That's because the communists went and fucked up left wing populism for everybody.

But yeah, the true path to righteousness is restoring the New Deal and equality of opportunity.

That and deporting all the illegals.

Great another episode of "I never learned the definition capitalism and socialism in school"
>markets are innate and exclusive to capitalism
There is market socialism, you know 'social democracy', market anarchism. Free markets can actually exist in socialist economies, whereas capitalism needs authority to capitalize.

Are you going to stop me buying luxuries that do not "respond to a need" or "create wealth for those who need it"?

How does literally investing in a company "not favour investment"?

Why aren't I allowed the freedom to build a business or invest my beer money? Why must you take it from me afterwards? Am I really that much of a threat to society? You don't trust me but you trust someone who wants the authority to violate my rights.

A social democratic economy still has the capital in private hands.

Capitalism is a spectrum from Articles of the Confederation level limited government to Sweden level economic intervention.

As long as markets allocate resources and there is are rationalized, constitutionally protected property rights, things should work okay.

They produce the same amount of goods, the difference is the capitalist at the head of receives more of the capital and so instead of these goods and services being used to better the lives of the people providing the goods and services they are given to someone to be able to make more money off their money by hiring more people to do more work for them. Same amount of capital but if you provide everyone the full products of their work there is no way they can compete in a free market economy where there are companies that take some of that. There you go.

>A man born with nothing has the same opportunity as a billionaire

There is no such thing as equality of opportunity in capitalism

I'm talking specifically about executives and managers.

Why do stockholders pay them if they don't increase value?

The entire idea of Social Democracy is that no man is truly born with nothing, that there is a bedrock foundation that every member of society can rely on.

It has worked out significantly better in practice than Marxism-Leninism or Maoism.

>state protecting absentee ownership and the capitalization of land/labour
>be fine
Fine for who exactly? Property is theft
Capitalism isn't about markets it's about turning a profit from things that don't personally belong to you . Hence 'capitalism', as in 'to capitalize'

Well social democracy was just a bare-minimum example of social ownership of means of production. I actually argue for market anarchism.

Read my responses again and better your reading comprehension, they increase value FOR THEM, not overall the money is just distributed upwards.

I have never advocated for either of those ideologies and they are a corruption of what communism is.

Capitalization is good though.

A society does well when the means of production are efficiently utilized.

Open markets create the strongest incentives for individuals within a society to use capital efficiently.

>they increase value FOR THEM

For the shareholders or for themselves?

The rich don't make all the wealth, but they do play an important role in the economy by investing based on profit motives. The existence of large concentrations of investable wealth allows the economy as a whole to function better than it would otherwise. If all money was evenly distributed and there were no wealth concentrations, the system would be stagnant because there would be no concentrations of wealth that could be rapidly deployed into promising economic sectors.

Investing IS doing productive work in the sense that it's a form of higher-level management, and thereby allows the economy to function better than it would otherwise.
Your argument is like arguing "what's the nervous system for? the muscles and digestive system do all the productive work. let's get rid of the brain."

Irrelevant, whoever is profiting off of the surplus value taken from the proletariat. A man does not simply produce more goods because he has someone taking from his paycheck at the end of the day.

be that a corporation or a sole propriertorship, the bourgeoise being THEM.

Well, it's very relevant when you consider the structure of corporate law in the United States.

The shareholders don't have to hire managers.

They choose to.

If the managers don't make the company produce more stuff, why do the shareholders continue to pay them?

...

>the US is what made Lenin crush the Kronstadt sailors

pls

>to use capital efficiently
Too bad that doesn't mean allocate resources efficiently, look at the housing market collapse, post industrial waste, or pic related. Market efficiency is a spook of the highest degree.
Socialist markets are wayyyyyyyyyy better

Kronstadt has little to do with American imperialism, nor was it some critical moment. The Bolsheviks still went on to establish a socialist state that stood up to America.

Fucking US, sending Stalin all that lend-lease to help him fight Hitler and forcing Mao to launch the Great Leap Forward.

But average standard of living was higher in the worst stages of the housing crisis in the US than at literally any point in the history of the USSR.

>free market
>ruled by someone

Perhaps your rich fat-cats are anti-free-market by definition. If they didn't have government granting their arbitrary definitions of value, we would have a healthier system.
one of you admits this yourself
>it's not objective because it's ruled by the whims of etc etc

The market is plenty objective. It's the PEOPLE that aren't.

Just as rabbits and tigers and etc obey the rules of natural selection, so do the "fat cats" obey economic rules.
When people come in and try to alter the forest to be advantageous for only one species, the whole system runs out of wack.

You favor the predators, they get fat until there's no more prey.
You favor the prey, they eat the grass until there's no more, and they die.
(Meanwhile, the predators which are still around somehow enjoy a temporary surplus in idiot prey)

Try including the people that make up the supply chain of the consumer economy.
The USSR wasn't socialist and didn't have successful markets, so it's really a strawman anyways

>sending Stalin all that lend-lease to help him fight Hitler
Lend Lease is overrated and was only ever done reluctantly. Aid to USSR paled compared to aid to Britain, which did fuck all on land until 1944.
>forcing Mao to launch the Great Leap Forward
Aggravated by natural conditions such as drought. You'll notice that was the last famine China ever had too, after centuries of them.

>my fallible human beings are more suited to be determining objective values than your fallible human beings

>economic rules
Those rules are dependent on what system exist. Capitalism is not a natural, biological system, genetically hardwired and inescapable. It was created by man and it can be modified or destroyed. It's incredibly unstable and inherently prone to disaster.

Okay.

Is your philosophy something that has ever been implemented successfully in practice.

By "successful" I mean "improved standards of living relative to capitalist democracies"

More like favoring the plants, your analogy is dumb

>incredibly unstable and inherently prone to disaster
>USSR1991.jpg