What are your thoughts on socialism?

What are your thoughts on socialism?

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Just read up on Karl Marx's biography and tell me if that's the type of dude you want crafting your political ideology.

Worst mass murderers of the 20th century have been socialists (Hitler, Stalin, Mao...)

Well I know he partied it up and flunked out of college, but is there anything in particular you're referencing?

It has social in it so I don't see what the problem is.
I know this website is filled with autists but a society talking to one another is actually a beneficial thing

A comfy NEET intellectual who writes in-depth and knowledgeable books and has never harmed anyone in his life?

he was in massive amounts of debt and begged mommy and daddy to pay it off for him. he was literally the pizza roll inhaling modern archetype of the late 20's burnout that "is looking for a job, but no one is hiring."

he hated Kapital because he was bad at it. His convictions against capitalism were sound and just, but his solution was pants-on-head stupid.

without even pointing out the obvious, every single attempt to apply his teachings has ended in mass starvation and mass murder.

Most communists and socialists are complete idiots and illiterate, the rest of the socialists are completely evil, and the rest of the communists are too dreamy and I respect their devotion yet I don't support their methods nor their ideals.

Stop using my name.

What's stupid about his solution? I agree with you on his criticisms.

>Pseudoscientific basis
It's "dial. materialism" analysis is based on those assumptions. All its economic claims aren't solid, how can you take seriously him?

Communism suppresses natural biological gifts and talents i.e. higher IQ, physically gifted, etc. It's also impossible to have communism without coercion.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Socialism has debunked itself over the past century and continues to debunk itself today.
Marx was a very angry man, and rightfully so. Because of the horrible working conditions in England at the time, which are comparable to Bangladesh/Vietnam/insert poor country today.
But in the end Smith's criticism of capitalism stands the test of time much better than Marx's.
Where did socialist revolutions succeed?
Not in heavily industrialized countries where workers are exploited an alienated like Marx thought, but in barely industrialized countries ravaged by war.
Anyone who believes in socialism today is either ignorant, doing so willfully wanting to use to elevate themselves, or blind utopian idealists.

I like Socialism. I don't like socialists.

I like it

Dude what the fuck you are talking about?

I have mixed feelings.

>Karl Marx
Good as a critic of capitalism, but his solution "theory" of socialism is basically a belief.

>Social Democracy
Good in theory, but yet it is no alternative to capitalism, but rather a type of capitalism. Nevertheless, it is economically fragile and could result in a larger interference of the state in the life of the individual.
Perhaps someday we will advance more and more towards a distributive society due technological advancement.

>Socialism as it is understood by leftists
In a society where the individual depends on the will of the state, there will be a bureaucratic nightmare, unavoidable. Regardless of how it is tried, it would lead to tyranny.

The next stage after capitalism

The desired end state of socialism is more easily achieved through mixed economy tools than traditional commie ones like economic planning

>socialism is big gov doing big gov things instead of owning the means of production
It is fine that you misunderstand socialism but don't pretend every leftists are the same as you

tell me what I misunderstood.

a government owning the means of production is the maximum a government can be, and this leads to a very bureaucratic society.

I clearly differentiated social democracy to socialism, and commented them both.
Owning the means of production is a characteristic of the latter.

Social Democracy doesn't own the means of production, but rather interferes it, through taxes/subsidies. e.g. Nordic Model

owning the means of production is not necessarily or even originally intended to be nationalization when it usually not the case of the workers directly and fully owning the state that owns MOP.

But can you really consider Smith's Wealth of Nations to be a *criticism* of capitalism?

I'm a deadbeat virgin loser NEET who would starve under a system where I actually had to get off my lazy ass and work, so I am obviously a socialist. Why is life so unfair?

>Communism suppresses natural biological gifts and talents i.e. higher IQ, physically gifted, etc
Read this marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm

This. It's the next step of human evolution.

>We shall now deal with economic equality. In the United States of America, as in other advanced countries, there are no medieval privileges. All citizens, are equal in political rights. But are they equal as regards their position in social production?
>No, Mr. Tugan, they are not. Some own land, factories and capital and live on the unpaid labour of the workers; these form an insignificant minority. Others, namely, the vast mass of the population, own no means of production and live only by selling their labour-power; these are proletarians.
>In the United States of America there is no aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat enjoy equal political rights. But they are not equal in class status: one class, the capitalists, own the means of production and live on the unpaid labour of the workers. The other class, the wage-workers, the proletariat, own no means of production and live by selling their labour-power in the market.

Hey, maybe they're not equal in class status because the smartest and most enterprising of them rose above the pack. Does he think that one day some americans were walking in the street and saw some "means of production" on the ground, picked them up, and therefore became the bourgeois class?

Lenin confirmed for commie faggot brainlet. LENIN BTFO!

>I have never read Marx
Glad we cleared that up user.

Reading Marx does not make you smarter just like reading L Ron Hubbard does not make you smarter.

Replace "socialism" with "workers control of the means of production" and this post sounds pretty stupid.

Because that's all socialism is and yet it has been memed into this far-out utopian ideal.

> "workers control of the means of production"
I've never found a commie who was able to explain that phrase.

It's a great thing, and could work in an utopia but won't work in the real world because
>greed

>comparing a third rate science fiction author to one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century

Although like a dog, you have been trained to be triggered at the mere mention of Marx, he is unfortunately not some crackpot conspiracy theorist but instead one of - if not the most - important philosophers of the modern era. Almost all subsequent either built off him or tried to refute him.

So yes, actually engaging with him as a writer, even if you go in disagreeing with him, would be wise.

Subtle. Kek'd.

>but won't work in the real world
The brainwashing is pretty strong.

Hey, did you know that the US is part socialist?

Workers have democratic control over the means of production.

e.g. rather than the factory being owned by the "factory owner" who extracts profit from their labor, the factory is instead owned/run democratically by all those who work in it.

You've obviously never interacted with a communist because this isn't some pie-in-sky ideal. This is pretty basic stuff not even unique to communists.

>Almost all subsequent either built off him or tried to refute him.
The only people inspired by Marx are a bunch of French homosexuals and the German Jews of the Frankfurt School.

L Ron Hubbard wasn't a crackpot conspiracy theorist, he proposed a theory for explaining history, namely that the evil galactic emperor Xenu imprisoned the souls of aliens into monkeys, creating humans, just like Marx proposed his theory of historical materialism. The amount of empirical evidence of the validity of these two theories is the same: none.

>Because that's all socialism is and yet it has been memed into this far-out utopian ideal.
go back to r/fullcommunism and stay there you fuckin liberal

>Workers have democratic control over the means of production.
But that already exists in a free market society, it's called cooperatives.

>Hey, did you know that the US is part socialist?
liberal. There is no part socialist.

capitalism with a human face is still capitalism.

>if not the most - important philosophers of the modern era
Literally this.

Marx provided a solution to the problems of capitalism. The solution was nowhere perfect, but you know what, it's better than nothing™

Instead of trying to fix the problems that capitalism raise, what has capitalists done? Nothing. The Russian revolution happened because of capitalism, and it will happen again unless capitalists actually take the time to fix what's wrong with their shit instead of trying to meme alternative thoughts into oblivion.

>Hey, did you know that the US is part socialist?
It's not though, the government paying for school lunches doesn't make it socialist. There is no workers control over the means of production in the US, nor in social democratic Europe, which is still fundamentally capitalist.

>It's not though, the government paying for school lunches doesn't make it socialist
Actually it does.

It's called being SOCIAL.

Hence, socialist.

I didn't say the US was a Marxist socialist country. I only said the US is a socialist country, which it is.

But it does make you more qualified to talk about Marx

The military is a socialist organisation.

It's the truth though. Karl Marx regardless of whether you disagree with his thinking has had HUGE influence in the modern world, and still does today.

What did Hubbard do outside of Scientology and bad science fiction novels?

And communists want that everywhere. i.e. everyone is free of exploitation, and development and society itself is not geared around the profit model.

Look at how modern society has been shaped by capital. Productivity has increased ten-fold and yet we still work 8 hour days for the same (and even lower) wages. Why not maximize production not simply for profit but for human pleasure. Free people to read what they want. Create great works of art. Learn the skill they've always wanted to but have lacked the time to do so.

>get out of my safespace
you got reddit on you

>how to turn a prosperous country with massive resources, into a completely impoverished shithole.

>Russian Empire - grain exporting super power
>soviet union - can't feed it self. has to import food

>venezuela - largest proven oil reserves. year round growing season. now on the brink of becoming Zimbabwe

China begs to differ.

>inb4 duh huh they're not communists
Except all the social parts where they actually are.

>The Russian Empire didn't have famines.
>the soviet union was less successful than the RE
this is your brain on /pol/

Right now I pay 22% taxes and I consider that too much. The thought of paying 50-60% just makes me sick. Why should I support that?

Socialism isn't about taxes.

The greatest obstacle for socialism isn't the bourgeoisie, the state's monopoly on violence or anything like that. It's simply burger education.

By no definition is it socialist. It's simply capitalism that has a slight amount of government control and welfare payments. Socialism has a particular definition, and the US does not fit it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
>Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production;[10] as well as the political ideologies, theories, and movements that aim to establish them.

>socialism
>communism
>capitalism

These words are useless. Literally nobody can agree on what they mean. 95% of political discussions are just debates on what EXACTLY these terms mean.

Don't tell me you want "socialism". Tell me what kind of work you want people doing, who gets to make the decisions, and where you want to take money from and who you want to give it to.

Do you think one shouldn't be allowed to criticize scientology if you haven't read all of Hubbard's books?

>And communists want that everywhere. i.e. everyone is free of exploitation
But workers are not exploited in a capitalist system, they are free to choose where to work.

And how would you scale the cooperative model to an international oil company? It's impossible. Which is why international oil companies built upon the cooperative model do not exist in a free society. Because it's impossible.

>not geared around the profit model.
You think cooperatives don't want to make a profit?

>Productivity has increased ten-fold and yet we still work 8 hour days for the same (and even lower) wages
Wrong.

> Why not maximize production not simply for profit but for human pleasure
It's already the case.

>Free people to read what they want. Create great works of art. Learn the skill they've always wanted to but have lacked the time to do so.
Sounds a lot like capitalism.

In a communist system you'd be assigned to factory X to work 16 hours a day, would have your personal hobbies outlawed as bourgeois distraction, and would be shot for reading a book not approved by the party.

>China begs to differ

>China under communism:
>mass famines, mass graves everywhere, tens of millions of death
>China after economic liberalization
>growing superpower
Makes you think, innit?

The problem with school lunches is that it's a socialist idea regardless of whether you like it or not. If it was capitalist, everyone would be forced to work for their lunch, regardless of age.

Don't attribute the incompetence of Mao to the rest of communism.

>If the workers controlled the means of production you'd be assigned to factory X to work 16 hours a day, would have your personal hobbies outlawed as bourgeois distraction, and would be shot for reading a book not approved by the party.
I was going to attempt a dialogue but you've clearly never read up on the very thing you're arguing against.

A mindset I do not understand.

Pretty sure the students don't own the means of education so no

I have a decent paying job and can afford my rent + entertainment.

Explain how my situation would actually improve under socialism. The only thing that would be acceptable is if I could work less hours for equal or greater pay. I don't want to pay more money to a system and I don't want to give anything up.

>implying income tax is the only type of tax to be concerned with
Pretty limited worldview desu.
The federal government was once supported entirely on import duties and excise taxes, and it can be again.

And what is the rest of communism?
>mass graves in Russia
>mass graves in Vietnam
>mass graves in Cambodia
>mass graves in Cuba
>mass graves in North Korea
>mass graves in East Germany
>mass graves in Hungary
>mass graves in Romania
>mass graves in Yugoslavia
>mass graves in Albania
etc.

No, but they get free lunches, hence socialism.

Typical commie prevarication. Unable to come up with an argument so you use ad hominem attacks.

Fucking subhuman brainlet commie. I laugh at your intellectual mediocrity.

You do know that Russia industrialised a lot during Stalin's era, right? Before that, serfdom was terrible for nearly everyone else that wasn't a land owner or the tsar.

Churches also give free food. I bet churches are communist? Really activates my almonds.

Why do I need to have a community consciousness? I just want to live for myself, I don't want to live for anyone else. Unless you could argue that socialism would make it easier to live for myself.

If you know anything about China's history, you would know the reason why China was so bad during Mao's era has everything to do with Mao's poor decisions than anything with communism. What the fuck do you expect when you put someone who never lead at the top of a massive country?

Even then, Mao's 5 year plan was actually working in the beginning. Things only started to go sour once he told people to go make steel.

>it is another socialism means whatever i want it to mean to make socialism sound bad

>I bet churches are communist?
They actually are. Jesus was a socialist jew.

>You do know that Russia industrialised a lot during Stalin's era, right?
You do no industrialization had started before the bolshevik revolution right? Russia would've pursued industrialization regardless.

> Before that, serfdom was terrible for nearly everyone else that wasn't a land owner or the tsar.
Serfdom was abolished in the 1860s. Living standards in Russia in the early 1900s were higher than in the 1930s.

>whatever i want it to
A socialist means someone who is social. Are you social user? I'm social, so I give out free lunches whenever I can, because deep down I'm a good and social person.

>What the fuck do you expect when you put someone who never lead at the top of a massive country?
I don't know, George Washington had never led a massive country before. Neither had Abe Lincoln. Or FDR. Or any US president for that matter. Yet there were no mass graves.

So... this is the power of semantics.

>good
>SOCIALISM
>bad
>CAPTITLAISM!

No dumbass, socialist means someone who wants workers to sieve the means of production

>thinking Washington did much as the first president
Even then he fucked some rebels over in the Whiskey Rebellion

Yes I know. The tsar abolished slavery, but it still wasn't enough considering the poor conditions the workers were in. It was still akin to slavery.

>You do no industrialization had started before the bolshevik revolution right?
And it got better during Stalin's era. Why are you trying so demolish Stalin so much, user?

>socialist means someone who wants workers to sieve the means of production
That's one aspect of it. It's not all of it.

Whatever George Washington did or did not do, he did not starve tens of millions of Americans in the pursuit of a pipe dream.

ITT: People who don't understand socialism and are too blinded with cold war McCarthyist propaganda to think clearly.

>Socialism totally killed infinity million gajillion people!!!!

The advocacy of worker control over means of production in and of itself does not equate to the death of fucking anyone and to suggest otherwise you're simply attacking a straw man.

If you're referring to the crimes committed by the Soviet Union, Khmer Rouge etc keep a few things in mind.

1. The "innocent kulaks" decided to destroy their property and food supplies rather than give it up to the Soviets simply out of spite. If they didn't give a fuck about whether other people starved to death then why the fuck should I care whether or not the Cheka blew their reactionary brains out? Also, those that did comply and gave up their property received an immensely higher standard of living for them and everyone else.

2. The actual numbers of how many people Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin killed are also heavily disputed among actual historians but let's just say in the worst case scenario in the most extreme estimates we have from 1917 on "communism" murdered 100 million people. Capitalism kills 20 million people every single year through unnecessary starvation, lack of clean water and deaths by easily treatable illnesses all over the third world. The reason we don't help these people is because it's not profitable to do so. We currently produce 20% more food than is required to feed the entire planet but capitalists pay people not to produce to create artificial scarcity. In 5 years capitalism kills just as many people as the worst of the worst of your big bad socialist boogie man killed over a fucking century and that's not including the genocides caused by imperialism.

3. If you want to talk about the atrocities committed by socialist countries okay cool why not talk about the atrocities committed by capitalist countries as well? Hmmmm.

Yes. There were no mass graves, because these people were actually well educated. All Mao did was read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is terrible advice on leading anything at all.

>Yes I know. The tsar abolished slavery, but it still wasn't enough considering the poor conditions the workers were in. It was still akin to slavery.
Hey retard, read the second part of my post. The average Russian had higher living standards under the Tsar than under Stalin. The closest thing to slavery in modern russian history was the USSR's central planning.

>Why are you trying so demolish Stalin so much, user?
I don't know, maybe because he was a paranoid sociopath who killed millions?

The Confederation almost fucked up the country for him. Goddamn senpai is your knowledge of the founding of America really that shit?

It is the only necessary condition of a socialist

Oh yeah, I'm sure it's because Mao read a certain book that tens of millions of Chinese people died. Nothing to do with his political ideology!

Fucking retard.

>The average Russian had higher living standards under the Tsar than under Stalin
Of course I know that. What I was pointing out is that the country progressed.

>because he was a paranoid sociopath who killed millions?
He was justified in doing it to unify the country.

>Confederacy
>George Washington

What?

I think you're the one who should read a history book, user.

Hey retard, do you even know how these tens of millions died? Mao made a terrible decision. Nothing in communism states that you should abandon grain for steel.

>Of course I know that. What I was pointing out is that the country progressed.
In what way? It progressed because people's lives were more miserable than before? Because millions died of starvation? Because people lived in constant terror of execution?

Is that "progress" for the sociopathic communist?

>He was justified in doing it to unify the country.
The country was already unified by the end of the Russian Civil War, you fucking nigger retard. And anyhow how does "unification" justify anything? Was Adolf Hitler justified in killing millions of slavs for "unifying the Lebensraum"?

>It is the only necessary condition of a socialist
It's not since I'm a socialist and I don't believe in the means of production owned by workers.

>What is the Articles of Confederation and the Senate before an actual republic
It is not fair to compare an essentially independence movement that had a lot of outsider help and funding with an internal regime change that had many external enemies

>Hey retard, do you even know how these tens of millions died?
Yes, because communism is retarded, and so are you.

Even if I were the concede the fact that China's famines were caused by a bad decision from Mao (which they were not), the mere fact that your communist system could allow a single individual to have such a disastrous impact is enough to decredibilize that system entirely.

>Is that "progress" for the sociopathic communist?
Yes. People had to die so those who came after could have a better life. Do you not understand the concept of self sacrifice?

>The country was already unified by the end of the Russian Civil War
Do you know anything about Modern Russian history or what, you retard?

Why do you think Stalin went through all that trouble to purge his political opponents? It was not unified in the slightest.

I'm not American so I'll admit I've never had of that particular event.

>external enemies
Oh yes, those Trotskyist saboteurs!

Also why are commies always American?

>mfw a literal non-socialist No True Scotsman himself
Can't make this shit up

>Yes. People had to die so those who came after could have a better life. Do you not understand the concept of self sacrifice?
Do you? Self-sacrifice is not self-sacrifice if it's imposed by a komissar, you stupid nigger.

>Do you know anything about Modern Russian history or what, you retard?
Probably more than you, faggot

>hurr durr Stalin was great guys because he built gulag-cities on the artic circle which increased heavy steel production!

>because communism is retarded,
Nice buzzwords.

>t that your communist system could allow a single individual to have such a disastrous impact is enough
That wasn't a communist system. That was the Chinese dynasty system from 2000 years back. Don't confuse the two.

>That wasn't a communist system.
IT WASNT COMMUNISM GUYS

Correct. It wasn't. Mao making a bad decision is akin to the Qing emperors fucking up China.