My fear is that we are continuing to accelerate the younger generation toward that by doubling, tripling down on a system that isn’t working for people and punting on fixing it. We are continuing to deregulate, allow companies to union bust and remove any balance of power between businesses and workers.
In the minds of many, it seems like we need a revolution and not a reformation. And to the people charged with decision making, we need nothing at all. I would prefer we fix the system we have, but I’m increasingly worried that is becoming infeasible.
If reformation fails then we are headed towards a dark place anyway.
we could also make the same argument re: old folks in politics hanging on to their seats long, long after the point where they should be spending their days pushing a little white ball around the local golf course
In the name of "capitalism", our government has allowed big business to grow ever larger, become ever more inescapable, and often even delegates/cedes governmental power to big business. So really if anyone is reading this, getting angry at the rise of "socialism", and wanting to save capitalism - it's really incumbent upon you to be loudly criticizing both the foundational and emergent problems of capitalism as currently conceived. Because otherwise this frustration is just going to continue building, and we are going to lose what we do have, for good.
If you ask me what the common factor across MAGAs, flat earther, crypto bros or esotheric nut cases is, my answer would be that.
Add on musk's trillion dollar payout proposal, no criminal prosecutions for 2008 housing crisis, cities paying for stadiums, corps ducking us taxes, offshore funds or corps for tax dodgers, and a general sense it's one set of rules for the top 5% and real reality for everyone else. Also add on us Healthcare, housing, and higher education is too expensive for the bottom 70% ... and you've got problems.
Its ironic that they promote the titled narrative when we have neither a free market, nor effective price discovery (due to dark pools and other actors). The lack of those things in fact point to the dominant economic model being closer to Socialism than Capitalism.
I never understood how people can think that the answer to the failures of socialism is more socialism.
I don't think socialism is failing that much, not much more than capitalism in the US.
Non-reserve Money-printing creates runaway dynamics that inevitably allow state-apparatus to outcompete legitimate business in effect collapsing market over time.
In a regulated market big business will bribe the government and keep its monopoly, increasing inequality between the top 0.01% and the plebs.
Socialism != centrally planned/non-market economy, at least not in any political theory I've come across. Many socialist-ideologues of the mid 20th century landed on central planning as a particular implementation of its ideals (and one which was amenable to their own totalitarian inclinations), but "socialism" was a direct response to industrialized labor of the early 19th century, and specifically a reaction to the high degree of power capital-holders had over their labor force in this time. An anarchist commune with a barter economy is 'socialist' in this traditional sense, because the people doing the work own the tools they're using to do that work.
This is central-planning from a structural view, and people doing the work don't have ownership of their tools under such systems. So your anarchist commune as a socialism example can't really be called socialism if the individuals own their own tools, though socialist in a different context (as an ideology) may engender this in contradictory fashion.
Possibly we're familiar with different strains, but my understanding is that it's less about what's individually/collectively owned and more about the relationship between the person doing the labor and the tools they're using to do that labor (ie. "do the workers own the factory or not?"). Social ownership of means of production is one proposal to achieve "workers owning the factory", but AFAIR there are alternatives.
Even granting that a central enforcement authority must exist, it's not clear to me why that enforcement implies planning. It seems to me that one could have a voluntary cooperative agreement with "town council" style enforcement of property relations (or even something like community-ownership with citizen equity), but still have unregulated trade and barter between cooperative members, or with entities outside the cooperative.
> socialist in a different context (as an ideology) may engender this in contradictory fashion.
I think it's important to also note that there isn't really a central socialist tradition; even at the outset of the movement there were disagreeing views on what properly constituted "socialism" or not. This does't mean that the internal belief systems of these traditions have some inherent contradiction, just that there are multiple paths one might take to similar conclusions, and that these don't always line up 100% when you zoom in on the details.
On the other hand, you're applying a much broader definition of "means of production" than is typically discussed in Socialist circles. Most Socialists don't have any significant issue with personal possessions, or the presumption of exclusive use of things that you consistently are using. The bigger concern for Socialists is rent-seeking on said right of exclusive use.
Basically, only a small subset of Socialists would have any issue with "that's Bob's hammer, don't use it without asking". Most Socialists would be opposed to "that's Bob's hammer, you can't use it unless you toss him a fiver".
An Anarchist commune is approximately peak Socialism, everything else is an (arguably) necessary compromise with the complexities of large scale society.
You talk about socialism as a synonym of communism; Marx itself used them interchangeably in the 19th century - but it's not the common meaning in this century in my experience. Left-wing anarchists refer themselves as communists, not as socialists.
This crony capitalism with a big government colluding with big business is socialism with a wig on.
The fact that people who define themselves anti establishment yearn for socialism because "capitalism failed" is dangerous and will mark the end of the USA minarchist experiment: even if you leave a minimal government, you just need 250 years (of productivity, courtesy of capitalism) to become the largest government in the world - and eventually collapse.
Somehow we went from capitalism is the best system because it most efficiently distributes scarce resources to “give us all the money and power in the world because our large language model is going to usher in Star Trek!!!”
The grifters have one. Though you could equally assign the blame to the idiots who fall for it.
The capitalism your comment bemoans the death of, like pure free markets and homo economicus, has only ever existed in economics textbooks. In the real world it has always been grifters and parasites all the way down.
The boat is shrinking and the empire collapsing on itself. A finite world providing rise to infinite growth as ownership accelerates increasingly in the hands of the few.
f1yght•5mo ago