There’s too much baggage with last century’s names, call it capitalism plus.
Also works with fascism, sadly.
It’s almost as if capitalists have invested an obscene amount of resources on convincing people to invest against their own interests.
Me asking people if they like socalism without mentioning a single country that overthrew capitalism
nodding towards an AES state
“Oh, you mean the country that starved all the babies because one guy said they should? And the country that did the White Genocide so all the smart people had to leave? And the country that is governed by a Caliphate that wants to kill all the Jews?”
“But all of that is exaggeration, hyperbole, and outright falsehood.”
“Nice try you stupid fucking brainwashed Tankie. I’m not falling for it. The only way to make real change is to donate $10k to the Cory Booker campaign for President because he said he’d give everyone a 10% off coupon for insulin in 2037.”
Time for a rebranding
Nah time for people to think for themselves… But who am I kidding?
Communitism? Societism? Civilizatism? Social securitism? Social safetism?
Communitism is probably too close to communism, auditorially.
well … i’ve heard a lot of people saying “communication is key to a healthy relationship”
and i would say “communication” is auditorially close to “communism” too.
Sure, but you’re trying to convince rabid anti-communist/anti-socialist people to accept the ideals under a new name. Don’t give them anything that might preload their expectations.
Social democracy?
Edit: on a second thought that might also not work, we might need marketing department consultation
might it be that people have a problem with the -ism because they think it means you’re putting your ideology above everything else, including real observations?
Should we help people to ensure their kids are fed? - YES!
Should we remove welfare to filthy scroungers that might use it to buy alcohol? - YES!
Recently saw a stat that in the 50s and 60s people spent as much on alcohol and tobacco as they did on housing. Housing now costs so much that if it was still the case you would have to be buying a couple bottles of rum for the parents and a small bottle for each child, daily.
This is what’s frustrating about trying to talk to people about socialism. It’s everything that liberal capitalist democracy claims to be but isn’t. They’ve just been brainwashed into thinking it just means authoritarianism.
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Democracy: You want a government by the people, of the people, for the people? Well a system that lets the rich and powerful pour their vast resources into corrupting it doesn’t allow for that. And that’s before we even get into the explicit ways in which US “democracy” was set up to be resistant to popular influences. Also, in a less direct way, the more of society that is privatized, the less in under the preview of whatever semblance of democratic control we do have.
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Freedom: Under capitalism, your freedom is directly proportional to your wealth. Rich people and corporations can do whatever the hell they want and can often do things that infringe on the freedoms of others, but if you’re poor, or even just not super rich, your ability to make choices in life is heavily constrained by what the market offers and what you can afford. If you can’t afford to lose your job, you have to follow what your boss tells you. But hey, that’s not a government, so it doesn’t count right?
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Meritocracy: People want to be rewarded for their hard work and keep that reward? Well capitalism doesn’t reward hard work. It rewards having enough money and power to siphon the value of other people’s hard work. It doesn’t matter what people did to get to the top, they could have inherited it, they could have done crimes, etc. They could be completely undeserving of it and still be put in charge and still take your money.
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Innovation: Capitalism doesn’t promote innovation as anything more than a byproduct of a different force. ANYTHING that makes profit is incentivized, regardless of how productive it is for society. Sometimes that’s new tech, but things that are equally valid under capitalism include: Weapons, cheap plastic crap, getting people addicted to things, finding ways to offer less and charge more, suing others to try to stop them from using anything vaguely similar to what you own IP for (regardless of if you were even the ones to originally make the thing instead of just acquiring the IP) etc. Under this framework, you can even consider lobbying the government as profit generating activity. You spend some money to get the government to do things that will allow you to make more money in the future.
I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s just really hard to make the jump from having people agree with these things to realizing that the system itself is to blame and that in order to do better we need to change it.
They’ve just been brainwashed into thinking it just means authoritarianism.
Idk if I’d even call it “brainwashing” per say. A lot of it boils down to mass media exploiting ethnic and economic bigotries. Just stimulating the very human impulse to be afraid of other people - especially people who don’t look or speak or act like you. Then asserting that these Other People are trying to Take Over.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
For a lot of these core ideas, the very pitch-line for them is corrupted. Even removing the question of rich people having an edge, you have these core messages that only justify the status quo.
Democracy as a system of surveying the public mood and mapping policies is great. Democracy as a means of putting arbitrary lists of policies to a vote and then blithely executing the majoritarian opinion isn’t great. At some level, you have to recognize that “Two wolves and a sheep voting for dinner” isn’t going to end well for the minority, even if the proverbial Two Wolves are wearing different team jackets.
Similarly, Freedom v Tyranny is often couched within the (very deliberately mischaracterized) Ben Franklin quote “Those who value safety over liberty deserve neither”. But a better analysis might be “Freedom protects but does not bind, Tyranny binds but does not protect”. Because you need safety in order to be free. Freedom of choice is predicated on available choices not being harmful. All too often, policies that serve to protect the weakest members of society are pitched as somehow being tyrannical to the strongest, strictly because they prevent one group from bullying another.
Meritocracy is also larded up with an innate fondness for eugenics and other Social Darwinism. There’s this idea that a meritocratic society will subtly weed out the undesirables via a system that leaves no single individual culpable for social murder. “Hey, you’re homeless because you’re physically disabled or mentally ill? That’s not my fault, because I have proven myself to have merit and you clearly haven’t.” Again, even if we were rewarding hard work, we’d just be punishing the weak and promoting the strong in a Might Makes Right bureaucratic system.
So-called Innovation rewards growth at all costs. Exploitative change is championed purely on the basis that the “innovator” generates profit. Even as we do build things, we focus entirely on the upfront costs versus long-term revenues, without respect for the core function of the system or the long term sustainability of the project.
It’s just really hard to make the jump from having people agree with these things to realizing that the system itself is to blame
I think there is a general recognition that our economic system is broken. But time and again, we’re limited in the remedies we’re allowed to discuss by individuals invested in perpetuating fascist policies.
And when the contradictions of the system mount, we’re told that we must overlook them in order to defeat The Evil Outsiders - Russia, China, Mexico, Iran, Somalia… And that any effort to buck existing policies or curb fascist impulses is a tacit alliance with the Villainous Foreigners Who Want To Destroy Our Way of Life.
Those are some good points/better ways to say it.
Then asserting that these Other People are trying to Take Over.
Yeah that’s a more accurate analysis I think. When most people reject socialism out of hand, I don’t think they’re really engaging with any of it’s actual ideas, they’re just associating it with scary foreigners.
For a lot of these core ideas, the very pitch-line for them is corrupted. Even removing the question of rich people having an edge, you have these core messages that only justify the status quo.
Yeah. I do get that. There are plenty of these aspects of society that I would want to change to be more fair, compassionate, etc. But when it comes to discussing these ideas with regular people, you need some kind of starting point and using the system’s own premises against it I think is a reasonably effective tool to do that. Once we have a political and economic system free from the control of a handful of greedy people, I think it’ll be a lot easier to take the next steps.
That’s what we call a branding problem. Capitalism is also really really good at branding and it is also really really good at propagandizing in a way that makes other ways of life seem scary so we continue to do capitalism.
Its why I stopped reading The Saga of Tanya the Evil, she starts espousing about how capitalism is “gods greatest gift to mankind”…
I mean, Marx went on a tear about the unleashing of productive forces under Capitalism. It’s a significant meaningful improvement over the absolute monarchies and fractured feudal territorial economies that came before.
Throwing “God” into the equation is definitely fucked. But there’s a lot to be said for the benefits of laisse-faire capitalism if the only thing you care about is economic growth. Humans fully divorced from a social code and empowered with industrial technology can make so many fucking paperclips.
Before that you thought that the literal Nazi protagonist had good morals?
& the fact that it’s you know a Japanese anime. Japan is peak hyper-capitalism
To be fair you’re really not supposed to agree with Tanya. “Capitalism is God’s greatest gift to mankind” sounds about right for an unapologetic psychopath.
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Or:
“What if we give it to people that aren’t like you?”
I’m a socialist! I believe all the things that socialists believe. But with one tiny caveat…
I just think only people who serve a Nationalist interest should get Socialist benefits. I’m calling my philosophy National Socialism. Thinking about shortening it.
to anyone too lazy to watch the video:
he gets asked whether he’s a socialist. he says “idk what a socialist is but i support medical care for babies, sheltering homeless people, educating the population …”, he goes on for a minute, then the interviewer changes the topic and askes him “carl do you think that time travel is possible?”
One time I pissed off a bunch of people because they wanted to create a community where food is shared and work is divided.
I said, “Oh that’s a commune!” And they all nodded proudly.
Then I said, “Which is the foundation of communism.”
And they immediately started flipping the fuck out because people get triggered by that.
I expect the comments below to be the same.
If they lost their shit at a naming convention, they probably weren’t in a strong position to execute on a planned micro-economy. Unfortunately, a system is only as good as its members. The appeal of Anarcho-Capitalism is that it is the lowest common denominator of human behavior. Very easy to slide into.
How dare you. Haha.
Next thing they say, “and we want women and men contributing equally to our commune and have equal rights”
- “oh, so feminism?”
Feminism have suffered much of the same negative connotations, it’s ridiculous.
To be fair, whoever decided on the name ‘feminism’ was a fucking idiot. It’s considerably more difficult to get people to sign up for a movement when its own name suggests the opposite of what it’s supposedly trying to achieve.
If you don’t know anything about feminism, the name tells you absolutely nothing. In fact, it misleads you. Whereas names such as democracy or socialism are infinitely more self descriptive.
quite the deepity you’re developing there
That’s why I think it’s important to be objective. Like with Objectivism!
Don’t forget science and scientology!
In middle or highschool there was a kid who thought I was a scientologist, because they thought it meant atheist.
That is why the hegemon is controlling all language. Just saying. I don’t have a solution. But maybe teach people to understand concepts instead of going by the gut feeling of government/boss brainwash.
Same thing if you ask MSM-poisoned people if they think ethnostates are inherently unjust and dysfunctional without first mentioning that Israel is one.
Dang, haven’t played in a while but I guess even My Singing Monsters isn’t safe, that’s discouraging
…huh?
You didn’t say what the acronym is, so they joked that you meant a different one
Ah! Should have caught that since it’s something I love doing myself 😄
Dude, I’m not sure “ethnostate” isn’t some fucking used-car-lot buzzword like “the spend”, but I know Israel has done a lot of bad shit to everyone around them.
Maybe account for jargon?
I’m not sure “ethnostate” isn’t some fucking used-car-lot buzzword
Allow me to put you at ease, then: it’s not.
An ethnostate is a country that enforces by law the supremacy of one ethnicity at the expense of all others.
Examples other than Israel include Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, most of the former Yugoslavian Republics during the war in the 90s, as well as current day countries such as several Muslim/Arab majority countries, Hungary, Russia, Belarus, and increasingly the US.
How is that different from China, Japan, South Korea, or any of countless other countries with a dominant ethnicity and laws that try to preserve it? Heck, I would even call Quebec an ethnostate if it were independent of Canada.
the difference is whether the state consisting of mainly one ethnicity is a fact or a goal
if it’s a fact, well then it’s just how it is but other people could potentially live in this country and have the same possibility, chances, …
if it’s a goal, however, that means you’re not providing the same chances to everyone, but are discriminating based on ethnicity and treat people differently, which is a problem.
What laws do they have to preserve their ethnicity?
I’m not sure what laws those three specific examples have, but they allow foreigners to emigrate there and live there. An ethnostate would be violently opposed to the idea; think Stephen Miller in the US, he literally wants all non whites removed by force.
Now I’m not expert and it’s possible that those 3 examples do still count. But unlike Israel, with the exception of China, they are not currently right now commiting genocide. So it’s still different, except for China, and people who are paying attention are also mad at China.
What if both statements are correct? People love the parts but we don’t know how to blend it into a coherent working system.
The comparison of the Fediverse with Bluesky suggests that people reach goals less efficiently without leaders and capitalist funding.
I don’t see anything in the socialist philosophy that precludes individuals in positions of leadership. And I certainly don’t see anything about excluding funds for capital improvements to the nation-state - or even the world as a whole.
The Soviets seemed to manage running a space program that routinely outpaced their American counterparts while still juggling tenants of socialist economics with a hierarchical leadership structure and significant investments in new productive output. That’s how they achieved Superpower Status in the midst of a World War while states like France, Japan, and Brazil languished for the rest of the century.
I’ll spot you that building a functional socialist system is difficult, especially when you’re battling hostile outside forces. Allende’s Cybersyn put a big fat nail through Mises’s Economic Calculation Problem shortly before Pinochet and his goons had the project terminated. We’ve had a parade of Iranian presidents attempt socialist internationalism across the Middle East, only to see their diplomats gunned down, blown up, and poisoned to death by the enemy intelligence services. Even when countries can move unfettered - as Raul Castro and Nicholas Maduro kinda-sorta did during the Obama administration - people regularly make mistakes and miscalculations, attempting to provide short term relief to an impoverished population at the expense of longer term economic development.
And then sometimes a system flat out fails - as pretty much the entire Warsaw Pact did during the 1990s - due to internal contradictions and external pressures.
Socialism isn’t infallible. Socialists aren’t immaculate. The experiment of Communism is ongoing, in the same way the experiment of American Liberalism and Saudi Monarchism and German Fascism continues apace. Part of the struggle is getting people to see enough merit in a blueprint to begin building. Nobody knows how to do anything until they try.
Then if you say it they’ll raise 1950s farming failures and blame Socialism (rather than the conman Lysenko and his Lysenkoism)…
…and then pretend gulags were death camps… Even those for the 18 million that went through the gulag system the vast majority survived (one million dead out of 18 million isn’t a death camp, even if they were political punishment camps).
Those are arguments against Authoritarianism, not Socialism!
I feel like the former is also an argument against dogmatic ideologies, being unwilling or unable to question things can lead to some pretty bad misunderstandings.
One million people died in soviet Gulags around the time of Nazi invasion. 25 million people died "altogether* in the USSR as a consequence of Nazi invasion.
Gulags weren’t particularly deadly, the whole country was because of fucking nazis
