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Lightning Knight posted:What happens if the material conditions for revolution never become favorable? it means the capitalist class was the one that did all the overthrowing I suppose a slightly different, slightly more optimistic answer would be that the material conditions for revolution are never* supposed to be always unfavorable, in the sense that capitalism leads to its own undoing
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Dec 7, 2018 16:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:In that sense though . . . you're basically talking about democratic socialism. You're talking about structural reforms to the democratic system, achieved democratically. That's a fair point, what I was more suggesting as being on the outside of possible would be something like a new Constitutional Convention, where an entirely new government structure would be created and then ratified by the people. Underlying it all would need to be a mass uprising of popular support, with mass strikes, marches in the streets (and I don't mean the penny ante poo poo hashtag resistance gets up to). Maybe that is "revolution" in a meaningful sense and this is a disagreement of terminology. But given what we've seen of violent mass uprisings in the last couple decades, is there any reason to believe that if the military is prepared to start drone striking folks on American soil that it won't just devolve into a right wing dictatorship?
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Dec 7, 2018 16:37
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gradenko_2000 posted:it means the capitalist class was the one that did all the overthrowing I mean, I guess it seems to me that if the inevitable outcomes are socialism or barbarism and the capitalist class controls a massive and better organized military force than anything previous socialist revolutions had to oppose, the prospects for barbarism seem... high in a revolutionary context.
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Dec 7, 2018 16:40
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Azathoth posted:That's a fair point, what I was more suggesting as being on the outside of possible would be something like a new Constitutional Convention, where an entirely new government structure would be created and then ratified by the people. That's kinda what I was getting at, yeah. This thread has been clowning on socdem/demsoc a lot but given that it's a thread about socialism in America it seems important to realize that if you're talking about "Revolution" in any literal or violent sense, you're veering close to becoming just a much more well intentioned version of LaVoy Finicum, and if you aren't talking about actual violent revolutionary socialism, then when you say "Revolution" you're still talking about a democratic revolution and democratic peaceful processes, so you should probably be getting on the DSA train. I don't see how that binary has a middle ground, but maybe I'm missing something. gradenko_2000 posted:
Yeah, and we're seeing that happen in real time. Trump is a living avatar of the failure of the capitalist system. The problem is that socialism isn't the only failure state capitalism can collapse into; turns out state fascism is also an option. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 16:51
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Azathoth posted:That's a fair point, what I was more suggesting as being on the outside of possible would be something like a new Constitutional Convention, where an entirely new government structure would be created and then ratified by the people. in a way, the Russian Revolution didn't quite involve as much armed conflict as we tend to think revolutions should
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Dec 7, 2018 16:52
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's kinda what I was getting at, yeah. This thread has been clowning on socdem/demsoc a lot but given that it's a thread about socialism in America it seems important to realize that if you're talking about "Revolution" in any literal or violent sense, you're veering close to becoming just a much more well intentioned version of LaVoy Finicum, and if you aren't talking about actual violent revolutionary socialism, then when you say "Revolution" you're still talking about a democratic revolution and democratic peaceful processes. I don't see how that binary has a middle ground, but maybe I'm missing something. I will state categorically that any kind of "revolution" is utterly impossible now. Multiple decades of deliberately dismantling the left in America by both parties has seen to that and just because we desperately need it doesn't mean it's possible. That sucks, but as you say, anyone trying revolution now would just end up as a left version of Y'all Qaeda. But that doesn't mean that we can't do things to move in that direction. The kind of organizing that's necessary to address climate change or healthcare isn't fundamentally different from the kind of organizing that would allow for socialism to be implemented.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:07
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Lightning Knight posted:What happens if the material conditions for revolution never become favorable? industrial capitalism boils every vertebrate species alive in rising, acidic oceans
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Dec 7, 2018 17:07
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:industrial capitalism boils every vertebrate species alive in rising, acidic oceans Well, I suppose that would be the "barbarism" option, then.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:11
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Socialism already happens in the US, constantly, capitalists just try to take credit for anything positive that comes out of it. People are so deeply in the sea of capitalism they have trouble grasping it, as an example, my town recently got a grant from the state to make road improvements, the requirement for getting said grant is for the project is that it is shovel ready. It cuts the local cost of the project in half. What this means is, all the engineering and design work is done, we have a reasonably good idea of how much it's going to cost. The money cannot be spent on anything but this project exactly. The people who did All this work did exactly what the community wants, make the number of lanes consistent, add walkable sidewalks, improve the loop for things like fiber infrastructure. The city has never gone over budget on a road project. The response on social media to the announcement that a grant had been obtained was several variations of "You better not waste that money  "
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Dec 7, 2018 17:12
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RuanGacho posted:Socialism already happens in the US, constantly, capitalists just try to take credit for anything positive that comes out of it. Can you give the part of your example that is socialism? Because the state doing things like providing grants to local governments and roadwork is not socialism. Stop buying into conservative messaging.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:18
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Is it fair to call something socialism when entire sectors of the economy, but not the economy as a whole are state run (or worker co-ops or whatever, just not profit seeking corporations). As an example, is the British healthcare service (where AFAIK the hospitals and doctors are government owned and run unlike say Canada where it's just a single-payer public insurer) an example of a socialist sector within an overall capitalist economy? If it is, I could see making the argument that the road system in the US is an example of socialism. It's certainly possible to imagine a privately owned, for profit road system (one of our highways here in Ontario is privately owned and it's probably singlehandedly responsible for making us have some of the worst highway traffic in North America).
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Dec 7, 2018 17:26
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karthun posted:Can you give the part of your example that is socialism? Because the state doing things like providing grants to local governments and roadwork is not socialism. Stop buying into conservative messaging. Look, i know its uncomfortable, but socialism has to function inside capitalism until people no longer answer every public works project with "How much is it going to cost?" More over to the point government itself is socialist, it constantly is talking on project that not only don't make money, but cost extraordinary amount of money b3cause labor should be compensated. Unless your first project as a socialist is to appropriately rebuild the entire tax structure on which your community functions (an admirable goal) there will always be grants redistributing money to places of identified need. To quibble about the fact state governments have more money than cities isn't a knock on socialism itself, cities generally exist the same way businesses do, with charters and permission of the state. For some reason there aren't generally for profit cities however.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:28
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enki42 posted:Is it fair to call something socialism when entire sectors of the economy, but not the economy as a whole are state run (or worker co-ops or whatever, just not profit seeking corporations). Yes, it is, the difference is, in the US the costs aren't paid by the real people who make it cost money, heavy load trucks. In the US, capitalism has socialized all the risks for businesses and put the burden on the people.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:30
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something can be socialIZED without it being socialiISM
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Dec 7, 2018 17:32
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enki42 posted:Is it fair to call something socialism when entire sectors of the economy, but not the economy as a whole are state run (or worker co-ops or whatever, just not profit seeking corporations). I would say that those workers exchange their labor-power for a depository of value, so their labor still embodies the social relations of other labor under capitalism. That is to say, their ability to continue producing is at the mercy of whether enough value circulates back into the pool that they are paid from. If the workers were paid in non-circulating credits that could be redeemed (then destroyed) for access to other social products, then I would consider that a step further towards being a "socialist" sector, if there can be such a thing.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:something can be socialIZED without it being socialiISM So in your opinion is it non-sensical to say that an economy can be partially socialist and partially capitalist? With the NHS example - the health care system and individual hospitals are obviously run by administrators and ministers, but these are nominally in the control of the people through democratic controls. The system isn't profit seeking and as far as I know doesn't have any outside investors who are benefiting (outside of consumers of the system). That feels like a decent approximation of socialism to me.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:42
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It’s interesting that people think that militarized police and a large military make violent struggle impossible. Armed groups in Afghanistan and Vietnam’s with less access to resources and an inability to strike at vital infrastructure have defeated the US military. Now just because something is possible doesn’t make it a great idea, but I do think it’s possible.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:42
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Ruzihm posted:If the workers were paid in non-circulating credits that could be redeemed (then destroyed) for access to other social products, then I would consider that a step further towards being a "socialist" sector, if there can be such a thing. I can see what you're saying from that viewpoint. Looking at it from that perspective probably precludes such a thing as partial socialism though, since if it's a pre-requisite that compensation for labour isn't a currency that circulates to and from a capitalist system, then any system that does exist with that criteria isn't really a sector of an economy, it's a completely isolated economy existing within a non-socialist economy.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:44
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enki42 posted:So in your opinion is it non-sensical to say that an economy can be partially socialist and partially capitalist? Yes, any capitalist economics 101 class will explain mixed economies and technical monopolies to you, state ownership and management of industries is not in anyway mutually exclusive with a capitalist economy. That doesn't mean the NHS isn't good, it's just not socialism.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:46
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enki42 posted:I can see what you're saying from that viewpoint. Looking at it from that perspective probably precludes such a thing as partial socialism though, since if it's a pre-requisite that compensation for labour isn't a currency that circulates to and from a capitalist system, then any system that does exist with that criteria isn't really a sector of an economy, it's a completely isolated economy existing within a non-socialist economy. Yeah, but I've wondered about the feasibility of a government job program that pays in both conventional money and also the non-circulating redeemable stuff, where the proportion of how much is paid in money is decreased over time (according to a consistent measurement of each that makes a proportion sensible).
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Dec 7, 2018 17:47
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Lightning Knight posted:Yes, any capitalist economics 101 class will explain mixed economies and technical monopolies to you, state ownership and management of industries is not in anyway mutually exclusive with a capitalist economy. I'm not saying that state ownership is incompatible with capitalism, I'm just saying it's sufficiently close enough to socialism that it's not a totally unfair comparison (and thus socialism isn't wholly incompatible with capitalism).
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Dec 7, 2018 17:51
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enki42 posted:I'm not saying that state ownership is incompatible with capitalism, I'm just saying it's sufficiently close enough to socialism that it's not a totally unfair comparison (and thus socialism isn't wholly incompatible with capitalism). I think this line of argumentation presupposes an entirely different definition of socialism than what most socialists itt would agree with. I think the phrase "thus socialism isn't wholly incompatible with capitalism" makes about as much sense as "thus water ice isn't wholly incompatible with a raging fire."
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Dec 7, 2018 17:53
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Ruzihm posted:Yeah, but I've wondered about the feasibility of a government job program that pays in both conventional money and also the non-circulating redeemable stuff, where the proportion of how much is paid in money is decreased over time (according to a consistent measurement of each that makes a proportion sensible). Minus the decreasing over time part, Cuba's economy isn't far off this? Basic needs are taken care of through a coupon system but people are also paid in Cuban currency that can be used for non-essential things.
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Dec 7, 2018 17:54
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Lightning Knight posted:I think the phrase "thus socialism isn't wholly incompatible with capitalism" makes about as much sense as "thus water ice isn't wholly incompatible with a raging fire." Compatible in the sense that both systems can coexist and interact with each other, which seems plainly true to me on an international scale. In the context of a single countries economy it's definitely a little stranger, but at the end of the day, if a business / industry can operate in a way that it would had it been in a fully socalist economy, is calling it socialist so crazy?
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Dec 7, 2018 17:58
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enki42 posted:Minus the decreasing over time part, Cuba's economy isn't far off this? Basic needs are taken care of through a coupon system but people are also paid in Cuban currency that can be used for non-essential things. I can understand why - they still need things that are produced as commodities outside of that system, and exchanging commodities produced locally is the only way to do that consistently. If somewhere else implemented an equivalent system, and made their coupons interchangeable with Cuban coupons on an equitable basis (but still not allowing them to circulate), that would be pretty swell. It'd be a way provide both with the foreign things they need to mutually reduce their reliance on commodity production.
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Dec 7, 2018 18:04
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unwantedplatypus posted:It’s interesting that people think that militarized police and a large military make violent struggle impossible. Armed groups in Afghanistan and Vietnam’s with less access to resources and an inability to strike at vital infrastructure have defeated the US military. Part of the problem here is the difference between "fighting a portion of that military halfway across the world in an area where the locals know the land better and they're callously projecting force outward" vs. "fighting the whole military in their own backyard with their very future as an institution at stake." Also, the vital infrastructure a U.S. insurgency would have better access to is the same infrastructure that insurgency would want intact after the war, even if just to be repurposed for other uses.
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Dec 7, 2018 18:07
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the victory won by the Vietnamese and the Afghans. came at the cost of tens of millions of lives, decades of warfare, and incalculable damage to the environment and to man-made structures It's "possible" to win a war like that only if you're willing to accept such tremendous costs, and at that point, it's probably going to kill most of the people who stand to gain from whatever final socialist victory might follow Certainly there is a calculus by which one can say that lives would still be saved, but it's understandable that most people might consider that price (currently) too high to bear
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Dec 7, 2018 18:12
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unwantedplatypus posted:It’s interesting that people think that militarized police and a large military make violent struggle impossible. Armed groups in Afghanistan and Vietnam’s with less access to resources and an inability to strike at vital infrastructure have defeated the US military. I think the likely scenario in that case is that there would be an Enabling Act and a right wing soft coup that would move us in the wrong direction, possibly for decades. So, if you want to define that as "possible" then sure, revolution is possible right now. I should have phrased is as saying that I do not think it is possible to bring about socialism via revolution now, and that we need to do a lot of work before we can get to that point.
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Dec 7, 2018 18:13
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I mean yeah don’t try something like that now because it genuinely isn’t worth it; but don’t take a defeatist attitude that if the suffering caused by the current system became completely unbearable that there’s nothing we could do aside from electoralism
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Dec 7, 2018 18:20
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unwantedplatypus posted:I mean yeah don’t try something like that now because it genuinely isn’t worth it; but don’t take a defeatist attitude that if the suffering caused by the current system became completely unbearable that there’s nothing we could do aside from electoralism Yeah, not taking a defeatist attitude, but it's something that absolutely needs to be acknowledged in the face of climate change. It sucks poo poo, but we're gonna have to figure out a solution within the current system that can at least arrest the slide and buy us time and get it implemented via the electoral process. However, that organizing should be done with an eye towards building a durable movement, and just because it is necessary to engage on electoralism for this doesn't mean it needs to be the only, or even the primary, focus.
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Dec 7, 2018 18:30
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enki42 posted:Compatible in the sense that both systems can coexist and interact with each other, which seems plainly true to me on an international scale. In the context of a single countries economy it's definitely a little stranger, but at the end of the day, if a business / industry can operate in a way that it would had it been in a fully socalist economy, is calling it socialist so crazy? Commodity relations and non-commodity relations dont exactly play nicely together... One can only acquire commodities by exchanging them for commodities of one's own. If your state sector is not huge and integrated with itself, it's going to have massive interfaces of commodity exchange, and the enterprise that has such a direct interface is hardly socialist, given that its job is either to produce commodities for sale in a matter that is completely indistinct from a private corporation, or produce something that is monetarily worth more than its inputs somewhere in the chain (even if it's very indirect, like, functional healthcare or education allowing people to work more efficiently and enabling them to pay more taxes), meaning it still has to operate under capitalist labor discipline, wage squeeze etc while denying a certain amount of service that would make sense in material terms but not in monetary terms. To get convincingly beyond commodity relations, state or no state, there needs to be a meaningful sector that does not exchange its inputs or outputs but instead receives its inputs for free and gives out its outputs for free according to a social plan. And that is only possible through a radical reformation of the economy that would massively hurt profits in the industries being targeted for non-commodity production, which means the success of such a sector would be viewed as an existential threat by all capitalists. The common class ground that enables state enterprise under capitalism is them providing cheap basic inputs or infrastructure for capitalist companies using tools bought from capitalist companies, allowing the capitalists to outcompete foreigners as well as creating demand for their goods. State enterprise that does not engage in commodity relations, what could be called socialist state enterprise, serves neither function and is pretty much not allowed to exist under capitalism for that reason.
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Dec 7, 2018 23:30
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the NHS is absolutely a socialist endeavour and would never ever have been set up by a non-socialist government an economy with the NHS does not a socialist society make, but disregarding what modern socialists may learn from the NHS is like saying that the soviets weren't real socialists and we don't need to critically evaluate their mistakes and successes either socialism in practice has always had to exis within a capitalist society up to this point, even where they've seized the state. dismissing individual victories because they're incomplete is not constructive imo
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Dec 8, 2018 13:38
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V. Illych L. posted:the NHS is absolutely a socialist endeavour and would never ever have been set up by a non-socialist government I agree that it's a socialist *endeavor*. But I was responding to a claim about the compatibility of capitalism and socialism as systems, which is a different matter altogether. The NHS does not belong to any socialist system existing within the capitalist system, it's just as integrated to the capitalist system as any non-profit enterprise, and that's how it was possible to make a commonly accepted part of society. The NHS as an entity is not "socialism in practice", only its creation and its defense have been parts of the process of socialism in practice. Socialism is so far relegated to existing only through mass movements and would be erased without a trace if those mass movements ceased to form, there's no institutional base reproducing it as there would be in a socialist *system*. And the big point about the incompatibility is that for a socialist system to come into existence, the socialist movement has to fight the movement for the defense of the capitalist system, which will only be intensified as victories for a socialist system mount. The NHS can be loved by everyone precisely because it's not socialist as an institution. uncop fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Dec 9, 2018 |
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Dec 9, 2018 14:09
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V. Illych L. posted:socialism in practice has always had to exis within a capitalist society up to this point, even where they've seized the state. dismissing individual victories because they're incomplete is not constructive imo  I agree, and I think this is (perhaps unfortunately) one of the most important lessons in moving nationstates further away from markets and further into livable socialist situations.
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Dec 9, 2018 14:20
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uncop posted:I agree that it's a socialist *endeavor*. But I was responding to a claim about the compatibility of capitalism and socialism as systems, which is a different matter altogether. The NHS does not belong to any socialist system existing within the capitalist system, it's just as integrated to the capitalist system as any non-profit enterprise, and that's how it was possible to make a commonly accepted part of society. The NHS as an entity is not "socialism in practice", only its creation and its defense have been parts of the process of socialism in practice. Socialism is so far relegated to existing only through mass movements and would be erased without a trace if those mass movements ceased to form, there's no institutional base reproducing it as there would be in a socialist *system*. i do not understand what you're trying to get across in this post, i'm sorry
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Dec 9, 2018 14:31
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Infinite Karma posted:Aside from advocating violence or disenfranchisment, what ideology is so dangerous it needs to be banned? A number if ideologies naturally result in violence/disenfranchisement even if they aren't an explicit part of that ideology (for example libertarianism). Though I would argue that outright banning isn't the most effective way to marginalize them (it's probably be best to do something similar to what media does under the status quo, only with having it treat socialism as the only "obvious, serious" option, and other more right-wing ideologies as not worthy of much attention). Infinite Karma posted:Cops are corrupt as hell and are a vicious tool of oppression in this country. Even that isn't the same as the Gestapo. I don't think there's much of a difference in practice between certain people who tend to support certain political views having their murder/imprisonment by local authorities permitted by the federal government and the federal government doing those things itself. Our current society mainly imprisons people through proxies. The drug war, for example, is used to imprison, and thus disenfranchise, millions of black Americans. I don't see much of a practical difference between imprisoning politically inconvenient people en masse for bullshit crimes and doing so while directly citing their politics as the reason. I would argue that our current society is actually a far more sophisticated version of societies that directly arrest/imprison ideological opponents. Instead of directly being at war with "subversive elements," we instead create a media environment where their views are marginalized and imprison them for various other not-explicitly-political reasons.
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Dec 9, 2018 16:18
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Ruzihm posted:Infernot made a good post about this. And not discussed is the religious nature, especially in the United States. Americans go nuts and try set up Utopia. Oneida community, the Shakers, the Mormons, Jonestown, etc. Americans seem prone to it (utopian idealism) uncop posted:I agree that it's a socialist *endeavor*. But I was responding to a claim about the compatibility of capitalism and socialism as systems, which is a different matter altogether. The NHS does not belong to any socialist system existing within the capitalist system, it's just as integrated to the capitalist system as any non-profit enterprise, and that's how it was possible to make a commonly accepted part of society. The NHS as an entity is not "socialism in practice", only its creation and its defense have been parts of the process of socialism in practice. Socialism is so far relegated to existing only through mass movements and would be erased without a trace if those mass movements ceased to form, there's no institutional base reproducing it as there would be in a socialist *system*. I read this as socialism as the negation of capitalism. You're saying it's socialism when the mass movement is opposing and negating capitalism. You are saying the resulting intuitions are not socialism, but that when a mass movement defends them that defense is. Would this be a correct reading of your post?
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Dec 9, 2018 17:31
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V. Illych L. posted:i do not understand what you're trying to get across in this post, i'm sorry I believe he is arguing that an actually socialist institution would be part of a movement toward the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism. The NHS is a socialistic enterprise set up in such a way that it does not threaten and arguably even strengthens the larger capitalist system. Despite being run on more socialist principles than the rest of the economy it is still functionally just a prop used in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. I suppose that by uncop's estimation a truly socialist organization would be reproducing the conditions of socialism, i.e. it would be changing peoples daily lives or political subjectivity in such a way that it would hasten the development of socialism in other areas rather than just being an island of collectivism in a larger capitalist political economy. The merits of that perspective is that it focuses on the actual balance of class forces within society rather than trying to reduce government policy to some abstract measurement of how 'socialist' or 'free market' it is. Otherwise you end in a situation where various welfare and anti-monopoly policies, often enacted by deeply reactionary governments, are getting counted as "socialist" in nature even though they were specifically implemented to limit the spread and blunt the appeal of socialist politics.
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Dec 9, 2018 19:07
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Helsing posted:Otherwise you end in a situation where various welfare and anti-monopoly policies, often enacted by deeply reactionary governments, are getting counted as "socialist" in nature even though they were specifically implemented to limit the spread and blunt the appeal of socialist politics. Here's the problem with this. Let's take the co-opting of socialist ideas by a capitalist start. Say welfare and social security. Opposing or supporting them becomes almost a question of intent. It borders on" Was this done in the socialist spirit?"
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Dec 9, 2018 20:41
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Helsing posted:I believe he is arguing that an actually socialist institution would be part of a movement toward the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism. The NHS is a socialistic enterprise set up in such a way that it does not threaten and arguably even strengthens the larger capitalist system. Despite being run on more socialist principles than the rest of the economy it is still functionally just a prop used in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. I suppose that by uncop's estimation a truly socialist organization would be reproducing the conditions of socialism, i.e. it would be changing peoples daily lives or political subjectivity in such a way that it would hasten the development of socialism in other areas rather than just being an island of collectivism in a larger capitalist political economy. this seems like a really bad point tbh institutions like the nhs provide a practical rhetorical counterpoint and a clear example: there actually is an alternative, and it works here and now! the NHS would not be untouched by a socialist transformation of society, of course, but it's a very good example of socialist policy just unambiguously working out to everyone's benefit the conclusion to what you're saying seems to be accellerationism, which, ok i guess, not my cup of tea tbh
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Dec 9, 2018 21:48
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