Just going to keep posting this every time it comes up.
We could reduce energy and materials cost of global production worldwide to 30% current capacity by planning production instead of leaving it to the market, and greatly increase the standard of living for everyone on this planet. But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7n1POfYMo1I3kcy0oqSm6l?si=8ikYVJN8TIupvjoaCMRssA
But first we have to get rid of capitalism and institute democratic socialist planning.
All strains of Socialism are democratic, it's a bit redundant to include unless you're trying to emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system.
All strains of Socialism are democratic
Glances nervously at the ultra-nationalist strains
Some are more democratic than others, certainly.
emphasize the democratic factor as opposed to our current system
It is exhausting to hear people smuggly denounce AES states as dysfunctional, by citing their trend towards nationalizarion of capital and popularization of policy. Particularly when the same folks will scream bloody murder if you don't continue to mechanically endorse their brand of corporate liberalism.
Yes this is what I believe as well but to many people Socialism is synonymous with authoritarianism. Many of those people are amenable to Socialist ideas if not able to be won over completely as you and I have been.
Also, (not to begin the debate about AES) but I think its fair to say that where many socialist projects have failed is in the arena of democracy. Maybe its just a feature of the tradition I come from, but to me that commitment to democracy has to be constantly renewed. Not bourgeois democracy but worker democracy. The working class has to learn real democracy in order to engage in political struggle in preparation to overthrow the ruling class.
Lenin was constantly stressing and renewing his commitment to democratic process, which was one of the reasons he was able to create the revolutionary party after 1905 that was able to seize power in 1917. And while he had no illusions about the limitations of democratic process within his historical moment, he always "bent the stick" in that direction which in my opinion was one of the things that made him such an effective leader prior to and up through the civil war period ending in 1921.
So I will always stress the importance of democracy, not only for the historic necessity and precedent but also because it is not enough to be good materialists (and there certainly has been a history of bad ones) but also good dialectitians, which means contextualizing our project through unificatiokn of the subjective and objective; and to fail to do so is to fail to be dialectical Marxists. If I have to work and debate with some Harringtonites in the process well that is just a necessity of the historical moment.
In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the "socialist" movement or party. And they don't really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics...
It's almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
Democratic socialism (DemSoc) is a specific term (not to be confused with SocDem). Unless your point was that DemSoc is a bad term?
whoa whoa whoa
slow down there Karl Marx /s
Speed up there Marx!
Sure, because that's one thing socialist / communist systems are great at, making goods people want.
The capitalist class is no longer able to run society the way that they have. They will run nations into the ground, they will destroy this planet, they will kill millions systematically (as happened recently during the utter failure to deal with covid), they will enslave nations to produce those "goods" an ironic name for the incredible evil done with sweatshop labor. Unemployment is created by the system, which in turn causes the unemployed to suffer and starve in order to keep wages low.
There are no rules that say luxury goods couldn't be produced for consumption, except for the rules made up by the capitalists who do everything they can to destroy the government of socialists, to put them under embargo and sanction, affecting the masses of innocents more than anyone else. They have and will push their country's leaders to invade the country, killing hundreds of thousands or millions if necessary, so that their workforce can be exploited to produce their commodities. They have and will back mass murdering warlords, repressive religious fundamentalists and genocidal fascists to preserve the economic and political system that benefits them. If nations trying to provide support, housing and education for their people are under constant threat and attack from capitalist nations, how exactly are they supposed to dedicate a large part of their consumption to luxury goods? If they can't import goods either then yes it becomes difficult to access luxuries. That doesn't take a genius to understand; but to ignore it and still criticize a socialist nation for it takes a determination to misunderstand. I'm troubled by it and I think you also should be since you are the one who are so determined.
Too much is made, most of it is wasted. We are forced to drive cars while public transportation is dismantled, adding massive waste and pollution to our environment. There are thousands of train derailments every year, too many of them leaking carcinogenic chemicals into water supplies and neighborhoods. Industrial plants leak or dump pollutants into water supplies, making many people sick or worse, and do extensive lobbying and hire big law firms to protect against legislation and prosecution by affected communities. Cops whose job is to protect the private property of capitalists, that should belong to the workers, will beat and terrorize you for speaking out against genocide that your country pays for, all so that countries with mineral and oil resources are destabilized and hence easy pickings for finance and industry, that as I've explained pollutes, exploits, destroys the population of the affected nation.
All for your consumer "goods," your fucking treats. You don't even understand where they come from, you don't understand how the system you defend works, or for whom. I urge you to educate yourself about this, and take seriously the threat of climate catastrophe and likely collapse. I've included a podcast that features an economist where you can begin.
Workers must seize this system and destroy the old structures that underwrite their continued exploitation. I stand with the workers, the planet, the people. You stand with the very rich who exploit you and steal your time, health, energy, freedom. And why do you? I'm very curious.
Ever heard of Tetris?
The last panel should have an and, not an or
I misread this as "this country has always been ruled by the lich".
And yeah, tbh, yeah.
That would explain a lot of policies.....
And Dick Cheney.
Just putting it out there that "property owning" is not the class deliniator! I "own" my house/property and the only differences are that i pay rent to a bank instead of a landlord, and i can knock holes in the walls if i want to.
I'm still pretty much paycheck to paycheck, squarely in the working class.
If you're paying rent to a bank, you don't own your house, at least not yet.
Of course you're working class. It's about the owners of Capital property. Does your house that you own (which I doubt since you imply you have a mortgage) make money for you?
It's us versus a very small number of them.
No. Rent and mortgage are two different things. One is a fee for service and one is a loan.
If your home that you own doubles in market value and you decide to sell it, you pay off the mortgage (loan) and keep the profit (capital gain). If you are renting and the home is sold, you gain nothing.
If your home that you own burns down, you still owe the bank the money you borrowed for purchase (mortgage). If you are renting the home that burned down, you don't owe anybody money. There is to service to pay a fee for anymore.
Like sure, fuck capitalism. But we don't need to misrepresent how these systems work.
Yes of course there are actually a lot of differences, being a homeowner after renting for years I am very aware. My comment, partly in jest, was focusing on practical day-to-day differences. But also, getting equity in your house is actually not that big of a windfall if you sell, because you still have to live somewhere and the other houses/rentals have all gone up in cost to match. I suppose if I was to move in with someone... but I dont plan on doing that ever.
But anyways yea fuck capitalism
It's not about stopping climate change anymore. That ship has sailed and sunk.
Now its about surviving long enough to witness very bad things happening to very bad people.
There is still time to change course, however carbon sequestration is becoming a more important part of climate action. Doomerism just acts as an excuse to not take action.
witness very bad things happening to very bad people.
Yeah, not gonna happen in this life. Karma is a happy accident, not a rule
I honestly hate this rhetoric (nothing personal). Thing is, it gets worse and worse, the less we do, it's not binary, and while the planet will not be able to support close as many people as of now, humanity will survive. But it's very dependent on the actions we do now, how many will...
Whether humanity will survive really is an open question. Despite all the rhetoric and protests and promises the annual CO2 emissions have continued to increase steadily. It's wishful thinking to imagine that we are going to do anything about this before the consequences of our choices force our collective hand. Any report or scientific paper that includes a phrase like 'there is still time' is just not accepting the reality of the situation. A year ago James Hansen published Global Warming in the Pipeline where he wrote "Equilibrium global warming for today’s GHG amount is 10°C". A 4–7 degree rise over 5000 years ended the last ice age, Ocean levels rose 400 feet. A 10 degree rise in a century or so would be way too fast for most species to adapt. It would inundate the majority of our most populated cities. I could go on, but I get depressed writing about this.
If anything, society collapses and the very wealthy carve out fiefdoms for themselves and re-create medieval feudalism. They tell people they have a God-ordained to rule over the “small folk” and they continue on living like kings, albeit in a post-apocalyptic setting.
20 years? Jamie pull that up.
Well it was 25 years in 2019, and I’d round down since we’re in September so yeah, 20 to go.
Damnit, Gritty!
Covid ended any hope I have. We couldn't get people to put on a fucking mask or get vaccinations when the disease was right in front of us killing millions of people.
There's absolutely no way we're gonna get people on board with fighting the climate disaster. Humanity will be lucky if it survives itself.
20 years? Not 25? I thought 2060 was when things would really crumble due to climate change is we continued business as usual (which is what we're doing).
Does it matter? Ultimately, these are estimates. Educated, data backed estimates, but still estimates.
One larger than expected volcanic eruption, coral reefs dying faster than expected, whatever, all it takes is one or two things to not go the way they're expected and everything speeds up.
20 years or 25 years, the point is we're all kinda fucked unless we do something about it.
What we need to do has been and will continue to be debated ad nauseam, but we know we must do something.
20 years before we die from climate change? Given the hellish climate we're enduring here in south america, 10 years would be more believable
Simple solution: take power, ban the right-wing parties and their financers, if they protest use acid cannons, blackmailing and censorship towards them and coup every country with a right-wing government.
How do you plan to take power? And if you manage, how do you plan to stay in power long enough? The average voter is a moron being fed propaganda for years. You will not take power democratically. And you will not stay in power democratically.
All countries have always been governed by the property owning class. With all its faults, capitalism has resulted in "peons" having the most say they've ever had. It's not a lot, but it's sure better than under classical democracy, feudalism, monarchy, theocracy, and "communism" at least as practiced in the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and China.
(Capitalism is a) brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian - where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone - is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we're lucky that we don't live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it's better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc.
Edit: In this they take on the posture of a severely depressed person who views hope as a dangerous delusion.
Capitalism and modern western democracy suck. But, life has always sucked for those without power. Life is/was much worse for people under "communism". It was much worse under fascism. It was much worse under feudalism. It is/was much worse in a theocracy.
Also, this idea that "existence is evaluated in terms of money alone" is a silly caricature of capitalism. People with power have always been the ones to make the rules. It doesn't matter if that power is in the form of money, or absolute control over anyone who lives on a certain bit of land, or in terms of absolute control due to being the representative on earth of a god's will.
That's wildly ahistorical. It has allowed the creation of Labor Aristocracy, Proletarians that benefit from the fruits of Imperialism, but Socialist countries like the ones you listed did far more for the working class than Capitalist countries have. You should read Blackshirts and Reds.
“communism” at least as practiced in the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and China.
What are you talking about? Research how many rights women and lgbt people lost when the GDR fell for an example of how wrong-headed this line of thinking is.
For those who want light reading, I highly recommend "Why women had better sex under socialism, and other arguments for economic independence"
Countries are defined by land-hoarding class, because the nomadic people define themselves by their group instead of the land on which they live.
Without hoarders (landlords), we wouldn't need to put as much effort towards regulating land use, instead we could focus on regulating behaviours. Ex: "this land is a national park, you are not allowed to trash it. Go next door, there you are allowed to pour the trash from your industrial process into the ground, because it's your private land"
Highest pollution generating countries are communist 😂
Per Capita?
Are you referring to China? Because that would be an exceptionally bad example.
We could be nuked today
I agree, we should focus more on climate change, though.
Climate change cannot be sufficiently addressed without oveethrowing capitalism. China built more solar capacity last year than the entirety of American installations and both American candidates support fracking.
Join a local socialist org!
Lol they also built more coal plants than the rest of the world combined in 2023
I swear you tankies are a hilariously ignorant bunch.
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of-worlds/
I don’t remember the quote directly but it’s somewhere in the area of that;
We have gotten so used to living in the shadow of annihilation that we’ve forgotten to fear the constant threat of global destruction that nuclear war is.
This podcast really gave me some perspective on that.
