Socialism in america only exists for corporations. "Hey bankers! Screwed up again? Here's more money to play with."
I appreciate the sentiment, but the public sector supporting the private is not "socialism." Socialism describes an economic formation where public ownership is primary in an economy, ie where large firms are publicly owned and controlled. Segments of an economy cannot be Socialist or Capitalist just like an arm cannot be a human, it can only exist in the context of the whole.
Socialism, in reality, refers to a broader economy where public ownership is primary, while Capitalism refers to a broader economy where private ownership is primary. All Socialist societies have had public and private Capital, and all Capitalist societies have had public and private Capital, it matters most which one has the power.
I recommend reading my post here on common problems people run into when determining Modes of Production.
That's state welfare/insurance, not socialism.
A rose is a rose is a rose. I get your point though. Terms must be defined specifically in order to hold academic discussions. Welfare is called socialism by some.
The USA actually spends several billions, if not trillions on Medicare (meant for the old) and Medicaid (meant for the poor, and single mothers, and young children) combined.
In 2023, the federal government spent about $848.2 billion on Medicare, accounting for 14% of total federal spending.
source - and that's just Medicare.
I agree with you that it's weird that corporations get a bailout, instead of selling the company to competitors, but no need to act like the USA doesn't spend a TON of money on its citizens, keeping their head above water :)
SpenT
That's because the American healthcare system is infected with middle men parasites.
You forgot about social security, welfare, unemployment, housing subsidies and a bunch of other government programs that taxpayers fund.
Don't make me laugh, it's not socialism! it's bro-ism, 'cause, I got you bro. If everyone got their bros and we all bros then we can do absolutely anything bro!
I like to swap out "ism" with "frame". In this case broism becomes broframe.
Lisa's only mistake was saying yes.
Just do every single thing in socialism, but change every single word. Call it Americanism.
Proletariat? No, just "worker".
Bourgeoisie? No, just "elites".
Capital? "Stuff". Like how in baseball they say a pitcher's got good "stuff". Use your human stuff.
Class Consciousness - "common sense".
Dialectical Materialism - Idk I'm still trying to figure out wtf that one means.
Dialectical materialism -> Scientific materialism to distinguish it from the common usage of the world "materialism"
Historically, this just doesn't work, and it even risks supporting PatSoc movements like the American Communist Party (not to be confused with the CPUSA), also known as "MAGA Communism." Essentially Imperialism combined with Communist aesthetics.
In the lead-up to the Russian Revolution, there was disagreement over the necessity of reading theory. The SRs thought it was unneccessary, and got in the way of unity. Lenin and the Bolsheviks disagreed, as theory informs correct practice. The SRs became a footnotez and the Bolsheviks succeeded in establishing the world's first Socialist state. One of Lenin's most fanous lines, from What is to be done? is "without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice."
As studying theory is necessary, people will realize you're repackaging Socialism. This will backfire, and people will realize they've been tricked. This will hurt the movement.
As for Dialectical Materialism, in a nutshell it's the philosophical backbone of Marxism. It's an analytical tool, focusing on studying material reality as it exists in context and in motion through time, as well as their contradictions. If you want an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list that will teach you the fundamentals, I have one here that I made.
Personally, I’ve strived to adhere to the Einstein quote:
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
This not only applies to theory but language in general. If you, an English speaker, wants to ally with someone who only speaks Mandarin, the two of you will need to figure out how to understand simple shared concepts first (“water”, “car”, “help”).
Theory is the same. I don’t think we should completely do away with the proper verbiage. But, I do think we need to figure out how to translate our message in more ways than just language— I’m talking cultural. Because, right now, there are a lot of working class Americans who have been convinced that capitalist exploitation is American culture.
Dialectical Materialism
How about "a tug-of-war between owners and workers for jobs, resources, and technology"
Three examples:
Factory Work and Labour Unions
Early 20th-century factory jobs involved long hours, low pay, and unsafe working conditions. When workers tried to unionize, factory owners often resisted, viewing unionized labour as a threat to profits. This created a direct conflict: owners wanting to keep costs low vs. workers demanding better wages and safer workplaces.
Automation in Warehouses
Warehouses (e.g., Amazon fulfilment centres) are increasingly adopting robotic systems to speed up sorting and packing. Employees might feel pressure to meet higher performance metrics set by a partly automated workflow, while also fearing that further automation will reduce human jobs. Here, the “tug-of-war” is between technological efficiency (and profit) vs. workers’ job security and well-being.
Tech Industry Outsourcing
Companies sometimes outsource tech-related jobs to countries with cheaper labour costs. This lowers expenses for the company but can lead to local layoffs and economic hardship for employees in higher-wage regions. The conflict revolves around the benefit of increased profit margins for the company vs. the material needs of domestic workers who lose their livelihoods.
Dialectical Materialism - Idk I'm still trying to figure out wtf that one means.
Practical historical development?
Definition: Practical historical development looks at how money, jobs, and resources shape how societies change over time. It shows that the ways people make things, the tools they use, and how resources are distributed build the base for how societies work. Instead of thinking that big ideas or beliefs drive history, this view shows that real-world conditions—like who has what resources and how work gets done—create the path for changes in society and politics.
The problem with many conservatives and regressives is that the only change to the status quo they seem content with are based on bigotry rather than economics.
I can't remember where I copied this from originally but it seems pertinent here
Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. they know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism.’
Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions.
This is is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores.
An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete.
They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone too irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover).
One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services.
But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy.
American try to care one iota for your fellow man or really anyone other than yourself challenge (impossible):
During covid, going to a rural area in the US really got to me. The population is so individualistic / freedom-brained / "i do whatever I want all the time", that their grandmothers all dying meant nothing to them. I got mine keeps meaning smaller and smaller groups of people.
Socialism is the complete opposite of that. Socialism destroys horizontal connections and institution of family.
about what youd expect for a country thats been the global epicenter for anticommunist propaganda.
She's got a work on her sales pitch. "Probably one of the greatest... Oh it's not for you, it's more of a Shelbyville idea..."
Meanwhile, socialist Norway's wealth fund could maintain everyone's standard of living for 400 years if they stopped working right now.
norway isnt socialist. they just excel at exporting capitalism's issues to the third world.
In a democratic state, things like universal healthcare are also called "socialized medicine" because it is an example of the people owning the means of production in that particular industry.
That's why most countries are what we call "mixed economies", that mix elements of capitalism and socialism.
Norway mixes in a higher ratio of socialism to capitalism than most countries. But they don't export any more of capitalism's issues to the third world than other countries. It's something to emulate, not discredit.
Hmmm, interesting. But what if we gave it all to one guy?
Its so fucking dumb, you wouldn’t believe it! If he isn’t retarded and have an Elon Musk moment then he would and this is making me genuinely sick contribute to society, theoretically making a net plus to society
Norway funds its safety nets off of super-exploitation of the Global South, ie Imperialism. It is firmly Capitalist and in no way Socialist, private property is the primary driving aspect of Norway's economy, the higher standard of living comes from acting as a Landlord in country form.
Whenever people say this they neglect to point out that all the money came from selling oil.
They forget to point out that only dumbfuck yanks would consider Norway to be socialist, so the comment, in a meme community, is misleading from the get-go.
Norway isn't socialist. And by "everyone" you mean just Norwegians, even though Norway's wealth was built on the backs of people in the global South.
Not to mention that Norway's public wealth is being claimed by the capitalist class, just like in every western country
Norway is a capitalist country. It us an OECD hanger-on to the US-led imperialist world order.
Wait, isn't socialism all about class solidarity? "Working together regardless of class to fight a common enemy" sounds more like nationalism where at the end the upper class profits most. Unless we are talking about a classless society but that's not "regardless of class" but "with no class distinction" which sounds very similar when I think about it.
Sounds more like social democracy, which can include managed capitalism and cooperation between workers and owners. To a degree.
Socialism is about making the working class the ruling class. It is explicitly about oppressing the bourgeois class, which is itself the current ruling class oppressing the working (and other) classes. The idea is to take the means of production and run it for ourselves rather than the profit of a class defined by merely owning factories, buildings, tools, etc.
The cartoon may be confused.
Yes, you're correct here. Class collaborationism is a Social Democratic tendency, not a Socialist one.
Every character there is working class, so I'm imagining in this case "regardless of class" is implicitly "regardless of perceived class"
Moe is bourgeois.
Socialism is about the government playing a central role in the economy to ensure wealth and resources are distributed more fairly, rather than being concentrated in the hands of corporations or individuals. Socialism can still allow for private businesses and a market economy, but key industries and services are often publicly controlled to prevent excessive inequality.
"More fairly" means "more in a way that the said government sees fit"
Socialism is not about the government's size. Socialists, particularly Marxists, emphasize using the state and nationalization after proletarian revolution to reflect the working class' interests and build socialism, but the size of the state itself is not what makes something socialist, both because (1) socialists seek to eventually end the state itself once productive forces and consciousness are sufficiently advanced and (2) capitalist states can also have large governments, generally to serve the interests of the ruling class, albeit sometimes in a roundabout way.
What if was socialism, but for a nation? What could go wrong? /s
You joke, but this is a real thing, PatSoc movements like the American Communist Party (not to be confused with the CPUSA), also known as "MAGA Communism." Essentially Imperialism combined with Communist aesthetics.
Whats funnier is that when you count how many times Homer went to the hospital… unless if lives in a « socialist » country… he would be homeless
Maybe that's why Lisa is spreading socialist propaganda. Bc her family directly benefits from it
He has health insurance. That's what the union episode is about even
"All classes working together" as a counterpoint to socialism? Where have I heard of this before.....?
It's because it's impossible. The classes will always be in conflict until the communism is reached, so it depends which class is in power.
"All classes working together" is called capitalism
Yep, this is the concept behind "Social Democracy." Class collaborationism is a myth used to justify the perpetuation of Capitalism, not ending it.
Apple's ecosystem is socialism and people seems to love it
In what manner is a Capitalist company's ecosystem able to be considered Socialism? Capitalism and Socialism are descriptors for entire economies, not slices of one company.
What about anarchism?
Anarchism is preferable to Capitalism, of course, but as a former Anarchist I find Marxist theory and historical practice to be more evidently effective.
What type of anarchism?
Of course, you could just talk about "Tax The Rich" or "Bring Back the New Deal" but then how could people know you read Karl Marx?
Only taxing the rich or bringing back the New Deal perpetuates Capitalism, we are talking about Socialism here, not Social Democracy. In that respect, when we analyze AES states, all have a firm understanding of Marxist theory, showing that it indeed has practical merit.
If you want to get started with theory, I keep an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list you can check out if you want.
I've been thinking a lot recently about how to rephrase socialist ideals as capitalist bills for the sake of America.
I want to propose a "Proof of Economic Viability Bill" somewhere if I can find the right influence point.
Basically, financial advisors suggest that people should pay no more than 30% of their income towards living expenses. Knowing that the vast majority of Americans only have income from their primary job, this means that any business should be expected to pay no less than 30% of their income, evenly divided across the entire workforce (cart pusher to CEO), as a "living expense allotment" to prove they can afford to pay their workers enough to live and stay afloat. This will push out companies who are doomed to fail because of a lack of available workforce, allowing more economically viable options to reign king.
Edit to add: you can make this sound a little nicer to the maga crowd by telling them they can reduce wages by doing this. I don't necessarily care that you're paying minimum wage as long as you can afford to put your worker in a home and fill their stomach.
Historically, this just doesn't work, and it even risks supporting PatSoc movements like the American Communist Party (not to be confused with the CPUSA), also known as "MAGA Communism." Essentially Imperialism combined with Communist aesthetics. You need to be honest with people, otherwise they will learn they have been tricked and resent you. Further, this isn't really Socialism, but Capitalism with bigger safety nets.
The problem with policy is that it needs material foundational backing, otherwise it will be walked back if the class in power doesn't like it.
I go even simpler.
The New Deal.
Make the GOPs explain why we could pay salaries that let one earner support a family of four in 1940 and can't do it today.
It's the opposite, actually.
The people who talk about "tax the rich" or the New Deal don't actually do anything, they are armchair activists who have no real idea of how they would ever accomplish this outside of pretending the Democratic Party, which constantly opposes them and crushes such ideas, is the vehiclr, and the way to make it happen is complaining on the internet.
Communists know that actually addressing our collective problems is a much more difficult task, nothing less than the overthrow of capitalism, something that would need to survive attempts at cooption by liberal power structures like the aforementioned party. So we build from the ground up, educating one another and developing practice so that we can balance growth, education, and having impact through actions. We go to the meetings, we run the meetings, we teach one another, we organize the protests and marches, we build the strategic mutual aid events, we embed with workers' spaces and unions, we embed with and build from within the marginalized so as to be of them. Communist organizing is adding a part-time job on top of your other obligations.
Yes, we should definitely not have something like Sweden or the old New Deal. We should let children grow up in poverty, let old people suffer, and let the planet burn while we sit around discussing Trotsky and the Second International in hopes that the revolution will come.
iirc de La Cruz got less than 100,000 votes.
