Capitalism is economic tyranny Socialism is economic democracy.

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Sackeshi, Nov 25, 2022.

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Is Socialism and Democracy better than Capialism?

  1. Yes

    6 vote(s)
    15.4%
  2. No

    33 vote(s)
    84.6%
  1. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    I don't think you have the first clue about what you're talking about.
     
  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    <yawn> You seem to be very confused, and unwilling to be made less so.
    Where? Which post?
    I've seen no persuasive evidence that you even understand my premise, let alone that you hold it or stated it.
    Yet you appear to claim nature's way -- work for food -- is involuntary servitude, and that it is somehow peculiar to capitalism.
    I feel free to observe that Maslow's hierarchy has nothing whatever to do with the issue.
    Please feel free to express it more directly and succinctly, or refer to a post where you did so.
    That's a really bad example, as it does not resemble any of the relevant characteristics of capitalism.
    No, that's another really bad example because as unsavory as it might be, such an offer does not leave you any worse off than if the job had never existed. Real involuntary servitude is based on coercion: securing someone's acquiescence by depriving -- or threatening to deprive -- them of something they would otherwise have, like their life, liberty, or the fruits of their labor.

    Do you really not understand the difference between someone making an offer on unacceptable terms, and someone preventing you from dealing with a third prtyon mutually acceptable terms?
    You again show your confusion. The typical property tax can only be understood as two opposite taxes: the tax on improvement value, which measures what the owner has added to the wealth of the community by improving the land, and the tax on land value, which measures what the community is expected to add to the wealth of the landowner by providing the services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities that make the land valuable.
    Coercion must involve making someone worse off than would otherwise be. Just offering someone an opportunity they would not otherwise have is never coercion.
     
  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You have been comprehensively and conclusively demolished, you know it, and you have no answers. Simple.
     
  4. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    Publicly attempting to declare victory is something weak people need to do.
     
  5. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thank you .. for this raft of mostly made up accusations -- things that never happened .. such as me stealing your argument .. rather than you co-opting then subsequently bastardizing my position.

    "Maslow" nothing to do with it >>> ROFL -- a good one .. as if peoples wants - needs desires have nothing to do with their happiness in an economic system.. absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

    "acceptable terms vs dealing with python" -- crying "you don't understand" when it was me that told you about it. what a joke of a post mate.. just lost in a circle of your own logical fallacy.
     
  6. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Huh? The only thing that never happened, AFAICT, is you explaining how capitalism causes involuntary servitude.
    I am unable even to discern what your position is, other than utterly confused.
    Maslow's hierarchy of people's desires of course has a lot to do with their happiness. It just doesn't have anything to do with what is voluntary and involuntary in capitalism.
    "dealing with a third party on" -- something went wrong when I was editing the post (what I see is not always what I get), and I didn't catch it in time to correct it.
    Huh? I still have no idea what you incorrectly imagine yourself to have told me.

    what a joke of a post mate.. just lost in a circle of your own logical fallacy.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2022
  7. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You are just sad, now.
     
  8. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    Yeah it's me.
     
  9. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Your reflection in the mirror of projection ... Strawman fallacy and co-opting the position of others and then pretending was you who came up with it. There-in lies the joke mate .. :)
     
  10. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You lost the meaning when you failed to comprehend what involuntary means in context ..
     
  11. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Now that the thread has broken down into personal objections to personal issues, it seems like a good time to take another stab at clarifying exactly what socialism is to be and it differs from other systems. So here goes.

    In the last century socialism has, in every case, been a rebellion against oppression perpetrated by a minority class with capitalism being the most advanced such class society. In Russia in 1917 as the communist party grew in strength and ultimately led a revolution, the economy was not yet capitalist, so accordingly Lenin did not advocate a change to socialism, but rather, to what he called “state capitalism” in order to develop the productive forces and ready the country for socialism at a future time. He complied with the principle of socialism emerging from capitalism rather than the more feudalistic society of Russia.

    The intention and purpose of socialism as a rebellion against oppression by capitalism, then, is not one against individuals. Socialist revolution is not a revolution against persons, but is a revolution against a relationship of production. It is aimed at ending capitalism by targeting the relationships of capitalism. And those relationships are that of employer to employee. And to end it, it is necessary and logical to end the employer’s ownership of the employee’s production, the employee’s time on the job, and the employer’s legal and material structures that permit and preserve these items of ownership in order to end the employer-employee relationship (“the means of production”).

    These instances of ownership are referred to in Marxist and socialist literature as “private property”. And to end capitalist relationships it is necessary to end such “private property”.

    The revolution in China and elsewhere in the 1900s failed to account for this need of ending the employer-employee relationship. Instead, they took away the existing employer-employee relationship and replaced it with a different but no less oppressive employer-employee relationship: that of the employee to the state. The state became the new employer. No power of control and democracy was put in the hands of the workers. The relationship changed hands while retaining the same oppressive employer-employee relationship. Socialism was not created. China and those other revolutions no more created socialism than did the revolution in Russia.
    The question of relationships of production is why socialism is not a system in which the state owns and controls the MoP.

    So why do so many dictionaries get this wrong? —Propaganda value. If the public only consumes the news of the Russian revolution as presented in the press, and consumes the continuing stories in the news which repeat and reinforce the same theme, it is very easy to be convinced that socialism is “when the state does stuff” even though it is so wrong. The public has swallowed this approach to the news without questioning it. So it has become a “truth” for the public, albeit a completely incorrect one. But it is so much easier to sour the public against the idea of the state owning and running the workplace than it would be to get the public to reject their own collective democratic ownership and control of their workplace.

    Now, one point of clarification: Marx, himself, referred to an economy being administered by the state in socialist society. But carefully notice his actual wording as well as his meaning. He, in such cases, was referring to a settled, established, functioning socialist society. That will be very different from the initial or early versions of society as it begins its transition to socialism. In "The Critique of the Gotha Programme" Marx said the new society will be, "as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”

    IOW it will be a gradual transition from the old to the new and not fully socialism immediately. But in time, as socialism forms and consolidates, the state will take on greater and greater responsibilities for supporting and facilitating worker ownership and control. Thus the economy will then be administered by the state, yet will not be “state capitalism".
     
  12. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Involuntary would have been physical force, or threat of physical harm.
     
  13. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    or other means of coersion .. of which there are many ..
     
  14. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Coersion is merely marketing.
     
  15. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Rambling random unsupported nonsense is not an argument for much mate ..
     
  16. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    "Unsupported"? Do you want me to outline why coersion can't be considered force?
     
  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    To be coercion, a transaction has to involve one party making the other party worse off than they would otherwise be. Not worse off than they would prefer to be, or worse off than you think they should be. Worse off than they would be if the other party had never interacted with them. That is why the employer-employee relationship is not coercive, which proves socialism is wrong, but the landowner-land user relationship is, which proves capitalism is wrong.

    What can an employer do to you if you just decline the terms he offers? You are no worse off than if he had never existed. By contrast, if you decline to pay a landowner the rent he demands for his permission to use what nature provided, he is legally entitled to forcibly deprive you of your natural individual liberty right to access the naturally accessible opportunity that you would otherwise have been at liberty to access. He makes you worse off than you would otherwise be. The employer doesn't. There is nothing you, or socialists, or capitalists can ever say, do, or believe that can alter those indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
     
  18. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. In the decade before WW I, Russia had grown faster than any economy in history, and had become effectively capitalist, though at an early stage.
    No. Like socialism, capitalism is defined by ownership, not employment. The relationship of employer to employee per se is by definition consensual, and ending it means ending the freedom of contract behind the division of labor in a modern economy. The fundamental exploitative relationship in capitalism is the landowner-land user relationship, which is inherently coercive. Socialism consists in blaming the employer for what the landowner does to the worker, while capitalism consists in blaming the worker for it.
    I.e., to forcibly prohibit their consensual exchange, preventing efficient division of labor and modern civilization.
    But stealing the means of production would have no such effect, because the employer-employee relationship is not based on the employer's ownership of those things, but on the contractual relationship of the producer to the factors of production. Even if all the natural resources and producer goods were collectively owned, the producer could still enter into consensual contracts for use of them and employees' labor to effect production, whose products he would still rightly own, according to contract.
    But that is merely a Marxist anti-concept, and completely dishonest, because an economy that had private ownership of the means of production but no employment -- i.e., everyone being legally self-employed and dealing with each other as independent contractors -- would be indistinguishable from capitalism.
    This only demonstrates Marx's lack of understanding of what capitalist relationships are, and why they produce exploitation and injustice.
    Ending the employer-employee relationship means ending consensual exchange, the division of labor, and thus modern civilization.
    It was much more oppressive, because workers had no choice, no competing employers to choose from, and no liberty right to employ themselves, as they cannot under socialism.
    Except for the removal of the consent aspect....
    Sure it was. And the political operators easily removed it, as will always be the case.
    As I already proved, the employer-employee relationship is not oppressive.
    Sure they did. They created political socialism the only way it can be created: by violence
    Simple question: if the state does not own or control the means of production, who decides which workers' collective gets to use which natural resources, and how?
    :lol: The notion that lexicographers are editing definitions for propaganda value is an infantile conspiracy theory.
    It is borne out by history.
    No. They just haven't the least idea how to run their workplaces, and unlike you, they know it.
    The most charitable way to describe the above would be, "naive."
     
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  19. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I appreciate the effort .. but unfortunately this effort has many errors.

    Premise (A) "Employer-Employee relationship not coercive" - This is completely false .. for reasons you yourself point out .. if you get fired from your job ..you can't pay the rent and you are worse off for that and a whole lot of other reasons.

    Premise (B) If (A) is true then Socialism is wrong. Even if (A) was true this does not make Socialism wrong - Non Sequitur Fallacy - "It does not follow" that if (A) is True , that (B) is true

    and last .. the claim that fallacy constitutes indisputable facts .. or objective reality ... is false.
     
  20. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes - then you will at least have made an argument .. as opposed to an unsupported nonsense claim. Your argument will fail miserably .. but through the effort you may gain some enlightenment :)
     
  21. Sackeshi

    Sackeshi Well-Known Member

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    I wonder what Conservatives think socialized healthcare would look like? Cause it would look like this.

    All important medical staff, doctors nurses, and other valued staff would get their wages paid by the government tied to inflation.

    The drug companies would be required to sell their drugs at a set price only allowing for minimum profits or have government set up pharmacies that sell a not for profit generic version of everything.

    All elective procedures would still be private (looking at you plastic surgery)

    Vision, Dental, Hearing, medical, prescription and hospital would be free of charge.

    All medical executives and admin staff are out of a job.

    The average person would be taxed 2.4K a year or $200 a month (but if we had a government willing to pass universal healthcare they'd just take 500B off the military budget)

    That's based on Maryland medical costs.
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2022

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