I think human nature is inherently greedy and selfish, and capitalism is best equipped to use this in a way that benefits society. Workers are motivated to work harder and learn new skills to find the most rewarding job they can. Businesses are motivated to create products and run as efficiently as possible. Consumers are motivated to get as much value as the can out of their money. Everyone in the equation is acting selfishly and in their own self-interest (which I believe humans are inclined to do anyway) but when applied on a societal level, everyone benefits. However I will concede that this is a balancing act that requires some level of government regulation to maintain.
On the other hand, I think communism only works when everyone acts altruistically. Which is noble, but unrealistic.
I agree. Businesses and owners have too much influence. I want more unions, trust-busting, and consumer protections. Workers seem to be organizing more at least, which is a good start.
It’s the inability to see the forest for the trees. We were raised in a capitalist economic system, as were all of our past family members. The failings of capitalism appear to be the failings of human nature. In reality, meta analysis of multiple studies on human greed show that people will be inherently more kind to each other than be cruel. Quick search will bring up many articles on these studies. Plus, exchanges in material goods within communities where money hadn’t been invented would show that people didn’t barter, they gave their goods away to their neighbors, and the good deed would be remembered and reciprocated in times of need. You can look up “Gift Economy” in Wikipedia.
I also highly recommend reading or listening to the audiobook for The Dawn of Everything A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wingrow. It is extremely interesting and eye opening.
Human nature is co-operative and altruistic, there’s evidence going back to barely recognisable AS human and it’s literally a key reason why we’re the dominant species.
@Taleya Is there any scientific material on this? I've had this discussion again and again with my family, from the far side of ultimately altruistic to vastly egoistic... and if there is (hopefully unbiased) scientific material on this, we might settle this argument.
off the top of my head there’s the ancient remains found multiple times of disabled and/or badly injured hominids who were treated (signs of healing) and lived long into adulthood despite requiring extensive care from others, the fact an extended childhood in our species means that our young are vulnerable for a far longer period than any other animal (a necessity since you can’t fit a fully formed adult brain through a human pelvis) and require cooperation with others to raise and continue the species, the fact we have developed specialised skillsets (that are shared between us rather than developing and being held isolate and then lost when the person who holds then dies).
When you have a group that works together go up against one that doesn’t, the former comes out on top. When this competition is for resources and survival, it becomes an evolutionary pressure.
If you do a quick googs you should find scores of whitepapers - but the egoistic argument falls flat on its face out of the gate because we have the word ‘sociopath’ and it’s not considered something to emulate. Neither is ‘egotistical’. We’ve literally got coded into our language that isolation, self-absorption and ‘self serving at the cost to others’ are bad concepts. Being a self absorbed shithead is documented as wrong as far back as our tales can possibly go.
Not going to downvote, but I do think you’re lacking quite a bit of insight into the reasons human society exists at all. Cooperation is the reason human society exists at all, so saying we’re inheritly selfish is kinda laughable in that context.
I would encourage you to look up information on dialectical Materialism and the necessity of capitalism as a stage in that dialectical.
Capitalism had a purpose, and it’s past time for us to move on.
Explain open source, free software, linux community, lemmy / the fediverse, and many many other things not formed around profit, largely maintained by people in their free time motivated by community over profit.
People aren’t inherently greedy. People are born into a system that rewards greed, and punishes altruism. There have been many different societies with many different political and economic systems, and capitalism is a fairly new one all things considered.
Rational self interest is irrational. If only a few can succeed, chances are you fail. If everyone only looks out for themselves, then everyone fails. Humanity’s biggest strength — what set us apart from many other animals — is our ability to work together and look out for each other.
Capitalism doesn’t work, and is destroying the Earth.
Freeloaders, like large corporations taking open source and then not giving back, is yet another symptom of a system that rewards extraction and self interest.
FOSS exists despite capitalism. The fact that people are willing to work on something out of their own passion, or sense of community, directly contradicts the fundamental assertion of capitalism.
Fuck that, I do not concede the point. At least, I don't concede that humans are /more/ selfish than we are compassionate. Our emotional wiring evolved for hundred-human tribes that required a lot more empathy and cooperation than competition.
You don't have to go so far as to disincentivize greed. Greed is socially useful in small doses. Adam Smith wasn't a total idiot. Just stop letting the people who shape society make it so only the greedheads survive.
You’re preaching to the choir. “Concede the point” is a figure of speech which means the speaker is going explore an assumption despite not believing it themselves.
My point is that the whole “capitalism is the best economic system we know about because humans are greedy” argument is sophistry. It doesn’t even make sense in the context of its own flawed premise.
Even if it was true that human nature was inherently greedy and selfish then it would be an argument for creating systems that discourage such behaviors. What you’re arguing is akin to saying that you should encourage a person struggling with alcoholism to drink more.
@Gigan@SouthEndSunset
Human nature is not inherently greedy and selfish because human beings possess an inherent capacity for empathy, cooperation, and solidarity, which when nurtured within equitable social structures, can create a collective ethos centered on mutual aid, communal ownership, and the pursuit of the common good, transcending the narrow confines of greed and selfishness perpetuated by systems of exploitation and inequality like capitalism.
Greed, selfishness and our hyper-individualism is a product of our society, not society as a product of our nature
These sentiments are something encouraged by those in power as it is advantageous for them to have the masses in want
There are underlying instincts for survival and dominance that have manifested today as greed and selfishness, but that is something an equitable society can address given the chance
To suggest otherwise is incredibly degrading humanity
@Gigan@SouthEndSunset
There is nothing bad about the collective ownership of the means of production. I can, however, think of many things that are bad about one person owning the entire means production despite not doing any work, which is what exists under capitalism.
Dialectical Materialism. Right now, they are. You either work towards communism or capitalism moves towards consolidation of capital. Those are your choices.
thats not a mix though, it was just a bandaid over capitalism, borrowed from socialistic ideas. the capital accumulating class was never extinguished, eventually leading to the same problems today all over again.
hence why we advocate for a systemic change, if you can’t accumulate capital, you can’t buy back the system again like it is rn. this is pretty much the crux of the issue here.
I mean, it’s just literally what they call themselves. Sure, they lie or don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, but that’s kind of their whole deal.
Power dichotomy will always slander any “third option”. They’ll even say something dumb on its face like third way is “x”. There are only two solutions, “with us” or “against us”. Anything outside these choices is literally unthinkable for the power structure. The power structure cannot imagine a future where it does not exist. If you ask the unthinkable alternative, they will default to “oh you must be one of the enemy”. We know that category well. They stand for every thing we don’t stand for.
Describe what you consider the “third way” that isn’t capitalists owning the means of production, workers owning the means, or the state owning the means.
No, I asked for a third pill. I didn’t say “take my third pill”. I also hope we can escape the narrow minded concept of a society centered on the tug of war to “own the means”.
That’s what saved me too but I’m still stuck with unpredictable crashes, 150GB of HDD / 8GB of RAM lost in the void and bullshit ads for copilot in the lock screen …
I used WSL for a job and it worked fine. It’s kind of a weird VM that doesn’t really integrate with the host OS fully, but it works for many use cases.
Git BASH has more direct system integration and hardware access than WSL, though it’s been a couple of years since I had to look at WSL at all. Hopefully they’ve improved the integration over time.
When you’re marrying someone you’re usually not like “lets try this and see where it goes” (that’s called dating), you’re more like “till death do us part” so yes, divorce is failure more often than not. Ending a relationship, not so much
I can understand your perspective, but I want to offer an alternative view, maybe less bound to societal preconceptions. I married my partner for many reasons, financial, wanting to raise a child together, wanting to share my life with them… But staying married for the rest of our lives is a crazy concept for us. The marriage has its purposes, but we both know that life can change and that we could decide that we had a good time, and that now the time has come to move on. A marriage is less romanticised for us, it has practical reasons. I guess being polyamorous helps with defining new relationship ideas on many levels ;)
None of those reasons require marriage, so it’s not a satisfying reason. I want to know why MARRIAGE, specifically? Just checking it off a bucket list perhaps?
It seems to me that all of the reasons they provides are all reasons to get married. Especially raising a child, given the privileges that are afforded to married parents in a lot of places (especially in the case of adoption, or IVF using a stranger’s genetic material). Something doesn’t have to require marriage for the benefits of it to outweigh the cons for a specific situation.
The question seems to me to be kind of confusing. What alternative are you comparing it to? Some sort of local structure like domestic partnership?
The post I’m replying to was acting as if they had some new wisdom from being polyamorous and their perspective on marriage. But it sounds like they’re just using it as a business move which is something a lot of non polyamorous people do as well, and nothing new. I wasn’t asking what reasons could possibly exist to get married outside of romance or whatever you’re talking about, I was asking SPECIFICALLY THEM why they bothered, with their “unique” perspective on relationships. But it seems the only actual reason they have is taxes, despite their diatribe.
Taxes alone is a valid reason. So long as there are social, financial and legal benifits to the institution then there is no argument to have. If you feel that love or religion is a requirment that I feel your concept of marraige is outdated.
No, you are a misunderstanding me. The post I’m replying to was acting as if they had some new wisdom from being polyamorous and their perspective on marriage. But it sounds like they’re just using it as a business move which is something a lot of non polyamorous people do as well, and nothing new. I wasn’t asking what reasons could possibly exist to get married outside of romance or whatever you’re talking about, I was asking SPECIFICALLY THEM why they bothered. But it seems the only actual reason they have is taxes, despite their diatribe.
In a lot of animal species, relationships are lifelong. For most of their history, humans had life long marriages in all corners of the world. Why are you calling it "a crazy concept "?
Tankies have a lot of confirmation bias. Facts alternate to their beliefs that communism is the be-all, end-all of human suffering don’t go over well with them.
It might be if it were actually achievable in the way it was envisioned, but ideal communism isn’t the communism we see anywhere in reality.
Why do you believe Communism isn’t achievable as envisioned? Is it possible that you don’t actually know what is envisioned in Communism, just a few slogans and buzzwords?
Russian and Chinese famines weren’t intentional though. In China, because they were literally coming out from being the hungriest country in the planet, and decided to change too much too fast, you can’t really turn such a huge country around overnight. In Russia because they needed to collectivize really quickly in preparation for WW2, and the landlords at the time decided to literally burn grain and kill cattle instead of handing their big estates. The numbers offered by western authorities on both are greatly exaggerated without adequate proof.
After the tragic events, both countries saw unprecedented improvements in quality of life, nutrition and life expectancy. These events didn’t really repeat after they stabilized, something that can’t be said of most capitalist countries to this day.
In capitalism the owner class needs people to be in despair for them to be willing to work such shitty, desperate jobs. Millions of poor and starving people have to exist either in your own country, or elsewhere in a neocolony for one billionaire to be able to steal so much accumulated capital to himself. It’s common to see them taking decisions that help with their accumulation at the expense of everyone else (eg. Oil companies covering up climate change). We are already making more food than we would need to be able to feed everyone fairly, yet capitalist countries don’t.
There’s never be a full communist or capitalist society. What wears arguing over how far towards either we should go. Also, FYI for those that don’t know The USSR and China are not communist. Both are/were dictatorships that call themselves communist.
The problem is that you won't ever get a full communist country, at least not for a very, VERY long time, because you always get those few fartweasels who end up hijacking it and turning it into a dictatorship. You need to eliminate that problem first, and with how the world is sliding into fascism, it doesn't look like we're any where near close to solving that dilemma
Even when they don’t turn it into a dictatorship, they may just turn it back into capitalism, like Russia did. And when that happens, they just sell all the old estates to the highest bidder, making them richer and turning them into oligarchs. And that becomes functionally equivalent to a dictatorship of the bourgeois.
Look up dialectical Materialism. China is ‘communist’ as they are progressing along the roadmap Dialectical Materialism provides towards achieving communism.
Are they making actual progress on that path, though? They have tons of billionaires, lots of people go bankrupt there from medical bills or are homeless (unlike some other communist countries). The state owns a lot of businesses, but then so does Norway. All their initiatives seem to be related to hurting gay people or making it harder for kids to play video games. They’ve arrested some rich people and cracked down on some corruption, but that also sounds like it could come from a capitalist country. I can’t really find any sort of long-term plan.
Many cryptographers are suspicious of the NIST and their selection process, e.g. Daniel Bernstein (the guy who made ED25519) is currently suing the NIST for various infringements ( blog.cr.yp.to/20220805-nsa.html )
Use anything NIST related with care. Use ED25519 or if not available, RSA with large key sizes (4096+).
Ah yes, my grandparents, the landlords. Wait hol’ up, they were working people, not landlords. GDR fucked them regardless.
“bUt tHAT wASn’T rEaL ComMunIsM” If neither the USSR nor China could achieve true Communism, then maybe it isn’t so much a realistic goal as a utopian ideal, a convenient justification for all kinds of crimes against humanity that occur in its pursuit.
It wasnt the GDR, it was the totality of global Capital conspiring to defeat the biggest threat to their power structure. What did the GDR do specifically that ‘fucked’ your grandparents?
It’s weird, we tried having a small group of people control the flow of capital and it was unpopular each time. Let’s try it again but call it something different or say it was something else when we tried it before.
The thing is, both USSR/China and USA don’t fit the ideals of Communism. While in USA suffers from the gap between rich and poor, USSR/China suffered from the difference between the people and the government. Just because you get rid of economical suppression doesn’t mean you can’t have political suppression. Sure these countries had economical problems but a lot of their problems could have been avoided if the government would have actually worked for the people and not for themselves.
it WAS real communism and ur grandparents probably deserved it. absolute worst case senario no system is perfect and good people still get fucked over sometimes for no good reason, difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
As I understand it, “real communism” is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.
Communism is not anarchic. Stateless with respect to Communism refers to instruments of government by which one class suppresses another. Communism was always meant to have a world republic.
i wonder what planet u came from; clearly u arent human cuz any human would understand the context here. actually u are human (probably) and u are just making a meaningless semantics argument in bad faith.
when left leaning libs defend their ideals from right leaning libs by saying “it wasnt real communism” like in this case. they mean that the thing being talked about did not adhere to communist ideals.
when u say that “it wasnt real communism” u mean that there is a distinction between communism and socialism or lower stage communism as marx called it.
the gdr was a socialist country led by communist with the goal of establishing communism when they original lib said it wasnt real communism what he mean was that “the gdr was not a socialist country and it wasnt led by communist”, then when i said it was real communism i meant to re state the fact that the gdr was a socialist country led by communist. so it is self evident that ur argument is irrelevant no one was actually talking about where the gdr was a stateless, money less, classless society, we were talking about whether the leadership of the gdr truly adhered to communist principles.
as to why ur argument looks to be in bad faith u would have to live under a fucking rock not understand this context or far more likely u are arguing in bad faith.
I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn’t even realize that socialism and communism aren’t complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.
Real Communism, along Marxist lines, has a government. Marxism isn’t anarchic, the “stateless” part is specifically referring to instruments of the government by which one class oppresses another. Marxism has always been about achieving a global Communist republic.
Take it from a self-identified pinko commie and someone born in one of those regimes, it was not real communism. It was authoritarianism with a strong (but at times selectively applied) social safety net. To say that their grandparents deserved it when you know nothing about them is fucking absurd. You’re not helping your point or cause. You’re just being a child.
first anyone who would call themselves a pinko isnt a communist, ur probably a rad lib. second do u truly think that some lib the grandchild of gusanos can even be convinced by a random person on the internet to be a communist im not helping my cause sure, this is just for fun but if i had wrote some essay pointing out why the gdr was a real socialist country led by real communist which really adhered to communist ideals and said that its unfortunate what happened to his gusanos but that bad shit still happens everywhere i wouldnt be helping anything either.
I mean, it wasn’t, at least not according to the actual people who ran those governments. The USSR and the CCP were/are revolutionary governments, real communism happens when/if the revolutionary governments succeeds and transitions the means of control back to the proletariat.
and ur grandparents probably deserved it.
Really working hard to build those bridges of mutual respect and cooperation I see. This is one of the key reasons the USSR imploded in the first place.
The expansion of Soviet influence happened under the influence of Russian chauvinism, a major contradiction with the more successful maoist ideology today. Instead of allowing communism to be shaped by individual ethnicities or nations they did their best to russify or simply purge the base of power in the country, bolshevists or not.
Stalin and Beria did a whole bunch of purging of leftist to secure their control over the party. If you actually think everyone the Soviets killed deserved it, please go read about the Makhnovist, the Mensheviks, the Georgian bolshevist, hell go read what the Soviets did to the original leftist leader in North Korea.
difference is under capitalism it is constant under socialism it is rare.
Unfortunately that’s just not true. Revolutions are highly hierarchical due to their inherent need to react to militant reactionaries. As they begin to solidify their revolution and take over the responsibilities of the state, this hierarchy gets transferred from the the state.
Authoritarian governments are highly efficient, but are extremely hard to get away from once established. Often times the militant leader of the revolution is not the guy you want to be in complete control of the state after establishing a revolutionary government.
Mao was decent enough to accept this after the failure of the cultural revolution, Stalin on the other hand…
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty. the argument was never a semantics one about the specifics of what communism is and where the lines between socialism and communism are, what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did. u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved) isnt gonna change their mind cuz some random person on the internet told them otherwise nor do i care to make that argument.
saying that lower stage communism as marx called it or socialism as we call it today wasnt real communism is meaningless, and at best petty.
The problem is that the Soviet Union couldn’t even be correctly defined in Marxist terms to be socialist. Socialism according to Marx was a lower form of communism, one described as a transition from democratic capitalism to communism. The Soviets did not transition from a democratic state to communism, there were no valid democratic election from 38’-89’.
what was said when they said it wasnt real communism was that it wasnt led by communist and that it did not adhere to communist ideals and goals which it did.
I mean I still think there’s room for debate depending on who you’re talking about. I tend to think that the most simple definitional test whether or not you are adhering to communist ideology is to examine how the means of production is being managed.
Has the state expanded the means of control over the production to the workers in an equitable manor? Is the equity created by the workers being shared to the entire population of workers? By what means do workers negotiate their control over the means of production?
My arguments against Soviet communism is that workers had no meaningful control over the means of production. Groups of workers had no real access to influence the government such as voting as Marx described. The equity created by the workers was not shared equitably throughout the Union, with non ethnic Russians generally acting as a resource to be extracted from.
u would have to be some kind of alien lizard to not understand the context here which is why i know u are arguing in bad faith.
I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact that when Marx was dreaming of a communist nation, he was not thinking it was going to start in Russia. It was an absolute shock when the 1rst country to commit to communism was autocratic Russia instead of Democratic Germany. Meaning a lot of Marxist writing isn’t really applicable to the Soviet State, Marx didn’t think about revolution occuring in a authoritarian state.
also some idiot lib going around saying that the gdr wasnt real communism because their ancestors had a bad experience with that system (or more likely they were landlords or capitalist and go what they deserved)
Or, they were one of the tens of thousands of leftist that were purged by Beria or Stalin. Pretending that the Soviets only killed landlords is not only academically dishonest, it’s harmful to future leftist endeavors. Self criticism is essential to eliminating internal contradictions from arising within the state.
It’ll be different this time guys, no really, just one more time guys, we’ll get it right, it wasn’t even a good try, let us go again, this time for real, no way it’ll be anything other than a utopia guys, the people will have the power, guys.
Lol it sounds like someone trying to defend capitalism. “No, it’s totally fine, we just didn’t implement it right. There are certain laws and regulations that can fix it, we swear!”
Yet for some reason any flaw with a communist country is endemic to communism itself, instead of the implementation, contexts of their outside conditions, or foreign influence, or general state of economic development.
Communism isn’t a series of sacrifices for an eventual greater good, Socialism is definitely better than what preceeded Socialism in Russia and China. The idea of True Communism can only be achieved globally, sure, and in the far future, sure, but Communism is about building towards that through gradual improvements.
You’re implying that any progress forward is useless if it doesn’t immediately achieve a far future society, it’s devoid of logic.
No, I just have very different ideas what progress is.
Progress in my eyes is made when a society becomes more democratic, and when we solve conflicts without bloodshed.
In that sense, sure, the GDR was a step in the right direction, but nazi germany didn’t exactly set the bar very high.
The idea of socialism is nice, but you hardly have any progress if the system (be it built on free markets or planned economies) doesn’t work to improve ordinary citizens’ lives, but only to keep the powerful in power.
Personaly, I don’t care much about free markets or planned economies. I think the best approach, as so often, is a kind of blend, a social market economy that allows independent companies in a framework that protects workers, consumers and the environment.
Thing is, the specifics of the economic system aren’t important. What matters is that the people are the ones who decide them.
There is nothing wrong with pursuing a utopian society, but ultimatly you have no control over what happens in the far future (neither should you, future societies need to be ruled by future people).
The only thing you can control is the present and the near future, so what really matters aren’t the ends you strive for, but the means you employ while doing so.
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