There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst. I’m sure you’ve noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.
What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst.
And capitalists will allow this “at its worst” phase in order to capture the market, before squeezing it. This pattern is consistent in many industries.
It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it’s jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.
At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness
I mean the stages of economic transition have been “fuedalism->capitalism-> socialism” as each one is progressively more efficient and supercedes the previous.
That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
Representative “democracy” alienates the common man from the political process while maintaining a semblance of democracy. For this reason it is the ideal political form for capitalism, an economic system which alienates power from the masses and concentrates it in the hands of a few.
Class interests are the primary axis on which all political activity turns. Getting the working class to
does not help them, it helps those in power.
Representation is necessary as a matter of scale, though. There are other issues with small r republicanism that are more specifically nefarious, like the legalization of bribery, the tilting of power towards land owners via the senate, etc.
What about the absolute lack of “representative democracy” we experience under capitalism?
I’d argue that the capitalist system is more at odds with representative democracy than other systems mentioned. Most workers have no say in what is produced, who produces it, how they are paid, how much products are sold for, etc. Instead, we end up with figurehead CEO’s and nameless investors making all of those decisions, and of course they do everything to minimize costs, maximize profits, and disempower workers so that they can collect billions of dollars at the expense of the workers who actually make their companies run. If we had representative democracy do you think we’d have billionaires?
The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it’s nature, creates a “ruling class”, the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.
…and I don’t feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it’s not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.
Hence, what political system is required for a truly equal society?
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
Consider for 3 seconds that what you “learned” about the world is a product of the system that produced it
Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it
‘democratic’ is used today a lot of the time to describe neoliberal capitalist governments that are controlled (influenced greatly) by the capitalist class
for example we can look at somewhere like the US and point out how the majority of people in government are all rich capitalists and how through lobbying and campaign ‘donations’ and owning the media the capitalist class controls the government
marxists call this kind of state a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capital), as opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat (workers)
dictatorship here meaning general ‘rule’ not the specific meaning that the word has taken on more recently
so ‘democratic’ capitalist countries that exist today are under the “rule of the capitalist class” or “dictatorship of capital”
so if you wanted an actual democratic (in the real sense of the word) government, you’d need a government which is controlled by the majority of people, that is, the workers, a dictatorship of the proletariat
under such a system capitalists cannot be allowed to have influence on the government, which is something that is not really possible unless you implement tight capital controls like they do in China
the reason being that capital flight is a very real threat to a capitalist economy, and having that power over a government lets the capitalist class dictate terms and change laws to be favorable to them despite what the majority of people might want.
so to answer your question, the only way to have a government with a capitalist system not be controlled by capitalists is through suppression of the capitalist class, if they are allowed to have influence then you no longer have actual democracy.
Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth).
But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we’ve seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy.
We’ve seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections).
This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It’s not sexy, though.
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta stuff it’s communism <- This is you, but unironically. Educate yourself on the subject of which you claim knowledge.
Okay, well, I’ve studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you’re either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?
Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.
The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.
The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.
The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.
Okay, so extremely abridged, here is what seperates capitalism from socialism.
Under capitalism, private individuals own the means of production, distribution, and sustenance. Workers are forced to go to one of these private individuals and exchange their labor power for a wage. Capitalist profit is generated by paying the worker less than their labor power is worth but enough to sustain workers as a class. The workers are prevented from using the means of production without entering into the wage labor model through the threat of physical violence.
Under socialism, the means of production are managed in common, somewhere along a sliding scale of the people working in a workplace and democracy having control of how the workplace operates depending on the system
You’ll note that these both can operate within markets, and both require at least some planning.
To add on to what others have said, the concept that capitalism is just letting the economy do its thing with no government influence is really mystifying and innaccurate. Capitalism requires immense support from a state (some sort of apparatus with a monopoly on force) in order to guarantee and enforce property rights, contracts, the collection of debts, ensure stable currencies that are widely accepted as payment etc. Just because the state is overwhelmingly working on the side of people with capital to preserve and accumulate that capital, doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
For the record, I think before this your definition of capitalism was defensible, but then communicating clearly would require using the term “liberalism” to describe the government.
There is a difference between being a hard opposite and being mutually exclusive. They are not hard opposites, but they are mutually exclusive, like being a plant, fungus, or animal. None of those categories are the opposite of any other, and they share many interesting commonalities, but one cannot be both.
Engineers and designers made it great. Reddit could very well exist without capitalism (see Lemmy). What fucked up Reddit was explicitly capitalist incentives.
Aaron Schwartz did not author reddit in search of capital. He created it because he thought it would facilitate internet communication. Ohanian thought he could profit off of it.
When did capitalism make Reddit great? It took a while for capitalism to take effect, and it was still ok. Capitalism took effect, and it was bearable. Now it’s shit.
It just wouldn’t have existed at all without VC funding.
Lemmy exists now because Reddit already existed, built the model link sharing site, and over years of ad revenue and VC money, convinced communities to gather there and then convinced those same communities to move to lemmy
Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great, before making it terrible.
There’s a balance in there somewhere. What we got ain’t it tho.
There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst. I’m sure you’ve noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.
And capitalists will allow this “at its worst” phase in order to capture the market, before squeezing it. This pattern is consistent in many industries.
Reddit was never great lmaoo
It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it’s jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.
At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness
I meant the platform more than the company.
It’s my favorite format for social media… that’s why I’m on lemmy.
communism made lemmy so where does that leave us
I guess ‘a lot of free spare time in a socialized copitalism’ made lemmy.
That’s precious…
Are you saying you used Reddit for its jailbait etc subs? Cause Reddit was much more than it’s jailbait subs.
…
Do you have a point?
yeah
Here’s a link to a peer-reviewed study by Philip P. Bandhurst proving you’re an idiot
Go on…
Are you really trying to do that?
Of course.
It was good when it had only a few hundred thousand users, but obviously you weren’t there.
no that was when it was a jailbait/creepshots/libertarian/“hacker” site. Still not good. Still pedo and soy.
I mean the stages of economic transition have been “fuedalism->capitalism-> socialism” as each one is progressively more efficient and supercedes the previous.
I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.
I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.
Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.
Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.
They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.
That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
This just made China’s system click in my mind. Thanks Awoo
All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?
Representative “democracy” alienates the common man from the political process while maintaining a semblance of democracy. For this reason it is the ideal political form for capitalism, an economic system which alienates power from the masses and concentrates it in the hands of a few.
Class interests are the primary axis on which all political activity turns. Getting the working class to
does not help them, it helps those in power.
Representation is necessary as a matter of scale, though. There are other issues with small r republicanism that are more specifically nefarious, like the legalization of bribery, the tilting of power towards land owners via the senate, etc.
…and so what do you have instead?
What about the absolute lack of “representative democracy” we experience under capitalism?
I’d argue that the capitalist system is more at odds with representative democracy than other systems mentioned. Most workers have no say in what is produced, who produces it, how they are paid, how much products are sold for, etc. Instead, we end up with figurehead CEO’s and nameless investors making all of those decisions, and of course they do everything to minimize costs, maximize profits, and disempower workers so that they can collect billions of dollars at the expense of the workers who actually make their companies run. If we had representative democracy do you think we’d have billionaires?
Literally “whataboutism”.
I’m not interested in how the current system is broken. That’s obvious. What do you have in it’s place?
What specifically is at odds?
I would guess they’re reacting to the idea of “repressing” capitalists
The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it’s nature, creates a “ruling class”, the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.
…and I don’t feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it’s not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.
Hence, what political system is required for a truly equal society?
Consider for 3 seconds that what you “learned” about the world is a product of the system that produced it
Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it
deleted by creator
‘democratic’ is used today a lot of the time to describe neoliberal capitalist governments that are controlled (influenced greatly) by the capitalist class
for example we can look at somewhere like the US and point out how the majority of people in government are all rich capitalists and how through lobbying and campaign ‘donations’ and owning the media the capitalist class controls the government
marxists call this kind of state a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capital), as opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat (workers)
dictatorship here meaning general ‘rule’ not the specific meaning that the word has taken on more recently
so ‘democratic’ capitalist countries that exist today are under the “rule of the capitalist class” or “dictatorship of capital”
so if you wanted an actual democratic (in the real sense of the word) government, you’d need a government which is controlled by the majority of people, that is, the workers, a dictatorship of the proletariat
under such a system capitalists cannot be allowed to have influence on the government, which is something that is not really possible unless you implement tight capital controls like they do in China
the reason being that capital flight is a very real threat to a capitalist economy, and having that power over a government lets the capitalist class dictate terms and change laws to be favorable to them despite what the majority of people might want.
so to answer your question, the only way to have a government with a capitalist system not be controlled by capitalists is through suppression of the capitalist class, if they are allowed to have influence then you no longer have actual democracy.
deleted by creator
Politics and economics are not independent of each other One explanation
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Bourgeois democracy vs proletarian democracy. Lenin wrote a lot about this.
Socialism is also an economic system.
Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we’ve seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We’ve seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It’s not sexy, though.
As opposed to the corrupt oligarchies liberal states are… I guess you just don’t call it corruption when it’s working as intended.
Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual
Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties
Communism is where everything is owned by the state
This is not correct, I encourage you to do some more reading about how coats are made if you’d like to understand this better.
best way I’ve seen to tell someone to read capital lmao
You are impressingly wrong
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta stuff it’s communism <- This is you, but unironically. Educate yourself on the subject of which you claim knowledge.
:che-smile:
Yes you are wrong.
That’s because you dont know what capitalism or socialism is
Okay, well, I’ve studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you’re either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?
I apologize if this is too blunt.
So I understand total capitalism as an entirely market driven economy with no government influence
And total communism as an entirely planned and government prescribed economy
And socialism as some of the economy is market driven and some government planned.
Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.
The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.
The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.
The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.
no more half measures walter
Okay, so extremely abridged, here is what seperates capitalism from socialism.
Under capitalism, private individuals own the means of production, distribution, and sustenance. Workers are forced to go to one of these private individuals and exchange their labor power for a wage. Capitalist profit is generated by paying the worker less than their labor power is worth but enough to sustain workers as a class. The workers are prevented from using the means of production without entering into the wage labor model through the threat of physical violence.
Under socialism, the means of production are managed in common, somewhere along a sliding scale of the people working in a workplace and democracy having control of how the workplace operates depending on the system
You’ll note that these both can operate within markets, and both require at least some planning.
Video: we need a mixture of capitalism and communism is bullshit
Book: Explaining why markets are bad
Edit: this is ignoring the way the state plays a role in these economic formations but Im trying to keep it simple.
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To add on to what others have said, the concept that capitalism is just letting the economy do its thing with no government influence is really mystifying and innaccurate. Capitalism requires immense support from a state (some sort of apparatus with a monopoly on force) in order to guarantee and enforce property rights, contracts, the collection of debts, ensure stable currencies that are widely accepted as payment etc. Just because the state is overwhelmingly working on the side of people with capital to preserve and accumulate that capital, doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
For the record, I think before this your definition of capitalism was defensible, but then communicating clearly would require using the term “liberalism” to describe the government.
There is a difference between being a hard opposite and being mutually exclusive. They are not hard opposites, but they are mutually exclusive, like being a plant, fungus, or animal. None of those categories are the opposite of any other, and they share many interesting commonalities, but one cannot be both.
Capital-Communism would be like anarcho-monarchism, it’s an oxymoron
Engineers and designers made it great. Reddit could very well exist without capitalism (see Lemmy). What fucked up Reddit was explicitly capitalist incentives.
Lemmy would not have existed without Reddit. Lemmy is a clone of reddit!
Plus reddit put all the work intro attracting users and communities in the first place, before driving them to places like lemmy.
You should probably read up on the original author of reddit, Aaron Schwartz, before claiming capitalism made it.
I know about Aaron Schwartz. His beliefs didn’t change the fact that Reddit had major VC backing and wouldn’t have existed without it.
It’s really not a hard concept to grasp.
Bruh, reddit was created in search of capital. It grew and attracted communities in search of capital.
Reddit wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
Aaron Schwartz did not author reddit in search of capital. He created it because he thought it would facilitate internet communication. Ohanian thought he could profit off of it.
People made Reddit great, not capitalism.
When did capitalism make Reddit great? It took a while for capitalism to take effect, and it was still ok. Capitalism took effect, and it was bearable. Now it’s shit.
Capitalism made Reddit a CSAM site early in its existence
Which aspects of Reddit are you imagining wouldn’t be possible without capitalism?
Reddit existed for years without capitalism.
@dartos @Awoo what about capitalism made it great ? It was the people that made it great imo it just came to be under capitalism
It just wouldn’t have existed at all without VC funding.
Lemmy exists now because Reddit already existed, built the model link sharing site, and over years of ad revenue and VC money, convinced communities to gather there and then convinced those same communities to move to lemmy