Edit: I was proven correct
this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Lefty Memes
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wat
Like out of all arguments against a socialist state, saying it’s like cancer which is like capitalism is… dumb? Like how? Which socialist state metastasised and “grew” without natural limits? What even is this argument?
That's not what this says. It says the real problem is authoritarianism, not the economic system.
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Found a tankie!
There is no such thing as a socialist state. That's state capitalism
The reasoning is based on two axioms of anarchist system theory:
- Systems of hierarchical power structures beget authoritarianism (i.e. monopolization of power) and domination.
- Power structures seek to perpetuate themselves.
I don't know if he came up with that theoretical framework, but I got those ideas from Anark. Check him out.
You may disagree with the idea of the necessity of a socialist state, but saying it’s “not a thing” is just ignorant.
What even is socialism to you?
Socialism is when the workers own the means of production in a usufruct property relation.
What's IMHO more important is the anarchist definition of a state: A state is the hierarchical power structure which alienates the people from the business of their everyday lives.
If you have a state alienating the workers from their everyday business. That doesn't make a state socialist. The whole notion is an idealist illusion.
I think that definition of socialism is insufficient. It sounds like an end-goal. I thought we were all communists. We wanted the dissolution of all hierarchy, of the state and of classes, of money and work.
Socialism was then just born as a way to define what comes right after capitalism, and right before communism.
We can still all agree that those are two different socialisms in themselves. It won’t look the same right after capitalism from right before communism.
But getting back to it, how does your socialism maintain itself without markets? How does it protect itself? How does it function without regulations? You imply a state with your definition and don’t even realise it.
Jumping in to hopefully clarify something. The anarchist definition of the state is different than the Marxist definition of the state.
The anarchist definition of socialism is also different than the Marxist definition of socialism. Generally speaking, to anarchists, socialism and communism are synonyms, and there really isn't the lower/higher phase distinction.
State capitalism is a term used to describe the economic systems of places like the USSR. The state steps in and becomes the capitalist, in essence. The worker is in a similar position of not really owning the means of production, in the same way that the public doesn't really national parks in the US. In paper, in theory, and perhaps in spirit, the workers in a socialist state own the means of production, but in reality it is owned by the [the party/the state/an elite group of people]. There is still a similar incentive towards growth, there is still a group of people profiting off the backs of those who do the actual work of creating the items needed for survival, and there still a disconnected between those who do the labor of keeping all of us fed and clothed and the use of those things. Workers are not directly in control, and that's the problem, to the anarchist view.
Effectively, the anarchist is view that we can and should move directly from our current system to a stateless (by the anarchist definition of the state), classless, moneyless system, without an intermediary state in between.
I do understand all that. But explain this, how are all these commodity producing worker owned business regulated? How do they operate on a market? Who sets and controls this market? Who ensures collective property of the means of production?
Socialism as an economic model with the workers owning the means of production kinda still has commodity production, money etc. otherwise the whole concept of a collectively owned business makes no sense.
Unless you advocate for the complete atomization of groups into self-sufficient cells that have no organisation between them, to me you are still describing a state.
Also, can’t workers be in direct control of their means of production in a socialist state? What mechanically or physically impedes that? Like coops were a major part of the soviet model, right?
How long do you envision the transition from capitalism to socialism/communism to take then?
(Also also, Marx did talk a lot about “lower stage” communism or socialism later in life. Also about how a revolution could move towards a completely free worker’s state instead of going through an authoritarian phase - he had correspondence with a revolutionary peasant woman in Russia about this it’s really interesting, if I find it I’ll share).
e had correspondence with a revolutionary peasant woman in Russia about this it’s really interesting, if I find it I’ll share).
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While I agree in principle with you (except for where a socialist state is basically capitalism?!), I disagree very much with your condescending tone. The other person you were commenting on has obviously not got what you meant and you dismissed them outright as a tankie.
I just listened a bit into the video until the guy talked about that the means have to be in line with ends. If you are a prick like this to other people enjoying your power of knowledge over them you definitely won't get to a compassionate community free of hierarchies. Same goes for the guy in the video, reeking of male privilege.
So why not give people a chance to learn something? (Except if they are trolling of course.)
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Denying that State Socialism exists at all is to deny the entirety of Marxism and discredits Anarchism as well. You don't have to deny Marxism being Socialist to be an Anarchist, all denying even the validity of Marxism does is weaken the leftist movement with sectarianism.
Democratically accountable administrative positions do not beget a monopolization of power except in the Class that controls the state. In a Socialist, worker owned state, this does not result in increased power in fewer and fewer hands, as there is no accumulation.
Again, you can be an Anarchist, but stating that Socialism cannot have a State is absurd.
Denying that State Socialism exists at all is to deny the entirety of Marxism
No, only Marxism-Leninism, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, etc. I can stomach that, as I don't really care for Lenin and those that succeeded him.
and discredits Anarchism as well
I'm curious: please explain how it discredits anarchism.
all denying even the validity of Marxism does is weaken the leftist movement with sectarianism
Historically, whenever authoritarian leftists claimed that they're all about "left unity", they usually turned on anarchists as soon as they had the chance. Thanks, I'll pass.
Democratically accountable administrative positions do not beget a monopolization of power except in the Class that controls the state. In a Socialist, worker owned state, this does not result in increased power in fewer and fewer hands, as there is no accumulation.
As soon as you have a state which owns the means of production, the workers aren't the ones who own those means, but rather a new class of bureaucrats. That monopolisation and concentration of power is intrinsic to so-called stats-socialism. Which is why I call it state-capitalism. The burgeoisie is merely replaced by the class of bureaucrats.
Again, you can be an Anarchist, but stating that Socialism cannot have a State is absurd.
No, it's consistent with my beliefs and definitions.
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It seems that you're proposing that there's some point of sustainable economic output. Under all socialist states once that sustainable point is reached economic output would be frozen and from thereafter only that level of economic output is achieved.
Then what happens? Do you also freeze population levels somehow? Do you start restricting who has access to resources they need because there are more people than resources than can be produced under the economic output cap?
Why isn’t there a sustainable economic output? Are you then suggesting that there’s nothing we can do and that we will keep increasing stock prices until the entire ecosystem collapses and we go extinct?
It’s ludicrous to say that we can’t live in a way that is sustainable. We did it for millennia after all. So either we can’t keep growing forever and at some point it will have to stop, or we need less people, or we need to be more efficient with resources or a combination of the above (though the first one is always true).
And funny that you mention that when resources become scarce (and they already are) that we would need to restrict from people that need it because that’s what a “cOmUnISt” society would do. How about we prevent people from hoarding more resources than they could possible use in multiple lifetimes? Because those people are not hypothetical, they exist in the current system and we should definitely do that. If not just for the planet, also because it’s what is fair.
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Despots, as bad as they are, do not necessarily need to grow their empires.
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"I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure." -Agent Smith
Humans lived for 200,000 years before we started acting like a cancer. It's not our species that is cancer, it's the dominator culture that evolved within our species that is the cancer.
It's Capitalism. Capitalism is humans as cancer. It's why we joke about late stage Capitalism.
You're not wrong.
I see capitalism more as a tool that arose due to the rise of the dominator culture in our species. A species without dominator instincts would not invent capitalism.
Capitalism arose as a natural conclusion to the contradictions of feudalism, not out of some vague sense of Human Nature.
Ok, but why did feudalism come about, after 200,000+ years? Capitalism is just a current incarnation of an exploitative system brought to us by dominator culture. Before Capitalism it was Feudalism. If you back far enough, you get to stable groups that operated for millennia apparently without the need for domination being the primary driver of society.
Using game theory, if the players start out cooperating, this can go on indefinitely, but once someone cheats the game becomes exploitative. Sounds a lot like what happened in our species.
The history of humanity is the history of class dynamics. Feudalism came about as a result of agricultural development and the ability to store products, rather than needing to use them before they expire.
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Based and Bookchinpilled.
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Animals don't form equilibriums on purpose, eg invasive species
Eh, roughly 1-2% of people are psychopathic and we've only really destroyed the Earth since we adopted capitalism, the system in which a very small, unempathetic minority has control of pretty much everything.
But that's not my largest issue with Smith's comment. It's more that an program of his stature definitely should have a better grasp on taxonomy. Viruses aren't even alive according to some current classifications. Parasitic organisms would be much closer. Unfortunately there aren't really any parasitic mammals. Vampire bats, perhaps? And that simile — capitalists as vampires (the human kind) — is a bit older than Smith's virus metaphor.
Marxferatu "The figure of the vampire is the ultimate individual: predatory, inhuman, anti-human, with no moral obligation to others."
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I mean, yes, we're seeing a general rapacity balloon out of control, but hey, electric vehicles will make everything better.
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Capitalism does not require infinite growth, this idea is not taken seriously in economic circles. Keynesian and neoclassical economics do not consider or require infinite growth.
You can be profit driven and not require infinite growth, if you make 2% profit every year you are not requiring infinite growth.
It's not true that maximizing profits is the duty of a company to it's shareholders, here it is from NYT and supreme court:
There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”
You can bloviate theoretically all you want, but practically, as it has played out since its inception, this is how capitalism works. This is the only way capitalism works. Very simply because those who do not grow endlessly, are consumed by those who do.
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If you profit 2% every year, whether or not it’s a “requirement,” that is limitless growth.
Regardless, the Supreme Court’s opinion about the lack of an on the books law around an obligation is not relevant. We also don’t have a law on the books about how gravity works, nor one about rain making the ground wet.
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But capital that stops dies, and if you are outcompeted you stop. So you always have to do better than everyone else. And capital has to accumulate exponentially to keep growing, and not stop and die.
The mechanics of the system make sustainable growth impossible. Tweaking the surface of the system will never change that core.
The solution for cancer is usually killing the cancer or removing the cancer. I wonder what the capitalism equivalent is…
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And we have the pleasure of enjoying the last stage of it.
May it crumble under it's own contradictions.
That's the worst possible case for everyone & everything.
Let's hope we kill it first.
If we just let a self selected group of people have total control of our economy, things will turn out better this time. They promise.
"The previous attempts failed because they didn't do it right. We will get it right, this time."
The Earth isn't a closed system. The Universe might be but I feel pretty confident we'll have moved on from any currently recognizable economic system by the time we fill that up.
For practical purposes, the earth might as well be a closed system. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day
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The Earth isn't a closed system.
Where else in the universe there are trees and animals?
For all ecological purposes Earth is a closed system.
The sun would like to have a word
With how climate change has been accelerating lately, I wish I shared your optimism.
I take it more as humans acting out of individualist self-interest (which capitalism incentivizes above all else) as being more likened to cancer. All it can take is one mutated-individualist-greedy cell to ignore the signals from the surrounding tissues to cause cancer.
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