Welfare capitalism was better than the other ones.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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And better than real existing what-was-called-communism (as to not trigger the no true Scotsman leftists)
Listen man I know I'm edging pretty close to "no true Scotsman," but hear me out... it's not that it wasn't "true socialism," but whether something is socialist economically isn't necessarily tied to authoritarianism. Like, fuck tankies, but also I do think that combining market economics and truly representative democracy with proportional representation and freedom of speech and association with socialist ownership structures (as in the abolition of corporate governance from any input from, frankly, absentee "owners") is the move. Socialism doesn't have to be authoritarian, nor does it have to be against market economics. Ya know?
It’s just that that’s not socialism either. You’re no true scotsmaning existing socialism, and idealizing not-socialism. You’re a social democrat, a cooperativist, maybe a mutualist, which is the right thing to be. You seek to manage contradictions, you don’t idealize their synthesis.
That's true, but i don't know if it's fair to say that mandating employee ownership is anything other than socialist. Not Marxist, sure. Certainly leftist. But isn't employee ownership and governance of the means of production, by definition, socialism?
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I got a death threat from a tankie today because I suggested that Kamala would have not been as bad as the current administration.
That was fun, don't worry I was banned shortly thereafter from that community
Accelerationism is a hell of a drug. You would have thought they would learn something from Weimar Germany, but no.
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yeah I keep hearing how we're a democracy but I've never felt it ever was. We have the technology to do a direct democracy but no one really wants to do it.
I mean state capitalism is by definition not communism. This isn't a no true Scotsman they're just two different things.
Sure but words have philosophical pre-definitions and real world usages. It’s also possible that the pre-definitions are impossible, and that all attempts to achieve them lead to something else, it’s natural then that that something else becomes the new meaning of the word.
If I gave a recipe for bread, and it always came out to be shit, that word “bread” would come to mean “shit”, even if the old book said “bread is not shit”
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Because it's half way to socialism?
It's the most left of the right-wing scope that is pro-capitalism, but doesn't address the underlying contradiction and will inevitably backslide to the right. It'll take longer, but will eventually side with fascism as capitalism historically does
All human systems contain contradictions. They don’t synthesize. The very act of system building by humans is the act of manipulating nature into a box it wasn’t made to fit into. Socialism has contradictions: global planning of the economy vs somehow not centralizing power and being susceptible to oligarchy, the overwork of the “from each according to their abilities” when everyone is motivated to exaggerate “to each according to their needs”. Among many others.
What we need is multipolarity. All systems need to be actively tried and tested in the fire of competition. People need to be allowed to vote with their feet. For instance, European capitalism is CLEARLY superior in every way to American capitalism, while simultaneously being more free than Chinese “communism”.
I'm referring more to as a Mode of Production, where the Socialist Mode is the democratic organization of the workers who together control all aspects of the business such as wages and investment. Richard Wolff explains it well. Socialism doesn't mean exclusively using central planning or centralization of power.
The contradictions I'm talking about are between the workers and the capitalist owners. That exists whether the capitalism is state or private, and whether the capitalism is laissez-faire or social democracy.
That contradiction will always lead to the capitalists accumulating wealth and using that wealth to improve the mechanisms of which they are able to accumulate wealth. High taxation, while an improvement over laissez-faire, does not change that reality. Wealth will still be accumulated by capitalists, who will then use that wealth to change the laws for their benefit. Democracy will backslide as corporate influence grows year over year. We see this backsliding all over Europe to various degrees, despite them having significantly more social safety nets than America. There is no type of capitalism that won't lead to Fascism.
China is a mix of capitalism and socialism. Richard Wolff also explains this well. It doesn't matter if they claim to be communist or not, or if they claim to be on that path or not, the current system is a mix
I think you are talking about cooperativism. That’s a form of capitalism. Again, it would be great to have a multipolar world where we could try that out. But it doesn’t not have contradictions, it just has new ones. Every politicial system has dialectical contradictions, and we simply flow from old ones to new ones as material conditions change. I recommend reading the deluzian criticism of dialectics.
No, I'm talking about Modes of Production. I linked videos explaining it more in depth for a reason.
A workers cooperative is using a socialist mode of production to organize and run a private business.
You didn't provide what the contradictions of the socialist mode of production are. You gave critiques of planned economy and authoritarianism.
The contradiction of a capitalist mode of production is between the owner, who wants to maximize exploitation, and the workers, who want to minimize their exploitation. A socialist mode of production makes a democratic organization of all the workers replace that capitalist owner. The workers are in full control. There is no contradiction between the owner and workers because the workers are now also the owners.
I recommend reading the deluzian criticism of dialectics.
This is about philosophy, not a critique of marxian economics or dielectical materialism
If we can't agree on the definitions of Capitalism and Socialism, then we can't really have a conversation. I provided the videos by Richard Wolff so that the definitions being used are clear.
You didn’t provide what the contradictions of the socialist mode of production are. You gave critiques of planned economy and authoritarianism.
I… did… what? The critiques were in the form of contradictory forces: central planning (seeks to centralize power) and democracy (seeks to distribute power), those who work “according to their ability” (incentive to minimize work) those who receive “according to their need” (incentive to maximize receipt of goods) (contradiction comes from the added premise max work -> max goods). These are as contradictory as the class differences between capitalist and worker, even moreso since they are contradictions between the worker and himself. Society and itself.
This is about philosophy, not a critique of marxian economics or dielectical materialism
Which are we talking about again? Philosophy or Marxism? Wait, Marxism and dialectical materialism are philosophies. Wait, Deleuze comments on them. Wait… wtf are you talking about?
Those aren't contradictory. Centralized planning refers to organizing aspects of the economy, in particular things with inelastic demand, through the government (the public sector). It's run as a business, same as in the private sector, except profit is not the point. It can be organized based on a capitalist mode or a socialist mode. If it's organized in a socialist mode, the entire body of workers have a say in the process of the central planning.
Centralized planning is critical for inelastic demand, such as housing, healthcare, and for the most part food. It is not a replacement of markets, it is supplementing them to ensure basic necessities are available to everyone. The private market can still exist just fine, it's the organization within the companies that change. The ratio of public to private, and planned economy to market economy, depends on a significant amount of factors, internal and external.
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A workers cooperative is using a socialist mode of production to organize and run a private business.
Marx didn’t think so. You still produce commodities for the purpose of profit. You just become your own capitalist.
I made this a separate comment because it’s so common and also so absurd. Richard Wolff is wrong about this. A socialist mode of production where workers produce commodities for profit 🤣
You fundamentally misunderstanding capitalism if that's what you think.
Profit exists in both modes of production. The difference is that in a capitalist mode, workers are over-exploited to maximize profit for the owner. In a socialist mode, workers are not over-exploited and the profit is shared between the workers. In a capitalist mode, increasing profits are prioritized above all else, while wages are minimized as much as possible. In a socialist mode, workers decided democratically how much to put towards their wages and how much to reinvest back into the business; increasing profits year over year is not the priority, the well-being of the workers and business is.
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We're now trying pump and dump capitalism
Social welfare capitalism is a good mix but over time the social aspect got burried
Social welfare capitalism is good in theory. But social welfare is in direct opposition to capitalism, and there is no way to actually contain the corrupting power of capitalism. The social aspect will always get buried.
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But 2 large economies tried to impliment communism... while engaged in a cold war against much more entrenched ideologies, while having corrupt leaders and they didn't do it well.
The corrupt leaders were inevitable under the ideologies they devised. I swear people think it’s somehow an accident that Stalin and Mao were evil dictators and if only they weren’t we’d have true socialism. No. The system of Leninism is the centralization of power into a vanguard which limits dissent. All Leninist countries are fundamentally dictatorships. Dictatorships transfer power over time via dynastic means, and you always eventually get a power hungry madman when you do that without any checks and balances or democratic recall. And no other Marxist groups can get power enough to actually implement their ideas. QED socialism fails.
Socialism without an underlying set of morals beyond socialism is doomed to fail. It invites end-justifies-means to implement socialism, which taints it beyond repair.
I swear people think it’s somehow an accident that Stalin and Mao were evil dictators and if only they weren’t we’d have true socialism.
I don't know about Mao, but while Stalin being an evil dictator wasn't an accident, Lenin being an evil dictator was. The Russian revolution wasn't just the Bolsheviks; there were many different groups of which the Bolsheviks simply happened to come out on top because of a ton of coincidences and bad decisions by everyone else.
And no other Marxist groups can get power enough to actually implement their ideas. QED socialism fails.
The Ukrainians did it until they were invaded by the Soviets, and Rojava's experiment seems to be mostly successful.
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There's also been quite a few smaller socialist and anarchist societies that have existed under similar external influences. Almost like capitalism is tied up with ideological warmongering or something.
I feel like "socialism and anarchsim always fail or lose to capitalists" isn't the flex you think it is.
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But 2 large economies tried to impliment communism… while engaged in a cold war against much more entrenched ideologies, while having corrupt leaders and they didn’t do it well.
And while - which I, personally, think is the biggest reason - starting from pre-capitalist economies, thus materially having to do what capitalism did (rapid industrialisation, disenfranchisement of peasantry, accumulation of capital), and ultimately following what Marxism would have guessed: Their ideology forming around their material reality of having to accumulate capital from labour while trading on the world market. So it basically became its own kind of welfare state/social democratic capitalism, with a bit of "but communism will arrive eventually, we promise!"
Once that material dynamic is entrenched, no amount of ideological purity can simply correct it from the top, you can't change material society by implementing an ideal onto a reality. It has to develop materially and dialectically, through the process of the old system failing (in unbearable ways), necessitating revolutionary changes.
That means we still have time to wait. Sure socialism is inevitable after full automation and ai which can manage an economy far better than any currency and which brings the value of labor to 0. But until that day social democracy is clearly materially the system of our technological era.
I do think you could be right, but I also think it is a proper dilemma, that it is impossible to really know. An immature attempt at revolution can be impossible to tell apart from a proper revolutionary moment, and a genuinely well-advised conservative "let's not hastily break something" can be impossible to tell apart from useful idiots for reactionary movements, while living in the historical moment those things are happening. I think, to some degree at least, we just have to accept that uncertainty, and that the course of history is not simply determinable in the chaos of the lived reality.
Doesn't mean, that there is nothing at all to be analysed, no visions to be had, just that ultimately, every single historical movement will have to live with the reality of "crossing the Rubicon"-moments, where no amount of knowledge, no amount of theory, no amount of smug analysis can really tell the outcome.
I, personally, think advancements beyond social democracy should be possible already - I think the basic ideas laid out in the Gotha Critique (overcoming of monetary system through non-exchangeable production/distribution with a voucher-like system), in combination with advancements in Cybernetics already made within the 20th century (as well as computers to better implement the Cybernetics on top of that), could provide for a system, in which necessary labour can be jointly coordinated, with the aim of reducing work days and increasing value in everyday lives, along with a richer use of free time (think: education, makerspaces, creative hobbies like art and programming) beyond socially necessary labour.
But can I be certain? No. Do I think it is worth fighting for? Definitely.
I actually did a really deep dive into cybernetics, like the actual math involved, which I’m qualified to analyze. It unfortunately would still require a lot of research to get right, and even at the levels of compute we have today it might not be enough. One simply needs to consider the number of types of screws which are necessary to actually fulfill the global demand, and their interchangeability depending on a thousand factors of production, to see the problem. Ultimately, reducing their value to a quantity and optimizing on that quantity based on supply and demand is really easy, compared to some kind of actual graph flow optimization problem based on final product use-demand. The level of democracy at the end would be incredibly complex too, and let’s face it, democracy is not very efficient nor does it even really well reflect the modal persons preferences in a society, let alone representing minority interests.
Ultimately you need a system that can interact with each individuals specific needs and wants (demand), interact with each individual’s abilities, interests, and capacity for labor (supply), even pushing them a bit (incentives), and then balance that interaction with all intermediate necessities to balance the equation, not simply aggregate the averages and expect it to normalize. And even then, think how manipulative, surveillance, and controlling that is.
Ones doing quite well, hence why countries are abandoning the US as a trade partner and going for it instead. Dengism is the solution to the failed ideal that you can take an agrarian preindustrial society straight to communism. And given all essential sectors are worker owned, it seems to be working.
What’s that Churchill said about being the worst thing except for everything else that’s been tried?
Churchill was a genocidal war criminal on par with Hitler, he's not someone one should ever quote: unless you're just okay with Indians not being people.
Churchill said that about democracy, interesting you interchange the two.
Something that's incorrect
Don't look at what came before mercantile capitalism.
Let's go gambling!
Just look at life expectancies. Countries with social capitalism do the best and not by a little. By arguing everyone is the same, it's really supporting the worst.
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