socialism / capitalism

moreluck

golden ticket member
socialism-vs-capitalism.jpg
 

realbrown1

Annoy a liberal today. Hit them with facts.
This coming a person who draws medicare and social security from the government treasury.

TOS.
What are people suppose to do, turn down receiving those benefits?

We've paid into those programs our whole life. Financially weakening us doing so.

If it was up to me, the younger generations would have the option of joining those programs, or not joining and planning for their own retirement. With more money in their paycheck I might add.
 

Nimnim

The Nim
This coming a person who draws medicare and social security from the government treasury.

TOS.

I've already paid in for over 10 years to this, and while I don't expect it to be around anymore in another 30, if it is I damn sure want a payout. Yes it is a socialistic program, but it was far before my time, and I was paying into it before I was eligible to vote. I don't even care if all I get out of it is exactly what I paid into it, not very beneficial to me because of inflation.

There's virtually no way to restructure both those programs without shorting people who have been forced to pay into it, and that is the number one reason politicians don't want to touch it. They change it, they piss off a lot of voters who will surely kick them out.
 

jaker

trolling
We are a country that uses both and you can't denied that , we are more socialist then anything but that is because we have let the government take more control over our lives

It's damn near impossible to be a one or the other unless you let the government take over
 

oldngray

nowhere special
US is heading socialist but still far from what Europeans consider socialist. Our socialism would be to the right of most of the politics there.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
US is heading socialist but still far from what Europeans consider socialist. Our socialism would be to the right of most of the politics there.

Those socialist European nations you speak of are still considered capitalist economies. Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive. I'm one to see the rise of state capitalism and state socialism not just compatible but necessary. In fact, I question if capitalism can even exist at all and rise to dominate without a state in the first place. How do you take one of the 3 factors of production, the other 2 being land and labor, and yet one is given market dominance over the other 2? If labor was dominate we'd call that bad as a form of unionism and if land was dominate we'd call that bad as some form of aristocracy.

Socialism was first used by the frenchman Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and as an aristocrat, he believed society should be run by technocratic experts where industrialists would lead and direct society as it was assumed they were the most knowledgeable to do so. These technocratic experts would plan all aspects of life and thus a utopia would emerge. IMO, the same premise doth still apply and both the so-called political right and left in the US still use many aspects of Saint-Simon's original ideas. We just call it variations of central planning from a centralized topdown authority. Thus I see socialism and capitalism as twins, arising practically from the same mother.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
If the purpose is to sustain and maintain the current political economy and the nationstate structure as it presently and has in the recent past existed, Moas has a point. Even more so when we've moved from a manufacturing to a consumer society. But I'm betting money that both sides of the economic and political debate will find ways to ignore him and if my suspicions hold true, there are good lessons there we will just ignore and not learn.
 

wkmac

Well-Known Member
Vladimir Lenin and the grand communist experiment of the Soviet Union was not anti-capitalist. Just the opposite, they themselves are capitalists. Here, I'll let Lenin himself explain it.

State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in this country.

and

The state capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry.
Unfortunately, the introduction of state capitalism with us is not proceeding as quickly as we would like it. For example, so far we have not had a single important concession, and without foreign capital to help develop our economy, the latter’s quick rehabilitation is inconceivable.

source

We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not “in the name of capitalism, ” but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.

source

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

source

The Soviet Union was never one side of a dualistic conflict between some version of good verses evil. Instead, it was one side of a conflict within capitalism itself, no different than 2 competitors in the same market face off against one another. The Soviet Union was capitalism in the form of State Monopoly Capitalism minus natural rights. Not that the United States was that much better.

It was about power as both nations moved into they own phase of imperialism which is the natural progression of any State Monopoly Capitalism. State socialism is nothing more than capitalists as experts using The State as central planner so that edicts backed by the gun can guarantee the outcomes wanted by their own experts. Again, see my post above on socialism and it's founder in Henri de Saint Simon.

Thus the Cold War itself was nothing more than a Corporate Warfare sold under the fakery of nationalism. Nationalism being the true abandoning of people and place under the acceptance of a false narrative from which only an oligarchy benefit. It was Political Economy verses Political Economy of which the average folk under either economy gained little.

But then Lenin himself also told another truism:

A lie told often enough becomes the truth!
 
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