I’m wonder what the specific ancap opposition to the state it as oppose to the anarchist/ancom critique. What are your specific issues with a state? Is it just that is restricts the free market? Is it the monopoly on violence? Something else?

A few days i watched a debate between a social democrat and a libertarian.

In that debate it appea the topic of a company scamming it's consumers like CD Projekt with Cyberpunk 2077.

The libertarian guy defended CD Projekt saying that Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't a scam because "people wanted a game and they got a game"

And that if you buy a game you are signing a contract with the company.

This blowed my mind because Cyberpunk was an atrocity in 2020 i couldn't believe how some of you had the balls to defend the company.

Hello. My name is Agile-Caterpillar. I am an experienced and award-winning pro-capitalist influencer(PM for promos and sponsorships). You may remember me from my highly praised submissions such as "My pecker smells - Lack of household appliances and food refrigeration in the USSR during the 7 year plan", "Under capitalism you get a Playstation 5 and under socialism a Starvation 5" and "Hehe - The long awaited collapse of the USSR".

Today I want to talk about why I believe there has not been a single successful socialist experiment in the history of mankind.

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Now let's talk about the repeated failures of socialist experiments. As mentioned above I don't believe a single socialist experiment was successful.

Here is why:

The large longer lasting socialist experiments like the USSR did eventually fail or are close to failure(Cuba). Not only did they fail but they also were authoritarian states controlled by a small number of powerful individuals. The workers didn't own anything. Workers in the USSR or China had less rights than workers in capitalist nations. This is not socialism.

China is sometimes mentioned but they have zero worker rights and are running a capitalist economy. Not socialism.

Rojava is a capitalist society with private enterprise.

The nordic countries are capitalist.

Zapatistas are governing a failed state. Drug cartels took over and the population is subjected to daily harassment by armed gangs and crime ranging from threats and racketeering to kidnapping, land theft, forced displacement and forced recruitment.

Temporary wartime post revolution experiments are not enough to show that socialism can create a lasting and stable society.

Experience in the past 100 years has shown that socialism has failed to create a stable lasting society that liberates workers to a meaningful extent and provides living conditions equal or superior to capitalism.

I don't think any counter examples to this exist.

I see many conservatives claim that "taxation is theft", but when push comes to shove, argue that "a reasonable amount" of taxation is nonetheless acceptable, as per the "necessary evil" argument of establishing a monopolistic expropriating property protector to assure that a monopolistic exproproating property protector does not arise from a free market order. Of course, this "a reasonable amount" is completely arbitrary and each socialist can argue that they argue for the "reasonable amount" of taxation.

As stated by the economist and legal theorist Murray Rothbard:

"Finally there is a crucial inconsistency in the proffered criterion of laissez faire itself: limiting the government to protection of person and property. For, if it is legitimate for a government to tax, why not tax its subjects to provide other goods and services that may be useful to consumers: why shouldn’t the government, for example, build steel plants, provide shoes, dams, postal service, etc.? For each of these goods and services is useful to consumers. If the laissez-fairists object that the government should not build steel plants or shoe factories and provide them to consumers (either free or for sale) because tax-coercion had been employed in constructing these plants, well then the same objection can of course be made to governmental police or judicial service.

The government should be acting no more immorally from the laissez-faire point of view, when providing housing or steel than when providing police protection. Government limited to protection, then, cannot be sustained even within the laissez-faire ideal itself, much less from any other consideration. It is true that the laissez-faire ideal could still be employed to prevent such “second-degree” coercive activities of government (i.e., coercion beyond the initial coercion of taxation) as price control or outlawry of pornography; but the “limits” have now become flimsy indeed, and may be stretched to virtually complete collectivism, in which the government only supplies goods and services, yet supplies all of them."

Pro-market Statist, what are your justification for supporting the current jurisdictions of specific monopolistic expropriating property protectors? Why not choose to at least revise their jurisdictions in order to better a free society?

Labour Value is an invisible parallel economy that works on top of the visible economy. It's only function is to prove Marx's Hegelian dialectic materialism right. Otherwise it is completely unnecessary. There is nothing in Marxs observations that cannot be explained elsewhere.

LTV acts as a retreat for Marxists into which they can climb when all else fails. It's like jumping from one reality to the other. Marx uses an idea of “value” which in itself is an intangible ghost and divides this into other ghosts, all dancing to the tune of his pipe.

His thorough belief, influenced by the other economists of his time, is that value is an absolute, a definite. However value is simply a human expression of usefulness, something's value is as concrete as the user wishes it to be, which is changeable and intangible. The value of anything without humans is 0. It's an entirely social relation. However as a social relation valueis only one sided. It remains in the hands of the demander. Something Marx chooses to ignore focusing on the supplier for philosophical conscience.

Value can only be realised through exchange. Exchange requires a demander as it's common denominator. A supplier need not work or own or have madeve found, have been in the vicinity of the commodity to exchange it. The demander is the active participant in the exchange. The supplier is passive. He may set up shop, he may go door to door, but only by becoming a demander himself, he must forgoe his passivity and become an active demander to open shop or move himself from place to place. Demand is the active state.

Choice becomes dominant in this exchange afterwards. As the demander has, going into the exchange, a preference for that good. The supplier must then look at their own situation, seperate from their labour and their inputs as a demander to evaluate whether the trade should be made. This works in individuals as well as in aggregate. The value therefore is itself an expression of multiple and myriad individual factors that we group together as an easy expression of “Value.” Marx then takes this idea of “Value” itself a ghost or a spook, simply a notion for a phenomenon that is itself unreal, without a stable meaning or equal sum of parts from one exchange to the next, he takes this and divides it into the parts of his choosing: Labour value, use value etc.

This is done to suit the historical materialism that he has set out to prove as the driving force of nature. The value theory of Marx is itself unrefutable, however this is due to its place above the actual and tangible economy. The beauty of creating this ghost is that like any spectre we cannot hit it, for, self contained, it simply flits away into the air from whence it came. The Marxist idea of value presents itself as scientific but remains pseudoscience.

It might follow laws of logic, but not of empirical inquiry. Marx's theory of labour is etherial for this very reason. Marx as a philosopher is well aware of what he is doing. By proposing a theoretical model that sits on top (A superstructure if you will lol) of the processes of production and exchange, in which those processes can function as well without it as with it, he creates a spectre that can jump out at any stage in the process and shout “boo” announcing its presence and then disappearing again.

It, despite the attempts to formally calculate and realise it in reality, remains elusive. But that is a power granted to it by it's creation. It cannot be proven or disproven, you could replace the whole thing with ghosts and it wouldn't lose any logical reasoning. The labour value of Marx indeed acts as a ghost, an intangible and etherial force that work embues into commodities, a spirit that lives in that commodity and realises itself spontaneously when another person claims ownership of it.

The challenge that Marx gives to his acolytes is to find this transformation using his vague mathematical theories, that aggregate the economy, then divide and sub divide through further aggregates until you end up with a number that has absolutely no relevance to anything and has to be proven useful in predicting anything. The Value of Marx is therefore at once a concrete, self contained theory that follows strict laws of logic and is irrefutable in it's own theoretical state.

But it is also a ghost, it takes an intangible human construct and breathes a whole mysticism into it, which l, like any religious system is thoroughly logical in itself. Accept the idea of Kronos and nothing about the Roman pantheon makes sense. There is nothing about Marx's value theory that doesn't mimic in this regard.

It suffers the same fate as well, when science, medicine, economics etc are based on religious mysticism they suffer from the unrelenting forces of reality. Marxist theory suffers the same fate. Marx's observations were nothing new, simply taken from other economic theories of the time. His predictions are explainable with more robustness and accuracy with Austrian Economics for example, which does not need any ghosts to make it work.

His only contribution is the additional and contrived shoe horning in of his theory of value, itself a cheery picked combination of classical economic ideas. Marx wished for value to be a tangible force that can explain things as elegantly as electricity, but instead it remains a ghost, like the old aether that filled the void.

It comes from nothing than the mind, stays in the mind and dies there when it cannot be brought out into reality.

Hello. My name is Bungling-Worm. You may remember me from my highly condemned submissions such as "Socialists-The Moralist Busybodies Preventing You From Beating YOUR Cheating C*nt of a Wife and Annoying Children", "Profit or: Humanity's Raisin Deter (sic).", "Who Really 'Needs' Clean Air and Water Anyway?", "Hayek Was Right! - How Fascism Saved Western Civilization™ From the Bolshevik Menace" and "SWEATSHOPS!-The Greatest Gift to Third-World Youths Since the Polio Vaccine."

Today I'd like to address my fellow capitalists. It's no secret that, much like the U.S. military in Iraq circa 2003-2011, we're losing the battle for the hearts and minds of our intended slav..subje...vict...vassa...thral...our fellow men™. For this reason my employer, Generic Right-Wing Think Tank Inc., in partnership with our good friends in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the U.K. Special Intelligence Service (formerly U.K. Military Intelligence, Section 6), have contacted the eminent propagandist conservative philosopher picnic-boy and gained his gracious permission to make an official Part 2 to his highly acclaimed How to argue in favor of capitalism and against socialism, a helpful guide the table of contents of which is freely available (for a limited time only) here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/1cqvdsv/comment/l3wuegi/

Without picnic-boy's pioneering achievements in sophistry this work would not be possible. Now, without further add-do (sic) I give you a sneak peak into the table of contents of How to argue in favor of capitalism and against socialism, a helpful guide: Part 2.

1. State, often and always without evidence (because none exists), that socialists control all mainstream news media, organized religion (especially the Catholic Church, the Jesuit Order, the Hasidic Colleges and every sect of Islam), academia, K-12 public education, the entire U.S. civil service/bureaucracy (from the municipal all the way up to the federal), the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Democratic Party, the neoconservative wing of the Republican party, the Fraternal Order of Freemasons, Hollywood, all police unions, the AFL-CIO board, the entire federal judiciary, all the major drug cartels and organized crime syndicates, the Federal Reserve System and the governments of literally every single third and second world country, especially the far-right and non-white majority ones. At the exact same time, and this is really important so pay close attention, accuse socialists of being unpopular teenage losers living in their parents' basement who're too lazy to get a job.
2. When socialists remark upon how similar the claims in point 1 are to contemporary Neo-Nazi conspiracy theories and start to question how you feel about Jewish people turn around and accuse them of being "the real anti-semites" for "wanting to take all the Jews' money away ". In no way is this conflation of all Jewish people with rich capitalists a form of economic antisemitism. If someone points out that it is simply cherry pick quotes from Marx's "On the Jewish Question" out of context so that none of the parts where Marx makes it clear he is only critiquing Judaism as a religion while at the same time advocating for the political emancipation of the Jews as people are clear to the reader. After that go on to talk about how much you support Israel and how much happier you think diaspora Jews would be if they permanently immigrated there. Also and for no particular reason talk about the "failure" of the Kibbutzim apropos of nothing and don't elaborate on anything.
3. Always portray struggles of democratic socialists within ML states/the Eastern Bloc as struggles for capitalism. Yes, it is true the people who organized the East German Uprising of 1953, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring of 1968, and the Polish Solidarity Movement of the 1980's (before the Vatican and CIA hijacked it) all demanded democratic socialism, yes they all said that, but what they "really wanted" was capitalism and don't you let any so-called "historian" tell you otherwise.
4. Pretend that socialists invented the very concept of the state and thus that all state rulers from the Roman Emperors, Egyptian Pharaohs, Greek Archons, etc. to modern Kings, Kaisers, Tsars and Presidents were/are "socialists".
5. Don't forget to liberally pepper your psychotic rants with plenty of freudian slips and accusations in a mirror. For example, make the claim that socialists want to destroy the family so that they can isolate, abuse and indoctrinate women and children while at the same time assert that wives and children are nothing more than an extension of "the individual" who need to be shielded by this individual from an unrealistically hostile and confusing world (literally everything and everyone outside the home).
6. Assert that socialists invented taxation and ignore that the first taxes in recorded history took the form of land-rents set by the first governments (which were councils of militaristic landlords).
7. Defend rent-seeking and landlordism so long as it's done by private individuals. Remember rent-seeking is only bad when the government does it because they spend that money on social parasites and welfare leeches, unlike landlords who spend it on their second families in the next state over.
8. Claim fascism is a form of socialism but also defend the legacies of lesser known fascist regimes, military dictatorships and other totalitarian right-wing governments whose symbols and mottos the people in your country haven't developed a learned fear response to yet the way they have the Swastika and the Fasces.
9. When leftists point out that the main victims of things like the Great Purge and the Chinese Cultural Revolution were socialists, communists, anarchists and other left-wing intellectuals who opposed Stalin and Mao's cults of personality either ignore them and maintain that the "real victims" were the tiny minority of "innocent" religious extremists, ultranationalists (who were "definitely not" fascist collaborators or spies), and grain hoarders or do a complete one hundred and eighty degree pivot and actually defend the Great Purge and Cultural Revolution because "The more left someone is, the more violent/dictatorial they are, therefore anyone to the left of Stalin and Mao would have been more violent than them and it's a good thing they were killed."
10. If you think any of these points are self-contradicting just remember that doublethink is merely a tool and "communists" (Stalinists) shouldn't be the only ones allowed to make use of it.
11. Ignore the mountains of evidence that an anti-Stalinist left exists. Portray these leftists as right-wingers and edit their most famous works to leave out the many mentions of their own support for socialism.
12. Remind your interlocutor(s) that socialism is gay and cringe.
13. Remember that reading is gay but total illiteracy is still kinda cringe (unfortunately). Therefore read as little as humanly possible without going full illiterate. Our recommendation is to only read blurbs from ancap websites, your favorite conspiracy theorist podcasters' social media threads and your fellow "capitalists' " reddit posts and nothing else.
14. In keeping with point 13 let the only things you "know" or "learn" about socialism be things you absorbed through osmosis and half remember from your high school history textbooks assuming you even read them at all. Never look at primary sources, never listen to people trying to explain things to you in detail, always complain that quotes provided to you are "blocks of text" or "unoriginal" and can thus be dismissed without serious engagement on your part.
15. Remember that conformism, unquestioning obedience to authority, an unflinching belief in the correctness of the current socioeconomic status quo and conventional wisdom, and a general Panglossian worldview with a huge heaping of moral nihilism (which is definitely a real philosophical school of thought and not just a rationalization of one's own sociopathic tendencies) are actually somehow radical and that "conservatism is the new punk rock" of the 21st century.
16. Remember that guy begging for spare change you passed on your way to work? Tell everyone that he was a capitalist. Carefully explain to workers why capitalists are actually worse off than everyone else in society as hard to believe as that may seem. Remind them that when it comes to capitalists' they're "cash poor, asset rich" which means all their wealth is tied up in assets like yachts and sports cars and mansions and designer suits/dresses/jewellery and second summer homes and third winter homes and tropical island resorts where "nothing unethical ever happens so shut up about it already"...and talk about how they can't use these assets to buy groceries or clothing or even pay the "exorbitant" property taxes on their assets. "So you see the real unfortunates in our society aren't the homeless or the victims of police brutality or refugees or the working poor, it's capitalists. These brave men and women take (minor) financial risks by using what little cash they have to found businesses, not for their own benefit but for ours, so that they can give us jobs and provide us with products and services and then what do these generous souls get in return for their herculean efforts? Just a whole lot of ingratitude from socialists and a bunch of tacky junk they can't even use to feed and clothe their many, many illegitimate and adoptive children that they're definitely not doing anything questionable with on their tropical islands that aren't even worth that much anymore because of rising sea levels (which have nothing to do with climate change, which is just a Chinese communist plot to make Americans poor don'tcha know?)".

I'm WayWornPort39, and you may remember me from such posts as the one about corporatism, "We don't actually live under capitalism, it's corporatism!".

So, I think from what I've gathered to the overall reception to my post is that maybe I should clarify my political and economic views before going forward.

I am an anarchist-communist. This means I advocate for a stateless, classless, non-hierarchical society based on mutual aid and voluntary association.

I am also a believer in the principle of platformism, which places emphasis on the organisational aspect of social revolution, and believes in a coexistence of both efficient organisation and a maintenance of autonomy and horizontalism.

I recommend that you read these:

Mutual Aid: A factor in evolution by Pyotr Kropotkin

The Conquest Of Bread, also by Pyotr Kropotkin

The Anarcho-Communist Manifest

The Organisational Platform for the general union of Anarchists by Nestor Makhno

Neither Democrats Nor Dictators by Errico Malatesta

Free pdfs of these are relatively easy to find. I hope this helps in future debates on this subreddit.

Apparently Judy and Sherman are not getting along in this passage. Campbell is their daughter.

Judy broke in. "Let me try."

"Well ... all right."

"Darling," said Judy, "Daddy doesn't build roads or hospitals, and he doesn't help build them, but he does handle the bonds for the people who raise the money."

"Bonds?"

"Yes. Just imagine that a bond is a slice of cake, and you didn't bake the cake, but every time you hand somebody a slice of the cake, a tiny little bit comes off, like a little crumb, and you can keep that."

Judy was smiling, and so was Campbell, who seemed to realize that this was a joke, a kind of fairy tale based on what her daddy did.

"Little crumbs?" she said encouragingly.

"Yes," said Judy. "Or you have to imagine little crumbs, but a lot of little crumbs. If you pass around enough slices of cake, then pretty soon you have enough crumbs to make a gigantic cake."

"For real life?" asked Campbell.

"No, not for real life. You just have to imagine that." Judy looked to Sherman's father and mother for approval of this witty description of the bond business. They smiled, but uncertainly.

"I'm not sure you're making it any clearer for Campbell," said Sherman. "My goodness...crumbs." He smiled to show he knew this was only lunch-table banter. In fact...he was used to Judy's supercilious attitude toward Wall Street, but he was not happy about ... crumbs.

"I don't think it's such a bad metaphor," said Judy, also smiling. Then she turned to his father. "Let me give you an actual example, John, and you be the judge."

John. Even though there was something ... off ... about crumbs, this was the first real indication that things might be going over the edge. John. His father and mother had encouraged Judy to call them John and Celeste, but it made her uncomfortable. So she avoided calling them anything. This casual, confident John was not like her. Even his father appeared a bit on guard.

Judy launched into a description of his Giscard scheme. Then she said to his father, "Pierce & Pierce doesn't issue them for the French government and doesn't buy them from the French government but from whoever's already bought them from the French government. So Pierce & Pierce's transactions have nothing to do with anything France hopes to build or develop or ... achieve. It's all been done long before Pierce & Pierce enters the picture. So they're just sort of ... slices of cake. Golden cake. And Pierce & Pierce collects millions of marvelous" - she shrugged - "golden crumbs."

"You can call them crumbs if you want," said Sherman, trying not sound testy , and failing.

"Well, that's the best I can do," Judy said brightly. Then to his father and mother: "Investment banking is an unusual field. I don't know if there is any way you can explain it to anyone under twenty. Or perhaps under thirty."

As we know, the US has tons of homeless problems due to 1% of the wealthiest people in the country owning half of the country's money. Would socialism fix the wealth distribution or is the US too far gone? Is there a chance for more of a socialistic country if trump gets his presidency or is it thrown completely out the window? Thanks for your time.

Hello, its my very first post on this subreddit. Ive seen a lot of people, if not all trying to defend communism in some way by calling it "not true socialism" or making some of the crimes caused by communist system sound very miniscule and missunderstood. And I can understand it, Ive been the same like you guys and still sometimes am, trying to defend some failures of the system. But recently I came to terms that communism as an political system would require pure miracles to succed. But that doesnt mean Im some kind of traitor, right guys? I simply prefer for more friendly social democracy or syndicalism. I would love for companies to be protected by the goverment and ruled by the people actually working there. Is it less efficient? Yup, it surely is less efficient than free market. Does it makes a way happier workplace? Imo it does. And thats what I stand for as a socialist, to make the working class have what they deserve and for those ridicolously rich billionaires to let go off their inifite money glitch and give their accumulated wealth back to the system, so it can go back to people or buisnesses. We really dont need milionaries, they give nothing to the system and only spread their web of influences. But yeah, to finish off my post and come back to the topic:

Is communism good in my opinion? No

Is capitalism good in my opinion? No

Can we achive better future by working together and for the common good? Hell yeah. And throw shit at me however much you want you angsty liberals, but Im pretty sure that we can achive it thanks to moderate socialism.

I've seen this increasingly mentioned recently. It's the top reply to the top post right now - as a viable socialist alternative to Amazon.

I read the Wiki and an article about it but couldn't understand - why is Cybersyn important? Did it actually accomplish something in Chile before it was taken down by capitalists? Can it be used today by socialists?

Socialists often argue that workers should share in the profits of a business because they are essential contributors to it. But, I have noticed that they never argue the same when a business is not profitable.

A lot of large businesses with a lot of employees lose money. And, a lot have lost money for many years before turning a profit. For example:

Reddit has never made a profit for its investors.

Uber only made a profit in 2023, and it was losing investors' money before then.

JetBlue lost about 300 million dollars in 2023.

Tesla lost money every year from 2009 to 2019.

Obviously, people invest in these businesses anyway because they expect that they will eventually turn a profit. And, these businesses continue to pay employees and provide consumers with goods or services despite losing money. What do socialists on this subreddit think of this?

In an OP today titled, "Would Amazon exist in a purely socialist country?" socialist after socialist claimed quickly and with little to no qualifiers resounding "yes".

These "Yes" really told us nonsocialists a lot about you socialists. This was mind boggling. Mind boggling because the majority socialists on here reject Marxist-Leninist history (e.g., not socialism), but here many of you claim that Amazonon existing in a socialist country would be so obviously, "Yes". We are talking about an innovation company that is probably the most significant market global impact in the world since Ford's assembly line.

Ranking fifth in the world in terms of market cap with a staggering $1.045 trillion (CompaniesMarketCap, 2023), Amazon has been able to cement itself as a global giant that has altered how we shop and live. Expanding beyond just delivering goods, it is also a media streaming service and manufactures other technologies such as “Alexa”. Amazon has quickly become one of the most recognizable company names throughout the world. It has achieved such success that it has become commonly used as a verb in everyday language, much like “Google.” However, like many other large corporations today such as Google and Facebook, Amazon started out as a small business building its way up to being a large corporation. The History of Amazon and its Rise to Success – Michigan Journal of Economics (umich.edu)

This leads me to conclude a few things about socialists on here:

• The most obvious is most on that thread are delusional
• Some on that thread are closeted about your true ideals with your public ideals of anarchist and libertarian ideals and do want a centralized authoritarian system of socialism like the USSR.
• Some want Dengist Chinese flavor socialism that overseas capitalism where a person did cite BABA - Chinese Amazon. 

The reason most of you are in denial is how much leadership and venture capital businesses like Amazon take. These concepts are the antithesis of what most of you hold dear to "socialism". These are disruptors to the economy.  

I cannot understate the following enough and why socialists are particularly bad at the following. If you seek benefits then what are the costs???

In this case, Amazon is going to change jobs for millions of workers and even workers are going to lose jobs. Right now, Amazon has a pharmacy. It is going to put a strain on local pharmacies and some will go under. How is that pro workers?

Pro consumers? YES

Then, mostly Amazon is not a producer but a third party. So they are almost no matter what you do a capitalist model. As they are going in order to function have to profit off of other industries - profit off of workers. Thus this means for most of you socialists you have to enact forms of laws, edicts, or some form of constitutional framework to protect "the workers" from being exploited by Amazon.

• How are you going to do that?
• How are you going to do that and yet have all the wonderful benefits of "Amazon"?

The simplest answer is to nationalize Amazon. Hence my last two bullet points of either being a full-blown Soviet Union centrally planned economy (or similar form) or going the Dengist route and overseeing the company by the socialist worker's party. These simple answers leaves out most if not all libertarian and anarchist socialists on this sub. So the answer is most all socialists should be "NO!" to that op. But where are they?

Lastly, that's me working through the problem. Those reading this may have other ideas. I'm not saying I have all the answers. I'm saying it is really sad I have more ideas than the socialists on that thread. The socialists on the thread just seem to go, "Yes" like it will be no problem - smh. And that is really telling how in the clouds most socialists are and don't take the economic realities of their ideology.

tl;dr Something stinks and isn't on the so-called capitalism side.

Oh please, of course we live under capitalism.

And, tell me, do you actually know what corporatism is?

Corporatism, to put it simply, is fascist economics. More or less a form of economic interventionism which prioritises the interests of capital, and a key characteristic of class collaborationism, which seeks to resolve class struggle through collaboration between classes. Of course, classes with fundamentally opposing interests cannot actually "collaborate" as such.

Ultimately, corporatism is simply what the capitalist class will resort to when genuinely threatened by proletarian movements, or if the social democratic method of simple placation through welfare fails to satisfy the working class enough, and as such, more violent and authoritarian methods are required to prevent the system from simply collapsing out of its own contradictions.

I cannot think of a reason why a member of proletariat would not try to become a member of the bourgeoise whether that be through equity stakes or some form of landlordship. What I am asking is if there is a reason, outside of morality, to not seek to become an owner of production? In many cases a member proletariat is not necessarily impoverished; for instance a person who works as a coding manager and gets paid a direct salary may not be strapped for cash but is still a member of the proletariat so if they stop working their income stops which holds that they trade labor.

So is there a point where a member of the proletariat who has the means to become a member of the bourgeoise should avoid becoming a member for practical reasons?

This is not the question, "Is the bourgeoise the natural end of wealth?", which is a completely differently structured conversation. If you are a capitalist please don't answer that question and instead answer the question that was asked.

Project Cybersyn was an effort developed under Salvador Allende when he was president of Chile. I pick that month because Cybersyn was stress-tested in responding to a national trucking strike. The government had to quickly react to changing conditions of time and space.

I like that the chief designer, Stafford Beer, does not seem to have been very ideological. He seems to have taken the project as an opportunity to apply certain ideas being developed in Operations Research, cybernetics, communications theory, and so on. His design, with its communications to a central operations room seems to have been sensitive to the human use of human beings.

What happens in individual factories is abstracted; the point is not to punish individual workers for not exceeding production targets. The operations room is structured to allow group discussion and decision-making. One does not want technocratic experts to be dominant.

The ideas that Beer drew on have been extended. Oracle long ago ceased to be a database company. They, in competition with SAP, provide systems for Enterprise Resource Planning. They have management dashboards. Obviously, these products reflect a set of non-socialist values.

Charles Babbage provides a Victorian precursor to cybernetics. Marx talks a bit about his ideas in Capital. I happen to know that Alan Turing was aware of Babbage's work. I am talking about much more than the logical structure of computers and Ada Lovelace's programming manual. I do not know if, for example, Claude Shannon or Norbert Wiener were aware of Babbage.

I just bought a tool set for my RV and boat, $129, it has everything, screwdrivers, sockets both regular and deep well, pliers, nippers, drill bits. Its produced overseas by cheap labor. Because I live on the ocean, it will rust out over time, guaranteed. I see it as disposable. I could have bought SnapOn tools( high end and quality) but that would have been gross overkill, I will hardly use it, hopefully. If the US were pure socialist, would I have been allowed to buy such cheap overseas products and avoid buying union made or socialist made tools.

My gut says no. I would be trying to avoid paying high labor wages. It would be interesting to see if Sweden and Norway use Amazon a lot. Checking, it appears they do not. Not really surprising, but more related to their being tiny insignificant countries and low sales numbers.

TL:DR, Would mail order access to low wage products be OK, in high wage socialist countries?

1. Criticize socialism for requiring violence to establish itself as opposed to capitalism which was peacefully implemented when the feudal lords and kings all realized what they were doing was really lame and that capitalism was the way to go all along and all the peasants happily marched into the factories without a fuss.
2. Say those who lived under it don't want it back and we should listen to them because they know what they're talking about. If anyone points out that people who lived under it actually tend to prefer it to liberal capitalism just say we shouldn't listen to them because clearly they don't know what they're talking about.
3. Talk about all the wonderful innovations capitalists have given us such as the internet and smartphones because those could never have been developed by the state for example or without the profit motive.
4. Talk about how capitalism has improved living standards and reduced extreme poverty (never look at poverty as a whole though). Despite the fact that living standards have continuously improved throughout all of history there is no need to actually explain why capitalism is to thank for this specific window of improvement though we can dismiss socialism as a factor for why similar improvements happened in socialist nations.
5. Talk about how Marx's theory of value is wrong because he didn't account for the fact that you could spend a lot of time baking a mud pie and then no one would want to buy it. Also, Das Kapital is very boring.
6. It'll be really funny if you keep saying communism has no food because the USSR had two famines. Just ignore the overall improvements in food security, no one will notice.
7. Capitalism rewards hard work and ingenuity. Just look at Elon Musk.
8. Socialism is very repressive. In Soviet Russia 4% of the population was imprisoned, 25% of the world's prison population was there, and a third of the population had criminal records due to harsh policing and strict law enforcements. Edit: ignore this, I accidentally used the statistics from America instead of ones from Soviet Russia.
9. Socialism is inherently authoritarian because socialist states tend to be authoritarian. The fact that capitalist states also tend to be authoritarian is just because we've never actually had capitalism.
10. Dismiss libertarian socialist societies because they were insignificant and paled in comparison to the glorious libertarian capitalist societies like Liberland, Paulsville, or Galt's Gulch. Anarcho-capitalism and libertarian capitalism are very serious and well thought out ideologies.
11. Complain a lot about how socialists overly broadly define capitalism to encompass most aspects of the economy since that results in capitalism being responsible for a lot of bad things. Everyone knows capitalism is really just anything voluntary or being allowed to own things and nothing more so it can't possibly be to blame when things go wrong.
12. Complain about how socialism caused a lot of bad things that happened in nominally socialist nations. No need to elaborate as it's enough that the state called itself socialist. You may feel like this is hypocritical considering the previous point but you're wrong.
13. If you're debating a libertarian socialist or an otherwise non-ML keep criticizing ML states and use them as representatives of socialism and socialist ideology as a whole. You can excuse this insincerity by saying this is how socialism always ended up even though every socialist state in history has been different.
14. Authoritarianism and dictatorships are bad while autonomy and self-management are good. Except in the workplace.
15. Say socialists don't understand economics. They don't realize it's a hard science that can be used to accurately predict economic systems and the economy 99%+ of the time and that the laws of economics are concrete.
16. Compare mostly stable capitalist nations that have been around for 100+ years to socialist nations in turbulent political climates recently recovering from civil wars and constantly being bombarded by outside interference. Those two are completely the same.
17. Don't hesitate to repeat arguments that have already been debunked. If you want you can make it your whole thing and make multiple posts a month containing arguments you're well aware are not right.

Hello. My name is Agile-Caterpillar. You may remember me from my highly praised submissions such as "I will expose my pecker - Pork and poultry expos in communist mongolia", "100 years of communism and 100 million dead" and "McDonald's vs McDumpster - Venezuela demonstrates why socialism can never work".

Today i want to talk about East Germany and it's success as a socialist experiment.

I do not believe East Germany was an example of socialism working for the following(and other) reasons:

The Stasi - The secret service had the population under constant surveillance. Up to 2 million East Germans may have been informants. Once a potential enemy of the system was indentified, victims were psychologically attacked to break their spirits which often resulted in mental breakdowns and sometimes suicide.

Censorship - Censorship of the media and free speech was extensive - Freedom of thought was not tolerated.

Restriction of movement - People trying to climb the berlin wall would be executed instantly

Environmental problems - Pollution level were much higher than in the rest of Europe. Most rivers were dead, regions with a high number of cancer cases existed.

Living standards - Were significantly lower compared to West Germany. Consumer goods were limited.

Lower work satisfaction - Innovation was not rewarded - Highly skilled workers were unhappy as above average performance did not result in higher pay.

Cars - Only Trabants were available. They were loud, low quality and more polluting than western cars. Average waiting time to get one was over 10 years.

The final collapse - East Germany's system was not sustainable did eventually collapse like the other socialist experiments.

So be honest do you believe East Germany's socialism was working? If not what does this tell us when even the Germans couldn't make socialism work?

“Minutes after it became clear that Javier Milei had been elected president of South America’s second-largest nation in November, Elon Musk posted on the social platform X: “Prosperity is ahead for Argentina.”

Musk has helped turn the pugnacious libertarian into one of the new faces of the modern right. But offline, he has used the relationship to press for benefits to his other businesses, electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX.

           “Elon Musk called me,” Milei said in a television interview weeks after taking office. “He is extremely interested in the lithium.”

Milei is part of a pattern by Musk of fostering relationships with a constellation of right-wing heads of state, with clear beneficiaries: his companies and himself.

Musk’s endorsement has given many nationalist and right-wing heads of state more international cachet, which they have eagerly promoted as a validation of their policies and popularity. Last month, as India began holding an election, Modi prepared to host Musk in New Delhi, calling the billionaire’s visit a testament to his leadership.

But as populism and nationalism spread,

    Musk courted Xi Jinping in China and   supported Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel,    Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and    Italy’s Giorgia 
     Meloni. 

He began criticizing the “woke mind virus” and what he has declared the failings of the left, which he says have led to issues such as illegal immigration and declining birthrates.

    “I guess if you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes,” Musk said in a 
       podcast in November when asked if he was becoming more political. 

         “Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/12/technology/elon-musk-world-leaders.html

Many of the new socialist movements are entirely based around the idea of democracy being good and/or perfect and, therefore, needs to be applied everywhere, especially in the workplace. But is it that good?

Democracy has worked fairly well in liberal European countries, but that seems to be coming to an end. Europe has been stagnating for the better part of the last 20 years and, since the Arab Spring, has been taking on a high degree of migration from people who come from cultures that are not that liberal. The solutions for both issues appear to be reducing liberalism and, therefore, possibly reducing democracy. From Denmark's forcing immigrants to send their kids to school to get socialised or forcibly moving migrants around Denmark so that they won't be in enclosures living parallel lives or the UK's sending asylum applicants to Rwanda, countries in Europe are dealing with these issues using a heavy hand which can be argued is violating liberal democratic principles.

Lastly, similar to socialism's problem of running out of other people's money, Europe will have to cut back on its welfare spending.

The Arab Spring itself was an example of democracy failing. A study done on the region showed that Muslim populations that had democracy, instead of voting for majority centrist policies, voted for the parties that adhered the most to Islamic political preferences. This resulted in extremists getting into power, as in the case of Egypt.

Recently, the king (emir) of Kuwait disbanded parliament for the next four years because extremists from the Muslim Brotherhood from Qatar had (democratically) infiltrated it.

So it does not seem to me that democracy works around the globe for all cultures and therefore puts in doubt socialism's reliance on it as a core element of their system.

When it comes to the incentives of worker controlled industries in socialism and how they are going to do what is best for consumer demands needs to be seriously addressed. It cannot be simply hand waved with, “Workers are also consumers too!” That is a cop out. This magically all of a sudden “Workers are consumers too” argument pops up by socialists. It’s a magic wand by far too many utopian socialists not answering the hard and real questions. The incentives structures of markets once again by socialists gets thrown out of the window and you are not to be taken seriously. You are proving you don’t know the answer(s) to anyone with a brain.

We (mostly) don’t tolerate on here that Billionaire CEO when asked about their motives and incentives for profit, exploitation or whatever the topic of the day on this sub are then countered “they too are social” or “they too were raised by a family” or “they too have a heart” or other such silly false equivalencies. All of a sudden SOCIALISTS GET THE CONCEPTS OF INCENTIVES WHEN IT FITS THEIR NARRATIVES.

It’s like MAGIC!

Workers in an industry are going to be looking out for their own interests and their own families (e.g. Kin selection theory) to some degree. Just like CEOs do. This is why most people know socialist are full of shit. The Market Socialists have an angle as the workers are profit motivated and thus have a reason to be consumer focused. The other forms of socialists that are not profit motivated? You have some serious and harder explaining to do. Because the drive isn’t there to be consumer focus. Community focused? I kinda get that and that needs to be argued. You need to do hard thinking and explain the “how” you are going to go about being that community focused. Because you sure as hell are not driven to be consumer focused.

My conspiratorial side thinks many of you don’t like where these questions lead and that is centralized authority…

Lastly, industries spend in the billions surveying potential customers, focus groups, and other forms of market research. It is just glaringly disingenuous on this sub of “socialism vs capitalism” to say that trope or you are very ignorant how focused the so-called capitalism side is on the consumer.

Tl;dr the trope above, “Workers are also consumers too” is ignorant. Sorry. It’s also lazy and doesn’t answer the question(s).

Both mattress makers( capitalists) and unions( workers) are lobbying the Admin to place tariffs as high as 700% on imported mattresses.

Consumers get punished by collusion between politicians, capitalists and workers. You can make a case that this would be much worse if the economy were pure socialist.

How do we protect consumers from this collusion?

Hi all. I am looking for books that explain the mechanics of how economies would work in alternative systems to capitalsim. I want an in depth layout of how demand and supply would work, how incentives are used and where they come from, and how life would be different in terms of "standard of living" under other systems.

Thing is, as an econ major I have looked at major incentive issues that exist in the centrally planned economy of the USSR (incentive to under produce in order to acheive the minimum bracket bonus (you can read more about this in Economic Development textbooks), part shortages, product quality issues etc) but I also see many economic issues in the capitalist economy (the artificial creation of demand due to advertising industry, the jobs that create nothing of value to society ir. investment bankers, inevitable exploitation of the poor when there are no restrictions, etc). So I want a well researched book outlining either all the problems with a capitalist economy and how to fix them, or a book that sets out viable alternatives and corrects for the incentive problems common in centrally planned systems.

Thank you in advance.

I've been trying to do research into different governmental and economic systems lately, but I find it difficult. I'm hoping people here can explain the differences between capitalism and socialism and their respective pros and cons.

As I understand it, capitalism is when the super-rich elite control the means of production while socialism is when the working class controls the means of production. Under capitalism, the employer makes the decisions and the employee follows them. Under capitalism, profit is the most important factor. Socialism, meanwhile, gives more power and wealth to the people lower on the social ladder.

Socialism sounds to me like it's more equal and democratic, but I've run into many people who insist that I've misunderstood the two. I'm hoping people in this subreddit can clear things up. If I've gotten things wrong, please correct me. Thank you.

There is always a lot of discussion of technological-unemployment, and the 'post scarcity' abundance world / what happens when most people don't have to work and everyone has UBI (universal basic income).

It struck me that the real scenario we are seeing play out on this is actually what is going on at Ivy League colleges right now. The real answer to what happens in a post-scarcity world is staring us right in the eye: when people don't pay for anything and work isn't the purpose or valued… they start participating in unhinged protests and LARPs in an attempt to create a sense of meaning and purpose (and new social structures of who is 'in' vs. 'out’). Tests of moral purity as an achievement.

On Ivy league campuses, there are plenty folks in hard sciences, taking real hard classes - those people are working and really not part of the LARPs going on at campus....Then there are the people in humanities, less 'precise' disciplines shall we say: they don't really pay anything for school / they effectively have full UBI at the college since the financial aid system is so strong they have no skin in the game. They enjoy massive well documented grade inflation (and a lot of affirmative action by handouts that are anti-meritocratic) / they are all going to get As (making As meaningless). In an era of near full employment they will get jobs as Harvard grads, but what those jobs are pretty bounded since they aren't building real skills of value in college. And what happens?

The LARPing happens... the protests happen... all because - if we are going a few levels deeper - people feel in a UBI world unimportant, less powerful, and they lack identity and purpose. So they go out inventing these things and trying to create social structures of in-crowds and out-crowds however they can - subconsciously or not. Upshot from all of this, my Friday evening end of week thinking is that if Al really does drive technological unemployment, UBI, post-work future... we are all in for a world of pain.

Since there appears to be much misuse of the term, I think it may be good to put some points about fascism that I think are key in helping us understand it better to combat it.

This is not a definition, but a description of what fascism has historically been and how it came to power, so you can decide for yourself what its "definition" is.

Fascism and Revolution

To put bluntly, fascism is not revolutionary and never has been. It is in fact, counter-revolutionary.

Fascism may credit itself as being such, and fascists may say they are revolutionaries but a cursory glance of how fascists came to power shows otherwise.

First with regards to Italy, Mussolini was appointed PM by King Emmanuel III on 31 October 1922, after the March on Rome. Described as a coup, it was in reality a hand down of power from the Italian ruling elites and aristocrats who feared the rise of left-wing unions and Bolshevism (Marxism-Leninism). Mussolini was put in power because his squadrismos were the most effective (violent) ways for the ruling class to stop this brewing revolutionary movement.

Mussolini's rise was celebrated by the monopolists and business elites in America and the UK, many looked on Italy with admiration. For those seeking more information on this, I recommend this article

US corporations flocked to invest in Mussolini’s Italy. The American historian and analyst Noam Chomsky wrote, “As fascist darkness settled over Italy, financial support from the US government and business climbed rapidly. Italy was offered by far the best postwar debt settlement of any country, and US investment there grew far faster than in any other country, as the fascist regime established itself, eliminating labor unrest and other democratic disorders”. (4)

The irresistible attraction of big business towards fascist rule, like moths to a flame, tells its own story. With Mussolini one year in power, the US Embassy eulogised in late 1923, “The results have been excellent, and during the last 12 months there has not been a single strike in the whole of Italy” (5). The Embassy believed that Mussolini was becoming a success because of his destruction of labour power, and therefore the erosion of a key democratic process.

In regards to our other example, which is Nazi Germany, once again we have the same story of Hitler being appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, the president of Weimar Germany at the time. Contemporary Weimar constitution gave the president full discretion to choose anyone he thought fit to the role, and Hindenburg himself was persuaded to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, after beating him in the presidential election in 1932, by Von Papen, who thought the far left was becoming a dangerous threat to the republic.

The traditional story presented of course is of a charismatic leader winning an election to rise to power, putting the blame of Nazi leadership on the masses of Germany and the communists who sought the destruction of the republic. This story conveniently ignores that the Nazis actually performed worse in November 1932 than they did in July, and that the ruling establishment in Germany was far more cocnerned with Bolshevism than with Nazism.

To add more examples to the table, Pinochet was backed by the CIA, Suharto was funded by the UK & US. Or Kolomoyskyi, who has funded the Aidar and Azov battalions in Ukraine

In fact wherever we turn to find actual fascism in the real world, its origin of power almost universally comes from the ruling elites, i.e fascism comes from the top-down, not from the bottom up.

It is as Dmitrov describes, the terroristic rule and vengeance of finance capital, the most advanced form of capital in the stage of imperialism. It is not in the depth of the country among rural or uneducated masses.

Fascism and Definitions

Definitions of fascism seem to miss the point of describing actual fascism. Instead of trying to understand what force animates it, and also what concretely unites Squadrismo with Azov and Pinochet with Mussolini, they ponder and wonder on abstractions and ideals that fascist leaders have seemed to espouse.

Eco's 14 points are a good example of the shortcoming of this, as Eco meanders to say that not all 14 can apply, and sometimes they don't and sometimes they do. The failure of these points to identify actual fascism can be illustrated when we take a control, which is actual neonazis today such as Azov battalion. Eco is no better at finding fascism in azov than it is in finding it in Joe Biden.

The form fascism takes in reality does differ based on time and place and circumstance, the specific ideas it adopts are malleable to those. Which is why chasing fascism by ideals it aspouses is beginning from the wrong premise

Fascism and Opportunism in regards to culture.

In the sphere of culture war, the use of fascism is naught but pure opportunism in the strictest sense of what that word actually means.

As we have seen above, fascism does not come from the masses organically, it rather comes from the heights of political and economic institutions as a response to the unrest among the masses. There is no upsurging fascist revolution among the masses who reject social engineering, while fascism may deceive the masses it acquires political power when it is handed it down from the heights of the elite. Not for arbitrary reasons is fascism elitist.

In their opportunism to silence or cancel their opponents, the opportnistic ultras distract from the very real threat of fascism, which is latent within our very own political institutions. Instead, they objectively side with the establishment in blaming the horrors of fascism on the masses and their backwardness and wiping the ruling class' hands free. In so doing, they legitimise and make credible the suspension of even the facade of formal liberal process by the enlightened ruling class as a tool to preseve the same formal liberalism against the deplorables whom they have alienated by their own opportunism.

Fascism is not based on backward stances regarding culture, culture is not the principal contradiction on which basis we define this term. The cultural aspects of fascism are purely superficial to it - Azov and Aidar have specifically targeted ethnic enemies such as Russians and Roma and have not attacked the disabled or homsoexuals because doing so would alienate them from the western aid they really need. The same way Zionists try to monopolise Nazi atrocities, positing that only the Jews were victims of Nazi atrocities, and that the Nazis sought to exterminate the Jews only, Nazi policies towards Germans they considered inferior is likewise attempted to be monopolised by culutral activists to argue that rejecting their views is a slippery slope to nazism.

This is perhaps forgivable to the uneducated, but it must be adressed to counter opportunism. Stop using the threat of fascism to push a social agenda.

Fascism and Communism

As we have seen, despite what ideas fascism aspouses, its power stems from the handing down of power from the established powers, from parliaments, kings, presidents or state department agencies during a time of crisis, to be unleashed against the masses, fascism and communism do not merely differ "in internationalism" or whatever. Fascists are empowered specifically to fulfil the end goals of financial capital and to crush mass movements against the establishment. Communism on the other hand is an incipient mass movement that tries to sublate and overcome the current state of things. This is why the two are fundamnetally at odds, and why what unites fascism across time and space and through history is violent anti-communism.

Fascism and the Current US

Should be clear by now that I think the real threat of fascism in the US today is not the MAGA base or the rednecks, or the deplorables, but the state department itself, the ones in bed with the duopoly but especially in the Democratic party Fascism in the US will come from the state department and may history of fascism attest to this reality - if fascism is to come to the in 2024 it will be when the powers behind Joe Biden decide to just make Kamala Harris, or anyone else for that matter the leader, and suspend the elections or ignore their result completely. This will be in continuity with how actual fascism - the one that actually killed people - has functioned around the world for over a century.

Fascism and Anti-Fascism

Effective anti-fascism is populism. It is building a mass movement that can challenge the political elites, it is bridging the differences and putting aside personal disagreements for the sake of a greater cause, which is a united front against fascism.

It is for example, reaching out and supporting the truckers and the freedom convoy, it is not believing the media when they plant a glowie to bring a nazi flag to the protest to smear its reputation. It is raising a voice when banks closed their bank accounts. It is not conditioning co-operation with the truckers behind a list of demands, or rejecting them if some are crass or unarticulate.

Conclusion

Feel free to tackle these points or point out where you think I'm unclear or wrong. But keep in mind, I am basing my understanding of fascism on how it actually was, not on the ideas or abstractions it claims to be

As a young socialist trying to refine his beliefs and reconcile democracy, collective ownership, and pragmatism, I've been drawn to the idea of a democratic socialist state with a market socialist economy. In my understanding, this means a society wherein both the state and market are democratized, with workers collectively owning firms through a variety of possible systems (co-ops, communes, syndicates, elected bosses, etc.) within the bounds of a democratic republic. To that end, I've created a lengthy list of reasons why I believe a DemSoc/MarkSoc state would be a monumental, yet practical, step forward from today's capitalism, as well as a list of possible questions and criticisms that I fully admit not having the answers to. I hope this post spurs lively discussion, and can help myself--and perhaps others--refine their views and learn new ways to improve our societies.

1. A MarkSoc economy would be practical for immediate post-revolution rebuilding, as it leaves pre-war production structures intact enough to resume economic activity and quickly alleviate resource shortages. It would also, by virtue of retaining many pre-war structures, be capable of reintegrating into the global economy, even as it works to achieve socialism and support similar movements abroad.

2. Due to democratic ownership requiring each worker to be fairly compensated for their labor and hold a stake in decision making, firms would be naturally disincentivized from aggregation and monopolism, instead seeing an economy of small and middle sized firms that would, in theory, be less liable to overconsume, pollute the environment, promote wealth inequality, and hold disproportionate economic/political influence over society.

3. By democratizing labor, democratic decision making and ideals are normalized in day-to-day life, fostering a more democratic, collectivist spirit among the whole of society, which may better resist the encroachment of counterrevolutionary elements.

4. Rights to recall for all major elected leaders in government and business would force greater accountability to the common worker and citizen, with a simple majority vote among the population being enough to recall an official and host new elections.

5. Constitutionally enshrined labor protections are essential for the stability of a MarkSoc state, and would place hard checks on the market to prevent capitalist retrenchment (ex. Right to democratic ownership, nationalization of energy, academic, prison, and healthcare industries, state-funded baseline provisions for all citizens, right to unions and strikes, prohibition of private campaign donations exceeding certain amounts, etc.)

6. A MarkSoc state would help alleviate the more authoritarian aspects of bourgeois democracies by ensuring the common worker owns their labor and their government. With collective ownership of production, capitalist intervention in politics would be greatly reduced as the size and corruptibility of firms is reduced. It is in the best interests of workers to uphold politically the rights which empower them economically, and vice versa.

The state and the market would check and balance each other, preventing the extremes of capitalist corruption of the state and Soviet-style state bureaucracy, with a vibrant and empowered labor movement coexisting with a democratic socialist government. Should the market grow too powerful, the citizenry can check it through the state, with popularly or constitutionally mandated anti-monopoly laws, a bureau of workers rights, judicial inquiries, etc.; should the state grow too powerful, the workers can check it through strikes, boycotts, strong trade unionism, the democratic process, and if all else fails, the right to revolution.

7. By not totally abolishing the market, a MarkSoc economy retains profit incentives to socially advance, even as society's basic needs–food, water, shelter, healthcare, education, and energy–are provided. People naturally want to raise their standards of living when given the chance, which will ideally spur the hard work and innovation championed by capitalists, within the realms of collective ownership and democratically-endorsed limits on wealth. By allowing for limited degrees of wealth inequality and not removing the proverbial engine of the market, the state retains a stable tax base from which to fund its social programs.

8. Graduated income taxes, Georgist land taxes, anti-monopoly laws, and a “State Ceiling” on firms are essential to prevent wealth inequality and capitalist retrenchment. The State Ceiling is of particular importance, wherein firms that grow too large in revenue, resource consumption, and/or influence over a given market can be broken up or nationalized, thereby incentivizing smaller businesses while remaining flexible to material needs (if society needs more food, large agricultural firms can be nationalized; if production is stable, big-agri can be divided). Society can democratically vote against nationalization if it considers maintenance of state industries to be too much of a tax-burden, creating a natural counterbalance against the bureaucratism seen under the Soviet model.

9. A MarkSoc society can allow for a true meritocracy, with each citizen provided a stable foundation to begin from, and thus capable of maximizing their potential in economic, artistic, academic, and/or political life, with enough of a profit incentive retained to encourage striving for more, without the shackles of poverty and wage-slavery. Thus, society would see more, not less, innovation and competent leadership as people are able to compete and thrive from closer starting points. Various types of democratic ownership (communes, coops, elected bosses, syndicalism, etc.) would also be allowed to compete in the market, providing a treasure trove of data for political scientists and economists, and practical experience for labor leaders to build upon.

10. Market socialism distinguishes itself from social democracy in that workers, not capitalists, own the means of production. While a strong welfare state still exists, it would not be acting against, but rather mutually supporting the market, while simultaneously achieving the first and greatest goal of socialism–collective ownership of the means of production.

11. A more democratic political system would allow for massive reductions in the military budget, providing another source of funding for social programs, while the armed forces are reconstituted to serve as guardians of the new state. Nuclear deterrents should be enough to prevent invasion by counterrevolutionaries, allowing for a small, but highly professional and ideologically disciplined, military to intervene when necessary and serve as a future vanguard for the world revolution.

Questions, criticisms, and concerns:

I. Will even controlled income inequality lead to the reestablishment of capitalism and foster disproportionate influence among wealthier firms and citizens in government, or can a stable enough foundation give everyone a fair shot?

II. How can banks be democratically held accountable for their investments?

III. If a democratically owned firm fails, will the economy be hit more strongly than under normal circumstances, or would firm sizes be reduced enough to prevent massive damage?

IV. If small and middle sized firms are the norm, will this cause increased unemployment as hiring more workers is discouraged, or will these workers find employment in local businesses? Could state industries (healthcare, academia, energy sector, armed forces) serve as fallbacks, or would this cause a glut of useless government jobs funded by taxpayers? Would a demographically stable population (ei, zero net population growth) be able to reach an employment equilibrium?

V. Will small/middle sized firms be able to meet material needs efficiently enough in developed economies used to massive corporations allocating resources? Is this a point in favor of central planning, and if so, how would central planning compare in efficiency to the current model? Do large firms already use internal central planning (ex. Walmart)?

VI. Would overconsumption and resource mismanagement be reduced enough through industrial democracy and state protections, or would the market and disposable income still fuel excess production of consumer goods?

VII. How would the limits of the State Ceiling be decided? Would there be a risk of the state acquiring too much control over industries, or would democratic discontent lead to natural reductions in the size of industries if taxpayers decided they were too expensive?

VIII. What would the exact language of a MarkSoc constitution be? How would democratic power be apportioned within branches of government? Would there be a Supreme Court, and if so, how are its judges chosen?

IX. How would mass recall of elected officials, both governmental and economic, be formally structured, and what would prevent its constant usage in partisan obstruction?

X. Would constant democratic participation in firms exhaust workers and slow efficiency to the point where workers prefer more traditional corporate hierarchies, leading to retrenchment of capitalist elements, or would the benefits of worker ownership encourage workers to find healthy equilibriums between debate and production? Would the simple threat of bankruptcy be enough to mitigate partisanship and sectarianism in firms, or would democratic ownership inevitably result in collapse, to the detriment of the economy and its dependents (everyone)?

This argument is about the 2024 US election and Trump as a candidate.

Let’s assume for sake of argument Donald Trump is a businessman who really only cares about his own personal interests. As we know in a capitalist society, a businessman’s priority is profit and delivering shares to shareholders of the company.

Many hardcore capitalists could argue that this is actually what’s best for the country, as this will force the president and his cabinet to appropriately abide to market forces. If you try to defy the will of the market and the consumers you will lose badly, and Trump as an experienced businessman knows this.

I understand this argument isn’t very nuanced or fleshed out but I randomly thought of it while reading a book and am having a hard time debunking it.

Btw I’m clueless on economics so if anyone can help me out I would appreciate if you can explain why this argument is wrong or even if it is wrong.

As of 2022, Venezuela ranked second on the misery index. Most capitalists here would probably attribute that to the nationalization of private industries under Chavez and advocate for freer markets. For socialists on this sub, what would you do differently whilst still maintaining the policies of Chavez and Maduro?