SolarCross wrote:
Imaginary oppression does not count.
Palmyrene: "I gots no money! I want money! Oi mista give us a job so I can has money!"
Mister: "okay I am sure I can find something for you to do."
Palmyrene: "Sucker, now you is oppressing me, dat means i gestakill yu and take yur stuff and it will be yur fault. TYRANT!"
Mister: "Aaaagh!"
This is a common 'tactic', that of *mixing scales*.
SC, or any right-winger, will often *dramatize* overarching socio-political dynamics, by trying to 'personalize' such -- like the strivings to get out from under the institution of private property ownership (over the means of mass production).
This racist characterization of the *objective* reality of capitalism tries to depict the exchange of labor for a wage as being 'clean', a basic daily 'trade', when in fact it's far better described as racism because of how capitalism has been, and is, implemented, socially. People of color, women, immigrants, and other social minorities *have* been specifically denigrated by the state according to imposed-from-above social status, by private property ownership, race, sex, gender, age, ability, etc., because the system is *not* purely mechanical and heaven-sent, as its proponents would have us believe.
The political goal of the proletariat is *not* petty theft, as this caricature depicts, because the goal is actually one that is *collective* in nature. Class rule currently benefits from its political hegemony, so that the military-industrial complex is dominantly socially defined as 'defense' while the U.S. empire benefits from that global 'protection' racket, better-described as *imperialism* over Central America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
SC is allowing the 'Mister' petty-bourgeois character to have social validity as virtually a 'philanthropist' in the propagandistic scenario by creating-a-job out of otherwise *trivial* tasks, when it's the whole bourgeois *system* that relegates proletarians -- like the 'Palmyrene' caricature of a proletarian -- to having to find economic *sponsors* just to secure the basic necessities of life and living (food, shelter, etc.).
This inherent *oppression* is *real*, not imaginary, because the employer / owner-of-capital has enormous social *power* over who gets a wage-paying job, and who doesn't, and can arbitrarily sub-divide all job applicants according to *favoritism*, and by demographic qualities such as ownership, race, gender, social minority status, etc., thereby manifesting *oppression* in all proletarians' treatment according to the prevailing bourgeois social power structure.
Julian658 wrote:
Capitalism does not change the fact that some humans are not talented and are destined to be in the lower socioeconomic strata. However, capitalism has given us the most prosperity in world history. In western capitalist nations the poor are now obese and receive cash from the government for subsistence. Up until this era the poor were always thin, emaciated, and cachectic. IN many capitalists nations the poor do not need to work to eat or to have a place to live. That is a first in world history! Furthermore, in the USA most poor people have smartphones, designer clothing, and large flat TV screens. Are they poor? Sure they are poor compared to productive citizens, but they are better off than the middle class in the 1920s.
While the wealthier have condominiums, large castle-like estates, stock portfolios, private personnel, planes, cars, social connections, ties into government, etc., in addition to good food, smartphones, designer clothing, and large flat TV screens.
Capital itself, btw, is *not* inherently productive -- it's only economically 'productive' to the extent that it can exploit commodified labor, so as to realize new monetary *gains* from the *exploitation* of that labor and its labor value.
Unthinking Majority wrote:
So what do you think determines the value of a worker and how much compensation they get? How do you compare the value of worker A vs worker B? Is it simply how much effort or time they spend to complete a task?
If every worker is paid a portion of all the money the business takes in above costs, what's the incentive for anyone to invest money into that company? Where is the company going to get needed cashflow to expand production?
See, these are the problematic implications resulting from a social *hierarchy*, of any kind, whether based in *power* (the capitalist state), or in *wealth* (economics).
Workers are *commodified* in the process of working for life and living, and can then be formally officially compared against one another according to their respective relative positions on the world power structure / hierarchy.
You're also glossing-over that 'profit' is a *cost* to funding, and is *withdrawn* from the materially productive M-C-M' cycle.
If / when the workers of the world all control social production *collectively*, *they* / we would also be the natural *benefactors* of that arrangement, with no exchange values required whatsoever -- insteading of a system that abstracts 'values' (exchange values) away from societal availability, into private hands, all of the material benefits produced by liberated-labor would be available to any and all who *needed* that stuff, be it food or land or technology or leisure. A communist gift economy would enable those who *want* to work, to work, and those who want to consume, to consume -- or any mixture of the two -- as is organically appropriate to those respective empirical material roles. (My 'labor credits' model framework happens to address the potential issue of how a post-capitalist social order could deal with liberated-labor being *scarce* in relation to mass needs for socially-necessary social production:
https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/200014-Labor-credits-Frequently-Asked-Questions).
Agent Steel wrote:
Why is capitalism the "best" system for creating wealth? Granted it's a hell of a lot better than communist dictatorships we've seen in the past, but I see no reason to be content with it when it creates so much misery for so many people.
I can definitely imagine better systems in the future.
Yeah, capitalism *was* historically progressive at one point in time, *for* its quality of centralizing accumulated value into currency, and away from the feudal aristocracy, but that was well over 200 years ago. Now capitalism can't move past this dynamic, even though the social reality it's produced is one of systematic *overproduction*, and benefits to a wealthy ownership elite, over all other people.
All of the right-wing attacks on Stalinist states are ill-founded, because these quasi-collectivized, nationally-circumscribed societies wouldn't even have *been* necessary if it wasn't for capitalist imperialist military meddling *within* such socio-politically revolutionized states, in the first place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_WarAs a result, the right-wing ideology is ideologically *dependent* on (mis-)portraying socialism as being equivalent to these historically battered class- and popular- founded revolutionizings of how social production is structured ('mode of production') (beyond capitalism) ('soviets', or worker councils).
JohnRawls wrote:
Nationalism was/is present in USSR, PRC, DPRK, Cuba, Vietnam. What do you think they fought for in most of those places? PRC, DPRK, Cuba and Vietnam specifically were nationalist who fought for their independence. The difference is that they were communists along with being nationalists.
Yes, and they were successfully *anti-imperialist* as well, which is more-to-the-point historically.
SolarCross wrote:
No it isn't because you want to kill all the capitalists. Technically that is almost everyone including yourself. Where is the solidarity in wanting to butcher humans for being human?
Here's another knee-jerk *personalizing* of class politics -- even *if* killing-of-capitalists was to happen, it would only be in response to actual *empirical* conditions playing-out, such as the resistance of counterrevolutionaries to the nascent workers state. In other words it would be a *tactic* to fit overall political conditions, and not would not be something for you to take *personally*.
Your type indulges in such scarce-tactics with your knee-jerk hand-waving over such issues -- it's *not* a revolutionary-ideological *precept*, that 'all capitalists must be killed', as you're currently misrepresenting.
Agent Steel wrote:
Throughout history, nations that have attempted strict communist philosophies have not worked because inevitably someone will take all the power for themselves and then use it to regulate the lives of everyone else.
This, again, isn't due to *ideology*, but rather to do the overarching *capitalist* class power structure that prevailed, and continues to prevail, over all left-leaning countries.
Economics is inevitably *global*, and the nationalist circumscribing of a relatively more-collectivist social order within any given country *won't* ultimately be successful while the overarching global capitalist power relations of production continue to prevail -- a left-leaning country then has to *manage* its internal affairs *within* the larger wealth- and exchange-value-based global social order, and it has historically done this by creating its *own*, national power structures internally, as with one-party states and dictatorial-type rulers (more socially progressive than the major capitalist nations, but still hierarchical internally).
Agent Steel wrote:
However, it seems to me that this scenario is not exclusive to communism. This exact same scenario will inevitably come to exist in a pure free-market system where there's no government regulations at all. It would be total anarchy, much like a post-apocalyptic scenario where one corrupt ruler would step into power. And the very reason this has not been able to happen in the USA is because the USA is NOT a pure free-market economy. USA is and has always had elements of socialism, and it is those elements that have prevented dictatorships from forming.
And due to U.S. *exceptionalism*, in which its military imperialism prevails, thus setting the hegemonic standard by which all lesser world powers must conform-to.
Agent Steel wrote:
In fact, since the dawn of civilization, mankind has lived under some form of socialism. Libertarians and anarchists who want to abolish all government interference have a delusional idea that they are free and independent and that they are wholly responsible for their economical achievements, whilst living under a safety net which has provided them with the opportunities they have to go out and make a living for themselves. You might think you are wholly independent but in fact you almost certainly would fare poorly without some form of government to protect you.
This formulation is yet-*another* attempt at a personalization of the social protection racket -- the capitalist state is *not interested* in any given *person*, normally. You're also *mixing contexts* -- we currently live under capitalist-type private-property-based commodification of labor, with a few remaining welfare-state-type reforms, which are *not* a 'given'. The regular proletarian in society does not *need* 'protection' from the ruling-class bourgeois state, since there is no such *objective interest* for such on the part of the state. What the working class needs is the *non-intervention* of either capitalism (capital) (private property), or the capitalist state (imperialism).
Agent Steel wrote:
No man is an island. We have always been social animals, and the idea that we can survive totally on our own is an idea that can only arise once we are already living under a system that has provided us with some stability and protection.
'Stability'? 'Protection'? Workers today, as always, do not *have* any economic stability or 'protection' from the bourgeoisie because the bourgeoisie's ruling-class interests do *not* include the well-being of the workers that it facelessly exploits, day-in and day-out.
Agent Steel wrote:
Most other developed countries are laughing at us. We seem to have a bizarre obsession with "freedom", as if only we uniquely have freedom. We have a paranoid fear that if we socialize healthcare it will take away our freedom. That is a myth. We also have this false idea that the reason why our healthcare costs more than it does in other countries is because it’s higher quality. This is also a myth. In Canada for example, a person can get the same quality healthcare they get in the USA for a fraction of the cost. Those in the USA who control the price of healthcare care only about themselves and their ability to make a profit. They can raise the cost of care to insanely high levels because they know that it being a necessity for many people they can still make a profit. This type of exploitation of people’s desperate needs to get treatment is deeply immoral.
What is currently being presented in the form of socialized democracy is nothing new. A socialized democracy is essentially what the USA is and has ALWAYS been. Our military is an exercise in socialized democracy. Without it we cannot survive. And yet, a common mindset many Americans have is that socialized democracy is evil. I think anyone who believes that is oblivious.
Workers do *not* benefit from nationalistic militarism because our foes are *not* workers in other, foreign countries -- our collective foe is the *bourgeois* *ruling class* here at home (U.S. or whatever), *and* the bourgeoisie of *other countries, whatever those other countries are.
Even a purported 'socialized democracy' doesn't help the working class of the U.S. because that 'socialized democracy' will have to inevitably conform to the interests of the ruling-class *state* -- a plutocratic oligopoly of the *corporations* of that capitalist state, against all other plutocratic oligopolies the world over, again not-representing or resembling the interests of the U.S.' -- or the world's -- working class.
Julian658 wrote:
There is no such thing as equality among humans. Some humans are destined to to go to the gutter and others accumulate wealth and go to the top. The rest of the people align themselves in the middle.
The best system is capitalism for the creation of wealth. Some of the wealth can be used to help those that are low in the strata of competence and achievement. If no help is provided we have a revolution and no one wants a revolution.
Those that still favor socialism are fools and do not understand history, the human condition, or economics.
I've just outlined the reality of *class society* -- yes, the working class of the world has an empirical, objective interest in *working class revolution* since the bourgeois class has no objective interest in working class interests.
Here's a graphic in two varying versions:
History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle
[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision