cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10351845
This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/10351845
This is the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldjerking/comments/1d92dkp/rate_the_political_factions_in_my_totally/
I love this logic because capitalism has made it its job to
kill any competitionprove the alternatives nonviable. Chile was trying something truly revolutionary, a fully democratic based socialism, and the CIA aborted the attempt and installed a capitalism friendly dictatorship.You won’t catch me simping for Authoritarians or anything, but when the only other mode of operation is a military strong enough to resist the CIA, there’s going to be a bias towards Authoritarian based alternatives. Convenient, if you’re trying to paint the alternatives as nonviable.
Man I love state sponsored terrorism!
That’s kind of a straw man, though, isn’t it? Governments of capitalist countries have worked hard to suppress non-capitalist movements within and without their country, but that’s just what governments do. The Soviet Union was communist (as pure communist as the US is pure capitalist, which is to say, not very), and that also suppressed any alternatives. It’s not a function of the economic system; it’s a characteristic governments repeatedly demonstrate, regardless of their economic ideology.
I agree with the grandparent argument: capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best thing we have so far. Personally, I don’t believe communism can work, mainly because I think it goes against human nature. Except for clan behavior - altruism to your family, friends, neighbors - people are generally selfish, and communism requires us to be altruistic at our own expense to people who we not only don’t know, but who may talk differently from us, look different from us, have different culture from us. And even at the clan level, communism struggles. There were hundreds of attempts at building communes in the US in the 60’s, and I honestly believe most died out not because they were subverted by the government, but because people are selfish and they collapsed under their own internal conflicts. Very few of those remain, and when you look at them, they have fairly rigid internal structures that re-enforce the commune.
Maybe if we can make it to post-scarcity, we’ll be able to afford to be communist, because then it won’t depend on altruism. But right now, when times are hard and food is scarce, most humans will look to feeding their own children first, and the priorities of the commune tear like tissue. Capitalism endures because it’s built upon greed and selfishness, and those come easy to humans. When times are hard, we tend to fall back on barter, which is capitalism.
Anyway, saying that the US suppression of communism in Latin American countries says less about capitalism than it says about the US government, and their perceived interests. The proof is in the parallels in Soviet and communist (Mao era) China regional actions.
I mean, that’s why I’m here using a p2p alternative. Since Napster and Bittorrent, they’ve proven that the most reliable way to resist their violence is to decentralize.
Some argue that the true democratic socialism has been achieved in India under Nehru. He was a socialist and the Indian economy was heavily regulated and many industries were government-owned. I’m not sure of the specifics but that hasn’t worked out well for many years. There is a reason why the news that India “liberalising” its economy in 1990s was big and seen as historical. Many credit India’s continuing growth from the liberalisation of the 90s. But some things have been relaxed too much imo.
I don’t know about the situation, but from what you described that wasn’t democratic socialism, it was social democracy; social democracy is a branch of capitalism. More specifically, social democracy emerged from a compromise made by capitalists to quell socialist and communist fervor.
In socialism, workers would be the owners of business and would distribute the profits among themselves. In social democracy, the states runs/manages some businesses with (in theory) the countries interests in mind, and creates several public support systems (i.e. public education and free healthcare) to improve overall quality of life for the average person; however the economy is still a capitalist one with free (but regulated) markets, where the only power workers have is voting on government elections.
I don’t think it was social democracy in India under Nehru. If I’m not mistaken, Nehru’s policies were further left than social democracy but I am willing to be corrected.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the Indian state of Kerala elects a socialist party since the independence of India, and have successfully uplifted the standards of living in its population with free housing and education etc, but people there are emigrating because there aren’t any jobs.
So do you have a functional alternative or do you just want a functional alternative?
(We ALL want the functional alternative)
Se can’t have a functional alternative if we don’t try and experiment dysfunctional ones and improve them. No system arises perfect. The argument that there is no alternative good enough is a tool to abot the creation of a good enough alternative through the improvement of not so good altemratoves.
We don’t requite perfection from capitalism, but require from it’s alternatives. Why? To block the possibility of a alternative, as all systems have problems, and initial experiments are problemsl ridden.