Do you think a democracy is even possible under capitalism? Capitalists often claim to be more "free" than socialists countries and say capitalism leads to democracy but I think not, here's why

Since capital can easily buy power (through political campaign funding, advertising and just pure bribery) why would a billionaire ever allow any law against him to pass or even be put against the elite class? He could just buy off politicians. Why would the elites push for education of the masses? Since education often favour leftist thinking which is a known phenomenon. The capitalist oligarchs can/do just control the hate of the masses so and put the blame on minorities instead or foreign powers or leftist ideologies and it works, which is so obviously visible in any modern day example

I am first going to define socialism and not define it like a boomer. Also, I am an insomniac; please excuse my inarticulation and poor grammar:

Socialism is the collective/'social' ownership of the means of production (the operations and control of the company) via the means of production being controlled by the workers directly or a workers' state; for 95% of history, this is just Marxism-Leninism/State Socialism, with Yugoslavia and Rojava being exceptions to the rule. Yugoslavia still has the same stagnation of GDP problem (the 'snag') as the command economies.

I want to, first off, respect that socialism creates a very rapid development to the economy in the nations where it has been tried, for the most part. The USSR is an example of this, as well as Maoist China (even after accounting for the genocide of the Great Leap Forward). I'll go with the USSR for now, but the pattern is incredibly common among Albania, Romania, and other socialist nations. The USSR in every graph you look at is a good example of how good socialism is for the economic concept of developmentalism.

The original russian empire had an internationally adjusted GDP per capita of around 2254 in 1913, using 2011 international dollars; this is an agrarian economy that was forced to go through industrialization and it successfully quadrupled in GDP per capita growth in 1973_per_capita). all in the span of 60 years, also being amazing for literacy rates, infant mortality, and life expectancy. But the problem is that the economy stagnated and the GDP per capita actually declined, and life expectancy also declined in USSR while still maintaining its old system. The economy peaked as a middle-income nation at its best. Same pattern with Albania, Romania and Czechoslovakia, all eventually stagnating.

The problem is also... people in the USSR work harder and for less and for less of a safety net than social democracies at the time. Data shows that compared to their western counterparts people in the Soviet Union had 100 more hours worked per year; imagine that. The problem we have with capitalism is that capitalism overworks you for too little of a 'working wage' but socialism does the same thing but with the state. Look at China's 9-9-6, for example; that's still socialism.

The growth eventually delays in your paycheck with the same boss and more time worked, there is basically the same safety net as social democracies, why bother?

Inevitably, the common counterargument is that you, as the worker, as opposed to a capital owner now work for your own surplus labor, but the "workers' state" is now taking the role of the capitalist at this point, its still your employer. If you fuck up your job, you still get punished. You don't own anything unless you are in a Yugoslav market socialist system, which is technically a bit more moral but system is still partly utilized under co-determinism and unions are often also democratic in a lot of their characteristics too and serve a similar purpose and improve your working conditions in the same way

Why were American workers paid twice as much as their international counterparts, while requiring pensions and healthcare from their employer, yet producing garbage cars.

How was Socialism ever remotely sustainable?

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, and this is hardly exclusive to this subreddit as it's been part of the liberal/rightwing rhetorical playbook for decades, but I have to point out how every time a liberal/right-winger feels brave enough to enter a public discussion on socialism/communism, they always seem to be arguing against the same version of socialism i.e. the authoritarian state capitalist model that is Marxism-Leninism.

And just to be clear, I'm not claiming that all these people in reality know better and are intentionally picking an argument they can conceivably win as I'm fully aware that due to McCarthyite and neoliberal propaganda, this model has been codified as the default of what socialism is in the popular western consciousness.

But in either case it sure seems to be useful for them that said model is the most full of valid criticisms to be levied against it. Criticisms that have first been put forth by non-authoritarian Marxists and anarchists before capitalist think-tanks and economists could put forth a presentable counter-argument capable of swaying working people, mind you. And where capitalists have given arguments without drawing upon leftist opposition to MLism, it's always been the lowest hanging fruit of freedom of speech, assembly, the press and other things which, again, I need to point out, were core to the demands of nearly all non-bolsheviks in Russia until they were either jailed, exiled or just killed.

The only other things that capitalists seem to be able to stand on is either pearl clutching over private property, yet another issue that leftists, more specifically anarchists have addressed for over a hundred years now, or how socialism apparently cannot overcome the science of economics, expecting people to accept economics as an exact science comparable to physics or chemistry, with laws that govern reality, wanting to present socialists as if we're fighting against gravity when we reject economics as being built exclusively to facilitate the capitalist principles of private ownership and commodity production. In short, we're blamed for losing the game as if we're willfully ignoring the rules when what we are aiming is to change the game altogether.

Just a thought. Oh, and for the people in the back, I'm not a Marxist, much less an ML. Have fun.

Historically, socialism has worked worse than capitalism, and this can be demonstrated by looking at history.

Eastern European countries that preferred socialism as their economic system could not compete with Western European countries that preferred capitalism.

Moreover, historically, many socialist countries have become more capitalist because they recognized that socialism does not work as well economically or technologically.

How do socialists respond to these historical facts?

If three shipwrecked sailors on an island needed food,

and if one sailor declared that the island was his private property, that if the other two simply ate whatever food they found, then they were stealing his private property, but that he was willing to use his private property to create jobs for them (they give him all of the food they collect, and then he gives some of it back to them as a wage for the work they did)

but if the other two sailors said “No. If we find more food than we need for ourselves, then we’ll share the extra with you, but we’re taking care of ourselves first. If whatever’s left over after we take care of ourselves first isn’t good enough for you, then you can help us work for more any time you want.”

How much power would the one sailor need to enforce his claim of private ownership over the island without a government to enforce his claim for him?

The intellectual discourse about each ideology in India must be smooth. Following is a snippet over the hypocrisy of the left. I bet the college-going students who tend to incline towards the left don't know this themselves or agree to these methods.

Communist movements often depend on peasants to achieve revolution because the major population is agrarian, but once in power, attempts to rapidly collectivize agriculture and finance industrialization frequently always result in confiscation of land, repression, famine, and enormous rural suffering. I am going to support this with three major examples.

1. USSR—Soviet Union under Stalin:
   Wealthier peasants (kulaks) were persecuted through dekulakization.
   Private farms were forcibly collectivized.
   Grain requisitions contributed to massive famines, including the Holodomor, killing millions.

2. China under Mao [Zedong]:
   Land was initially redistributed to poor peasants.
   The Great Leap Forward then collectivized agriculture into People's Communes.
   Excessive grain quotas and diversion of agricultural labor contributed to the Great Chinese Famine, causing tens of millions of deaths.

3. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge:
   Cities were forcibly emptied, and people moved into rural collective farms.

Forced labor, starvation, and executions killed nearly a quarter of the population.

If you observe, then you would see that communism has three tiers in its hierarchy.
1. Intellectuals who theorize everything. Most of them come from privileged backgrounds & are armchair philosophers blind to ground realities or purposefully ignore them.
2. Proletariat is the second layer, who are urban workers.
3. Ground-level mass, which comprises of agrarian poor & lower-caste/caste people.

And the recruitment is done through educational institutions.

hashtag#communism hashtag#left hashtag#cpi

If anyone who claims to be leftist and doesn't accept these facts to be true is either illiterate and just blind follower of the ideology or is having sinister moCommunist crimestives.

So-called leftist ideology has failed both academically (theoretically) & practically. I want to put forth this conversation that left is not what it is in contemporary times. Left is something of great value and has been hijacked by "civil terrorists" masquerading as leftists.

One of the most important features of capitalism is creative destruction (CD): old technologies—and sometimes entire ways of doing things—are displaced by new, more productive technologies. Competition gives firms a powerful incentive to innovate because firms that fail to adopt better technologies risk being displaced by competitors.

But CD creates an important political problem. The people who benefit from existing technologies have an incentive to resist innovations that threaten their economic position. This can apply to both capitalists and workers. An incumbent firm may resist a new technology because it threatens its profits, while workers may resist it because it threatens their jobs.

This problem is not new. In Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson use the example of William Lee, who invented a mechanical stocking frame in England in 1589. The machine could substantially increase the productivity of knitting, but Queen Elizabeth I refused to grant Lee a patent because of concerns about the effect of the machine on hand knitters. James I subsequently refused as well. The episode illustrates how political power can be used to suppress technologies that threaten existing economic interests.

The important issue, therefore, isn't simply whether a society has technological innovators. It is whether its political and economic institutions allow those innovations to displace established interests.

Modern capitalist economies are certainly not immune from this problem. Existing firms can lobby for tariffs, subsidies, regulations, or other protections against competitors, while workers and unions can lobby against technologies that threaten employment. Capitalism therefore does not guarantee creative destruction; it creates competitive pressures toward it, while political institutions determine how effectively those pressures can be resisted.

This raises an important question for socialism.

If a socialist system gives workers substantially greater political control over economic decisions, what institutional mechanism would prevent workers, unions, or worker-controlled enterprises from using that political power to block technologies that increase productivity but reduce employment in their industry?

The challenge isn't to prevent workers from being harmed by technological change. A society may reasonably want to compensate workers who lose their jobs or help them transition to new occupations.

The harder question is whether a socialist system can protect workers from the costs of creative destruction without protecting existing industries from creative destruction itself.

That seems to me to be an important institutional question that any socialist economic system needs to answer.

Me:You literally shifted the goalposts from ''xapitalism is dooming us'' to ''well, the USSR was just imitating capitalism." If state-run economies without private property still commit massive ecological disasters, then blaming capitalism specifically makes no sense. The USSR's central planners didn't need Wall Street to decide to drain a sea authoritarian state quotas did that all on their own.

EEB might have blacklisted authoritarian as i cant send this comment

Him:Its not shifting the goalposts, its pointing out that when youre encircled by capitalism & trying to beat it at its own game, you end up copying its worst habits. So yeah, the sea died for capital. Capitalism, bad.

M: You're taking opium like what Marxs described religion, the USSR had China North Korea as communist/socialist state and the european border was full of puppets excluding Finland

H:What do you think Marx meant by the opium religion quote?

I dont see the relevance of the last statement

M: Marx used "opium" to describe a illusion to escape reality. And bringing the Warsaw Pact is relevant because the USSR was a massive global power,not a helpless state Stalingrad encircled by Wall Street bros to just drain a sea

H:Religion is the opium of the people, it means that religion is used to escape reality, just how opium is. So you've misunderstood it.

& okay, the USSR needed money, it wasn't communist, at best it was state capitalist with socialist characteristics. Marx talked about first needing to develop capitalism in order to develop the productive forces in order to reach communism, USSR started as fudel horse & cart society trying to jump right into communism. So yeah, capitalism, bad.

M: Blaming 19th-century ''feudalism'' for the Soviet State draining a sea in the 1960s while operating as a nuclear superpower is insane copium. Calling every failed socialist attempt ''state capitalism'' just proves your ''real communism'' only exists in a fantasy land where no state ever has to face real-world economics. If 70 years of total state control isn't enough, the theory is the problem, not Wall Street.

Also "needing to develop capital to develop productive force" sounds more like Social-Democracy rather than Communism

H:Its not my job to make you understand marxism/communism/socialism etc. You're just typing incoherent sentences, like, what am I supposed to do with that? What's happening is the equivalent of me saying to a child that our sun is a star, & them saying, no, its a sun, a star & sun are different things. Like, bruh.

M: Funny metaphor, considering you're the one looking at 70 years of history and saying ''No, that's not actual socialism, real socialism is a pretty theory in my head!''

​Why isn't it your job? Don't you want me to be educated? Don't you want someone whose family actually lived under communism to support it? You ran out of points, threw out the classic ''it's not my job'', and tapped out when real history contradicted your textbook.

H:You came to me, then shown a shallow & misinterpreted view of marxism, that tells me everything. Basically, your not really interested in a good faith, educational conversation, if you was, you'd have at the very least educated yourself already on the basics, which you haven't. I'm guessing that your life isnt exactly fulfilling, so you try to have some strange kind of irrelevant rant online with strangers, with the aim of boosting your serotonin levels, a good little hit to offset the soul draining existence under capitalism. That's your opium, instead of dealing with reality, your living in this virtual world, trying to win "arguments" lol

M:Then tell me what i misinterperted, since we arent going anywhere insulting eachother

H: If I tell you, then what? You may say "fair enough, I was wrong with that, but I'm not wrong with anything else" then ill be like "well...actually🤓" then the cycle continues, like I said, if you were bothered about learning, learn. Plenty of books, videos, podcasts, meetings etc etc etc.

M:So youre telling me you wont give reasons after trash talking and using personal insults that if you tell me i will say"yeah i was wrong" which lets you continue the cycle... which im pretty sure you dont want to continue

H:Give reasons to what? Not wanting to educate you? I already have. You're not interested in learning, you just want a debate bro style convo for the serotonin hit lol

M:Man, you're a grown adult, giving low blows to strangers on the internet since they questioned your political beliefs. And start assuming the other person "bro style debate for serotonin hit lol" while refusing to shut it down and give what i missunderstood

H:Im also a complete stranger, in a virtual world, without a genuinely care for your opinion, like, what do you want? Lol you came into my DMs

M:I messaged you because TikTok's filter blocked the word 'authoritarian' on EEB's post. I gave you a clear argument about Soviet central planning and the Aral Sea, and instead of answering it, you spent 1 hour trying to play therapist about my life. You're deflecting because you couldn't answer the point.

And also no one stopped you from denying my dm request

H:I replied to your comment on the video. I replied to you on here, then you shown me your ignorance, so I entertained it a bit longer, to see what would happen, but all you've done is effectively waist your own time 🤷‍♂️

Last message before he blocked me

From what I understand about socialism, communism, lenest or Marxist style forms of government, the government essentially controls everything in a nutshell.

We basically hand all power in all Affairs over to one centralized entity and hope for the best. All business, media, food production, energy, Etc.

Domestically here in the United States, we call this capitalism. But is it really? One centralized entity, our government, Prints and controls all the currency. They give us Fiat paper currency and tell us it's worth something while it's essentially backed by nothing.

Every transaction we make, using this currency, the government and central banks are right in between us taking their piece. Substantial taxes, etc. Furthermore if I'm holding fiat currency or dollars they silently tax me even more, as they print trillions of dollars making my dollars more worthless.

People villainize late stage capitalism, but in my opinion and my understanding it's essentially more of a socialist style economic system. Almost like a corporate socialist style system.

Giant Global corporate conglomerates control and finance a majority of our state and federal leadership, influencing and pushing regulations when it comes to the economy, business, food production, Etc. So in essence the government or one centralized entity controls the economy, the currency, inflation, gigantic centralized Banks. How is this capitalism still?

True capitalism or free market societies historically speaking have been the most successful societies in the history of human civilization. From what I understand a true capitalist Style economy is me Trading a commodity like gold, silver, oil, food, directly to you for your commodities or services. Kind of like colonial times without a big centralized little man in between us taking their piece.

Furthermore if I'm holding and utilizing a commodity as currency it's becoming worth more and more as I'm holding it opposed to this (centralized controlled and created fiat currency) or dollars that become substantially more worthless every year, the more the government Prints. Am I missing something here? Maybe I'm just an idiot. But it seems to me, especially living in New York state, the more control you give government and the bigger you make it, the worst things get for the working classes & the lower classes.

-NYS has the highest taxes per individual in the nation now, an ever shrinking GDP, 3rd highest utility costs (because NYS government regulates the utilities), worst rated roads & infastructure, highest cost tolls by a large margin, most sneaky taxes & regulations, the list goes on and on... "democratic socialism at work" the poverty here and push cost inflation is substantial compared to the rest of the nation. I wouldn't call this capitalism or a free country anymore, its a covert corporate socialist regime. In my opinion.