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@Cowbee@lemme.ml so bruv, what were you saying? I got banned from that thread over there.
You can DM people, by the way. You don’t need to go into posts, if you like you can click on people’s profiles and message them directly. Unless you want to talk on this thread specifically, of course.
Either way, I explained why there are Marxists on Lemmy, and why Belgium isn’t Socialist but China is. If you want to talk more about that, we can, but I’m not sure what you are trying to say based off this comment alone.
Sent you a message after clicking on your username on the post I got banned on, just to see if it reaches you.
I know Belgium isn’t socialist, we’re rather social democratic.
There’s also market socialism which doesn’t require public ownership, just that the workers own the company. Something like Huawei.
But the end result. We have a median net wealth of 250k euros per adult. I’m quite happy about that.
We have some nationalised stuff. Our commuting train company, post company, Bank and insurance, bus transport, télécommunications company. Infrabel.
The government plays a major role in our lives but they are still liberal.
They just tax and transfer. 45% of the GDP is tax revenue. Belgians are doing just fine.
Owning key industries is useful, like the french with their nuclear reactors. But you as employee it’s better to have private options as well when it comes to employment.
Like in Cuba they have 1 employer. The government. Sure, the doctors get paid the most in the country, but still they flee to other Latin American countries so that they can fund their family in a luxurious housing unit in Havana.
This is because there’s more competition to buy the doctors their services in those other Spanish speaking countries in the Americas.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike socialist economic stuff, if it’s used properly.
I despise the censorship.
Saying Belgium is “more Socialist” is clearly wrong, though. It’s a Capitalist country, China is Socialist.
Cooperatives are not “socialism,” they exist in a broader economy. China has a Socialist Market Economy, it has cooperatives and whatnot but that doesn’t define their system, it’s the public sector.
All countries have public and private sectors. Belgium’s public sector is subservient to its private sector, though, the private sector is made up of large firms and is the driving aspect of the economy. It is the opposite in China, hence my point.
There is nothing inherently better about having a private option. Cuba has a private sector as well, though it is subservient to the public. That isn’t why they have lower wages, though, it’s because of brutal embargoes.
Everyone censors, in different ways, that which goes against their interests.
With the market cap of their SOE’s, they have a broader impact on their economy. Sure, china is the most socialist relevant country in the world as of now.
Censorship can be ranked like anything else can.
https://rsf.org/en/index like they are trying to do.
It isn’t about market cap. The rubber factory has more power than the rubber ball factory, as an example, market cap is one window.
As for RSF, it’s a government-funded western propaganda outlet designed to manufacture consent against countries that don’t toe the Western line.
The NED in particular is pretty damning.
RSF was just an example to show that such a ranking exists. Removing conflict of interest and the ability to censor will be what’s needed in order to have real unguided public opinion.
That’s difficult to achieve.
The major thing to think about are things like CP, obviously that needs to be removed from existence.
So there’s positives to control, but nobody does anything for free.
Like here at Lemmy, I assume an instance creator of a popular instance will be able to be bought by companies or politicians.
Like Musk just bought twitter, lots of newspaper companies are owned by oligarchs. Other sources of news are owned by governments.
There’s always a conflict of interest.
It’s difficult to get away from.
A ranking only exists for propaganda purposes, though, that’s why it’s Western Government-Funded.
As for Lemmy and an instance creator being “bought,” it could happen, sure, but it hasn’t, and moreover such an instance can be defederated from.
With the last ban, I messaged 3 people and none of them responded even though we were having quite some conversations in the thread. So I assume it doesn’t reach. Lemme try again.
I remember a republican coworker arguing that Interstellar’s concept of time dilation was super unrealistic and that can’t possibly be how things are. All this to say, I’m sure Einstein is about to be cancelled and relativity denied as hard as climate change.
I look forward to the collapse of civilization when all of the satellites stop communicating with our computers because our satellites are sending messages from the future.
Also, ruining GPS for everyone would be a really effective scapegoat for Tesla’s full self-driving failures.
All but those Starlink satellites….
A customer told me they don’t believe in space last night 😞
He wasn’t a SeRiOuS intellectual though.
Need a sever lack if humor for that sweet sweet capitalistic greed.
Also, Einstein was offered a position as leader of the State of Israel. He basically said “fuck off and fuck Zionism.”
Source? Never heard of this
socialism might be nice but just getting rid of billionaires is a great start.
Can’t do that without taking supremacy of Capital. There is no path to keep billionaires from existing within Capitalism.
I think we’ve been doing this capitalism thing all wrong. All these issues are because we forgot to do the sacrifices.
We should be taking the top .1% of capitalist and using them to perform routine blood sacrifice rituals to appease the capitalist gods.
We then use their capital to fund a festival that last until then funds run out.
Their purity of capitalism will surely appease the gods and end all these climate change issues we’ve been experience.
The crazy thing is that is clearly a bad and dumb idea and yet would be an improvement of our current system. That money would actually recirculate.
Through the blood offering, their capitalist spirit will be released into the ether for The Gods to redistribute to us, their worthy followers.
We will honor these sacrifices by engraving their names in the bricks we will use to build the temple to The Gods has has been foretold in these gold tablets I found that only I can see and read.
The tablets say if we fail to follow these edicts we will be doomed to live in an ever warming planet on fewer resources as punishment. The seas will rise. The cities will burn. The rivers will flood.
For Grofit! The wise and avaricious Parvos commends you!
Erm… Ok
We could always introduce a purge. Maybe every 5-10 years (random) the 10 wealthiest individuals must fight to the death. Win or lose they lose all their money and have to start over. Its like the Olympics. And they can use their money to equip themselves, with tech and weapons.
Its like the Olympics
But yeah capitalism is no bueno
In capitalism, the wealthiests make the rule, not us.
I’d say Capital itself makes the rules, the wealthiest just try to guess at those rules the best they can. The M-C-M’ circuit isn’t very “human” in design, it’s more like a law of nature for this level of development.
isn’t that part of it
I would expect so. I said “but” as in, “even if we just do this and dont carry out other requirements immediately” kind of “but”
i don’t think we can get rid of them without socialism
I think a certain italian plumber says otherwise.
The thing with Adventurism is that it doesn’t change anything. The path to getting rid of billionaires requires organizing and toppling the system that necessarily gives rise to them, not by killing them as they crop up. Luigi played a valuable role in showing the Working Class that, actually, they have more in common with each other in their shared hatred of their natural enemy, but he didn’t get us any closer to taking down that system.
the billionaire is dead, long live the billionaire
I don’t know, it also seems very difficult to achieve world wide socialism. but then again it is also hard to cull people’s desire to become powerful over others. there will always be those aspiring to become billionaires but yet it seems easier to motivate majority of humans to do away with billionaires then to convince them to accept socialism.
Most intellectuals are socialist
I think this short essay was the first thing that appeared in monthly review
Youd be hard pushed to find many who weren’t
I don’t think they say “No intellectual would be a socialist”, instead they say intellectuals are bad and evil. It’s a classic pattern among dictator cults of personality.
Dictators love the poorly educated.
No, they just need their votes.
And the name of that Albert Einstein…?
Carl Sagan.
I can recommend this piece from Hobo Johnson (“why socialism by Albert Einstein”)
And while you’re there just check out the rest of his work, man’s amazing.
Hey history buffs: why did Einstein flee to the US when he believed this? Why not flee to the USSR?
My overall opinion on that matter is that, ultimately, Einstein grasped the logical necessity of Socialism as outlined in Why Socialism? but contained many chauvanistic attitudes common to Western Socialism. He changed his tune from being firmly anti-Soviet in the 20s to overall greatly complimenting Lenin:
“I honor Lenin as a man who completely sacrificed himself and devoted all his energy to the realization of social justice. I do not consider his methods practical, but one thing is certain: men of his type are the guardians and restorers of the conscience of humanity.”
The chauvanistic attitudes, however, are often swept under the rug. With respect to Chinese people, he commented in his diary:
“Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse… It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
Overall, I believe he harbored extremely reactionary views, such as support of Zionism (which, while eventually fading, persisted), the shown racism towards Chinese people, and more. While the logical necessity of Socialism is elucidated quite clearly in Why Socialism? it appears he harbored western-supremacist views.
This stands in stark contrast to contemporary intellectuals like Frantz Fanon, who lived in Algeria and the USSR. I don’t think Einstein should be lionized, however I do think his essay Why Socialism? serves as a good starting point for those who think Socialism to be utter nonsense, and serve as a springboard for actual, genuine works of theory.
Einstein also wrote some colorful things about Latin America
“I have no desire to meet semi-acculturated Indians wearing tuxedos.”
It’s a good reminder of how ingrained colonialism is in society, and how no one is immune of its influences in our worldview.
Gross…
Thank you for the information! <3
No problem! That’s just my interpretation, he waffled back and forth on the Soviets his whole life but maintained a “non-anti-soviet” position after coming to Socialism from his former Liberalism, which shaped the earlier aspects of his life. I don’t think he ever seriously committed to confronting that liberalism, but merely became convinced of the benefits of Socialism.
In his early 20s, the region that would become the USSR had performed a number of pogroms and mass murders in the name of blood-libel. Post WWI, Bolshevik started to become a bit of a dog-whistle for Jews, which got amplified through WWII, and then fed back into anti-Bolshevik/antisemitic beliefs.
As a proud, yet incredibly hypocritical Jew, I’m sure Einstein had seen enough antisemitism coming from that region that it likely played some sort of a role in his decision.
Also, this is an assumption.
No safe harbors for socialists anywhere
(appeal to authority)
The anti-communist in the meme was also making an attempt to appeal to authority
It is not an appeal to authority… It’s called a rebuttal. If someone makes a claim that no real smart person can do x, an easy way to prove them wrong is to provide an example of a smart person doing x.
true ig i was wrong
(btw I’m not far right and fully agree with this, I just like being annoying and pointing out things like this)
I mean, kinda? It’s a meme, really. The actual article itself though isn’t an appeal to authority, rather, it outlines pretty well the basics of why a publicly owned and planned economy is logically the correct path to take.
“The good of the people” is a noble goal. The problem is that for the most part, people who deliberately seek power to lead these groups are vain, greedy, selfish, brutal assholes.
Collectivism, as Karl Marx wrote it, has never been practiced in any so-called “communist” country on Earth. It’s always been an oligarchy.
I think Parenti said it best, in Blackshirts and Reds:
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
To that end, Marx’s conception of Socialism, that being a state run by the proletariat along the lines of a publicly owned and planned economy, has existed in many areas, and does to this day. These are called “AES” states. You’re partially correct in that no AES state has made it to the historical stage of Communism, which requires a global world government and a fully publicly owned and planned economy, but this is a historical stage requiring Socialism to be fully developed first.
I think you would gain a lot from reading some books on AES states, such as Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan and Is the Red Flag Flying? Political Economy of the Soviet Union. These aren’t “oligarchies,” or whatnot, but Socialism in existence, warts and all. We need to learn from what worked and what didn’t to progress onwards, it’s clear that Capitalism is in a death spiral and Socialism remains the way forward.
OP is talking about socialism, not communism?
Kinda. Einstein here is referring to an eventual fully publicly owned and collectivrly planned economy in a world republic, which is what Communists aspire to. Communism is that world-government stage, Socialism is the process of building towards that stage. So, when Einstein espouses the necessity of Socialism, he means in the process of building towards Communism.
All Communists are at first Socialists, because that’s the most immediate stage to reach.
Hmm, OK. Personally I believe in socialism (like democratic socialism) but I don’t think communism is going to work. Especially a planned economy has been shown to not work at least a couple of times.
Socialism is about collective ownership and planning of the economy, so I don’t really know what you’re getting at, here. If you’re talking about Social Democracy, like in the Nordic Countries, those are Capitalist with safety nets, and as such depend on extreme exploitation of the Global South, essentially trust fund kids bragging about how they’ve “made it” by working at their father’s banking firm.
Moreover, I don’t know what you mean by planned economies “not working.” There have been some issues, sure, but by and large AES states have been undeniable successes for the economy and the living standards of the working class. If you could give an example, then I would love to talk more, but I don’t really know what you’re referring to here.
Planned economy isn’t mandatory for socialism. Market socialism exists, for example the socialist market economy practiced (quite successfully) by China. (And no, I do mean democratic socialism, not Social Democracy or the Nordic model)
I think anyone can point to USSR and China as examples of failed planned economies, so I am quite surprised by you claiming to know nothing about that. I wouldn’t include Cuba because there have been a lot of unjust outside pressures against its economy. I will say I don’t know much about the AES states so I will have to look into that, but at a quick glance I don’t see anyone describing their economy as planned?
China is heavily planned. This isn’t really a point in your favor, China’s Socialist Market Economy works because it’s so heavily planned. The vast bulk of heavy industry like Steel and Energy is fully publicly owned, and finance is in the hands of government as well. Even the private sector is heavily planned and adjusted by the government.
Furthermore, again, I don’t know what you mean specifically when you broadly gesture at the USSR and PRC as “economic failures.” They have not been perfect, correct, but by and large both saw incredible growth and dramatic improvements in quality of life for the Working Class. Do you have specific issues you are trying to point out? Otherwise, here is a decent video going over the Soviet Economy’s myriad successes, and I recommend reading Is the Red Flag Flying? Political Economy of the USSR as well if you want to go much deeper.
As for AES, those are not the Sahel States as you might be finding, but China, Cuba, the former USSR, Vietnam, Laos, etc.
Edit: to respond to your edit about “Democratic Socialism,” such a name is redundant. Socialism is democratic, and that includes AES, or “Actually Existing Socialism.” What are you specifically talking about?
China is heavily planned.
Oh, OK. If that’s what you believes… (I wonder if you have talked with someone who actually live in China currently?) I don’t think there will be much more I can say that would convince you otherwise. But I do recommend you to read broadly and try to consciously combat your own confirmation biases.
Every national economy has some planned parts (utilities and ag in the U.S., for example). Most less-planned capitalist economies don’t work, either – what has capitalism done for the vast majority of people in Latin America, Asia, and Africa?
China is a major example of a more-planned economy working as well as any economy in recorded history. About two-thirds of the economy is in the form of state-owned enterprises, the rest of the economy is firmly answerable to the government, and there’s top-down economic planning at regular intervals. In 75 years this has taken China from a mostly feudal society that had been carved up by various invaders for the previous century to a country with modern living standards and technology on par with anyone in the world.
Central planning is also at the core of the largest companies in the world, even ones that operate outside of significant state economic planning. Apple and Microsoft don’t have internal divisions operate on market principles; they plan and direct resource and labor distribution from the top down. The People’s Republic of Walmart is great reading on this last topic.
It’s a little silly equating one (albeit learned and genius) guy’s opinion as something which will work across the board for everyone, everywhere. There’s nothing democratic about socialism, just as there’s nothing democratic about the unregulated and oligarchic capitalism we have today.
At a very simple and human level, there are a number of explanations for why some elites and intellectuals gravitate towards socialism, this has been discussed to death in many places, but here’s an accessible article.
https://iea.org.uk/why-intellectuals-are-so-upset-by-the-injustices-of-capitalism/
To add some economist perspectives, here’s another article
What I find interesting from the above article is that China currently does very efficient market socialism, which tbh if the U.S. was to implement would make the U.S. a more powerful economic force to contend with. The caveat will be that U.S. citizens will no longer have the right to means to production, or land ownership. Such systems have no respect for individual liberties. The relative rate of poverty and inequality in the U.S. does not merit this kind of shift versus what it sacrifices.
The only countries which have issues with capitalism are the economic loser countries. Here’s the problem though, there are so many examples of countries which could have been economic losers, but instead turned it around for them because those countries had good sense and controlled their levels of corruption. The only people in countries who have problems with capitalism are the economic losers. The best way to correct those woes is through taxation and social programs, not a forced or authoritarian formula of break-shit-and-take-shit.
Edit I won’t respond to any comments to my post, I just don’t have the time to poke at this today lol, but don’t take my no response as a signal of agreement, just saying
/lazyposting
For what it’s worth, I agree, one person’s narrow expertise does not directly translate to knowledge elsewhere. Einstein admits as such, yet explains exactly why Socialism is a necessary step forward and why he thinks those not trained traditionally in political economy should still have a voice. Further, Einstein’s essay just shows his thoughts on the matter, I don’t consider it a genuine work of theory, more a springboard to look into actual Marxist theory.
This is where our agreement ends. Socialism is, factually, more democratic than Capitalism. By collectivizing the economy, it can be democratically directed and planned, as already has been the case in many AES countries. Consider reading Soviet Democracy and Is the Red Flag Flying? Political Economy of the Soviet Union for historical texts on how the USSR’s economy was democratized and how it functioned.
Your last point is just anti-intellectualism, and ignores that Marxism has, historically, been extremely popular among the working class, and in the Global South. Your article is very western-centric, only analyzing thoroughly Imperialist countries like the United States and Western European countries, and shuts out the vast majority of actual, practicing Marxists in the real world.
Edit: Oh, you changed your entire comment. You’re going back to defending Imperialism and suggesting a system where workers are heavily exploited are only problems for “losers.” This isn’t a serious point. You want to throw workers to the meat grinder and find poverty fine as long as the wealthiest live free, which is very sad.
There’s nothing democratic about socialism
Incorrect
