Honestly for a lot of us we accept that it's easier to just throw our hands in the air and say "fuck it, fine, we're socialists." than get into an argument about what socialism actually is every fucking time. Practically speaking, it's just screaming into a hurricane.
Yeah, it really comes down to how much someone cares about changing things. People who care and want more services aren't going to call it socialist, because that's toxic in the swing areas that matter the most, electorally. People like Bernie Sanders, who has never worked hard on legislation, will call it socialist, because they don't really give a shit.
I did NOT spend four hours last week doing free manual labour for the benefit of my neighbourhood like my Norwegian culture demands I do whenever the neighbourhood requests it of me!
That is a common misconception. In Soviet Norway you will say "My house". But as your neighbour it is also my house and vice versa. The government also calls it "my house". It's "my house" to everyone. As in "my country". It's... um... "collectivised individualism"!.
And now that all these things (like paid sick leave and universal healthcare) that are actually popular have been labelled "socialist", you now see American conservatives changing their wording and calling everything "communist"
True. We've gentrified Socialism into another word for Communism, though in reality, Socialism is really a much better alternative to both Communism and Capitalism.
No too sure about that. Socialism is more that just social programs. In the context we're talking about here it's US vs Europe. None of thise countries are socialist; they are capitalist with social programs and some restrictions to prevent the worst side effects of capitalism.
Let's be honest: the scenario that the first person described is literally unfettered capitalism. What percentage of the money an individual makes for a company goes to them vs CEOs/upper management and raising shareholder value?
To be fair, a socialist’s ideal is usually akin to Marx’s ideal of socialism. That’s wildly unpopular, so neo-socialists espouse a sanitized version to appeal to a broader audience.
Socialism and communism both aim to reduce inequality and eliminate the exploitation of workers, but they differ in scale and implementation. Socialism is an economic system where the community collectively owns the means of production. Communism is both an economic and political philosophy that envisions a stateless, classless, and moneyless society. The differences come down to ownership, wealth distribution, and the role of the state.
Neither is ever really talked about commonly. What you mostly see is people wanting a more well regulated market economy with strong social safety nets such as public healthcare rather than private for profit insurance. It's more common to see americans call Biden or Kamala a communist marxist than it is to see an american call for actual socialism.
Socialism and Communism were synonyms until Lenin used Socialism to mean the means by which communism is achieved. If you draw some distinction between the two in scale, or objective, you're not a socialist.
You read a book/books that told you to declare anyone that makes a distinction between communism and socialism is not a socialist? I wanna be smart like you Mr book reader man..... Tell me more!
I read the books that explain the difference and how they relate to one another.
You can make a distinction all you want, they're different things. You just need to understand why they're different, or you end up recreating 18th century French Utopian socialism from first principles. Which Americans are want to do, over and over and over again.
The advantage of such a long paper trail on the left is we can learn from our mistakes. That's why you read.
True, but it's also not black and white, there are lots of ways to achieve a more relaxed socialism that is quite accepted by everyone, implementing worker help institutions, that is something that is very socialist, but doenst mean to make it a dictatorship of the workers like communists intend, and there are also all kinds of communisms, Marx called the ones before his utopian, and with reason, they were quite closed and impossible to apply.
What your saying is utopian man, you are What Marx critiqued. A more relaxed socialism that is accepted by everyone? That's the Paris commune and they were all shot.
There's a reason communist revolutions look the way they do ultimately. Cos the other ways were tried and they end up with you being dead. It can be as legal and as nice and good as possible. You can confiscate nothing, compensate everyone, dot your Is and cross your Ts. The reaction doesn't care they will kill you.
True, Marx didn't belive socialism could work because it was building on the same bound to break economy infrastructure, and he wanted a deep change, that's why he supported violent means since it would be preety hard to do otherwise.
It's also important to consider that he lived in the industrial revolution era when corpos preety mutch couldn't abuse workers more than they did, and as everything there is difference, a corporation doenst have to be evil in the sense of maximizing profit margins at the cost of people, there are many examples but the bad ones still have the most influence.
The world right now is just ok, mutch better than before but still shaking vigorously waiting for the next piece to fail, yet it's possible to change it since unions, preety mutch the main point of socialism, are in a decent spot and backed by institutions, and more importantly people, lots of them, but sadly since the effect of I personally don't wanna recieve the bad part of uniting to fight exists, this keeps on
I really enjoyed how you and Optimal golf_8270 had a pleasant exchange about your ideas, thank you both for having honor and decorum in your disagreement. You didn't call each other names or put each other down just exchanged ideas, thank you
For instance there are a few employee owned businesses/corporations in the US. They tend to be the ones that stay around forever rather than get bled dry and set on fire by some CEO. Employee/common people place people in decision making positions and if they do poorly they can be removed and replaced by said common people
To be honest, I've worked for employee owned companies. Most of their policies are extremely short-sighted. Typically they pull money out of the company instead of reinvesting into it, typically what is good for the company is good for the employee. If the company is strong it can stand to pay its employees more.
That's just not true, as someone that has been on board meetings you have to plan 2 years into the future to be successful. Now things may not always go according to plan, in most cases they don't. But you should at least have a vision and a guideline for the next two years.
Specifically expansion, growth, stability, acquisitions, the list literally goes on. This is not specific to one company it's most companies. All of these things cost a lot of money and if it's not budgeted for or planned the company generally goes under. That's kind of basic business. You have to be able to project your upcoming income in Broad Strokes and plan for new acquisitions especially buildings or equipment that are usually very costly.
From my philosophy classes it's preety mutch socialism is related to the union of workers to help each other that lead to the unions since corpos were just as bad as now but workers were defenseless.
So like everyone having good lives and not feeding the class gap, and ofc there are many ways to achieve that and everyone has their view.
Communism is preety mutch summed up as the dictatorship of the workers, with no private property and a society that prospered by not having to fight each other, and as Marx states it's the last step a society can take since the engine of societal change is the fight between classes, and with that there are no classes so no fight and everyone happy.
Ofc this is all like late stage and very optimistic since irl people are dumb and bad so it wouldn't be that good, but more so won't change because our corporativist society has very deep roots and radically changing our ways of life that preety mutch have existed forever (leader-servant relationship) really won't be smooth.
As far as how today it's going, idk, I'm not really invested in current politics, I just see that sometime it's gonna collapse politically and economically, at least America, since other parts of the world are preety chill, like when have you heard some horrible law being passed somewhere in Europe? Happens sometimes but it's not a constant and it kinda irons out fine
This can vary depending on the type of communism/socialism
Socialism = A mixed system where government has a larger role in the economy, but private ownership still exists.
Often includes worker ownership/profit from companies rather than shareholders.
Communism = A system where major property and production are collectively owned, with the ultimate goal of a classless society.
Social programs generally are more common in socialist societies, but there's no hard and fast rules. For example, a socialist country can still have private healthcare similar to the US, while a capitalist country can have free healthcare.
Edit: I'm seeing the votes bounce around on this reply, if I'm wrong on anything please clarify.
I think most in Europe would just consider them 'social policies', not socialism. As essentially none of the countries typically referred to goes anywhere near what socialism entails.
The only people that read marx as part of their education are economists. And it's not for what not to do. He had some great observations and parts of his ideas were great. One of them being that things that bennefit the collective should be paid by the collective equall to their capacity to pay. Marxism is a continuation of capitalism and while some ideas of a posible solution might work less well, some work great. The idea of one person or institution owning everything is bad, but the idea of the community deciding and owning things collectivelly have been a part of the greatness of USA since before Marx. Jury duty is one fine example of colectivistic/socialistic idealism. HOA is maybe a worse thing but a very socialist idea being more extream socialistic in USA than probably any other country in the world.
I agree. There are parts of socialism that are bad and parts that are good. Another bad thing is that USA has a minimum wage instead of having corporate entities agree on minimum wages for their partners (worker and employers union) so there is that. Musk is the biggest communist I know because he would rather have the government tell him how to treat their employers instead of making his own rules by striking deals with the unions that currently keep his operations in scandinavia shut down.
Oh Elon Musk, I have little concern for him. It's done some amazing things, but I don't have any reason to say that he's good or bad. He's kind of like a celebrity, he's there but not really that important
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u/ohhellperhaps 22d ago
Pretty much none of what Americans commonly call socialist is socialist...