We need a balance between socialism and capitalism… i.e. social democracy

People say this unironically.

Because they think socialism just means government regulation and hand-outs. These things cannot exist together. We need to go after social democracy more. Is this pic-related?

The American military is a good example of socialism.

ebin memes

To be fair though, the Soviet Union, Cuba, etc. we're very centralized. Central planning focused. This is why people think that central planning = socialism.

That and propaganda.
Kind of why a lot of socialists are annoyed with tankies and other more statist socialists.

When I actually explain what socialism is to libertarians (workers ownership of the means of production) they actually don't think its as bad as they thought it was.

Naturally they still believe in capitalism. But they think socialism means central planning and free shit.

No the free shit is basically the symptom of a much larger problem (capitalism destroying the economy. So people need welfare to survive because there are no jobs. Or good paying jobs.)

I'm starting to kinda get the libertarian point of view tho. Not 100%. Markets are not necessarily rational. But hoarding of capital ultimately leads to devsluatioj of wealth. Ironically. Just look at what happened to bitcoin lately. lol. Libertarians were buying up that shit like crazy. And now that people need to actually buy shit, they are desperate to sell (or use their bitcoins to buy shit. Which is no different than selling it for cash really). Id imagine a free market would punish hoarders of capital ruthlessly like this. Wall Street is protected from this punishment because they just keep going back to the fed and congress to give them cheap loans and bail them out.

Well, than go talk to them about market socialism or market anarchism (not capitalist).

Yea I brought up market socialism to them. And they think it's more palatable than what they did on Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

We like to make fun of libertarians and they like to make fun of us. But we have a surprising amount of common ground. We both realize that the game is rigged. The government is basically an apparatus to serve the interests of the bourgeois. And they share our distaste for crony capitalism.

We don't have disdain for "crony" capitalism. We have disdain for capitalism. In fact, I prefer the system we have now to any "pure" capitalist system they could muster up.

And whenever libertarians bring up something like a minimum wage hike being terrible, I frame it this way: if your business is so unproductive that you can't afford to pay your workers a living wage, we've got bigger problems than the minimum wage

I can't imagine it could get any worse than what we've got. lol. We are completely fucked. The economy is going to implode. And it's unclear whether the west will ever be class conscious and seize the means of production.

I rather have what we got then corporations running around with private armies.

Oops forgot to turn off shitpost flag

But user, atleast we have some sort of social welfare now. They want to cut that all off and no minimum wage. If that sounds "better" to you then idk what to say :(

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unless there is a major catastrophe, gradualism is the only way to go if you want to achieve communist utopia. hence, social democracy. small steps, but it's all we've got right now.

There will be plenty of major catastrophes in the next few decades as economic instability and climate-caused disasters force mass migration of poor people towards safer territory, while the current world powers go full reactionary police-state to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie and their muh privileged, decadent suburban lifestyles. No one is going to be batting for social democracy when the next famine or recession or civil war causes a few hundred million brown people to try to cross the border towards the West.
Reformism is like fighting an infected, gangrenous wound with band-aids and tweezers. The conditions for revolution will arise, and eventually people will realize it's a better idea to amputate instead.

You are correct. However, I still hope that what you've described won't happen for a while. Until then, socdem seems like a reasonable approach IMO.

Radicalization itself will be gradual, because it emerges trough small fights, which could become hard due to reactionaries' counter-attacks.

WHO THE FUCK STARTED THESE MEMES, THIS ONE LIBERAL KEEPS SPOUTING THEM OFF LIKE BIBLE VERSES

Yeah, it pisses me off too OP.

People say this unironically

Tony Benn

Your mom is good example of socialism.

No, seriously, think about it.

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Better than "we need capitalism"

Fuck off, racist.

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this

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