Given their sheer prevalence in the modern world, why are mixed economics considered to be either:
a) Just as destructive as capitalism? b) A stepping stone to either communism or socialism?
I ask this because I'm currently not convinced that there is one perfect economic system. Each one has it's strengths and weaknesses, so it makes sense in my mind to use elements of each economic system for a particular situation. Although, the more restricted the market is, the better. I'm very new to politics, so feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong.
There is no such thing as a "mixed" economy. You either have private ownership of the means of production or you don't. The presence of social welfare institutions and redistribution through taxation does not somehow make your economy "less" capitalist, and it does not at all ameliorate the problems caused by having a system of distributing resources based entirely on profit.
Grayson James
This. Socialism isn't "anything the government does." Socialism is when the workers own and control the means of production.
Clearly, since you don't even understand what socialism and communism mean. Pic related.
In a leftist context, the only meaning for "mixed economy" would be a matter of whether markets or central planning is used.
Alexander Parker
Also, feel free to ask questions, OP. Some faggots might tell you to read the FAQ but it's good practice to explain the basics of leftism to people who are unfamiliar.
Samuel Powell
this, also I was going to post a screenshot I found here, but can't find it it was something like this
its the same with foreign aid and other forms of """socialism""" supported by suckdems
Alexander Williams
Also, here's a book on the basics if you want to learn more, but like the other user said, feel free to ask questions as well if you're curious about anything specific.
Camden Adams
Basically everything that's been said already. Capitalism with more government control/regulation and welfare is still capitalism.
The dichotomy you are thinking of is of central planning of production and distribution versus market production and distribution. This will exist in both capitalism and socialism, but will not exist in communism, as communism is a marketless, moneyless society where goods exist in abundance, something that can be achieved through further technological innovations and automation.
Lucas Gonzalez
I thought the former was simply defined as a state-owned and planned economy, whereas the latter is defined as the workers being the owners of the means of production. However, I just found this webpage that explains the different betwixt the two. It makes sense so far.
It may be possible to have socialism through state ownership, but only if it is credible that the workers/people can control/own the state. This was not the case in pretty much all the countries of the former communist bloc.
Isaac Jenkins
can you stop being such a faggot user? How is the left gonna grow if everytime a newfriend doesn't know what socialism is we snap at them?
OP to answer your question,
I wouldn't say just as destructive necessarily. I would say the system probably would have fallen apart a lot sooner if it weren't for more recent government intervention to save the capitalist economy. I think most modern economists would agree with that actually.
The issues of accumulation, power dynamics, workers being replaced by increasingly mechanized industry and unpaid surplus value remain, however. Especially considering the very rich in this country get out of a lot of taxes imposed on them. This is not necessarily to say that the solution is closing loopholes either. All this does is essentially stabilize things somewhat and slow things down. The boom-crash cycle may be less erratic, and accumulation may be slowed temporarily, but the economy will move slower as a whole, business owners will still accumulate wealth and will have added incentive to fire more workers and look for alternatives (mechanized industry). As long as you maintain our current capitalist system, no matter its form, the contradictions remain.
I don't think it is. In fact most people on this board would probably be hostile to that idea
Jack Powell
not /stalin/. I just like mustaches
Matthew Jackson
That article sort of implies that religion would be forcefully abolished under communism, which isn't necessarily true - Marx's view on religion in particular was that it would wither away just like the state once the material conditions that lead people to hope for heaven (poverty, despair, purposelessness) would be gone, people would just naturally drift away from religion. Most people here aren't for any sort of thought control of that nature.
Also, despite the implication in that piece, neither the USSR, Cuba nor North Korea achieved any kind of socialism, much less communism. Under communism by definition there is neither the state, nor classes, nor money.
Otherwise, it's fairly accurate.
Gabriel Green
That's an interesting statement. If they haven't achieved those statuses, were they simply dictatorships?
Brandon Fisher
For the most part, they were just capitalist states where the state took the role of employer and exploited the work of labourers like private capitalists do in liberal democracies. You could argue that there wasn't really production for profit, but you still had the majority of people working for the benefit of a few party officials.
Gross oversimplification. Communism is the goal of socialism. The theory goes Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism. There are many theories on the details, but that's the basic premise.
No country is communist because no country can be communist. Here's a simple definition of communism so you can see why: a society absent of classes, money or states wherein economic activity is decided collectively.
No, no they don't. Look at this picture again. Socialism is about who is in control of the workplace.
They are not two separate philosophies. They are not even philosophies. Marxism or one of its variations would be the "philosophy" which is more like a political affiliation. Socialism and Communism are economic systems.
Both are economic systems. "Political system" is a very bad way of looking at this. Leftists look at society in Marx's terms, which say that society is fundamentally defined by its economic activity, or its production. Economics have evolved throughout history, going from primitive communism to slave societies (Greece, Rome, other ancient cultures) to feudalism to capitalism and theoretically to socialism and then communism. These economic systems are defined by the relations of production, that is to say, how the working class conducts its labor in relation to the class that reaps the benefits of that labor. The economic system forms the base in Marxian analysis, and the superstructure which encompasses everything else about society forms according to the material conditions of the base. Then the two exist in a mutually-reinforcing harmony (see pic). Economic systems (the base) change throughout history as a result of class struggle and if revolution succeeds, there is a transition to a new system. The new base forms, and a new superstructure forms around it. "Political systems" are part of the superstructure, and so calling communism a political system is misleading. The economics lead the politics. Think of it like this: communism isn't in charge, it's the result of socialism being in charge.
Zachary Cooper
Thanks for sticking up for me, but I wasn't offended; I'm encountered nastier people on /christian/ of all places. He was probably tired of hearing people confounding the two terms.
I hear what yer saying, user. That decision only benefits the hardcore capitalists; the workers will be into the trash if that happens. I assume that under a socialist or communist system, technological advances would still be occurring, but their would be a diminished level of greed that's involved in the decision-making process of producing technologies.
Charles Perry
What happened?
Jeremiah Morgan
That was just a side note. Don't want to go into details; more interested in learning leftist theory itt
Samuel Ward
if you're familiar with Rebel Absurdity, he's a youtuber here, he actually did a pretty good video on innovation under socialism or something like that.
Anyways, yes greed is certainly an issue in the sense that a lot of scientific development is motivated by the pursuit of profit which means projects that might be more beneficial to the general public are pushed aside and the general public does not necessarily reap the full benefits of innovation. There is also the issue that our modern system in some cases will pit the laborer against technology (as i've mentioned with me mechanization of industry) which means that in many cases the laborer will have an incentive to organize against technological development. Essentially often technological progress is slowed because it must come at the expense of some workers under our current system or altogether stopped because it must come at the expense of those in power.
Wyatt Wright
Yes, that is very much the case. In the second essay in this book, in fact, the author makes a particularly good case as to why the bureaucratic-capitalist system actually stifles original research due to the manner in which resources are allocated. (It's altogether pretty good, I'd highly recommend reading it. His other book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, isn't bad either, if you'd like a copy.)
Bear in mind that very few of us believe that greed is necessarily the problem. Even if every individual capitalist was selfless and ethical, the very structure of capitalist society would still lead to harm for the great majority of people because of issues relating to profit, exploitation and competition. We are not against individuals so much as we are against the system.
Jack Bell
OP here. On a side note: Can someone explain the flags in the Hide post options & limits?
Andrew Ross
The flags are to broadcast what philosophy you subscribe to or just for shitposting. The other stuff is just a way to do a manual sage (making a new post in a thread without bumping it to the top of the first page) and to spoiler your images, ie, instead of the thumbnail you have a spoiler image (usually used to hide porn.) The other thing is a dice rolling thing that we don't really use, but it lets you do something like roll 1 d20 or what have you +modifier which rolls 1 20-sided die and adds the modifier to the result.
Nathaniel Evans
there's a lot. Basically if the lower right corner is black they probably are hippies who /weed_not_read/. If basically anything else, there's a 50/50 chance you're dealing with a former Holla Forums larper who happens to like the color red or some sort of tankie/anarkiddie hybrid.
Gabriel Clark
I figured that much. But some of these flags are cryptic, like Snibbeti Snab, Angry Cat, or Pirate; maybe that's when the shitposting comes into play. The countries are somewhat explanatory.
Bentley Young
Snibbeti Snab is a reference to a spurdo meme, and the angry cat is actually a symbol of the IWW, whose members have historically been very prominent within the working-class left. They've sort of faded from their former glory in recent years, but that's true of most of the organized left these days.
The pirates can refer either to high seas buccaneering or to some digital piracy-based movement that I don't entirely trust as they smell like lolberts.
Aw fuck I forgot the last two pics. Also, peep these images I found in another thread. Third pic is how various broadly defined theories of socialism work, whereas the last/fourth pic is the sad reality of what's usually happened.
For reference, here are the ideologies summarized: all the people become leftists and overthrow capitalism together to form a new socialist society people vote to implement socialist or "socialist" policies in the existing system, see FDR's New Deal for the quintessential example a minority of citizens form a "vanguard" that organizes a revolution and sets up a new government with members of the vanguard running it
Adrian Kelly
PART 3 OF ?
>Economic differences between socialists and communists
>In a Socialist economy, the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. Sometimes there is central planning, sometimes markets. Sometimes both. In a Marxian sense, "distributing" falls under "production" as it produces the service of delivering goods to you. The MoP is owned "collectively" in the sense that the people who work it are its owners. Think of it like if everyone who works at a factory automatically gets 1 share each of the company's stock, and the only way to get stock is to work at the company.
This is correct, which is weird because the chart contradicts this statement. There may be a central planning committee of some sort but that would be democratic in nature.
This is very good, but where it says "From a capitalist system, it is easier to achieve the Socialist ideal" it should also say "in comparison to a feudal system" because when the Russian revolution happened (1917) feudalism was still around and there is some theory on transitioning from feudalism to socialism, skipping capitalism entirely. The process is usually: Also, the ultimate goal here is Fully Automated Luxury Communism, i.e. Star Trek where everything is taken care of by machines and all people are free to do what they want with their lives.
Alexander Sanchez
You're right, except for the wrong reasons. There is no mixed economy because literally any system of commodity production, public, communal, or private, is just capital in a different external form.
Brandon Taylor
Shut the fuck up, nerd.
Jacob Cox
PART 4 OF 4 Fucking OCD mang.
>Political differences
Yes. Depends on the socialist, but the key is a change in the relations of production or the base (feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and so on).
Again, depends on the socialist. Libertarian socialists (sometimes called anarcho-communists) don't follow this logic at all.
This is reformism or "social democracy" (not to be confused with "democratic socialism"). It never ever works because the capitalists can see it happening and use their extra political power (money) to roll back these changes. As such, it's often considered not really socialism.
Yes, but because the economic system is the base, it lends itself toward democratic systems.
Again, socialists and communists are the same thing. Some socialists believe this is the best way to get to socialism, some don't. Making the distinction as "socialists" vs. "communists" is way way off. The system this quote describes is called "dictatorship of the proletariat" and is a part of Marxist-Leninism.
Elijah Powell
BTW people more knowledgeable than me, pls kick my ass over any mistakes I made. I don't wanna mislead the newfag.
