Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How do you want to define “best” in this discussion? If you think it’s easier and want to lead under your paradigm go ahead. I have no problem operating within their established framework. Labels have their uses but I’m not dogmatically attached to them. In fact, all the better as far as I’m concerned. If you want someone stubborn to accept the brilliance of your philosophy the best way isn’t to argue with them but to convince them it was their idea in the first place, and then roll your eyes once their head is turned around.
Well. I don’t know who these “internet socialists” are. I don’t spend that much time living my life online and this is pretty much the only social media account I actively use on occasion. They clearly aren’t the ones I talk to that have actually read a book down that alley.
You examine the characteristics of these systems, the same as you do for anything else. Capitalism is a system where the means of production are privately owned. Socialism is a system where the means of production are controlled by the workers. Now how both of these different systems go about trying to enact and carry out their aims is multifaceted.
Good question. I suppose that would be, what gives me the most accurate mental model to work with? Modeling NK as "democratic," for example, would not be very accurate at all for any reasonable common understanding of the word "democratic." You'd have to construct so many epicycles to make that model work that it's much easier to model NK as simply being a very undemocratic dictatorship.
Right, and when "private ownership" and "worker control" start blending into each other, what use do the labels have anymore? To go back to the beginning of this thread,
Well that depends on what is meant by "socialism", no? If by "socialism" you mean a Chinese-style economy where you can have more billionaires than the US, but the billionaires are explicitly subordinate to the state, then yeah I'm sure that's more palatable to a lot of people. It sounds pretty similar to a fascist Nazi Germany or modern Russia where the state has overwhelming power to direct industrial titans to work towards the state's goals, and neither of those were/are communist states.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link