Capitalists, describe socialism. Socialists, describe capitalism.
It'll be interesting to see how one sees the other.
Posted Feb 27, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC
43352
Capitalism is the delusion that hard work will bring you fortune, perpetuated by people who do next to nothing, to keep you working hard to enhance their fortune.
20
Say misconception rather than delusion. We’re trying to win people over, not attack them for their beliefs. It is due to propaganda that they believe as they do, and that’s not their fault when they’ve been brought up to believe that the western press is independent and free, and that it is therefore free of propaganda.
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Speak for yourself. Nobody in this sub is being "won over."
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If we’re not here to better understand one another, then why are we here?
When I say “win over”, I’m NOT talking about ideological conversion. We’re here to gain a better understanding, thus limiting the “them-against-us” mentality. That’s what I imagine to be a “win”.
5
I think many on the left are here to learn, but the majority on the right I've seen here just preen around looking for opportunities to mock socialists and high five each other.
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At least you’re free to leave with virtually no cost!
1
I’ve made 6 figures for the past 9 years working hard
5
You're middle class.
4
You go ahead and keep gerrymandering those lines until you find a way to justify your comment.
2†
OK, let's put it in perspective. Say this guy makes $200k. Over 30 years of work he'll have earned $8 million. If he's like most people, he pisses most of it away on frivolous shit, and his total net worth at retirement might be $1.5 million if he's lucky. That's middle class. It's not even close to the level of people I'm talking about. Alice Walton is worth $35 billion. That's 4,375 times more than this guy. She probably spends his entire net worth in one day. She didn't do a goddamn thing to earn it. She is the country's largest employer, and lowest payer. Constantly under fire for making people work overtime without pay, strong arming unions out of the picture, and having the most employees on food stamps.
9
u/plumbtastic76 didn't say anything about his total net income for the past 9 years.
"I’ve made 6 figures for the past 9 years working hard" is very vague and he/she is most definitely in the middle class (US).
2
I bet I have a lot more than you
1
Let’s measure our dicks.
2
You've wasted nine years of your life slaving away and you're not even rich.
It's embarrassing that you're proud of that.
4
Do you still live at your mom’s?
3
You need it to be that way don't you? You need anti-capitalists to be poor and lazy.
Truth be told, I'm not too different than you. I just don't consider it a "success" to have done all this and live an above average life.
We basically did the same thing, make probably similar money (I don't believe you, for what it's worth, I think you're LARPing as a middle class tech yuppie, but that's another issue), have my own very nice classic house in a very pretty neighborhood, climbed the corporate ladder, have other competing hospitals seeking me out for my skills...
...the difference is that when I got here I looked back and realized how much bullshit it was, how much effort I wasted, and how much I was lied to about how it all works. You got here and think "The system works! Look at my success, my hard work paying off."
We got bamboozled my friend. I'm apparently the only one that notices it.
1
That's well above average. Why would he not be proud of that?
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"Above average" is not the American Dream. It means the American Dream has failed you.
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Yet, there are millions working just as hard as you are and aren't getting shit. And people working far less than you yet making much more.
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It’s about working hard and smart to produce the most value for others that you can in the face of competitors trying to do the same. You can work your ass off digging holes and filling them back up, but that’s not much of a valuable service for anyone.
1
You can work your ass off digging holes and filling them back up, but that’s not much of a valuable service for anyone.
Yes, because nobody is hiring a hole-digger-and-filler-upper.
However, people do need truck drivers, construction workers, bakers, shopkeepers, baristas, etc. (I could list hundreds, or thousands, of relatively low-paying jobs that are 100% necessary in the world). If you reply to someone saying "I get paid far less for doing more work" by claiming that they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a better job, you are denying the fact that their work is necessary and that someone needs to fill that position. It's not sound philosophy because if everyone took a magic pill that made them Albert Einstein and granted them 40 different STEM degrees immediately, you would still have people getting paid $7.50 an hour to flip burgers because that's what the world needs. Until, of course, robots replace everyone's job, but once that becomes the case we are going to need some form of socialism for a much more important reason - everyone who doesn't own property will starve.
2
Where?
1
Literally everywhere. I'm in the tech industry, software engineer jobs pay very well yet are (in my opinion) quite easy if you are trained for it, I would much rather be coding all day than working fast food or shipping packages or doing construction work, even if you paid me the exact same for both - the tech job is not as demanding. Yet one is compensated much more than the other (because that's how capitalism is). And on the other end, you will find billionaires whose wealth goes back generations, who could literally do nothing all day and just live off the investments they or their parents have made (doesn't even need to be "smart" investing, if you had a billion dollars and made 2% off it adjusted for inflation, you would never run out of money pretty much no matter how hard you tried). In theory, someone in their family might have worked hard at some point to make that money, but that work is not necessarily occurring now. Look at what really rich people do with their money - a lot of them, especially those that didn't earn it, spend it on pointless business ventures to keep themselves busy that aren't remotely useful to anyone. The correlation between hard work and compensation is not nearly high enough under capitalism. Even if you are someone who is a strong believer in meritocracy (I am not one of them, but I understand where you're coming from if you are), capitalism is nowhere near the perfect system for such a thing.
My philosophy is that if you are given a gift by the world, whether it be a natural inclination to do work that is compensated well under our current system, or born into a privileged family or something else, you have a moral obligation to help others. I think those that are wealthy and feel completely entitled to it are far more morally corrupt than the worst drug addicts or thieves, you are a product of your environment and that is a fact.
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You didn't. Your employees did. You just collected their hard earned dollars. You're a parasite.
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You have obviously never had to run a for profit company
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You've made more than that, what you got is only part of what you made.
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Yes I grossed more than that
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You've made 6 figures total over the past 9 years?
$100k/9 = $11.11k/year
Isn't poverty level like $28k/year? (US).
Unless you live somewhere like in Moldova, this is a very low salary, and that's not counting taxes.
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He made $999k
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It’s over a million And no mortgage since 2006. I work construction (Plumbing). It’s my company but I still work in the field. I have 3 licensed plumbers that each make 60-80k a year and 2 helpers that make 30-45k a year
2
6 figures each year
1
I would say that's "The American Dream". Some places and people are more realistic about capitalism.
"The American Dream" is the lie. That's the most fucked up part about capitalism, it keeps sycophants defending a system that is causing them all the harm they think is coming from somewhere else. "The American Dream" is what keeps poor people thinking they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
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hard work
There's a big difference between hard work and productive work. Digging a ditch with a spoon is hard work, after all
0
If you take three days to dig a ditch with a spoon and your competitor takes one day to dig the same ditch with a shovel, you're better off not digging ditches unless you can get a shovel for yourself. You're making the same amount of value as the shovel man does, only he makes it in one-third the time, so in the time it takes you to dig one, he's dug three, and he's produced more value (by whatever measure you care to use) than you.
That's plainly self-evident and is exactly what Marx's theory says.
From the first chapter of the first volume of Capital:
Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power.
The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.
The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.
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Oh good fun. Let me try. Socialism is the delusion that you deserve other people's money because they did "nothing".
-1
labour vouchers solves the problem of taxes and getting other peoples money, they can only be obtained through work, not transaction
the advantage of labour vouchers is that you don't work to make somebody else wealthier
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Nope
-2
This might be the dumbest answer I’ve ever heard in my life.
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Just because you suck at life doesn't mean everyone else does.
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Typical response from mindless idealogue.
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Wtf i love capitalism now
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Socialism is where the means of production (land and capital) are collectively owned, and their returns (rent and profit) collectively captured.
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collectively owned
Ownership without exclusion. Hmmmm 🤔
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What do you mean by "collectively captured"? Is that a bad thing?
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Yes
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Says whom?
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That should be "says who"
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Says I
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What do you mean by "collectively captured"?
That everyone gets them, usually by way of the state taking them and then sharing them out to everybody.
Is that a bad thing?
In the case of profit, yes, because it denies people the full value of their own labor and distorts the market by reducing the incentive to engage in useful economic activity.
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Not all kinds of socialism are like this - look into syndicalism and related theories if you are interested in such
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The negation of capitalism.
What's the prize? What do I win?
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The mental note that you are one of the few non-Socialists who actually get it.
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A one-way trip to Siberia!
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The concentration of power in the hands of the few.
-edit: not my real answer
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Applies equally to both- I like it.
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Are the people few?
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In theory they are many under both. In reality political power always concentrates.
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Unless it's decentralized socialism
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Not really, in one of them the class that produces actually has something
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In one the wealthy become powerful. In the other the powerful become wealthy.
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One has a society stratified by class, and the other has a society that has abolished class. The commenter above isn’t thinking about the dialectic. In order to have powerful people, you must have weak people. In order to have rich people, you must have poor people.
You cannot empower poor and the weak, because as soon as you do, there becomes a new poor and weak. Socialism is about breaking the cycle.
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The concentration of power in the hands of the few.
You were supposed to describe capitalism, not communism.
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Capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production and an economic theory that believes competition will result in the best and cheapest product in the marketplace. An economy guided by the "invisible hand" of the market.
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Capitalism: The appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others, and the economic and social regime in which capital, the source of income, does not generally belong to those who make it work through their labour.
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edit: Having read the comments, I've edited much of this for clarification.
Capitalism is when the main form of power is control over a market. Ideally this is done via competition. The competition never ends. It just keeps going on forever. But, the competition never ends for the poor, but it does for the rich.
If you do not compete (as most poor people can't), you are assumed to have lost. You are thrown to the gutter in squalor.
Those who "win" (usually those who already started rich), try to stop others from winning. They always want more. They are never satisfied. Like vultures, they tear apart anything they don't own yet. They will even devour and destroy that which allows the poor to survive.
The winners must suffer to win, but once they do, they can never lose.
The losers suffer for the sin of losing. The poor suffer for the sin of being poor. Even when it's not their fault.
When this system collapses, the competition re-starts. Over and over, forever. An endless cycle of competition. An endless cycle of vultures. An endless cycle of squalor.
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Since when is competition a bad thing in the marketplace? As long as it is restrained to non-violent measures how is it a bad thing? Competition breeds the best goods for the lowest prices, benefiting everyone is society. To "win" in capitalism is to not only benefit yourself but also the masses of people who willingly gave you money for the product/service you gave. What is unfair about this?
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Without competition humanity ^would still be living in the stone age
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[citation needed]
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Capitalists: "Hypotheticals are only okay when we make them.
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Exactly, and I think this is the central reason why most socialist's hate capitalism they only see one outcome of a capitalist system e.g. competition forces people who work less efficiently out of the market, but also gives goods to the people at a better price
0
You are so incredibly arrogantly blind.
Like a manipulated fool.
As I just posted above, what socialists "don't like" is the capitalists penchant for privatizing profit and socializing costs. For forcing people to buy crap we don't want or need, to work making crap we don't want or need and having no control over the means of production or any aspect of our lives.
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Capitalism is a strict, immoral and cruel system. But it's miles better then any other system
0
No, competition does not breed the best goods, it breeds the shoddiest goods that are hidden well. And the so-called "lowest" prices ignore all the externalities that allow the capitalist to make their profit and force others to incur their costs.
As for "willing", when everything is crap, when everything is forced on us through manipulative advertising and addictive nature of the product, there is no will.
4
In a given scenario company A and B both make chairs. If company A makes a notably durable chair that will last but costs more people may buy from them. If company B makes a chair that is less durable but much cheaper some may buy from them.. Now you're going to assert that if a company C came along and made a chair that was not only durable but also as cheap as company B people wouldn't buy that chair?
Free markets are a logical way to organize economies otherwise like is socialist economies you have a monopoly on chairs and receive a crappy product as well as whatever price "society" deems fair.
2
Now you're going to assert that if a company C came along and made a chair that was not only durable but also as cheap as company B people wouldn't buy that chair?
C would not make such a chair as they know it is not profitable enough. They would go somewhere else or develop something else to sell - or cheat on materials or labor and lie about it.
Free markets are a logical way to organize economies
So, not capitalism. Profit is not logical - for the consumer.
socialist economies you have a monopoly on chairs and receive a crappy product as well as whatever price "society" deems fair.
So your owners have convinced you.
No, in socialism the workers have different motives than profit. You can't be an automaton and understand these motives. So explaining to you is a waste.
Oh well.
Because the worker is not oppressed, because the worker is motivated by the autonomy that anarchy provides, allowing the profession of one's choosing without any barrier to education, the mastery of being a craftperson - rather than a piece on an assembly line, and the purpose of serving and pleasing one's peers, and accepting accolades for a job well done, and maintaining an economy without oppression, without poverty, without the depletion of resources the result is a superior product.
How many people in the capitalist economy actually like their job? What they do and the conditions in which they do them? Certainly the worker has no control over any of it. So workers do as little as possible, with as little effort as possible.
That's your reality. Even if we want a product, it is crap and the "competition" is a race to the bottom.
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This is the first time I've upvoted a commie.
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Capitalism is when people compete for control over a market.
Capitalism =/= free market, competition. Capitalism is an ownership system not a system of trade.
1
That's not how I define it. I define it as competition for control of a market. That can be done under an un-free market too.
0
That's not how I define it. I define it as competition for control of a market.
Well, your definition is wrong. Markets and competition have existed before capitalism therefore they cannot be used to define and distinguish capitalism from other systems.
1
Okay, I should have specified. Capitalism is when ownership of a market defines legitimate power. To have a monopoly is the highest form of power in Capitalism.
Oppose that to, say, Feudalism, where the King's legitimacy came from traditional blood-right.
The two can cross over, as a Capitalist can inherit their fortune and possessions, but it is those possessions which define their power. A King could call for war in order to get back traditionally-owned lands, but a Capitalist can not simply demand back a market he once owned but lost.
edit: Control over a market can also be granted, such as through a government contract. This is still no less Capitalism.
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Capitalism is any society which permits capital accumulation. What capital is precisely is a little more complicated.
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The domination of the capitalist mode of production, characterized by the generalized production of commodities for sale on the market.
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Socialism is where the law of value no longer holds. In other words, where goods have no exchange-value, only a use-value.
In a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of production devoted to different articles will be determined by the degree of their social utility.
Marx (Poverty of Philosophy, ch. I)
So basically, fantasy world.
7
And that is the correct answer. Bonus points for quoting the original material. The problem for both socialism and communism is that they are incompatible with humanity's innate selfishness and evil. My only wish is that more capitalists like myself would admit that calling ourselves good people when our entire philosophy is conquering other's economically for personal gain.
0†
Yeah, it seems that (as is so common in philosophy) the justification follows, rather than precedes, the thing itself.
1
the justification follows, rather than precedes, the thing itself.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an "eternal law".
Marx/Engels, The German Ideology
The solitary and isolated hunter or fisherman, who serves Adam Smith and Ricardo as a starting point, is one of the unimaginative fantasies of eighteenth-century romances a la Robinson Crusoe; and despite the assertions of social historians, these by no means signify simply a reaction against over-refinement and reversion to a misconceived natural life. No more is Rousseau's contrat social, which by means of a contract establishes a relationship and connection between subjects that are by nature independent, based on this kind of naturalism. This is an illusion and nothing but the aesthetic illusion of the small and big Robinsonades. It is, on the contrary, the anticipation of "bourgeois society", which began to evolve in the sixteenth century and in the eighteenth century made giant strides towards maturity. The individual in this society of free competition seems to be rid of natural ties, etc., which made him an appurtenance of a particular, limited aggregation of human beings in previous historical epochs. The prophets of the eighteenth century, on whose shoulders Adam Smith and Ricardo were still wholly standing, envisaged this 18th-century individual -- a product of the dissolution of feudal society on the one hand and of the new productive forces evolved since the sixteenth century on the other -- as an ideal whose existence belonged to the past. They saw this individual not as an historical result, but as the starting point of history; not as something evolving in the course of history, but posited by nature, because for them this individual was in conformity with nature, in keeping with their idea of human nature. This delusion has been characteristic of every new epoch hitherto. Steuart, who in some respect was in opposition to the eighteenth century and as an aristocrat tended rather to regard things from an historical standpoint, avoided this naive view.
The further back we trace the course of history, the more does the individual, and accordingly also the producing individual, appear to be dependent and to belong to a larger whole.
Marx, Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Rather then declaring Marx wrong via impotent ridicule, argue against his points. Prove you have not elevated man as he currently exists, as you have been told he exists, to a falsified trans-historical category.
2
Prove you have not elevated man as he currently exists
Man as he currently exists is degenerated and man as he existed in the late Mesolithic was far superior from a genetic standpoint, both in terms of constitution and intelligence, and comes second to modern man only in terms of lacking the cultural and technical inheritance that modern man owes to his his unquestionably superior ancestors.
1
A theoretical system where the workers receive a "fair" compensation directly related to what they contribute to production and also havea proportional ownership and control over means of production
5
Capitalism places a monetary value on anything and everything. Literally anything can be bought and sold on the "market".
5
Which is where I ask where does the line end? Should we have to pay the police out of pocket for them to come to our house if need be? Should we have to pay firefighters to put out our house fires? And don't get me started on medical( which honestly should be like the first 2) .so by this logic if we didn't give the police and fire fighters tax money it would mean you have to pay them or they just wouldn't help you at all.
2
Is your alternative to directly paying with your own money coercive redistribution? Because that’s what we have now and is why if you don’t pay taxes you still get help. I have more peaceful alternatives if you're willing to consider something besides coercion and theft.
1
I was referring to how the acient romans had a fire department that you had to pay them upfront or they wouldn't put it out
1
If you want it put out without paying though, what’s your alternative? Steal from others to pay for it for them like what we have now?
0
Abolishing of private property, nations, and hierarchy.
4
nations
Wrong, Socialism has nothing to do with culture or ethnic makeup.
4
Wrong, Socialism has nothing to do with culture or ethnic makeup.
"Workers of the World, Unite!"
A very internationalist statement. Socialism very much affects culture, ethnic makeup, and the very idea of nationhood.
2
That's communism.
3
The goal of socialism is communism.
1
Socialism doesn’t have a goal, only individual socialists. It just so happens that most socialists have the goal of attaining communism, but not all.
1
Socialism is a system where economic assets are all owned on a shared basis, and all economic decisions are made on a shared basis.
It'll be interesting to see how one sees the other.
Theoretically, it's a concise and complete system. In fact, in the view from my desk, it seems as though most families run on some version of Socialism. The six-year old (and the 85-year old grandmother) both receive according to their needs, despite generating nothing of value. All gains are shared by the family, even if there is only one person who directly produces something for trade outside the family.
I am a moderately Libertarian capitalist, and would be very open to forming a commune or co-op with a like-minded group of people.
However, the greater diversity of the people involved in the definition of the community, the higher the risk of two breakdowns of two important features:
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A shared agreement to a desired amount of production: for example, a group may wish to all adopt a very basic lifestyle, where there is not much work needed, but the standard of living is not high. But that desire might not be shared by another group that wants a higher standard of living, whether that's higher levels of culture, or more choices (or simply higher quality) in goods and services, or better health care.
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A uniform commitment to production: similar to #1, but differs in that we're not talking about the group decision, but the amount of effort that each member puts into fulfilling it. If too many individual members have reduced production or increased consumption, compared to the group in general, then the living standard drops, sometimes catastrophically.
Another weak point is one that I note from Capitalism: as the size of a business grows, it develops economies of scale, but also becomes more difficult to manage. Socialism on a national scale is an extreme version of this, and the increasing power of internal administration is often difficult to maintain without occasional corruption, or just plain inefficiency.
3
A economic system that prioritizes economic freedom and less government intervention in business.
3
Capitalism: A system where property, including the means of production (items used to make other items) are owned by individuals, or groups of individuals, but not necessarily the workers.
Socialism: Ownership of the means of production by the workers who use them
Which am I?
2
Uhhh "worker" is a positive term so socialist?
5
no
1
In socialism, the product of each individual's labor and all the economy's resources are collected into a centralized bureaucracy - wherein 'the people' have de facto ownership of. Income or resources is distributed equitably and resources for production are distributed based on need.
edit: formatting
2
0
I'm saying "in socialism" - not "socialism is".
1
Socialism is extremely broad and it isn't just centrally planned economies. Some forms use market distribution and/or decentralized planning instead.
2
Socialism would be neither...
1
Socialism is the delusional idea that collective ownership of the means of production and abolition of private property will somehow create an optimal economic system that serves the interest of the worker and not the state.
2
What a completely unbiased statement, devoid of fallacies and full of logical conclusions.
2
Capitalists want people to die from lack of food and healthcare. Socialists want to destroy innovation.
1†
R A D I C A L C E N T R I S M
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Username checks out.
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nobody likes a fucking neolib
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[deleted]
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Why am I a neolib? Who am I fucking? Is it your mom?
-2†
oof, don't cut yourself on that edge
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Socialists only want to destroy the innovative ways people die from injustice in capitalism.
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By replacing them with starvation and work camps?
1
Hard mode: turn off your flair, don't use the words'oppressive', 'slavery', or 'coersion' and write it in a way that people can tell which one you're talking about
no u
Expert mode: use the words oppressive, slavery and coercion to describe socialism.
Wait, shouldn't that be easy mode?
you mean like when the oppressors impose their property norms onto you effectively coercing you into slavery.
That's easy to do, you just use the terms that the regime in question would use. Slaves become "the workers," or "immigrants"
For a lot of reasons. Liking the flair, by the way, but I'm now going to quote it out of context to imply you're into dudes.
Joke is on you, homosexuality is too accepted to be an insult in current year
Definitely not in conservative circles
u/Hhtura 🤔
?
But if you're going to be dishonest anyway then why bother waiting for him to write something you can take out of context, when you could just plainly make shit up?
Most of the time everything he says is stupid anyways so it's more just an issue of economizing.
An unfair system where people who don't do any work get money.
So you mean capitalism right
Nope. Socialism.
I know. It was a joke because in capitalism the rich do the lest work and get the most money and the poor do the most work and get the least money
Do I get special treatment under this clause