The hate against socialism is the idea that someone who doesn’t work as hard as you, gets the same benefits as you, and that’s not fair.
Something like that could never work under capitalism. Everybody knows that rich people work extremely hard to be rich. I work hard, and I’ll be rich some day too.
decades of red scare propaganda and purposefully sabotaging public education
Seriously. People don’t seem to remember or understand how intense anti-communist feelings were during the Cold War. It would be un-American to assume anything different than capitalism.
I heard that most of my life, so it feels extremely unsettling to experience MAGA love affair with some of the tyrants their forbears would have most hated
Anti-socialism is just collateral damage
Also Cubans who act like they weren’t children when their family left. Souith Florida Spanish radio is wild!
“Socialism is when the government does stuff 😭” - Average American, unfortunately
Nah seriously this is what they legit believe, they just think the government doing it means it’s going to be shitty. Which is not entirely untrue. But at least it’s not trying to actively rip you off while continuing to offer less and less, like any publicly traded company has a good track record of doing.
Those who are educated on the matter and oppose socialism do so because of a belief that continuing high-intensity development of the economy is preferable, for one reason or another.
Many of us would argue that, with the economy in developed countries at the point where everyone could very easily be guaranteed a good quality of life without further improvements, and that, in fact, further improvements at this point are more likely to come from the cultural and technological development enabled by a more equal and less labor-intensive society, capitalism has overstayed its welcome.
The ultra rich have successfully convinced a lot of people that they, too, could become ultra rich some day - but there’s no place for ultra rich under socialism.
Then further, a lot of people have been convinced that only the very very poor would be better off and everyone else would be worse off. That is of course also untrue.
I think this is true, but id add that most socialist societies we have seen have been awful. Lots of corruption and poverty. Turns out whichever system you have there will be evil scumbags seeking to self-enrich.
Thats not to say it couldn’t work, but that there are no shining examples of success and lots of examples of failure.
If everyone does better, then you’re doing worse by comparison.
I want 10% unemployment and 0% interest rates. That’s the magic formula where I can sexually harass my au pair and she has no choice but to put up with it.
Someone should print this on a t-shirt. Or stickers. Both!
What you have to remember is that socialism means everyone paying their fair share, and some people don’t want to do that.
It is due to lobbying and astroturfing.
Simple as.
It’s definitely not based in data, because that overwhelmingly shows massive economic and happiness growth happens in these states
Where in the world has socialism been successful in the past?
I’ll wait.
I’m Canadian and my country is extremely successful. We’re also pretty socialist. Obviously socialism isnt a binary, but we have universal Healthcare, strong financial regulations, and a stronger more centralized federal government than the US. We’re doing very well, and the elements which cause us the most pain tend to be where we are more like the states, not where we’re more like Denmark.
I’m Canadian and my country is extremely successful.
That‘s a stretch, isn‘t it? What‘s the housing market like over there?
Worlddata.info - Canada 26th in World Quality of Life index vs. US rank 38 IM Global Wealth News - 10th in quality of life, US not listed U.S. News - 4th overall to US third. Wagecenter.com - Canada has the highest rated standard of living, US not listed in the top 10 UN Happiness report - We’ve dropped to 18th, vs the US 24th.
It is absolutely not a stretch to say Canada is extremely successful. Perfection is an awful long way off, of course. Costs are up, happiness is down. American influence has caused a rise in right-wing hate groups. But I’ll repeat - the more socialist we lean, the better we seem to do.
Well. Maybe it depends on your definition. When it comes to providing a good quality of life for your citizens, Canada is probably doing alright. But not exceptionally well. When the working class can’t afford to enter the housing market, and GDP per capita is around 60% of the US; that’s not so good. I’d classify Switzerland and Singapore as extremely successful.
Off the top of my head: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland.
Here is an important example of the disconnect between liberal and conservative interpretation of the word “socialist”. Economists would not label Scandinavian countries as socialist. Meanwhile conservatives point to Cuba and Venezuela as examples of socialist failure when that’s not entirely true either. We’re talking past each other in these debates.
That’s because Conservatives have no argument other than pedantry when it comes to their villifying of “socialism”.
“They aren’t socialist, they’re Democratic Socialism or Social Democrats, which are totally different from each other and not socialism at all!” (Is their pedantry, in case anyone was wondering)
It’s ALL socialism, just with a few different policies at play. But that would destroy the conservative argument that you can’t have a successful capital economy under socialism. So they play the “They aren’t real socialists” bullshit game.
In the same vein you could argue that US is not true Capitalism because trickle down doesn’t happen and many means of production are still owned by the government.
And yet we call them a Capitalist country, no?
Economists would not label Scandinavian countries as socialist.
Economists would say that’s a matter for political scientists. And aren’t all conservative.
But yes, in the English-speaking world, conservatives and the far left use the traditional definition, while the mainstream left has recently gravitated towards something like “when the government does things”.
Anarchist Catalonia, Socialist Yugoslavia, any number of modern workers’ coops and corporations, including Mondragon Corp.
To me the hate is quite simple to understand. Socialism means that the extremely rich will be worse off financially. The 1% have an unnatural love for money, and the idea of being less wealthy for the greater good is totally abhorrent to them.
For generations they’ve been able to demonise socialism using their disproportionate influence through the media, to the extent that the majority of the population now fear it.
We’ve really not moved on that far intellectually from the witch trials. People are collectively ignorant and fearful, and with the right nudges are easy to control to the point where they’ll literally vote against their own good. They are the proverbial Turkeys voting for Christmas and I honestly don’t know how we will ever get past it.
Thankfully, we’re now reaching a turning point where PragerU will be used to teach directly in schools, letting kids know why socialism is bad and capitalism is good. Wait, that’s the opposite of what we want, fuck!
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We’ve really not moved on that far intellectually from the witch trials.
Cognitive biases seem to be unavoidable. Even if you are well-educated about a particular bias, it often takes reflection (internally or externally motivated) to recognize it in your decisions / behavior.
Fallacious reasoning is often just as good at convincing an audience, which is one of the reasons they are still in use despite many or most being documented and named in ancient times.
Individual training in critical thinking skills can help, but theocrats (in specific) and authoritarians (in general) spend a lot of effort making sure that public education is robbed of that. But, that’s not enough to “intellectually move on”; even with that training, bias occurs. So, we have to build systems for bias detection and remediation if we want a just global society.
It’s the PR and marketing campaigns. Capitalism concentrated the wealth with the bosses so they can send a coherent message. A message people can buy into.
Socialism marketing makes it sound like a MLM scheme. The lack of centralization puts different unions against each other.
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Years of propaganda from oligarchs, their think tanks and their propaganda spreaders. This has been an attack for many decades but especially after WW2 during the red scare and then after 1970 when the Powell Memo was issued. That is the origin of all of our messes, including Reagan and Trump.
Many of the same right wing think tanks are from the same oligarchs from decades ago and/or their heirs. Think Timothy Mellon or Birch Society (Koch Brother father). Even then, there was “the business plot” where the oligarchs of the 1930s wanted fascism because of the threat FDR had to their wealth and power.
The red scare is a huge factor that continues to this day.
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here in the us we opperate like a socialist country pretending to be capitalist. “Distributing things evenly” is hard when no one agrees what evenly is
Socialism by its barest definition is great.
Socialism as outlined in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a little sketchier because it makes a lot of unrealistic assumptions about human nature and is just generally super hard to implement without creating a power vacuum.
Socialism as in the USSR’s Socialism is a century old practice of the cruellest and most war hungry culture imagineable, having taken advantage of the afforementioned power vacuum to starve and torture millions at home, ally with the Nazis in WWII and then change sides halfway through, tear down democracies around the globe, and push us all the closest we have ever been to thermonuclear annihilation. A threat so great that even 30 years into its grave is still a great stone over our heads, having crafted a world power balance that will threaten our destruction for generations to come.
But Socialism by its barest definition is great.
Socialism as outlined in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a little sketchier because it makes a lot of unrealistic assumptions about human nature and is just generally super hard to implement without creating a power vacuum.
Marx’s general proposals for the implementation of a socialist government:
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Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
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A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
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Abolition of all right of inheritance.
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Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
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Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
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Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
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Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
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Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
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Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
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Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
Which of those do you think is hard to implement or makes unrealistic assumptions about human nature?
So right around step 1 you’ve got either
A) An Authoritarian state who controls all property with no method to implement such state.
B) An Anarchy where, since nobody owns anything, the influential will go wherever they want and take whatever they want.
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My dad was Finnish, and I think it helps to remember, Finns were fighting Russians before and during the time Russia called itself Communist and Socialist. The western side of that divide, the Nordic countries, practiced a very different version of “socialism”, with democracy, and they seem to be reaping a lot of benefits.
Yeah, and capitalism has never lead to the toppling of foreign democracies or threatened thermonuclear annihilation
Ah, shit wait
Top of the line Whataboutism
It actually wasn’t. The comment I responded to was posing socialism as being at the root of these issues. It’s hardly the cause of any of these, much like how capitalism itself also isn’t the cause of toppling foreign democracies or threatening thermonuclear annihilation, which is what I was contrasting.
Socialism as outlined in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a little sketchier because it makes a lot of unrealistic assumptions about human nature and is just generally super hard to implement without creating a power vacuum.
And is still pretty vague. There was a lot of colouring in for the Bolsheviks to do.
Socialism as in the USSR’s Socialism is a century old practice of the cruellest and most war hungry culture imagineable, having taken advantage of the afforementioned power vacuum to starve and torture millions at home, ally with the Nazis in WWII and then change sides halfway through, tear down democracies around the globe, and push us all the closest we have ever been to thermonuclear annihilation. A threat so great that even 30 years into its grave is still a great stone over our heads, having crafted a world power balance that will threaten our destruction for generations to come.
I’m glad it fell (plz don’t ban), but there’s hella artistic licence there.
The power vacuum came from the Tsar. They were always enemies of the Nazis, although they did temporarily agree not to fight them, and then afterwards they basically won the war themselves. The US went first with the nukes. I don’t even know what you mean about the current power balance - Russia is laughably weak, China is behind where it would have been if it took the Japan path. And, the thing about their cruel culture just sounds like bigotry.
The power vacuum came from the Tsar.
The Bolsheviks literally couped the democratically elected and socialist post-Tsar government of Russia, kickstarting several years of civil war.
They were always enemies of the Nazis, although they did temporarily agree not to fight them,
Funny, then, that they invaded Poland and the Baltics in tandem with the Nazis and spent several years supplying the Nazi war machine.
and then afterwards they basically won the war themselves.
Fucking what.
Even Stalin regarded the Soviet position as unwinnable without the Western Allies.
I didn’t expect to end up arguing with you, Pug.
The Bolsheviks literally couped the democratically elected and socialist post-Tsar government of Russia, kickstarting several years of civil war.
It was itself months old. Just like in France a century and a bit earlier, revolutions have a way of getting overthrown. And the one that stuck was itself autocratic.
If the Tsars had made actual concessions to liberalism earlier, maybe history would have developed differently. But, as it is, they waited until the late 19th century to abolish actual tied-to-the-land serfdom, were similarly reluctant to stop being autocratic feudal dicks in other ways, and set up the Duma right as revolutionaries of various stripes were trying to knock in their door. With the unpopularity of WWI and the necessity of having a lot of angry soldiers running around during it, instability became fait accompli.
Funny, then, that they invaded Poland and the Baltics in tandem with the Nazis and spent several years supplying the Nazi war machine.
The Nazis saw communism as right up their with the Jews as their main nemesis, and invented the term Judaeo-Bolshevik to describe how they’re actually the same. Yes, they did agree to not fight each other and split up some weaker nations (and trade? I’m not sure what you mean by supplying), but calling that an alliance seems like a stretch. I can’t believe both sides weren’t gauging when to break it off and attack the other from the start. Stalin spent that time shifting his defense production base to the Urals in preparation, even.
Compare Britain and France, or Italy and the Nazis, who were definitely allies.
Fucking what.
Even Stalin regarded the Soviet position as unwinnable without the Western Allies.
Yes, it would have been a very different war if the Nazis weren’t already fighting. But, as it was, they were in a stalemate circa 1941 when they started Barbarossa, and the Soviets ended up taking the lion’s share of casualties tipping the balance hard against them. Being a history student, I’m sure you as well have seen actual historians explain that human wave tactics weren’t a thing - Soviets died in spades because they were fighting hard against an enemy that saw them as subhuman.
In a few words “they basically won it themselves” is the best I could do. Since there were many topics at play I didn’t want to start pulling out statistics and narrative to explain the nuances behind that, or talk about counterfactuals relating to it being a 1-on-1 fight.
It was itself months old. Just like in France a century and a bit earlier, revolutions have a way of getting overthrown. And the one that stuck was itself autocratic.
“It’s just the nature of revolutions” rings a little hollow when two revolutions had occurred without kicking off a civil war until the Bolsheviks dissolved the democratically elected assembly. Feels rather like creating a power vacuum.
Yes, they did agree to not fight each other and split up some weaker nations (and trade? I’m not sure what you mean by supplying), but calling that an alliance seems like a stretch.
What do you call it when two countries agree to cooperate on military matters, including offensive military actions, up to an including performing a joint invasion of a country with the intention of annexing and genociding it?
Yes, it would have been a very different war if the Nazis weren’t already fighting.
No, as in, “Stalin believed that without American Lend-Lease alone, the Soviet Union could not have survived the war, even with the Western Allies being in the fight”
But, as it was, they were in a stalemate circa 1941 when they started Barbarossa, and the Soviets ended up taking the lion’s share of casualties tipping the balance hard against them. Being a history student, I’m sure you as well have seen actual historians explain that human wave tactics weren’t a thing - Soviets died in spades because they were fighting hard against an enemy that saw them as subhuman.
The Soviets inflicted approximately 50% more casualties on the Nazis (though a roughly equivalent number of total losses due to Nazis being more willing to surrender to Western forces), but suffered ten times the number of casualties as Western forces.
It doesn’t have to be human wave tactics to be a staggering display of incompetence that nearly lost them the war.
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the cruellest and most war hungry culture imagineable
America?
BuT hER eMaILs!
Gonna go bomb a wedding, maybe torture some Muslims at Gitmo? You sick fucks can’t go a year without invading a country or brutally toppling a government. What’s the longest you ever not been in a war/conflict/or any other word you created to downplay your crimes?
bUt TrUmP iS tHe OnLy PrObLeM wItH aMeRicA
Yes, you have several EmAiLs to complain about instead of actually addressing anything. I doubt anyone here thinks the US is perfect, but that’s not the question.
I did address something, I addressed that the US is everything that American thought about the Soviets.
The question had noting to do with perfect, the question was about unmistakable evil.
No, the question was about the Soviet Union. That’s why talking about the US is a cop-out.
“Socialism by its barest definition is great.” That’s what I thought too until I learned about the USSR’s Socialism and how it led to starvation, torture, war, and nearly caused a nuclear apocalypse. It’s easy to romanticize socialism in theory, but we must remember the horrors it has caused in practice.
Lmao thats just the short version of my comment
Conservative reactionaries since the French Thermidor Reaction opposed it, believing communalism and eventually socialism undermines their existing hierarchical, feudal system. Stalin also did not help matters at all.
Yeah Stalin was like “You want to see totalitarianism with socialist window dressing?”
This is also why I can’t stand tankies. Worshipping the Soviet Union, China and even modern day Russia. Clearly the “is not The West™” is the important part for them, not socialism or communism. Also, I’ve had interactions with people on reddit where they said that the mass deportations were absolutely justified, etc.
Look, I also want a lot of the things socialism offers, without necessarily going full communist. But I’ll argue all day that Nordic countries do it better. Not perfectly of course, there’s still billionaires and there are still issues. But people are by and large much more free than they are or were in any of the countries tankies love, and those who aren’t well-off still have it much better than they do in, say, the US.
How can a person who resolves their conflicts with hate feel comfortable about socialism if socialism creates a space without hate? Some people want to fight and can only fight. Removing fights removes their ability to gain status and respect.
