You don’t get to make moral arguments that anyone takes seriously and you sure don’t get to criticize others arguments. Yours led you to support Rhodesia.
Rather overly optimistic communist at that. Told me to study up on communist theory without ever engaging with my best points. Talks a lot, says very little.
Well? Did you study up in communist theory, or are you content always getting dunked on?
Also, please link us the thread where Cowbee “ignored your best points” so we can take a look at it. I’m curious to see what you’re talking about. I suspect you’re lying.
Sigh, Cowbee painstakingly engaged with you, displayed patience and empathy and kindness, and this is the route you went. Reading your comments, you’re completely and utterly clueless. You would do well to stop throwing mud at people who take time to help you parse your scattered “ideology” and instead do some reading and shut the fuck up.
As stated earlier, my best points were essentially ignored. If that’s what ‘getting dunked on’ means, I’m beyond fine with it lol
I don’t know how this is mud throwing when he describes himself as an optimist and at the same time was the ‘clueless one’ on what a moderately conservative communist stands for.
I love your take though, especially the ‘parse your scattered ideology’ bit, that was hilarious. I believe Cowbee has been clued in on my perspective despite my own cluelessness haha
Communism by itself isn’t bad, nor is capitalism, but both assume that their proponents are immune to greed, and that their opponent are full of it.
There are good things in both, bad things in both. The problem is to find people that are truly altruistic, and that have the moral fortitude to stay altruistic.
Edit: y’all can downvote all you want, I’ll stand by my opinion unless someone has the honesty to argue on that.
Can you list the good parts of capitalism? If you say the free market, capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on that concept. Socialism and communism have free market aspects too, but they centralize control of resources so that 5 people can’t drain everything and ascend to the top.
Both having a form of free market doesn’t make it suddenly good for one side and bad for the other.
Some sort of free market is good, so new idea can brew, some of them being one day attempted, other won’t because it ends up either not getting traction, or would very obviously fail after some research.
Problem is with too much planning is that it doesn’t give as much place for innovation, as well as put too much weight on a single point of failure.
That played a good part in the USSR famines, like the holodomor, which was then further aggravated by their unwillingness to admit they fucked up, blaming it on other factors.
But if they had learned from their mistakes, it would have improved, but unfortunately those very same error were repeated multiple time (see the multiple famines the USSR faced while strangely their western counterparts did not.
And I’ll pass on the other similar failures (Chernobyl, among other), that follow the very same pattern.
Of course, the USSR had some very clear wins, like the first part of the race to space, and others.
The USSR could have been a success if their leader weren’t selfish idiots, which os a shame since I’d rather live in a good cummunism regime than a good capitalism regime.
I always worked toward such ideals, I contributed to some open-source project (Gnome, KDE, mostly translation, bug report, but also some packaging for OpenSUSE and Fedora.
I’m a bit tired of those who blindly follow ideologies without having the intellectual honesty to recognize where said ideology fucked up and where it was great. Do I have to be called a social-traitor for every reflection on communism or socialism?
I doubt Marx would be happy to see those he tried to enlighten sheepishly follow whoever yell the loudest… Even if they yell parta of what he tried to teach them.
You still believe in human nature detached from material conditions, which is an idealist position. There’s nothing convincing anyone can say to you until you challenge this position.
Neither capitalism nor communism assume that their proponents are immune to greed. Capitalism was developed as an improvement over (European) feudalism and mercantilism. The idea is that division of labour expands the quantity and diversity of goods that can be produced. Communism is similarly supposed to be an improvement on capitalism. Here, the idea is that centralised planning can improve the distribution of the produced goods (and further improve the quantity and diversity of goods).
I would argue capitalism is bad in nature, but people confuse free markets as being inherit to capitalism, which it is not.
Capitalism at its core is about ownership, in that those with money own a thing and thus make the decisions. This results in an Oligarchy controlling the market.
Communism in contrast is about collective ownership in that those that produce, own and make the decisions. However in practice, that ownership get usurped by “the state” which basically translates to an oligarchy through control of the market.
This is why I like the term, free market socialism. Ownership should be held by the producers, but the state should not control the market. The role of government in the market should be limited to monopoly prevention.
The state ownership of production is deliberate, and aimed at improving efficiency and allowing forward planning. One (or a few, if you want competition) large factory is more efficient than a bunch of smaller workshops. State ownership can lead to corruption, as you pointed out, but it is a conscious choice and not happenstance.
I would argue that state facilitation is superior to state control.
A small government that does not interfere with the initiative of individuals and groups.
You don’t need central control and orchistration when you have our level of communication technology. That’s only required when your communication channels are limited.
The state at national level should be limited to providing facilitation, infrastructure, defence and foreign policy. Independent Local governments should provide the bulk of public services.
I trust collective decision making a lot more than central decision making for optimising a system.
Imma need some context. Searching “cowbee” gave me nothing.
Cowbee is a prominent user on Lemmy who is a communist and frequently picks apart anti-communist comments.
You mean they dump copy-pasta fan-fiction about AES everywhere.
You literally supported Rhodesia.
You don’t get to make moral arguments that anyone takes seriously and you sure don’t get to criticize others arguments. Yours led you to support Rhodesia.
Holy shit? There are Rhodesia apologists on Lemmy?
Lol, you continue to make up funny stories that have nothing to do with reality. I never “supported Rhodesia”.
you do support the fascist regime in Ukraine tho, or gonna pretend that’s also a funny story fash?
go home fash
Rather overly optimistic communist at that. Told me to study up on communist theory without ever engaging with my best points. Talks a lot, says very little.
Well? Did you study up in communist theory, or are you content always getting dunked on?
Also, please link us the thread where Cowbee “ignored your best points” so we can take a look at it. I’m curious to see what you’re talking about. I suspect you’re lying.
Edit: https://lemmy.world/comment/23871382
Sigh, Cowbee painstakingly engaged with you, displayed patience and empathy and kindness, and this is the route you went. Reading your comments, you’re completely and utterly clueless. You would do well to stop throwing mud at people who take time to help you parse your scattered “ideology” and instead do some reading and shut the fuck up.
As stated earlier, my best points were essentially ignored. If that’s what ‘getting dunked on’ means, I’m beyond fine with it lol
I don’t know how this is mud throwing when he describes himself as an optimist and at the same time was the ‘clueless one’ on what a moderately conservative communist stands for.
I love your take though, especially the ‘parse your scattered ideology’ bit, that was hilarious. I believe Cowbee has been clued in on my perspective despite my own cluelessness haha
Thank you for linking the comment thread for me.
I think you might have some things to work on. I wish you well on the journey of self discovery
He thoroughly broke down your points, you just refused to agree.
Gotcha, I’m terrible with names.
Communism by itself isn’t bad, nor is capitalism, but both assume that their proponents are immune to greed, and that their opponent are full of it.
There are good things in both, bad things in both. The problem is to find people that are truly altruistic, and that have the moral fortitude to stay altruistic.
Edit: y’all can downvote all you want, I’ll stand by my opinion unless someone has the honesty to argue on that.
Can you list the good parts of capitalism? If you say the free market, capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on that concept. Socialism and communism have free market aspects too, but they centralize control of resources so that 5 people can’t drain everything and ascend to the top.
Both having a form of free market doesn’t make it suddenly good for one side and bad for the other.
Some sort of free market is good, so new idea can brew, some of them being one day attempted, other won’t because it ends up either not getting traction, or would very obviously fail after some research.
Problem is with too much planning is that it doesn’t give as much place for innovation, as well as put too much weight on a single point of failure. That played a good part in the USSR famines, like the holodomor, which was then further aggravated by their unwillingness to admit they fucked up, blaming it on other factors. But if they had learned from their mistakes, it would have improved, but unfortunately those very same error were repeated multiple time (see the multiple famines the USSR faced while strangely their western counterparts did not.
And I’ll pass on the other similar failures (Chernobyl, among other), that follow the very same pattern.
Of course, the USSR had some very clear wins, like the first part of the race to space, and others.
The USSR could have been a success if their leader weren’t selfish idiots, which os a shame since I’d rather live in a good cummunism regime than a good capitalism regime.
I always worked toward such ideals, I contributed to some open-source project (Gnome, KDE, mostly translation, bug report, but also some packaging for OpenSUSE and Fedora.
I’m a bit tired of those who blindly follow ideologies without having the intellectual honesty to recognize where said ideology fucked up and where it was great. Do I have to be called a social-traitor for every reflection on communism or socialism? I doubt Marx would be happy to see those he tried to enlighten sheepishly follow whoever yell the loudest… Even if they yell parta of what he tried to teach them.
Read Marx
Already done, lot a good ideas, some ideas I don’t agree with, but an enlightening read nonetheless.
The part I disagree the most about are free competition.
I promise you that we all know you haven’t read Marxist works. No need to lie.
That was part of my philosophy class, the book is probably still at my father house.
You still believe in human nature detached from material conditions, which is an idealist position. There’s nothing convincing anyone can say to you until you challenge this position.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
And he wants someone to “honestly argue with him” LMAO.
Neither capitalism nor communism assume that their proponents are immune to greed. Capitalism was developed as an improvement over (European) feudalism and mercantilism. The idea is that division of labour expands the quantity and diversity of goods that can be produced. Communism is similarly supposed to be an improvement on capitalism. Here, the idea is that centralised planning can improve the distribution of the produced goods (and further improve the quantity and diversity of goods).
I would argue capitalism is bad in nature, but people confuse free markets as being inherit to capitalism, which it is not.
Capitalism at its core is about ownership, in that those with money own a thing and thus make the decisions. This results in an Oligarchy controlling the market.
Communism in contrast is about collective ownership in that those that produce, own and make the decisions. However in practice, that ownership get usurped by “the state” which basically translates to an oligarchy through control of the market.
This is why I like the term, free market socialism. Ownership should be held by the producers, but the state should not control the market. The role of government in the market should be limited to monopoly prevention.
The state ownership of production is deliberate, and aimed at improving efficiency and allowing forward planning. One (or a few, if you want competition) large factory is more efficient than a bunch of smaller workshops. State ownership can lead to corruption, as you pointed out, but it is a conscious choice and not happenstance.
I would argue that state facilitation is superior to state control.
A small government that does not interfere with the initiative of individuals and groups.
You don’t need central control and orchistration when you have our level of communication technology. That’s only required when your communication channels are limited.
The state at national level should be limited to providing facilitation, infrastructure, defence and foreign policy. Independent Local governments should provide the bulk of public services.
I trust collective decision making a lot more than central decision making for optimising a system.