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I usually describe myself as some kind of social democrat, and I suspect I'm not the only one in the Chapo community. And I'm still involved here, in spite of all the comments made at the expense of social democrats. When people say "social democrats suck", I don't take it too seriously, just as I don't take it too seriously when people say "men suck" or "white people suck" even though I'm a white guy. I'm more interested in the specifics of a given discussion.
When I participate in an online community such as this, I do so knowing what that community is and what value I hope to get out of being here. I was attracted to the Chapo podcast and community because I agree with 80% to 90% of what is said here, and because I perceive the values of the people in this community as being mostly aligned with my values, and when we get into arguments, I can generally sympathize with why a person would disagree with me (e.g. I'd rather be around leftists who hate me because they want the best for humanity and they think I'm not doing enough to help people, than around right-wingers who hate me because they think I'm a cuck for caring about people too much). And if I feel like defending capitalism or talking about what I like about capitalism, I understand that this particular forum isn't the place to do it. Or at least, if I do defend capitalism or mention something I like about it, I still need to adhere to community norms of discussion, and I have no right to be surprised or angry if people get mad at me. I'm also an atheist, but I don't run into churches yelling that everyone inside is a deluded idiot.
So I suppose my answer is that I suspect a mature person who considers themselves to be a social democrat should be willing to meet you halfway. Maybe don't go out of your way to intentionally alienate social democrats (e.g. actively seeking them out to aggressively bully them for no reason) but it would also be unreasonable to ask you to refrain from giving your honest opinions. Why should you be accepting of me if I'm not willing to extend the same courtesy?
Why do you stick with capitalism?
(The space below this comment is an acceptable zone for arguing in favor of capitalism)
My smart-ass response is, tell me what you think capitalism is, and I'll tell you why I stick with it. The Chapo community isn't too bad and seems to settle on a definition that's something close to "a mode of production in which capital is owned by a powerful 'capitalist' class, and not by the workers who created it." But in many places on the internet, and sometimes in the Chapo community, I see the word "capitalism" used to criticize anyone speaking positively about work, or commerce, or competition, or currency, or markets, or any economic reasoning that involves numbers -- which makes discussion of "capitalism" confusing.
A few quick thoughts about capitalism:
(1) It's better than feudalism.
(2) I think markets are neat, and I think there is some nonzero amount of value in what the finance industry and capitalists do, especially in terms of distributing risk and deciding which technologies to invest in. Which is not to say that this can't be done in non-capitalist economies, but it is to say that I think there's a "baby in the bathwater" and that there are things we can learn from how capitalist economies do these things. I am very skeptical that the idea of using markets to determine prices can be completely done away with, which seems to be what some anti-capitalists want. But I'm open to being proven wrong.
(3) Sort of a meta-argument -- many of the anti-capitalists I've encountered seem unwilling or unable to answer basic questions about the nuts-and-bolts of how a post-capitalist economy would work. This doesn't necessarily mean their criticisms of capitalism are wrong, but it makes me not want to put them charge. (I'd make an exception for people like Richard D. Wolff or Yanis Varoufakis -- but my understanding is that they're usually described as "social democrats", and they still talk about reforming capitalism rather than getting rid of it entirely.)
When I say "basic questions", I don't mean "bUT hoW wiLL yOU paY fOR UNiveRsaL HeAlThcARe" -- that's a case where there are demonstrable real-world examples of universal healthcare being more efficient and effective than private systems, and there's no logical reason the US shouldn't be able to afford it. I'm talking more along the lines of me asking "Okay, but without markets or currency, how would the post-capitalist economy decide how to distribute scarce resources? What would replace the risk-distributing function that insurance has? What would contract work look like in a world where people 'own' the capital they create?" and getting an answer like "Uhhh, I guess there'd be a committee that figures that out, or something."
When I hear an answer like that, that makes me think that the person I'm talking to has not thought about the problem hard enough or realized how complex an economy is. And in a state of ignorance, I think it is a perfectly reasonable strategy to start by making cautious changes to the status quo rather than just destroying everything and replacing it all at once.
"So, you've just admitted that your entire worldview is based on your own ignorance?" Unironically, yeah, kind of. I am doing the best I can to understand the world using my current brain, as opposed to using something else, and part of that is bearing in mind that I am ignorant about a lot of things, as are most people. It may be that as I learn more, I become more confident that capitalism can be entirely replaced. But I'm not going to pretend I'm totally convinced of it right now, so for the time being, "social democrat" is the phrase that comes closest to describing my views.
Wolff is a socialist, he wants to abolish capitalism. I'm not really that familiar with his stuff because I'm past the point of needing to be convinced that capitalism is bad, but I'm sure he has some answers.
(1) I mean yes, I don't think anyone disputes that. But it also shares a lot of the characteristics of Feudalism that make Feudalism so shitty.
(2) The markets debate is interesting, but capitalism vs. socialism isn't about markets. Socialism (as an ideology in itself rather than a transition to communism) takes no explicit position on markets, so bringing up markets isn't really that relevant. Now, it's the case that many/most socialists aren't "market socialists," but trying to resolve the markets debate in the same breath as the socialism debate is just biting off more than you can chew. It's unreasonable to expect one side of a debate to redesign all of society in exquisite detail where the other just has to argue for reform.
(3) This can be divided into two categories, unreasonable questions and reasonable questions:
Unreasonable - This is basically the same as (2). You're expecting the socialist to know way too much about the precise function of a completely hypothetical society, whereas the capitalist can just say "How will capitalism handle x? Like this" and point to whatever it's currently doing in the real world. Like yeah, society would figure it out. Like we've figured out everything we do now. I'm not going to just speak into existence an entire functional society that I've designed to the tiniest detail to be a perfectly functioning machine.
Reasonable - Things like "If you don't have money or markets what do you have instead" fall into this category, they do in fact demand an answer. But also like in (2), these are not part of the socialism/capitalism dichotomy because socialism on its own doesn't imply abolishing money or markets. Trying to have the socialism debate AND the money debate AND the market debate at the same time is going to be even more impossible (and besides, I think most people who believe in abolishing money believe it would just sort of become useless after a long period of time rather than a specific concerted abolition effort being made).
edit: It's much easier and makes more sense to talk about abolishing money and markets if you're already a socialist.
It’s unreasonable to expect one side of a debate to redesign all of society in exquisite detail where the other just has to argue for reform.
Yes, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to redesign all of society in exquisite detail, which is exactly why I prefer to argue for reform.
Slight tangent, but the other thing I see a lot is people describing "abolishing capitalism" as though it's a discrete action that can be taken. As if there's a big "CAPITALISM" switch in the middle of the continent and the first step we need to take is to turn it from "ON" to "OFF". When in fact, capitalism (whatever that is -- are going with the "mode of production in which blah blah blah" definition or something else?) seems to permeate the system at every level. Which means that "Abolish capitalism now, figure out the rest later" doesn't really make sense. It would be a bit like saying "We'll plant the forest now, and we'll worry about the trees later."
One thing I've been impressed with is workplace organizing and the idea of building dual power. I attended an IWW workshop on organizing, and one of the things they emphasized was that, in order to have power in their workplace, the workers need to understand how the business works at least as well as their bosses do. The catchphrase that came up was "Organizing is Reorganizing". This kind of local organizing seems to me like a potentially promising way to find practical answers to questions in the category of "How would a non-capitalist system handle X?" in specific situations before capitalism has been entirely abolished, rather than just postponing the question until after the revolution.
I need to clarify my points but I also need to go to sleep so I'm gonna get back to you tomorrow
But there is a big switch. It's getting rid of the owner class, and transferring ownership of the business to employees. For businesses that are natural monopolies like oil, governments can take over those.
See, this is why I'm a social democrat. I'm on board with "pig" and "poop", but I'm not so sure about "balls". Call me a liberal, but that seems phallocentric.
I think you need to read this https://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf
Social democracy as far as it is instituted for the defense and advancement of capitalism will always run head first into the brick wall that is the investor classes market monopoly on investment capital, to advance the material condition of the working class is by definition to undermine the social position of the employer and investor class
Social democracy is historically a treaty of cooperativism between big business, labor and the government in favor of labor and capital, but this dynamic undermines capital in the long run inevitably leading to stagflation, investor strikes and state capture by capitalists who correctly recognize their social prestige is being threatened by a labor class that grows ever more confident with each victory
What do you mean by alienate? How do you propose we incorporate defenders of capitalism? We can be tentative allies on the things we agree on, but there's no agreeing on things we fundamentally disagree on.
I would also differentiate between ordinary people and leaders. Ordinary people don't neatly fit into categories. So they might be very lib, but they also might have more radical views than the mainstream if you talk to them. It depends on the individual. Whereas the leaders, the talking heads, the political junkies, they're indoctrinated into their beliefs, they're going to defend capitalism to the death, there's not a lot of hope in converting these people in large numbers. Instead we are competing against these people to recruit the ordinary people, the less politically informed, to our cause and against their cause.
Good luck. The SocDems in my country have gone completely neoliberal and the same thing happened all across Europe. By far the most lefty thing they do now is sing the Internationale at the party congress every 4 years.
Because they want to reform capitalism rather than abolish it and you can't work with someone like that on the project of abolishing capitalism. You can try to radicalize them and convince them to help. But to just take them and their views as allies won't work. The goals aren't aligned. Socdems may now be considered more left than they used to be, but only because the right has shifted yet again. This doesn't mean their goals are compatible with socialism/communism. Eventually current Democrats will be far left, but you can see how that doesn't make them good allies.
It's possible to work with people who have different ultimate goals, that difference just has to be resolved one way or another before that end state is reached.
Historically those differences have been resolved in favor of anti-communism and MORE capitalism
Social Democracy is less bad than neoliberalism, but SocDem political movements ideologically prefer to slide into neoliberalism than communism, so SocDems will never be anything except allies of convenience. By all means push SocDem policies for harm reduction reasons, but when push comes to shove, the SocDems will be on the other side (unless you radicalise them).
Or perhaps another way to phrase it is: if they're on the side of the revolution, they're (by definition) not a SocDem.
Yeah, obviously socdems are allies in the current circumstances. They're ridiculously easy to radicalize, too, so when we get to that ideal future where it becomes relevant it's not like they're going to be some sort of uniform reactionary wall.
Relative to the rest of America, socdems are the cream of the crop when it comes to being good and moral people with left leaning political ideas.
No Social fascism is as relevant as ever
What people done realise and why the Soviet Union was so hated in the West....was because the Soviets waged a 70 year uninterrupted war against Social Democracy
You say the "left is ostracised" but when were communists not?
Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.
-Marx, Communist Manifesto
“One may say without exaggeration that the most central task of our days (nay, perhaps even of our entire epoch) is to defeat social-democracy, the main factor of the international counter revolution.”- Clara Zetkin [Speech to the Fourth Comintern Congress, 1922]
Those that preach "unity" essentially want to liquidate the conflict within Marxism, the very best of Marxism, by reducing it to a cowards ideology of "nice feelings".
Stripping it of its scientific and revolutionary content.
Social-Fascism, a well thought out analysis after a century of revolutions betrayed by SuccDems, sounds silly on the face of it.
It sounds as moronic "red fash tankies" the anarchists go on about or "stalinists" the trots cringe about
But lets take Bernie, our beloved SuccDem and darling of the left.
Bernie voted to destrory a socialist country. He voted for round the clock bombing of 78 days of Blitzkrieg against Yugoslavia.
The worldbank,imf and US gov would demand Yugoslavia broke up into a bunch of reactionary right wing states where the populations had been ethnically cleansed back into their home countries (croats back to Croatia, Serbs forced out of Kosovo, Slovenes back to Slovenia..etc.)
An ethnic cleansing that took place under Nato soldiers watch with Nazi parties in power in those countries that honoured their nazi collaborators with parades (the croat and slovene nationalists etc.)
What would you call what was done to Yugoslavia except for fascism supported by social democrats all over the world so they can get a few crumbs from imperialism to placate their local working class?
If you think social fascism isnt a thing now do the same analysis with Ukraine in recent years
Fascism is wedded to social democracy and i could easily imagine this entire site going "vote bluu shut up sectarians!" If Bernie had become the dem candidate
“Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organizations [social-democratic and bourgeois fighting organizations]; a bloc which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc. It would therefore be a mistake to think that ‘pacifism’ signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation, ‘pacifism’ is the strengthening of fascism, with its moderate social democratic wing pushed to the forefront.”
J V Stalin [Speech to Fifth Comintern Congress, 1924]
It always ends up the way around since the socdems and libs are the only ones who actually show up to do anything. MLs would have to join them, not the other way around beause if Socdems did go somewhere like PSL they would immediately be the majority.
Why do we continue to alienate these people
(laughing Marx)
middle class liberals are not alienated from capitalism, they've given themselves over to serving it, that's what "totalitarian" really means.
try to incorporate them into our cause
Social democracy, also known as social fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_fascism
SocDems are hot and I power bottomed one. Thank you for listening. :jeb: :pickle-liz:
interpreting modern political tendencies, especially marginal tendencies (which includes the entirety of the US left) as a direct continuation of the tendencies which were ascendent before WWII is uhhhhhh stupid as shit. Of course succdems are allies. Libs can be allies depending on the specificities of the conflict. If you got arrested tomorrow and don't have anyone you could rely on to show up to your hearing, you should have 2nd thoughts about fronting like you're a relevant political force.
