Let's define what Socialism is.

God that fuckin thread. Someone in there really straight-up pulled a "I honestly think the world is split into the greater and the lesser; and the latter exists to serve the former" and had the unmitigated settler gall to take offense when people compared him to a nazi/eugenicist.

me normally:

me when there's confederate scum nearby: THE UNION FOREVER HURRAH BOYS HURRAH DOWN WITH THE TRAITORS UP WITH THE STARS
Greater at what?? You can be the LeBron James of torture but why would I want to live in a society that actualizes your talent? These people power scale societies based off of IQ or something and even given that it predicts your capacity to be a scientist or a
, eventually you're going to want someone to build something. Without the proper care and attention given to the artistic vision and conviction to humanities they're going to build the skyscrapers amd urban sprawls you hate so much. The hierarchical vision you had manifested as shit and nonsense. That instinct betrays you

A fair metaphor. @ me about it

.world

that's a great emoji
- another @WhyEssEff@hexbear.net banger

Is OP stupid or living under a rock? We already have socialism in America. Joe Biden is a card carrying CCP member. Obama is the most influential Marxist after Lenin and Marx himself.

California and New York are the staunchest communist states we have.

The Democratic Party has always been socialist, and the GOP is loyal to Putin.

The US is the only successful socialist country. Period.

Why are you misspelling Chairman Obamao's name?
- I'm pretty sure I read it on Wikipedia. What's your counter source?
- perhaps not an earnest statement
- Oh yeah? Name one incorrect statement there. I’ll wait. (Edit: besides the statement implying Marxist-Leninism is more influential than Marxist-Bidenism)
- I mean my question honestly. Would you profit from tone indicators telling if something is a joke?
  Hexbear has a left unity approach meaning that RyanGosling's comment is a joke built on re-hashing bad takes from propagandized USA citizens.

no one ever seems to stop and think, "I don't actually know that much about socialism, or socialist countries, or socialist history."

Look, just because the most influential philosopher of the last thousand years spent his life explaining it and libraries of books have been written about his work with still more books written about those books, doesn't mean that they can be expected to know what it means. They need you to explain it and respond to all their dumbass questions
I attribute this to my uncle, though it was years ago. I was butting heads about communism. I stopped for a moment to ask him what socialism is. I don't even think he said it's when the government does stuff; he just said it's when taxes are 70%. It gave me the clarity of mind to just give him the thumbs up and go do something else because he wasn't going to listen and he'd never agree with me because he was adamant and ignorant
I remember thinking exactly that shortly after the 2016 election. Now I'm here

OP in that thread has some real bangers in their comment history like "not going into debt is Marxist activism"

On the subject of Marxism, if people stopped getting into debt a lot less money would be flowing to the top. Banks would have fewer profits and their power would shrink. Therefore abstaining from debt could even be considered a kind of activism. The best kind of activism really, because it actually makes you wealthier.

Also they just straight up defend being a landlord insisting it's a ton of work lmao.

This is why we can't have nice things. Like this is just an insult to the entirety of Marx's work.
- Back on Reddit I had an esoteric fascist argue to me that capitalism was something invented by Marxists and doesn't really exist, so I guess it could be worse.
the only way I'm arguing with this person is using a crowbar
Have you considered not going into debt?
Also they just straight up defend being a landlord
really buried the lede there
The irony is that they’re right but for the wrong reasons. Capitalism would collapse if debt as an economic tool ceased to exist. But paying off your credit card in full every month isn’t going to do that.

I don't think I can take much more of this. Everything is getting so watered down, even though there are fucking definitions and volumes of books written on everything.

Fucking EVERYTHING is up for grabs, words have no meaning, and you can twist literally anything to fit your agenda, and a bunch of braying jackasses will eat it up with a gigantic spoon.

- being extremely obnoxious about linguistics (wikipedia pages and arguing over descriptive vs prescriptive only) was one of the defining characteristics of early reddit comment sections. That shit still sets off my alarm bells lol
- A sh.itsfullof.nazis poster pulled this exact shit on me lol
- I'm thinking back to an argument on the Internet (I half heartedly replied to dissenters as I posted lefty propaganda) where they contested my claim that right wing meant that you're in favor of hierarchical organization of society and that necessarily means corporations because it's meta. And they were all "right wing means different things at different times. Sometimes it means a mountain village with bakers and shit." Baby brain and you know their ass only wants a certain kind of person in that village
- Make Caucasian not white again
misinformation age
actually telling me to learn and become knowledgeable on a subject is classism, sweaty

it's so weird to me how these types of people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about yet still do it all the fucking time. Why don't they just go talk about video games or whatever else it is they like to do?

I fully, 100% expect their takes on video games to be incredibly shit as well.
- Those are usually either the obnoxious quartering fans and/or obsessive minmaxer mechanoids which actively ruin games by spamming devs non stop 24/7 with their shit ideas untill devs cave in.
Because they think they're smart
Smart people discuss politics
And of course, smart people always start political discussions with links to Wikipedia
Dunning-kruger effect. The most ignorant like being very vocal, most do really just go and talk about video games.
- The synthesis is that there are those who unironically think video games are political theory. I've had someone (IRL but talks about reddit all the time) explain to me how Bioshock proves that far left and far right are equally bad. What the fuck is up with libs and fiction? They just take it all at face value and do zero critical analysis.

"define socialism"
has never read theory in their life

Socialism is when the goverment does stuff, the more it does the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta of stuff, its communism.

Socialism is the transitionary stage of society between capitalism and communism.

Socialism begins when the proletariat seize power away from the bourgeoisie, ending the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and installing the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the meaningful point at which the transition between capitalism and communism has begun, the point at which the capitalists are not in power, but instead the working class.

All states that achieve this status are socialist states in practice. The varying unique conditions each country finds themselves in will define what economic and transitional policies they undertake, which will look very different depending on the strategy they're pushed into by the varying conditions.

To some degree isn't it just describing the decoupling of power from capital?
- Ultimately capitalism began when the bourgeoisie seized power from the monarchs and developed a system that was designed around empowering them. The development of the capitalist economic system comes after the seizure of power and develops around the resistances and problems it encounters.
  The same can be said of socialism. It begins when the proletariat seize power but what it becomes is a process of time and development. The obsession people have with full central planning vs markets vs something else is not as important as the seizure of power and construction of institutions that maintain that power.

I'm not moving to Nazi

-Lemmy.world brain genius

Link it you absolute lib https://lemmy.world/post/6238022

Shouts out to @Dkarma@lemmy.world -27 "Just Google it u lazy little shit"

Oh boy what a thread. Amazing to see all that Finland talk, I so wish those people do choose to come to the Nordics.
Let them come without knowing the language. Tbf if poor and unemployed they can never even get in. If no language = no job so poverty and working for 9€/day mandatorily for your unemployment is your life very fast. Can also clean toilets/pick vegetables for such a small pay it won't even be enough to house you.
Also no real healthcare unless rich.
They will see the true colours of these socdem fascist shitholes decorated with niceness real fast.

Let's define what socialism is

Even asking this question amongst well read leftists will give you 500 different answers lol.

Good thing they didn't, since libs split mostly between "when the government does stuff," "when the government does good stuff (Scandinavia)," and "when the government does bad stuff ( Cuba
)"
Yeah and they're all wrong because I'm the only one who knows what socialism is and I'm not telling.
- Oh shit oh fuc the socialism understander™ has logged on.
Dogma should be avoided anyway

Hello yes, my brain works as a semi-sentient wikipedia article and that's why I'm always correct.

Would you like to learn about the non-nazi waffen ss? Just ask me, I'll tell you everything you'd possibly need to know.

most politically educated liberal

Aww. The baby brain liberals are struggling again.

Where's the wikipedia stormfront emoji. dangit?

- https://hexbear.net/post/745340?scrollToComments=false

Yet another meme became straight up reality with them, "socialism is when capitalism".

Bad month for Onion.

please read. Be better. Read and think first. Comment later.

Can this possibly be more condescending? Especially coming from someone who clearly has barely read about the thing they’re pontificating about. Jesus.

If by "socialism" you mean [Not Socialism], then no. If by "socialism" you mean [Also Not Socialism], then yes.

"We have Nazis at home"

social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism

The problem with language is that the only thing required for a definition to be "correct" is for that definition to be in common use. That's just how language works.

You can try to fight against that, and lead a never ending struggle to halt the conversation and say, "no no, the Real definition is this!" every time someone uses a definition that conflicts with the definition you use. But at some point fighting against semantic drift and taking a stubbornly prescriptivist stance on how words should be defined is a fruitless battle that doesn't actually help you communicate those ideas more clearly. Instead, you should adopt a different communication strategy that is less prone to misunderstandings.

There are so many different and contradictory understandings of what it means to be "progressive" "leftist" "liberal" "socialist" "communist" and so on that it's impossible to create a definition that everyone agrees on. Even if you correctly incorporate things like historical origin, first recorded use, and the context in which a world was popularized when evaluating how you define those terms, those things don't actually help communicate your thoughts more clearly. Which should ideally be the mechanical function that language facilitates.

Part of the issue is that those words are very broad and general, and encompass a wide variety of competing schools of thought who all nonetheless identify themselves using these umbrella terms. Of course some of the disagreement over definitions comes from bad actors deliberately mischaracterizing these things for propagandistic/rhetorical purposes, but even if that wasn't the case umbrella terms such as these are inherently more prone to semantic drift over time.

A better strategy for communicating political ideas is to use terms that are much more specific in context, such as Marxism. Of course, Marxism has the same problem of bad actors intentionally mischaracterizing what Marxism is, but because Marxism is a much more specific thing it is much easier to resolve disputes over contradictory definitions. This is because there is an authoritative source you can refer back to in order to resolve conflicts and disagreements over definitions. Because Marxism is defined by the collected body of work authored by Marx (as well as those who contributed to that body of work and expanded upon that work over the years), it is much easier to have a conversation with agreed upon definitions by referencing that body of work.

Edit: But to get back on topic and define socialism, "Socialism is when the government does stuff."

You can look at any existing socialist country - if you don’t want to call them socialist, call them whatever you want. Post capitalist- whatever, I don’t care. Call them camels or window shades, it doesn’t matter as long as we know the countries we’re talking about.
Parenti, from that "the revolution that feeds the children has my support" quote.
- My beloved Parenti quotes
Was gonna say....like it or not they aren't strictly wrong. A lot of socdem Biden/Harris voters are running around calling themselves socialists so defining what you actually mean by "socialist" is kinda important today.
...which is why whether or not it's strictly true I just call myself a communist these days. There's less ambiguity or misunderstanding that way.
- so defining what you actually mean by "socialist" is kinda important today.
  This is absolutely true, and making sure that everyone is on common ground and agrees on what definitions you are using is essential to any effective communication.
  But defining what you mean by socialism is different than defining socialism. The first is a generally good practice for communicating clearly and avoiding misunderstandings. The second is a Sisyphean task that will never have a satisfying resolution, because that's the nature of language.
  The best we can hope to do is use communication strategies that are less prone to misinterpretation, and to be willing to clarify when misunderstandings do come up. And the problem with explaining what you mean by socialism is that you can only do that if you're already in a conversation with someone who is willing to ask for clarification, or if you catch them using a different definition and take that as an opportunity to clarify what you mean. But there are many contexts where you simply won't have an opportunity for clarification.
  Trying to clarify what you mean is a reactive communication strategy. If possible, it's better to use preemptive communication strategies to avoid misunderstandings in the first place. Which is why I suggested using word choices that leave less room for ambiguity. It can also mean adapting your communication strategy based on the context that your audience is familiar with and trying to meet them where they are.
  Of course, we're never going to eliminate misunderstandings and misinterpretation simply because language is too imprecise to be able to convey the full complexity of human thought. Any successful communication or discussion requires an audience who is obeying the cooperative principle and is making a good faith attempt to understand your intent as much as it requires a speaker to make a good faith attempt at communicating as clearly as possible.
- So why do Americans decide what socialism is?
  Why do capitalist nations decide what socialism is?
  If people want to know what socialism is, they should research what socialist theorists say and what major countries self-identifying as socialists say
  Scientific socialism isn’t a dogma and has no dogmatic definition. That’s the whole point. It’s really defined by what it negates, ie capitalism. All of the Lemmy folks saying AES doesn’t exist are totally incorrect. It is not necessary to achieve utopian communism to be considered socialist. All that matters is that a state takes definite steps to negating capitalism, ie ownership of private property, following the material conditions unique to that state. This nonsense about “socialism is when the workers own the means of production, and nothing less” (sadly encouraged by some armchair socialist named “Communism” in that thread) is utopian and anti-Marxist.
There are so many different and contradictory understandings of what it means to be "progressive" "leftist" "liberal" "socialist" "communist" and so on that it's impossible to create a definition that everyone agrees on.
fwiw, this is why the name of the left faction invariably changes over time, as liberals slowly latch on to and then neuter the old name. social democrat at one time meant what communist means today. socialism is similarly on it's way out and eventually communist will go too.
- ib4 communists officially rename the parties to "Tankie party"
- You have this issue with liberals co-opting terms that you pointed out, but in addition to that you also have historical instances where communists would self-identify with softer language and euphemistic phrasing because openly identifying as a communist could get you locked up for sedition/treason.
  What I'm trying to say is that both sides are to blame, and horseshoe theory is real /s
"socialism is when the government does stuff" as a definition doesn't even fit the question though does it? It's clearly a response to the "communism no food" stereotype which isn't levied against western socdems by anyone but the most brain broken chud who only says that because they ignorantly conflate it with revolutionary socialism. No one is saying "Sweden is when no food" are they? Obviously oil-rich Western socdem countries with social programs would be an upgrade to any American making under 6 figures. So what's the question if you aren't talking about revolutionary socialism which is unpleasant in the transitional stage compared to most Western countries' lifestyles? (China is already probably about on par with, or slightly nicer of a place to live than America already, but I don't expect the op to understand that)
- So what's the question if you aren't talking about revolutionary socialism which is unpleasant in the transitional stage compared to most Western countries' lifestyles?
  There's a little bit of correlation vs causation that you can argue with regards to this point as well. Yes, it's almost certainly true that any revolutionary upheaval in how society is organized is going to result in a bumpy transition. But revolution is often an act of desperation, a step that people are typically only willing to take after every other option has been exhausted and the alternative of being worked into an early grave is too bleak to accept. And even then, revolution is only likely once a critical mass of people find themselves in the same wretched circumstances.
  So I would make the argument that causation should actually be reversed. It's not revolutionary transition that leads to poor living conditions, it's poor living conditions that leads to revolution.
- China is easily on par with America, but America is one of the worst Western countries. It's a harder sell when comparing to other Western countries because China's labour protections and work culture could still use work.

This is why lemmy.world is scared of hexbear. Its users might learn one or two things about socialism.

Personally, i would instate socialism where I am, whatever the cost.

I wasn't even this dense when I was a social democrat. :/

It's not good, folks.

Socialism is when the government supports social stuff, like social housing, social media, and let's not forget, social credit score. Counter to what it sounds like, it is actually socially oppressive: due to its being a type of -ism, it is inherently anti-freedom and democracy. If you want both social stuff and freedom, considering supporting social democracy in the next election.

I will also not move to Germany.

This is the same reasoning wignats use against Black people

"Hey would you ever actually want to live in a ~~socialist~~ Black community after we bombed them and took half their wealth away? Oh well I guess that means you're a hypocrite"

This is my post and I get to decide what socialism is!

Like I said in that thread, socialism is what you are when America is planning a coup in your country. Simple definition!

the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry