Just one more reform bro

I haven't met any soc dems who think capitalism can be saved. Most agree that it can only be contained. Just look how successful the Nordic countries are. They have successful companies and still have billionaires, but the rich are heavily taxed. And if the rich threatens to leave with their assets, they will still be taxed heavily for doing so.
- The Nordic Model has Private Property as its principle aspect, ie in control of large firms and key industry. As a consequence, Private Capital has a dominant role in the state, and though labor organization slows this process, there has been a steady winding down of Worker Protections, gradually.
  More damningly, though, is the fact that the Nordic Countries are reliant upon the same Imperialist machine of extraction from the Global South as the rest of the West. The Nordics enjoy their cushy lifestyles on the backs of brutal labor in the Global South, almost like an employer-employee relationship at an international level.
  
  More damningly, though, is the fact that the Nordic Countries are reliant upon the same Imperialist machine of extraction from the Global South as the rest of the West. The Nordics enjoy their cushy lifestyles on the backs of brutal labor in the Global South, almost like an employer-employee relationship at an international level.
  That is a good point usually raised. But, developed countries do not have jurisdiction on developing countries on how to treat their workers and what wages to set, and vice versa. Unless there is harmonised and legally binding rules and regulations for everyone in the world to follow, then this issue won't even exist.
- I haven’t met any soc dems who think capitalism can be saved. Most agree that it [can be saved]
  ???
  Just look how successful the Nordic countries are.
  Propped up by the underpaid labour and stolen resources of the global South and rapidly sprinting towards fascism like the rest of the West?
  
  Capitalism is in its original inception advocate in self-regulating market. Soc dems don't believe this and recognise the bad aspects of capitalism (and of pure socialism in relation to economy), so we tend to advocate for regulation.
  Propped up by the underpaid labour and stolen resources of the global South and rapidly sprinting towards fascism like the rest of the West?
  Like I mentioned to other commenter, unless developed countries have jurisdictions on developing ones, and vice versa, there is not much that richer countries could do. There are no legally-binding and harmonised rules on a global level for everyone to follow. Try advocating that and let me know how people will react.

The problem is that in order to unite the left it is necessary to agree to the ideological level, very difficult, to unite the right it needs just a briefcase of money.
- Or a general hatred of the other
- The briefcase of money turns into velocity of money, which turns into jobs, which turns into wage pressure, which turns into higher wages for the poor, so they can buy the product or service with their own greatest marginal utility; so in their eyes they view the briefcase of money as the optimal empathetic choice.
  Well, assuming the right in this case are Ron Paul right-leaning and not Trump right-leaning. In Trumps case he does just want the briefcase of money for himself.
- Money's got nothing on hate. Nothing unites the Right more than hate, every fascist ideology centres around hate for a certain group. Be it Jews, Palestinians, Chinese, or Hispanics.
- to unite the right, all you have to do is say "so, we all hate Black people and immigrants, right?"
  
  "so, we all hate capitalism, right?"
- Oh man… wait until you hear about how the Democratic Party is funded…
  
  He said the right.
  
  tbf the democratic party isn't a left party.
- I wish. You're giving right-wingers way too much credit. Most of those craven idiots do it for free for the opportunity to lose themselves in a gaggle of other morons. They are vulnerable in a way that is easy to exploit for people who know how to do it.
  
  can we do it too?

I swear bro the next capitalism actually works, bro trust me, bro without capitalism you wouldn't have iphones bro.
- No no no you don't get it bro, what we have right now is adjective capitalism, that's very different from real capitalism. Bro if we had real capitalism things would be so nice
- bro i promise, with social democracy capitalism is equalitarian. yes bro i promise. bro, no more oppression! please don’t look at the global south
  
  Global South wouldn't be a fair example since you'd have to factor in historical (and current) exploitation by Western nations. This tends to bolster corruption by having leaders sell out their population to align with Western prerogatives, enriching themselves in the process.
  The social democracies in these nations is generally an attempt to protect the populace from Western capitalism moreso than domestic capitalism.
  One example would be when the US overthrew the Shah in Iran back in the 50s because they socialized ownership of their oil reserves (previously owned through exploitation by a Western coporation). They staged a coup d'etat to install a pro Western leader so that the Western exploitation could continue. This inevitably led to the Iranian revolution, playing a significant role in Iran's current state as a theocracy.
  The Global South, particularly South America, has countless of examples of this. The term banana republic is used to describe this very situation.
  This is by no means an indictment on Western culture, just that the global rich will inevitably be in a position to manipulate the global not-so-rich for their own gain. Western nations are the global bourgeoisie.
  Nordic nations are a better example of social democracies as they are not subject to the same type of meddling.
  
  bro capitalism is the best we've got, trust me bro despite its flaws it's the only one that works bro, bro just accept this as truth, bro don't question it bro.
- I love the iphone thing because they are literally all manufactured in the most successful socialist country still existing.
  
  Yeah, and the most capitalist part in them is the outrageous price tag and planned obsolescence. But yeah, keep talking about "muh technological development"

I’ve never come across anyone who calls themselves a “Stalinist.” Maybe that’s what some horseshoe theorists call Marxist-Leninists.
- The only people I call Stalinist are people who intentionally go about delaying or postponing things. They gotta quit stalin for time.
  
  You could say that but you could also say that they're biden their time
  Is this horseshoe theory?
  
  Lmao post this in dad jokes please
- Hoxhaists called their ideology Stalinism often
  
  I’ve never run into one myself. ProleWiki/Lemmygrad user Wisconcom was before my time.
  A self-proclaimed Hoxhaist (although he would later start calling himself a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, anti-revisionist, or a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist... and eventually claimed he was never a Hoxhaist as Hoxhaism “does not exist”) […]
- I must confess to have stealing this meme from elsewhere and didn't even notice that lol
  
  This is one of my favorites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX8GeXpw84c
- The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is what they have in mind. But, on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet; it is an honor for us to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will never force us to our knees.
- What would it even mean?
  
  Kinda like Marxism-Leninism, but in a one-man cult-of-personality police state and if you as much as look funny at the leader, you get disappeared/shot?
  In other words, what's happening to the USA minus the Marxism-Leninism?

I like this analogy, because you can kill all those other ideologies and it’ll come back as capitalism and even when you kill capitalism, it doesn’t stay gone so you just make it work for you.
- There is no alternative ™
  
  The best you can do is control it for a time.
- What on Earth are you talking about?
  
  All roads lead to capitalism.

Yet you participate in a society, curious, etc etc
- But have you considered iphone?

Which movie is this from?
- Shaun of the Dead, but this particular scene is nothing like the meme is portraying it as. In fact, the two images arent even from the same scene.
- I'm pretty sure it's Shaun of the Dead.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_of_the_Dead
- Shaun of the Dead

How about, "are anyone of you qualified to do open heart surgery on an entire country?"
- i never heard this one.

Stalinists, Maoists and Socialists (at least the reformist ones) are pro-capital, just under a different form. They love their commodity production and wage labor...
- Marxism-Leninism (which I presume you mean by the term "Stalinist") is more classically Marxist than those who think they can abolish commodity production over night. I elaborate more on that in this comment.
  
  While I do like your writing style and think you're quite talented at it, that's just a bunch of ML revisionism/State capitalist (Dengist) apologetics that misrepresents Marx.
  Not gonna thoroughly debunk it cause it's a wall of text, but ownership =/= mode of production. Marx never said that public ownership alone makes something socialist, what matters is how things are produced: Is it for exchange or use? Is labor still waged? Does surplus value still exist and get extracted? If yes - that's still capitalism therefore not Marxist.
  You also claim that "Marx didn't think you could abolish private property by making it illegal" which is true cause else it would be idealism, but then you use this to spin it into "that's why we need to let firms develop then make them public" while in reality what Marx meant is that we should abolish capital relations, not co-exist with capital and preserve businesses until they're "ready".
  You're also trying to spin the "by degrees" quote from the manifesto to act as if Marx argued for gradual market-led process of evolution from Capitalism to Socialism (or in other words, keeping Capitalism and Markets for decades after the revolution) and not a revolutionary process of abolition of Capital entirely.
  That isn't Marxism, but maybe I'm just too ideologically pure and idealistic. Still, I think being more honest that it's not actually "classical Marxism" wouldn't hurt.

There's a huge difference between capitalism and oligarchy. What we have is oligarchy. All the worst parts of capitalism. 19th century robber-baron "capitalism."
- Bro bro no listen we need to capitalism better
- "It wasn't real ~~communism~~ capitalism"
- ❌❌❌
  Capitalist economic systems will inevitably lead to oligarchy
  
  It leads to corporatism, the most important aspect of fascism.
  Wonder why capitalist countries never mention that?
- The "oligarchy" of today is not distinct from Capitalism, but Capitalism at a later stage in its life.
  
  Capitalism today looks nothing like capitalism in the 1950s. Back then, a family could easily survive on the income of one person. With money left over to pay for college education, a car and a house.
  That is not the situation today, where most Americans have NO retirement savings. Unless you're redefining what capitalism IS, then that's a problem caused by the people in charge (oligarchs).
- Oh, it isn’t real capitalism. Trust me, it would work so much better another time, trust me

Where do I fit in, I want capitalism with massive regulation and oversight and no corporation protection for board members?
- Socialism with chinese characteristics.
  China is a controlled market economy where capitalists hold no political power. Tho there is not that much regulation as people think there is, people are very free to enterprise as long as they comply with the general direction of the CPC.
- Sounds like SocDem, the problem with that is you want to give Capitalists all of the control of key industries and large firms yet somehow not also have control of the state.
  
  i.e. you want to give the companies the guns to go hunting for food, except you still want to tell them what they can hunt, but you don’t have any guns yourself. But surely they will obey you and not point out that they have the guns so you should make whatever rules they want
  In this case “you” is either the OP of this this thread or just a general you
- Where do you fit in? Do you own capital? Are you a business owner or a factory owner? If not then you are a tool for capitalists to exploit as they wish
- Sounds like SocDem.

Liberalism and capitalism is the best system in the world.
- for the rich? absolutely.
  
  For every single person
- For the bourgeoisie, perhaps, but only temporarily. We can see that out of every country right now that it's the Socialist PRC that is making the most dramatic and rapid improvements and growth.
  
  It's interesting how many China stans have popped up in the past few weeks.
  
  The PRC is a capitalist country but not liberal. They have good growth but they lack a lot of the freedoms we enjoy in liberal society.
  Also its funny to me how when you wanted to pick which system was "the best" you selected economic growth.
- I guess it just depends on what your metric is.
  Unfortunately one of its leading metrics is its contributions to human suffering. It certainly is the best system in the world at spreading suffering.

Serious question: has communism ever been proved to work at scale? (not communist regimes, the communist ideology)
- No, it gets destroyed by a CIA-funded coup every time. (Read Jakarta Method)
  But look at Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Kerala, China, Burkino Faso for modern attempts at Socialism/Communism
  
  China, seriously?
  
  They're all 'one-party states' aren't they?
  Opposite of democracy... so whether they work well economically is irrelevant, since you're relying on the party not to become totalitarian. 😬
- China, Yugoslavia, USSR, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Cuba, DDR, etc etc
- Yes, The PRC, DPRK, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and former USSR all are examples of Communist parties over Socialist systems. Communism, the post-Socialist, global fully publicly owned economy hasn't been achieved yet, but thus far Communists have been able to successfully build Socialism, its necessary prerequisite.
- https://dessalines.github.io/essays/capitalism_doesnt_work.html
- Have to get past American and western interventionism to figure it out. But socialism lifted millions out of poverty look at Chinese and Russian history. Both countries went from feudal and monarchal society to industrial powers houses lead by peasants and workers, rivaling the United States in mere decades. So I’d say yes socialism does work. Also both those societies went from a near totally illiterate society to a 100 % total literacy within a generation. Free healthcare, housing, education and unemployment was non existent. Just to name some more achievements of socialism.
  
  Socialism yes. I've always thought that capitalism regulated with socialist policies is the way forward. That way you can still encourage entrepreneurs to get going.
  But we're still left with the r > g problem (money attracts more money).
  Communism is the extreme end of socialism isn't it? And I've always thought that extremes never work. Extremism is a circle...
  I'm open to being educated on this though....
- No system has ever worked at scale. Capitalism is literally destroying the planet we live on, Feudalism wasn't any better, and no other system was ever applied at such a scale.
  Maybe the scale is the problem, and the Anarchists were right all along.
  
  Anarchists would still have to deal with scale in terms of trade, production and centralization - after all, not every commune would be able to produce penicillin, insulin, chips, phones, steel, etc as a hobby. In other words, they would still have to replace capitalist system to a decent enough extent to be able to meet all their needs.
  
  (most) Anarchists don't have a problem with scale, just with hierarchy. We can have democratic and free associations at any scale.
- no capitalism keeps declaring war on it, the road towards it however.... Massive Ws in the soviet union, the prc, dprk, east germany, just tremendous achivements
- Capitalism is a global system, it is based on exchange value and things being produced and sold for a profit, not for use (which is known as commodity production), and if you want to trade internationally, you have to follow this capitalist mode of production. Communism, on the other hand, aims to abolish the production of commodities (money included) and instead produce goods for use. Notice how these two systems differ so much, international trade between actual communist and capitalist countries becomes impossible given how differently they value things.
  Now consider how today's capitalist nations are so dependent on trade, and it's because trade allows nations to prosper, to grow, to have increased standards of living and gives the nations access to materials they otherwise couldn't have produced within their local borders. If a nation goes full isolationist, it loses access to all of that and the nation becomes crippled.
  So there's three ways for communist countries to go about the global capitalist system:
  Go full isolationist, which would cripple a country substantially.
  Participate in the capitalist market, meaning the country would be forced to produce commodities and participate in capital exchange which would make them, in one definition or another, capitalist. This also heavily risks the country to fall into full capitalism with time (as seen historically).
  Support worker movements internationally en masse and hope they succeed with achieving their revolutions. If they succeed, only then can exchange value be safely abolished, goods be produced for use instead of profit, and international socialist/communist trade can actually happen with people having their needs met.
  It's clear that international communist revolution is pretty much the only viable way forward, and the only opportunity to do so failed (with Spartacist uprising, Hungrarian Soviet Republic, etc being crushed, leaving USSR standing pretty much alone).
  So to answer your question with all this nonsensical wall of text in mind, no. Actual communist/socialist mode of production has never existed (therefore whether communist ideology works hasn't been proven), as any experiments so far had essentially been capitalist.
  
  This isn't quite accurate. If you maintain public control over the large firms and industries, and the proletariat controls the state, you remain on the Socialist road. Markets themselves are not necessarily Capitalism.
  Communism must be global, but we can't make a fully publicly owned economy simply by declaring private property illegal, the USSR didn't even manage to do that.
  
  this.
  adendum: in some "primitive" societies, there was no private property of the means of production. marx and engels studied that extensively.
- Not capitalism ≠ communism (or communist ideology). Imagine an interest-free economic system. This could also work completely without communist ideology, but would get rid of the problematic core principle in capitalism that money attracts more money (which for instance might have stopped the Swasticar CEO from even becoming so powerful). This would also improve the value of work compared to just owning money. But maybe I am just delusional and instead the anarchists are indeed right. Dunno.

- Please just cut yourselves off from the fediverse already. Even replying to this drivel has lost it's fun.