Bubble check - Is liberalism/progressivism the true path forward? What are some of the critiques? Serious replies please.

[loquaciousJenny]

Uhhh, you do realize that the more distributed wealth is, the more difficult abuse is, right? Otherwise wealth concentration wouldn't result in an increase in political power, which it does.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens - Volume 12 Issue 3

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory

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I'm not talking about wealth, a union of coal or oil workers fighting a societal change that would disarm their political capital is really so hard for you to believe?

 

[RSTEIN]

The concentration of wealth is a discerning factor between socialism and capitalism.

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Got it, thanks. I don't see it as one.

 

[Deleted member 1445]

I'm not talking about wealth, a union of coal or oil workers fighting a societal change that would disarm their political capital is really so hard for you to believe?

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You don't see the difference between a single person affecting change, and a large union? I'm confused 🤔

 

[loquaciousJenny]

You don't see the difference between a single person affecting change, and a large union? I'm confused 🤔

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Where have I said that, I'm arguing, as I always have, that socialism and anarchism have no footing on the idea that they are the answer to climate change. You're welcome to argue as Samyoed has that its better to redistibute anyway, it probably is, but to say it's the solution is wrong.

 

[Deleted member 1445]

Got it, thanks. I don't see it as one.

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Okay, well, you're wrong about that... so, uhh maybe you can argue this claim of yours?

 

[hikarutilmitt]

Progressivism is the path forward because it looks for the reason behind the fix and if it will truly be a fix. There's a possibility of give and take and finding a balance that works.

Liberalism just wants the fix and doesn't care how it happens, which is definitely worse in the long run as it doesn't account for how it happened or how the fix was done, which could and typically does lead to other issues.

 

[Deleted member 1445]

Where have I said that, I'm arguing, as I always have, that socialism and anarchism have no footing on the idea that they are the answer to climate change. You're welcome to argue as Samyoed has that its better to redistibute anyway, it probably is, but to say it's the solution is wrong.

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They have power in their knowledge and what they provide, removing the koch brothers from the equation doesn't make the source of their wealth less important, you're simply redistributing their power to their workers, the idea they can't or won't abuse it is required to have faith in such a system

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Okay so you're saying here that redistributing the power of the koch brothers to their workers, doesn't mean they won't abuse it -- implying that nothing much will change. That is what I was replying to.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

I'm not talking about wealth, a union of coal or oil workers fighting a societal change that would disarm their political capital is really so hard for you to believe?

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Yes but this is where anarchism beats communism because there can't be political power without a political class ruling the state.

 

[RSTEIN]

Okay, well, you're wrong about that... so, uhh maybe you can argue this claim of yours?

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Sorry, I thought you meant contemporary democratic socialism.

 

[Lathentar]

...a significant proportion of the food we produce is thrown in the trash. And you speak as if people will just eat everything they can. I dunno about you, but I get full after a while. Yes, people do end up throwing out food they aren't able to eat, but that's usually due to poor proportioning of foods sold at stores (at least in my experience, this happens to me all the damn time). If food was freely available from a community supply, you wouldn't need to stock up when food is on sale, you wouldn't have to worry about getting to work on a tight schedule every day. You could just take what you need for the next day or two, eat it, then come back for more when you need it.

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Obviously food is thrown in the trash it's not produced just to go to waste though. That was my point. My point was that when people can easily meet their needs waste will occur.

 

[Lathentar]

Other people can self-educate to learn how to build sustainable power plants if necessary. The average coal plant worker is not an expert on energy systems or their construction.

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But within that community there will be experts on energy systems and how they are constructed. This gets more true the more advanced the power plant would be. That's what makes unions often so powerful is the collective knowledge and experience gives them negotiating power. Switching to a different style of power would give another community the power of energy, it's unlikely that coal plant workers are experts on nuclear plants for example.

 

[Dark Knight]

It's better than the alternative. And isn't that what the two party system truly is about? Choosing the slightly less crappy?

 

[Kittens McMittens]

How about socialized capitalism? Say a company as large as Amazon decides to donate its shares to a "Public Trust". Public Trust being a trust setup where the beneficiaries is defined as every living human. Since that establishes everyone as an equal shareholder of the company the trust managers are now required to run the company under global democratic vote. In this model it is capitalism but the people have seized the means of production. Say this company develops into a monopoly due to consumer trust because of consumer ownership, then it is an entirely socialized system operating on capitalist mechanics.

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If we take what you're saying at face value and things proceed as you imagine (which I think is unlikely, but am willing to concede for the point of discussion) then what you end up with is not, in fact, capitalist.

Socialism is, in the broadest sense, the workers control of the means of production. A scenario where there is a global democratic control over the means of production is necessarily not capitalist. There would still be capital and a form of capital accumulation would occur, but if that was taking place under workers control - and the element of democracy in your final scenario suggests it would be - then there would be no private ownership of capital, so therefore no capitalism.

 

[Deleted member 25600]

It's better than the alternative. And isn't that what the two party system truly is about? Choosing the slightly less crappy?

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Are you talking about Social liberalism, or Economic Liberalism? Because economic Liberalism is literally killing us.

 

[Dark Knight]

Are you talking about Social liberalism, or Economic Liberalism? Because economic Liberalism is literally killing us.

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I'm a socialist through and through, no need to preach to the choir.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

But within that community there will be experts on energy systems and how they are constructed. This gets more true the more advanced the power plant would be. That's what makes unions often so powerful is the collective knowledge and experience gives them negotiating power. Switching to a different style of power would give another community the power of energy, it's unlikely that coal plant workers are experts on nuclear plants for example.

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Well the obvious answer is to fold the coal workers into a new general utilities collective or syndicate that could provide the necessary retraining. And I would be willing to bet not that many coal workers would necessarily want to stay in that sector anyway.

And again without the ability to hoard capital there is no inherent "power of energy" because another group can just make their own power supply, since the means of producing power are not privatized.

 

[Ogodei]

The hard question of the future will be the challenge of ecofascism. Fascism does well enough rising in cases of manufactured crises, it'll be tough to see what it does with a real one.

 

[Midramble]

If we take what you're saying at face value and things proceed as you imagine (which I think is unlikely, but am willing to concede for the point of discussion) then what you end up with is not, in fact, capitalist.

Socialism is, in the broadest sense, the workers control of the means of production. A scenario where there is a global democratic control over the means of production is necessarily not capitalist. There would still be capital and a form of capital accumulation would occur, but if that was taking place under workers control - and the element of democracy in your final scenario suggests it would be - then there would be no private ownership of capital, so therefore no capitalism.

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Shhhhh exactly. It's a model that uses the existing economic mechanisms to essentially remove subset ownership of production by providing equal ownership to everyone. There is still private ownership it's just that it is privately owned by everyone (thus public/socialized). Capitalism just means private ownership with the goal of increased value for said owner. That doesnt set a limit on the number of individual owners. Once you increase that set of owners to be everyone (i.e. seizing the means of production) it is "socialized" but notice how you can make that transition using that existing "private" structure. The governance works essentially the same way. (A topic well covered in a fun book titled The Dictator's Handbook). Again, the other route you can take towards this, as mentioned by acorn, is nationalization, which is essentially the same thing on the national scale. I just prefer looking for a global scale solution as i feel its necessary for serious change for the sake of humanity's future.

 

[samoyed]

The hard question of the future will be the challenge of ecofascism. Fascism does well enough rising in cases of manufactured crises, it'll be tough to see what it does with a real one.

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The answer to this one is still socialism actually. A fascist with control of Koch Industries is much more dangerous than a fascist worker at Koch Industries who controls 0.01% of Koch Industries.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

Shhhhh exactly. It's a model that uses the existing economic mechanisms to essentially remove subset ownership of production by providing equal ownership to everyone. There is still private ownership it's just that it is privately owned by everyone (thus public/socialized). Capitalism just means private ownership with the goal of increased value for said owner. That doesnt set a limit on the number of individual owners. Once you increase that set of owners to be everyone (i.e. seizing the means of production) it is "socialized" but notice how you can make that transition using that existing "private" structure. The governance works essentially the same way. (A topic well covered in a fun book titled The Dictator's Handbook). Again, the other route you can take towards this, as mentioned by acorn, is nationalization, which is essentially the same thing on the national scale. I just prefer looking for a global scale solution as i feel its necessary for serious change for the sake of humanity's future.

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If it's owned by everyone, then it's not in fact privately owned. Are you trying to make a distinction between private ownership and state ownership? Because there's plenty of socialist ideas around having collective ownership through co-operative / collective institutions that aren't owned by a state.

 

[Lathentar]

Well the obvious answer is to fold the coal workers into a new general utilities collective or syndicate that could provide the necessary retraining. And I would be willing to bet not that many coal workers would necessarily want to stay in that sector anyway.

And again without the ability to hoard capital there is no inherent "power of energy" because another group can just make their own power supply, since the means of producing power are not privatized.

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Well the obvious answer is to fold the coal workers into a new general utilities collective or syndicate that could provide the necessary retraining. And I would be willing to bet not that many coal workers would necessarily want to stay in that sector anyway.

And again without the ability to hoard capital there is no inherent "power of energy" because another group can just make their own power supply, since the means of producing power are not privatized.

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It's not exactly straight forward to just create your own power supply, grow your own food, build complex machinery, etc. You need natural resources which would be controlled by either a set of people or the community. The workers would have a say, and the fact that they are generating power and have the knowledge to do so creates a hierarchy where they stand above.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

The rehashed liberal vs leftist argument in this thread is a little amusing since the OP reads like he's looking for critiques of progressivism from the right.

 

[Lathentar]

The rehashed liberal vs leftist argument in this thread is a little amusing since the OP reads like he's looking for critiques of progressivism from the right.

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A question I would have for the OP would be what makes a strong central government feel morally right?

 

[samoyed]

The rehashed liberal vs leftist argument in this thread is a little amusing since the OP reads like he's looking for critiques of progressivism from the right.

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There's no logically consistent critiques of progressivism from the right though.

 

[Flygon]

There's no logically consistent critiques of progressivism from the right though.

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Just giving a tiny ramble, but most of the vitriol from the Right - or to be specific, those out in the outback - yeah, this is going to be an Australian centric post again, is concern that the Left will demolish their own lifestyle.
ie. enforcement of lower carbon emitting farms (this pertains to the Beef industry, in particular), less flexible use of land - such as less permissive land clearing rules, and concerns that things such as subsidies for their practice would be reduced under a Left Wing Government.

This makes for a large perceived perspective gap between the Regional Right/Farmers, and the Suburban Left. The Suburban Left don't understand why the Farmers can't understand they're engaging in an unsustainable self-immolating business practice, and the Farmers can't understand why the people in Suburbia want for their business - and food produced that goes to the Suburbia - to go and be shut down in the long run.

This is a gargantuan oversimplification of the matter, of course.
But it at least attempts to give some perspective.
And myself, from this approach, it does feel like the alleged arguments that those from the Right use in critique of the Left, regarding sustainable business practices, make absolutely no sense.

But, Politics is often about feelings, not rationality.
As much as it absolutely pains me to say that.

If the one Unicorn "Right Wing Farmer" Era member could pop up and clarify the issues I've presented in my post, please do so.

 

[Midramble]

If it's owned by everyone, then it's not in fact privately owned. Are you trying to make a distinction between private ownership and state ownership? Because there's plenty of socialist ideas around having collective ownership through co-operative / collective institutions that aren't owned by a state.

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I think we are getting crossed at semantics. A company can be owned my a large portion of the population and still be private, as in the market sense of shares not being available for public purchase on stock markets (meaning open uncontrolled trading of ownership outside the regulation of the organization). I'm extending that idea to cover the entire population so that the organization is owned and democratically controlled by the entire population while simultaneously preventing unbalancing of ownership percentage by allowing public purchase of more shares, essentially creating a co-op like you mention. And yes, I am essentially advocating for a global co-op. The only reason I don't specifically say co-op (though I do like them) is that ownership is usually set to exclusively the collective suppliers or the collective consumers of the organization's service. This excludes people who are not in that sector and also it is possible for co-op owners to sell or relinquish their ownership to other parties which can erode the collective control. The point of doing it through private org ownership is that you can set a governance structure by having the company directly owned by a trust where the beneficiaries are established as equally every human and the condition being that no one is able to sell their share. This establishes ownership of the means of production as an inalienable right to every human on earth. Trust managers would be beholden to managing the assets of that trust (the organization) to the benefit of the beneficiaries (everyone on earth) under penalty of international trust law in a sense causing them to be elected officials of organization governance which would essentially be a prototypical world government that is required by legacy international trust law and it's own organizational guidelines to continue policy improvement with the goal of increasing the quality of life for all people everywhere.

More simply put, I'm saying collective ownership/co-op institutions (as you mention) are the way, but a fast way of getting there is by converting a large private company to be an bonded co-op where the entire public makes up the "owners". Most people look to shift to socialism by nationalizing services however I find fault there in the sense that nationalization inherently excludes those outside of said nation so in order to develop gains for your beneficiaries it is more efficient to do so at the cost of non beneficiaries (other countries in this case). I seek to remove the entire idea that an organization operates for the benefit of a subset of the human population instead of the entire population.

 

[RustyNails]

A question I would have for the OP would be what makes a strong central government feel morally right?

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A strong central government is morally right only if the people elected to it govern accordingly. Using the American context, the central government did both morally horrible things (wars, trail of tears, Japanese internment, atomic bombs, forced sterilization) and also morally correct things such as American civil war, forced integration of South, social security, Medicare and even Obamacare to an extent.

Central government is capable of both evil and good, but I think having a strong central government can do much more good than America's record. State rights have nothing but been hot flaming trash to suppress voter rights, outlaw abortion and minority rights and other freedoms. Imagining America with a weak central government in face of these issues is pretty depressing.

 

[Lathentar]

A strong central government is morally right only if the people elected to it govern accordingly. Using the American context, the central government did both morally horrible things (wars, trail of tears, Japanese internment, atomic bombs, forced sterilization) and also morally correct things such as American civil war, forced integration of South, social security, Medicare and even Obamacare to an extent.

Central government is capable of both evil and good, but I think having a strong central government can do much more good than America's record. State rights have nothing but been hot flaming trash to suppress voter rights, outlaw abortion and minority rights and other freedoms. Imagining America with a weak central government in face of these issues is pretty depressing.

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States rights have set higher fuel standards, allowed same sex marriage, allowed abortion before Roe, provided more robust health care to it's citizens, provided a universal dividend. It's certainly not all bad and with a moron such as Trump as President it's good thing the federal government isn't even stronger. It's often the case that a more responsive government is a more local one.

 

[samoyed]

Just giving a tiny ramble, but most of the vitriol from the Right - or to be specific, those out in the outback - yeah, this is going to be an Australian centric post again, is concern that the Left will demolish their own lifestyle.
ie. enforcement of lower carbon emitting farms (this pertains to the Beef industry, in particular), less flexible use of land - such as less permissive land clearing rules, and concerns that things such as subsidies for their practice would be reduced under a Left Wing Government.

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We have the same problem here in America. It's because the "left" is for environmentalism which threatens the coal industry (and also the beef industry but we haven't hit that point yet) which ends up in the same scenario as you (and I believe Australia also has a coal industry right-left conflict).

This is Trump's electoral map:

This is the coal map of America:

American coal subsidies ($20 billion total on fossil fuels):


"War on Coal"


Okay, so, beneath the coal stuff, there's largely three reasons why people from the right attack left this way.

1) "We want to preserve our way of life": Most of these places heavily depended on coal mining as the foundation of their industry. No coal = their towns disappear. They don't want job retraining to become coders because it's uncertain and complicated, there's no guarantee that you'll get a good job afterwards.

2) Conservative propaganda. Climate change is a liberal/Chinese hoax, liberals are out to get you, "clean coal", "war on coal" etc.

3) Just plain racism. Self-explanatory

Of the three reasons listed above, I can only consider the 1st one "logically consistent". And my critique of this critique will still be "far left critiques center left" instead of "right critiques center left". The reason is because the center left has a PR problem of being "out of touch coastal elites", and an actual problem of being out of touch coastal elites. There's also the trend that people from subsidized, heavy pollution industries simply don't trust liberals. They don't trust liberals for the same reasons above but also because liberals are just not known to be very rural friendly. We make fun of them in our movies. We make fun of them in our politics. We have a reputation for colluding with private capital, a reputation that is known to most of the world, people left of Democrats, and people right of Democrats. Why should they trust us?

And then sometimes, our initiatives just fall flat on their faces.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mined-minds-retraining-appalachian-coal-miners-1.5145676

They come to a poverty-stricken state, made a bunch of promises like a soapbox preacher, and they failed. They failed me multiple times.

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In summary, I think the most valid critique of liberal progressivism from the right towards the left is "we don't trust you to look out for us".

 

[Don Fluffles]

Many leftist and socialist policies have weak spots that we absolutely must compensate for.

Going full socialism means completely overhauling the economy. There will not only be resistance, but hard, brutal unrelenting resistance. See: Venenzuela for how that resistance can fuck over the best-intended socialist state.

There's also corruption we have to deal with.

We should also elevate everyone without pushing anyone down for "doing better".

 

[samoyed]

We should also elevate everyone without pushing anyone down for "doing better".

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Out of curiosity, why not?

 

[skipgo]

Liberalism seems to be more intent on compromises than actually pushing their ideas in a productive way. That in turn makes them an easy prey to the ever more radical right who is not afraid to demonize opposition to achieve their goals.

Ideally the answer is to the left of democrats, but years and years of indoctrinating people that "socialism" is the greater of all evils is very hard to undo.

 

[ZackieChan]

It's odd. They talk about how Capitalism is broken and only hurts the world because of bad actors and how the system incentivizes bad behavior. I don't think any of that is a symptom of capitalism rather than human nature. For any system to truly "work" for everyone, requires its participants to be benign and virtuous. The same applies to any socialist system. The potential for corruption and abuse in a socialist system is just as strong if not stronger than a capitalist one. The only examples we have of attempts at socialist regimes are horribly oppressive disasters.

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It doesn't help that a lot of posters seem to have learned everything they know about capitalism from looking at the character on the Monopoly box

 

[samoyed]

Okay, setting aside that "human nature" is a naturalism fallacy, any appeal to "human nature" has to hold true for the bulk of human history, for as long as a human can be considered "biologically modern", which is as "natural" as you can get.

So, if greed is a problem today, why was it not a fatal problem for our ancestors, say, 100,000 years ago? Surely hunter-gatherer societies are more "natural" than modern day urban ones.

See, the problem with the "human nature" arguement is simply this. Its arguers seem to think that "human nature" was invented 100 years ago or 2000 years ago and not 350,000 years ago, unless you think a time frame of 2000 years is enough for genetic shift to change "human nature" from a cooperative, social animal to a competitive, individual one.

 

[Deleted member 7130]

Many leftist and socialist policies have weak spots that we absolutely must compensate for.

Going full socialism means completely overhauling the economy. There will not only be resistance, but hard, brutal unrelenting resistance. See: Venenzuela for how that resistance can fuck over the best-intended socialist state.

There's also corruption we have to deal with.

We should also elevate everyone without pushing anyone down for "doing better".

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How would you propose elevating every one without the resources of those "doing better"?

 

[Deleted member 32101]

There isn't actually an unbiased forum out there so this is actually a null criticism. I don't think you could find an unbiased answer to this question anywhere in the world except maybe in a Comparative Politics course in Berlin.

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Avoiding the point entirely. Obviously there's not, but asking your question in a forum that aligns with your view is the worst possible thing you can do given the goal of objectivity.

 

[Deleted member 5127]

This isn't doing a bubble check, it's reinforcing it.

+ 5ish years ago I would have said hell yes, but these past couple of years I have seen plenty of flaws on the left(especially the American variant) and it has opened my eyes. The hyperbole, ignoring nuance and constantly going for absolutes, no self-reflecting, purity tests, shutting down of conversation, no self-critique, only when things ''aren't left enough''.... etc, too many things are regressive these days and there's barely any self-awareness. The (far) left even hurts minorities in indirect ways, and not to mention how good it has become at giving ammo to the far right.

And no, ending capitalism is not going to end climate change. Humans would need the resources in any system. We need to invest in science for something new down the road.

I still consider myself a progressive, but I want actual progressives to splinter away from the current left and form a critical liberal/progressive movement and group.

 

[samoyed]

I still consider myself a progressive, but I want actual progressives to splinter away from the current left and form a critical liberal/progressive movement and group.

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Third Way? Or a social democratic party?

 

[Terrell]

So long as capitalism maintains itself as a competitive economic policy and liberalism operates within it, liberalism and progressivism will ALWAYS be at odds with one another.

You simply cannot achieve cooperative/collaborative solutions in a competitive market and nearly ALL of the world's many problems require a cooperative solution, climate change being key among them. Being kind to the environment reduces competitive advantage, so it will always be secondary.

To put simply: capitalism is more interested in who wins than who succeeds, to the detriment of us all.

A critique that doesn't get surfaced here enough is that market pricing is a signal of preferences. Absent externalities, giving people what they want is often a good thing. And competitive markets move towards giving consumers what they want.

In other words, capitalism has its merits.

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Unless you propose eliminating taxation, which is now impossible given how deep in the thick of it we are with capitalism without a total shutdown of our entire way of life, externalities can never be removed from capitalism EVER. Taxation, either low or high, is a government's way of putting a thumb on the scale. Preferences are thus manipulated all the time and are unreliable as a metric.
Also, capitalism doesn't "give" people what they want, it allows them to take it through participation in it. Again, taxation is the way for governments to manipulate who can participate and how.

This isn't doing a bubble check, it's reinforcing it.

+ 5ish years ago I would have said hell yes, but these past couple of years I have seen plenty of flaws on the left(especially the American variant) and it has opened my eyes. The hyperbole, ignoring nuance and constantly going for absolutes, no self-reflecting, purity tests, shutting down of conversation, no self-critique, only when things ''aren't left enough''.... etc, too many things are regressive these days and there's barely any self-awareness. The (far) left even hurts minorities in indirect ways, and not to mention how good it has become at giving ammo to the far right.

And no, ending capitalism is not going to end climate change. Humans would need the resources in any system. We need to invest in science for something new down the road.

I still consider myself a progressive, but I want actual progressives to splinter away from the current left and form a critical liberal/progressive movement and group.

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Science only gets invested in when there's money to be made in doing it. And green energy is simply less profitable, so there is far less motivation and the few corporations that do are doing so because they can set the price of going green however they like due to the low amount of competitors.

 

[Penny Royal]

Liberalism in the US is lipstick on a pig/sticking plaster on an gaping wound.

I have no idea what 'progressivism' is in any context, least of all the OP which completely fails to define any terms. Sounds like the kind of wishy-washy hand-wavy 'We want things to be better, but not deal with the hard task of reforming society that task requires.'

 

[Laser Man]

Okay, setting aside that "human nature" is a naturalism fallacy, any appeal to "human nature" has to hold true for the bulk of human history, for as long as a human can be considered "biologically modern", which is as "natural" as you can get.

So, if greed is a problem today, why was it not a fatal problem for our ancestors, say, 100,000 years ago? Surely hunter-gatherer societies are more "natural" than modern day urban ones.

See, the problem with the "human nature" arguement is simply this. Its arguers seem to think that "human nature" was invented 100 years ago or 2000 years ago and not 350,000 years ago, unless you think a time frame of 2000 years is enough for genetic shift to change "human nature" from a cooperative, social animal to a competitive, individual one.

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I don't really think it does have to hold true for the bulk of human history because technology changed the game and it did so very recently, on a historic scale. Greed didn't matter much to large groups when large groups meant 20 people, no ramifications for nature or other groups not directly involved.
Now we live in groups of thousands and millions, directly interacting with each other every day, globally and greed can turn into war and natural disaster (maybe even extinction of humanity, it already did for many animals) The evolutionary dynamics are out of whack because we have outrun evolution with technology.

 

[Deleted member 1445]

We should also elevate everyone without pushing anyone down for "doing better".

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Could you define "doing better"?

Since this is a gaming forum, would you decry it if an imbalance in a multiplayer game was patched out? That's "pushing people down" for "doing better" in much the same way

 

[samoyed]

I don't really think it does have to hold true for the bulk of human history because technology changed the game and it did so very recently, on a historic scale. Greed didn't matter much to large groups when large groups meant 20 people, no ramifications for nature or other groups not directly involved.
Now we live in groups of thousands and millions, directly interacting with each other every day, globally and greed can turn into war and natural disaster (maybe even extinction of humanity, it already did for many animals) The evolutionary dynamics are out of whack because we have outrun evolution with technology.

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I don't disagree but this ceases to be a "nature" argument. It is the old "nature vs nurture" debate.

If we have, as you say, "outrun evolution" with technology, then why are we still beholden to our "nature"? It makes more sense to claim that "nurture" rules humans now in a post-technological civilization, but people bring up "human nature" again and again as a critique of critiques of capitalism.

Alternatively, I could also argue that capitalism rewards greed, and that capitalism concentrates power in the holders of capital, therefore, capitalism inherently produces powerful people who are greedy instead of altruistic. The "greed is human nature" argument is inherently anti-capitalist, but you wouldn't know it by the way it gets thrown about.

"Communism can't work because of human greed, capitalism, though, which rewards the greedy with power, definitely works"

???

At best, you could draw a line between socialism and communism and every person who's critical of "greed" should naturally be a socialist, because democratizing ownership of capital helps prevent concentration of capital. But I would bet good money that most people who bring up the "human nature" critique against communism/anarchism are not socialists.

 

[Deleted member 4783]

This isn't doing a bubble check, it's reinforcing it.

+ 5ish years ago I would have said hell yes, but these past couple of years I have seen plenty of flaws on the left(especially the American variant) and it has opened my eyes. The hyperbole, ignoring nuance and constantly going for absolutes, no self-reflecting, purity tests, shutting down of conversation, no self-critique, only when things ''aren't left enough''.... etc, too many things are regressive these days and there's barely any self-awareness. The (far) left even hurts minorities in indirect ways, and not to mention how good it has become at giving ammo to the far right.

And no, ending capitalism is not going to end climate change. Humans would need the resources in any system. We need to invest in science for something new down the road.

I still consider myself a progressive, but I want actual progressives to splinter away from the current left and form a critical liberal/progressive movement and group.

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Didn't know Dave Rubin had an account here.





Also, you have no idea what the far left is. And, dare I say, don't even know what the left is.
Your comment reads like a reactionary as the likes of Dave Rubin (go figure), Sargon and others who use this: "the left is a monolithic entity, I was part of it and then I hated it".

 

[Deleted member 1445]

Sorry, I thought you meant contemporary democratic socialism.

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What difference does that make? Regardless, socialism is characterized by social ownership, whereas capitalism isn't, in capitalism the concentration of wealth is an inherent part, you can't really get around it.

 

[Kay]

Liberalism has managed to make no dent in climate change in over 40 years. In fact, it's actively running backwards away from the start line. As climate change gets worse liberalism won't be able to maintain itself and collapse into either socialism (not likely since liberals destroyed all organised left movements that threatened them.) or, unfortunately more likely, eco facism.

 

[RedSparrows]

I find 'progressivism' a really unhelpful term tbh.

 

[alexiswrite]

Progressives are people too. They make bad arguments sometimes. They can be biased towards people they think share their ideology. They can oversimplify big political systems. Generally, I see a lot of Leftist people focus way too much on class-based politics, at the expense of everything else.

 

[SurrenderDorothy]

Legit, that American left isn't far enough left

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Yep.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

I think we are getting crossed at semantics. A company can be owned my a large portion of the population and still be private, as in the market sense of shares not being available for public purchase on stock markets (meaning open uncontrolled trading of ownership outside the regulation of the organization). I'm extending that idea to cover the entire population so that the organization is owned and democratically controlled by the entire population while simultaneously preventing unbalancing of ownership percentage by allowing public purchase of more shares, essentially creating a co-op like you mention. And yes, I am essentially advocating for a global co-op. The only reason I don't specifically say co-op (though I do like them) is that ownership is usually set to exclusively the collective suppliers or the collective consumers of the organization's service. This excludes people who are not in that sector and also it is possible for co-op owners to sell or relinquish their ownership to other parties which can erode the collective control. The point of doing it through private org ownership is that you can set a governance structure by having the company directly owned by a trust where the beneficiaries are established as equally every human and the condition being that no one is able to sell their share. This establishes ownership of the means of production as an inalienable right to every human on earth. Trust managers would be beholden to managing the assets of that trust (the organization) to the benefit of the beneficiaries (everyone on earth) under penalty of international trust law in a sense causing them to be elected officials of organization governance which would essentially be a prototypical world government that is required by legacy international trust law and it's own organizational guidelines to continue policy improvement with the goal of increasing the quality of life for all people everywhere.

More simply put, I'm saying collective ownership/co-op institutions (as you mention) are the way, but a fast way of getting there is by converting a large private company to be an bonded co-op where the entire public makes up the "owners". Most people look to shift to socialism by nationalizing services however I find fault there in the sense that nationalization inherently excludes those outside of said nation so in order to develop gains for your beneficiaries it is more efficient to do so at the cost of non beneficiaries (other countries in this case). I seek to remove the entire idea that an organization operates for the benefit of a subset of the human population instead of the entire population.

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What you are describing is a form of social ownership though. The particulars of how it's run aren't that important. What's important is that it's socially owned and controlled.

So, what you are describing is a form of socialism and not 'socialised capitalism' as you originally stated. That goes back to the original point of how in this historical moment, it's not really possible to advocate for anything other than capitalism - i.e. the status quo - or some form of socialism - which is the obvious next step. The fact that you are using property rights in your idea isn't unique either. All serious socialist ideas have to contend with how we get 'there' from 'here'. Ultimately you have to use the state in some form, and so subverting the current system of property rights (all property rights come from the state after all) to extend those rights to all is a genuine socialist idea.

I don't think this is a semantic debate though. It's important for things to have the proper name. The system you describe would be a definite (and positive!) break from capitalism, and so it's actually dishonest to call it a form of capitalism. What you're advocating is a form of socialism.