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[Helgoland]

Still, why do folks have to jump from US-style fucked-up-ness straight to Communism? Just look at the way things work in Europe - it's decidedly capitalist, but works pretty well. Certainly better than any previous implementation of the whole dictatorship of the proletariat thing.

[Reelya]

Also, the central thing of Marx was the "commune", e.g. local councils which elect delegates, and those delegates coordinate everything else. It's a type of direct-democracy plus federalism idea. Plus the idea is about combining oppositional classes into a single class. The communes were economic as well as political units, owned by their members. So this collapses the dichotomy of worker vs owner, but it also collapses the dichotomy of economic heirarchy vs political heirarchy. So you can understand Marx's goal about classes as being the need to remove oppositional structures and parallel heirachies. When workers owns a factory, there's no "unions vs management" conflict, since the workers are the owners and management works for them.

This is basically the bit of communism that the 20th century communists decided they didn't need at all: the very thing that communism is named after. Instead they just replaced the old bosses with new party bosses, creating a class struggle between workers and the government. Thus it defeats the entire point of reorganizing the system: which was to collapse us/them class divides into a single "worker/owner" class.

Communism not based on economic communes is like a democracy without voting or how the crusades murdered people in the name of Jesus.

[hector13]

That's what happens to politics when you let people get involved.

[Reelya]

The thing is, the plan for local councils + federalism totally could work, it's not that far different from how a bunch of nations already operate, but you need the local councils to get entrenched before some asshat comes along and makes themselves a dictator. Which says more about the dangers of having a power vacuum than about any specific policy you're trying to enact. wannabe dictators will always pick up whatever is trending to justify their takeover.

The first thing the "Soviets" did was to eliminate the soviets (or murder everyone in them and replace them with stooges), which is the Russian word for "Commune". but they kept the word "Soviet" as lipservice. Because the last thing you need when faking being dedicated to something is the actual real deal coming along, making you look bad. It's the same as how the catholic church burnt monks alive as "heretics" for setting an example of poverty. Can't have people acting like Jesus when you're up in your palace claiming to be Jesus' mouthpiece.

[Avarice]

(removed)

[Tack]

Boy are you tilted.
Go back to a #chan please or work your way towards a relaxed aggressiveness or I can attest that you will be permatoaded in short order.

[scriver]

Sweden's localest councils are called communes. But noooo, social democracy totally isn't socialist.

[hector13]

I'm not sure why it's a problem if it is, or why people claim it isn't.

[MrRoboto75]

I'm not sure why it's a problem if it is, or why people claim it isn't.

in the US, the cold war happened.  Nobody really got over it, so not-capitalist systems are bad no matter what.

[scriver]

I'm not sure why it's a problem if it is, or why people claim it isn't.

If social democracy isn't socialist then it's good results can be appropriated by liberals and conservatives without having to acknowledge the underlying ideology that made the system work, or what it's purpose was.

[Tack]

Took me playing that election game realise that socialists are usually poor or dumb or both, because the rich smart ones do well in a capitalist society.

If you have to be rich to do well in a capitalist society, how is it any different from hereditary nobility?

It's a flaw of the system. Elon Musk left South Africa because it didn't have good capitalist opportunities. Any country which attempts communism will probably have the same "brain drain" happen with their emigration as well.

[hector13]

I'm not sure why it's a problem if it is, or why people claim it isn't.

If social democracy isn't socialist then it's good results can be appropriated by liberals and conservatives without having to acknowledge the underlying ideology that made the system work, or what it's purpose was.

So basically the same as most every other political philosophy then?

[martinuzz]

I'm not sure why it's a problem if it is, or why people claim it isn't.

in the US, the cold war happened.  Nobody really got over it, so not-capitalist systems are bad no matter what.

Emphasis edited by me.
It's not like the cold war didn't happen in Europe as well. I daresay it affected people in Europe as much as it affected the people of the US. Thinking of East-Germany, for example. With all due respect for US lives lost in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
That didn't stop European countries from labelling themselves 'social democracy'.
I yet fail to understand how many US voters seem to have a distorted worldview where everything involving the word 'social' triggers a communist alert.

[Reelya]

Took me playing that election game realise that socialists are usually poor or dumb or both, because the rich smart ones do well in a capitalist society.

If you have to be rich to do well in a capitalist society, how is it any different from hereditary nobility?

It's a flaw of the system. Elon Musk left South Africa because it didn't have good capitalist opportunities. Any country which attempts communism will probably have the same "brain drain" happen with their emigration as well.

Well the thing is, some societies have high inequality. And if a society has high inequality then the high rollers can roll even higher. So there can be a brain-drain to a high-inequality nation, but that doesn't mean the system there is objectively better than where you left. People who are above-average will benefit more from an unequal system (disproportionate rewards for doing better than average) than other people, so they will be more attracted to unequal systems than other people are.

Remember what people are optimizing isn't "make the most money" it's "make the most money for the least amount of effort". And if you're above-average then a place which makes it disproportionately easy for above-average people to make money without requiring great effort is where you want to go. But those places naturally have the opposite problem for the average or below-average person: it's disproportionately hard to make enough money to get by. Those economies are biased to making things easier for the elite, so they attract the elite, while the people who don't benefit from the system are trapped as they cannot afford to relocate.

Another example of how a brain drain could actually signal a bad system, imagine a nation which closed schools and used the money instead to pay more to foreign-trained engineers and scientists. Then, another nation didn't close schools, but they don't pay engineers and scientists as much. The first nation would be the beneficiaries of a "brain drain" but not because of any good thing they did - closing public schools increases inequality. This works because it's an open system. If the systems were separate, then clearly the nation that didn't slash education funding would come out ahead, instead.

[MrRoboto75]

I yet fail to understand how many US voters seem to have a distorted worldview where everything involving the word 'social' triggers a communist alert.

nobody said it had to be rational