Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion. Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead? Is it true that communism inherently involves the death of millions of people? Or were those bad actors doing bad things because they are bad people?
Edit 2: Capitalism is a symptom not the cause. Until we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Individuals don’t exist in a vacuum though. Ideologies and systems shape behavior by setting the rules of the game and defining what gets rewarded or punished. Under capitalism, exploitation, profit-over-people, and competition are incentivized, so it does cause patterns of harm — not just isolated bad actors. That’s why we see consistent violence, poverty, and dispossession under capitalism across the globe. It’s not random individuals — it’s a system rewarding destructive behavior.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
People do bad stuff because they are bad. I live in a capitalist county but choose not to bad things to people because I’m not a bad person.
FWIW I am anarchist so INB4 “supporting capitalism”.
Also, that’s not what downvotes are for but whatever.
Okay, let’s place the blame on the individuals. Now what? We imprison them in a neverending cycle while ignoring the conditions that created them? That would be like mopping up the blood forever from a hospital floor while doing nothing to suture any wounds. The problem with a myopic moralistic view is that it is incapable of actually changing anything, or even understanding how things come to be. All it tells us how to do is sit in judgement of individual ripples, not examine undercurrents.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
capitalism is a system that gives an individual the potential authority to literally own an entire fucking city, can you please like eat shit
I think I’m arguing with an actual child who is incapable of understanding things in terms larger than individual interactions, who literally cannot conceive of the incredible political authority afforded to the capitalist class which, consequently, affords their “individual” actions (which tend to have extreme class solidarity, lol) an inordinate amount of influence over our society, to the point where your mention of “individual responsibility” really comes off as an ignorant fucking child wanking off and thinking they’re smart and special
you’re a liberal despite your anarcho-jacketing so I know you worship authority figures, so here’s albert einstein with Baby’s First Theory explaining how capitalism is inherently authoritarian:
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
anyway go off about how individual responsibility matters more than an economic system which allows a single individual to literally own your entire fucking state! hope you read a fucking book in your entire life that isn’t harry potter
I won’t engage in your straw man argument but to be absolutely clear, I am not defending capitalism in any way shape or form. There is not a single cell in my body that endorses this shit.
That being said, I’m not content with blaming a political system. I want to hold individuals accountable for their actions. I want bad actors eliminated from society regardless of their purported political beliefs.
Bad actors exist in every form of social and political structures. It is absolutely critical that these anti-social individuals are ousted from the group.
You are oversimplifying things because it’s easier than understanding the big picture. It’s easy to think that political ideologies can fix things. They can’t without a deeper understanding of human/animal group behaviour.
Einstein had some interesting things to say but I would suggest reading Kropotkin if you want to understand more about the true nature of social structures and the relationship between the individual and the group.
How exactly are you proposing we do this? If re-education or some similar imprisonment system works successfully, then it would be our current system (capitalisms) fault for their anti-social behavior. If on the other hand you mean they should be killed, isn’t that exactly the anti-social behavior your complaining about?
I don’t have a good answer on how to deal with these people specifically. There are too many potential variables to really make a conclusive statement about this. It depends so much on the social structures we’re acting within.
i will say I don’t think killing is inherently anti-social. If the death of an individual who is working against the wellbeing of the community is the only way to improve the health of the community then I would not consider causing their death to be anti-social.
For a “spherical cows in a vacuum” argument, I would say that if there is a community locked in a box where no one is free to come and go, and a member of that community is engaging in rape or murder, I would support them being killed. There is obviously a whole world of discussion to just be had on this example and I’m over simplifying.
The specifics are more of a moral/ethical problem than a political/social problem imo.
Congrats, you are the actual cringiest person I have encountered on the fediverse.
Every comment you post just projects harder that you are comically insecure and immature.
It’s honestly sad and confusing to see behaviour like this out of someone who claims to be a leftist but I suppose you may be on the path to becoming the anti-social bad actor I’m warning about.
I’m sitting here trying to have an actual political discussion but instead laughing at how it feels like I’m arguing with an LLM trained exclusively on 4chan posts and brain rot Rick & Morty memes.
It’s ok to be wrong sometimes. I used to think the same way you do but then I decided to read actual theory and educate myself on the nuances of leftist thought.
What is not ok is to drag down well meaning conversation because it makes you feel insecure.
I’m not going to block you because I have hope that you may grow as a person and some day have some meaningful things to add to discussions of this nature but I’m completely done entertaining this “conversation”.
Feel free to continue shit posting meme lord gifs in an effort to feel like you have things to say but I’m out.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion
They just know more than you and you’re too fucking stupid to realize it. Oh, remember when I AD HOMMINAMMED YOU with the grievous insult of “you’re huffing your own farts” yeah you’re still doing it
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Capitalism absolutely pushes people into these behaviors in the same way that being born and raised in Israel pushes people into becoming genocidal nazis. People are products of their environment, and the core feature of capitalism is that it must continue expanding until it controls every aspect of the environment.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion.
“Nuance” is not a code word for “you people just don’t understand that I’m right”
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
You are pretending that systemic issues are actually just individual issues, and are trying to suggest that systemic issues are solved with individual solutions instead of with systemic solutions.
Needless to say, your perception is off the mark.
Have you ever heard of the term social murder? Where someone dies an unnatural death as a result of societal conditions, but can’t be blamed on any single individual?
I would argue that it’s possible to murder someone through inaction.
I don’t think every unnatural death can be traced to a single individual but it can almost always be traced to the group that individual is part of. The collective individual actions of that group lead to the death of the individual.
For example someone sleeping on the street who dies of exposure. The cold killed them but the inaction of the group who was able to prevent that death can be held to blame.
My point though is that capitalism didn’t kill them. They could have survived within capitalism if the group had chosen to extend aid to that individual.
To be clear, I’m not saying we should place blame on capitalism, but we can’t stop there. We have to understand the root cause of the problem which is social more than political IMO.
Ok, but once you understand a social problem, sometimes the solution is political. Like, what if we as a group choose to extend aid by charging landlords a massive fee for letting homes go empty and unused. Or if we used the law to end housing as an investment vehicle.
I agree, my argument is just that we need to understand and address the core social problems in order to better understand how to construct political solutions than actually work.
That’s what Marxism-Leninism does. The term “scientific socialism” that came about with Marx and Engels was based on analysis of history and existing conditions, they explicitly rejected the “utopian” model that believed they just needed to find the right recipe.
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
and when you have an entire political and economic system that just kills people as a side effect of how it functions, that’s just nothing to you, i guess? good job being a fucking liberal, dipshit!
We might be getting caught up in the semantics of the word “cause”.
Capitalism sets up a system that puts people in these situations undoubtedly. It also encourages and rewards violent behaviour.
I would like to believe that in a better society, gang violence would significantly decrease. It seems to be driven and encouraged by socioeconomic factors outside of the control of the gang members.
For every person growing up in poor socioeconomic conditions who makes the conscious choice to become a gang member, there are many more who don’t and instead decide to lift their communities.
We can’t use living under capitalism as an excuse to act anti-socially. We must hold individuals accountable for their individual actions. We must practice mutual aid RIGHT NOW if we have any hope of a future. Political / economic system aside.
No idea has ever forced someone’s hand to pull a trigger or evict a single mother. Every single bad thing that is done comes down to an individual making a decision to harm another. It’s always possible to choose not to harm.
Capitalism is a mind virus that leads to very real harm, but it in and of itself does not directly cause that harm. Capitalism encourages but does not force people to be bad. In this same way socialism encourages but does not force someone to be good.
It’s simply not possible to make a logical argument that capitalism “causes” suffering without admitting that political ideology can in and of itself be a cause for anything. To admit that capitalism “causes” suffering all on its own is to admit that socialism can also “cause” suffering as well. I’m not willing to admit that there is any inherent death toll associated with building a better world for our children (aside of course from the bloody reality of revolution itself).
That being said, even in a society where everyone’s core needs are met we still see bad actors.
Bees are a communal insect. A macro-organism that practices mutual aid. Even in a hive where the bees have everything they could possibly want, there are still some bees that don’t share, who don’t practice mutual aid. They choose instead to steal from their own hive or other hives. These bees are swiftly kicked out of the group or often killed.
We have seen that the ideals of communism and socialism, Marxist thought in general, can be used to shield bad actors from their truly anti-social actions. We cannot allow or condone this.
When we put so much faith in a political system, we often lose sight of the fact that we must hold individuals accountable for their choices regardless of their purported political ideologies. We lose sight of the fact that mutual aid is the only way forward as a species and that saying the right words can not replace taking the right action.
A killer is a killer and a thief is a thief. Anti-social behaviour is the core problem and until we address that, any attempt at a better wold with surely fail.
i understand your point of view but i just disagree. those individual decisions are all made in the context of capitalism and the conditions it creates. thats what fuels those decisions. just because two people come from the same socioeconomic background make different life choices it doesnt mean capitalism isnt to be blamed at the end of the day for the one who becomes involved in gang activity. it also overlooks that while their socioeconomic background may be similar nobody comes from the same exact circumstances
when i was a teenager my family was homeless for a few years. in and out of hotels, even living in a mosque at a time. nobody would give me a job. when i tell them i have no permanent phone number, no address, nobody would hire me. to make money i stole shit from walmart and sold it on craigslist. this eventually lead to my arrest. people can look at that in a vacuum and say i made my choices, and im not saying i didnt, but its not the choice i wanted to be making. it was the last choice i could make and i dont know how much of a choice i really had otherwise. you need money. no one will hire you. what do you do? i deeply sympathize with the people who end up living the gang life. while they may put out an image that says they’re tough and this and that, those are people who live with a lot of pain and suffering and they were pushed to that point by their conditions
im also not sure how saying capitalism causes suffering must necessarily mean socialism can cause suffering. that makes no sense to me. the basic premise of capitalism is exploitation. this is not the case for socialism.
suffering for capitalists? they deserve to suffer and their suffering under socialism is only a product of their entitlement so fuck em lol
Brilliant and well thought out rebuttal. You almost got a whole thought out without ad hominem attacks or insulting disabled people. Keep trying and maybe someday you will be the able to make it the rest of the way.
also an “ad hominem attack” would be me saying “your argument is dogishit because you are a moron,” calling you a moron (much less accusing you of huffing farts) isn’t an ad hominem attack. read a fucking essay or something, clearly books are beyond you
They both kill people, the first causes the second to happen and justify itself because of it.
Personally, looking at the state of western societies, I’m all up for both: personal re-education (yes, if you don’t show empathy towards others you’re going to prison) but before that, systemic change. If you don’t change society first, there is no place for “bad” people to be reintegrated in without falling for the same influences. A sick society produces (mostly) sick people.
I think I agree. It doesn’t seem like we can have any nuanced discussion amongst the hive mind meme lords here though.
I don’t support capitalism in any way shape or form. It only can lead to the situation were in now.
But it seems we are expected to believe in communism as some kind of holy untouchable grail that will solve all of societies woes. It’s heresy to be critical of anyone who dangles the communism carrot in front of us. We must blindly consume the promises of charlatans.
Anyone one who thinks critically is a “dumbass” “liberal” who hasn’t… checks notes read Einstein.
Eh… I do believe communism in perfect uncorrupted version solves most of the problems. Is it applicable right away? No. We have a sick society and first we need to heal and understand. Should we not aim for communism? No, we should, it’s good to have a final goal, a vision to inspire people.
Getting there is the hard part.
I can see why you triggered a lot of people saying capitalism doesn’t “cause” it, because unfortunately it does.
It seems you are all getting caught in a false dichotomy of thinking that it’s not possible to oppose capitalism and also hold individuals liable for their actions. I don’t understand this.
To me this is the equivalent of saying that Nazis were just following orders. That they had no choice in that matter.
Nazism didn’t “cause” the holocaust. Hitler and the people of Germany did. Nazism was a product of a social illness which has still not been cured. We defeated the Nazis but we didn’t cure the social illness that led to it so look what we have again (Nazis).
Maybe a better word is “force”. As in capitalism does not “force” harm.
Implying that capitalism forces harm excuses the individuals who are truly causing the harm.
You mention “perfect, uncorrupted” communism and this is what I want but I don’t see a reality in which we obtain that without first accepting that “perfect, uncorrupted” communism is NEVER what we get without first curing social issues.
Would I rather have a fucked up communism than fucked up capitalism? Yeah but I believe fascism can accompany either and I would prefer to deal with that first and foremost.
I too want to live in an ideal communist society but I won’t lie to myself and pretend we can get there without social change. That change starts with holding individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead?
We can do both, though. Hold individuals accountable, and still recognize how they’re enabled and emboldened by the systems they operate in. Focusing on either the individual or the system while disregarding the other when trying to assign blame or find a better solution is not going to help
Well your initial comment very much reads like you’re falling into the same dichotomy except flipped the other way. “We don’t need to change the system as long as we stop the bad people from doing bad things” was the vibe I’m getting from it
Political ideologies don’t kill people. Individuals kill people.
Capitalism happens to reward this kind of behaviour but it doesn’t “cause” it.
Edit: ML users don’t seem to have a concept of nuanced political discussion. Should we just forgive these crimes against humanity on the individual level and blame an ideology instead? Is it true that communism inherently involves the death of millions of people? Or were those bad actors doing bad things because they are bad people?
Edit 2: Capitalism is a symptom not the cause. Until we address what led us to capitalism we will never see a better world.
Individuals don’t exist in a vacuum though. Ideologies and systems shape behavior by setting the rules of the game and defining what gets rewarded or punished. Under capitalism, exploitation, profit-over-people, and competition are incentivized, so it does cause patterns of harm — not just isolated bad actors. That’s why we see consistent violence, poverty, and dispossession under capitalism across the globe. It’s not random individuals — it’s a system rewarding destructive behavior.
You are just restating what I said.
My criticism is that blaming “capitalism” for the actions taken by individuals or collective actions taken by the group moves the blame away from the individuals committing those actions. Which is not helpful.
People do bad stuff because they are bad. I live in a capitalist county but choose not to bad things to people because I’m not a bad person.
FWIW I am anarchist so INB4 “supporting capitalism”.
Also, that’s not what downvotes are for but whatever.
Okay, let’s place the blame on the individuals. Now what? We imprison them in a neverending cycle while ignoring the conditions that created them? That would be like mopping up the blood forever from a hospital floor while doing nothing to suture any wounds. The problem with a myopic moralistic view is that it is incapable of actually changing anything, or even understanding how things come to be. All it tells us how to do is sit in judgement of individual ripples, not examine undercurrents.
capitalism is a system that gives an individual the potential authority to literally own an entire fucking city, can you please like eat shit
Idk who you think you are arguing with but it’s clearly not me haha.
I think I’m arguing with an actual child who is incapable of understanding things in terms larger than individual interactions, who literally cannot conceive of the incredible political authority afforded to the capitalist class which, consequently, affords their “individual” actions (which tend to have extreme class solidarity, lol) an inordinate amount of influence over our society, to the point where your mention of “individual responsibility” really comes off as an ignorant fucking child wanking off and thinking they’re smart and special
you’re a liberal despite your anarcho-jacketing so I know you worship authority figures, so here’s albert einstein with Baby’s First Theory explaining how capitalism is inherently authoritarian:
anyway go off about how individual responsibility matters more than an economic system which allows a single individual to literally own your entire fucking state! hope you read a fucking book in your entire life that isn’t harry potter
The projection here is palpable.
I won’t engage in your straw man argument but to be absolutely clear, I am not defending capitalism in any way shape or form. There is not a single cell in my body that endorses this shit.
That being said, I’m not content with blaming a political system. I want to hold individuals accountable for their actions. I want bad actors eliminated from society regardless of their purported political beliefs.
Bad actors exist in every form of social and political structures. It is absolutely critical that these anti-social individuals are ousted from the group.
You are oversimplifying things because it’s easier than understanding the big picture. It’s easy to think that political ideologies can fix things. They can’t without a deeper understanding of human/animal group behaviour.
Einstein had some interesting things to say but I would suggest reading Kropotkin if you want to understand more about the true nature of social structures and the relationship between the individual and the group.
How exactly are you proposing we do this? If re-education or some similar imprisonment system works successfully, then it would be our current system (capitalisms) fault for their anti-social behavior. If on the other hand you mean they should be killed, isn’t that exactly the anti-social behavior your complaining about?
I don’t have a good answer on how to deal with these people specifically. There are too many potential variables to really make a conclusive statement about this. It depends so much on the social structures we’re acting within.
i will say I don’t think killing is inherently anti-social. If the death of an individual who is working against the wellbeing of the community is the only way to improve the health of the community then I would not consider causing their death to be anti-social.
For a “spherical cows in a vacuum” argument, I would say that if there is a community locked in a box where no one is free to come and go, and a member of that community is engaging in rape or murder, I would support them being killed. There is obviously a whole world of discussion to just be had on this example and I’m over simplifying.
The specifics are more of a moral/ethical problem than a political/social problem imo.
Congrats, you are the actual cringiest person I have encountered on the fediverse.
Every comment you post just projects harder that you are comically insecure and immature.
It’s honestly sad and confusing to see behaviour like this out of someone who claims to be a leftist but I suppose you may be on the path to becoming the anti-social bad actor I’m warning about.
I’m sitting here trying to have an actual political discussion but instead laughing at how it feels like I’m arguing with an LLM trained exclusively on 4chan posts and brain rot Rick & Morty memes.
It’s ok to be wrong sometimes. I used to think the same way you do but then I decided to read actual theory and educate myself on the nuances of leftist thought.
What is not ok is to drag down well meaning conversation because it makes you feel insecure.
I’m not going to block you because I have hope that you may grow as a person and some day have some meaningful things to add to discussions of this nature but I’m completely done entertaining this “conversation”.
Feel free to continue shit posting meme lord gifs in an effort to feel like you have things to say but I’m out.
I generally agree, but I need to ring the alarm bell for anyone who might listen
Consulting companies like McKinsey are the conspiracy selling indirect mass murder. The reading on them is endless… They’re insanely evil
They just know more than you and you’re too fucking stupid to realize it. Oh, remember when I AD HOMMINAMMED YOU with the grievous insult of “you’re huffing your own farts” yeah you’re still doing it
Capitalism absolutely pushes people into these behaviors in the same way that being born and raised in Israel pushes people into becoming genocidal nazis. People are products of their environment, and the core feature of capitalism is that it must continue expanding until it controls every aspect of the environment.
“Nuance” is not a code word for “you people just don’t understand that I’m right”
You are pretending that systemic issues are actually just individual issues, and are trying to suggest that systemic issues are solved with individual solutions instead of with systemic solutions.
Needless to say, your perception is off the mark.
It is, in fact, ‘the’ cause of many issues.
Have you ever heard of the term social murder? Where someone dies an unnatural death as a result of societal conditions, but can’t be blamed on any single individual?
I would argue that it’s possible to murder someone through inaction.
I don’t think every unnatural death can be traced to a single individual but it can almost always be traced to the group that individual is part of. The collective individual actions of that group lead to the death of the individual.
For example someone sleeping on the street who dies of exposure. The cold killed them but the inaction of the group who was able to prevent that death can be held to blame.
My point though is that capitalism didn’t kill them. They could have survived within capitalism if the group had chosen to extend aid to that individual.
To be clear, I’m not saying we should place blame on capitalism, but we can’t stop there. We have to understand the root cause of the problem which is social more than political IMO.
Ok, but once you understand a social problem, sometimes the solution is political. Like, what if we as a group choose to extend aid by charging landlords a massive fee for letting homes go empty and unused. Or if we used the law to end housing as an investment vehicle.
I agree, my argument is just that we need to understand and address the core social problems in order to better understand how to construct political solutions than actually work.
That’s what Marxism-Leninism does. The term “scientific socialism” that came about with Marx and Engels was based on analysis of history and existing conditions, they explicitly rejected the “utopian” model that believed they just needed to find the right recipe.
You are talking to people who have done that
Time? Reality? Science? Humans? Feudalism? Like wtf are you going to address?
The industrial revolution
and when you have an entire political and economic system that just kills people as a side effect of how it functions, that’s just nothing to you, i guess? good job being a fucking liberal, dipshit!
You should read some theory before you go around calling people liberals who are clearly more educated on leftist thought than you are.
This is seriously some 4chan levels of cringe. Should have read your meme lord user name before engaging in this discussion.
lol
it causes it too tho. even down on a smaller scale. gang killings for example are a product of capitalism. those count toward the death toll.
We might be getting caught up in the semantics of the word “cause”.
Capitalism sets up a system that puts people in these situations undoubtedly. It also encourages and rewards violent behaviour.
I would like to believe that in a better society, gang violence would significantly decrease. It seems to be driven and encouraged by socioeconomic factors outside of the control of the gang members.
For every person growing up in poor socioeconomic conditions who makes the conscious choice to become a gang member, there are many more who don’t and instead decide to lift their communities.
We can’t use living under capitalism as an excuse to act anti-socially. We must hold individuals accountable for their individual actions. We must practice mutual aid RIGHT NOW if we have any hope of a future. Political / economic system aside.
No idea has ever forced someone’s hand to pull a trigger or evict a single mother. Every single bad thing that is done comes down to an individual making a decision to harm another. It’s always possible to choose not to harm.
Capitalism is a mind virus that leads to very real harm, but it in and of itself does not directly cause that harm. Capitalism encourages but does not force people to be bad. In this same way socialism encourages but does not force someone to be good.
It’s simply not possible to make a logical argument that capitalism “causes” suffering without admitting that political ideology can in and of itself be a cause for anything. To admit that capitalism “causes” suffering all on its own is to admit that socialism can also “cause” suffering as well. I’m not willing to admit that there is any inherent death toll associated with building a better world for our children (aside of course from the bloody reality of revolution itself).
That being said, even in a society where everyone’s core needs are met we still see bad actors.
Bees are a communal insect. A macro-organism that practices mutual aid. Even in a hive where the bees have everything they could possibly want, there are still some bees that don’t share, who don’t practice mutual aid. They choose instead to steal from their own hive or other hives. These bees are swiftly kicked out of the group or often killed.
We have seen that the ideals of communism and socialism, Marxist thought in general, can be used to shield bad actors from their truly anti-social actions. We cannot allow or condone this.
When we put so much faith in a political system, we often lose sight of the fact that we must hold individuals accountable for their choices regardless of their purported political ideologies. We lose sight of the fact that mutual aid is the only way forward as a species and that saying the right words can not replace taking the right action.
A killer is a killer and a thief is a thief. Anti-social behaviour is the core problem and until we address that, any attempt at a better wold with surely fail.
i understand your point of view but i just disagree. those individual decisions are all made in the context of capitalism and the conditions it creates. thats what fuels those decisions. just because two people come from the same socioeconomic background make different life choices it doesnt mean capitalism isnt to be blamed at the end of the day for the one who becomes involved in gang activity. it also overlooks that while their socioeconomic background may be similar nobody comes from the same exact circumstances
when i was a teenager my family was homeless for a few years. in and out of hotels, even living in a mosque at a time. nobody would give me a job. when i tell them i have no permanent phone number, no address, nobody would hire me. to make money i stole shit from walmart and sold it on craigslist. this eventually lead to my arrest. people can look at that in a vacuum and say i made my choices, and im not saying i didnt, but its not the choice i wanted to be making. it was the last choice i could make and i dont know how much of a choice i really had otherwise. you need money. no one will hire you. what do you do? i deeply sympathize with the people who end up living the gang life. while they may put out an image that says they’re tough and this and that, those are people who live with a lot of pain and suffering and they were pushed to that point by their conditions
im also not sure how saying capitalism causes suffering must necessarily mean socialism can cause suffering. that makes no sense to me. the basic premise of capitalism is exploitation. this is not the case for socialism.
suffering for capitalists? they deserve to suffer and their suffering under socialism is only a product of their entitlement so fuck em lol
The lengths some people will go to to retain their sense of psychological safety…
You do realize I’m posting from an anarchist instance and that I’m an anarchist right?
Being realistic and placing the blame on the individual is not supporting capitalism in any way.
Anarchism is when there is no society, only individuals
you are huffing your own farts so hard I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the degree of brain damage
Brilliant and well thought out rebuttal. You almost got a whole thought out without ad hominem attacks or insulting disabled people. Keep trying and maybe someday you will be the able to make it the rest of the way.
lmao you don’t even know what that even means
l m f a o x 1000, christ
Read a fucking book comrade.
Got any recommendations, lib?
become one first, dipshit
Holy fucking fuck what is wrong with you lmao?
also an “ad hominem attack” would be me saying “your argument is dogishit because you are a moron,” calling you a moron (much less accusing you of huffing farts) isn’t an ad hominem attack. read a fucking essay or something, clearly books are beyond you
When your insult comes as a reply to an argument provided without a counter argument it’s taken as ad hominem.
If you actually had a counter argument, the insult would just be regular cringe.
It’s clear you have nothing to add to this conversation besides vitriol.
Because the individual exists outside any social context, which in no way influences how they think or act. /s
They both kill people, the first causes the second to happen and justify itself because of it.
Personally, looking at the state of western societies, I’m all up for both: personal re-education (yes, if you don’t show empathy towards others you’re going to prison) but before that, systemic change. If you don’t change society first, there is no place for “bad” people to be reintegrated in without falling for the same influences. A sick society produces (mostly) sick people.
I think I agree. It doesn’t seem like we can have any nuanced discussion amongst the hive mind meme lords here though.
I don’t support capitalism in any way shape or form. It only can lead to the situation were in now.
But it seems we are expected to believe in communism as some kind of holy untouchable grail that will solve all of societies woes. It’s heresy to be critical of anyone who dangles the communism carrot in front of us. We must blindly consume the promises of charlatans.
Anyone one who thinks critically is a “dumbass” “liberal” who hasn’t… checks notes read Einstein.
Eh… I do believe communism in perfect uncorrupted version solves most of the problems. Is it applicable right away? No. We have a sick society and first we need to heal and understand. Should we not aim for communism? No, we should, it’s good to have a final goal, a vision to inspire people. Getting there is the hard part.
I can see why you triggered a lot of people saying capitalism doesn’t “cause” it, because unfortunately it does.
It seems you are all getting caught in a false dichotomy of thinking that it’s not possible to oppose capitalism and also hold individuals liable for their actions. I don’t understand this.
To me this is the equivalent of saying that Nazis were just following orders. That they had no choice in that matter.
Nazism didn’t “cause” the holocaust. Hitler and the people of Germany did. Nazism was a product of a social illness which has still not been cured. We defeated the Nazis but we didn’t cure the social illness that led to it so look what we have again (Nazis).
Maybe a better word is “force”. As in capitalism does not “force” harm.
Implying that capitalism forces harm excuses the individuals who are truly causing the harm.
You mention “perfect, uncorrupted” communism and this is what I want but I don’t see a reality in which we obtain that without first accepting that “perfect, uncorrupted” communism is NEVER what we get without first curing social issues.
Would I rather have a fucked up communism than fucked up capitalism? Yeah but I believe fascism can accompany either and I would prefer to deal with that first and foremost.
I too want to live in an ideal communist society but I won’t lie to myself and pretend we can get there without social change. That change starts with holding individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Capitalism literally does force harm in so many fucking ways, god i wish you weren’t so grievously ignorant
We can do both, though. Hold individuals accountable, and still recognize how they’re enabled and emboldened by the systems they operate in. Focusing on either the individual or the system while disregarding the other when trying to assign blame or find a better solution is not going to help
Yes exactly. We can and should do both.
But it seems most people here would prefer the false dichotomy that implies we can only do one.
People want communism to be a panacea and it’s simply not. Until we understand that as a group, we will never see lasting change.
Well your initial comment very much reads like you’re falling into the same dichotomy except flipped the other way. “We don’t need to change the system as long as we stop the bad people from doing bad things” was the vibe I’m getting from it