None of those words are the insults you think they are, but I think I should say something because I am sick of people being cowed by asshole assumptions behind words like these. I think many people are too firmly in ideological camps to understand what makes sense in different situations, and what may look like one thing may not necessarily be it. Regardless,

Anti-immigration doesn’t mean you don’t want any immigrants or immigrants of a certain type only. Second, if you’re anti-illegal immigration doesn’t mean you’re anti-immigration. Third, all countries are free to set their immigration policies, why does anyone believe they have the right to be anywhere? I am not even anti-immigration, btw. That’s besides the point if I am making a devils advocate comment.

There’s no such thing as imperialism in the modern world. The fact that some countries insist on blaming their shortcomings on imperialism is a distraction tactic so their citizens don’t turn on their failing or corrupt governments. I feel bad for the people of those countries.

I simply hate that someone takes a historically failure idea like Marxism and creates a narrative around it which sets that ideology as morally or ethically superior. It’s just part of the narrative to make western country citizens hate their own countries so that they dismantle their democracies. Which is the sum total of what we’re seeing everywhere now.

There are too many complexities to these issues so I understand why people choose to engage in hivemind like behavior online. I am not even that much pro-capitalism, and I am definitely not against diversity or inclusion. Saying you don’t trust DEI as a concept (because we already have anti-discrimination laws here) or the people implementing DEI doesn’t mean you’re against diversity or inclusion.

It’s been addressed. The altruism refers to the altruism of those with enough resources to become successful in capitalist states.

The errors you’re seeing are due to your biased assessment of the systems and processes, there are a lot of assumptions you’re baking into your own understanding and then blaming me for them. Like this,

Even without any corruption whatsoever, this process will continue, it’s a consequence of markets in general. Those that outcompete absorb or kill off those who undercompete until few large syndicates remain.

Monopolies are not an inherent consequence of free market economics, in fact that’s why we have anti-monopoly actions in many industries. That’s why regulatory concerns exist in the first place.

Second, claiming that because corruption exists in all Modes of Production doesn’t mean it exists to equal degrees and scales in all Modes of Production. This is, again, more of a point of nihilism, by refusing to analyze the causes and mechanisms of corruption and just applying it in blanket terms, your analysis is not very useful for addressing it.

That’s fine, but historically what we’ve observed is that centrally planned economies tend to lean autocratic. Or do you really believe that select groups could petition Stalins committees for anything that deviated from his vision of what society should be. Even with Trump trying to do away with birthright citizenship it can’t be undone constitutionally.

Third, you never justify why a system based on public ownership and planning is harder to root out corruption, you just leave it as a hanging thesis. What democratic means are more effective when you have a handful of unaccountable individuals in charge of firms, instead of Socialist organization along democratic lines?

Simply because of what I’ve observed in existing places which follow Marxist ideology. The average Chinese citizen does not have any power over what the state does. The same goes for the average Vietnamese citizen. Meanwhile even small business owners can provide input to their states in western democracies and effect regulations.

As for your second point, I legitimately have no idea what you’re trying to get at. Shifting to public ownership and planning would dramatically increase the level of influence the average individual has over the economy and how it runs

This is patently untrue based on anything that’s factually happened over the course of recent history. This tells me your perspective is either misguided or disingenuous.

Capitalist countries are controlled by the wealthy few, there isn’t a genuine democracy in place.

People in western democracies can effectively vote for different types of representatives, and the pov of those representatives have wide ranging consequences. In fact that’s exactly why western democracies are experiencing destabilization via nation state propaganda which makes their citizens hate their very countries and the systems they’re based on. This is very different from any scenario that has existed in any socialist or Marxist state, including USSR or China or Vietnam.

The fact that people want to extol the virtues of Marxist ideas based on nothing but magical and wishful thinking is sad.

Capitalism “works” up to a point, in a sense. The issues with Capitalism don’t arise from “selfishness.” Rather, Capitalism necessarily monopolizes and centralizes over time, and competition lowers the rate of profit through automation and raises the barrier to entry.

Those issues are related to corruption, as mentioned. Corruption exists in all forms of economic systems. The problem with a system which relies on central planning is that corruption is harder to root out or beat via democratic means.

Further, Marxists don’t believe people will “work for the common good.” At almost all phases of Socialism and Communism, people will almost certainly be paid for their labor, be it through traditional currencies in the earlier stages of Socialism to Labour Vouchers, distributed centrally and destroyed upon first use, in the earlier stages of Communism. This is how all Socialist societies have functioned.

I am saying that Marxists believe that people don’t want to own properties or the means of production in favor of central planning. Why shouldn’t they? Because they’re so altruistic and want to favor those who will never be able to achieve such means?

The fact is that some people will have better resources to become capitalists, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to do away with capitalism. What makes sense then is to make it easier for those who cannot or do not want to become capitalists to have a life free from being abused or harmed.

You keep saying things are non sequitors because you are essentially this meme

While I don’t like Turning Point USA, I think that’s the crux of the issue in all these contentious points. Can a group of a well-meaning individuals tell the PRC how to do anything?

No one here is patting me on the back lol, which is fine. I don’t care about internet points, only about pointing out issues where people think what they want or think is inherently moral or correct

Some people on lemmy think this place exists to propagate their Marxist ideology just because some of the fediverse devs are Marxists. People will just get turned off and go somewhere else

Okay cool then

The state owns it in a Marxist society. Or are you saying that a group of farmers in China can go tell the PRC what to do

…as a tool for analysis because it has proven its handiness

If you mean, China then most would agree that their success is a natural consequence of intense competition, and not necessarily of their economic system of choice. When you run a country like an army, then it’s very likely to get good results. Yes, the people there have recourse via law (against each other, not the state), and freedom to decide where to work, but that freedom is limited when there are no natural mechanisms to create sources to direct productivity. Many new grads are jobless or underemployed.

you talk about why the concept of ownership of, say, a factory is foreign. Your point misunderstands theirs. The belief in a societal concept of “ownership” is separate from the actual, real world mechanisms at play. What is “morally correct” doesn’t guide society, starving people don’t refuse to steal bread because of morals. The reasoning behind ownership is punishment by the state for not respecting it.

So you say Marxist don’t believe moral superiority and then come out with this lol? Why isn’t owning moral good? If you give resources to acquire something, then why shouldn’t it be yours? The reason why Marxists insist on state ownership of means of production is because they fear losing control and power. The people don’t and wont own anything, just as they don’t in China or Vietnam.

In an inherently violent, imbalanced system like Capitalism, the violence is systemic and daily.

The problems are due to centralization of power and control. That’s why regulations protect everyone, including the wealthy and powerful. That’s why monopolies are dangerous to freedom.

The reality of Liberalism is violence and Imperialism, from murdering 1 million Iraqis for the pursuit of profits to dropping napalm and Agent Orange on the Vietnamese for daring to go against the US-dominated world marketplace to dropping more tons of bombs on Korea than the entire pacific front of World War 2, Liberalism dons the mask of “winning hearts and minds” for its public while slaughtering without care innocents to the tune of millions

You cant seriously say that Marxist nations won’t do asshole things to each other. This is magical thinking again. The problem is greedy people will always preserve themselves and their power, that’s what Stalin did. That’s what Lenin did. That’s what Marx would have done, if he had gotten the chance.

I am not saying the world is perfect right now. I am saying I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that creating a different hell is better than trying to make the current place less hellish.

The downvote brigade wants to discredit a pov it finds threatening

The alien assumes a property cannot be owned because it in fact can not be owned.

Why? If someone pays for the resources to build it, then who owns it? If the labor could build it to begin with, then why didn’t it? Then labor could be the owner. But if labor relies on resources to build mechanisms of productivity, then it’s fair to say that those who build the mechanisms are justly due some compensation for their input.

We already tried armed conflict over resources, the pieces of paper were what we decided was a better alternative.

So I say somewhere else that one shouldn’t bother with this comic because its assumptions are flawed, but let’s point out exactly how because otherwise Marxists will live in the flawed understanding that their pov is unchallenged or inherently correct.

— the alien assumes for some magical reason a property cannot be owned, specifically a factory. A factory is not a natural product of the world, there’s not tree growing factories. Someone put in an investment to create it, and the work they allocate in that factory is a recoupment of that factory building investment.

— the workers obey “pieces” of paper because that’s what society decided is civilized behavior. The alternative is one where a factory owner decides to kill people for trying to take what’s theirs, or the workers decide to kill the factory owner to take over. Either way, there is violence and bloodshed.

Marxist believe, for whatever magical reasons, that the violence will stop once they seize the means of production. But why should it? Why wouldn’t another subgroup of Marxists constantly want to challenge the committees who want to run that specific factory? The answer is that without a rule or agreement (piece of paper), various groups will constantly try to seize what they think should be theirs.

— the alien believes that agreeing to work with someone is slavery. Here I have two things to say: 1) for someone who doesn’t want to work, then any kind of work will appear to be slavery, and that’s not a a capitalism problem, that’s a self actualization problem for some people. 2) in reasonable economies, people have choices for places to work, or unions which ensure that employers cannot abuse them, or laws which ensure protections.

The fact is simply this, whenever two people interact, they will have disagreements. We make laws to not kill each other over those disagreements. If you want to experience what it’s like living in an authoritarian state, try living in china or Vietnam. Rule of law means little or nothing in such places, whereas in democracies you can still get some recourse via the courts, or via regulations. Have kleptocrats and oligarchs ruined democracies, yes definitely.

— being a larger class doesn’t necessarily mean anything in violent conflict. I think any philosophy which relies on violent conflict to achieve its goals is tacitly admitting that it cannot win the hearts and minds of people via ideas alone.

Edit to say, I have a busy day ahead so I wont be responding lol, but doesn’t mean I agree or don’t want to challenge this vapid Marxist pov

And once more: lol @ downvoters constantly butthurt that their Marxist pov is challenged

The point of many .ml lemmy posts is to pretend that Marxism and Leninism are the best ideas created and can never do no wrong. The point isn’t to be correct, factual, or entertaining.

Let’s not even bother with the flawed assumptions made by the aliens in the comic.

lol @ downvoters constantly butthurt that their Marxist pov is challenged

It’s a little silly equating one (albeit learned and genius) guy’s opinion as something which will work across the board for everyone, everywhere. There’s nothing democratic about socialism, just as there’s nothing democratic about the unregulated and oligarchic capitalism we have today.

At a very simple and human level, there are a number of explanations for why some elites and intellectuals gravitate towards socialism, this has been discussed to death in many places, but here’s an accessible article.

https://iea.org.uk/why-intellectuals-are-so-upset-by-the-injustices-of-capitalism/

To add some economist perspectives, here’s another article

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/free-market-or-socialism-have-economists-really-anything-to-say

What I find interesting from the above article is that China currently does very efficient market socialism, which tbh if the U.S. was to implement would make the U.S. a more powerful economic force to contend with. The caveat will be that U.S. citizens will no longer have the right to means to production, or land ownership. Such systems have no respect for individual liberties. The relative rate of poverty and inequality in the U.S. does not merit this kind of shift versus what it sacrifices.

The only countries which have issues with capitalism are the economic loser countries. Here’s the problem though, there are so many examples of countries which could have been economic losers, but instead turned it around for them because those countries had good sense and controlled their levels of corruption. The only people in countries who have problems with capitalism are the economic losers. The best way to correct those woes is through taxation and social programs, not a forced or authoritarian formula of break-shit-and-take-shit.

Edit I won’t respond to any comments to my post, I just don’t have the time to poke at this today lol, but don’t take my no response as a signal of agreement, just saying

/lazyposting

Same NIH where this guy ran a decades long scam https://apnews.com/article/misconduct-alzheimers-parkinsons-research-nih-297a61dc69cb18965015381a911197ec

If they’re saying this is now because of DEI stuff, that’s just more optics and politics to cover up decades of NIH fraud and debauchery

Idk, some leftist people (including minorities) are energized and motivated, so it’s important not to get stuck in some weird self-defeating trap. Political up and downs happen every generation. Don’t fall for the doomer BS, it’s important to keep following through with your personal goals and persevere. Find a community and volunteer, take care of each other.

Ultimately people should seek to close gaps with others, and try to find common ground, while acknowledging that there are some values which cannot be compromised, like sacrificing someone’s humanity and (personal/psychological) safety.

Let us know how it goes

This is awesome

Seems like it’s Indians turn to experience the “scary minority” moment after Latin Americans and Muslims.

firsttime?.meme