11 ms·
Conveniently, consuming shiny things and lowest-common-denominator mass media is what the Western society very much encourages us to do. Work, consume, repeat.
by Sharlin 7y ago
Conveniently, consuming shiny things and lowest-common-denominator mass media is what the Western society very much encourages us to do. Work, consume, repeat.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- McWobbleston 7y agoIt's the most efficient way to extract value from us
- walrus01 7y agoWhen I was a teenager, old people told me that my political views would grow more conservative as I got older. If anything, as I've watched growing income inequality and the further concentration of wealth among the one percent, I can better appreciate the point Karl Marx was trying to get across to people.
- cameronbrown 7y agoBeing conservative has little to do with consumption culture.
- danlindley 7y agoI'd argue that rationale was based on a very different economic evironment to what we have now, and arguing that today, a failing to know and understand the different challenges that are faced by the very people they may empart this idea to.
- atemerev 7y agoI was born in the USSR, where Marxist socialism was implemented: no significant private property (you own your clothes and furniture, but not your apartment, a car is borderline suspicious), and most certainly no private business ownership. Life was pretty miserable back then, if you ask me. Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons.
- jahaja 7y agoIt's a big problem that our current political imagination is so narrow to only allow the false dichotomy of either neo-liberalism or Stalinism. The number of top-down Stalinist within the general leftist movement is tiny.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoIndeed. Since capitalism is "lots of smaller dictatorships(companies) with a set of rules for all", and the migration to communism was "get rid of the smaller dictatorships and make a nation-wide dictatorship". "Communism" ala USSR, North Korea, etc just moved the problem to a strictly worse area, and something you could not get away with. At least in capitalism, there are better and worse 'masters'.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThe modern democratic and republican parties are chock full of pro-totalitarian, pro-authoritarian, "pro-state control of people's lives" politicians (of course they're inconsistent and they'll say or vote the opposite when they are pandering to their base though). If the "modern socialist" types gained tons of traction tomorrow and became mainstream within the democratic party people like Feinstein and other authoritarians won't stop pushing regressive authoritarian policy. They'd just do it in a way that's sculpted to line up with the (newly) popular "socialist" sentiment. So the end result would be pretty darn Stalinist IMO. So yes, you're right that current socialists are generally not in favor of secret police and shipping undesirables to the gulag but you're also wrong because if socialism becomes popular it will include all the totalitarians on that side of the isle who do want secret police and gulags. As regrettable as it may be I don't see any path for going from the status quo to something more socialist without the current crop of totalitarian jerks in the ruling class turning it into a 1984 dystopia (the technical, procedural and much of the precedent for said dystopia already exists) along the way.
- jahaja 7y agoFrom my European perspective both those parties are firmly capitalist and right-wing. I will never expect anything other that what you described from members of them. Certainly not to do some sort of socialist transformation. The current US mainstream "socialists" are after all at best bog standard EU social democrats - that is, still capitalist. I don't believe that currently ostracized strains/ideas/people will somehow inherently come to power just because democratic socialist ideas become mainstream. Democratic minded socialist are just as inoculated against authoritarianism as liberals. These people were persecuted and killed by ML/Stalinist authoritarians too.
- mlevental 7y agoif only people really new what Marx said instead of the caricatures deployed by McCarthyism. Marxism is about alienation. read this and tell me you don't relate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation#Types_of_alienation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio...
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoAnd especially so this one: "Alienation of the worker from other workers" Now, look at the 'gig economy'. Instead of grousing about shitty bosses, these companies pit 'employee' against each other. The gig economy companies are setting up zero sum style games: There's only X work per day, and each person claws for their slice of it against others.
- wry_discontent 7y agoI'm in the midst of reading Capital after realizing I'd never read any Marx, but only heard second hand stuff. It's surprisingly different from what I expected. It's a behemoth of a book, but I'd still recommend it.
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoYeah, that's how I felt when I got my first job out of college. Then I met a bunch of Marxist-Leninists and they reminded me why I stick to democratic socialism.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoIndeed. Same here. It doesn't matter how nice a system of fluid economics the Wealth of Nations was on paper. The problem is that people will exploit them. And exploitation of rules leads to exploitation of people. And where are we now? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasingly-rely-on-the-safety-net/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=56511256 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasi... "In 2014, the middle 60 percent of Americans accounted for 46.8 percent of federal aid offered to people who qualify for such help, Brookings found." Any one of us can 'fall', and not able to be self-sufficient to 'pull up by ones bootstraps'. We've given capitalism a good 300 year run. And we know its pathologies. Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion.
- saiya-jin 7y ago> Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion. Well, compared to capitalism its much more utopistic - I mean how far it is from reality of human nature and how much you should expect from people in the system. As history shows us numerous times, it really doesn't matter how good things look on the paper or during academic discussions. The reality is, evil, messed up, unbalanced, sociopathic etc. folks are part of society. I don't mean in insane asylums, I mean in schools, hospitals, corporations, hackernews, everywhere. And somehow, for number of reasons, when numerous factors combine these people rise to power although they shouldn't. Every communism I am aware of ended up as dictatorship very quickly. In real capitalism, they come and go much more quickly and the impact is smoothed out over time. This is the breaking point for me where the system is obviously worse - in communism, those dictators always ended up as net loss for citizens and mankind. And you gotta be brutal if you want to force millions into situations they wouldn't choose themselves. There are other obvious issues - no private ownership means nobody will work hard to maintain/enhance/create if at the end benefits are marginal at best. Better enjoy that beer. And over time, these things compound and the result is always the same. Capitalism wins through sheer efficiency and overall upper hand. When comparing similar starting systems, its pretty clear which is more beneficial. But yeah, it looks cool and very nice on the paper, or in TV like Star Trek.
- 7y ago
- sjg007 7y agoI've heard this too. I think it is that people fear change intrinsically. Also they want to avoid anything that could kill property values. Plus there it is just competition in general that people view incorrectly as zero sum.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Retric 7y agoFeedback loops like transistors increasing economic efficiency to pay for more transistors are unusual. Sure, over the long term markets change, but day to day most competition approaches zero sum. Americans are only going to pay for and consume so much food each year. That may move around a little, but mostly it’s a question of competition between food producers not expanding the market. Entertainment competes for only so much free time and disposable income etc. Now as productivity increases people may have more disposable income, but Disney can’t really influence how much money people have.
- bpyne 7y agoAnd the most efficient way to keep people from reflecting on their lives, realizing how far from their "ideal lives" they are.
- esoterica 7y agoAnd it’s still less toxic a hobby than being annoyingly smug on the internet.
- mrosett 7y agoHa! I’m going to file that line away.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoA zinger.... except is this even remotely true? Buying bigger TVs every year and disposing of them in landfills (and sacrificing your quality of life to afford it) seems a bit more toxic than "being smug on the internet." Plus, isn't the remark itself exactly what it accuses others of... smug?
- Sharlin 7y agoI doubt it's being smug on the internet that has brought us to the brink of a global ecological disaster.
- maybeMaybeNacht 7y agoon the internet And yet, being smug everywhere else probably did.
- walshemj 7y agoDepends which social class and country are we talking about here its not as cut and dried as that.