4 ms·

It is a bit bizarre to read about a system of exploitation that has flourished under a capitalist police state and then mention communists.

kbenson 3y ago
Eh, I'm not really pro communism, but it makes sense to me. If one of the central differences people focus on between the systems is private property, if someone sees that as somewhat of an illusion it makes sense to note it.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Private property != personal property Means of production is not the same as the shoes on your feet. It's just unfortunately confusing terminology that leads to twisted argumentation. Btw, the alternative to capitalist liberal states is not exclusively authoritarian marxist-leninist communism. Not all anti-capitalists are pining for another different boot to lick.
  - Retric 3y ago
    A tool (boot, glove, knife, hammer, etc) is easily both the means of production and personal property. The distinction is in effect meaningless.
    - enterprise_cog 3y ago
      A hammer isn’t a factory. There is a distinction, unless you don’t think industrialization had any effect on society.
      - Retric 3y ago
        The rhetoric around the means of production was initially in reference to slaves. Communism was an offshoot of the abolition movement not in reference to at the time minimal number of factories. And in that context people did abandon slavery. Even today factories aren’t the means of production, they don’t make houses that’s mostly people with hand tools. Nor do they make food or mine resources etc.
        enterprise_cog 3y ago
        What point are you trying to make here? Marx’s writings were based on his observations of factories and industry in England at the time, among other things.
        Retric 3y ago
        It just annoys me that people don’t understand the philosophy they expose. Marx was not the origin of Communism or the phrasing around means of production. The context for his writing wasn’t simply factory conditions being so bad he created an original ideology from whole cloth. Which is why he was credited with the Marxism not Communism.
        enterprise_cog 3y ago
        This entire thread was in response to police stealing in the US, and someone responded referencing communists. Given they context, they were clearly talking about Marxism. The guy you responded to explicitly mentioned that. And then you go off on some other interpretation of the same words, clearly misinterpreting what they posted to argue some other point.
        Retric 3y ago
        Assuming someone misspoke to support your point is a bit much.
  - Nasrudith 3y ago
    That is an imaginary distinction which only exists to anti-capitalists to have their cake and it eat too, along with a continuation of their ongoing torrid love-affair of creating their own sophistic definitions. Everyone else says more or less "that is private property you fool!".
- Gormo 3y ago
  In theory, communism can reject the concept of private property, but in practice, all property ownership is "private", as any finite quantity of matter and space must necessarily be controlled by someone in particular at the exclusion of everyone else if it is to be used by anyone at all. So the practical differences are merely aesthetic.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ben940830298432 3y ago
It is a bit bizarre to read about police state where the police are a monopoly ran and controlled by the government and then call it capitalist.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  The role of the police in upholding and defending capital is a well understood mechanic of capitalism. It's either naive or disingenuous or hold that they are separate unrelated phenomena when literally centuries of experience and scholarship demonstrates how they are interconnected mutually reinforcing social structures.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Capitalism is not a monolithic idea, and lots of capitalist scholars have challenged the validity of, variously: - police writ large - police monopolies - any given police policy and its interaction with capital Anyways, if police are supposed "to defend capital", then a policy of stealing capital from private individuals is exactly not capitalistic.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      In this case we don't need to generalize across all systems that can be called capitalism, we have a specific instance in front of us to reason about. In the american system and its precursors, the role of the police is clear and well attested. And people's personal property is not normally capital in the sense of capitalism, it not generally being the means of production or of reproducing capital itself. This is a really basic point which has me thinking we disagree on the fundamental terminology. Capitalism isn't a synonym for commerce, assets are not necessarily capital.
      - throwawaymaths 3y ago
        Despite being called capitalist, as a resident of the States that regularly visits other countries. I think many countries are more capitalist than the US, the US just gets called capitalist because we have fucked up healthcare and social services systems which themselves in the US to me seem like taking the worst aspects of socialism and combining them with the worst aspects of capitalism.
Gormo 3y ago
It's not really that bizarre. Everything boils down to human beings acting on human motivations, and humans often rationalize bad behavior by appealing to pretexts rooted in contrived ideologies. Communism is one such ideology, and the war on drugs is another. In both cases here, the true underlying motivation of the parties involved is to take other people's stuff for themselves, but their apologists, communists and drug warriors alike, both rationalize real harm done to real people by pretending their actions are in pursuit of some utopian end state (which in both cases is an unattainable fantasy).
kmeisthax 3y ago
During the Cold War, Soviet states and the socialist economic system they had were propagandized in America as "the government can take your stuff at any time because COMMUNISM". This was aided by the fact that, in practice, the Soviets could and did do that. However, it was not at all a unique feature of socialism or communism. Police states don't care about who nominally owns the economy, they care about what can be looted from it. Capitalism has no defense mechanisms against unwarranted seizure of property. Private ownership is a precursor to capitalism, not a byproduct of it. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways by which capitalist entities can gain government-like powers, if not totally supplant the government[0]. Concentration of wealth is a problem whether or not the person who owns the wealth claims to own it for themselves or in the name of the working class. The way that you prevent the government[1] from stealing your stuff is to make it inconvenient for them to do so. In the US, we have presumption of innocence, right to due process, and so on. These are constitutional rights that the government broadly respects. If they regularly didn't, you'd see brain drain as people and businesses with the means to do so would escape the country. Those without such means would begin economically sabotaging the country. However, these are blunt instruments whose use entails personal cost, so people don't use them right away. The US can therefore get away with ignoring its own constitutional obligations some of the time, and in this case, that's how they get away with civil forfeiture. Think of it like this: when Apple or Google start screwing over developers, or Reddit or Twitter start screwing over users, we don't all immediately jump ship, but some do. If they continue doing this, and they exceed a particular threshold of bullshit, they continue losing people faster than they gain. This creates a feedback loop of stupider and stupider tactics pissing off more and more people until the platform collapses. Countries work in similar ways. [0] The basic idea of Rothbardian ancap economics is that we should deliberately encourage this. The idea is that this would supposedly lead to competition for governance. Except this wouldn't actually happen because competition is a byproduct of capitalism, not an essential property of it. [1] or government-like entities
- enterprise_cog 3y ago
  I’m not going to go homeless, be starved, imprisoned, or killed by security forces if I stop using Twitter. If people start organizing and forming mass strikes and unrest, all those things would, and already have, happened. As for the rest of your comment, I have no clue what it has to do with what I posted. My point was that when talking about a system and its negative outcomes, it is pointless and often disingenuous to immediately mention another system. It blurs the topic and takes away from real analysis and critique. Let’s talk about how this system developed in the US on its own merits, and when that is well understood, maybe then compare it to other systems.

kbenson 3y ago

Eh, I'm not really pro communism, but it makes sense to me. If one of the central differences people focus on between the systems is private property, if someone sees that as somewhat of an illusion it makes sense to note it.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Private property != personal property Means of production is not the same as the shoes on your feet. It's just unfortunately confusing terminology that leads to twisted argumentation. Btw, the alternative to capitalist liberal states is not exclusively authoritarian marxist-leninist communism. Not all anti-capitalists are pining for another different boot to lick.
- Retric 3y ago
  A tool (boot, glove, knife, hammer, etc) is easily both the means of production and personal property. The distinction is in effect meaningless.
  - enterprise_cog 3y ago
    A hammer isn’t a factory. There is a distinction, unless you don’t think industrialization had any effect on society.
    - Retric 3y ago
      The rhetoric around the means of production was initially in reference to slaves. Communism was an offshoot of the abolition movement not in reference to at the time minimal number of factories. And in that context people did abandon slavery. Even today factories aren’t the means of production, they don’t make houses that’s mostly people with hand tools. Nor do they make food or mine resources etc.
      - enterprise_cog 3y ago
        What point are you trying to make here? Marx’s writings were based on his observations of factories and industry in England at the time, among other things.
        Retric 3y ago
        It just annoys me that people don’t understand the philosophy they expose. Marx was not the origin of Communism or the phrasing around means of production. The context for his writing wasn’t simply factory conditions being so bad he created an original ideology from whole cloth. Which is why he was credited with the Marxism not Communism.
        enterprise_cog 3y ago
        This entire thread was in response to police stealing in the US, and someone responded referencing communists. Given they context, they were clearly talking about Marxism. The guy you responded to explicitly mentioned that. And then you go off on some other interpretation of the same words, clearly misinterpreting what they posted to argue some other point.
        Retric 3y ago
        Assuming someone misspoke to support your point is a bit much.
- Nasrudith 3y ago
  That is an imaginary distinction which only exists to anti-capitalists to have their cake and it eat too, along with a continuation of their ongoing torrid love-affair of creating their own sophistic definitions. Everyone else says more or less "that is private property you fool!".
Gormo 3y ago
In theory, communism can reject the concept of private property, but in practice, all property ownership is "private", as any finite quantity of matter and space must necessarily be controlled by someone in particular at the exclusion of everyone else if it is to be used by anyone at all. So the practical differences are merely aesthetic.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ben940830298432 3y ago

It is a bit bizarre to read about police state where the police are a monopoly ran and controlled by the government and then call it capitalist.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
The role of the police in upholding and defending capital is a well understood mechanic of capitalism. It's either naive or disingenuous or hold that they are separate unrelated phenomena when literally centuries of experience and scholarship demonstrates how they are interconnected mutually reinforcing social structures.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Capitalism is not a monolithic idea, and lots of capitalist scholars have challenged the validity of, variously: - police writ large - police monopolies - any given police policy and its interaction with capital Anyways, if police are supposed "to defend capital", then a policy of stealing capital from private individuals is exactly not capitalistic.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    In this case we don't need to generalize across all systems that can be called capitalism, we have a specific instance in front of us to reason about. In the american system and its precursors, the role of the police is clear and well attested. And people's personal property is not normally capital in the sense of capitalism, it not generally being the means of production or of reproducing capital itself. This is a really basic point which has me thinking we disagree on the fundamental terminology. Capitalism isn't a synonym for commerce, assets are not necessarily capital.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      Despite being called capitalist, as a resident of the States that regularly visits other countries. I think many countries are more capitalist than the US, the US just gets called capitalist because we have fucked up healthcare and social services systems which themselves in the US to me seem like taking the worst aspects of socialism and combining them with the worst aspects of capitalism.

Gormo 3y ago

It's not really that bizarre. Everything boils down to human beings acting on human motivations, and humans often rationalize bad behavior by appealing to pretexts rooted in contrived ideologies. Communism is one such ideology, and the war on drugs is another. In both cases here, the true underlying motivation of the parties involved is to take other people's stuff for themselves, but their apologists, communists and drug warriors alike, both rationalize real harm done to real people by pretending their actions are in pursuit of some utopian end state (which in both cases is an unattainable fantasy).

kmeisthax 3y ago

During the Cold War, Soviet states and the socialist economic system they had were propagandized in America as "the government can take your stuff at any time because COMMUNISM". This was aided by the fact that, in practice, the Soviets could and did do that. However, it was not at all a unique feature of socialism or communism. Police states don't care about who nominally owns the economy, they care about what can be looted from it. Capitalism has no defense mechanisms against unwarranted seizure of property. Private ownership is a precursor to capitalism, not a byproduct of it. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways by which capitalist entities can gain government-like powers, if not totally supplant the government[0]. Concentration of wealth is a problem whether or not the person who owns the wealth claims to own it for themselves or in the name of the working class. The way that you prevent the government[1] from stealing your stuff is to make it inconvenient for them to do so. In the US, we have presumption of innocence, right to due process, and so on. These are constitutional rights that the government broadly respects. If they regularly didn't, you'd see brain drain as people and businesses with the means to do so would escape the country. Those without such means would begin economically sabotaging the country. However, these are blunt instruments whose use entails personal cost, so people don't use them right away. The US can therefore get away with ignoring its own constitutional obligations some of the time, and in this case, that's how they get away with civil forfeiture. Think of it like this: when Apple or Google start screwing over developers, or Reddit or Twitter start screwing over users, we don't all immediately jump ship, but some do. If they continue doing this, and they exceed a particular threshold of bullshit, they continue losing people faster than they gain. This creates a feedback loop of stupider and stupider tactics pissing off more and more people until the platform collapses. Countries work in similar ways. [0] The basic idea of Rothbardian ancap economics is that we should deliberately encourage this. The idea is that this would supposedly lead to competition for governance. Except this wouldn't actually happen because competition is a byproduct of capitalism, not an essential property of it. [1] or government-like entities

enterprise_cog 3y ago
I’m not going to go homeless, be starved, imprisoned, or killed by security forces if I stop using Twitter. If people start organizing and forming mass strikes and unrest, all those things would, and already have, happened. As for the rest of your comment, I have no clue what it has to do with what I posted. My point was that when talking about a system and its negative outcomes, it is pointless and often disingenuous to immediately mention another system. It blurs the topic and takes away from real analysis and critique. Let’s talk about how this system developed in the US on its own merits, and when that is well understood, maybe then compare it to other systems.