6 ms·
It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union
by oleg_antonyan 2y ago
It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union
- heckerhut 2y agomore nuance wouldn’t hurt
- throwaway4pp24 2y ago[flagged]
- oleg_antonyan 2y agoThe headline itself literally repeats Marxists theory: the means of production belong to workers aka proletartiat. Inside the article they oppose this working class to "evil rich CEOs" aka bourgeoisie. I won't even go deeper to unrelated to the article topics like "evil imperialism" and other nowadays popular in the west ideas used by Lenin&co hundred years ago. This crap cannibalizes the very foundation of the success of the western civilization and many people fall into this - that's insane to me
- Apocryphon 2y agoRecent article on Spain's Mondragon Corporation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40143814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40143814 > No one bats an eyelid at the co-operative model in countries such as Germany, “but with these ideas in Texas or Kansas, you’re basically a communist,” says Mendieta, only half jokingly.
- kanbara 2y agois it so insane, in a world of disparity and outsized influence of CEOs and billionaires, where people cannot afford houses? maybe the insane thing was how for hundreds of years we let the rich dictate the rules as if they knew better for having taken advantage of others.
- talldatethrow 2y agoPeople can absolutely afford houses. They can so easily afford houses that they buy them quickly, often for over asking. If people couldn't afford houses, they would sit unsold until sellers lowered the price to a price someone could afford. Luckily so many people can afford houses in most areas they don't have to do that.
- sofixa 2y agoYou're confusing some entities, often private equity or similar corporations buying assets, often to rent, sometimes just to park, being able to buy, and the general public being able to afford to buy. In many desirable metro areas, you need two high incomes (two people in tech or lawyers or finance) to be able to afford to buy anything. What about everyone else?
- throwaway4pp24 2y agoWhy does everyone else need to live in a desirable metro area? That sounds infeasible with so few of them. If there was more desirable metro areas, the prices of those few wouldn't be so high.
- timschmidt 2y ago> Why does everyone else need to live in a desirable metro area? Jobs, mostly. Along with increased access to all the things people like, like food, other people, activities, etc.
- sofixa 2y ago> Why does everyone else need to live in a desirable metro area Because if nothing else (and there is a lot of else) the tech/lawyer/finance folks want to have restaurants, shops, cinemas, street cleaners, utilities etc etc etc etc
- blackhawkC17 2y ago
- ffgjgf1 2y agoIt’s the opposite. In the 60s and 70s many western countries were semi-socialist. Just look at Britain, the state owned a significant proportion of the industry, housing etc. the unions were extremely powerful (by modern standards). Same in other European countries. Arguably the US was generally much more left leaning than now, even somebody like Nixon might struggle passing off as a moderate/rightwing Democrat let alone a Republican just based on his domestic economic policies…
- sofixa 2y agoIndividual companies being owned by their employees isn't socialism. For that matter, the Soviet Union wasn't socialist either - the workers owned nothing, the state owned everything. All the land, all the factories, all the manufactured goods.
- oleg_antonyan 2y agoYep, that's what it leads to. But it all began with "good" intentions. They destroyed well-developed empire, took the land from the rich and see where it all now. Trust me, you don't want "to take money from the rich and spread them across poor" in USA, it sucks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization. Pleas, keep being a place where anyone can build a unucorn company and become rich af
- sofixa 2y ago> But it all began with "good" intentions. They destroyed well-developed empire The Russian empire wasn't well developed by any stretch of the imagination.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Miner49er 2y ago> Individual companies being owned by their employees isn't socialism. Actually, yes, this is the literal definition of socialism. It's workers owning the means of production.
- sofixa 2y agoNot individual companies, but at the wider scale. Socialism is an economic system, not the specific act of one group of employees owning where they work. In the same way that China having private companies doesn't make it capitalistic.
- TomK32 2y agoThe Soviet Union was just the same old russian feudalism with a new name tag and leadership. In a sense even modern-day russians are still not emancipated citizens like we are in the West.
- b800h 2y agoAbsolute rubbish. This is a classic trope of the fully-brainwashed. The bread queues that resulted from collectivised agriculture that couldn't respond to market conditions had nothing to do with feudalism. The mass-murder of the middle-classes in Cambodia had nothing to do with feudalism. Communism is a brutal, oppressive system that has to erase individual liberty in order to force people to comply with its absurd, unfair rules. If it was so great, why didn't the Russians just vote it back in again?
- croisillon 2y agothey wrote "same old russian feudalism" and "still not emancipated citizens" and you non-sequitur it with "if it was so great"..?
- b800h 2y agoFair point - my argument is that it added a load of additional garbage on top. It clearly didn't achieve anything substantially positive, and it hasn't done anywhere it's been tried.
- croisillon 2y agoi agree with that and i believe the person you answered to agrees as well
- b800h 2y agoI'm not so sure. Sounded like apologism to me, which is dangerous, frankly.
- 2y ago
- defrost 2y agoDid the Soviet Union ever actually practice effective social policy and embrace control from the lowest working level or did they just run with epilet backed dull grey committees with a promise they'd eventually get to actual socialism and communism post Stalin and all that not socialism stuff? I'm no fan of the USSR but they're arguably no more socialist than the National Socialism of the Nazis.
- Shihan 2y agoYeah, communism hasn't been really tried yet - let's try it again, I believe this time it will just work out. On a sidenote, please read "The Gulag Archipelago".
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago>actual socialism And what is actual socialism? Perhaps more importantly how will you enforce it?
- uxcolumbo 2y agoHow do you define socialism? I think it’s one of those terms that people define differently for themselves.
- jltsiren 2y agoThis sounds like actual socialism. The kind of socialism that seeks to abolish private property and the concept of ownership. Only personal property remains, and workers controlling the companies they work in as a natural extension. It may not be intended to be socialism, but it would lead to socialism if universally adopted. On the average, when someone says "socialism", it's intended to be an insult. It also serves as an indicator that the person is not interested in having a real discussion. But this is not it. This is real socialism. The kind of socialism that died as a mainstream option in Europe with the USSR, but which is still somewhat popular in the US.
- uxcolumbo 2y agoThat sounds like concentrated power in a hands of a few people, government officials who decide what's what. This leads to oppression. And central planning for everything is definitely bad. Plenty of examples from China and former Soviet block. Our current system (which is not true capitalism in my view) also has concentrated power in the hands of a few people. So what do you call a system where the majority of people can't be exploited by the 1%? I like Carl Sagan's answer to this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDK2chgNPZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDK2chgNPZM
- DemocracyFTW2 2y agoA finely balanced, thought-through commentary if I've read one /s