4 ms·

The most capitalist thing possibly happening at the heart of a capitalist empire is actually gobbunism guyz

js8 10mo ago
Except the Soviet society wasn't very communist. It definitely wasn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...
- decimalenough 10mo ago
  Funny how no self-proclaimed Communist party has ever achieved anything even approximating communism.
  - saubeidl 10mo ago
    It's similar to the mythical "free market" in that way.
    - nephihaha 10mo ago
      The free market today (so called) is heavily managed by governments, leading to a kind of centralised control which converges with what Marxism produces in practice. Neither deliver what they promise. Marxism (and capitalism) sell themselves as ground upwards movements but are in fact top down. They are both based around materialism which leads to a cynical attitude to life and individuals.
      - saubeidl 10mo ago
        That is precisely my point, that is the only type of free market to ever exist, because it's an ideological construct.
        nephihaha 10mo ago
        The free market does exist, but not where it is supposed to. The black market sometimes acts as a free market... As do car boot/yard sales... Precisely because it is not interfered with by the authorities all the time. Putting everything online is going to increase government interference. We are heading to a centralised command economy. Marxists want more of that, not less, but sell it as liberating the working classes.
        derelicta 10mo ago
        > Marxists want more of that, not less, but sell it as liberating the working classes. Well yes, because it does. You dont even need a fully planned economy, some market forces aint bad and some small bourgeois aint bad either. Bird in a cage etc etc.
        dragonwriter 10mo ago
        > We are heading to a centralised command economy. Marxists want more of that Marxists want the working class whose labor is applied to capital in production to direct capital, and thereby production, rather than capital being privately owned and its owners directing labor, and thereby production. While the democratic centralism favored in Leninist theory and its derivatives is (at least in the theory in which it is conceived) a means of achieving that, current Western Marxists are, IME, all over the map with regard to centralism. They are more united about who should wield power over the economy than about the structure of how that power should be wielded.
  - derelicta 10mo ago
    Communism is no button you just have to push. It can be described as a society so prosperous that its members do not need to work anymore to live, where classes have been abolished and where the State has disappeared. It needs to be built and engineered. Countries like China and Vietnam are going in this right direction, and they are already more prosperous, more industrious and more democratic than their western adversaries despite starting from basically scratch
- hagbard_c 10mo ago
  Soviet society was communist, don't fall for the real Communism has never been tried ruse. Soviet society was one of the examples of how Communism at a large scale can end up looking, others are e.g. Cambodia under Pol Pot, China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, Venezuela under Maduro, etc. The things these societies have in common is that they were/are repressive, that the Party/ the government claims it was/is working for 'the people' and that there was/is a clear distinction between Party members and the 'common folk' with the former having access to perks not available or allowed to the latter. Communism at a large scale does not work because it goes against human nature - we're not bees or ants or other similar animals but rather belligerent primates with a cultural predilection for living in families and clans. It is there where Communism can work, at a small enough scale so that leechers and moochers can be put in their place and there is no (need for a) Party. As soon as the size of the Communi(ty) gets so large that any individual can no longer check on all of the others Commun(ism) no longer works since it offers far too many opportunities for less scrupulous individuals to leech of others and for ideologists to rise to power 'in service of the people'.
  - darkwater 10mo ago
    > Communism at a large scale does not work because it goes against human nature - we're not bees or ants or other similar animals but rather belligerent primates with a cultural predilection for living in families and clans. And yet, we don't live as such animals and our collective behavior changed throughout history thanks to our reasoning capabilities taking over the inner "animal".
    - hagbard_c 10mo ago
      > our collective behavior changed throughout history thanks to our reasoning capabilities taking over the inner "animal". That 'inner animal' comes out the moment the shelves in the supermarkets are empty and the electronic payment systems are down. Those reasoning capabilities may have put a thin cultural veneer over the beast but it is still there, ready to defend itself and its own if push comes to shove as well it should - cultures have a way of collapsing when times get hard.
  - 10mo ago
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  It was founded by Marxists to fulfil Marxist dogma. Either Soviet Marxism was not as predictive of reality as it liked to pretend to be or it compromised itself. Any system which says "my way or the highway", and that it alone is scientific, is inevitably going to lead to lead to oppression in practice whether it's Marxist dogma or the subject of this article. Yanis Varoufakis himself attended private school and his father in law was one of the biggest industrialists in Greece. I'm sceptical about how much he knows about working class realities.
  - saubeidl 10mo ago
    That's a nice parallel to the article, which points out that the biggest fans of capitalism haven't managed to actually create their predicted free markets. Pure ideology.
    - Hikikomori 10mo ago
      And when do something approaching free markets we get things like the Bengal and Irish famines.
      - nephihaha 10mo ago
        Bengal's famine occurred because British imperial government (not market forces) shifted food resources away to support the war effort. Ireland's famine occurred within a largely feudal system, and has been followed by massive land reforms within Ireland. It is arguable if either occurred due to "free market forces". For what it's worth, the massive famines in the USSR and PRC didn't take place due to free market forces either. The problem with the free market vs Marxism argument is that they are both materialist. These systems know the price of things and real value of nothing.
        saubeidl 10mo ago
        At least in the context of the Irish famine, capitalist policies were a key driver: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43910575 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43910575
_DeadFred_ 10mo ago
The most capitalist thing possible/unregulated scenario happened and was called the East India Company.

js8 10mo ago

Except the Soviet society wasn't very communist. It definitely wasn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...

decimalenough 10mo ago
Funny how no self-proclaimed Communist party has ever achieved anything even approximating communism.
- saubeidl 10mo ago
  It's similar to the mythical "free market" in that way.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    The free market today (so called) is heavily managed by governments, leading to a kind of centralised control which converges with what Marxism produces in practice. Neither deliver what they promise. Marxism (and capitalism) sell themselves as ground upwards movements but are in fact top down. They are both based around materialism which leads to a cynical attitude to life and individuals.
    - saubeidl 10mo ago
      That is precisely my point, that is the only type of free market to ever exist, because it's an ideological construct.
      - nephihaha 10mo ago
        The free market does exist, but not where it is supposed to. The black market sometimes acts as a free market... As do car boot/yard sales... Precisely because it is not interfered with by the authorities all the time. Putting everything online is going to increase government interference. We are heading to a centralised command economy. Marxists want more of that, not less, but sell it as liberating the working classes.
        derelicta 10mo ago
        > Marxists want more of that, not less, but sell it as liberating the working classes. Well yes, because it does. You dont even need a fully planned economy, some market forces aint bad and some small bourgeois aint bad either. Bird in a cage etc etc.
        dragonwriter 10mo ago
        > We are heading to a centralised command economy. Marxists want more of that Marxists want the working class whose labor is applied to capital in production to direct capital, and thereby production, rather than capital being privately owned and its owners directing labor, and thereby production. While the democratic centralism favored in Leninist theory and its derivatives is (at least in the theory in which it is conceived) a means of achieving that, current Western Marxists are, IME, all over the map with regard to centralism. They are more united about who should wield power over the economy than about the structure of how that power should be wielded.
- derelicta 10mo ago
  Communism is no button you just have to push. It can be described as a society so prosperous that its members do not need to work anymore to live, where classes have been abolished and where the State has disappeared. It needs to be built and engineered. Countries like China and Vietnam are going in this right direction, and they are already more prosperous, more industrious and more democratic than their western adversaries despite starting from basically scratch
hagbard_c 10mo ago
Soviet society was communist, don't fall for the real Communism has never been tried ruse. Soviet society was one of the examples of how Communism at a large scale can end up looking, others are e.g. Cambodia under Pol Pot, China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, Venezuela under Maduro, etc. The things these societies have in common is that they were/are repressive, that the Party/ the government claims it was/is working for 'the people' and that there was/is a clear distinction between Party members and the 'common folk' with the former having access to perks not available or allowed to the latter. Communism at a large scale does not work because it goes against human nature - we're not bees or ants or other similar animals but rather belligerent primates with a cultural predilection for living in families and clans. It is there where Communism can work, at a small enough scale so that leechers and moochers can be put in their place and there is no (need for a) Party. As soon as the size of the Communi(ty) gets so large that any individual can no longer check on all of the others Commun(ism) no longer works since it offers far too many opportunities for less scrupulous individuals to leech of others and for ideologists to rise to power 'in service of the people'.
- darkwater 10mo ago
  > Communism at a large scale does not work because it goes against human nature - we're not bees or ants or other similar animals but rather belligerent primates with a cultural predilection for living in families and clans. And yet, we don't live as such animals and our collective behavior changed throughout history thanks to our reasoning capabilities taking over the inner "animal".
  - hagbard_c 10mo ago
    > our collective behavior changed throughout history thanks to our reasoning capabilities taking over the inner "animal". That 'inner animal' comes out the moment the shelves in the supermarkets are empty and the electronic payment systems are down. Those reasoning capabilities may have put a thin cultural veneer over the beast but it is still there, ready to defend itself and its own if push comes to shove as well it should - cultures have a way of collapsing when times get hard.
- 10mo ago
nephihaha 10mo ago
It was founded by Marxists to fulfil Marxist dogma. Either Soviet Marxism was not as predictive of reality as it liked to pretend to be or it compromised itself. Any system which says "my way or the highway", and that it alone is scientific, is inevitably going to lead to lead to oppression in practice whether it's Marxist dogma or the subject of this article. Yanis Varoufakis himself attended private school and his father in law was one of the biggest industrialists in Greece. I'm sceptical about how much he knows about working class realities.
- saubeidl 10mo ago
  That's a nice parallel to the article, which points out that the biggest fans of capitalism haven't managed to actually create their predicted free markets. Pure ideology.
  - Hikikomori 10mo ago
    And when do something approaching free markets we get things like the Bengal and Irish famines.
    - nephihaha 10mo ago
      Bengal's famine occurred because British imperial government (not market forces) shifted food resources away to support the war effort. Ireland's famine occurred within a largely feudal system, and has been followed by massive land reforms within Ireland. It is arguable if either occurred due to "free market forces". For what it's worth, the massive famines in the USSR and PRC didn't take place due to free market forces either. The problem with the free market vs Marxism argument is that they are both materialist. These systems know the price of things and real value of nothing.
      - saubeidl 10mo ago
        At least in the context of the Irish famine, capitalist policies were a key driver: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43910575 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43910575

_DeadFred_ 10mo ago

The most capitalist thing possible/unregulated scenario happened and was called the East India Company.