265
Talking to liberals
(lemmy.ml)
the smugness is always the worst part.
Yes, people should have that, but it's not that simple. Some liberals, particularly classical liberals, think a free market would bring those things to everyone. I don't necessarily disagree, though I think free markets can only ever be free under communism/socialism, not capitalism. The issue with centrally planned, universal healthcare is that a hostile government could refuse to provide you care, much like insurance companies that don't approve coverage for many things. Additionally, there needs to be strong medical privacy protections.
Markets are fundamentally profit driven, and services like healthcare or housing need to be provided regardless of the profit motive. These are a natural fit for the state owned industries. Where markets can have a role is providing nice to have things that improve general quality of life, but aren't living essentials.
*Capital markets. Commodity markets are fine as long as you align stakeholders with ownership. So worker and consumer coöps. Rental and housing coöps are a great example.
How do you prevent the commodities turning into capital?
You don't have to. If it becomes capital, then it is subject to the same multi-stakeholder analysis.
If I bought a printer, it would just be a commodity. If I start selling products made from said printer and hire more people, then it would need to be a worker coöp.
How would an authoritarian socialist system handle someone wanting a printer given that it could be used as capital?
Depending on the stage of socialist construction, private ownership is either limited, or no longer possible to begin with.
I like to take a Mutualist position on it. Things should only be socialized to their direct stakeholders. So most companies would be worker coöps. Utilities would be consumer worker coöps. And large interstate transit would be federal. Universal healthcare would fall into the later as a largescale consumer coöp.
This doesn't really solve the problems of capitalism, competing cooperatives still gives rise to class distinctions and creates an economy oriented around competition over collective interest. Cooperatives can play a part of a broader, developing socialist society, but should always be intended on being phased out. You can have local units of broader contexts without soley giving ownership to the local.
As a Mutualist, I firmly disagree. Coöps are essentially a democratic alternative to top-down coercive management styles or forms of ownership. It is a mutualist system that is antithetical to competition.
Take a renter's coöp for example. Essentially everyone owns their building and they aren't competing with other buildings or have shareholders would expect a return on investment.
With coöps you can actually respect locality. Large auth-socialist systems will often have with people competing interests who have undo control over local systems. That isn't to say broader standards shouldn't exist, but that they should be done thru voluntary industry wide syndication.
The problem with cooperative ownership is it puts local interests over global interests, and gives rise to class distinctions. Local councils can play a part in a broader system, but local coops forming the basis of organization works directly against collectivized planning and production. The Soviet Union, early on, experienced directly the consequences of having too much local control, resulting in some local factories "gaming the system."
Not all forms of managament and administration are coercive or bad. Trying to solve the issues of management under capitalism and replicating the competitive class structure in a horizontalist fashion misanalyzes the problem and thus provides a faulty conclusion.
To make clear the point Cowbee made, consider these three scenarios:-
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The different parts of the country have different levels of natural resources / infrastructure / educational facilities. Co-ops i the wealthier areas are doing well, and all their employees are prospering. But those in the poorer areas are struggling, and all their employees are struggling.
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There are five co-ops making the same type of product (say, radios). They each have their own design office, factory, sales networks and marketing. Would it not be more efficient to consolidate them?
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There is a co-op that works in digging coal and running a thermal power plant. The society as a whole would benefit from switching to solar panels, but this co-op keeps blocking all such efforts since it would hurt them.
I've never encountered this type of liberal. Neolib, sure.
Liberalism is an ideology with two main parts. First is political liberalism which focuses on individual freedoms, democracy, and human rights. Second is economic liberalism which centers around free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects form a contradiction. Political liberalism purports to support everyone’s freedom, while economic liberalism enshrines private property rights as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing them from political debate.
Liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property rights even when they come into direct conflict with providing necessities such as food, shelter, and healthcare. The idea that private property is a key part of individual freedom provides the foundational justification for the rich to keep their wealth while ignoring the needs of everyone else. Thus, all the talk of promoting freedom and democracy is nothing more than a fig leaf to provide cover for justifying capitalist relations.
This is an excellent primer on the subject https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
I very much understand all of this. Do you truly prefer maga? You would rather have ICE raids than student loan forgiveness? You would rather have Medicaid cuts than the CHIPS act. I am not a liberal but I have to admit I am extremely embarrassed by the short sightedness and lack of care from modern leftists. Letting Trump won is causing so much harm to people who don't deserve it. Is the DNC the answer, fuck no. But letting republicans win everything is clearly pushing America to the far right.
How on earth did you come to the conclusion the comment you were responding to was supporting MAGA? Honestly baffling
Because it doesn't support Democrats and anything that doesn't support them must be supporting MAGA. Politics is black and white like that.
Because leftists are pushing the youth towards the right. There are way more lil Nazis then there ever have been. Y'all are the reactionary assholes that assume I have to love the DNC, quite the opposite. I can however, see reality.
In what possible way are leftists pushing youth towards the right? The opposite is happening, the left is growing rapidly. There is also a surge in the far-right, driven by the US Empire crumbling. You're baselessly accusing the left of being responsible for the right, while sitting on a high horse pretending you're the one that can see reality? Come on.
The far right seems to be winning both the culture war and the political war. This was unimaginable 15 years ago.
The right, liberals and fascists included, have always been in support of the capitalist status quo. This did not change over 15 years. What has changed is that imperialism is weakening and capitalisn is decaying. The left in the US did not do this, capitalism is inducing its own demise and the reactionaries are running to the right while leftists gain strength.
Ahh yes, the demise where it is in place in literally every country on the planet and right wing parties are gaining momentum everywhere. What are you actually talking about?
No? Capitalism is in decay, it's struggling under its own conditions. Socialist countries like the PRC are on the rise. The right-wing parties are mostly rising in Europe and the US, in other words, the imperial core. Outside the west, progressive movements are rising, such as in the Sahel States.
Genuinely curious what you mean by capitalism being in place "in literally every country." Is capitalism just "trade" to you?
If China is the kind of socialism you all are talking about, I'm good.
Why? The PRC is making rapid scientific progress in production, infrastructure, green energy development, multilateral trade, and is wildly popular among its working class for the great achievements socialism has brought them. The large firms and key industries are state run, while the secondary and light industry has diverse forms of ownership from private to cooperative to joint-stock. Already, while being only in the primary stage of socialism, they are surpassing the US Empire.
The PRC's Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is merely one form of socialism, it just happens to be the presently most advanced form of it. Other countries like Cuba have similar but different forms of socialism.
Cuba seems the best example to me. PRV is not a great place for many of it's residents, and certainly not a life I want to live.
Why do you say that the PRC isn't a great place to live, and not a life you want to live? The overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens support their system and believe it's on the correct track, they are by far the most developed socialist country presently.
You vote for a genocide and tell yourself it's because you're anti-fascist... you sure that's reality you can see?
I don't vote for a genocide. Neither party is going to fully control Israel. Allowing Trump to take office was the true worst case scenario for Gaza and it's people and that is proven more true everyday. The only reality is that more Palestinians are dead because Trump is the President and they now have no shot at any sort of future as an independent nation because Trump became President. If you didn't vote for Kamala and could have you are responsible for that but your fanatascism and lack of awareness allow you to lie to yourself. If you actually gave a shit about the people over your narrative . . .
Neither party is going to fully control Israel.
Whichever party wins fully controls Israel. It is a client state.
Allowing Trump to take office was the true worst case scenario for Gaza and it’s people and that is proven more true everyday.
You are a holocaust denier. You deny the genocide existed until your team lost power. You are exactly the same as them.
they now have no shot at any sort of future as an independent nation because Trump became President.
Clownish ignorance. You supported the biggest Zionist in the entire country. It's exactly here that the distinction between evil and stupid has zero relevance.
You didn't just suddenly start giving a shit about the lives of Palestinians. You're an evil piece of shit who wants to use them as political props for your nazi party now that the other nazi party is in power.
Follow your leader.
I didn't support anything I'm just not an extremist zealot so I can understand that a bad situation can get worse. Gaza was a genocide under the Dems but under Trump it will no longer exist. If you can't see that difference I truly feel very sorry for you.
Because in the US not voting always favors the conservative party. Do any of you have any knowledge history?
Not only are you creating a false dichotomy here, but you're ignoring the fact that Trump coming to power is itself is a direct product of decades of liberal policies.
It's not though. He came to power through a strong propaganda network, he is actually just continuing liberal policies.
The question you need to ask yourself is what made his message resonate with people now when this sort of rhetoric was ignored before. People are falling out of the liberal mainstream because they see their material conditions decline, this makes them lose faith in the system and mainstream media. This is what creates room for opportunists like Trump to come in and promise change like draining the swamp, and so on. Obviously, he is continuing the same policies that benefit the ruling class, but the same people who were fooled by the liberal message for decades prior, are now fooled by his promises.
Because NYC has proof the DNC is not far enough left to achieve their goals. Everywhere else the DNC can be used as a leftist Boogeyman.
The dem party as a whole is fundamentally a right wing party. The NYC is proof that there is demand for left wing policies in the US, but they cannot be implemented sustainably within the capitalist system.
Right, but it's currently the only system in use anywhere. It is truly a despicable way of life that will likely cause the end of this planet but I am 99% sure that allowing it to be completely controlled by billionaire tech edge lords and racist incels is not a better outcome than Kamala. This isn't about being the entire game plan and effort but allowing the further right party gain control by not voting just doesn't make any sense to me. Every single president of my lifetime has sucked but the damage done by Bush with Homeland Security shit and what Trump is doing with ICE is honestly detrimental enough that ignoring it is fucking weird to me. Again, I do not like the DNC but I understand the dystopian nature of the country I live in and the true hopelessness of third party votes. The DNC will never get a penny from me unless hell freezes over and they run actual leftists, but they will get my vote because I can't picture a single scenario where anyone's life is improved when Republicans are in control.
Uh no, other systems very much do exist. Go look at China or Vietnam as two obvious counter examples. The reality is that the US will continue on the exact same trajectory regardless of which oligarch owned party is in charge. The US is a dictatorship of capital. Until people start organizing outside voting and create an actual labour movement, nothing will fundamentally change.
Neolibs are just a subcategory of liberal, though.
I'm not actually sure that's true.
Why wouldn't it be? Liberalism is the ideological superstructure of capitalism, Neoliberals are a particular type.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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