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oleg_antonyan | 1 year ago

It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union

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TomK32|1 year ago

The 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|1 year ago

Absolute 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?

eru|1 year ago

'Real Socialism has never been tried'?

heckerhut|1 year ago

more nuance wouldn’t hurt

oleg_antonyan|1 year ago

The 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

uxcolumbo|1 year ago

How do you define socialism? I think it’s one of those terms that people define differently for themselves.

jltsiren|1 year ago

This 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.

ffgjgf1|1 year ago

It’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…

defrost|1 year ago

Did 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.

dennis_jeeves2|1 year ago

>actual socialism

And what is actual socialism? Perhaps more importantly how will you enforce it?

Shihan|1 year ago

Yeah, 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".

kanbara|1 year ago

is 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|1 year ago

People 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.

germandiago|1 year ago

I see. And you keep looking at billionaires instead of regulations or the things that make it possible, like housing regulations (talking Europe now, Idk America well enough).

If you really set the market more free, you will automatically have more reasonably wealthy people bc of competition. When thede few billionaires exist due to governments favors we should think what is wrong with some people selling favors to others without providing services to others.

If you start regulation after regulation you create an elite of people and normal people suffering those regulations.

The elites are basically, in this setup, a collusion of sellers of favors (politicians favoring employers) and people who buy those to avoid competition and favor their business.

This is not possible by definition if you see that with bad eyes and watch out permanently.

However, people want more and more regulation bc there are always things that are "wrong" and eventually those things take you exactly to the outcomes you complain about right now. But you want more of it. Guess what you are going to have if you ask more of it: more of that.

There is a sentence from Javier Milei that I think is very correct regarding this matter: "the politician cannot sell you a favor he does not have for selling".

Think of it. We cannot reduce all problems to that sentece but there is a very big part of truth in it.

I recommend you to take a look at the profiles of billionaires there are around the world. Some are very different to others. But the more regulations you have in a country, especially the ones that did not develop first, the less wealth transfer you have and the more money stay in the same people's hands. This is something to think about very seriously: the path to derregulation is a better choice to keep things balanced.

If you choose the other way, no matter how good it looks to you, you will get what you are asking for. Basically, "The great taking". Look for that book if you do not know it yet.

daedrdev|1 year ago

The housing crisis is caused by government policy voted in by locals who dont want their neibhorhoods ti change so block new housing that would lower prices. Which can just as easily happen in a Socialist country since I assume there is still democracy and people havent somehow changed to not be NIMBYS

DemocracyFTW2|1 year ago

A finely balanced, thought-through commentary if I've read one /s

sofixa|1 year ago

Individual 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|1 year ago

Yep, 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. Pleas, keep being a place where anyone can build a unucorn company and become rich af

Miner49er|1 year 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.