Our definition is slightly different. We say socialism is when workers own the means of production and communism is a stateless classless utopia.
What we basically mean when we say the workers own the means of production is that the people who work at a place decide how its run and that noone profits off anyone else's labour, so noone who doesn't work there collects a paycheck for doing jack shit and everyone who does work there gets a paycheck within one order of magnitude of each other.
I think that people are too smart and ambitious for that to ever work as intended. Classes and hierarchy are the natural states of mankind. It's in our blood to learn to game every system and put ourselves on top. I don't believe that a classless stateless uber-utopia is a bad thing, hell it sounds wonderful, i just believe that it can't be maintained. It's not in our nature to purposefully handicap ourselves, our families, or our communities for the benefit of others. It would be nice to live like that but it is not possible and will either lead to bloodshed in a vein attempt to maintain it, or more likely will devolve back into a class based society either through social developments, the natural accumulation of wealth; whether that be actual coinage, power, or just good old fashion hording of resources; or by the force of whoever has the biggest gun.
The thing about our current system, is it's not in the vast majority of people's best interests. Like, the people who actually violently defend capitalism, the cops and the soldiers and the propagandists, all of them would benefit far more under socialism. They're all workers who write and fight and die on the orders and to the benefit of very few people who "own" the world they're defending. Most billionaires have never personally killed anyone in their lives and most people who have actually pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger aren't billionaires, so the whole physical might makes right thing isn't really what's happening.
That seems to suggest that most people are willing to act against their material best interests for other reasons.
I strongly disagree that class is natural or in our blood as well.
Humanity has been around for at least 200,000 and we've only had class based society for like, 8000 years max or like, 4% of that.
In the animal kingdom, tool usage isn't that uncommon. The most unique things about humanity are our complex language and willingness to teach and cooperate with other humans who aren't related to us by blood. I'd argue that this natural impulse to help each other is what's made humanity so powerful, and these weird systems of thought that divide humanity along national lines and drive us to exploit each other along class lines are a disease of the mind that's making us weaker.
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Mine is cute horses...
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Well Horsefucker1488 and IEatHorseAss911 got banned because i guess they're ebul nasees
Serious question, what's your working definition of socialism/communism?
They abolishment of private property and the collectivization of it within government control
That's a pretty good answer.
Our definition is slightly different. We say socialism is when workers own the means of production and communism is a stateless classless utopia.
What we basically mean when we say the workers own the means of production is that the people who work at a place decide how its run and that noone profits off anyone else's labour, so noone who doesn't work there collects a paycheck for doing jack shit and everyone who does work there gets a paycheck within one order of magnitude of each other.
Do you think that's a bad thing?
I think that people are too smart and ambitious for that to ever work as intended. Classes and hierarchy are the natural states of mankind. It's in our blood to learn to game every system and put ourselves on top. I don't believe that a classless stateless uber-utopia is a bad thing, hell it sounds wonderful, i just believe that it can't be maintained. It's not in our nature to purposefully handicap ourselves, our families, or our communities for the benefit of others. It would be nice to live like that but it is not possible and will either lead to bloodshed in a vein attempt to maintain it, or more likely will devolve back into a class based society either through social developments, the natural accumulation of wealth; whether that be actual coinage, power, or just good old fashion hording of resources; or by the force of whoever has the biggest gun.
I think people being smart and ambitious is exactly the reason why "It's just the natural state of things" arguments are always moot.
I used to think that.
The thing about our current system, is it's not in the vast majority of people's best interests. Like, the people who actually violently defend capitalism, the cops and the soldiers and the propagandists, all of them would benefit far more under socialism. They're all workers who write and fight and die on the orders and to the benefit of very few people who "own" the world they're defending. Most billionaires have never personally killed anyone in their lives and most people who have actually pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger aren't billionaires, so the whole physical might makes right thing isn't really what's happening.
That seems to suggest that most people are willing to act against their material best interests for other reasons.
I strongly disagree that class is natural or in our blood as well.
Humanity has been around for at least 200,000 and we've only had class based society for like, 8000 years max or like, 4% of that.
In the animal kingdom, tool usage isn't that uncommon. The most unique things about humanity are our complex language and willingness to teach and cooperate with other humans who aren't related to us by blood. I'd argue that this natural impulse to help each other is what's made humanity so powerful, and these weird systems of thought that divide humanity along national lines and drive us to exploit each other along class lines are a disease of the mind that's making us weaker.
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