this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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[–] Urist@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 months ago

(yes, we exist, we read Marx AND Adam Smith - imagine that)

I am pretty sure Marx read Adam Smith too, so I do not see why this would be controversial.

The biggest ignorance of most socialists and indeed communists is the idea that capitalism is a political system. It is not.

Well, capitalism is primarily an economic system (more on that later, I guess), but as it influences and is influenced by politics, it cannot be separated from the political system that fosters it (everything is political, what parts of our societies can really be claimed to exist truly outside the sphere of politics anyway?).

what if I'm a libertarian socialist, or even an anarchist

If you claimed to be a libertarian or anarchist without being a socialist, I would not take you seriously since the former necessitates the latter. I also thoroughly agree that

Anyone who believes that a "free market" is an unregulated market is an idiot

and would like to add that anyone saying a classist society is compatible with anarchism is so as well, since the power and authority both inherent to and needed for upholding said social classes is contradictory to the nature of anarchism, and moreso of individual freedom itself.

Now onto your description of capitalism:

Capitalism is a system where we virtualised ownership or property as a form of valuing said property automatically, instead of employing appraisers everywhere

I am not quite sure what you mean by "virtualised ownership", but I would infer that you mean that capitalism is characterized by property (including capital) being realized as private property, through which independent firms and people may extract surplus value from the product of labour and thus accrue capital.

Now, both labour and value take on specific meanings within marxism, different from that of Ricardian economics (and thus neoclassical economics), which is developed from the works of Adam Smith. I am not quite sure whether you advocate for more of this (neo)classical valuation when you speak of "employing appraisers everywhere", but this valuation is a feature of capitalism that Marxists ultimately seek to destroy by rendering obsolete (I would also like to add that it is a "bad" valuation, since it places value of commodities in a pseudo arbitrary fashion where a portrait of Hitler might garner more value than a vaccine).

It's not a political system, it's not a judicial system, and it never was. That's the big brain rot, the big conjob, that and the fact that the liberals will always claim there's only one form of capitalism - which again, China has thuroughly disproved. It's literally just usury, but applied to property rather than currency. It's a tool, a double edged sword, which in it's current, centralised form fosters dialectal matetialism - yeeeey Marx & Engels.

Surely we could categorize different "types" of capitalism, but why bother when all are bad and need to be abolished for the sake of humanity? I understand how you connect private property to usury, since on a surface level it bears similarity. However, private property in the form of capital is much more nefarious as to how it exploits the labour power of the proletariat than a mere contractual transaction (I lend you X amount and you pay me back 1.2 * X amount). It is inseparable from the social conditions that force the proletariat to sell their labor power, not at a freely agreed upon price, but by the price the capitalists are able to enforce om them through their commodification, i.e. valuation, of labour.

I would say that my reading comprehension is okay, but I am unable to discern how the subject of your last sentence, that I referred to above (are you still talking about capitalism?), is somehow "fostering" dialectical materialism, to which you seem confusingly sarcastically enthusiastic about.

I can assure you that I would indeed not like to see the world burn, since I as well value human beings and all the other entities that live within the world. I also am very much sceptical of so called "strong men" with simple solutions, even though that does not dissuade me from advocating appropriation of private property on behalf of the public.

Both are scapegoats. You need the individual, you need the community, you need the collective.

Socialism is anything but. A socialist mode of production is the means by which the individuals may flourish. I tried to arrive at it earlier while talking about how libertarianism necessitates socialism. A social contract is necessary, because true individualism is not possible for multiple beings living in the same space, i.e. with cojoining spheres of influence.

If my actions influences the world of others, and by extension their possible actions or results thereof, we have arrived at the need for a social contract that allows both of us to act "freely". This is what socialism functionally is, and why you cannot reject it as neither a libertarian, anarchist nor a humanist

Now, I would assume you are feeling that I am being unfair to you since this is not directly what you say you are rejecting:

Don't come here with that bullshit, because then I'll reject you like I reject centrists, moderates, conservative, social democrats or any of the other liberal rebrandings, let alone tankies and "rip the system down" imbeciles who have blood on the tooth.

I reject all of that, because for thousands of years, naturalism has reigned. It's time for humanism to take it's rightful place, and that rejects all political ideologies and forces you to actually think - which people don't like to do.

However, by rejecting all political ideologies and in its absence believing that "thinking" will transform our current state of society into a socialist mode of production that allows that which you are welcoming, I think you have misunderstood the role of ideology and are de facto rejecting the future you describe to want. Ideology is the product of thinking really hard about the world that is, the world we want and the means by which we could achieve it. As such, ideology is the tool that we agree upon to make actual change, other than what we already made inside our own minds while thinking really hard.

I would like to see humanism in its rightful place, as a product of a socialist mode of production. I am therefore willing to exert my will upon the world, along with my comrades that want the same.