AeonFelis comments on socialism lesson

[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world -2 points 6 days ago (3 children)

capitalism refers to a system where socioeconomic power is primarily concentrated in the hands of a capitalist class

No. Capitalism is a system where socioeconomic power can be sold and bought in the form of "capital". It's true that this inevitably leads to a concentration of power, as those with lots of capital can easily get the means to buy more capital while those with less capital need to slowly sell the little they have just to scrape by, but skipping that part and just saying "capitalism is about being evil" is unhelpful because then people will say "we'll, I'm not advocating for just being evil for evil's sake, I'm advocating for allowing free trade of capital"

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[–] bunchberry@lemmy.world 1 point 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I didn't say capitalism is about being evil. You just blatantly lied about something I wrote, invented a false quote out of whole cloth, and are confusing a system with an individual action.

When you state, "Capitalism is a system where socioeconomic power can be sold and bought in the form of 'capital'," you are basically defining it as "a system where an individual can do X." No, that phrase is itself incoherent, because systems are not defined by what individuals can do, they are defined by what the system actually does. That is to say, to be capitalist, then the defining characteristics of capital accumulation, i.e. commodity production and the extraction of surplus value by the capitalist class, has to be the dominant mode of production in that system, in the real, physical world.

You are using idealist definitions whereby a "system" is defined by what is written down on paper, and not what exists in real, physical reality. This is a flaw many liberals like yourself have: seeing things in terms of legislative ideas and not what physically exists. It is nonsensical to define a socioeconomic system in terms of potential individual actions allowed for on paper, but they instead have to be defined in terms of the real-world dominant structure of the system as it exists in reality.

Blatantly lying and claiming this topic somehow had anything to do with moralism" and calling someone "evil" doesn't make your "definition" any more reasonable.

Your idealism stems from liberal philosophy in general. Liberals are historical idealists, they believe in human "free will" and if individual humans have free will, then surely, a collection of humans, i.e., society, has "free will," and thus society has the "freedom" to choose whatever it wants to be, regardless of material circumstances. You thus have a hyperfocus on understanding systems based upon the ideas and ideals written down on paper by the people who run it, because that is ultimately seen as the determining factor for the whole system.

But that is not how Marxists see the world. Human societies are physical machines built in the real, physical world, built upon real material circumstances. These unconsciously dictate the structure of the basic structure of that socioeconomic system, and the legislation that is later enacted is only there as post-hoc rationalization for something that already, for the most part, pre-existed.

The aim of political economy, then, is to objectively study these physical structures as they arise, and to document them as they really exist in the real world. The ideals and morals of the leadership of a society in what they write down on paper or legislation or say in their speeches is not of primary concern. The primary concern is actual material system that exists in the real, material world.

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[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago* (1 child)

I didn’t say capitalism is about being evil. You just blatantly lied about something I wrote, invented a false quote out of whole cloth, and are confusing a system with an individual action.

Quotation marks are not exclusively for repeating what the person you reply to wrote verbatim.

systems are not defined by what individuals can do, they are defined by what the system actually does.

You mean, systems except socialism. In socialism's case, if the result turn out bad "that’s not the fault of “socialism” but of a charlatan opportunist pretending to be one to trick the workers to enriching themselves"[^1]

[^1]: And this time I do quote you verbatim.

That is to say, to be capitalist, then the defining characteristics of capital accumulation, i.e. commodity production and the extraction of surplus value by the capitalist class, has to be the dominant mode of production in that system, in the real, physical world.

A system is capitalistic the moment the accumulation is enabled - not just when the accumulation reaches some threshold.

You are using idealist definitions whereby a “system” is defined by what is written down on paper, and not what exists in real, physical reality. This is a flaw many liberals like yourself have: seeing things in terms of legislative ideas and not what physically exists. It is nonsensical to define a socioeconomic system in terms of potential individual actions allowed for on paper, but they instead have to be defined in terms of the real-world dominant structure of the system as it exists in reality.

This is not "what is written down on paper"[^2] vs "what exists in real, physical reality". This is about mechanics vs dynamics. POSIWID does not mean the mechanics are completely meaningless - it just means that the mechanics were designed to achieve the dynamics they achieve in practice.

[^2]: Here I am quoting you verbatim again. One indicator is that there is no other reason to put the quotation marks.

Blatantly lying and claiming this topic somehow had anything to do with moralism" and calling someone “evil” doesn’t make your “definition” any more reasonable.

I did not call you "evil". I said that defining an ideology by a bad outcome is akin to making "being evil" its definition.

Your idealism stems from liberal philosophy in general. Liberals are historical idealists, they believe in human “free will” and if individual humans have free will, then surely, a collection of humans, i.e., society, has “free will,” and thus society has the “freedom” to choose whatever it wants to be, regardless of material circumstances. You thus have a hyperfocus on understanding systems based upon the ideas and ideals written down on paper by the people who run it, because that is ultimately seen as the determining factor for the whole system.

Did you even read what I wrote? Specifically the part about how concentration of power is an inevitable outcome of all this freedom?

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[–] bunchberry@lemmy.world 1 point 4 days ago

Quotation marks are not exclusively for repeating what the person you reply to wrote verbatim.

So quotation marks are used to blatantly lie and claim someone said what they did not?

You mean, systems except socialism. In socialism’s case, if the result turn out bad “that’s not the fault of “socialism” but of a charlatan opportunist pretending to be one to trick the workers to enriching themselves”

Funny how you again, say, "when the results turn out bad," which is objectively something I never said, implied, of gave the air of an impression of. I gave a definition of a physical system in the real world, not a moral analysis, but you are so obsessed with moralism that you keep trying to inject moralism into everything.

You are professionally dishonest, obsessed with lying and misrepresenting everything stated, because you know a single ounce of honesty would reveal how laughable your position is. It is equivalent to arguing that if a republican movement fails to get rid of its monarch, then is proof republicanism is just a form of monarchy, and anyone who disagrees is a moralist saying "when bad things happen" or whatever.

I am sorry, but you are just obviously a troll baiting at this point.

I did not call you “evil”. I said that defining an ideology by a bad outcome is akin to making “being evil” its definition.

No one said anything about "good" or "bad" but you. You are just professionally dishonest.

Did you even read what I wrote? Specifically the part about how concentration of power is an inevitable outcome of all this freedom?

Concentration of power is indeed inevitable from limitless individual freedom. I did not refute that because I don't disagree with it, and it is why capitalist societies always collapse into oligarchies, but socialist societies do not.

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