Re: The joy of Democracy

On Tue, 22 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 22/10/2024 08:46, D wrote:

  On Mon, 21 Oct 2024, Dave Yeo wrote:
 

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 12:00:15 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
 

I would say that they are capitalist grifters using social morality to
justify what they do.
 Same as the whole West.
 Socialism is the new opium of the people.

Wait ... socialism is actually “capitalist” now? Does that make it good or
bad?

 There's always been socialism in the market economy working much like the capitalists. Consider Credit Unions, socialist companies owned by their members competing against capitalist banks. Various types of Co-op's too.
It's always funny people like D who don't seem to have anything but propaganda to inform them that socialism equals big government.
Dave
 

 You have no clue about what sociaism or capitalism is. Credit unions are definitely not socialism and neither is a company owned by employees. In fact, what makes those two forms possible, is private property rights and capitalism. Nowhere does capitalism state that there can be only one individual owner.

>
The mere fact that you both talk about socialism as the antithesis of capitalism shows that wittingly or unwittingly you both have absorbed implicitly the Marxist worldview.

The fact that you talk about Marxism shows that you have shifted the goal post. I am talking about socialism of which marxism is a subset.

In reality the best companies are co-operative ventures between staff, shareholders, and directors, in which oddly enough everyone contributes according to his means.

My point exactly. Thank you. Although not everyone contributes according to his means. It's an imperfect world. Some contribute more some less, and of course there are single person companies and LLC who can very well be among the best.
All as it should be due to the plurality and experiment encouraged by the market.

Unfortunately they seldom pay out according to agents needs, but hey, its half the equation, right?
>
But the point about Marxism is not that it identifies a solution through revolutionary struggle towards Utopia,  but that it divides society neatly into black hats and white hats, and sets up an eternal gunfight at the wall street corral.

That goes for all isms looking to strengthen the in-group, and the expense of the out-group. See national socialism, religion, woke:ism etc.

It is a purely destructive force. One that justifies a new elite far far worse than the old as the apparatchiks bureaucrats and commissars in charge of the moral compass of the nation, having usurped it from the priests, and in charge of the capital wealth of the nation, having usurped it from the one most competent in using it to generate wealth, can now oversee the descent of the nation into 'the equal sharing of poverty'  - apart from the apparatchiks who buy in all the Capitalist goods they cant make themselves for their palaces and dachas.

Socialism is a very dangerous and destructive force. That is correct, and it must be fought again, and again, where ever it pops up.

Or that was the way it used to be, before the Left became capitalists themselves, and realised that the cost of buying enough politicians. marketing people  and activists to pass laws and taxes to make something as ridiculous as - say - windmills, a highly profitable investment, was vastly preferable to the extremely hard and detailed engineering needed to build a grid that actually worked using - say - nuclear power stations.
>
In that sense the companies themselves have gone 'socialist' in that, like Marx, they regard economics as a zero sum game.

Incorrect. By design they do what they do, and whether the economy is zero sum (it is not) or not, does not really apply. That is why todays crypto-socialist government is so extremely dangerous. It subverts and distorts the markets, just by existing.

That is, it isn't about creating more wealth, it's about who gets to own what there is left.

True.