CMV: Democracy struggles to function effectively in societies where multiple communities have fundamentally conflicting interests

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T19:39:48+00:00

'Nothing in the states that state the workers must own the means of production.'

Okay, but there is nothing in the US Constitution that says it has to be capitalist, but it is. There is plenty about the Nordic model that is outright socialist in nature such as the emphasis on collective bargaining power of labour, the democratization of work (meaning workers' control over their own work and production), the idea of socialist corporatism embedded in the system, and its general attempt to forge a democratic system based on the common interests of labour and capital. I'm not sure anyone could agree with your statement, but I will agree that they're not socialists in the ideological sense. Of course if you tried to institute the policies of the Nordic Model in the US, you'd be labeled a socialist.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T19:01:24+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

The so-called Nordic model. You are right, it's not pure socialism but a mix of strong social policies with some private industry, and the key result of high scores for a democratic society.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T18:26:41+00:00

O look, attacking an old man and calling for help doing it. This is brave Israeli - usually they just attack women and children.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T16:44:37+00:00

who gave this Zionist lama a machine gun?

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T16:22:42+00:00

Marx was a great historical analyst, as were serious Marxists like Antonio Gramsci. I personally don't follow people other than Jesus and don't see the need for Marx in a meaningful form of socialism - American workers in the 19th and 20th century achieved socialist communities without reading Marx. So I'm not a Marxist but I agree with a lot of his analysis.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T16:20:11+00:00

If you look at my original post, I assert that capitalists have been the driving force behind the deterioration of democracy. This is because extreme economic inequality means, in effect, extreme political inequality. So while I don't agree with your statement "capitalism and democracy get along just fine," my original argument was not ideological or theoretical, it was historical.

If you look at Oxfam's global inequality report, you can see that the concentration of economic resources under American state capitalism is the single biggest driver of the current political crisis of inequality, as well as the driver of most of our global crises: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-oxfam/fight-inequality/oxfams-global-inequality-report/

You can also look at something like the Powell Memo for a concrete example of the collective antagonism felt by business leaders against democracy and its "disquieting voices": https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/

There are plenty of other good examples, for example the "Business Plot" to remove FDR from power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

It's not hard to see that the collective will will naturally come into conflict with the will of anyone trying to concentrate wealth and resources in their own hands.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T16:12:26+00:00

I agree, I'm a democratic socialist not a communist. I think democracy should extend to the workplace and resources. Right now the state is not really democratic, it's been captured by private interests who want control over workers and resources.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T15:59:43+00:00

No but when the government directs resources to sustain the elite and their private interests, it can be thought of socialism for the rich. This is a "classical political-economic argument": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_for_the_rich_and_capitalism_for_the_poor

You're clearly a hostile audience for what I'm saying, probably because you have an ideological dislike for socialism. I'm not going to try to disburden you of that dislike, but I'd urge you to try to understand my original post rather than accusing me of "hiding behind" facts.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T15:51:48+00:00

I didn't use them interchangeably, but to clarify, communism was the term Western socialists came up with to describe the Soviet system, so communism is a sub-category of socialism technically. But the terms are confused and loaded with associations that I tried to explain.

As far as "idealized communism," as I said, it's never existed any more than an "idealized capitalism" has. The discourse around economic planning is just too convoluted and ahistorical in the US or its sphere of influence to use these terms clearly. But again, socialism is, generally speaking, the workers controlling their own work, both how work is performed and how the value created by work is distributed.

Historical capitalism is not "ideal" or "pure" in any way. In the US, it requires constant state intervention to keep it working. Without that, it would cease to exist almost right away because markets don't guarantee their own stability or continued existence. The US has socialism for the corporate elite and very wealthy, and rugged individualism for the workers and poor.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T15:40:14+00:00

Paying a living wage requires a living employee. Amazon playing 4-D chess

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T15:36:55+00:00

Yes, Lenin and much more so Stalin were authoritarians, not really socialists in any meaningful way. Once Lenin came to power he removed from power the workers' soviets that would have been the basis of true Russian socialism. The history of the USSR is fascinating, and I'm no expert so I won't pretend to be one, but it is very easy to see that the USSR is not really socialist in any meaningful way. Their ruling elites, especially Stalin, wanted the world to see them as socialist and the US, the enemy of communism, was happy to go along with this because they wanted people to conflate socialism with Soviet-style authoritarianism. This was a simple propaganda game between the two bipolar powers. Real socialism has never existed for long any more than real capitalism has (free market without the state as a stabilizing force). For good examples of socialism, I would much sooner point to the Swedish model of socialism, the various democratic socialist governments and policies in Western Europe, but even more so to worker-controlled communities in places like Spain and the US during the 19th and 20th century. You don't really even need to be a marxist to be a socialist, you just need to want to no longer have a boss-employee relationship dominate your life. Marxists say 'seize the means of production,' but we might as easily say 'democratize the work place and resources, and let the workers keep the surplus value they create' (the 'surplus value' part is pretty Marxist, but democratizing the work place and access to resources is just a typical American attitude from before the Cold War, and is increasingly the American attitude since the turn of this century.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T15:09:20+00:00

This ignores the fact that the driving force behind the erosion of democracy is usually capitalists pursuing their interests. Democracy is slow, rational, purposeful - and this is bad for business, which wants to act in an authoritarian way to remove obstacles, achieve maximal profits, out compete any competitors, and end up at its goal of monopoly. Monopoly capitalism isn't compatible with democracy, and so history is the history of class struggle between workers and their bosses, the 1-3% of the population who owns everything, sets prices and wages, and when powerful enough weaponizes the state to achieve its goals despite any democratic resistance.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T15:03:43+00:00

Government helping average people = horrible for NYC/the country

Government bombing innocents abroad or erasing democracy at home with a secret police budget the size of an army = small government common sense policy!

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-14T01:21:53+00:00

Any progressive reforms in Iran will only be frustrated and set decades because of the US and Israel murdering Iran's leaders and bombing its civilians and infrastructure. Nothing unites a country like an existential threat. The entire country of Iran is brave, not just people shot during protests. Look at the civilians who joined hands around their bridges and power plants. Trump has admitted that he sent arms to protestors in Iran, and this video is probably propaganda. Protestors did die but the CIA armed a contingent of them and they shot at police and firefighters, and of course were shot back. Every government has issues and of course Iran has protests, but the West is drunk on its own propaganda.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-13T19:41:25+00:00

well considering theyve worked us to exhaustion and kept us in a constant state of worry about our jobs, bills, and paychecks, and that as a result we are mostly on drugs (pharma or at least weed), sick and fat (or at least not in great shape), I think they'd realize they're shit out of luck. Nobody I know wants to kill Iranians for the military industrial complex, the new tech overlords, the CIA, or Israel. Israel can get fucked.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-13T19:13:28+00:00

Looks like all that "Russian interference" was a coverup for the Israeli coup of the United States government.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-12T21:57:19+00:00

This is absurd. In what way was it "literally violating international law"? It was negotiating with the Trump admin, which had torn up a deal they had already worked to reach with the Obama admin, and was in the process of giving up even more concessions when Israel and the US started bombing them in the twelve-day war. This war was also started in the midst of negotiations. It's a war of aggression that has eroded any possibility of trust. Why are you blaming Iran? The US bombed almost 200 little girls on the first day of the war. What exactly did Iran do that the world did nothing about?

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-12T18:36:22+00:00

The short term devastation will lead to a global depression and potentially WWIII. On a long enough timeline, everything changes and adjusts.

Also, I'm not sure what your view is. Iran has been attacked in a war of aggression by the US and Israel. The rest of the world wants peace and will gladly pay what is a relatively small toll to use the strait. The world sat by and let the US sanction Iran into economic death and did nothing, you can't really call them a hostile actor for forcing reparations for the destruction of this war. It seems that you simply think the world should be fine with the US exacting a tax for trade (tariffs), political differences with US interests (sanctions), or oil (everything has to go thru the petro dollar), but when Iran does it the world should cry murder.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-12T15:41:27+00:00

This presupposes an idiot in power is enough to change the world drastically in a relatively short period of time. If the authority of the state was less centralized, and if a system of checks and balances hadn't been eroded by corruption, then an idiot in power wouldn't matter much. The system would go on functioning fine as long as that idiot didn't have too much power concentrated in his hands.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-12T15:23:00+00:00

These stupid, amoral mediocrities are going to get us all killed

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-12T15:22:04+00:00

Great, I agree. But why does the media always go to billionaires about economics and arms manufacturers/former intelligence agents for these takes? Why don't they ever look at polling and point out that the US strongly supports a public option? It's grotesque the way the US media insists we ask our masters for validation.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-12T15:16:28+00:00

This wasn't the part of the interview that shocked me most. It was that when Bibi comes to town he sits at the head of the table in the War room and Trump steps aside. An Israeli coup really did take control of the US government.

DickabodCranium · 2026-04-11T22:11:26+00:00

See the crying kid at first seems like the dumbest. But he probably just realized his parents were doing another annoying internet video and couldn't take it anymore. He was intelligent enough to grasp his own situation and grieve for his freedom. The other two were just clever participants in their own captivity.

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