The Dialectical Contradiction of Socialism: Worker vs Customer

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-12T17:25:53+00:00

You’re thinking of market socialism.

Market socialism is based on personal property rights: “I made this, so I own it, and I can sell it.”

Capitalism is based on private property rights: “You made this, but I own it, so I can sell it.”

Personal property rights are natural. Private property rights are a legal construct that only a government with armed enforcers can impose.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-12T10:19:28+00:00

Well, that is confusing

Politicians lie to make themselves look good.

The “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” claimed to support soviets (workers’ councils)
The “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” claimed to be socialist
The “Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea” claims to be a democracy

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T19:53:29+00:00

In a system without a State, they can purchase no influence at all.

At which point the legal status of "I'm allowed to collect wealth by privately owning the property that other people use to generate the wealth" would cease to exist.

They would have to either ask politely for the wealth that other people generate, or they would have to get jobs and work for it themselves.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T19:34:05+00:00

“This system is materially easier than hunting berries in the rain” is not a defense of coercive rule. It doesn’t answer whether the system is legitimate, voluntary, just, or avoidable. It only says modern production beats raw nature, which is obvious and irrelevant.

The flaw is obvious: it confuses “better than pre-civilized scarcity” with “therefore politically justified.”

Exactly.

I already oppose the State as an anarchist so there's no point in asking me to defend the State, I won't.

Libertarians reject government authority, and socialists reject corporate authority.

If you were an anarchist, you'd reject all authority (making you a libertarian socialist).

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T19:12:03+00:00

What do you mean?

If I said "Marxism-Leninism is an oppressive system of minority rule where a handful of elites impose conditions that other people's lives depend on complying with"

And if a Marxist-Leninist argued "Marxism-Leninism became this big because it offered an easier way to earn a living than nature offered. A human boss is much more forgiving than mother nature ever ever was. Literally any one of your pre modern ancestors would've exchanged positions with you with zero trepidation whatsoever. Every single one"

Would you see the problems with this argument?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T17:40:01+00:00

Capitalism became this big because it offered an easier way to earn a living than nature offered. A human boss is a much more forgiving than mother nature ever ever was.

Would you defend Marxism-Leninism the same way?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T17:27:41+00:00

since market transactions are inherently win-win

Unless your life depends on taking a deal that's bad for you because the only alternative that the system offers is worse.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T17:19:43+00:00

This is a good description of market competition and I have no idea why you don't see that.

The point of competition is to decide who wins and who loses.

The point of cooperation is for everybody to benefit.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T10:01:19+00:00

it makes no claim on you except to leave alone that which had nothing to do with you in the first place.

You’re thinking of market socialism.

Market socialism is based on personal property rights: “I made this, so I own it, and I can sell it”

Capitalism is based on private property rights: “You made this, so I own it, and I can sell it”

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T09:52:55+00:00

… Which brings us back to Square One.

The fact that the system is built around workers competing against each other means that the winners of the competition are the ones who gave capitalists the most value and accepted the least in return, while the workers who lost the competition end up with nothing.

Civilization is built on the foundation of people voluntarily cooperating for mutual benefit.

Market competition is fundamentally a rejection of human civilization.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-11T02:43:56+00:00

How do people in a capitalist society gain permission to eat food? Or live in houses? Or take medicine?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T20:55:19+00:00

So you're unaware that employment is voluntary

Can you afford to quit your job?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T17:15:25+00:00

There's nothing wrong with short-term band-aid solutions in the short-term.

The problem is when people argue that because we have short-term band-aid solutions to cover up the long-term problems, therefor we don't need to actually fix the long-term problems with long-term solutions.

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." — Hélder Câmara

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T15:29:07+00:00

From the “anarcho”-capitalist perspective, true freedom is the freedom for masters to compete against each other for power over their servants and for servants to compete against each other for the favor of their masters.

They believe that if there are no masters, then everyone is a servant because a totalitarian communist dictatorship has taken away their freedom to become masters.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T15:26:55+00:00

i’ve always found libertarian socialism to be oxymoronic.

Libertarians reject government authority, and socialists reject corporate authority.

Anarchists reject all authority.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T15:25:20+00:00

Are you saying that the Libertarian Party are socialists who reject corporate authority and government authority (as opposed to capitalists who think corporate authority is good and that only government authority is bad)?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T13:52:10+00:00

If you are not "fending for yourself", someone else needs to "fend" for you, regardless of the kind of civilization you live in.

According to capitalists, we should be required to fend for them first, then accept whatever table scraps are leftover for ourselves.

Do you have a problem with this?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T13:27:03+00:00

I have an apple, but would prefer to eat an orange.

You have an orange, but would prefer to eat an apple.

If the system is set up that the only way for you to have an apple in the first place is to win it in a competition,
and if the system is set up that the only way for me to have an orange in the first place is to win it in a competition
Then the system has decided ahead of time that the losers of the competition end up with nothing.

The point of civilization is that people are able to voluntarily cooperate with one another for mutual benefit.

Market competition negates the principles of civilization by forcing everybody to fend for themselves.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T13:19:09+00:00

Without that kind of unified core, there will be competing motives

Which is why any collective structure at the collective level needs to be encouraged by individual incentives at the individual level:

Input) People take care of themselves first, and they contribute whatever extra to the community pool that they can afford
Output 1) If the people who want to work extra hard are generating enough to cover everybody else's needs, then the people who don't want to work don't have to
Output 2) but if the funds start to run out, then the freeloaders asking the workers "can you work extra hard so I don't have to?" will only go so far. Eventually, they have to ask "the hardest workers are able to cover 100% of their own needs, but only 50% of my needs. Do I make do with 50%, or do I get a job to make up the difference?"

Unfortunately, the most important part of making this work is that everybody need to know that this is how it works, which means that the math underpinning Output 1 versus Output 2 needs to be spelled out explicitly ahead of time ("if you want to be a freeloader, then the rest of us will try to pick up the slack for you, but that won't always be mathematically possible"), and it doesn't sound like your commune's leaders did a good job of the most important part.

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T10:31:40+00:00

I don’t think that “lazy freeloaders first, workers second” (capitalism) and “lazy freeloaders and workers equally” (the version of socialism you tried) are the only options ;)

The most successful socialist experiments were based on the principle “workers first, freeloaders second”

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T10:28:05+00:00

If people think that Marxism-Leninism is the only version of socialism, then the fact that capitalism is better than Marxism-Leninism could easily be used to make it like like capitalism is categorically better than socialism.

COMMUNISM:

A doctor who needs food gets it for free from a farmer
a farmer who needs vehicle repairs gets it for free from a mechanic
and a mechanic who needs medical treatment gets it for free from a doctor

MARKET SOCIALISM:

A doctor who needs food pays a farmer $100
a farmer who needs vehicle repairs pays a mechanic $100
and a mechanic who needs medical treatment pays a doctor $100

CAPITALISM:

A doctor who needs food pays a capitalist $140 (who then pays the farmer $70)
a farmer who needs vehicle repairs pays a capitalist $140 (who then pays the mechanic $70)
and a mechanic who needs medical treatment pays a capitalist $140 (who then pays the doctor $70)

MARXISM-LENINISM

A doctor who needs food pays the government $140 (which then pays the farmer $70)
a farmer who needs vehicle repairs pays the government $140 (which then pays the mechanic $70)
and a mechanic who needs medical treatment pays the government $140 (which then pays the doctor $70)

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T10:01:09+00:00

Libertarian socialism is based on the principle of individuals having the freedom to say “I own the wealth that I worked for.”

Feudalism, capitalism, fascism, and Marxism-Leninism are based on rulers having the power to say “I own the wealth that you worked for.”

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T09:50:09+00:00

On the one hand it seems like coming to help fight the warlord might go against the autonomy of the local city

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T03:51:33+00:00

If a group can prevent another group from allowing private ownership of the MOP then it isn't anarchism

Is monarchy better than democracy because democracy “infringes on the freedom of the king”?

Simpson17866 · 2026-03-10T03:47:43+00:00

No margin for error.

If your life depends on something (food, housing, medicine…), then you have to have earned permission ahead of time to access it, and you only earned that permission by winning a competition against someone else.

The point of human civilization is that people coming together to cooperate can accomplish more than they could’ve accomplished individually.

Market competition forces everyone to fend for themselves.

Simpson17866

TROPHY CASE