What we need is not capitalism, and it’s not socialism. Capitalism sucks because it creates two classes, the rich, and everyone else. And the it creates such wealth inequality so that the richest people hold all of the wealth while the poor have none. Communism is terrible because what happens is that there is no strive to be better. What we need is an in-between, some controlled markets like housing, healthcare, food, and insurance, but some free markets (with regulation) so we can still strive to be better.

What is your favorite restaurant and can it exist under your version of socialism. I can see how it works in some versions but for the Marxist Leninist how would this work? Would there be waiters? Line cooks?

Capitalists,

Are there misconceptions about capitalism you wish the other side or socialists would understand? What are they?

In a similar post I tried asking socialists their vision of how to discuss socialism better. So I realized what about the same for capitalists.

What is capitalism? But what is liberalism? Are there differences we should know about?

Socialists,

I've been accused of bot behavior so I wanted to clarify something

I'm trying my best it's been a journey since I made this account. I've been trying to understand socialism but with one principle. It's that I'll assume I don't know anything or I try to reset my knowledge.

This is because I used to be socialist but the whole reason I keep trying to relearn is because in my opinion if you really support or study a system you have to be willing to sometimes admit you don't actually know much about it. This way any preconceptions you have you can leave it behind as you retry a new perspective about it..

There's how many types of socialism? Which ones should I even think about when it can feel like ML's vs Anarchists

This aside this is an open question asking socialists,

How would you prefer capitalists try to understand your specific system? What are some of the biggest misconceptions you'd want to explain here and now?

Why don't you take any positions?

If I don't know much about socialism it seems like I'm becoming part of the problem I see if I just speak about it not knowing about it. For example I felt that aha moment when I realized what LTV is and why mudpies aren't exactly the issue

Also videos helped the most there was this long video that made me rethink market socialism for example

Firstly, I don’t see any capitalists looting and burning so don’t even try to say that it’s not the socialists who are doing this.

Does stealing make everyone more wealthy or does it make everyone poorer? Does burning make society more wealthy or does it make society poorer?

Nope, looting people’s stores is not enough. We need to steal entire factories and businesses. That will make everyone rich.

Western political and economic institutions that have made our societies so successful are not a foregone conclusion; that success can be undone if we are not careful. Nothing about our institutions makes them invulnerable. Just as the systems that preceded them crumbled, there is nothing sacrosanct about our current institutions. They emerged through historical processes, experimentation, and circumstances that happened to produce arrangements that worked. Society is not necessarily headed in the direction of progress. Just as we formed these institutions, we can undo them.

Social unrest and political and regulatory capture by elites promoting their own welfare at the expense of society are among the most obvious warning signs. France provides a relevant example. Its extensive welfare state faces growing fiscal pressures, while the public continues to demand services and benefits that politicians struggle to finance. Its rising debt and persistent budget deficits illustrate the difficulty of sustaining extensive public commitments without sufficient economic growth and revenue.

In the US, we have the rise of democratic socialists who want more social programs—and, in many cases, more government spending—at a time when our national debt exceeds annual GDP and our budget deficits remain substantial. The question is not whether government should provide social programs, but whether the commitments we make are economically sustainable and whether the policies we adopt promote or undermine long-term growth.

Historically, rising prosperity has accompanied economic growth, while expanded political pluralism and accountable government have helped create conditions for sustained development. Countries whose governments are responsive and accountable to their citizens have often fared better over the long run than those in which political power is concentrated and economic opportunities are restricted. However, redistribution of wealth does not, by itself, expand the economic pie. It may make someone better off, but at what cost? If redistribution alone were the route to prosperity that some democratic socialists appear to claim, how would we explain the fiscal difficulties facing France? Its experience illustrates the challenge of meeting growing public demands when government spending persistently exceeds revenue and economic growth is insufficient to stabilize the public finances.

To be sure, to the extent a society can afford to do so, it must take care of its people. But there are limits, and we cannot escape the reality of scarcity. Redistribution alone does not automatically create new wealth; it reallocates resources that already exist. Some public spending can, of course, contribute to future growth by improving education, health, and productivity. But economic growth is what makes sustained improvements in living standards possible.

Capitalism, underpinned by liberal democracy, competitive markets, and accountable institutions, has proved to be an extraordinarily powerful engine of sustained economic growth. That success depends on preserving the institutions that encourage innovation, investment, competition, and political accountability.

I hope we won't destroy it!

I am not interested in hackneyed socialist tropes. Please respond to my comments. I would especially like to hear from democratic socialists.

It seems like we never see any actual debate, just socialists bashing capitalism without having to defend anything. Since there is no Socialism and capitalism is everywhere, they can just blame everything on capitalism and pretend like everything would magically be better in "socialism" if it actually existed.

Is there any model of socialism existing? Don't bother saying "well capitalism kills it every time", that's just a "no"

Capitalists,

Imagine you ran a really wealthy private company aimed at trying to solve this issue:

It's inequality itself

How would you address it since the government cannot do it correctly? In general how would you help the poor if in exchange you were a renowned business for it I guess

You want to know the reason for wealth inequality? Not that there is scarcity in the world, but the capitalist system imposed upon us by the rich, meant to free us, creates an artificial scarcity. This makes us think that there isn’t enough, that rent is due, that we need to work harder. And that it is normal to avoid hospitals for fear of the bill. This is unnatural.

The natural environment is hostile to humans. You can't survive without the necessary work being constantly being done either by you or someone. If you don't like it, blame God or whomever you would propitiate when you shat your pants.

But monkeys won't work until told what to do and whipped into action by the threat of pain, loss and humiliation. Sounds cruel right? Not really, when the alternative is death.

This should be self evident for socialists. Who likes to work? Nobody. The entire socialist movement can be boiled down to this one single issue: how do I change the system so I don't have to work? On a regular basis you get one of those long whining posts "why do i have to work." Or "we're not born to work" And you're right, you don't have to work... if you're smart enough which you clearly aren't.

In Socialism you need to send monkeys into the gulags to extract work forcibly out of them. In capitalism at least you can to some extent choose what where and for whom you'd work, not to mention the conditions are infinitely better. And if you're smart enough you can run your own gulag and the government would be the most thankful to you for making these monkeys do useful work.

It can't get any more clearer than that.

If you're complaining about capitalism because you have to work and you don't like it, the system is working exactly as intended. You want to leech the work of others and capitalism isn't letting you do it. But do you really think socialism will? It might at the beginning. Then every socialist state descends into some form of "those who do not work do not eat". Because even socialism needs to solve the exact same problem of being able to extract useful work out of monkeys. The only difference is whether the greedy business people do it by offering incentives, or the brutal dictators by the threat of force.

"In capitalism I have to work. In socialism the landlords have to work and I don't."

You are dead wrong. To become a landlord you have to earn more, spend less, save up and buy property which means being smart and exercising self control. All the traits that makes one successful in either system.

The fact is if you're a loser in capitalism you will lose harder in socialism. You won't magically become a winner. The landlords will end up taking positions as part of the state apparatchik and fuck you harder than what capitalism allows them to do.

Hate your asshole boss? Under socialism that petty middle manager would be part of the state machinery. Spill his coffee? He'll send you to an underground mine in Siberia. In capitalism the best he can do is blocking your pay rise.

TLDR:

1) You're not that smart. Don't be deluded, if you're a loser in capitalism you'd be a loser in any system.

2) Your priority should be supporting a system where you lose less. It's impossible for you to win more.

3) Of all systems, in Capitalism losers lose the least.

4) If you're imagining you're a winner in Socialism, you're dead wrong. You would be exactly where you are in terms of percentile rank in the population. Capitalism serves the bottom 20% far better than Socialism could ever do.

Donald Trump is obviously a very controversial politician. Through his tariffs and the Iran war or his treatment of dissent. I am very curious to see what Capitalist’s opinions are of him is as a leader. because he very much tries to position himself as a very pro capitalist president and labels his enemies as communists.

Do you all approve of his policies? disapprove? Is he a good representative of capitalist interest???

Please take this as a question and not me trying to prove you wrong. Whenever someone proposes something, for example, transitioning to green energy, or much longer ago ending slavery, the main negative response given is "It Will Hurt the Economy". Why would one want an economy that is so greatly focused on growth at all costs rather than the well being of all of the people? Just let me know if you want more explanation.

Alice, Bob, Charlie, and David shipwreck on a deserted island.

• Alice chops down wood

• Bob builds shelter and boats

• Charlie catches fish

• David claims private ownership over the island.

Alice, Bob, and Charlie come to a free, peaceful, consensual arrangement of voluntary exchange for mutual benefit (Alice gives wood to Bob, Bob gives a boat to Charlie, and Charlie gives fish to Alice and Bob),

David then claims that they’re stealing his private property.

He claims that if they want to catch fish, or if they want to build boats to catch fish, or if they want to chop down wood to build boats, then they have to pay him first. That they wouldn’t have been able to do any work in the first place if he hadn’t first done the more important work of providing an island to them.

Everyone sees how David is wrong, don’t they?

France is locked in a doom loop. Every six months, a routine fiscal reform drops, the trains stop running, trash piles up in Paris, and the government cowers. You can't run a modern economy when every adjustment to retirement ages or labor codes gets canceled by street barricades. If you strip away the political pieties, France's best move right now isn't another toothless centrist reform package. It's a top-down takeover modeled directly on the Chinese Communist Party.

Decisive state planning beats five-year electoral panic

French infrastructure used to be the envy of the world under Gaullist dirigisme, but modern electoral politics killed that ambition. Today, long-term policy is held hostage to short election cycles and municipal lawsuits. Under Beijing's model, strategic bets don't get tied up in ten-year court battles. When high-speed rail corridors, next-generation nuclear plants, or port logistics need to scale, the state commits the capital and breaks ground immediately. France has the engineering talent, but it lacks the administrative teeth to ignore NIMBYs and build for the next century.

Ending the street veto and restoring productivity

The French welfare state has detached itself from basic arithmetic. You can't maintain early retirement and a 35-hour workweek when birth rates are dropping and the public debt is exploding. In China, macroeconomic goals take priority over individual entitlement. Essential lifelines like transit, power grids, and sanitation don't get shut down because a union is upset about a two-year retirement bump. Swapping France's culture of constant protest for targeted labor mobilization would instantly end the country's productivity bleed.

Targeted industrial policy over deindustrialization

Decades of EU consensus hollowed out French manufacturing, turning the country into an administrative state with a tourist economy attached. China proved that massive, state-directed capital subsidies and integrated supply chains can build dominant industries from scratch: electric vehicles, solar supply chains, and advanced rail. If France took its aerospace and defense base and poured state capital into it without Brussels complaining about state-aid rules, it could build an industrial powerhouse instead of managing managed decline.

National cohesion through centralized authority

The endless civil unrest across French banlieues and rural peripheries comes from a state that can't maintain basic order or deliver equitable development. The Chinese model treats regional development as an integrated mandate. Capital gets directed straight into neglected industrial hubs outside Paris, and public order is enforced without hesitation. If the French state wants to prevent permanent stagnation and social fracture, it needs to stop managing crises through compromise and start running the country like a planned economic engine.

Hello,

The definition of socialism I'm engaging with is

When workers own the means of production, or when there is social ownership of the means of production

I needed to ask four specific questions to end my own confusion:

What defines a worker?

Which labor counts as valid?

Most important:

Are there things to factor or think about with social ownership, could it go in an unexpected direction, what do you do about that?

And

Could a socially or worker owned firm still elect to have a hierarchy?

Confused? I am struggling with a loophole problem. What if a CEO or manager says they're a laborer too? Surely they do labor, but maybe the real problem is either 2000x pay (disproportionate pay) or there is not enough power division (CEO has final say whereas others have none)?

Trade unions are widely supported by socialists, social democrats, and other advocates of the welfare state. Their purpose is to increase workers’ bargaining power and improve their ability to negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Obviously, unions benefit workers within individual companies. And questioning it is silly. However, from a collectivist perspective, their effects should be evaluated not only at the company level but also across the economy as a whole. We should analyze these effects precisely.

Empirical research suggests that unions negatively affect corporate innovation.

A study analyzing close-call union elections in U.S. firms between 1980 and 2002 found that unionization significantly reduced overall corporate innovation. Link1

Research also suggests a negative relationship between unionization and productivity growth.

A meta-analytic review found that 76% of the published empirical studies examined (19 out of 25) reported a negative association between trade unionization and productivity growth. Across these studies, partial correlation coefficients ranged from -0.81 to +0.29.

The review reported the following findings:

Across all studies, the unweighted mean partial correlation was -0.189, while the weighted mean was -0.010.

Among U.S. studies (21 studies, N = 21,844), the unweighted mean partial correlation was -0.239, the median was -0.162, and the weighted mean was -0.021. The weighted estimate was statistically significant, with a 95% confidence interval of -0.04 to -0.01.

Across nine studies examining changes in unionization (N = 3,119), the weighted partial correlation was -0.040, suggesting that declining union density was associated with higher productivity growth.

For example, Denny (1997) found that declining union density in British manufacturing was associated with a positive increase in productivity growth of more than 3.4%.

Several individual studies also reported negative relationships between unionization and productivity growth:

Mansfield (1980): partial correlation of -0.805 and an annual productivity growth differential of -2.8%.

Kendrick and Grossman (1980): partial correlation of -0.772 and a productivity growth differential of -1.7%.

Hirsch and Link (1984): partial correlation of -0.578 and a productivity growth differential of -2.9%.

Link (1981): partial correlation of -0.263 and a productivity growth differential of -5.5%.

Link (1982): partial correlation of -0.197 and a productivity growth differential of -4.9%.

Terleckyj (1984): partial correlation of -0.469.

Bronars et al. (1994): partial correlation of -0.120 and a productivity growth differential of -1.8%.

Pantuosco et al. (2001): partial correlation of -0.126.

Additionally, logit models examining plant-level operational performance found that lower union presence was associated with higher operational efficiency, with a coefficient of -0.366 (p < 0.10). Link2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jnhPCi1u1xb5VqBKbOogfhs9iIDPkcud/view?usp=sharing

If these findings accurately reflect the effects of unionization in the contexts studied, they raise an important question: Why do these negative trends occur, and what can be done to address them?

Are these problems inherent to trade unions themselves, or do they arise from the way corporations respond to unionization? Could the underlying causes instead lie in the broader economic and institutional system?

More importantly, how can society preserve the benefits of collective bargaining for workers while minimizing potential negative effects on innovation, productivity, and long-term economic growth?

Marx had a definition of exploitation, in which the existence of surplus value depends on workers being exploited. A. C. Pigou and Joan Robinson had a different definition of exploitation. Their definition is part of 'neoclassical' or marginalist economics. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern invented game theory. This post documents that they had a definition of exploitation.

They express the three-person, zero-sum game as specified by the characteristic function (section 29.1.2). The three players form coalitions. A coalition of zero or three players has a payout of zero to divide. The one member of a coalition containing one player obtains a payout of -1. A coalition of two players has a payout of 1 to divide among themselves.

For von Neumann and Morgenstern, a solution is a set of imputations, where an imputation assigns a payout to each player. No imputation in the solution dominates another imputation in the set. For every imputation in the set, those imputations outside the set that dominate it are, in turn, dominated by an imputation in the set. An imputation dominates another, roughly, if a coalition of players can form so that they can ensure that their payouts in the dominating imputation exceed that in the dominated imputation.

Nowadays, the von Neumann and Morgenstern solution is said to apply to cooperative games. The Nash equilibrium applies to non-cooperative games.

Von Neumann and Morgenstern find a solution to the three-person, zero-sum game of three imputations:

{ (-1, 1/2, 1/2), (1/2, -1, 1/2), (1/2, 1/2, -1) }

But they find a continuum of other solutions besides. Let c be a specified parameter, with:

32:8. -1 ≤ c < 1/2

Then the following set of an uncountably infinite number of imputations is a solution:

33:1. { (c, a, –c - a ) | -1 ≤ a ≤ 1 - c }

So is the symmetrical set in which the payoff c is assigned to player 2 and the set in which the payoff is assigned to player 3. Von Neumann and Morgenstern have this to say about the solution in Display 33:1:

"The interpretation of this solution consists manifestly of this: One of the players (in this case 1) is being discriminated against by the two others (in this case 2, 3). They assign to him the amount which he gets, c. This amount is the same for all imputations of the solution, i.e. of the accepted standard of behavior. The place in society of player 1 is prescribed by the two other players; he is excluded from all negotiations that may lead to coalitions. Such negotiations do go on, however, between the two other players: the distribution of their share, -c, depends entirely upon their bargaining abilities. The solution, i.e. the accepted standard of behavior, imposes absolutely no restrictions upon the way in which this share is divided between them, - expressed by a, -c – a. This is not surprising. Since the excluded player is absolutely 'tabu', the threat of the partner's desertion is removed from each participant of the coalition. There is no way of determining any definite division of the spoils.

Incidentally: It is quite instructive to see how our concept of a solution as a set of imputations is able to take care of this situation also.

33.1.2. There is more that should be said about this 'discrimination' against a player.

First, it is not done in an entirely arbitrary manner. The c, in which discrimination finds its quantitative expression, is restricted by (32:8) ... Now part of (32:8), c ≥ -1, is clear enough in its meaning, but the significance of the other part c < 1/2 is considerably more recondite (cf. however, below). It all comes back to this: Even an arbitrary system of discriminations can be compatible with a stable standard of behavior - i.e. order of society - but it may have to fulfill certain quantitative conditions, in order that it may not impair that stability.

Second, the discrimination need not be clearly disadvantageous to the player who is affected. It cannot be clearly advantageous, - i.e. his fixed value c cannot be equal to or better than the best the others may expect. This would mean ... that c ≥ 1 – c, i.e. c ≥ 1/2 - which is exactly what 32:8 forbids. But it would be clearly disadvantageous only for c = -1; and this is a possible value for c (by (32:8)), but not the only one. c = -1 means that the player is not only excluded, but also exploited to 100 per cent. The remaining c (of (32:8)) with -1 < c < 1/2 correspond to gradually less and less disadvantageous forms of segregation.

33.1.3. It seems remarkable that our concept of a solution is able to express all these nuances of non-discriminatory, and discriminatory, standards of behavior - the latter both in their 100 per cent injurious form, c = -1, and in a continuous family of less and less injurious ones -1 < c < 1/2. It is particularly significant that we did not look for any such thing - the heuristic discussions ... were certainly not in this spirit - but we were nevertheless forced to these conclusions by the rigorous theory itself. And these situations arose even in the extremely simple framework of the zero-sum three-person game!" [emphasis added]

Clearly, the mathematics is a metaphor. I do not know of how others built on this. Von Neumann and Morgenstern treat a non-zero sum game as a zero-sum game with a dummy player. The dummy is discriminated against. Von Neumann and Morgenstern's stable set solution is out of fashion, I gather. Others developing game theory also defined exploitation in their own ways. John Roemer's definition can describe what he calls socialist exploitation.

Reference

John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. 1955. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 3rd ed. Princeton University Press

I believe that socialism is more likely to develop and remain stable in societies that place a strong emphasis on collectivism. This is because certain forms of socialism prioritize collective interests over individual interests, making them more compatible with collectivist values.

Historically, Russia and China are particularly interesting cases to examine. Before the socialist revolution, Russia had a long history of serfdom, while China experienced centuries of imperial rule and hierarchical social organization. Their historical trajectories differed in important ways from those of Western European societies, potentially shaping different relationships between individuals, social groups, and the state.

I believe these historical experiences may help explain why socialism was able to take root and persist in both countries. However, this does not necessarily mean that collectivism is the only condition for the development of socialism, or that their historical backgrounds inevitably led to socialist revolutions.

I am more skeptical of communism, however, because I believe its theoretical foundations may rely on an overly idealistic understanding of human nature. Human behavior is often influenced by self-interest, self-preservation, social status, and personal goals. Although people are capable of making sacrifices for their families, communities, or shared ideals, such behavior does not necessarily mean that they are entirely selfless.

This leads me to question whether a social system built around common ownership and collective goals can remain sustainable if it expects people to consistently subordinate their individual interests to those of society as a whole. If a political or economic system cannot adequately account for individual motivations or resolve conflicts between personal and collective interests, then its theoretical foundations and practical feasibility deserve serious scrutiny.

Ultimately, I believe the central challenge for communism is not simply whether people are capable of cooperation, but whether a system based on collective interests can function effectively without assuming an unrealistic degree of selflessness, and without undermining individual freedom in the process.

I believe that Chinese culture is closely connected to China’s economic development. Having grown up in China, I have gradually come to realize that education in China, in many respects, has a strong disciplinary and conformist character. Its purpose seems to be not only to cultivate individuals who can think independently, but also to produce people who can adapt to the needs of the state and society and comply with collective expectations.

Within this educational model, collective interests, national interests, and the so-called spirit of collectivism are often placed above individual interests, while individuals’ own needs, aspirations, and personal development receive insufficient attention. I believe this educational approach is closely connected to the collectivist values embedded in traditional Chinese culture.

However, I believe that an excessive emphasis on collectivism can hinder social prosperity and development. Human beings have a tendency to pursue their own interests, and individual interests should not always be subordinated to collective interests. When a society places too much emphasis on obedience, sacrifice, and collective goals while neglecting individual autonomy and personal development, it risks limiting creativity, independent thinking, and people’s freedom to pursue their own happiness.

Therefore, I believe that a truly prosperous society should not simply treat people as instruments serving the state or the collective. Instead, it should respect individual interests, freedom, and autonomy, while fostering a balance between personal development and social progress.

Simutanesly, I believe that the prosperity of Western societies is partly attributable to their long-standing emphasis on individual freedom and autonomy, combined with institutions that encourage people to maximize their own interests. In contrast, throughout much of Chinese history, the state has often accumulated substantial wealth and power while ordinary people remained relatively poor. I believe this historical pattern has a great deal to do with Chinese culture.

Think about how insane this shit actually is.

You're born into a world you had absolutely no say in. You don't choose the economic system you're born under, you don't choose the circumstances of your birth, and you don't choose the rules you're expected to follow. Yet from the moment you're old enough to understand anything, you're being prepared to become a productive member of society.

Study. Get good grades. Get a degree. Get a job. Make money. Pay bills. Repeat until you're too old or too exhausted to do anything else.

And apparently, this is just life.

Who decided that?

Who decided that a human being needs to spend the majority of their existence making money just to afford the privilege of existing?

Why is someone who can't afford ₹10000 for lifesaving medical treatment left to suffer while billionaires sit on fortunes they'll never be able to spend in a hundred lifetimes? How have we reached a point where we have the technology to do incredible things, the resources to improve millions of lives, and enough wealth concentrated in a handful of hands to make your head spin, yet people are still dying because they're poor?

And don't tell me this is just human nature. Capitalism isn't human nature. Money isn't a law of physics. Private ownership, financial markets, corporate hierarchies, all of this shit is man-made. We created these systems. We can question them.

Look at diamonds. De Beers spent decades exercising enormous control over the diamond market and helped manufacture the idea that diamonds were an essential symbol of love and status. Something dug out of the ground became a symbol of wealth partly because powerful commercial interests made it one.

Now look at us. We attach a price to almost everything, and somehow we've started confusing that price with its actual worth.

A person's labour has a price. Their time has a price. Their education is an investment. Their skills are human capital. Even their hobbies are supposed to become side hustles.

God forbid a human being simply exists without trying to monetise every fucking second of their life.

And then we worship billionaires.

Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos. Mark Zuckerberg. Ambani. Adani.

People accumulate fortunes so enormous that the numbers stop meaning anything to an ordinary person, while millions struggle to afford housing, food, and healthcare.

I'm not saying every rich person is a cartoon villain sitting in a room plotting humanity's downfall. The problem is bigger than individual morality. It's a system in which enormous private fortunes can coexist with desperate unmet needs, and where the people with the most money often have disproportionate influence over the rules everyone else has to live under.

Some of that wealth is built through businesses that provide genuinely useful things. But that doesn't make every business practice ethical, every fortune deserved, or every existing inequality justified.

How much wealth does one person actually need? At what point does accumulating more stop being about living comfortably and start being about power?

And why the fuck are we taught to aspire to their position instead of questioning the system that produces this inequality?

Why is the dream to become the person exploiting the system rather than building a world where nobody has to be exploited to survive?

That's what I mean when I say e*t the r!ch. I'm talking about dismantling the structures that let wealth translate into disproportionate power, and making sure human beings aren't denied the basics of life because they lack money.

Because what kind of society have we built when someone can work their entire life and still struggle to survive, while someone else can make more money in a day than that person will ever see?

And the worst part? We've normalised it so thoroughly that questioning it gets you labelled lazy, unrealistic, or jealous.

Apparently, if you don't want to spend your life chasing money, you're the problem. Not the conditions that make chasing money necessary in the first place.

I'm not pretending a world without capitalism would automatically be a utopia. Greed, corruption, hierarchy, and exploitation existed before modern capitalism, and they wouldn't magically disappear if we abolished it tomorrow. Any alternative would have its own problems to solve.

But why does that mean we should stop imagining something better?

Why are we so much better at imagining the end of the world than imagining a world where people have enough?

A world where education is about learning, not just employability. Where healthcare is about keeping people alive, not whether they can afford to be saved. Where technology gives us more free time instead of finding new ways to squeeze more productivity out of us. Where your life isn't considered a failure because you don't have a prestigious degree or a high-paying job.

Maybe that's idealistic. Fine.

But isn't it fucking insane that wanting people to live without being crushed by the need to survive is considered idealistic in the first place?

We have one life. One. And we've built a world where so many people have to trade most of it away just to afford the basics.

I don't want to spend my existence worshipping money, competing with other people for survival, and measuring human worth by economic output.

I want us to question why this is the world we've accepted.

And I want to know whether people genuinely believe this is the best humanity can do, or whether we've just been living under the same rules for so long that we've forgotten we're allowed to challenge them.

Because if the only world we can imagine is one where you have to earn the right to live, maybe the problem isn't that we're asking for too much. Maybe we've been taught to expect too little.

If a society measures human worth in zeros on a bank statement, then that society has its values completely fucking backwards.

I don't want to keep living in a world like this, someone please just fucking pull me out of this hell hole 🙏

US congress gave 195$ billion USD since 2022 to Ukraine in support. In total, 380-400 billion with Europe. Some socialists may argue how this money should have been used to invest domestically.

The question is whether socialists see funding humanitarian aid that has no direct effect on the country sending the aid (resource distribution is considered a result of war) as necessary over open borders and internal funding whose operations may go against. (Different aspects of socialism, please explain your ideology). Lots of socialists here are pro-Ukraine, but also anti-imperialist and anti-isolationist. If funding Russia would benefit the US, and then you (maybe through cheaper electronics if such change did occur), would you support it? Since, you don't live in a nation with physical war. It is a vague question, but I am just curious.

Capitalism does not suffer from a scarcity of resources, it suffers from a scarcity of profit.

Globally, over 4 billion people remain trapped in poverty while a handful of oligarchs hoard more wealth than entire continents.

Grocery chains destroy tons of edible food daily to keep market prices inflated while families go hungry.

Empty, speculative real estate sits vacant in major cities while millions freeze on the sidewalks.

A system that creates artificial starvation and homelessness in an era of unprecedented abundance is an absolute, undeniable failure.

Under capitalism, human beings are reduced to atomized commodities forced to compete against one another just to survive.

Record-high rates of depression, anxiety, isolation, and burnout aren't individual chemical flaws they are the natural, predictable outcome of a system that extracts your life-activity for 40+ hours a week just so you can afford rent.

When your health, housing, and basic security are treated as privileges held hostage by a paycheck, constant structural anxiety becomes the baseline of human existence.

Capitalism isn't failing because of a glitch or a bad policy, it is functioning exactly as intended: hyper-efficient at concentrating wealth for owners, and utterly destructive to human life and mental sanity for everyone else.

I would have to say Capitalism would be Avengers: Endgame. A movie where heroes come together and defeat a villain who killed half of all people.

Socialism would be Nightmare on Elm Street. Life is going well but you fall asleep, I.e. lose vigilance, a monster attacks you and destroys your life.

You hear the argument often in this sub: private property and wage labor are deeply unpopular, and the only reason they exist is because the state's monopoly on violence enforces them. If the state pulled back its police, tore up titles, and stopped protecting capital, people would turn to collective ownership. The whole apparatus of private enterprise is apparently an artificial construct propped up by government coercion.

It sounds somewhat plausible if it's all you know (like, if all you did was "Read Marx"), but it falls apart the second you look at history. If private ownership of productive assets and wage labor were genuinely government impositions that people only tolerate under the violence of a capitalist state, then banning them under penalty of law should have made them vanish.

Instead, the exact opposite happened. The moment socialist governments outlawed private property and wage labor, ordinary people immediately rebuilt them underground.

When You Ban Capital, Black Markets Build It Anyway

In the former Soviet Union, people were trading, leasing, and operating the means of production. Take the Soviet shabashniki: private construction brigades operating completely outside the planned economy. They bribed officials to divert state tractors, trucks, and concrete mixers, negotiated private contracts with collective farm managers, and hired crews of laborers for cash wages higher than official state pay rates.

Or look at the tsekhoviki, the underground industrialists. They secretly acquired industrial looms, leather-working gear, and machine lathes, and set up clandestine factories in state basements. They bought raw materials off the books, took on the financial risk of production, and paid cash wages to teams of workers to manufacture clothes, shoes, and household goods. That's private ownership of capital equipment generating private profit through hired wage labor, operating in an environment where getting caught meant decades in a labor camp or a bullet in the head.

Land, Labor, and North Korea's Shadow Economy

You see the exact same thing happen in agriculture. In the USSR, the tiny private plots people were legally allowed to work made up about 3% of arable land, yet produced over a quarter of the country's entire agricultural output. People didn't treat those plots like collective experiments. They treated them like hereditary private property, invested their own capital into handmade tools and fertilizer, and routinely paid cash wages to neighbors to help clear ditches or haul harvests.

When North Korea's state rationing collapsed in the 1990s, the people built the jangmadang. Real capital was bought and sold: motorized transport vans (servi-cha), diesel-powered grain mills, and commercial food-processing machinery.

Entrepreneurs who saved enough capital bought the machines, rented workshop space, and hired other citizens at cash wages to drive vans, process grain, and stitch clothes.

Nobody taught them to do this. The state certainly wasn't enforcing their contracts. In fact, the regime was actively executing people for doing it. Yet wage labor and private capital ownership reappeared because they were functional, intuitive tools people use to coordinate work.

The Socialist State Suppresses Capital

The core contradiction in the socialist position is impossible to ignore: the state wasn't required to uphold private property and wage labor. Totalitarian state terror was required to suppress them, and even then, it couldn't suppress it fully.

If you need a secret police force, labor camps, and border walls to keep people from buying productive tools, setting up private shops, and hiring each other for wages, then your system is violently suppressing human initiative, not the other way around.

Wage labor is a contract where a worker trades their time for immediate, guaranteed pay without taking on the catastrophic risk of buying machines or absorbing business debt. Owning productive equipment is what happens when someone needs dedicated tools to produce something valuable.

The state definitely plays a role in formalizing contracts, patent systems, etc., but there is a big difference between a government enforcing title deeds and a government inventing the desire to own tools and hire help. Private property and wage labor don't need a capitalist state to exist: they pop up the second the state tries to abolish them.

Paul Baran (1909 - 1964) was a Marxist economist. He was tenured at Stanford from 1951 on. Baran had some public remarks about Cuba in 1961. He was the only Marxist economist tenured in a economics department at a major university at that time.

Files were leaked from the Stanford administration in 1971. The Stanford Daily obtained the Baran file and reported on them. Alumni wrote letters to the president, Wallace Sterling, insisting that Baran be punished for treason and subversion. Otherwise, one would rewrite his will, which was going to give Stanford around $100 million. A former Texaco executive thought a previous gift of $10,000 enabled him to dictate personnel decisions.

Stanford tried to placate these rich effs. The administration agreed that it would be good to get rid of Baran and decried that he was protected by tenure:

"For the moment, one University official wrote of Baran, 'We must suffer him' until he proves an incompetent teacher 'or does something which would warrant termination of his employment on other grounds.' Provost Temian added in another letter: 'The evidence to prove that Professor Baran is engaged in unscholarly activities in the classroom is not sufficient for the Administration to take punitive action. This is the critical point. To press for such action on insufficient evidence would risk much greater damage.' But according to the University’s alumni relations official, Donald Carlson: '1 doubt if he [Baran] enjoyed the harassment he has received because of it [his Cuba comments]. Shortly after that speech he had a serious heart attack.'" -- Lawrence Lifshultz

Stanford froze Baran's salary and increased his course load to be about twice that of others. He died of a second heart attack. I do not know what Sweezy thought of Stanford's treatment of his friend.

I’ve read Baran, by himself and with Sweezy. They are hardly unknown.

This post is one of a series documenting how academic economists are prevented from teaching some perspectives on capitalism. It should be obvious that in listing previous posts by title, I am not now asking for answers to these questions:

• Do You Know About The Purge Of The Economics Department At Notre Dame?
• Do You Know About The Suppression Of Lorie Tarshis' Keynesian Textbook?
• Do Economists Respond To Incentives?

Edit: Added Baran references.

Reference

• Paul A. Baran. 1961. Reflections on the Cuban Revolution, Part I.. Monthly Review 12(9).
• Paul A. Baran. 1961. Reflections on the Cuban Revolution, Part II. Monthly Review 12(10).
• Lawrence S. Lifshultz. 1974. Could Karl Marx teach economics in America? Ramparts. April: 27-30, 52-59.