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The New Socialists

M

MHBDemon

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/opinion/sunday/what-socialism-looks-like-in-2018.html

The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.
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I think the first sentence is wrong, but the rest is good.
 
Arguably the biggest boundary today’s socialists are willing to cross is the two-party system. In their campaigns, the message is clear: It’s not enough to criticize Donald Trump or the Republicans; the Democrats are also complicit in the rot of American life. And here the socialism of our moment meets up with the deepest currents of the American past.

Like the great transformative presidents, today’s socialist candidates reach beyond the parties to target a malignant social form: for Abraham Lincoln, it was the slavocracy; for Franklin Roosevelt, it was the economic royalists. The great realigners understood that any transformation of society requires a confrontation not just with the opposition but also with the political economy that underpins both parties. That’s why realigners so often opt for a language that neither party speaks. For Lincoln in the 1850s, confronting the Whigs and the Democrats, that language was free labor. For leftists in the 2010s, confronting the Republicans and the Democrats, it’s socialism.
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I think that capitalism does make people poor and is a part of the argument. I don't know, just came off as kind of "privileged" i guess.
 
Yeah. I bet the author would agree that capitalism causes income and wealthy inequality which is the same thing.
 
The socialist, by contrast, believes that making things free makes people free.
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let me spell it out for you lubie, taking responsibility for yourself makes you free

getting things free makes you dependent, not free
 
sailordeac said:
let me spell it out for you lubie, taking responsibility for yourself makes you free

getting things free makes you dependent, not free
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Both systems make you dependent. It’s just dependent on who.
 
sailordeac said:
let me spell it out for you lubie, taking responsibility for yourself makes you free

getting things free makes you dependent, not free
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Says a man who presumably never had to choose between food and medicine. Being unaware of your personal advantages and opportunity doesnt make you any more "free" than a person who relies on government assistance.
 
“Freedom is not a quality of man, nor is it an ability, a capacity, a kind of being that somehow flares up in him. Anyone investigating man to discover freedom finds nothing of it. Why? because freedom is not a quality which can be revealed--it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form of existence--but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.”
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Says a man who presumably never had to choose between food and medicine. Being unaware of your personal advantages and opportunity doesnt make you any more "free" than a person who relies on government assistance.
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Every assertion in MDMH's post is based on astounding ignorance and is profoundly mistaken.
 
sailordeac said:
just to clarify Ph's post: taking responsibility for yourself makes you dependent on yourself

getting things free makes you dependent on those from whom you are taking those free things
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Capitalism limits your ability to take responsibility for yourself to the extent to which you can pay for it. How much you can afford depends on how much the wealthiest people in the system are willing to pay you. That’s dependence.
 
Until man evolves to near perfection, the most successful societies will be combinations of capitalism and socialism. Without incentives, great discoveries are less likely.
 
See the article from The Economist I posted in the bullshit jobs thread on the Pit. People are tied to bullshit jobs that lack creativity and freedom and serve no purpose.
 
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