Comment on Lemmy's gaining popularity, so I thought new people should see this.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 days agoSocial democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world.
Are you trying to say that wherever Social Democrats are found, they are the most left available? That may track, but again, Social Democrats want to “harness Capitalism,” it isn’t pro-Socialism nor anti-Capitalism, hence my categorization.
And liberals are only “right” when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term)
Liberalism is the ideological framework for Capitalism, this is, again, supportive of Capitalism and against Socialism.
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 days ago
This is a bit reductive. I accept that liberalism and capitalism are closely intertwined in the historical reading. But the fact is that capitalism won the economic battle, for better and (I agree) for worse. Attempts to replace it completely, in an interconnected world, invariably end in disaster or (China) in a reversion to capitalism. Just look at the list of them. To me this whole question feels like a disconnected high-school philosophy debate.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
I don’t think this is a good place to have this convo, but I firmly disagree with what you’ve said here. I understand if you don’t want to, but if you want to discuss this further you can shoot me a DM.
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Seriously? I’m not trying to convince you, I’m trying to convince the people reading us. That’s the way a forum debate works! But I admire your earnestness.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
My biggest issue is with these two statements:
For the former, I disagree because AES states still exist, and Marx’s analysis has retained it’s usefulness at full capacity.
For the latter, most AES states were and are dramatic improvements on previous conditions, such as the fascist slaver Batista regime in Cuba compared to now, where life expectancy is 50% higher than under Batista and disparity is far lower.
As for the PRC, it isn’t correct to say it “reverted to Capitalism.” It’s more correct to say that Mao failed to jump to Communism, and Deng reverted back to a more Marxist form of Socialism. The Private Sector is a minority of the economy in the PRC, the majority is in the public sector. Here’s an excerpt from Engels in The Principles of Communism:
Mao tried to skip the necessary developmental stage. Marx wasn’t a Utopian, he didn’t believe Socialism was good because it was more moral, but because Capitalism creates the conditions for Socialism, ie public ownership and central planning, through formation of monopolist syndicates. Marx says as much himself in Manifesto of the Communist Party: