volodya_ilich @ volodya_ilich @lemm.ee

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1 yr. ago

Starts with "t", rhymes with the Sumerian god of water and patron God of the city of Eridu "Enki".

I'm sorry to disappoint you but a sizeable proportion of westerners in my humble experience are racist towards Arabs and Muslims. It's literally the core of the platform under which the extreme right wing thrives in Europe

You could argue that what we have isnt true capitalism

No, I couldn't. Capitalism doesn't need to account for every externality to be capitalism.

If we could do that

We've been trying for 36 years with no result. That's exactly my point. The people who benefit from the lack of account of externalities are the ones in control of the system.

but there is a potential version of capitalism that could work

That version of capitalism is "let's make the public opinion guided by the scientific research make the environmental decisions". At that point, why stop with accounting for externalities and planning the economy as a whole in a democratic fashion? Why this obsession with maintaining capitalism?

Obviously China has immense demand for power and it is in many ways a developing country

You got it. You can't expect a developing county to rely on new and expensive tech instead of cheap and reliable one during the process of industrialization. But currently, China is by far the country installing most renewables. I personally don't consider China to be very socialist, but saying they're right wing is far from the truth as well.

The problem with capitalism as well, is the competition not only between companies, but between geopolitical blocks. You can't expect China or the US to degrow when they're geopolitical enemies that are in theory threated by each other. In reality, the US is the main threatener, followed by Russia, since they're both heavily capitalist and imperialist countries with opposing interests and different capitalists who fight each other for supremacy. Unless we eliminate these capitalist threats of geopolitical fights by transcending to worldwide socialism, degrowth simply will not occur, and climate deals that harm the economy of countries won't be agreed on.

While capitalism is a big accelerator of climate change, socialism could do the same

The difference is that capitalism by its nature requires the degradation of the environment. Capitalism, by definition, needs to increase profits year after year. Unlimited growth is impossible in a finite planet with limited technology without degrading the environment, so capitalism simply ignores the climate in its quest for higher profits. After all, you can't risk getting outcompeted by another company which will be less afraid of abusing nature.

Socialism, on the other hand, doesn't need perpetual growth. The objective isn't infinite profit, the objective is higher living quality for people, which doesn't necessarily rely on increased material wealth, especially not in a context of degrading climate which negatively affects the quality of life of people. It doesn't mean socialism doesn't have to work hard to prevent degrading nature, it just means that it's not a necessary logical consequence of socialism whereas it is of capitalism.

You talk about historical proof. The reality is that historically, the groups concerned by climate change have consistently been to the left of the political spectrum, whereas the right wing (capitalism's most loyal defenders) doesn't seem to care. For 36 years we've had an International Panel on Climate Change (though ExxonMobil had reports of Climate Change being manmade since the early 70s and hid them), and for 36 years scientists have been saying the same: we're not doing enough. What's been the response of capitalist governments everywhere? "We shall continue not doing enough". How many years of capitalism in all countries failing to step up to the problem do you need to realize that capitalism simply has no incentives to solve this problem because it's fundamentally an antidemocratic system, in which the interests of a few in the owning class are held above those of the working class?

I fully agree with all you're saying in your second paragraph. My whole point is that, historically, this sort of progress isn't achieved by voting, but by organized worker action through unionizing and strikes.

I wish it was tiddies, m8

That's cool and all, but as I said, the post explicitly mentions the 60s, I don't see how your smug input about Gen Z and whatever happened when you were in elementary school (30-40 years ago) relates to or adds value to the post that explicitly talks about the 60s.

I beg you browse through the currently popular posts, took me quite a bit of scrolling to find one post about the far right in England, and that's after 5 posts attacking Russia (which, again, fair enough)

for the past 30+ years

The title says "1960s", that's closer to 60 years than to 30.

This community when the far-right in the west does something horrible: "I sleep"

This community as soon as there's the slightest evidence linking it to Russia: "Real shit"

Fuck Putin don't get me wrong, but take some perspective and reflect on the failures of your countries and your systems

Everyone in this sub agrees that climate change is a disastrous event, and that we're not doing enough. But as soon as you suggest changing to a system that actually may do something against it, you guys drop the t-word like there's no tomorrow.

Edit: to all of you fellas downvoting me, I have a message. Don't worry, we will surely defeat climate change by reforming capitalism against the interests of those controlling the media and our politicians through their vast wealth, as we've been achieving for the past 20 years in which the CO2 emissions have been reducing exponentially!

Ill leave arguing history

That's actually a wise position

And just say that your last paragraph I agree to

Ok, that's nice. My proposal is to have strong worker movements, and by nature worker movements are very leftist. Wanting to lower working hours, higher pay, higher vacation, higher working conditions... all of those are conditions of the left. I also think that a majority of the population wants extended healthcare and education for free, public pensions, and access to affordable, quality housing. From what I see and what I read, the people pushing for that the strongest are the ones on the leftmost side of the political spectrum. Would you agree with that?

Well I'd at least state that the countries absorbed into the Soviet union where not free to do so

While what you say is partly true (although the reality is more complicated for many countries such as Ukraine or Belarus or Armenia or most of Central Asia), when you say "the countries" were not free to do so, what do you mean exactly? Because I don't think anyone is really free to belong to a country or to other for the most part. I'm Spanish and I didn't choose to be so, and there are plenty of people in my country who don't feel Spanish but are forced to be so, especially in Basque areas and Catalonia. I've never been asked what nationality I want to belong to, or what country I wish to be born in.

This is especially true for regimes in the 1920s (countries that annexed during the Russian Civil war) and the 1940s (countries that annexed during and after WW2). Polish citizens themselves, or Ukrainian, or Finnish, when in 1917 the first Bolshevik constitution declared the unilateral right of self-determination and secession for all peoples of the former Russian Empire, didn't get to choose democratically whether they wanted to become independent. The local powerful authorities simply declared so, and afaik there was never any referendum about the topic in these countries. In some places this was very short-lasting, as for example in Ukraine when they were immediately invaded by Poland because of nationalist expansionism in the Polish-Ukrainian war. So, can you argue that these peoples of Ukraine were incorporated into the USSR against their will after the expulsion of the Polish forces from Ukraine by the Soviets, any more than they became independent against their will since there was no referendum?

I didn't get to vote the constitution of my country since I was born too late for that. I didn't get to choose the parliamentary form of it, I didn't get to choose to have a fucking king, I didn't get to choose whether I wanted to join the EU and abandon our previous currency. If my decision power is consistently ignored, can you argue that my national identity and my belonging to a state is good just because it's by default? Second-generation Latvians, Uzbeks, or Georgians, didn't get to choose what country they were born in and belonged to, any less than I do currently. In fact, most citizens of the USSR got to vote in 1991 in a referendum whether they wanted to maintain the USSR, and the overwhelming majority of citizens voted affirmatively... which was promptly ignored as the state was dissolved from the top-down, and plunged into the worst humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe since WW2 with the application of Neoliberal shock therapy.

I had the privilege to discuss old vs new with my east German grandparents in law. And they had a lot of good to say about their communist days. Especially the labor market, equal rights, and access to goods. It took time but everything was available. But when asked if they preferred then or now they said now.. when asked why. The answer got to me. "Because now if someone rings your doorbell unexpectedly you don't have to worry about dissapearing". They told me they knew multiple families that where all arrested and never heard from again.

As for this, I'm not familiar with the history of repression in Eastern Germany. I'd dare to say that your grandparents in law were "lucky", in the sense that they got to have an employment for the most part after the dissolution of the country and the reunification with western Germany (which forced the deindustrialization of Eastern Germany in favour of western one, big part of the reason why there are so many inequality differences between the two afaik). Is the risk of unemployment and misery less serious than the risk of political oppression? We tend to think so, but for many people who don't enjoy the most basic material rights, the answer isn't that simple. I agree that oppression to those levels is something inherently negative, but it's the common response of systems when there are sectors of the population that go against the system itself. In my country, Spain, cases of lawfare manufactured by the state and police apparatus and coordinated with mass media, destroyed the leftist party Podemos which used to be the 3rd biggest force in the parliament after the 2008 crisis. In the USA, the Black Panthers movement was eliminated by the CIA despite committing no real crime.

My point isn't anything other than "let's question the metrics that we use to compare one country to another". To me, as a young person who may never be able to afford a house, who's only seen the welfare state eroded further and further in his lifetime and maybe won't have a public pension like my grandparents and parents enjoy/will enjoy, who's seen the political oppression through lawfare and manufactured consent of progressive politicians, who doesn't have a right to decide whether to eliminate the literal monarchy from his country, and who has seen Catalonian politicians jailed for wanting to make a referendum on the HUMAN RIGHT of self-determination, it's hard for me to see the innumerable advantages of the capitalism that ravages the third world and destroys the climate of the planet I inhabit. Young people don't unionize because they're afraid that the hidden profiles that companies make of them and share with each other thanks to the internet will brand them as undesirable to be employed. If they're unionized, they're liable of getting arrested and getting a sentence to jail as happened to "las seis de la suiza". How the fuck is this more democratic and less oppressive?

Thing is, regardless of what anyone says, you'll probably not be moved to consider a state you fundamentally disagree with as "successful". My following two paragraphs are mostly based on data collected and published by western studies, and compiled in a book called "Human Rights in the Soviet Union", by Albert Szymanski, which I highly encourage reading to anyone interested in socialism.

By the 70s, the USSR had eliminated homelessness and unemployment. It guaranteed free healthcare to every citizen, free education up to university level, men retired at 60 and women at 55. It drastically improved the material conditions of hundreds of millions of people, lifting them from feudal agrarian societies like the Russian Empire or the central-asian countries, to industralized societies with welfare state. They progressed the rights of women to the point that there were more female engineers in the USSR than in the rest of the world combined. There were widely available and affordable canteens and food at the workplace so that women wouldn't have to cook at home if they didn't desire to do so, as well as affordable childcare and kindergartens to prevent women from being tied home by children. Free abortions were available for every woman. In most republics, including Kazakhstan, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Lithuania... there were more publications in the local official language (in which people could study at schools and take university exams in) than in Russian. The vast majority of the population was content with the government, except possibly in Estonia and Georgia due to the strong and long-lasting nationalist movements in those countries.

The USSR went from being a feudal backwater country in Eastern Europe, to extremely rapid industrialization that enabled the defeat of the Nazis, and to eventually become the second world power for the latter half of the 20th century. All of this was achieved without the exploitation of 3rd world countries' resources and labor, the USSR never engaged in colonialism and, since it was mostly a self-sufficient country, it didn't partake in unequal exchange either. In the past of the country, mainly in the Stalin period, there was massive and unjustified repression with terrible consequences for millions of people, but that was a phenomenon that exclusively took place in the paranoia between 1935 and 1945 approximately, afterwards this level of repression was never seen again. We should condemn this for what it was, but does it invalidate all the achievements of the USSR? Should the UK, for example, be dismantled as a state, because all the benefits that it generated for its population were at the expense of the oppression and murder of tens if not hundreds of millions across the British Empire? Would you classify the UK as a failed state as a consequence? Is the USA a failed state because it developed under the premise of the Manifest Destiny doctrine, which implied ans turned into the genocide of practically the entirety of the native population?

Many people in the world saw such a country as the USSR and decided to follow its steps, that's why there were plenty of leftist movements in many developing countries such as Iran (Mossadegh), Congo (Lumumba), Chile (Allende), Cuba... Most of these movements didn't "fail", but were eliminated by elaborate western-country ploys to do so, as is the case of the three former that I mentioned.

My point is, you probably disagree with the point of what I'm saying, but what metrics would you actually use to consider whether a country is a success or a failure?

Not exactly my field of expertise, but I can point you towards How to Blow Up a Pipeline

I'm sorry, just wanna say that made me lol. I understand your comment is serious and I agree with it, but the intro was too funny

That link is basically responsible for solidifying my beliefs that leftists are correct about labour regulations and the economy when I was a young adult. I showed it to a friend some time later, and he quite literally told me "millennials discover Marxian surplus value extraction from the working class". Truer words have never been spoken

I'm not arguing for Maduro, I personally don't like him. But if your alternative is the violent overturn of elections because you don't like the candidate that the majority chose, until there's any real evidence of election fraud, I can't support that and I don't think a majority of democrats (in the non-US sense of the word) would.

Ok, which others of the 800+ international observers from a whole array of ideologies and countries have found and documented any serious irregularities in the election process? Afaik, only Carter "foundation", which is extremely US-centric and has clear pro-US bias has tried to make such claims, without any substance behind them. And, believe it or not, the burden of proof when calling for violent riots against election results, is on the people claiming that the elections were rigged.

Yeah, in my opinion you were clear about that in your comment, so I guess people are just being outraged assuming that "they're not supporting solar!!!!"

I really don't know why people are downvoting you. The internet is full of journalistic coverage of new developments in the field of photovoltaic and electric batteries, and journalistic coverage of science is generally... poor. They overstate the importance of everything because they wanna make clickbait, and the result is that it feels like there's a nonstop of development, of new battery technologies that are gonna change the world... It's frankly exhausting, like, give me real data as you say, such as capacity installed per year, trends in battery capacities and prices and the reasons for that, and so on and so forth.