I have been thinking about this a lot and it just seems like that it depends on how you ended up finding socialism in the first place. Is your interest and advocacy of socialism because you care about people? Or is it because of intellectual interest? Because intellectual interest might explain why some people have socialist brain but not a socialist heart. Most of the popular thinkers we as communist or socialists or anarchists read became what they were because they wanted a fundamental change in condition of the people and wanted a better world. The source of motivation isn’t that capitalism is inefficient or anything like that but that an overwhelming number of people are suffering under this system. The analysis of inefficiency and other things came about later, they aren’t the motivation, they are the results derived from an analysis which was motivated by suffering of people. However so many if not most of the socialists out there today aren’t concerned with suffering, they’re concerned with their analysis and their analysis is their motivation, not that people are suffering which is why they’re always unmoved when the topic that China owns mines in Congo ran by child labor doesn’t move them.
It’s difficult for me to follow your point. Who exactly are the people wanting a socialism that is a reformed capitalism, in your eyes? Are you referring to the DSA and Nordic style Social Democrats, or are you referring to the Socialist Market Economies of China, Vietnam, Laos, etc? I don’t think anyone that supports existing socialism will tell you that they are all utopias free of contradictions, but the manner with which we judge them needs to be based on the best materialist analysis we can do, otherwise our own motivation to build a better world becomes an impediment to that progress by clouding our judgement.
Socialists want to build a better world. This is the baseline motivation for study. The desire to do better is what compels us to study how to do better and how to bring that better world into reality. It isn’t enough to want better, we have to figure out how that actually works through experimentation, through the unity of theory and practice.
Tell me more about these Cinese mines in Congo ran by child labor.
And you’re ignored. What a surprise that an ultra sneaking in vibes based jabs against China like that isn’t interested in actually elaborating on their position or being willing to listen and learn.
I don’t want people to think that there isn’t COBALT mined by children in the DRC. There is, and it happens within what is called “artisanal and small-scale mining operations”. These operations are highly informal and difficult to monitor. Chinese mining corporations (even state operations) have had COBALT enter their supply chain that was mined by children. The USA/West have also had this happen as well. There are currently programs in China that these corporations can use to help mitigate that, but they are voluntary; the USA has basically nothing. We also have to remember that it was the USA in the '60s who orchestrated a coup that overthrew the DRC’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, out of fear they would nationalize the country’s mineral wealth or align with the Soviets. The US has a history of offering security for mineral access in the DRC, a history that China obviously doesn’t share. So it’s in the US’s best interest to wag their finger but make no material changes. From what I’ve seen, there is no evidence that Chinese mining corporations own mines that employ children. Some reports I’ve seen say these artisanal and small-scale mining operations account for a historically low percentage of the COBALT output currently (2% by some accounts). In the past, it accounted for 15-30% of COBALT mined. All this to say, the situation is bad in the DRC, but the claim that “China owns mines that employ children” isn’t true. Now, it’s also fair to say that “China isn’t really pushing for changes” either. This is how global capitalism works though, doesn’t it? The DRC is the world’s largest cobalt source by a mile (around 77% of global supply), so the whole system is built to keep the minerals flowing, not to protect the people digging them. Child labor gets pushed down to third parties so the big operators can shrug and say they didn’t know. The DRC elite and their friends and family look the other way because they control most of the ASM through the cooperative system, and those cooperative leaders (often the same friends and family) skim massive rents off the top. There’s no incentive for any of them to change it. And the external actors who depend on that cobalt would rather keep the operation “stable” as it is than roll the dice on a social revolution that could shut down production.
You know, just globalized international
things.Exactly, see, there’s actual discussion to be had when people want to understand the situation and why it exists, but it’s much easier to just cast a moral judgement on a country for being forced to exist within the real world and not a perfect fantasy land where they have limitless power.
Many such cases even with communists “trust me China exploiting Congo is good because they’re disrupting western imperialism”
some people have socialist brain but not a socialist heart.
Having a socialist heart is insufficient to bringing about socialism. Otherwise, utopian socialism would’ve been successful instead of the dead end that it is. You need a socialist brain and a socialist heart (and socialist guts because having brains and heart mean nothing if you don’t have the guts to face adversity). I do not think it’s particularly fruitful to speculate on which deficiency is worse since they’re all deficiencies in the end.
Not saying that you don’t need a scientific socialist perspective (a socialist brain) just saying that empathy needs to be the motivation.
I love a good vague post
If socialism doesn’t include my tophat and monocle it’s not my socialism
I mean if you choose to wear a zombie costume with your top hat and monocle then you’re welcome to tophot-and-monocle-socialism/jesting just in case
Socialism will look very similar to capitalism at first. Wholesale societal transformation to undo all capitalist social practices is impracticable and those who have attempted it have not only failed but generally been malicious and reactionary, like the Khmer Rouge and their attempted ethnostate. This is exactly what Marx rejected and how he defined his analysis in terms of worker struggle and a dictatorship of the proletariat, not a sudden transition to completely different social practice.
Not saying that it won’t be but that shouldn’t be our end goal as in that happens and then we kick back and do nothing and let it go on its own. Soviet Union had many problems but it wasn’t similar to capitalism it was already a very different society despite being in very early stages of socialism even arguably in state capitalist stage.
The Soviet Union had wage labor. You bought things at markets with your mone. Uou could get injured at work and have a hard life because of it. You still had a boss at work and they could be an asshole. You did not generally elect your boss (workplace democracy extremely incomplete, still resembling top down dictatorship). You could not, generally, simply elect to not work and expect things to go okay. Your choice in what job to work was limited. The USSR party leadership promoted reactionary family units and this was reflected in USSR society: the nuclear family remained prime and housing and general urban planning catered to it. Education focused on creating good workers and having discipline on the job. Petty bourgeois ventures were still common, somewhat meditated by the state. Black markets became rampant.
The USSR resembled capitalism closely in social economic relations. They took important strides in a dictatorship of the proletariat but they did not abolish capitalism in their country. And no one should have expected them to. They were one, albeit major, country, with few allies in the effort, trying to survive and adapt while under constant imperial attack. There is a limit to what experiments you can run when you have to spend a huge amount of resources on your primary defense strategy. In the USSR this was quite direct: weapons, military readiness, supporting other revolutionary socialist projects. This is not the primary defense of other countries run by socialist parties. The USSR fell to imperialism both externally and internally. The countries that adopted a different strategy are still around, at least.
that shouldn’t be our end goal
Who’s saying it is? And could you help by articulating more clearly what you mean by that end goal?
capitalist cultural practices
Honestly it’s hard to conceive of non-capitalist living because we mostly have Capitalism to look at today.
I think a lot of people get hung up on the notion that “markets = Capitalism” and believe they will lose “choice” or otherwise be forced to dig ditches instead of whatever desk jobs they have now. At least that’s what I get from talking to the “professional” class in my part of the US.
What could help is narrowing the scope when trying to explain how this would actually work. Start with something small that people can understand so it’s not so daunting. Imagine your Cracker Barrel was full of workers who owned that restaurant, made decisions about how it runs equally, and were able to control the day-to-day operations without corporate breathing down their necks. How would that look different than today? What if the people who supplied Cracker Barrel with flour and tea and chickens were also organized that way? So those farm hands and workers who raise the chickens, drive the chickens to the restaurant, etc. Had control over how that process worked? Probably a better deal for everybody and I bet the chickens get better treatment too!
It’s a win-win for everyone. You get a better experience, the people who actually work at these places get fair wages, everyone has more stability and better quality of life. Seems like a no-brainer to me
surely OP is complaining about consumption culture?
but I like consuming soup
