Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin and H.G. Wells (1934)

Re:Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin ... by sacrosancty on Monday February 21, 2022 @09:57AM (#30416537)

I think communism requires society to operate in an unstable state away from its Nash equilibrium, so it needs a strong dictatorship to keep people coerced into working against their personal interests (even if that's ultimately better for them when everyone complies). If it was democratic, most individuals would see opportunities to do better for themselves one way or another if they had the opportunity, so they'd vote for more individual rights, and erode the communism. Either that, or people really like freedom of choice so much, they'll tolerate a worse quality of life in other areas (assuming communism leads to better quality of life).

With capitalism, the coercion to work is decentralized in the form of people promising to give you somebody else's work (money) if you do some work for them. Being decentralized makes a dictatorship unnecessary to sustain it.

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Re:Marxism vs. Liberalism: An Interview Between J.V. Stalin ... by ModernMech on Monday February 21, 2022 @11:08AM (#30417369)

I find this view of history very perplexing. Workers movements in the US have lead the things like a 40 hour workweek, paid sick leave, weekends, minimum wages, workplace safety standards, etc. The people standing in the way of those reforms and, and indeed who employed state violence against workers to prevent these reforms we enjoy today, were capitalists.

People like to say that America is the home of the free, but we have the world’s largest prison population. This happened under a democratic capitalist system.

> With capitalism, the coercion to work is decentralized in the form of people promising to give you somebody else's work (money)

You say the system is decentralized but 3 individuals in the US hold more wealth than 50% of the population. If money is the method of decentralized enticement, yet a handful of people control most of the money and assets, is that really decentralized control? “A handful of elites owning the nation’s wealth” sounds like most people’s perception of communism, and yet it describes reality in capitalist America.

> Being decentralized makes a dictatorship unnecessary to sustain it.

Last January a defeated President and his followers attempted to overthrow democracy and install himself as the first American dictator. This happened under a capitalist republic. If capitalism makes dictatorships unnecessary, why is an authoritarian movement growing in capitalist America?

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