But "socialism" is a scary word

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One hurdle we have to deal with is the assumption by the general public that markets = capitalism.

You tell people capitalism has failed them and they worry that you mean to take away their ability to buy a latte.

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Greedy people vote for greedy leaders. Money mattered more than morals in at least the last federal elections since 2000.

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I don't think it's the theory most people disagree with.

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Patriarchy appears to have been solved in Rojava/Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Though I'm afraid not for much longer.

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While I welcome some developments in NE Syria, this is propaganda.

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Kerala: As you mention, not a country. Also didn't really seize the means of production. But when I think of Communism working well, it's at a local level like this rather than at the level of a country. There are communes and kibbutzes that lasted decades. Generally a tough life but at a small level you can have a government controlling everything without hopefully making as many huge mistakes. Worst case you can more easily just leave if they do (hopefully they let you).

Chile: Also didn't fully seize the means of production, it's more or less a perfect example of a government that's run by a socialist majority for a small amout of time and which enacts socialist measures during that time, but never reaching full communism. This is the kind of thing I would hold up as the ideal case. Socialism for long enough to strengthen the situation of the people, but not long enough to wreck the economy and grow into full blown authoritarianism.

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I don't mind being corrected. Would you care to explain?

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This might be a better system.

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Well, you cannot just declare the dissolution of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition and expect everything to follow along. We need centuries of conditions of antipatriarchial policy to be able to claim eradication of patriarchy.

I would not even be saying we eradicated classist aristocracy in European republics, because the ideology is still relevant.

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Good point. I've read that the Kurdish leadership is trying hard to integrate Arabs into government, making everything available to read in Arabic, etc. I just hope they can hang on and continue to improve. I don't trust HTS at all, and the Turkish government are doing their damnedest to eradicate Rojava.

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Oh so now we're moving the goalpost?

We started with "socialist theory is the problem!" but when pressured, suddenly it's "well the theory is not really the problem".

Go figures

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Thanks for the detailed responses.

Sounds like, to me, that you have a bigger issue with government than Socialism or Communism themselves. Are you much of an anarchist?

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No, I'm more of a social democrat. I'm a believer that the best we've come up with is to have a government who's job is to fill in the holes (economic externalities) of capitalism, while curbing it's worst instincts (monopolies, tragedy of the commons issues like global warming).

Indeed this is the system the most successful and happy countries use. Go too far to the capitalist side or too far to the socialist side and things deteriorate quickly.

Right now, especially in the USA, we are experiencing what happens when things go too far to the capitalist side.

Unfortunately it seems that this combined with misinformation leads to fascism which will destroy even capitalism and likely leave us only with war.

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More Anarchist, I think that we should try to disengage from states and their power structures and treat people with respect and autonomy. Try to bring thee principles into daily life and interactions and live as much of a better alternative as I can.

Devolution of powers is a fine first step to work towards if engaging electorily, but that's a long way from the be all and end all of political ideology.

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Where funny?

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I'm definitely on board on the small scale. Unfortunately when faced with issues like health care, education, global warming, and curbing the excesses of capitalism, only a government can solve those issues. At least it's the only mechanism we've found so far.

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That has been gone over by Marx over 150 years ago. I'm not going to go over everything Marx said about capitalism, he wrote an entire book called Das Kapital about it. Here's a summary that does a pretty good job at getting Marx's ideas across. You can skip the first 2-3 chapters as the main criticism of capitalism starts around chapter 4. But some things refer back to the previous chapters so you might want to watch them if some parts of Marx's ideas aren't very clear.

As for you points, I'll do a short summary:

Production of commodities and services is not capitalistic, we've been producing commodities and services for more than a millennia before capitalism was even a concept.
Profit-motive is a poorly defined concept if we want to divorce it from capitalism. Profit-motive in the sense that I want to make all the money is capitalistic. But if we talk about the "profit-motive" in the sense that I want money so I could buy things I want to use, Marx argues that is not capital and not capitalism.
Marx has a very specific definition of capital where capital is something that exists for the purpose of making more capital. If you make $10 mil and you buy a fancy house, that $10 mil you got is not capital and the house you bought is also not is not capital, but if you take that $10 mil and you for instance invest it with the purpose of getting $20 mil later, now it's capital. The capitalist definition of capital doesn't acknowledge the purpose money or things, so everything is capital which also makes it impossible to separate capital accumulation from just owning things you need to live your life. Your house is not capital, your car is not capital, your phone is not capital, the money you're saving up for a trip to the Bahamas is not capital. But if you own a company and the means of production within that company and you're buying in labor to use your means of production so you could siphon surplus value from the laborers work, that's capital.

The things you've brought up aren't necessarily the basis of capitalism. They're the basis of capitalism only if you want them to be the basis of capitalism.

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It's not funny, but it's still irony.

GladiusB

It's here in the comments by someone called the word police. I think they are cousins of the wambulamce.

GladiusB

I mean it's a tweet. The very essence isn't long from and open to discussion of every permutation of capitalism. It's like taking a snarky sarcastic comment and fully flushing it out and realizing there are hella holes in the comedy. Well yeah. There are ways to make it work. But those ways are being ignored for the profits. Which is implied in the sarcasm.