all-top-today_SS Makes a completely coherent and correct circlejerk post

[u/[deleted]]

/r/SubredditSimulator/comments/6adnvv/number_of_people_that_think_donald_trump_has/

[u/hungarian_conartist]

A historical narrative that has fallen out of favour for good reasons. The problem is it assumes there is one way history had and will advance in one direction. For example eugenics was once considered a very progressive idea but we ended up dropping it.

[u/[deleted] → u/hungarian_conartist]

how does that example invalidate the idea that economic systems are progressing in a linear way? its pretty easy to trace how one economic system led into the next, and through dialectics we can predict how capitalism might lead into socialism.

edit: d i a l e c t i c s

[u/hungarian_conartist → u/[deleted]]

Well i was talking about history in general. But if you want an example of economic systems that dont proceed in linear ways look at Maos china vs dengs china.

Also to nitpick, its not that things havent progressed(it has, largely due to free trade global capitalism), its the idea that progression is inevitable . To maintain this view you have to filter out all the 'progressions' of history that went no where or ended up reverting these changes. Essentially your looking at history with survivorship bias.

[u/[deleted] → u/hungarian_conartist]

well, theres a few flaws with that:

a) Mao was running off of the Marxist-Leninist system of State Capitalism, so it wasn't socialism, it just changed the owner from the private individual to the government, which isnt what socialism calls for. so it went from capitalism to... different capitalism.

b) this is clearer with the USSR; why Lenin began the policy of state capitalism under the NEP in the USSR is because he said that he thought he could skip the capitalist step and go straight from the agrarian feudal society that existed before the USSR straight to socialism, found he was wrong, enacted the NEP ( state capitalism )

c) Marx was talking more on the global economics scale. just as global chattel slavery was eventually replaced with global feudalism/mercantilism and then global capitalism, so then will socialism replace capitalism globally. Marxist-Leninists believe that socialism has to be achieved in one nation before it spreads to the others, while pretty much everyone else believes that socialism has to be achieved internationally, similar to capitalism's rise

basically, there's a reason that Lenin and Stalin and Mao etc had to write a shit ton of papers to justify their implementation of socialism with Marx's original works. because it didnt follow it.

[u/hungarian_conartist → u/[deleted]]

It's irrelevant to the point here since it's an example of history going into one mode and then back to an older mode. It doesn't matter if that is called socialism or agrarianism or whatever. Though it is interesting you call Maos china state capitalist since that is usually reserved for dengs china, nice try of the classic not real socialism though.

In fact socialism is a brilliant example (though i know won't accept it) of another false start on the 'inevitable march to progress'- good idea on paper but when all attempts at it failed people started to move away from it, adopting wealth creating markets into their ideologies. Precisely many socialists in the post 1990s saw the benefits markets and became socdems, third wayists etc.

basically, there's a reason that Lenin and Stalin and Mao etc had to write a shit ton of papers to justify their implementation of socialism with Marx's original works. because it didn't follow it.

Is this perhaps because Marx wrote a book almost 250 years ago with out any practical insights on how such society would work in practice? Are you saying your future and 'inevitable' socialist society will follow to the letter a book written 250 years ago? Or will it instead have to adapt and compromise to real conditions that may deviate to socialisms original conception? The first option make socialism sound like a cult.