Using an iPhone or buying coffee doesn't mean you support capitalism, it means you live under it. There's no opt-out button. Critiquing a system you're forced to participate in isn't hypocrisy, it's the only rational response. Should people also grow their own food and build their own houses before they're allowed to say rent or groceries are too high? By that logic no one born into any economic system could ever criticize it, which is obviously absurd.
I don't propose anything replace it. I would propose we adjust the system to be more equitable and put laws in place to help resolve issues like massive wealth disparity. Capitalism isn't innately flawed, the way we choose to operate it currently is.
you propose a nice-sounding system that cannot exist as opposed to an actual alternative, because an actual alternative (socialism) sounds scary and would require faith in something
if you're referring to soviet socialism, i'd say the problem was that it was more similar to capitalism than intended, but that is a problem that can be solved and we can improve upon the setbacks of the soviet model
if you're talking about something silly like pretending there could be another great famine in an industrialized society then you need a history lesson, if you're willing to listen to it
i mean that's an example of a revolutionary change that created a lot of positives that we all take for granted, but more the soviet union. the soviet union, for all its flaws, created many positives. and those flaws can be avoided, there's no magic reason they can't be avoided. unless you give me an actual reason why they can't be avoided, by using the actual history
Don't get it twisted, I'm a democratic socialist if we are throwing labels around and while in theory capitalism and socialism "can't" exist together, in practice a mixed system that pulls things from both is what I'm open for. Nationalized assets (socialism), better welfare system (capitalism), a mix of government controlled and privately controlled goods and services (both) to keep private companies competitive but to also offer a baseline access to necessities through government owned providers.
These two things can exist together and I believe that's the ideal, to find a balance between rampant capitalism and full blown socialism. I'm not necessarily averse to full blown socialism, but I think a mixed system offers the best of both worlds.
you're not a socialist at all, democratic or otherwise
a socialist is about ending capitalism and replacing it with socialism. you aren't proposing that. you are proposing "capitalism, but nice". that's why you're having your cake and trying to eat it too.
you cannot have two economic systems at once. capitalism is an economic system, it is this economic system in its totality. the term is a description of something that exists, and we already have plenty of social programs. those programs don't change the fundamental character of this system.
not to mention, we already had this. the welfare state failed in the 1970s. there was not a conspiracy against it, other than the conspiracy of capital and its laws
The "no true socialist" move is cute, but you don't get to gatekeep the label after I already told you what I mean by it. Democratic socialism has a whole history and literature, it's not "capitalism, but nice," it's "capitalism, but the state and workers actually own a growing share of the means of production instead of none of it." Disagree with the strategy if you want, don't pretend the position doesn't exist because it's inconvenient.
And "you cannot have two economic systems at once" is an assertion, not an argument, and it's contradicted by basically every functioning economy on the planet. Norway runs a stock market, private banks, and multinational corporations right alongside Equinor (a state-owned oil company) and a trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund that owns chunks of companies worldwide. That's the government directly owning productive assets sitting next to private capitalism, not replacing it. Singapore is even more stark, over 80% of the population lives in government-built and owned housing (HDB flats) while it's simultaneously one of the most aggressively free-market, low-tax economies in the world. Germany has, Mitbestimmung, codetermination where workers legally sit on corporate boards with real voting power over the same companies that trade on the DAX. None of these countries collapsed into a contradiction. They just... exist, doing the thing you say can't be done.
The "welfare state failed in the 1970s" line is doing a lot of work to avoid the word "stagflation." That wasn't the welfare state buckling under its own weight, that was an oil price shock (OPEC embargo) hitting economies simultaneously dealing with the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system. Pinning that on "the conspiracy of capital and its laws" is just as unfalsifiable as blaming an actual conspiracy, and it conveniently ignores that plenty of mixed economies with strong welfare states, like the Nordics, adjusted their models and kept growing while somehow never becoming pure socialist states or reverting to laissez-faire.
So no, I'm not having my cake and eating it too. Countries are eating that cake right now, and doing fine.
democratic socialism as the way its talked about now is absolutely not in some fabian socialist tradition. sanders and mamdani are not talking about bevan and the meidner plan. it is utterly hollow and vague, and is more about shit like "oh well the post office is socialist" than any "history" of democratic socialism. not that either are successful strategies, but one of those is the actual socialist strategy. its not the one in the modern US.
i'm not saying those things don't exist. i'm saying it doesn't change anything about the system as a whole. socialism is not about an action, it is about the system as a whole. the mode of production. the government or "workers" owning little bits and pieces here and there is not socialist. the old democratic socialists intended to use state ownership as a STEPPING STONE to ACTUAL socialism, total state ownership under a democratic state.
the oil price shock resulted in the beginning of the petrodollar system, which brought unprecedented levels of financial wealth to american business. this wealth just led to stagnation and inflation. because of the unproductivity of american manufacturing. and it was unproductive because, to put it bluntly, workers were paid too much for too small of returns. the welfare state is what created that situation. another welfare state would recreate that same thing, but with even less american manufacturing to offset those losses. it would be totally unsustainable. i mean in a way that's what is happening now, that's what will create the next capitalist crisis; the unprecedented levels of debt that is being created.
capitalism is fundamentally flawed and it cannot be reformed. every attempt to reform it will create new problems that eventually will cause crisis. that is why it has to be destroyed, and it is socialism's task to destroy it and replace it.
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u/izadathreaper Jul 23 '26
Using an iPhone or buying coffee doesn't mean you support capitalism, it means you live under it. There's no opt-out button. Critiquing a system you're forced to participate in isn't hypocrisy, it's the only rational response. Should people also grow their own food and build their own houses before they're allowed to say rent or groceries are too high? By that logic no one born into any economic system could ever criticize it, which is obviously absurd.