As we all know, the USSR fell apart in 1991. Russia and its former colonies dumped their socialist economies, and in most cases the already weak economies have failed to prosper. In contrast, formerly socialist China has been successful in its economic transition to state capitalism. Why do you think this is true?

I do.

Left Anarchism is directly created by action, according to prefigurative politics. It is not something that can be changed top down, but instead come from bottom up actions.

From my understanding of anarchism, it essentially is like hierarchical institutions and governance being replaced by an egalitarian horizontal civil society.

If people are convinced to willingly associate with each other in this way, then they can set up mutual aid federations.

These federations are entirely voluntary and are regulated through local social trust. This social trust is built by prefigurative politics, and both feed into each other.

People who trust each other will be less likely to rob or commit crimes against each other. Anarchy forces accountability through its fundamental way of association. If you are a freeloader, with no good reason, you will eventually feel the need to contribute to mutual aid.

And people would have free speech and gun ownership.

There are historical examples of medium scale societies ran with lower coercion, and without binding commands from above. It could be seen in some parts of Europe (maybe Iceland, and definitely the Wendat tribe).

People are not compelled to be anarchist in an anarchist society. Instead, if you don't like how things are run, you can leave and set up your own community organized around different principles.

One of the major freedoms that people used to have before the era of nation states, was this ability to move freely and associate more fluidly.

To me, all of this sounds very free. There are multiple senses of the word "liberty", and this fits as a specific type of it to me. Unless you define liberty narrowly, I think this sounds sufficiently libertarian.

When asking capitalists about the point of welfare I ran into this:

workfare; - traditional, means-tested welfare provided to people who have no choice in their inability to work - skills-based, training, work/community service welfare incentives for people who are able to work but don’t

According to this, wouldn't a communist society expect to have workfare instead of welfare?

In a moneyless society that provides to the vulnerable isn't this workfare

The only question I have is what incentives would exist in communism for those who do not want to work?

Capitalists,

I remembered that the Scandinavian countries are capitalist,

But what exactly is the core reason for welfare but from a capitalist perspective in contrast to a socialist perspective of welfare?

University professors are always socialists, as this is by the government’s design.

The government wants to make as many socialists as possible, because that is how it steals more taxes from the people and gets more power for itself. The more kids it can brainwash into socialism—and the more it can destroy masculinity in general—the more power the Karens and ultra-feminine men who work for the government get, which is what they want more than anything else.

The universities actively weed out students who are not socialists (meaning students who can think for themselves). The government can’t afford to have ethical people in positions of power in society, because then they wouldn’t be able to get away with all their lies and pathetic little evil deeds.

The government isn’t just cracking down, it’s building an army of socialists to fulfil its sinister self-serving agenda.

I was checking some statistics and I saw that socialism is getting more popular, at least when we're talking about university students and professors.

Almost 50% of graduates have answered that they support the socialist ideation, and about 30% said that they support it fully. Capitalism was met with a drop in popularity in comparison to previous years.

The research was based in the USA which was even more surprising. My question is: Why is it that more people are supporting socialism? Is USA doing a worse job in propagating "capitalism"?

Source: https://www.campusreform.org/article/half-college-students-say-socialism-better-capitalism-poll-says-/28674

Under socialism, one of the biggest unresolved questions is how we actually define democratic ownership. Does it belong directly to the workers inside each workplace, or does it belong to society as a whole? Both models aim to end capitalist exploitation, but they define the franchise in fundamentally different ways. The real tension comes down to who gets a ballot, and whose democratic rights take priority when interests clash.

Worker Ownership and Workplace Autonomy

The worker-ownership model, favored by market socialists and syndicalists, eliminates shop-floor alienation. The people doing the labor directly elect their managers, set their conditions, and decide what happens to the value they produce.

The democratic dilemma is what this means for everyone else. A semiconductor plant or a modern chemical refinery generates massive surplus, not just from individual effort, but from generations of accumulated societal knowledge and infrastructure. If only the workers on that specific payroll get to vote on how that wealth is allocated, the rest of the working class is effectively disenfranchised. Teachers, nurses, and farm workers get zero say over the massive industrial bottlenecks that shape their lives, turning high-yield co-ops into something resembling exclusive guilds.

Societal Ownership and Majoritarian Control

The society-wide ownership model, favored by democratic planners and communist traditions, treats the economy as a shared commonwealth. Every citizen gets an equal vote, production is guided by human need rather than enterprise competition, and wealth divides between industries are eliminated.

The democratic challenge here is majoritarian rule over the direct producers. In a society of millions, the broader public can always outvote the people doing the actual work. If a regional assembly votes to run a metal foundry on expanded shifts to hit green transit goals, the foundry workers have effectively lost control over their labor. When your daily conditions are dictated by an outside electorate that never sets foot in your facility, shop-floor self-determination disappears.

The Problem of the Final Veto

Many people propose hybrid models like nested councils to balance local autonomy with community needs, but that still leaves the question of the tie-breaking vote. If power plant workers vote to cut their hours for safety, but the regional community votes that the grid needs those hours to keep homes warm this winter, which vote wins? If the community overrides the workers, workplace autonomy is conditional. If the workers override the community, the public lacks democratic control over vital resources.

Where Should Authority Lie?

Both models have clear democratic merits and clear democratic blind spots. One prioritizes the direct producer's right to control their physical labor, while the other prioritizes the working class's right to equal control over shared wealth.

Which side of that trade-off do you think is more essential to genuine socialism, and why?

The rich are rich because they produce a lot, this means that there is a lot of products to go around, which means under supply and demand the prices of those products are low.

If you want to hurt the rich somehow, the following will happen by default they stop producing and now there is a lot less products to go around, so prices are a lot higher.

There is absolutely nothing in the world anyone can ever do to fix this.

What the rich are doing is running a company successfully, meaning the company makes money. If the company doesnt make money you nor anyone else would run this company because it will only cost you yourself money. So you now have to argue why you would want to be poorer. Either way.

Taking their stuff and be poor in 2 weeks or running their company at a loss which means you would be poor within 2 weeks.

Here is the one and only third option, run a company successfully yourself.

You see the problem is that you socialists doesnt see this, simply because you do not understand economics. If you did understand economics you would understand this and you would no longer be socialists.

Understaning that there are more understsnding of socialism, what are the incentive structures in the system you envision. Do people work for the common good and that is incentize enough? Perhaps they are incentivized by professional accomplishment? Do they get more wages or good for doing a good job or being more highly skilled. What happens to people like what the Soviets called social parasites (who could be jailed)

You read that right. Unfortunately it seems to be a quite unpopular opinion. Hard men create good times, good times create weak men. And now we are here with the weak men who think Communism is somehow good. Have we not learned from history?

Communism is horrible. It's kind of obvious too. It murdered and starved over 100 million people. You might say, ehh whatever, what is 100 million anyway. But humans can't comprehend big numbers well. 100 millions is a damn lot. Don't you hear the screams? Communism is an unholy satanist sect.

Science shows us we should examine things by their outcome. And every time communism was tried it failed horribly. Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao, North Korea...

Please don't disrespect the victims of communism. Let them rest in peace and stop promoting this unhumane parasitic shit system. Thank you.

1. Introduction

The marginal revolution occurred in the 1870s. Political economists tried to extend supply and demand reasoning to both the short run and the long run. They erroneously described the economic problem as allocating given supplies, of labor, land, and capital, among alternate uses. They generalized the principle of substitution. Higher prices of a good are supposed to induce consumers and producers to substitute other goods for the more expensive good.

These confused ideas became accepted partly as a response to Marx. They do not really refute Marx, of course. They merely offer a contrast.

Anyways, the marginal revolutionaries were shown to be mistaken over half a century ago. Many microeconomic textbooks are just wrong.

I like to echo these demonstrations by outlining numerical examples with upward-sloping demand functions for labor. In these examples, managers of firms choose to adopt more labor-intensive techniques, out of an existing menu of choices, at a higher wage. The examples apply under ideal assumptions of competitive markets, no information problems in the long run, no search costs in the long run, and so on. Opocher and Steedman (2015) is an example, out of a vast literature, on which I draw. I like to cite Borjas' textbook for muddled nonsense.

Anyways, I have posted four examples here, for those willing to work through a bit of math.

2. An Example With Natural Resources

In this example, given endowments of land limit how much can be produced. Even with the dependence on final demand, the noted problem with labor economics arises.

3. An Example with Three Produced Commodities

 You could check this example with a spreadsheet. Answers are given, so it can be checked with arithmetic. I outline something like a market algorithm when the wage is given. Two levels of the wage are given. (An example of supposedly educated economists being unwilling or unable to recognize results established sometime last century is here.)

4. An Example with Fixed Capital

This post works through a fixed capital example from Baldone (1974), in Studi Economici. A machine that lasts for three production cycles is an example of fixed capital. I take the interest rate as given. To check, you have to be willing to solve a linear system of four equations in four variables. (I do not go into the centre of a fixed capital system, which reduces that system to one of two equations in two variables.) This exposition asserts that firms will not produce commodities with negative prices.

5. An Example With Two Commodities

This exposition works through an example from Bruno, Burmeister & Sheshinski (1966, p. 545) in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. These are mainstream economists, and that journal, associated with Harvard, is one of the most prestigious in the world. This example has two produced commodities. The example requires you to solve two equations in two unknowns, given the interest rate (also known as the rate of accounting profits).

6. Conclusion

Many more examples like these can be produced, including with smooth production functions, rent, and so on. Empirical examples have been illustrated in the literature. I would have liked to have seen more. Innovation in actually existing capitalist economies is probably more about creating new processes and products, not the choice from an existing cookbook of recipes, as presented in production functions and the theory of supply and demand.

I want to note these responses and these responses, in comments from confused, presumably academic economists.

TL;DR: Mainstream economists agreed in the 60s of last century that what they teach is incorrect and illogical.

Hace unos momentos ví un post en éste Subreddit dónde se hablaba sobre el evento de la Plaza de Tiananmén en 1989, y aquí va mi análisis: esto es un recordatorio histórico de lo que sucede cuando un sistema intenta abrir sus mercados manteniendo un control político absoluto. Desde una perspectiva liberal y capitalista, la tragedia no fue un fallo del libre mercado, sino el resultado inevitable de la falta de instituciones democráticas y de derechos de propiedad reales que limitaran el poder del Estado.

1. El origen del problema: La apertura económica sin libertad política

En 1978, bajo el mando de Deng Xiaoping, China entendió que la economía centralizada y puramente socialista de la era de Mao Zedong los llevaba al colapso así que introdujeron las reformas de "Reforma y Apertura", permitiendo la inversión extranjera y el comercio privado. La riqueza empezó a crearse, pero el poder político siguió concentrado en una sola entidad: el Partido Comunista de China.

El economista y Premio Nobel Milton Friedman, en su obra clásica Capitalismo y Libertad, argumentaba que la libertad económica es un requisito previo necesario para la libertad política, pero no es suficiente por sí sola si el Estado retiene el monopolio de la fuerza y de la ley. En 1989, la inflación y la corrupción que indignaron a los estudiantes ocurrieron precisamente porque no había un Estado de derecho independiente; los funcionarios del Partido controlaban quién prosperaba y quién no. Cuando los ciudadanos exigieron transparencia y libertades civiles el estado totalitario reaccionó de la única manera que sabe operar para mantener su monopolio: la represión... Y con ello me doy cuenta de una cosa.

1. Mi perspectiva como un capitalista conservador

Si todos analizamos cómo se podría haber gestionado o mejorado esta transición desde la óptica del capitalismo conservador (arraigado en pensadores de la tradición liberal-conservadora como Edmund Burke o el economista Friedrich Hayek), la clave está en el orden, la tradición institucional y los contrapesos jurídicos.

El capitalismo conservador no defiende el "libre mercado salvaje" en el vacío; sostiene que un mercado próspero requiere de un marco institucional sólido que lo proteja. Para mejorar el escenario de 1989, se habrían necesitado tres pilares fundamentales:

• Estado de Derecho y Seguridad Jurídica: Una economía de mercado requiere reglas claras que apliquen a todos por igual, no favores políticos. Si China hubiera priorizado un sistema judicial independiente antes que la discrecionalidad del Partido, la corrupción burocrática que desató las protestas se habría mitigado sustancialmente.

• Derechos de Propiedad Privada Sólidos: El capitalismo conservador entiende que la propiedad privada es la base de la autonomía individual frente al Estado. Al decentralizar la propiedad, se descentraliza el poder. En la China de 1989, los ciudadanos empezaban a generar ingresos, pero sus vidas y propiedades seguían dependiendo del gobierno central.

• Transición Ordenada hacia la Libertad Civil: A diferencia de las revoluciones caóticas, el conservadurismo aboga por reformas graduales pero firmes que fortalezcan las instituciones intermedias (familias, comercio local, asociaciones civiles) para que sirvan de amortiguador entre el individuo y el poder estatal.

De lo que me dí cuenta:

El capitalismo en su sentido más profundo, no es solo "hacer dinero"; es un sistema de dispersión del poder. Cuando el poder económico y el poder político están en manos de los mismos burócratas (como ocurre en los sistemas de partido único o socialistas), el ciudadano queda completamente indefenso.

¿Puede un sistema económico ser verdaderamente libre a largo plazo si el individuo no tiene el derecho legal y protegido de disentir políticamente?

- Esto te invita a mí y a ti a pensar que la prosperidad económica y la dignidad humana requieren obligatoriamente, límites constitucionales estrictos al poder del Estado.

Workers keep businesses running, yet major decisions usually belong to owners and executives.

Capitalists argue that private ownership rewards investment and risk-taking. Socialists argue that workers should have more control over the production they make possible.

My question is: why should investing capital grant someone greater decision-making power than the people whose work creates the value?

I'm interested in arguments for both sides, especially how each system can prevent abuses of power.

I have a quick question for any Holodomor deniers out there. First ill lay out my evidence for it being the intentional exacerbation of a famine to inflict harm on the Ukrainian population so you can understand where ive formed my opinion.

1. June 1932-Chubar writes a letter to Stalin informing him of the detrimental effects their grain procurement policies are having on the Ukrainian people, reporting hunger and death across the region.

2. August 11, 1932-Stalin writes a letter to Kaganovich calling ukraine “the main issue,” treating resistance to the grain quotas as a threat to soviet dominance, rather than the starving populations response to a brutal famine that it really was

3. November 18, 1932-new policy enforced which allowed for the confiscation of meat and later potatoes in ukraine if grain quotas were not met

4. December 1932-certain villages are blacklisted and cut off from all outside manufacturing and trade

5. January 22, 1933-the Stalin Molotov directive sealed off Ukraine, violently preventing starving populations from seeking out food.

If anyone would like i can provide sources but these are all primary soviet documents and are reasonably easy to find. As you can see the state acknowledged the famine early on, increased quotas and harshened enforcement shortly after, and justified it by accusing starving populations of being enemies of the state.

Now that ive explained why i believe it to be a genocide, by question for any deniers is why? What do you gain from denying an atrocity with so much evidence behind it, much of which comes straight from the state responsible for it? It seems to me an absurd and awful thing to deny considering the millions of lives which were lost, and in my view only serves to weaken your own credibility when discussing many other issues such as whats being inflicted against the Palestinian people.

India is a mixed economy, right? A mixed capitalist economy. But if it becomes a socialist country, does that mean everything will be distributed equally among everyone? The thing is, human beings naturally tend to seek superiority over others. So, even if socialism or communism is established, wouldn't the system eventually transition back to capitalism?

In short, money brings political power, and when a single person or group gets so much wealthier than everyone else, we no longer have democracy. The whims of the powerful become more important than the needs of the populace.

And for what?

Let's take Warren Buffett, the billionaire with the best reputation... mostly because he doesn't flaunt it. He lives in an upper-middle class neighborhood he bought long before he became extremely wealthy; drives a nice car, a Cadillac, but he drives himself; doesn't get overtly involved in politics. Fair enough.

What did he do that was worth a billion dollars? What did he contribute to the world in such a way that he somehow deserves to have vastly more political power than most others; that he and his children should never have to lift a finger, again?

All he has done his entire life is move money around, and while someone needs to be in charge of managing resources (ultimately what we are talking about), the guy distributing the resources doesn't somehow deserve more of those resources than the people who actually produced them, right?

He was at least good at that function, though; most billionaires are parasites.

Elon Musk didn't come up with the idea of Paypal or program the website or engineer an electric car or develop rockets; he was the guy with the money to pay other people to do those things (some from family, some from fraud), and he took most of the profits.

Bill Gates isn't a "Rags to Riches" story, his father was a partner in the largest law firm in Seattle, he wasn't on scholarship at Harvard, and the only reason anyone has ever heard of Microsoft was because his mother was on the board of the United Way with the CEO of IBM, who told his executives to give Gates the OS contract for the PC (which Gates ripped off another guy to get, he didn't write any of it), and Gates shoved the knife in.

When we reward people whose primary talent is criminality, guess who winds up in charge?

People like Trump, Putin, Musk, and Zuckerberg have enormous wealth and power. How much is enough? When does greed become evil?

Ordinary people spend years studying, work decades, pay taxes, and struggle to survive, while the richest accumulate fortunes and influence our future.

And now robots and AI are supposed to replace us. Shouldn’t technology serve humanity instead of making us disposable while the rich get richer?

We build their empires, sacrifice our lives, and what do we get in return?

We deserve a future where human lives matter more than endless wealth and power. Why is that so difficult to achieve?

Capitalists for a followup later I wanted to collect your opinions on this,

Is the government from the market, part of it, or is it separate?

This is because I ran into a definition of the free market that said it is when two parties voluntarily exchange without third party intervention.

Is the government always 'third party intervention'? What if they are the only representative agency left for some poor individuals?

Its a hypothetical scenario, you have a house and a lawn and you just hate mowing your lawn, so you hire a person to do it for you. But you have a lawn mower and you have gas for it. So once every week he comes over uses your lawn mower and your gas to mow your lawn.

One day he has an accident, he falls and somehow the lawn mower cuts off his fingers on his left hand?

How would you feel about this?

USSR supported Israel because they thought they’d be a left wing anti imperialist country. What if the USSR prediction ended up being correct?! I have a feeling the modern left would be different.

What if it was the US arming and funding billions of dollars to weapons for Palestinians instead of Israelis? What would you think

Hello,

Me and a good friend me and her were talking about things but she asked a question that had me stuck so I wanted to bring it up here.

Assume a large community of people already freely exchanging goods and services,

What would ever compel them to eventually come up with banks?

I feel like talking about why money was made is relevant too.

Ok but I'm stuck. Why did banks ever come up to begin with?

The best I had to say was that I thought banks allow you to lend so this means that you can have things now and pay later?

I asked this here because the discussion did eventually get into how banks might not be necessary and then an eventual change into a moneyless society could happen. The thing is I still thought banks serve something necessary for society but if I can't exactly imagine how it originated then maybe I'm in the wrong?

Something I've found a bit odd about parts of the modern left is how much hostility there seems to be towards industrialisation, economic growth and increasing consumption.

Obviously Marx was highly critical of capitalism, but he also saw it as an enormous advance over feudalism. He praised the productive forces capitalism had unleashed, and socialism was supposed to build on those achievements rather than reject them.

And I'd have thought this is something Marxists and pro-capitalist liberals should broadly agree on. The industrial revolution and subsequent increases in productivity have been hugely beneficial to humanity, even if we disagree about ownership and distribution.

So I find it strange seeing leftists talk about industrialisation itself as some great mistake, or treating reductions in production and consumption as desirable goals.

I'm aware not all ecosocialists are degrowth advocates, and obviously environmental damage is a real problem. But surely the goal should be making production cleaner and more efficient while continuing to improve material living standards?

Curious whether Marxists here see degrowth and anti-industrial environmentalism as compatible with their understanding of socialism, and whether capitalists think there's some common ground here

there are like only 3 people who constantly fight each other on here.

some cia agent vs “criticism of capitalism not proof of socialism” vs a pragmatist of a non-existent economic system.

The irony.

Peace.

Brazil is heading for a presidential runoff at the end of the month. Bolsonaro has a narrow margin to win, supposedly representing ‘the right’, Lula is not far behind, supposedly representing ’the left’. But IMO, we’re just picking from two different flavours of cronyism.

Both are terrible choices. Quoting one of Brazil’s greatest movies, City of God “Do you wanna get shot in your hand or on your foot?”

It’s like a vicious circle. Populism wins elections. It’s not about policies or plans, it’s about selling an identity and then convincing people the other side is evil and stupid. If you question your side’s identity, that’s a betrayal, and if you are on the other side you’re a communist or a fascist, woke or a nazi.

Have we always been this tribal? Is there any hope for us to evolve past this type of behaviour?

Hello,

I ran into a definition where capitalism is defined as where the means of production are owned by private individuals rather than the state, and things are ran for profit.

The state fails all the time,

Someone asked where's the exploitation in capitalism?

When you think about at will employment, if you sign into a really bad wage then that's the wage you signed into. Your rights are that you can leave any time because you sell your labor.

But can the profit motive serve social good, why or why not? For example an economics professor told me self interest is not the same as selfishness, And that it's not the benevolence of the butcher but self interest, and then talked about how capitalism made sure cows are still around.

But beef is expensive now in the US

Either way can self interest or the profit motive become oriented towards social objectives such as wanting national healthcare coverage that is good for even people who are unproductive or disabled, good housing Options for the same demographic, and jobs anyone can do at wages people decide?

Instead of the government doing it, it could look like individual activists starting local companies offering health or housing cleaning services. Or a market where price signals are used to help serve the underserved. The problem is that this might still be called capitalist. However, this is in contrast to a moneyless economy. Could we have an honest discussion about this?