this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Capitalism is not "when you have markets." I totally agree that it's important to have well regulated markets. But capitalism perverts democracy with bribery and lobbying. Democratic Socialism is when you have a democratic government and a democratic economy.
Democratic socialism and capitalism can coexist. As long as the former significantly neuters the latter. Capitalism is (supposed to be) an economic organization, not a political one. It's just captured the government in the US and other places.
That is a core function of capitalism, not some crazy coincidence. There are market economy models separate from capitalism.
Could you point me to the economy models you are refering to?
I think the biggest mistake of the social market economy practised in Germany, was overlooking or disregarding the fact, that policy and policymakers are themselves part of market forces by lobbying, corruption and bribery. This leads to creeping reduction in social standards and development of the economy towards are radical free-market economy, which in turn inevitably leads to feudalism and fascism eventually, as demonstraded live in the US currently.
Market Socialism (like worker co-ops)is my personal preference:
Private companies still exist, but instead of being beneficially owned by separate investors, they are collectively owned by the workers themselves. Think privately-traded corporations where all shares are held exclusively by employees. Profits can be reinvested in the company, spun-off into other ventures, or distributed between the workers themselves.
This retains the competitive benefits of markets, while cutting out the non-working investor class. Fewer billionaires, stronger middle class.
And, instead of dictatorial decisions coming from CEOs and separate investors, the decisions would be debated and decided by vote in the workers' board. An actual workplace democracy
There's only one kind of democratic economy and we already have a word for it - it's socialism. If the means of production isn't owned by the workers it's not democratic. It's not socialist.
Exactly markets aren't the distinction, communist and socialist democracies all have markets. A really interesting model of that was Allende's Project Cybersyn in Chile before the US sponsored fascist coup that put Pinochet in charge. There's highly regulated markets within capitalist countries as well, bulk energy is largely very "designed" and regulated markets.
The Marxian view of socialism would consider it as a transition state between capitalism and communism. While someone may be ideologically communist, they will likely have more political opportunities catering to socialist policies in capitalist democracies with a "left" party. Revolutionaries don't believe this is possible, and argue capitalism's structure won't be threatened by socialist policies unless a revolution occurs, and might even consider comrades who support socialist parties as "not real" communists. Germany's socialist party supporting ww1 is often used in forms of this argument.
Ultimately in a lot of these capitalist democracies, there are individual leftists but no real political power, this is certainly the case in the US. Working to raise class-consciousness and labor organizing is basically the front of whatever left exists there. It's a bleak time to be on the left, and sometimes I wish I could have the enthusiasm of the self-righteous liberals who naively think that if everyone regardless of identity was distributed equally in the capitalist system everything would be right and fair.
And when democratic government turns into direct democracy socialism turns into communism
although how do you want to achieve a democratic economy? voting? 🤣 corrupt politics and capitalism are symbiotic. how do you plan on getting rid of just one of them.