I keep running into tankie and antifa spergs who keep yapping about bringing down or "reforming" (lol) state capitalism. Not understanding that it's literally communism, only less honest.
Can anyone make sense of this bullshit?
They imagine the equation suddenly becomes any different if industries are "nationalized and worker controlled".
Meanwhile, if you actually look at places like East Germany, Poland, etc during their communist era, just because factories were nationalized and state controlled didn't make people really any happier.
There's this anecdote I remember hearing about that I'm going to butcher, on East Germany, where someone was visiting a well off friends family in the early 80s. The family were proud of their East German state and factories, proud of their role in the socialist utopia. They had some trad dinner, and then the mother was like "I have a very special treat for you", and bitch just pulls out some shriveled looking orange and "Look at this proud product of socialism, from Crimean SSR" and the people actually seemed to think this was special.
Ultimately, tankie spergs hate to hear this, but people like having cheap and accessible commodities. Its like when soviet era politicians would come to the US in the late 80s, see a supermarket, and just realize that communism was over.
There are some things socialism does do better. In the USSR, homelessness was practically eradicated- and thats a very serious thing. But, on that note, you also had major problems, major abuses of liberties, lack of competition, increased costs to produce commodities, little to no commodities, etc. In East Germany, even if you were "rich" and in a high position, it could take years for the order for a new car to actually get processed.
You could probably reform state capitalism, its a lot better than "bringing it down", but the things proposed to "reform" it are rarely based in reality. I still volunteer with a co-op, most of them fail and utterly suck (the one I'm with actually does work pretty well). All the mutualist stuff, worker control, "direct democracy in the workplace", its all meme shit that almost always turns into a shitshow.
These activists also deny that people, as much as its unequal, really do enjoy the standard of life we have. Noone wants McDonalds to cost $40 a meal, noone wants having a shriveled orange to be a "special and rare treat". Almost everything these people propose would basically guarantee that.
Theres stuff you maybe could argue, in an age where unions are dead (and there was a fair amount of corruption in them), workers probably do need some form of collective bargaining (ie, if a workplace wants to layoff 20% of their staff, it used to be that they'd have to negotiate with a union and have a valid reason. Now, Activision can report increased earnings at a record high, and then they lay off half the blizzard staff and hire temps from Malaysia to make wc3: refunded). Temp/gig workers (amazon, uber, etc) should have better protections & contracts from their employers. Maybe we could reform things to make it so the proles paid less taxes than they are now.
Ultimately, the tankie/antifa sperging just occurs because these people are politically illiterate, economically illiterate, and just want some meme fantasy that actually has no place in reality. For every "worker progress" you have to be aware that you may have to sacrifice productivity, you may make commodities more expensive, etc. If you can figure out ways to better workers lives without making things expensive, thats what reforming capitalism should be about. To these people though, its not. Thats why their meme ideology is garbage and distracts from actual stuff that could make things suck just a bit less from happening, because actual realistic reform is never on the radar to these people jumping on literally the most sensational and cleaved from actual reality ideas.
www.forbes.com
, and where it will be rewarded. Without honest prices in the marketplace, the economy and stock market would plummet.
