Arguments for Socialism
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We don’t want socialism in order to be free to live like rampaging capitalists, but to save our world from rampaging capitalism.
Sounds to me like you envy the capitalist class and see socialism as a ticket for being free to behave like them without any laws, money, etc. standing in your way.
That is not why we are socialists, and has never been so.
‘Sounds to me like you envy the capitalist class and see socialism as a ticket for being free to behave like them without any laws, money, etc. standing in your way.’
I don’t envy anybody. Money does stand in the way of all people having what they want. This was my original point, that in the mind of a lot of people Socialism is associated with sharing out the misery and imposing controls on what people want or need.
What is your definition of ‘rampaging capitalism’? Building infrastructure? Planning to travel to Mars?
What is your definition of ‘rampaging capitalism’? Building infrastructure? Planning to travel to Mars?
No. Rampant pollution, deforestation, driving other animals to extinction, poisoning the seas and the land, killing for fun (“sport”), driving tribal communities out of existence, fracking, more and more weaponry for nation-states, you name it.
Obesity at one end of the scale and starvation at the other. But hey, we can all become obese! Won’t that be fun? Just reproduce the parasitism of the capitalists, but for everyone!
If you don’t view capitalism as rampant and destructive, what are you doing here?
Socialism may not have police in the sense we have today, but anyone causing harm won’t have carte blanche.
The native Americans had shunning, but that doesn’t mean they also didn’t physically stop a do-badder from doing what he was doing.
The basis of society is the same as when Marx was writing, but capitalism has not stood still since then.
Marx today would be a 21st century socialist, not a 19th century one.Socialists should surely respond to sensibilities which were barely circulating in the 19th/early 20th century, but which are forced by the realities of capitalist destruction to be awakening now.
Our task must be to show people the link.Are you going to say to the concerned, “I support socialism so I’ll be able to do what I want”?
I think you’re slowly proving my original point, which is why although I believe in a fairer society and abundance for all, I wouldn’t describe myself as a Socialist.
We don’t know what Marx would think if he were alive today. Maybe he would be amazed with the potential of A.I. to help tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems. We don’t know.
People and companies are fined or imprisoned for breaking rules and regulations related to the environment”
Can you name some instances?
Most of the problems are happening in countries without adequate institutions to set and enforce laws.
You mean countries like UK/US/Australia. Their inadequate institutions permit their national mining/fishing corporations to pillage their own and, even-more inadequate, international zones of depredation, indifferent to local punitive fines and imprisonment.
The might of human disapprobation doesn’t cut it against the might of inhuman capital.
You see, it’s capitalist law—by capitalists for capitalists—that is notionally “violated”.
Accumulation of capital thrives in environments it finds congenial or else skedaddles to greener pastures, where it may rape without encumbrance, leaving behind human disapprobation along with environmental detritus in its wake.
The working class is ineffectual in capitalist affairs, even if it bleats its disapprobation ever so loud and ever so plaintively to unrepentant capital.
This was my original point, that in the mind of a lot of people Socialism is associated with sharing out the misery and imposing controls on what people want or need.
Is that your mindset too?
If not, why bring up a fact recognised by all—thanks to a century of labourist and communists exemplars?
Why triumphantly turn ignorance into a bludgeon against socialism?
‘Can you name some instances?’
Here are some examples obtained from a simple google search:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6gr4rjkk5o
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/shipping-company-fined-2m-maritime-pollution-offense
https://www.epa.sa.gov.au/blog/2025/04/04/penalty_for_serious_environmental_harm_in_adelaide_hills‘Accumulation of capital thrives in environments it finds congenial or else skedaddles to greener pastures, where it may rape without encumbrance, leaving behind human disapprobation along with environmental detritus in its wake.’
And which countries are you referring to when you write ‘green pastures’?
These are minor infringements.
A step above the council park ranger dishing out littering tickets. And no-one has gone to gaol for it.
What about the accepted devastation wrought by the big companies and their heads?
Which countries?
Countries like the UK/US/Australia—nationally and internationally.
For capital, green pastures are wherever it can expand.
Can you define ‘accepted devastation’?
Companies usually seek out countries with weak regulations and a lack of institutions. They are usually countries in which corruption is rampant.I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. As I said before, capitalism creates uneven development and massive inequalities in wealth. However, capitalist economic growth has rapidly improved the living standards of many people. In richer countries people are living longer and healthier lives. The environment is generally better in richer countries and animal welfare is better.
As I said before, I think we need a world in which nobody goes without the things they want and need, to live a happy and healthy life.We don’t know what Marx would think if he were alive today.
Why triumphantly turn ignorance into a bludgeon against socialism?
In fact, we do know what Marx (and Engels) wrote about environmental devastation in the pursuit of capital expansion.
Maybe he would be amazed with the potential of A.I. to help tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems.
While everyone (including its developers) is amazed by AI, we can be fairly certain that the Marx who wrote on Machinery in Capital would also be amazed, but that the scientist in him would immediately recognise the significance of AI’s provenance in training by machine learning.
Therefore Marx might be expected to conclude that AI, just as money is tightly constrained to function reliably in exchange, so also must AI function reliably in universal cognition, with the major proviso that AI is subject to what it was trained on, but that—and here’s the big arrow at the heart of AI—it must also satisfy objective scientific/logical criteria.
And so Marx might be expected to foresee that AI will ultimately spill the beans on the essential nature of capitalist exploitation—the source of capital expansion—as the basis of humanity’s miserable lifetime subservience to capital.
Scientific logic must undermine capitalist ideology. That was Marx’s enterprise in writing Capital—to expose the materialist base of capitalist confusion.
Finally, the class-conscious Marx would definitely stipulate that AI can only help humanity, rather than just help its ruling class, when it is wielded collectively by associated humanity in the interest of all humanity. That is, when it is wielded under socialism.
We don’t know.
The ignorance is all yours.
Can you define ‘accepted devastation’?
Companies usually seek out countries with weak regulations and a lack of institutions. They are usually countries in which corruption is rampant.If you can’t see ‘accepted devastation’ in the water and power guzzling AI data centres, or in mining/fishing/agriculture, then why bother?
Companies seek out resources—means of production—read the Party’s Object and Declaration of Principles—that we seek to become the common property of all humanity under the democratic control of all humanity.
They can’t choose where nature concentrates resources—that’s the province of geology. If deposits are found at home, they’ll be extracted there. Corruption is best when not carried out by a gun.
At present, wars are being fought precisely over which capitalist powers own and control a large chunk of the world’s petroleum resources.
And wars are among the most glaring example of “acceptable devastation”—sanctioned by governments and bolstered by nationalism—under world capitalism.
Signing off.
I notice you’ve made no attempt to address my original point that Socialism tends to be associated with sharing out the misery. Waxing lyrical about the disadvantages of capitalism, and surmising what Marx might have thought about the present, doesn’t address the point.
‘If you can’t see ‘accepted devastation’ in the water and power guzzling AI data centres, or in mining/fishing/agriculture, then why bother?’ I think this comment says it all really. Your limited horizons and inability to notice the huge strides that humanity has taken over the last few centuries has blinded you to the progress that has been made. There are people out there now trying to tackle these scientific and engineering problems. Yes, they’re probably doing it so a company somewhere can make a profit. But it is my opinion that socialists should be harnessing those strides forward and make the case that all people can benefit from them.
I notice you’ve made no attempt to address my original point that Socialism tends to be associated with sharing out the misery.
Oh, I addressed it, alright. Either you didn’t notice, or you ignored me.
- I asked you point blank whether you also shared that popular mindset?—which you refused to answer, i.e., it was you who “made no attempt to address”.
- In the absence of a shared basis for dialog, I asked you why you dragged in a commonly agreed fact unless you assumed that your popular fact was the killer demolition of Socialism?
Your reticence indicates that, at minimum, you do incline toward the proposition that “Socialism universalises misery”.
Here’s a scientific warning for you: an immediately observable fact is not, of itself, mediated science (read Marx on scientific method—essence and appearance).
An observable fact begs scientific comprehension. For example, it is immediately observable that the Sun moves across the sky from sunrise to sunset, and yet, contrary-wise, mediated science compels us comprehend the phenomenon as the Earth rotating on its axis.
Waxing lyrical about the disadvantages of capitalism, and surmising what Marx might have thought about the present, doesn’t address the point.
You threw down a provocation—your “surmise” that Marx would be totally clueless about certain modern phenomena—and I met it by evidencing relevant counter-clues that Marx has left us.
Being found out as a pontificator bereft of knowledge of the subject matter on which he pontificates, reduces you, the pontificator, to a mere clueless “surmiser”.
You accuse me of “waxing lyrical about the disadvantages of capitalism”, which only proves that it is you who desperately desires to wax “lyrical about the advantages of capitalism”.
In passing, maybe you should follow through to the actual class that mostly suffers the [your word] “disadvantages” of capitalism. I assume you also belong to it, but are nevertheless inhumanly tolerant towards capitalism’s disadvantages.
Your limited horizons and inability to notice the huge strides that humanity has taken over the last few centuries has blinded you to the progress that has been made.
In short, you are claiming that my inability to notice progress blinds me to progress—tautological drivel. And any remnant content about “inability to notice progress” is patent nonsense.
There are people out there now trying to tackle these scientific and engineering problems. Yes, they’re probably doing it so a company somewhere can make a profit.
Have you ever stopped to consider why these [unspecified] “scientific and engineering problems” are driven by the inhuman need for commercial profit instead of by the thoroughly human drive to comprehend the world we inhabit, and to make life better for all who dwell in it?
Have you ever stopped to consider that our social lives are conditioned by the class-divided society we spend our lives under, subject to a ruling class that owns and controls the means of our social existence.
As old Shylock, who knew a thing or two about commerce, says “You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live”.
But it is my opinion that socialists should be harnessing those strides forward and make the case that all people can benefit from them.
Yes. When humanity ceases to meekly condone and justify capitalist exploitation as humanly inevitable. Yes, when humanity turns the social means of life into our common possession under the democratic control of us all.
Until then, it remains exploitative and profit-driven, not collective and humanity driven.
Maybe think a little more about becoming a socialist.
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