How could a revolution or significant changes to the economic system of a nation (towards socialism) work in the context of the modern world? To save time I'll include some inevitable questions
1. Are HICs, MICs, or LICs the most capable of/receptive to a major overhaul of economic system?
2. How would a country like the UK with significant employment in the financial and service industries alter the underlying capitalistic system without causing such discomfort and difficulty that it too is opposed before it has been given a fair chance?
3. How could a 'failed state’ such as Libya or Somalia achieve socialism in their current state and should they even try?
4. Given the extreme unlikelihood of simultaneous global revolution or even capacity of some nations to achieve the change required how would a country manage to avoid imperial oppression or state capitalism?
Capitalism can only destroy itself. The revolution will be precipitated by capitalism's self-destruction.
By not trying to pilot the revolution. Only the proletariat can free itself.
Evan Rivera
This is just non-committal handwaving.
How would that prevent capitalist states from influencing or invading the country? A nation and more importantly institutions (such as a national health service) within that nation will be less effective without oversight on a large scale that will result in some form of beurocracy.
Ayden Jackson
They would need the ability to do so, which they would not have while capitalism is collapsing. Armies march on their stomachs.
Blake Foster
IMO only first world nations like the ones where most of our posters live can achieve socialism, they need: - Strong democratic heritage - Strong institutions - A skilled and educated population - Physical infrastructure that is developed - A strong industrial base, or at least the ability to create one quickly - A sophisticated and renowned cultural heritage and soft power - A reasonably strong military able to at least inflict casualties on foreign invaders - Status as a 'developed nation' so that the world powers couldn't just bomb them into oblivion without anyone caring
My blueprint for British socialism (for example) is for Corbyn to be elected, go as revolutionary as he could within the boundaries of the establishment, ie nationalisation, worker owned industry, realigning away from imperialism, huge state investment programmes (all things he's promised), and from there build a workers movement of dual power to support the reformist agenda, and popular momentum behind his policies, then some time down the line either him or his successor moves further toward socialism and builds consensus for that, and so on until the conditions are right for the workers to totally seize power with the passive assent of Labour. Will it be smooth sailing and go without any opposition or problems, of course not, but that's my rough plan.
The same as it should have been done 100 years ago - replacing money with labor-certificates and double-entry accounting based on labor and material-balances. What do the acronyms stand for? I guess this could be answered two ways. In an economic sense, restructuring the economy would be accomplished via a planned transition and would be easiest if achieved by starving unproductive sectors of "social-capital" or whatever you want to call investment under socialism. In a political sense, it would have to be done forcefully without much regard to the input of the former bourgeoisie or financial enterprises. Tough luck for them. It would require political stability and lack of foreign interference, so it's kind of pointless to think about. If they had outside assistance from another socialist country it would definitely be possible but probably only after being occupied and rebuilt for about 20 years. These are two different problems. Foreign intervention can only be avoided by having a good defense, which really means nukes, ICBMs, and cyberwarfare. State-capitalism is an internal problem which is going to happen whenever society succeeds in expropriating the capitalists but then puts production under bureaucratic control of the state or their cronies. The only prevention against this is by eliminating the need for a bureaucracy and using modern telecommunications to achieve direct democracy in the workplace as well as society as a whole.
Cooper Roberts
Assuming socialism as the share-holder workers model and not as the state-owned conglomerate model:
1. High income countries are the least receptive due to fears that the value of their currency in the world market would fall.
2. Service industries can remain in the SHW model, but financial industries are more complicated. First they would have to be weakened by supra-national public financing.
3. A failed state that experienced a turn-around would serve as inspiration for even viable states but if they're more battlegrounds than states then it's obviously difficult.
4. You would have to use a combination of things.
Daniel Morgan
It is not possible to achieve socialism anywhere populated by more than a few thousand humans. Get anything bigger than a few tribes living peacefully and any socialist attempt is doomed to fail. You are all a bunch of idealistic kids whom completely fail to take human stupidity into consideration when you think politics.
Luke Ross
I have never heard of tribes that live peacefully with one another.
Leo Young
High Income Countries, Middle Income Countries, Low Income Countries
Blake Watson
That is an arbitrary way to categorize societies.
Jaxson Powell
It's not. It what development economists use.
Luke Campbell
I agree with many of your listed criteria; Indeed much of that is shared with my own list of criteria regarding what nations would be suitable founding nations/priority acquisitions for a Stratocracy.
I do however strongly disagree with your proposed path towards 'British Socialism'. Ignoring my own personal opinion that the working class are to far gone at this point to ever back such a venture, I see two large flaws with your proposed path:
1) The EU. Simply put, the European Union (specifically France and Germany) would never allow a socialist nation to exist within spitting distance of it. If Britain were to raise the red flag and proclaim itself a socialist republic, make no mistake that an EU military intervention would not be far behind. Even if the entire standing British military were to support your new government (I would personally consider a ~25% desertion rate optimistic), you would still be utterly outmatched by the EU alone; Crushed like a bug if all of NATO gets involved.
2) Economic independence. Even if the EU did not stage a military intervention, I imagine that your proposed mass nationalisation programme alone would provoke crippling sanctions from them. Britain is simply far to small and resource poor of a nation to be able to weather economic isolation; Your government would quickly fall.
I do not wish to crush anyone's hope here, but I do think that a grasp upon realism is required to change the status quo. From my own reckoning, that only nations capable of being the 'founding nations' of a new system are Russia, China, America, a united EU and Australia. If you ever want to see socialism or some other non-capitalist system in Britain, it is my opinion that it will have to be exported to it from one of the previously listed nations.
Carson Gutierrez
you can grasp deez red nuts bitch
Henry Evans
If you believe that the ability to defend one's sovereignty against the forces of counter revolution and foreign interlopers is not needed, then the lifespan of any nation you seek to establish will not be measured in years, months, days or even hours - but minutes.
France and Germany are both interventionist nations with large military forces and are bastions of neo-liberalism in the world. You are kidding yourself if you think that either nation would ever consider letting a socialist state exist so close to them.
Frankly I'm only referring to army and air force personnel with that figure. I expect that the famously royalist, conservative and nationalist Navy and Marines would have desertion rates well over 50% and possibly as high as 75%. Either way you are left with a military incapable of defending itself against any of the nations likely to oppose it.
There is no reason that they would not. As you have failed to provide any sort of counter argument to why they would let such an important pillar of internation finance fall to socialism, I can only assume that you cannot think of any reasons either.
The post I was responding to specifically listed nationalisation on their preposed path to socialism; That is what I was addressing, I made no claim to socialism being synonymous with nationalisation. Frankly it is bad enough that you lack any substantive counter arguments to my points, creating silly strawmen of my positions is just sad.
It is. And it is a grasp that I find to be sadly rather loose with many socialists.
How charming. With such a demeanour, I have no idea why the general public would associate your ideology with black clad thugs, edgy teenage street toughs and irrelevance.
Also, your lack of understanding of tripcodes betrays your reddit origins.
Austin Reyes
The next financial crisis will call for such drastic austerity measures in a system that's already reaching incredible structural fragility, even in the richest countries, that the people will simply no longer accept. We're headed towards the biggest monetary and financial disaster history has known. Even traders nowaday know this is just a game about pulling out at the right time. This is the equivalent of significant sismological activity in San Andreas, if you want.
Even wealthy western-European countries are getting turned into shitholes. Think of the state in which southern US states are RIGHT NOW. People there are betting on cryptocurrencies to survive because work has become so alienating and thankless that anyone who can desert, does, albeit for more modest living conditions. Why is that so? You know it, the free market. Since products are all sold, the cheapest (meaning the ones made by countries with the worst working conditions because you can get more worker hours for 1 USD than in anywhere else) imported from super far away are in direct competition with local workforce. Globalization is the generalized development of this. It means products are cheaper but come from much further and cause unemployment in areas that used to be flourishing industrial regions, much like Northern and Eastern France, North England, Northern Italy etc.
So how does nowadays' narrative fit into this? We're going to reach for various reasons (mostly Reagan's decoupling of USD value and gold, meaning money really stopped being real and started being entirely virtual, but also excessive bank credit creation and deregulation of finance) a critical state for the monetary and financial system. This means bank checks will stop working, credit cards will stop functioning and coins may be of use for a very limited time. Why is that? Because private banks are not only creating credit through loans, but they also handle the entire payment infrastructure. What does this mean? It means that if they suddenly collapse like they did in 2008, the bourgeois states bail them out with absolutely zero counterpart, why would they, of course porky is in bed with porky. Also a significant part of that money goes to bonuses to exec members because up there they're incredibly cynical. So what comes next? Banks suddenly collapse much like they did in 2008. Nowaday's stocks that make money are extremely overinflated. TSLA for instance hasn't made a buck, but the stocks are still worth a shitton. When people realize Musk is a hack and doesn't have what it takes to actually perform like he promised he would, they'll pull out all at once. For now they're funding the pipe dream but the hype can only come down from underwhelming results. Maybe it will keep swelling for a while but it's just a waiting game that makes the outcome worse over time. If anything, working-class people should pull out their own savings from banks asap. People are speculating on financial VOLATILITY. Volatility is basically the overall activity of the market but high volatility generally means everyone is selling a lot, so prices are going down. People nowadays bet in short or long term low-volatility periods. This means people bet the market is going to remain calm. While the market remains calm, these kind of bets work like insurance in case of stormy waters while costing a little. But when there is a spike of volatility (spreading panic made the VIX spike all the way to 80 in 2008).
A few days ago, someone who already made a huge buck on an unexpected VIX spike is doing it again but betting on late August. Everyone knows the VIX is rigged at this point but it can also lead to general financial instability. So people should pull out their money from the banks and purchase land, tools and actually useful basic life supplies because world trade is going to be severely disrupted and we operate on very complex logistical chains that might suddenly be broken due to impending commercial chaos.
Zachary Sanders
Also the Internet means new institutional forms for socialism are fesible. We can actually, for the first time in history, do away forever with representation, personalization and clientelism at once. This is just a question of institutional forms. With cryptography (not cryptocurrency), everyone can have absolutely guaranteed identity & anonymity. It also means we can have federated states operating on the same open-source software. This means basically federated states with absolutely transparent bureaucracy and decentralization achieved to a level that was never even thought of. Also we have to consider how to reform educational systems around this. I learnt the english language on my spare time playing games with english-speaking persons. So I get better results on my spare time actually having fun than attending alienating classes with no significant linguistic improvement in spite of up to 6 years spent learning extremely basic things in stead of actual practice. I know the current times are gloomy but think historians don't consider the 20th century started before 1814, with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. The first years of any century are typically the most reactionary forms of the dying century's consciousness. We're probably living a similar dynamic where we basically see the old structures crumbling and feel powerless but keep in mind generational change is in our favour and you'll notice people in real-life will get more and more incline to consider seriously newer forms of thinking. For the best or the worst, I also expect a resurgence of milleniarisms/cults in the next few years. Also some extreme internet-induced horrors we can't imagine picture yet.
Julian Brown
Good luck defending that
Caleb Moore
good posts.
Matthew Jenkins
You do realize that with the exception of Burgerland most first world countries have pretty weak militaries and are compliantly reliant on Burgerland for defense against invasion.
That is pretty damn good proof that it is arbitrary.
Ryder Ortiz
The French are just very efficient and get a lot done with little money. :)
Brody Adams
By that I don't a military that can defeat America or Russia or other superpowers but one that is capable of defending against say surgical strikes so that imperialist nations can't just bomb them with impunity. I don't think that the first world powers would be able to justify a full invasion of a peaceful socialist state in the first world to their citizens.
Logan Morales
It's ridiculous to think you can get by with defence alone. You also need diplomacy, benefactor states, support movements in hostile states, media, etc. If necessary you need the US as a benefactor somehow, or to play off powers against each other.
??? Are you implying 55 and 41 billion expenditure isn't enough to a large military force?
Asher Gray
(checked)
my nigga
Literally just abolish any education "system" and instead have people take up teaching individually. Education as it exists functions primarily to (1) train people to accept regimented behavior cycles in prep for jobs/prison and (2) to convince people that learning sucks and people have to be coerced to do it. People will go and listen to a podcast for a few hours and learn (and retain) more information than almost anybody in a traditional class. The most effective form of education is to present someone with a problem they are motivated to solve and give them access to the internet so they can learn what they need to solve those problems. Children, adolescents, and young adults are already doing this with social problems which is why they skew so much lefter than Gen X and older. That's the natural way for people to learn and it guides people toward things that are actually relevant. Another example, a friend of mine who's a musician taught himself about electrical work so he could work on his guitars. I imagine that teaching is going to become much more like the apprentice system than what we have now. Some professional teachers will exist, but they'll probably be experts doing lectures online via podcasts (Dan Carlin's hardcore history is a good example of format even if he's very liberal).
