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sudo wrote

I said socialism, not communism. Socialism is the transition phase from capitalism to communism. Under socialism, a state still exists, but it is controlled by the proletariat. So, socialist state is not a contradiction, but communist state is.

Also, I don't know if late communism implies a world government. There might still be individual countries without states, or there might be one giant country without a state.

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ziq_TNG OP wrote (edited )

You also said socialism only means 'the workers own the means of production', my point is that isn't all socialism is. Socialism can still exist even in a post-worker world. Socialist people can still exist even if they're forced to live in a capitalist state.

Being puritan about it and excluding labour unions, welfare, antiwar, anti-imperialism, queer / womens rights and such from a socialist forum is ridiculous.

Communism doesn't imply a world government at all. It implies a stateless, moneyless world.

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sudo wrote

You also said socialism only means 'the workers own the means of production', my point is that isn't all socialism is.

No, I didn't say that's only what it means. I said, "socialism is where workers own the means of production." There's no "only" in there. To give a complete definition of socialism would take a long time, so I decided to give the simple definition, and hoped that people wouldn't be pedantic about it. Looks like my hopes were wrong.

Socialism can still exist even in a post-worker world.

Do you mean a world where virtually all production is automated, and scarcity no longer exists? If so, that's late communism, not really socialism. I suppose the workers would still "own" the means of production, but not in the same way as in socialism, because in late communism, the means of production would work all by themselves. But if that's not what you meant by a post-worker world, then please elaborate.

Socialist people can still exist even if they're forced to live in a capitalist state.

Agreed, but what does that have to do with our current discussion?

Being puritan about it and excluding labour unions, welfare, antiwar, anti-imperialism, queer / womens rights and such from a socialist forum is ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous when we already have forums for those particular things. Yes, those are all related to socialism, in that they are all struggles imposed on us by capitalism, but they're each a specific subset of the broad struggle against capitalism. So, how broad of a focus is too broad? It's hard to define explicitly, but I'd say including this article (the one about the NHS) is too broad, because it's only tangentially related to socialism. /f/news is a good fit for this, but /f/socialism isn't.

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