@yogthos surplus was one of the main points of Marxist criticism of capitalism, but Marxian economy had a problem much worse: shortages.
@kravietz shortages happen under capitalism all the time. You also end up with recurring recessions and wars. Right now capitalism is literally killing our biosphere and there is a distinct possibility that it will make us go extinct along with the rest of the complex life on this planet.
@yogthos so there's a fundamental problem with bashing "capitalism": it's not an ideology but a economic model that is very flexible and can adapt - Sweden, UK, USA, Russia and China are all capitalist, yet their living standards are drastically different; at the same time Marxism is very prescriptive and closed ideology
@kravietz
A true democracy has to start with the democratic allocation of resources in a way that benefits majority of the citizens. However, capitalism is designed to accumulate resources under the capitalist class. Fundamentally, this system optimizes resource usage towards personal whims of the capitalists as opposed to the needs of the society at large. Capitalism inevitably creates an oligarchy of the rich who run the country for their own personal benefit.
@yogthos "real socialism" operated in quite the opposite fashion: because there's no competition, nobody cared about quality; because there's no imperative of "profitability" nobody cared about production cost or effectiveness
@kravietz that's not really true though. For example, a lot of stuff produced in USSR still works today. Meanwhile, under capitalism we got planned obsolescence.
There was also a large study conducted in the 80s that showed physical quality of life under socialism to be higher across the board https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/AD12-7RYT-XVAR-3R2U
@yogthos I'll prefer to read the full study before commenting on it. As a matter of fact, life expectancy was ~10 years lower in Eastern Bloc as compared to the rest of Europe. Another question is what they define as "socialist" - Sweden maybe?
@kravietz the study focuses on Soviet Union specifically, and definitely worth reading in full.
@yogthos how ironic it's hidden behind a for-profit paywall :D
@kravietz yeah sadly :)
@yogthos a lot of stuff like what - a hammer and a sickle? Possibly, as it's really difficult to make them in low quality. I had the "pleasure" of driving Soviet cars produced in 80's and even a new Lada or Uaz would break more often than a 10 years old VW, not to mention twice more fuel used per 100 km.
@kravietz how about closed cycle rocket engines that beat anything US could produce https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oGr1UVNBDLs
@yogthos we had a joke in 80's Poland "maybe the prices of food increased twofold but at least prices of locomotives decreased by 20% so all is good on average!"
@kravietz I mean things weren't perfect obviously, and I think Leninism specifically is quite problematic. I do think that a good governance system needs to work bottom up though.
The system needs to represent the majority as much as possible in terms of how resources are allocated. And that's only possible when everybody has roughly the same influence.
@kravietz in a socialist system that would just happen by default because resources are optimized towards providing cheaper solutions naturally since there is no profit motive in the first place.