I don’t know about other people, but pretty much the only reason that I didn’t become a socialist earlier than I did is because I just didn’t know what socialism really is. Someone has to be straight up evil in order to understand socialism and still oppose it.

I know this is probably pretty obvious for most people but I only became conscious of it recently.

  • Soviet Snake
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    18
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    1 year ago

    Marxism is a thought that has a philosophical background that has proved through praxis to provided a cientifically driven analysis of society’s history and economics. It is not a matter of discussion wether or not Marxism is correct, of course a better understandment of it can still be achieved, but opposition or agreement comes from the comprehension of it, or by a total refusal of empathy by other human beings.

  • Water Bowl Slime
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    161 year ago

    One of the biggest problems with discussing politics is just setting definitions tbh. I’ve found that most people that talk about “socialism” straight up don’t even have a consistent definition themselves. One day they’ll use the word to mean “an economic system without commerce” then another day they’ll use it to simply mean “sharing” and another day they’ll use it as a synonym for “evil”.

    Approaching people like this is maddening because you can’t say what you mean directly without being wildly misunderstood. But I agree that most people that oppose “socialism” don’t know what socialism really is.

  • @Binkie55
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    131 year ago

    A wise man once said,

    If you’re afraid of Socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.

  • @Soselin
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    91 year ago

    A lot of people really believe in hierarchies, and their belief in hierarchies as either natural, beneficial, or inevitable makes them oppose socialism or even egalitarianism more generally.

    Obviously many people believe capitalism is a “necessary evil” with the empirically incorrect but very common belief that competition is required to achieve economic growth and this makes them believe in capitalist hierarchy.

    But there are others who don’t think of it as a necessary evil but go a step further to the extremity of equating material success with virtue, which is a key idea that underpins neoliberalism. This group are today dominant among the ruling class and they justify their wealth with ideological belief that success is due to personal ability, and therefore if someone is materially successful that means that are an innately superior person. This group will actively seek a capitalist hierarchy and call it a virtuous moral outcome to have such uneven distribution of wealth.

    It’s like under the absolute monarchies of times past, these would always be justified as morally correct even divinely ordained and we get some kind of secular equivalent of this with the implicit belief in some kind of Social Darwinism that you find at the core of neoliberalism. These people view equality as an abomination.

    Many people either have true wealth and a true position of social power, and often also working class people who lack class consciousness and are alienated into identifying with some kind of identity associated with that position of power even if they themselves don’t have that power (eg the working class white males who are the foot soldiers of white supremacism) and these people, even though they actually don’t occupy a high position of economic power, this group often still highly value the aspects of their identity associated with that power. They feel offended if you say everyone should be equal because they don’t agree that everyone is equal. They gain some kind of sense of self-worth simply by identifying with the ruling class.

    The fact is many people are either supremacists and therefore oppose equality since that offends their sense of supremacy.

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
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    81 year ago

    Let alone communism. Hell I loved the concept of communism and didn’t even know wtf it was until I read Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme. I read that and was like wait a second, so this is what communism was? The manifesto and principles of communism didn’t even really go as far in depth and I had already read both of those. I can’t stress enough how important the Critique of the Gotha Programme is.

  • @EuthanatosMurderhobo
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    81 year ago

    Mostly, yeah. The funniest shit is that nationalists can’t get what they want under capitalism and don’t get it.

  • Anna ☭🏳️‍⚧️
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    81 year ago

    On many instances interacting with liberals and conservatives, they always assume that socialism is whenever the government does stuff. They put this premise to basically confirm their biases, so that they can exclaim: “You know that the government giving free healthcare is socialism? And you seen the experiments of socialism in the past which ended in failure, you don’t want to have socialism do you?”

    So yes, you’re right. Many people who criticise socialism don’t even know what socialism is. But they don’t care. They’re willing to criticise not the definition itself, but the experiments that occurred within legitimate socialist nations. Only a few of the capitalist bootlickers know what socialism is. And those who do know usually possess fascistic tendencies, subverting the proletariat using socialist rhetoric.

    I’ve been rambling for too long already, but I hope that’s enough explanation.

    • @redtea
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      71 year ago

      Not rambling.

      So it goes, e.g.: USSR bad, USSR = socialism; national healthcare = socialism; therefore national healthcare will lead straight to the USSR. It’s a kind of slippery slope argument, riddled with logical fallacies but it suits the ruling class, which wants to profit of healthcare and to avoid USSR-type socialism. Two birds, one stone.

      Those two guys did once say ‘the ruling ideas of the epoch are the ideas of the ruling class’.

  • @sinovictorchan
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    71 year ago

    Socialism is government by the working class. The definition and definition of dictatorship got altered in schools of NATO countries to confuse people.