Sort of, I’d say I’m way more of a socialist than communist, but I also think that both capitalism and communism suffer from being very old ideas that actually don’t address issues of the modern world as much as they could. I think about the LGBT community, and remember that communism didn’t just forget they existed, they ran on the same macho bullshit that vilified them for existing as capitalism. Castro admitting he made a mistake in regards to LGBT people near his death bed is far too little, far too late for the lives they destroyed.
There are valid critiques of both communism and capitalism, but we’ve basically got worldwide capitalism, so the critiques of capitalism simply matter more since it represents the status quo. I’ll worry about critiquing more of socialism/communism when communists actually have real power worldwide beyond China, which is having it’s own struggles right now as well. (Also, most of the critiques of China I have seen fall under propaganda messages from the US/Europe, and fewer of them have real meat of critiquing the actual functions of Chinese politics and how they work.)
Also, when it comes to theory, I fell in line a little more with people who weren’t strictly communist, like the Situationists. Guy Debord is my pfp for a reason, and that’s because he was fucking brilliant, in my opinion. I have a dog-eared copy of Society of the Spectacle that has more notes in it than any other book I’ve ever read.
Anyway, yeah. I’d say socialism is as good of a “fit” for me as I can find in existing political ideologies, and even that is more a close fit than a perfect fit. I’m definitely a fan of Critical Theory and the idea that we should always critique the status quo, whatever the status quo may be, because there is no such thing as a perfect world, we can always pursue improvement. If we had worldwide communism, I’d promote critiquing that as well.
What do you mean by socialism? Do you mean the abolishment of private property? Or just higher taxes for the rich?
Neither of those is “socialism.” Socialism has a strict definition.
From Wikipedia:
Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
Socialism doesn’t necessarily say we should remove all forms of private ownership, as much as it says we should remove private ownership of the means of production. Also, that doesn’t mean that nobody owns it, it means all the workers own it, collectively. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t have your own house or your own refrigerator, rather that the companies that build those will just be collectively owned. Imagine every company being unionized by default, something like that.
We have a similar structure of owning things in the US when it comes to stocks and public companies, but the thing is in that case anyone can buy a part of the company. In socialism, only workers who are invested in the company through their labor get part in ownership and choice of the direction of the company.
I do agree on higher taxes for the rich, but that’s just a band-aid on the existing capitalist system, it’s not really a “socialist” idea at all. Higher taxes on the rich is about trying to keep capitalism from spinning out of control into outright feudalism. The rich only become that rich to begin with because of how our system of ownership works where they take all the excess profit generated by their workers and keep it for themselves. Socialism would remove their ability to do that because they would own as much of the company as any worker. They would no longer hold dictatorial control on the finances and where they go.
