Why do you think it’s the US specifically and none of all the other capitalist countries?

Mining conditions are all over the place right now. Some workers have it good, with good compensation, perks and with a lot of attention paid to safety and others live in horrible deathly conditions and are practically slaves

Public ownership was the principle aspect of its economy, and private ownership was mostly relegated to black markets

Public ownership doesn’t make a mode of production, it’s a falsifier belief (such as of Lassalle) Marx himself had to fight against that he called bourgeois socialism.

The economy did not rely on the circulation of capital, or its continuous transmogrification.

This does make their mode of production not purely capitalistic though I agree, even though the system wasn’t capital-free. Still, a lot of the social relations remained, enough for opportunism to still be heavily encouraged by the system especially when it came to the party and bureaucratic management of the capital.

That being said, it was still not socialist economy - a socialist economy comes after productive forces are sufficiently developed and commodity production has been completely abolished. Until then it hasn’t changed the mode of production yet from capitalist, with it being mixed at best and it instead is a period of DOTP where productive forces are developed or reorganized, which, don’t get me wrong, is a massive step forward and a massive achievement, but one that can be reversed unlike historical transformation of mode of production.

Stalin redefined socialism, which was previously viewed as the abolishment of capitalism into something entirely different and pretty much one of the main major goals into “whatever USSR was at the time”, which was quite a disgusting move in terms of opportunism, though may have had good intentions back when it was done. Now, it just serves to confuse people and as an excuse to call capitalism a different name.

Though, this is something we’ll NEVER see eye to eye with lmao

Yep, that’s the intent behind it! It’s designed to be approachable by anyone, feel free to leave feedback if you decide to follow it!

Socialist countries have not been oligarchial nor dictatorial. They haven’t been utopian wonderlands free from any problems either, but they’ve been dramatically more democratic for the working class than capitalist countries.

I understand your position very well, it’s just wrong and based on critical misunderstandings of socialism in theory and in practice. Simple as that. Collectivized production and distribution works very well when it comes to economic growth and satisfying the needs of more people.

I’m not discounting “human nature,” you’re attributing it as a problem for socialism when that isn’t the case. Again, socialism doesn’t care if everyone is perfectly moral and upstanding, that has nothing to do with how we run collectivized production. You should familiarize yourself with what leftists are actually talking about before waxing poetic about how there’s some fundamental flaw we haven’t properly understood, as though we don’t hear the same tired arguments day in and day out.

Not particularly old or long but yes if you want to avoid being completely wrong about things you will eventually have to read about those things

Early communalism isn’t the same as future communism, Marx was only comparing the two modes of production as far as they both lack class, not beyond that. Communism is not a return to communalism, but an advancement beyond socialism, ie towards fully collectivized and interconnected production at a global scale.

Modern communism (is the age of industrialization) is essentially Marxism which is younger than capitalistic models.

Hunter gatherer societies were egalitarian but its impossible to apply a pre-civilization framework to civilizational societies. So the fact that he referred to it as primitive communism is not an indictment on communism.

Communism as a political movement was introduced by Marx and Engles. Only since then has it been attempted on a nation state level. Prior to this nearly every political and economic system was an autocracy or monarchy where the state administered private land ownership rights to lords. There are very few exceptions to this in civilizational history.

So if we are looking at communism as a political and economic system as can be applied to modern civilizations ie. nation states, it is much younger than capitalism.

There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has primarily gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up as compared to the total number, because poverty isn’t systematically targeted for alleviation in capitalism but instead is a requirement for it to function. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut.

Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:

The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.

As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:

Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.

There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.

Lemmy is made by communists.

Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.

The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.

Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.