• 1 Post
  • 545 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
cake
Cake day: May 23rd, 2024

help-circle





  • Hell no.

    The premise of M-L types who wanted the state to control production for the workers is that the government was the workers, aka the dictatorship of the proletariat. In doing so excess production would be traded within the system to provide things like healthcare and housing.

    In theory.

    That obviously didn’t work out too hot, but even that is different in theory from a fascist or otherwise oligarchal state controlling production for the benefit of the owner class with absolutely no pretentions of providing social services with the profits. They are proudly ripping up any social safety net they find as a matter of ideology.

    Tl;Dr it’s quite literally the opposite of socialism when kings or oligarchs control and profit from the state owned enterprise. That is just the eponymous late stage capitalism, or neofeudalism/technocracy depending on the angle you want.











  • I’m not sure from the context of your comment with that “most socialist” line if you know or not but…

    Socialism is the workers owning the means of production. End line.

    Everything else is just how the society organizes itself. The US Army seeing to the basic needs of its troops is not socialism, it is the government doing things. Scandinavian countries providing maternity and unemployment benefits is not socialism. It is the government doing things.

    The US Army is not socialism. Nor is any other professional military, not even the ones working for socialist states. They are organizations trading capital for labor to empower the state.

    If you were a slave soldier, taken in a war raid, working for a monarch like the Janissaries, they would probably still provide you all of the necessities to function, even spending money to entertain yourself and maintain morale, and it wouldn’t be socialism either.


  • Conscription is slavery if the people are not under imminent threat.

    Conscription will always be used as weapon of the rich against the poor.

    Conscription will never affect the children of the rich as much as it affects the poor.

    Conscription does demystify military service and can teach useful skills.

    Balancing these and other factors is always the trick.

    I’d prefer a voluntary military service in a society that strongly encourages people to sign up for short service periods and doesn’t lock them in for years as an anti-abuse measure, as a training program for a more popular citizen militia defense scheme.