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by meerita 2440 days ago
I call corporativisim or prebendary, to those non-capitalists forms of enterprises, where some intermediaries ally with goverments. People always cite these examples when they want to point out about capitalism, but they're totally wrong about it. That's not capitalism, that's just another form of socialism where the State is not yet deep root in it and they're buying time while others profit, until everything is owned by the state "in favor of the people".
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Socialism is not "the state doing things" or "state intervention" or "state ownership." Of course these can be aspects of an implementation of socialism, but they are not socialism in itself - the "how" and "why" actually matters. This is a conflation that historically came to prominence during the Cold War to make the difference between capitalism and socialism "digestible." Even young modern socialists believe this now, no longer understanding socialism as a historical tendency towards emancipation, which attests to the current pitiful state of the Left.

You want actual evidence of what actual major socialist thinkers thought of the state during the time when socialism was most relevant, read Marx's 18th Brumaire or read Lenin's State and Revolution and come to your own conclusions.

I've read Marx, Engels and other marxists. Socialism is the phase 1 that any goverment must implement in order to achieve the proletary ditactorship and after that, achieve communism utopia. Once people is molded into one single line of thoughs, objectives and all property will be abolished through destruction or State ownership, after all that, as Marx said, the human would become interestless to the point it will never think for itself. Absurd. They've concluded that Phase 1 is needed, without questioning, and using force by all means, even killing people, lying or forcing into slavery. Lenin also said this in several publications:

> “We should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that it was impossible to confine things to a peaceful strike and that a fearless and relentless armed fight was necessary. And now we must at last openly and publicly admit that political strikes are inadequate; we must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this question by talk about "preliminary stages", or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.

The problem with socialists states is, they cannot plan everything, so they rely on the worst corporativism or prebendary, and that is not capitalism, not the classic view, not the modern one. Young people of today is so fooled that they wear a rainbow shirt with the face of Che Guevara.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it is the best system we know and the only system who took the entire population of earth out of poverty.

>As Marx said, the human would become interestless to the point it will never think for itself.

Could you cite this quote?

> They've concluded that Phase 1 is needed, without questioning, and using force by all means, even killing people, lying or forcing into slavery.

Capitalism also historically used force to support itself. Lenin supported armed revolutions, yes, but this became a necessary evil to him and he did not advocate for wanton violence. The thing is, suppose if the Bolsheviks were right about communism and everything - that means responsibility lies on the Bolsheviks to totally transform society, thus, they needed to secure these means: they needed to A) acquire state power make and B) prevent themselves from being undermined by a capitalist order. I point to Rosa Luxemburg's critique of Eduard Bernstein as evidence why moving beyond capitalism requires force.

You will find that, historically, Thomas Jefferson said similar things about the French Revolution:

"In France the 1st effort was defeated by Robespierre, the 2nd by Bonaparte, the 3rd by Louis XVIII and his holy allies; another is yet to come, and all Europe, Russia excepted, has caught the spirit; and all will attain representative government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate. To attain all this however rivers of blood must yet flow, & years of desolation pass over, yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what inheritance, so valuable, can man leave to his posterity?"

Lenin was in favor of armed revolution - but not wanton violence. This is why no one died during the October revolution, but millions did during the counterrevolution when the Bolsheviks had to assert themselves lest they would fall (i.e. the Russian Civil War).

>Once people is molded into one single line of thoughts, objectives and all property will be abolished

Marxism is not about turning people into the Borg and abolishing all property! Marx's critique of Capitalism actually went to say that Capitalism tended towards the degradation of property:

"We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence. From the Manifesto:

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily."