The person in question was talking about capitalism and how it’s not a sustainable system, wealth inequality, how corruption and wealth consolidation is a feature not a bug, etc.
Then:
“There’s also no magical best system we can go to. Communism would be nice, but it’s just as susceptible to the flaws that come from centralization of power as capitalism is so RIP to that idea. In the absence of a perfect solution, the best we can do is look at what we have, critique it as hard as we can and advocate for something better, even if it’s just incrementally better. For my part, I’d like to see a hard cap on wealth be introduced. No more billionaires. After a certain point (Say, $5 million just to pull a number out of my ass) all wealth, whether its in the form of liquid assets such as cash or iliquid assets such as property, get smacked with a 100% tax. Sell those assets off and invest/donate them (naturally, this would come with stricter regulations on charitable organizations too. No opening a “charity” to use a slush fund, like a certain ex-president on trial) or they go straight to the government. Individual ownership of corporations would also be phased out in favor of large scale profit sharing co-ops that are themselves run democratically by the workers, which is to say, workers elect their managers and bosses. Stocks and stock markets would then, not be a thing. If you want to own a piece of a company, you better work for that company. This would allow for a much more even distribution of the profits generated by the companies. No stocks means no investors which means that the majority of investment money would then come from a combination of credit unions which are formed by business in the area (since business in an area would be invested in improving the quality of life for people living there because they’re run by those people that live there, so they’d want to see other business open up) and a business development fund run by the government and paid for via taxes. Is this a perfect solution? Fucking no, of course not, but it’s a few steps better than what we currently have.”
I’m thinking, “Hey, this person kind of gets it. I could point them in the right direction.” I told them about the dictatorship of the proletariat and how successful socialism exists and has existed in the world. How there was actually a viable solution to this problem…
Then you get hit with this garbage:
“My dude, get your tankie shit out of here. The soviet union and china are neither communist nor are they “good” by any definition of the word. They’re both absolutely state capitalist. While we’re at it, Stalin was a genocidal maniac and Mao was a clown who either didn’t realize or didn’t care that forcing his farmers to make pig iron instead of, you know, farming, would lead to mass starvation. I’m sure all the people that died during the cultural revolution in china felt really uplifted. Shit man, I’m sure all those koreans that were ethnically cleansed in the USSR felt really uplifted too. What I’m suggesting is a far more realistic way to achieve proletarian control over the means of production and it’s likely never going to happen, at least not in our lifetimes, and despite that, it’s still a hell of a lot closer to happening than the revolution tankies like to LARP about, which would be both devastating and almost assuredly lead to fascists immediately taking control in the aftermath.”
What do you even say to a person like this…? What would you even call a person like this?
Reddit moment, I guess. I’m just confused by people like this. Would anyone offer an explanation?
In my unfiltered opinion, your interlocutor is just a White supremacist (USA) or a racist (if not from the USA) who uses misanthropic myths about humanity (sustaining myths of the capitalist class) to justify their apathy.
I’ve encountered this type of person in different levels, none as explicit as whom you’re talking about. If you’re close with them, you can try deprogramming. If not, don’t bother since the hours you have might spent on them will be wasted when they leave and consume the same reactionary sources.
They were explicitly talking about capitalism. I thought there were a genuine anti-capitalist at first, but then they just hit me with the “small and incremental change” bullshit.
I’m thinking they’re more like a “Democratic” socialist who still has their brain rotted from red scare propaganda and can’t take the next step. This comes about from a lack of education and theory.
For the record, this is just some random on reddit who I was disappointed in.