Mainly just asking you guys, but here’s my take:

Capitalism:

  • An economic system in which individuals privately own the buildings that produces stuff and services.
  • Their form of democracy is a “democracy of the minority” at best, and at worst, is a dictatorship disguising itself as a democracy. Has that illusion of choice shit going on for the majority class.
  • Can’t get rid of the top man “running the place” due to him/her owning the deed of the building. Sad, can we get an F in the chat for the workers having their labor exploited by this POS.

Socialism:

  • An economic in which the workers who do the shit for the business run the building that provide goods and services.
  • Their form of democracy is real democracy. In which that the majority class, actually have an impact on what they want in society. The minority somewhat gets to live, but not without a gun on the head and a sign next to it saying: “we will not hesitate to shoot you if you give in to your hedonistic greed the profit motive.”
  • Can get rid of the person just sitting their and owning the deed to the building, the least harmful method is via democratic vote and choice on who gets to lead the operation, or if the deed owner ain’t gonna give up his title of “leader” well, we shoot the guy if he/she reacts with malicious violence.
    • @frippa
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      31 year ago

      The only true definition, all other definitions are pure revisionism

  • @cayde6ml@lemmygrad.ml
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    121 year ago

    Capitalism: Rich bastards control everything

    Communism: “Sharing is caring” and “we’re all in this together, teamwork” taken to the logical and rightful “extreme”

  • KiG V2
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    91 year ago

    My way when talking to normies is very similar. I avoid jargon/SAT words at all costs for sure.

    Capitalism is when our economy and government is run by a rich elite of old money. The sole driving force behind every decision is profit, at any and all costs.

    Socialism is when our economy and government is run by socialists based on their merit and popular support. The sole driving force behind every decision is what is best for society and people’s basic needs, at any and all costs.

    Not perfect but I’d probably lead with that, and hopefully I can STFU then and allow the person to digest that and ask questions.

  • I think at its most macro level, capitalism is fundamentally the loss of what little human agency has existed, giving way to the newly developed natural laws of capital which judge the capitalist class, thus enforcing a fundamentally anti-human, anti-life, human system. It is the cataclysmic reorientation of social relations in the wake of the ceaseless enforcement and judgment of capitals laws upon the capitalist class and then upon the masses.

    Socialism is the process of history that naturally reestablishes human agency and fundamentally challenges the basis for the natural laws of capital, and thus the class that represents it, developing a human system capable of bringing capital under the full subjegation of newly developed natural laws of social equity, reciprocity, kinship etc. Tho there is no direct way back to the traditional world, socialism sublates capitalism in a way that allows humanity a future without the tyranny of capital, allowing for humanity, together, to brave futures not yet imagined.

  • Muad'Dibber
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    61 year ago

    TheDashRendar ( who is now a Maoist unfortunately ), wrote probably the best 1 page explanation of capitalism and socialism I’ve ever seen. Text is at the bottom. There’s also dessalines Crash course socialism which is a bit longer.


    Capitalism is, fundamentally, about the underlying property relations at the base of society. Claims on ownership granting special rules. So kind of like how in feudalism - the King got a bunch of special rules that only applied to him (sometimes from God), and later some of those would extend to the nobility and aristocracy, but not to the serfs and peasants - or how in ancient Rome, masters got one set of rules and slaves got a different set of rules - well Marxists make the argument that we’ve still got a two-tiered ruleset in place today - where one group of people (or CLASS of people) have to live and play by a basic set of rules, but another, smaller group (or CLASS) of people get some bonus special rules that help them out extra and give them bonus power and authority that members of the much larger group don’t have the same access to or ability to wield. Even moreso, Marxists make the argument that these bonus rules are actually detrimental and damaging to the larger group, in order to amplify the benefit provided to the smaller group.

    So let’s talk about these two groups. The first group is probably the one that you and I are a part of, as is the overwhelming majority of humanity. This group is a CLASS of people that acquire and grow their wealth - that is to say, make their money, earn their income, etc - primarily through doing work -ie/ labour. This can be a lot of different things: flipping burgers, writing code, building houses, transporting goods, etc. Lots of different things. But how they all get paid is largely the same. They perform this task, over a certain amount of time, and they receive money from the person or people who owns the business at a fixed rate of pay, multiplied by the amount of time that they spent working. So you make X dollars per hour (called a wage), or you make Y dollars per month or per year (called a salary), or you get paid Z dollars for doing a specific job that will take a specific amount of time.

    Now there’s a lot of interesting characteristics to talk about with this relationship - but one of the obvious ones is the mathematical limit to wealth growth through labour. Karl Marx calls this group the PROLETARIAT.

    If you are getting paid at X dollars an hour, then there’s only so many hours in a day that you can work, (and lets face it, you need to sleep to some extent, and there’s likely transit and other life obligations involved in there too) and there is a clear upper limit to how quickly you can grow your wealth. Yes, if you have the fortune of being born into a very privileged position, you might be able to negotiate a higher X dollars per hour rate, but it is still a fixed rate, and it still is capped off by how many hours you can physically perform work over the course of a day (or a week, or a year). So even if you are a super skilled, super hard worker who negotiated a good contract, you can still only grow your wealth arithmetically - in direct proportion to the time you put in. But overwhelmingly, that’s not how fortunes are made.

    Now let’s talk about that other group in society - the much smaller and much more powerful one - the one with all the fortunes - the one that really gets to make use of those bonus rules I mentioned. So remember, the PROLETARIAT primarily makes their money from doing work - that’s the defining characteristic of that class. Well this group, who Marx calls the BOURGEOISIE, grows their wealth, makes their money in a very different way. Their wealth does not primarily come from doing work - their money comes primarily from ownership claims. They make their money simply by owning things.

    Rich people sell you a story about working hard for their money - for the most part, that’s a myth - most of their money is made via ownership. In the old days is was the certificate they had that said 'this factory belongs to me (or me and my business partner), and in more modern times, it’s divvied up a little differently with things like stocks and bonds - people with differing amounts of equity and portions of the total ownership claim. But the money they make from the ownership claim - that money is made while they sleep and play golf. That money is the money made by the workers, that they only pay a fractional portion back to the people who did the labour to make the money in the first place (salaries, wages, etc). The owners pocket the rest, and the mechanics of how this system works is not the standard of history, but something that has come into place only in the past few hundred years.

    Think of a coal mine for example. The owner doesn’t physically go into the mine and dig up the coal. He doesn’t run the local office and organize the labour. The owner lives thousands of miles away. Yet, because he has a little sheet of paper that say he owns it, every three months he can expect a substantial cheque in the mail paid out to him. He gets a (very large, rather significant) cut of everything that mine produced this quarter. But he didn’t mine any coal. Capitalists love to say that “There’s no free lunch” - except that there is - as long as you have enough wealth to belong to the ownership class - you can extract free lunches from actual working men and women for as long as you own property. It’s not the poor and powerless who are leeches - it’s the wealthy who are the parasites.

  • @Munrock@lemmygrad.ml
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    41 year ago

    A capitalist world is one where everyone else in the world is your competition.

    A socialist world is one where everyone else in the world is your comrade.

  • @Shaggy0291@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Limbic System: All the rich apes and all the poor apes are dukin’ it out on this ball. You’re one of them. It’s basically all just apes dukin’ it out on a giant ball.

    You: How big is the ball?

    Limbic System: You can’t even make out that it’s a ball, when you’re dukin’ it out. It’s that large.

    You: How small are the apes?

    Limbic System: Infinitesimally small.

    You: And what is this “dukin’ it out” I keep hearing about?

    Limbic System: Vying for resources? It’s just a stupid expression you picked up somewhere. The part of the presentation you want to take home is this: you have to beat the rich apes in the face or you lose.