Considering that the capitalists got us to literally pay for the glorified goon squads that represses us while protecting their precious private property for them out of our taxes, I'd say that it's them that's getting all the "free stuff."
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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Socialism
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End welfare; kill the rich.
And ICE
Okay, the rich and their enforcers ¹.
¹including ice. Yes.
glorified goon squads that represses us while protecting their precious private property for them
Yeah, this never ever happened in human history before capitalism.
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Socialists and Capitalists both think you shouldn’t be able to freeload off the back of other people’s work. They only disagree on who exactly it is that’s doing the freeloading.
The whole point of capitalism is that the capitalist doesn't have to do any real work. They have employees who work, and they just sit around and look smart, doing nothing.
(Also, it tends to come up a lot in these types of discussions, but commerce is different from capitalism.)
Billionaires rigged the government so that they get the entire country and everyone and everything in it for free with zero ethical guidelines
I don't think the text is that helpful really. Equitable is a highly contentious term. A 'right-wing' libertarian/anarchist would likely argue that the fruits of ones labours should be first devoted to oneself, and that you should have control over how it gets shared at a personal level: it's only 'fair' that your labour should benefit _you_after all. Socialism generally doesn't view that as equitable, and instead prefers that the collective/group gets to determine how the fruits of people's labour are distributed (eg. typically higher taxes, to fund social programs).
Each approach, taken to an extreme and fuelled by authoritarianism, can lead to really negative outcomes for everyone.
You’re missing an important distinction. The only thing that socialists really insist on is that the means of production are collectively owned. Everyone is still free to put in a day’s labor and come away with the fruits of it.
I think this is one area where our messaging really breaks down.
the collective/group gets to determine how the fruits of people’s labour are distributed
For a lot of people, this is an absolutely terrifying proposition. Imagine you are part of the half of american adults that struggle with reading. Maybe you're neurodivergent and didn't get support. Maybe you dropped out to work and don't even have a GED. You're ashamed of your struggles, and never fit in well with a group because everybody thinks you're dumb. Your only friends are down at the bar, and they're also barely literate at best.
Fox News writes at a 4th grade level and tells you that the left hates you for being smarter than them, they just say your dumb because they're jelly of how cool you are. You're not living a luxe life working in an office somewhere, you're out in the real world doing real work, and that means you know how things work, not them.
Maybe you initially did want to give it a fair shake, Momma always said to look at both sides, but leftist theory is written at a college level, and doesn't make any sense to you. You go online to try and figure it out, but the rhetoric online is a mix of people saying that it's your own fault for being poorly educated, that they can't comprehend your struggles so you must be lying about it, that the government would work better if dumb people didn't get a say, that we shouldn't need to dumb things down for morons like you.
Then there's this little group of people over here going "just trust us bro, the group will decide who gets helped, it'll be fair, I promise!"
Would you take that bet?
This is a well crafted narrative, but i just don't buy it.
What did the trump admin run on last election? What are conservatives running on all over the world?
They all run on "brown man bad".
Sure there are some sprinkles of other elements in there, afterall, they have to sell their corporate overlords ideas as somehow being good for the common man, but ultimately it boils down to projecting a hierarchy where the people you talk about, are not at the bottom, and while they may be further than the top, if they can feel infinitely better than others through racism and bigotry, they're happy enough to have it.
Why do you think, to go back to American examples, that issues like which bathrooms trans people are allowed in are even "issues"? The trans people can be put into a pool of people who are , to them, worth infinitely less than they are.
Instead of solving problems in their own lives, they want to make sure that at least some folks are for sure lower than them.
To them its all relativistic, but in the worst way possible. They're fine if their lives get worse, if the lives of marginalized people get exponentially worse by comparison.
They don't see campaigns that raise all boats as being attractive.
The ones they resonate the best with don't have any indication of doing anything equitable, and instead talk vaguely about things that they haven't been conditioned to think disproportionately help the marginalized.
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Collectivism is possible without imposition of taxes by rulers. Gift economies exist. I have witnessed neighbors sharing produce or helping each other without need for compensation.
Communities can decide through consensus how to allocate resources. Achieving "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" is the ideal. Boo! That's Anarchism. Happy Halloween!
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actually i do want free stuff by the way
It should be noted, as is partially a point of this post, that those "free" things are not actually free, and are simply paid for through taxes such that they are cheaper for all.
Socialists famously always pushed for free universal healthcare and education, and achieved this to the highest degree in communist countries like the USSR or Cuba. I agree, free stuff is great when it comes to freaking human rights!
Too bad the libs will continue to attack socialism in lockstep with their fash allies.
Never gonna hear this explanation from a democrat. Maybe Bernie paying lip service.
Yep one the main points is to stop the theft of labor value by the bourgeois.
The thing about socialism is that it's about the social aspect of life. (it's right there in the name). You see an old lady and you take some time from your day to help her cross the road. You have 2 apples but only need one so you give one to a person without one. We're all people and it's not about OUR stuff or OUR time. Fucking share a little and be equals.
Actually, the thing is we don't even have to be equals, that never works, we just have to make sure everyone has what they need.
Exactly this. The small amount of socialism we have in Canada, where I am, allows otherwise destitute people to have a place to live, food on the table, and the ability to see a doctor and recieve medical care.
Also, the fire department will show up if their house catches fire, and the police will show up if someone robs them....
All social services.
ROI
?
“Socialism” things like healthcare and education being available to every citizen without a fee at the time of use is an investment in the country. And it’s been shown these all have excellent return on investment. Often times creating more tax revenue than is spent.
capitalism is just free stuff for the rich at the expense of everyone else.
Problem there is a lot of communism fails because leaders become corrupt and the wealth still gets funneled to the few. Which isn't a problem with communism specifically. Communism would be sound if human beings were actually honorable. However, they're mostly not. In fact, generally speaking, humans are pretty shit, and a utopia of any sort simply isn't going to happen because of that. Human nature is too messy to allow it.
a lot of communism fails because leaders become corrupt and the wealth still gets funneled to the few
This is literally empirically false. Wealth inequality in, say, the USSR, plummeted to the lowest levels the region has ever seen. The top 1% in the USSR only had 4% of the total income, in modern capitalist Russia this number has risen at least to 20%. The top earners in the USSR were also not "le evil bureaucrat politicians", but university professors, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia. Income inequality actually evolved downwards during the existence of the country. Your analysis is not based on real data, it's based off vibes you've gotten from CIA propaganda.
a utopia of any sort simply isn't going to happen
I agree, but us communists are not utopians. Utopian socialism died in the mid 1800s, and Marx and Engels famously talked about Scientific Socialism as opposed to Utopian Socialism. The debate has been settled for almost 200 years: Marxists are not utopians.
The top 1% in the USSR only had 4% of the total income, in modern capitalist Russia this number has risen at least to 20%.
You're commiting a type of McNamara fallacy here by accounting for financial income and ignoring the ability of people in charge of a command economy to, well... command.
If you are in charge of people, you don't need to pay for their services. You can command them to get things done. Imagine paying a company to asphalt 10 kilometres of road to your dacha. It would cost millions, but could be organised by most second-tier bureaucrats. Even now, Vladimir Putin doesn't need money. He can ask for anything he wants and if some people die for that, it's okay.
The top earners in the USSR were also not "le evil bureaucrat politicians", but university professors, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia.
And yet, the intelligentsia often starved, because they had little to offer to the shadow economy. Even the people with thousands of roubles in their drawers had very little that money could buy, you could walk to a store with a full wallet and leave with nothing. And if it had anything, you would wait in a queue for several hours. People would queue up without knowing what they are waiting for.
It was far more important to have friends that can command some stuff your way. A cashier at a store or a cook at a cafeteria could get you the best food. A sailor could get you import magazines and electronics. A machine worker could get you tools and make you spare parts.
To a western person, this might seem obscene, but it's how those economies have operated for decades and something people have to actively unlearn.
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The problem here is that socialism is not communism. Under socialism compensation is based on individual contribution to work. This doesn't imply an equal share.
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Communism would be sound if human beings were actually honorable
Just say you don't have the foggiest clue what political ideology is all about - there's no reason to dress it up like this.
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If there's leaders with enough power to manipulate things to their own end, it never even got as far as communism.
Its also not about "honor", it's about empathy. About caring enough about your fellow beings to enjoin efforts to raise everyone up, not just yourself or those you deem worthy.
Whether it is empathy or honor doesn't really matter. If you wanna say empathy, then we can roll with that. The point is that humanity doesn't possess enough of it.
They have plenty of it, they've just been trained out of using it. Part of that is making the assumption that other people are lesser or not worthy of it because they lack "humanity" by people who want to look down on them for no reason.
I have to strongly disagree here. While it is definitely possible to teach greater/lesser ideologies, and it absolutely does happen, at their core, humans are social creatures prone to forming groups and passing biased judgements on out groups. In groups and out groups form, and competition starts, followed by the mud slinging. It's not a training, it's part of human nature. The teaching just accelerates things and pushes people into groups faster and with more vehemency.
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Just want what we're already paying for
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