I am more conservative in the sense that I see things with more nuance. I understand societies are very complex systems in a fragile equilibrium and that my naive solutions to the world’s problems are not feasible.
And yet, each day I’m more convinced we need to eat the rich.
Edit: We need to create a whole new system to prevent people from getting that rich and to keep the power to the people
Eating the rich isn’t a coup de grace, it’s the beginning.
You’re bringing up a good point. People who say we’ll become more “conservative” are usually equivocating on the meaning of the word. It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and decide that global warming is a hoax, or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.
The people who say you become more conservative usually mean that you will become more well off. And indeed when they earn their financial freedom, they want to protect the status quo. So they start seeing others as threats: be it young people wanting more rights, employees wanting fair salaries, immigrants coming for your hard earned money, everyone is a threat. This is the how the mind of an unempathic person works.
I’m old enough now that I’m more financially secure than I ever have been before, and I still think we should tear it all down and create a more equitable system for everyone. Perhaps I’m in the minority though for people my age.
Politicians sew division, fear, and hatred knowing that this will allow them to continue fleecing everyone who works for a living. We should never forget that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.
Wait, what?
Seeing the world for what it is has nothing to do with conservatism. Nuance shouldn’t mitigate your desire to help people and want to live in a regressive society.
I don’t know what it’s like to live under communism, but I do know what it’s like to live under capitalism and it’s grip tightens more and more with every passing year.
I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, was there any communist country which wasn’t also both a dictatorship and poor?
Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it’s always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things… there’s also war, and that applies to most of them too.
Capitalism doesn’t benefit the vast majority of us. But the purpose of capitalism is to enrich a fortunate few at the expense of the rest of us who will be reduced to perpetual wage slavery until we die. Capitalism is working a treat in that regard.
That point is def made in that link.
Have you read my comment?
I know capitalism don’t work, everybody does now.
That has nothing to do with the fact we didn’t manage to have one successful exemple of communism either…
I don’t have a post for this, but also as a testament to China’s poverty alleviation campaigns, world poverty is increasing if we exclude China.
When they write the history of the early 21st century, China’s uplifting of millions of people out of poverty will be one of humanity’s greatest acheivements.
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Wrong, from the link I posted:
Capitalist hegemony has short-circuited people into buying wildly illogical and ridiculous propaganda like: “Lift yourselves up by the bootstraps” (which shows the almost religious power of capitalist propaganda, that the impossible can become possible), or “Communism doesn’t work”, when in fact Communism did work extremely well.
Examples from this post by /u/bayarea415, Stephen Gowans - Do publicly owned, planned economies work, Ian Goodrum - Socialism vs Capitalism and quality of life, and yogthos’s USSR acheivements post about the USSR specifically:
- USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US. source. Ended famines.
- Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.
- Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.
- Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.
- Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The “continuous” part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.
- USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960
- USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996., 2
- In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.
- All education, including university level, free. 2
- 99% literacy.
- Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.
- Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.
- Combatted sex inequality. Equal wages for men and women mandated by law, but sex inequality, although not as pronounced as under capitalism, was perpetuated in social roles. Very important lesson to learn.
- Combatted Racial inequality.
- Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.
- Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China’s in 2014.
- Housing was socialized by localized community organizations, and there was virtually no homelessness. Houses were often shared by two families throughout the 20s and 30s – so unlike capitalism, there were no empty houses, but the houses were very full. In the 40s there was the war, and in the 50s there were a number of orphans from the war. The mass housing projects began in the 60s, they were completed in the 70s, and by the 70s, there were homeless people, but they often had genuine issues with mental health.
- 66% of Russians polled in 2015 want the USSR back. The story is the same for all the former eastern-bloc countries: 72% of Hungarians say their country is worse off now than under communism, 57% of East Germans, 63% of Romanians, 77% of Czechs, 81% of Serbs (for Yugoslavia), 70% of Ukrainians, 60% of Bulgarians.
When it is claimed that a system works, we should ask, who it works for. Capitalism benefits a tiny number of rapacious capitalists, to the detriment of the rest of us, while Socialism works for the masses.
For an overview of the soviet experiment, watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut.
Also read this great article by Stephen Gowans, Do publicly owned, planned economies work?. Audio on youtube
Bonus vid about cyber-communism: Paul Cockshott - Going beyond money.
More sources: Socialism Crash Course, Socialism FAQ, Glossary.
That’s all awesome. So it’s still around, right? It didn’t collapse within one generation or anything, did it?
What do you believe to be the cause of the fall of the USSR?
The leader of it kinda sold out and started simping for Pizza Hut
It was overthrown by the USA, as the USA strangled most attempts worldwide in their cradles also.
Primarily via the arms race in the USSR’s case. You can read more about that here:
Thanks for your reading of Gabriel Rockhill. I’ve seen some of his interviews, and they are impressive.
That’s a yes, it collapsed within one generation. Such an outstanding method of government!
If all it took, according to you, is one department of one nation to bring it down, it was not strong.
But we both know that’s not why it collapsed.
A US sponsored executive coup is not equivalent to collapsing due to its own problems.
I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, was there any communist country which wasn’t also both a dictatorship and poor?
Most steadily improved their material conditions and did not have dictatorships.
Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it’s always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
Explain, please.
P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things… there’s also war, and that applies to most of them too.
Are you saying most Communist countries intentionally started wars?
Most didn’t? Can you give a few exemples then?
You don’t start a war unintentionally… but i didn’t say start, just being in a war.
Also i don’t imply it was because of communism, my point is that, how can we judge communism if other devastating sociological factors are involved.
Now, i don’t have a point if you say most of them were better for it, but i don’t know any who did so i’d love to educate myself…
A few examples include the USSR, Cuba, PRC, etc. Life standards dramatically improved, life expectancy doubled in the USSR and PRC and jumped around half in Cuba, literacy rates jumped to 99%+ from less than 50% prior, education access, healthcare access, food access, housing access, all dramatically improved. Wealth inequality also fell down dramatically.
Here’s an example of wealth inequality over time in Russia:
And how the Soviet Democratic process functioned:
So USSR was a dictatorship, the country was in ruin after WW2
The 3 factor i mentioned are there.
The data shows what everyone knows, capitalism increase inequality. But what it doesn’t show is how communism made the country improve, because it didn’t.
What i’m saying is, it couldn’t help because of the war and Stalin. We don’t know if it would’ve otherwise.
Cuba again is a dictatorship, and wasn’t rich.
The PRC is a dictatorship, China went on a horrible famine with Mao. Nowadays getting richer only because of how their economy is now fully capitalist.
So let’s say you had significant data that showed it improved some things socially. And let say you somehow managed to prove its causal and not coincidence.
I would still rather not say dictatorships like USSR or PRC are good to live under.
That’s my point, even if communism was good, dictatorship is a plague that makes any system a nightmare.
So USSR was a dictatorship
No, not even the CIA thought the USSR was a dictatorship. You can’t just make unsourced blanket claims based on your emotions.
the country was in ruin after WW2
Yes, they did around 4/5ths of the fighting against the Nazis in totality.
The 3 factor i mentioned are there.
If you conjure them into existence from your imagination, sure.
The data shows what everyone knows, capitalism increase inequality. But what it doesn’t show is how communism made the country improve, because it didn’t.
GDP per capita rose dramatically, wealth inequality dropped massively, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates trippled. The USSR had free healthcare and education, and guaranteed housing and employment. They ended famine, and made it to space from being a semi-feudal semi-industrialized nation 50 years prior. They democratized the government structure. Life absolutely improved not only under Communism, but because of it.
What i’m saying is, it couldn’t help because of the war and Stalin. We don’t know if it would’ve otherwise.
What on Earth are you trying to say? Of course the USSR had to focus on its military to survive, which impeded consumer good production, but life absolutely improved.
Cuba again is a dictatorship, and wasn’t rich.
Cuba is richer than under Batista despite a cruel embargo, and isn’t a dictatorship. You keep throwing out unsourced opinions as though they are facts.
The PRC is a dictatorship, China went on a horrible famine with Mao. Nowadays getting richer only because of how their economy is now fully capitalist.
The PRC practices whole-process people’s democracy, the famine under Mao was the last famine in China’s history of frequent famines, and China is Socialist, it has a Socialist Market Economy based on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics.
So let’s say you had significant data that showed it improved some things socially. And let say you somehow managed to prove its causal and not coincidence.
I have.
I would still rather not say dictatorships like USSR or PRC are good to live under.
You would have sided with the Tsars? The Kuomintang? The Russian Federation? What on Earth are you talking about, here? You’d rather live in societies with less freedom and lower quality of life metrics?
That’s my point, even if communism was good, dictatorship is a plague that makes any system a nightmare.
You have no point, only vibes and a firehose of falsehood. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
Sorry i’m harsh Cuba isn’t quite a dictatorship i give you that one (Although not quite democratic either), maybe that could be a good study.
But saying Stalin or Mao are not dictatorships is just delusional.
The CIA as a source is pretty funny though.
I get it Stalin didn’t quite have all powers, like that’s what it took to classify a government a dictatorship. As if one-party system couldn’t be complex.
(And yes socialist market economy, that really makes a world of difference from capitalist market)
Also to make things clear i wouldn’t have sided with tsar or anyone else than Lenin. I do believe in communism.
Now some improvements may be from communism, i hope so, but don’t pretend you can prove it more than i. It’s not like life expectancy, literacy rate or other factors alike couldn’t rise with another system. It’s not like you could eliminate the possibility of third factors in a time with so much change in all areas of life.
But i sure wouldn’t have followed Stalin in his totalitarian regime. I sure hope if communism was a solution today it would be democratic.
Are you a commie?
Of course, I’m a Marxist-Leninist. Most people on Lemmy are leftist of some sort.
Most of us here are communists. Anti-communist platforms like reddit already exist.
Holy cow you people are real. Wild
Fascists masquerading as communism doesn’t count
I have become aggressively more anti-capitalist as I’ve grown older. At 56, with a nice professional career mostly behind me, I am vigorously ANTIFA EAT THE RICH ACAB.
Well some people never learn I guess.
Some of us learn better lessons.
I’ve only gone further Left.
“You will be more conservative as you grow older” is not a truth, but a threat. If you don’t become a conservative under their regime, you won’t become old.
The people who told me that were 100% boomers. There’s that idiotic saying “if you’re not liberal* when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no brains” ok boomer.
Note this is using the US meaning of liberal, not to mean “capitalist”.
The one I’ve heard replaces “brains” with “money.”
To the point at least. The impression I always got was that it was meant to imply you’d have money by then and not want to pay taxes.
Honestly, if your goals include conserving an inhabitable environment for the human race in the future, conserving a semblance of wealth for everyone but the top, like, dozen people on Earth, conserving the rights of workers and consumers against an overwhelming opposition, conserving democracy for future generations (and all that against the best efforts of a supposedly “conservative” party), your parents may have been right.
What if my goals include family values, such as opportunity for my kids to earn a good living, live a long and healthy life, enjoy the environment, in a world better than the one I had?
Then you have to join in the fight for those things and educate yourself. This world is not getting better, and the reason for that is the productive political economic system in which we live.
I have the same values and I am a Marxist communist. That means I work for political struggle with the systems that oppress and exploit to for improving conditions for all, and also work to try and educate workers about the class dynamics of this struggle, and the revolutionary potential of the working class.
On some social positions, I’ve grown more conservative.
On fiscal issues? Son, at this point I’m only slightly to the left of “Feed the 1% to the homeless and convert their left-over mansions into low income apartments.”
If you’re on some eat the rich shit, I wonder what social issues you’re possibly siding with the political right on.
Transphobia is sadly common these days, wouldn’t be surprised.
If conservative means “cautious and wary of unexpected results”, “disillusioned with methods that we tried and failed with” or maybe even “equipped with experience of successful and failed cooperation with various sorts of people”, then yes. Already before age 50, I’m spoiled with various good and bad experiences. I cannot exclude that as my tendency to explore decreases (psychology tends to affirm this trend), I may get prejudiced too. I may have to figure out something to counter it.
But if conservative means that I suddenly don’t want a society with equality and without hierarchy, then - nope.
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Maybe we become more extreme in our existing beliefs. My political compass position drifted right from bottom left as I hit my thirties. After the Iraq invasion of 2003 and recessions following 2008 it swung back towards Ghandi. I became convinced that conservative politics isn’t working in my late forties and that has only been reinforced as I try to access the creaking UK healthcare system.
To be fair, the political compass is astrology that makes no actual point.
It’s definitely a terrible system, and there are better ones out there like 10Groups. But astrology is completely meaningless. The PCT at least tells you a vague (terrible, yes), but somewhat meaningful direction in which you believe.
For example, I know that since I’m libertarian left on the PCT, that I’m going to disagree with 90% of the things somebody who’s authoritarian right on the PCT believes.
Astrology doesn’t have that ability to reliably compare, since it is literally and completely meaningless.
But again, shit like 10Groups is better and everybody should switch to measures that have more than 2 axis.
It’s completely meaningless, actual positions and ideologies are the only way to actually measure.
I just gave an example of how it is meaningful.
It really doesn’t, though. Two people with wildly different views can occupy the same space, what matters is literal positions and stances.
Two people with wildly different views can occupy the same space
Not completely. If two people occupy a similar space, it means they agreed on something. That is meaningful. It’s vague, sure. But it isn’t completely random nonsense like astrology.
It doesn’t. Someone with a “left” view and a “right” view can cancel each other out, occupying the same space as someone with a “neutral” view. It’s worthless.
Plus, someone can say they are for something, but actually not support it in reality.
really If anything i have become more communist as i have aged, when the daydreams of becoming a millionaire or whatever fade away all thats left is the reality of life as the 99% and it kinda sucks, also the older i grow the more i learn about history, about the world, just about everything really and the more i realize how fucked up capitalism is and how much i was lied to thru out my life. Putting that aside tho, people generally do become more reactionary as they age for the simple fact that what was revolutionary in our youth becomes standard and then reactionary over time while many people dont change their views much.
Seize the means of production
I was politically ambivalent as a young voter.
Now, I’m pretty much convinced the rich people (and the parties that represent them) are just out there to screw everyone else over. And every single year just adds more evidence to the pile.
I don’t think there is any conceivable scenario in which anyone can convince me that free market will magically fix all problems. It’s nonsense.
Yep, hence why Communism is necessary.
How is it that some of us get further left and some people go right? Even poors and immigrants go right and vote against their own interests. I really don’t get it.
Broadly speaking, I’d say it’s done out of fear. Voting conservative feels like staying the course and not challenging the status quo, even if it’s not ideal. Voting change could be seen as a threat to “stability” even when it’s a false narrative.
To add to what you said I’d also argue it comes with finding financial success while lacking the awareness of how lucky one had to be to achieve that kind of success in life.
– although lately I have also seen a lot of people that lack the imagination to consider a reality different from what’s presented to them by the status quo.
On second thought, that latter point just sounds a lot like Indoctrination.
Yep this. It’s a combination of becoming more financially well-off, combined with loss aversion, combined with a sense that the culture starts to alienate you. It’s like grandpa simpson said: “I used to be with it. But what was ‘it’ changed. And now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’, and what is ‘it’ is scary and strange.”
Immigrants being on the right is also implicit. Almost nobody is gonna migrate to some place new because things like recent changes are going well for them in their country of origin. They instead leave and migrate to some place that is relatively more stable & predictable. Host countries don’t like it when people migrate over and start agitating for change. As a result conservatism is built into the process.
–Consider the Cuban Communist. The Cubans that are happy with Communism have no major incentive to leave and resettle in Miami. The Cuban Capitalists OTOH flee to Miami where they espouse the evils of Communism while advocating for our government to continue the trade embargo, ensuring they can spread their pain to their fellow Cubans back in Cuba. It’s the same exact story with Falun Gong
I was slightly conservative when I was young. Now I don’t know what political orientation I have
Any opinions at all?
they probably are too privileged or can’t form an opinion by themself
Quite rude towards a total stranger simply admitting they don’t know something yet, but okay.
Many of us realized that the simplistic labels don’t apply. We have views on issues, some of those views are quite clear and others less so, but you can’t capture our positions in a few words.
