this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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Honestly, I'd be tempted to grant the premise. Let's work together to end corporations. See what happens. When every commercial entity is an employee-owned small business worth less than $5M, communism vs. socialism vs. capitalism becomes a very interesting discussion.
Having every company be petite bourgeois cooperatives doesn't really get rid of the major problems with capitalism, plus there's no actual way to get from here to there where socialism doesn't make more sense. Communism is a post-socialist society, so it isn't really something you do from the outset.
It would be a whole lot easier to convince on-the-ground reasonable people to be ok with "all companies are employee-owned" than to convince them that "socialism" doesn't mean everything the GOP has told them it means for the past fifty years.
Historically, that's not how social change happens. Even if you convince everyone that it's better that way, society doesn't magically morph around it. This question was answered already in the 1800s with the death of utopian socialism and the rise of scientific socialism.
Yeah, I'm not super thrilled with the historic way that social change happens, though. Historically, a lot of innocent people end up dying to get us there. It'd be nice if we could avoid that.
People die every day because we haven't gone onto socialism. Imperialism is the biggest factor in the genocide of Palestine, for example.
Yeah, but there are entire schools of ethics built around who gets the blame for indirect systemic causes. If you're the one who lights the fuse, though, the ambiguity is significantly reduced.
The ones facilitating genocide get the blame. The ones organizing a reign of terror get the blame. Who do you "blame" in past revolutions?
I can be a lot more objective about stuff when it's not actually me who's potentially responsible.
This is just tacit support for the present system of plunder and genocide just because you don't want to be responsible for ending the plunder and genocide.
And now we're into the billion different schools of ethics thing again. No, I didn't want to be responsible for the innocent people who would die as a result of this hypothetical situation where I have the ability to kick off a bloody revolution. So if there's a way to stop fascism and techno-slavery without risking the lives of the people I would be trying to save, I would prefer to go with that option.
That option doesn't exist, though, you're just hiding behind vague notions of "ethics" to justify inaction.
What inaction? I'm acting locally, I'm volunteering, I'm raising my kids to be skeptical of anyone who suggests that empathy is weakness. You're saying this like there's an actual option that I'm choosing not to take. I'm saying, if I were somehow able to choose the way the change occurs, it wouldn't be in a spray of bullets. But it's not like that option is actually available to me.
You seem to be defending a position you know won't work, though.
No. I'm advocating for us to try for the best possible version of our future. It may be inevitable, but I'm not interested in hoping for a world where we consider the loss of a hundred million people under the final spasming throes of a dying capitalist oligarchy to be an acceptable loss. Yes, it would be ultimately the oligarchs' fault, but I still couldn't live with myself if I were the one advocating for it.
Nobody is advocating for that, though. Revolution is very rarely that bloody, you need to look at historical example.
I was hoping that my ad absurdum example was clear. I just meant "a very large number."
Either way, I certainly hope nobody is seriously advocating for that. It would be quite bleak if that were the only way change could ever occur.
Revolutionaries can't just "do a revolution," we prepare for it so we can succeed when it happens. This is how revolution has occured historically, and there isn't really a way to avoid it with any reasonable chance of success.
Mark Twain hit pretty hard about it:
βTHERE were two βReigns of Terror,β if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the βhorrorsβ of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terrorβthat unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.β
β Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
He did indeed. But I don't have it in me to be the direct cause of death for innocent people. Honestly, I very much doubt I have it in me to be the direct cause of death for guilty people.
I know the consequentialist arguments, but I can't do it.
Communists do not want a myriad of petit bourgeois small business.
Employee ownership is literally socialism my friend.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is that anyone with money (capital) can own the means of making more money. If you remove that, it is no longer capitalism. Period. It would be something else.
In this case, with universal worker ownership of the means of production, it would be socialism.
Never in my life have i understood why the working class (me and every single person i know) DONT want workers to own the means of production. You DO THE WORK you should OWN IT. Its simple.
A lot of people do want socialism, but it's not as simple as having society magically reflect the desires of the people.
This isn't really accurate. Petite Bourgeois worker-owners in competing firms still exist within the framework of capitalism. Socialist ownership would be more collectivized than focused on cooperatives, though cooperatives can play a role in the developing stages of socialism (like they do in socialist states today).
I know that, and you know that, but people are a whole lot more likely to vote for it with that framing than if the "s-word" gets anywhere near it.
There are 2 problems with this.
You cannot sinply put this to a vote and enact it, certainly not within capitalism. The system is designed to perpetuate its existence.
Socialism is extremely popular among younger generations, and is increasingly popular overall over time. You're adopting more of a tailist position by avoiding socialism outright.
Why not? The Nordic countries did. Yes, the system is designed to perpetuate its existence, and so nothing will happen on its own; but the GOP and the DNC wouldn't be so dead-set against Zohran Mamdani if his victory wouldn't present a serious blow to their soft power.
If it avoids a bloody revolution I don't care what they call me.
No, the Nordic countries did not vote away capitalism. They still have capitalism and a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, what happens is the imperialist bourgeoisie bribes the national proletariat with some of the spoils of imperialism. They also are largely petro-states and depend on nationalized oil industries to fund some of these safety nets, which are expected to continue withering with the adoption of cheaper renewables like solar over time. Additionally, it was proximity to the USSR that brought a lot of these gains in the first place, as a way to stay against revolution.
As for you being a tailist, it isn't so much a pejorative as it is a descriptor of the ineffectiveness of your position and why it's unlikely to gain ground. The working class is more radical than you are, increasingly so every day, so you will struggle to find mass support anyways. It won't avoid revolution, even if it did work it would still depend on imperialism unless we move onto a socialist economy and remove the profit motive from the dominating aspect of society.
My original post was about taking steps toward a better life for everyone and a repudiation of late stage capitalism, not specifically going straight to socialism. I think we on the left tend to let the perfect be the enemy of the good (though, in fairness, there's not a lot of good to ally ourselves with).
Yeah, but economies always change over time. There aren't any states whose trade balance and makeup is exactly the same as it's always been. The current industry just needs to last them long enough to get to the next one; which isn't a guarantee by any means, but countries have been doing it successfully for centuries.
I live in a blue dot city in a red state. The working class here is less radical than George W. Bush. I'm willing to admit that that colors my expectations significantly.
The Nordic countries don't take steps towards a better life for everyone. They took steps to make life better for themselves while cementing their reliance on imperialism. Some leftists do let perfect be the enemy of good, but social democracy in the global north perpetuates imperialism and thus cannot be considered truly good.
Yes, the Nordic countries are changing. They are decaying, and safety nets are being eroded. It is only through socialism and a turn towards production over imperialism that they can actually repair their economies.
As for being in a blue city in a red state, you'd be surprised by just how radical the actual working class is.
I grew up deep in one of the reddest rural area possible. They're unbelievably conservative, against their own best interests; and due to the electoral college's profound gerrymandering of the country, they have an outsized influence on the path forward. Even if Fox News and Newsmax and OAN went away tomorrow, I'd still be worried that radical steps with a smell anything like "socialism" (as defined by the GOP) would be thought-terminated by the extensive propaganda written deep in their brains.
By hiding your intentions, you only compound the problem, not fixing it.
Then what's the solution? They're suspicious of education. They have poor media literacy (and often poor literacy in general). They live in a filter bubble of like-minded individuals, and they've been told that everyone outside that bubble wants to kill them or take away their way of life. They've essentially been indoctrinated into a cult, and if you start out trying to deprogram a cult member by saying "so actually the devil isn't so bad," you're probably not going to get very far.
If you have an hour, I recommend reading Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing." Neither of us are somehow elites that see beyond the system, and the working class isn't stupid. People license themselves to believe what they think materially benefits them. As capitalism decays, the working class is more radicalized. When you hide your intentions, you sow distrust among the working class, resulting in failed tactics.
Another good article is Marketing Socialism, and it's only 4 minutes long.
I appreciate the resources, thanks. I'll look into those.
Also, I'm afraid that I may have implied something about rural folks that I didn't intend. I don't think that they're stupid, by any means; or cruel, or inherently evil. I think that they're victims of misinformation and indoctrination, that they're lied to and manipulated every four years to vote against their self-interest, and that at this point they have a generational stake in opposing the word "socialism." And while I'm certainly no elite who sees beyond the system, having been on both sides of this, I think I have a perspective on both the way that capitalist propaganda warps facts and also the way that rural people (at least certain rural people) interact with that propaganda.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that socialists hide the end goal; I'm just saying that using the words that conservatives have spent billions of dollars co-opting and redefining for 70+ years is likely fighting an uphill battle. And perhaps not one that can be won. The meaning of the word "socialism" doesn't particularly matter to the indoctrinated, as the GOP agitprop have discovered; calling anything "socialism" immediately brands it as evil, even if the thing they're calling "socialism" is companies rainbow-washing their merchandise during the month of June.
As you noted, people license themselves to believe what they think materially benefits them, but the fall of capitalism is showing that the indoctrinated working class has already been conditioned to blame its collapse on socialism, even as socialists are the very people trying to excavate them from the rubble.
So, no, don't lie or hide intention. Just be clear about the specifics, and avoid charged language.
I really recommend you read the articles. It does more damage by avoiding actually discussing socialism, you'll be branded a socialist regardless. Avoiding "charged language" just means you sow distrust when people catch on that this is socialism, it's dishonest and harmful.