Socialist Tropers, Unionize!

This a thread for tropers who identify themselves as socialists and where they can discuss socialist and other relevant economic/political ideas, be it left or right.

First let's define what "socialism" is. There are many sources with slightly varied worded definitions. For the sake of convenience I will use Britannica version and use the definition of "social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources."

I feel that the creation of this thread was appropriate, given the recent Writers/Actors' Guild Strikes, upcoming UPS strike, and labor unions becoming more popular than ever since the 1960s.

I must confess that for a long period of my life, I've been mostly conservative and bordering on Alt-right/Mc Carthyist level during my most extreme phase. And then the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis happened, and as its horrible effects lingers on, something made me ask the big question:

Capitalism have been the dominant economic ideology for many decades if not centuries...then why on Earth are things getting worse and worse for, well, pretty much 99.9% of entire human race?

Then after over a decade of studying, contemplation, etc, somewhere around last year I completed my transition into a socialist.

So now I find myself very actively supporting unions and strikes. I really hope that the UPS strike becomes a success.

Edited by dRoy on Oct 18th 2023 at 10:45:48 PM

Good news, everyone!

UPS reaches historic, $30 billion labor deal with the Teamsters!

Here are the list of massive benefits they received in return.

Well done, and I hope this is only a beginning!

I wish you luck. But 622 posts on the Conservative forum; only (so far) two here. So let's make it three.

Introducing myself: male, British, born in Wales, live in Northern England, pretty much lifelong on the Left. Member of the Union of Communication Workers.

Realised the political vocabulary is one of those British English versus American English things: until you get that it's completely opposite and sort of wrong-way-round, our perception of Red = Left, Blue = Right Wing can skew perceptions. Especially when looking at a map of Red States versus Blue States!

The Liberal - Conservative thing. Over here, the capital-L Liberals are a smaller political party who tend to the centre-right and line up with the capital-C Conservatives (Tories) who are drifting further to the Right by the day. Small-l "liberal" is, traditionally, a political philosophy advocating small government, low taxation, deregulation and free-market economy. So we don't really recognise the American use of the word, and have to perform a mental shift and re-interpretation of what else it can mean!

This could potentially be an interesting place; I'll check in as and when I can.

Oh, don't worry about it. That thread has been around since 2010, so it having more posts are to be expected. I'm just glad to have another poster in this thread!

And very interesting: I must confess that my understandings of economic and political ideologies are heavily based on that of America, so yeah, I really appreciate you clearing up the possible misunderstanding!

we must seize the means of production!

Admittedly, there was a time I was staunchly against nationalization because it would only increase bureacracy and reduce competition.

Now, though, seeing the sheer inefficiency of corporations and alarming tendencies of monolopolization, to Hell with it, let's nationalize sectors anyway!

I'm of the opinion that nationalization isn't currently viable for many sectors, though not so much because it'll make them weaker but because the government getting involved could risk the economy pretty directly.

In particular, the extraction sectors (the ones that usually get nationalized) tend to make the country that nationalizes them worse off because you end up with the petrostate problem of the government turning the nationalized extractable resource into the state money sink and cutting taxes about it, followed by this becoming a huge problem the moment the value of the resource goes down. Venezuela's problems were as much caused by relying on oil staying expensive as by Chavez being an authoritarian and terrible at everything except dying at the height of his popularity.

Though I do think a bunch of utilities could currently be nationalized and it would benefit everyone. (In particular water and power, and maybe internet if we're feeling particularly bold, though ideally there'd need to be a bunch of protections in place for the internet specifically.)

Also a restoration of the Postal Savings system in the US would be pretty cool while we're at it. Not sure if that's strictly a socialist thing, but it's effectively offering a national option in place of private banks.

Forgot to be a bit more specific about which sector should be nationalized. XP

One of the things I never realized until I briefly stayed in America was, the sheer importance of the public transportation.

Some opponents of increasing budget for public mass transportation say some darndest things such as not wanting to pay for the taxes to maintaining railroads.

Right, because apparently car roads don't need any kind of maintenance and taxes to keep running. Seems like this mindset is (unsurprisingly) common among libertarians.

They are, arguably, correct that car roads need less maintenance than train roads, and they're also much less of a feat of engineering than rails.

Superficially, their argument makes sense, though if you think about it on any level beyond the surface level "well it costs more to make and maintain a train track than an equivalent length of paved rock on the ground" the financial argument falls apart, because it costs a lot less in every other way to move things over train tracks due to the lower friction and higher ability to bear weight of metal.

Finishes reading How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, by Jason Stanley.

There are many things to unpack from this short and yet compact books. My favorite bits were at the end of the books, where the author discusses how to resist fascism and other toxic, relevant ideologies.

He mentions labor unions as one of the most powerful weapons against fascism. Well, I'm not gonna disagree.

I don't know about that, unions tend to repeatedly get shot at until a government officially starts tolerating then.

I suppose unionization can help by making workers better off economically, meaning they're less likely to be radicalized one way or the other, but I don't think unions are much of a weapon in their own right, they need the government to protect them in most cases.

Not sure about this threads' viability, but I fit the demographics for it, so I may as well make a post.

So I'm specifically a Market socialist. Yes that does exist. I take an issue with private ownership of means of production, not markets.

I see my beliefs here as a direct conclusion of a belief in democracy. If a democracy is good (or least bad to be precise) that it should be applied to economy as well as politics. I also think that lack of economic democracy subverts political democracy because money is power.

EDIT: Also, should it be unite not unionize ?

Edited by Risa123 on Dec 21st 2023 at 10:48:19 AM

I specifically used the term "Unionize" because union is one of the most important tenets of socialism...and there are already enough threads with "Unite!" in the title.

With that out of the way, welcome! And yes, I'm aware of the concept of market socialism.

makes sense. Unite seems to be a generic title here. I guess I was just surprised that this thread is the one that does not have it. As for market socialism, that is good that you know it. I should note that it was not necessarily addressed at you. I wanted to dispel any confusion due to the lack of distinction that is made between capitalism and market. In case anybody found that weird.

Since I'm at, I may as well elaborate on my choice of (sub)ideology here. For one, it can be implemented on a small scale in a capitalist society. That is what cooperative is, after all. It can prove its advantages (and disadvantages) without any large scale transition. Trying to convince people by persuasion is nice and all, but nothing is more convincing than when something actually works. The fact it is market based should also ease the transition.

I also simply do not see much alternative. State socialism in any form, even a democratized one with somewhat autonomous enterprises, is not really compatible with what free society means to me. Freedom is freedom to organize. The elimination of money does not seem possible to me. Unless we wish to live as hunter-gatherers again, at least. So market socialism is what I'm left with.

Now about money. The problem in my issue is not its existence, but the concentration in the hands of few. I do not feel it particularly unjust that "the Joneses" have a nicer house than their neighbours. They may genuinely do a job that deserves a higher wage. The problem is the really rich guys who can influence media, lobby politicians etc. With doing little actually work.

For a same reason as with money, I also do not think that we can eliminate the state. The nature of modern society simply requires a large scale organization.

For my last point, I will elaborate on what I mean by saying that all this is also based on my belief in democracy. I think that the concept of workplace democracy is not only good because democracy is the best form of governance, but I think it would strengthen the political democracy as well.

It makes democracy a part of people's lives, rather than something as infrequent and distant. Which I think would weaken the appeal of authoritarian leadership. I believe it would increase civic engagement, which would again strengthen political democracy.

As for civic engagement, that I see as general improvement. The biggest social problem is that people do not care about problems.

Long post, I know. I just never really felt I had an opportunity to get all my thoughts on the issue out. Thoughts ?

Happy New Year, everybody!

The last book I read previous year was (roughly translated) Marx for the First Timers by Ishikawa Yashuhiro. It was a pretty great, simple introduction to Marxism.

One of my new year's resolutions for this year is reading 52 books and on average one book per week. And hopefully, one of them is Das Kapital by Marx himself. The unabridged, completed version, that is.

On the other hand...ideally I should also read Adam Smith's works beforehand, as well as...(sighs) Hegel to get the (almost) full experience of Marx. I can already see it's a daunting task.

Bit late, but that is very ambitious, and I wish you good luck.

Belated, but happy MLK day to y'all.

I wish the fact that MLK also really strongly supported workers' rights become better known. After all, he wrote the famous "I have a dream" speech in the United Auto Workers headquarters and he also supported Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike of 1968.

Hmm...what would be the capitalist model that is closest to socialism?

I live in a patriarchial, near dystopian level of hyper-capitalist country, where the specter of Mc Carthyism still haunt the society to this day. As such, it's safe for me to hide my socialist tendency until I have enough following and financial security to be more overt about it.

For the time being, in public and to those around me, I refer myself as a believer in "welfare capitalism". In a sense, it might be the complete opposite of how Hitler renamed his party National "Socialist German Workers' Party, despite hardly being an actual socialist.

I would say that welfare state is the closest. Technically at least. More right wing people will call anything left of themselves socialism. As for what label to use for oneself. I do not think I have ever used a label to describe myself politically in RL. Generally I have found it is often better to describe your beliefs than use labels. Save you from dealing with misunderstanding caused people making assumptions about what your beliefs actually are.

Edited by Risa123 on Apr 5th 2024 at 5:09:10 PM

Sorry for the delayed answer, but yeah, seems like that's the best bet.

Continuing to add more economists to my "economics/political theory reading list".

Even before my transition to a socialist, there were several "more left-leaning" economists such as Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty whose books I was really interested in reading.

Now I'm also adding Joseph E. Stiglitz and Robert Reich in the list...and in the process I realized that my perspective of economy is so heavily skewed towards U.S., and that I should learn more about European and Asian economies as well.

Now that you mention transition to being a socialist, I want to ask. Have you had any sort of denial phase ? As a phase where you objectively were a socialist, but did not want to admit it to yourself due to social stigma. I have personally experienced such phase where I was inventing cosmetic differences in, so I do not have to admit who I am.

Edited by Risa123 on Apr 18th 2024 at 8:33:49 PM

The short answer is no, surprisingly enough. Interestingly, my total transition to/acceptance of socialism happened almost at the same time with me deconverting from Christianity after 25+ years of practice.

I think me becoming an atheist - as well as my ADHD - sparked something in me, in that it led me to think along the line of "Oh my God (heh), my faith was a lie...what else have I been wrong about all this time?"

So it led to reexamination of many core beliefs that my patriarchial, hyper-capitalist society instilled in me...and just how flawed capitalism, or at least its implementation and execution, have become in 21st century.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, me rejecting faith and accepting socialism...also happened at the same time with me becoming a straight/cis-gender ally to LGBTQ+ people.

Makes sense, I suppose. Mine was much more gradual, but what is perhaps even more important is that I live in the former Eastern Bloc. So socialism is viewed very negatively here and, for reasons that are understandable.

Edited by Risa123 on Apr 20th 2024 at 9:19:22 PM