I’m not misunderstanding you, I simply disagree with you and your frame of analysis. Not everyone you speak to that disagrees is misunderstanding you, same with me.

You have a very idealist frame of analysis. Capitalism’s persistence is not due to ideas, but material conditions. The compulsion for socialism isn’t something won over because some people have socialist ideas, but because capitalism necessarily paves the way for socialism and creates its own demise.

Plus, the PRC is the largest economy in BRICS, and is a socialist country. Even if your frame of analysis requiring BRICS to have large socialist elements to supplant capitalism was correct, it’s already correct, China eclipses every other economy in BRICS.

All very fair points, comrade. Ultimately, even if we can see the US on a downward spiral and countries like the PRC on the rise, we can’t know for sure how this will pan out. All the more reason to get organized, rather than wait and see.

This is a very myopic, eurocentric point of view. Capitalism in the global north is sustained by imperialism. The global south, and its suffering, is what keeps prices artificially low in the global north. This system is crumbling, and disparity is rising faster than ever in the global north as a consequence. Countries like Burkina Faso are kicking out occupiers like France, and BRICS is gaining as the west is falling in relevance.

Further, the UK did not go socialist, unless I’m misreading your meaning. Socialism, as it exists in the real world, can be found in countries like the PRC, Cuba, and former USSR. I’m not talking about welfare.

Further, the US is seeing normalization of socialism. Mamdani may be a socdem, but has implied a far more socialist line, ie collectivizing production. The assassination of the United Healthcare CEO is being met with united support among the working class, and parties like the Party for Socialism and Liberation are reporting record member growth.

Opinions aren’t what drive social change, material conditions evolving and changing do. The material conditions of capitalism in the west are declining, and socialism is gaining. The global south is increasingly throwing off the shackles of imperialism. If you take a very myopic, eurocentric view, then it can be easy to only see companies getting larger and larger and disparity rising, but if you zoom out this very system is pushing the profit motive and capitalism with it to the brink.

The capitalists have always had control of governments within capitalism. States are not distinct from the ruling class, but an extension. What we are seeing is not a shift from capitalism to neofeudalism, but the consequences of the dying stages of capitalism before socialism. Capitalism has decayed and is dying due to monopolization and centralization of capital, and due to imperialism, but these same conditions prep capitalism for revolution and collective ownership and planning, into socialism.

The US doesn’t have the industrial capacity, there’s a difference between currency and the actual physical industrialization needed to maintain a proxy war.

Socialism has a better track record than capitalism, but either way, my point is that necessary systemic changes need socialism for them to happen. Socialism isn’t a promise, it’s a mode of production. Further, countries like the PRC are rapdily electrifying, at the top of solar panel production and infrastructure initiatives, and combatting desertification, that’s the power of a publicly driven economy.

I really don’t think we are. You propose we push for change within the system, as it’s better to have a tweaked current system than a non-tweaked current system. My point is that the reason the current system lacks those popular and necessary tweaks is because its built to resist anything that risks lowering profits, so our strategy should focus on changing to a system that allows us to make those tweaks in the first place.

You may not agree with me, but I don’t think we are having different discussions.

I’m focusing on capitalism because we can’t let the progress we can imagine be the enemy of the progress we can actually achieve in the real world. Just like going up to Elon Musk and asking him nicely to not be a Nazi isn’t a viable solution to systemic issues, so too is trying to use regulations against the system they are meant to solidify and protect. Socialism is necessary because without it, we can’t get these well thought-through taxes and regulations to begin with, we are utterly at the mercy of profits.

It’s more that under capitalism, regulations and taxes only serve the bourgeoisie. It isn’t that the concept is being undermined, it’s that those are sold to the working class as a viable solution to avoid actually solving the problem.

Yep, but for systemic changes socialism is necessary. We should do what we can right now, but we can’t cause systemic change without socialism.

DSA is the Democratic Socialists of America, it’s a reformist socialist party. PSL is a Marxist-Leninist (technically Marcyist but the vast majority of members are ML) party with roots as a split from the IWW, and is thus more based on party building, revolution, and practices democratic centralism. The DSA gets a lot less done per member due to its lack of democratic centralism and its big-tent methodology, but it isn’t the worst org in existence if there’s no other options.

Check the party programs to see what the difference looks like in aim.

Sure, I can see that hypothetical, but we can’t get to that hypothetical in capitalism. Profit drives and steers the system, not humans.

Well-regulated markets, under capitalism, just means comfortable monopoly. You can’t work against the system of voracious demand for profit within said system. You can’t just pray for taxes abd regulations, the only ones that get passed are ones in the interests of the largest capitalists.

Sure, it wouldn’t be easy, but it’s nearly impossible under capitalism. What would realistically happen is the state would heavily subsidize plant based food and develop economies of scale, and increase requirements on animal products for more “humane” treatment, until gradually animal products are phased out culturally. A top-down command for animal liberation would be commandist if the masses don’t want it, so raising political consiousness would be a key part of that struggle.

Socialism will not automatically create vegan world, it hasn’t done so anywhere socialism exists. However, it does swap from profits as the end-all, be-all of how society is organized, to one where humanity can better plan production and meet people’s needs. If capital is in the driver’s seat, then the meat industry will continue to perpetuate said brutality and environmental destruction unimpeded. If humanity is in the driver’s seat, then we can actually work against what would be assured in a profit driven model.

The swap to veganism will never be instant, but it will be largely impossible without human supremacy over capital.

The DSA is okay if there’s nothing else around you, but PSL has a much better party platform and is growing rapidly.

Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.

The lead developers of Lemmy are communists. This is not “dead wrong.” Further, the communist instances are older than most of the right-wing instances. You’re free to complain about communists all you want, there are instances where that’s the norm, but there are instances where the opposite is the norm, like the one you’re visiting right now.

You’re on a platform made by communists, there are a lot of us here. Deliberately breaking the rules does get your comments removed.

Heartwarming.