Thread by @notestjm

1. Capitalism is the system of economy where a minority of individuals personally own the means of producing goods and services; and of distributing them (capital). They employ workers to use the means of production to create products and perform services, (1/32)

paying them less than the value their work creates for the owner upon sale of the goods produced. (2/32)

The remaining difference (surplus value) is called profit which the owners receive when they exchange and sell goods produced for them by workers to consumers (either other capitalist operations, capitalists or workers as consumers). Workers own their labor, (3/32)

but no means of production. The cost of paying for a worker’s living conditions is always less than the value of worker’s productivity. Capitalists are always trying to increase profits by reducing workers’ share of the economy, in any way possible.
2. (4/32)

Capitalists are very powerful because they have the two parties in their pocket as paid servants who are handsomely awarded for their services. They direct government policy through close collaboration with lawmakers and judges.
3. (5/32)

Capitalists in each country are always competing for markets abroad, raw materials, cheap labor, and profit opportunities. This causes the division of the world, the race to the bottom in workers’ conditions, and war. (6/32)

Consequently trillions are spent on military spending and war preparations. With two world wars in the 20th century and constant colonial war for the last 30 years. The world is headed to a Third World War. (7/32)

4. Capitalism isn’t interested in long term survival of the species if it impinges on profit, therefore the capitalists haven’t marshaled resources to stop global warming, to address world poverty and crises, (8/32)

disease control and the threat of nuclear annihilation which only grows every year with billions poured into nuclear weapons as nuclear war policy becomes more strident.
5. Capitalism is always cutting or undermining the availability and affordability of housing, (9/32)

healthcare, education, retirement and food, throwing billions of people into insecurity and paycheck to paycheck existence.
6. As capitalism declines it repeals past gains of the working class in these areas. It corrupts and has taken over the unions, (10/32)

which have fallen to cover only 10% of the population and specialize in sellout contracts and hoarding workers dues.
7. Capitalism is an anarchic system run by competing plutocrats who own 90% of the wealth of the earth in their private bank accounts. (11/32)

It is running the world into the ground.
8. Socialism is a system of economy and politics where housing, health, food, education and retirement are guaranteed. An equitable distribution of wealth goes to the whole population instead of rich capitalists. (12/32)

Through direct democracy, economic and political decisions are planned. Rational and science based decisions can be made to address the world’s problems and decide what to do with the economic surplus. (13/32)

With the removal of personal ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods according to need, not position or birth, corruption through money and luxuries becomes a thing of the past. All political roles become limited, subject to recall, (14/32)

are paid no more than a workers wage and subjected to the direct participation of the population on every decision. Competition between nations becomes cooperation.
9. (15/32)

Socialism as an alternative to capitalism is subject to constant propaganda war by the capitalist class and their paid servants in academia and journalism. The biggest lie is that several dictatorships in the 20th century, including the Soviet Union and China, (16/32)

were “socialist countries.” These regimes advertised themselves as a socialist alternative to Western capitalism, but lacked the basic rudiments of socialist economies, socialist democracy or socialist politics. (17/32)

Some of the surprisingly large amount of common ground that these regimes held with Western capitalism is that they both agreed that “socialism” consisted in an elitist dictatorship of a state bureaucracy distributing things from the top down in a fundamentally (18/32)

capitalist way. Both these Stalinist regimes and the Western capitalist countries agreed that this was “real, existing socialism,” to stave off and discourage the real socialist movement from taking power in any western or eastern bloc country. (19/32)

After a few decades experimenting with top down planning of one degree or another, most countries in the Stalinist orbit restored capitalism completely by the decision of the bureaucrats, (20/32)

who then became the ruling capitalists after splitting up the state economy among themselves and who became spokesmen and evangelists of capitalism. Even after the Soviet Union was gone and China became a capitalist market economy, (21/32)

the story that socialism was the same thing as Stalinism was repeated endlessly in an attempt to silence those who fought for something better. It was even declared that the “end of history” had occurred, but despite the fall of the Eastern Bloc, depressions, wars, (22/32)

poverty, standard of living decline and international crises continued, refuting the rosy outlook of capitalist spokespeople in the 90s. (23/32)

All the criticisms of capitalism made by socialism were proven all over again and the apologists of capitalism could only respond with more slanders and derogatory stereotypes taken out of the old 50s Red Scare playbook.
(24/32)

#Socialism #Capitalism
For the rest see:
whatwayforward.wordpress.com/2022/12/29/ten…