Comment on This is why Americans hate Socialism.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoI’m going to say a very unpopular thing here and it’s going to get downloaded specifically because of this but that’s okay because with the truth is the truth.
But let me preface I also believe that there is a undercurrent of significant child abuse in the upper echelons of American society specifically politics and amongst the ultra wealthy. I think it’s one of those things that we just don’t really talk about it’s the quiet part that nobody really wants to say out loud.
At the end of the day we don’t really have any hard concrete evidence we have a massive amount of speculation and conjecture and circumstantial evidence. So much so that it is not only worth investigating but it probably qualifies for a whole lot of arrests including people at the absolute very top if you catch my drift and it should have happened at very long time ago.
But it hasn’t nobody’s gone to court nobody’s been prosecuted nobody has made their case in front of a courtroom in a jury. Is a difficult thing for me to admit to that ultimately we’ve got a whole bunch of nothing.
So aside from foaming at the mouth with unsubstantiated rhetoric I can’t definitively say that there is a pedophilic class of people in the United States. Are there people committing horrific acts of child abuse yes could it be being performed in groups of people sure. Is there an entire class of people that are pedophiles extremely debatable probably not.
So understand I’m simply trying to be precise without degrading myself to propaganda like speak and misinformation to describe what is happening in the United States.
That being said I am opposed to any and all child abuse of any kind. Anybody who commits crimes be it a president or some homeless dude on the street they all need to be prosecuted and punished under the law. I condemn any and all abuse to individuals and groups of people. I do not support right wing conservatism I despise maga and there is enough circumstantial evidence for arrests and prosecutions to occur when it comes to child abuse please do not twist my words or make up positions for me that I didn’t take.
As for the second part of your statement I will tell you what I tell everybody else socialism is a stomach it is not social or public programs offered by literally any kind of government. Socialism does not protect the worker it simply gives the means of production to the worker. You can hard disagree with whatever you want it really makes no difference to me either way.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
There is also an important distinction between what can be proven in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt (against the best lawyers money can buy), and what is likely to be true. There’s absolutely no reason why we have to hold all criticism to the former standard, and it’s completely unreasonable to do so.
100% agreed, I never said anything remotely like that.
Agreed, however, protecting workers is a necessary (but not sufficient) quality of socialism. The goal of worker ownership is fundamentally driven by a desire to advance the interests of workers, which includes worker protection.
Yeah, it’s not the fact that I disagree, but the the arguments I made to support that disagreement that show your position is wrong.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think we’re actually closer to agreement than you seem to realize, but you’re making one important logical leap that I don’t think your argument establishes.
I agree that there’s a distinction between something being proven beyond a reasonable doubt and something being sufficiently supported by evidence to conclude that it is likely true. I’ve never argued otherwise. In fact, that’s precisely why I keep appealing to historical evidence and academic definitions rather than pretending every conclusion requires courtroom-level proof.
Where I disagree is your claim that protecting workers is a necessary condition of socialism. Worker ownership of the means of production is central to the definition of socialism. But you’ve moved from that definition to an asserted purpose: that worker ownership is fundamentally driven by the desire to protect workers. Those aren’t the same proposition.
Socialism seeks to alter the ownership and control of the means of production and, consequently, the distribution of economic power. That can absolutely benefit workers and historically has often been justified in terms of improving workers’ material conditions. But “worker protection” is not what makes an economic system socialist. A system could theoretically have worker ownership while providing extremely poor working conditions, and it would still be socialist in the relevant economic sense. Conversely, a capitalist economy can provide extraordinarily strong worker protections without becoming socialist.
That’s the distinction I’m making: worker protection can be a motivation, objective, or consequence associated with socialism without being a necessary defining condition of socialism itself.
And regarding your final point, saying that your arguments demonstrate that my position is wrong is not itself an argument. You still have to establish the premises and show that the conclusion follows from them. That’s exactly what I’m challenging.
If your position is that socialism necessarily entails worker protection, then demonstrate that from the definition or from the academic literature. If your position is instead that socialist movements have historically pursued worker protection as one of their objectives, I have no substantial disagreement with that. Those are two very different claims.
Objection@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I’ve already explained this but I’ll spell it out very neatly and plainly for you:
Premise A: Socialism means worker control of the means of production (MoP).
Premise B: A class that has control of the MoP will use that power to advance their own interests.
Premise C: Worker protections are in the interests of the working class.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, in a socialist system, worker protections will be implemented.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, if a system does not have worker protections, workers are not in control of the MoP, and it is not a socialist system.
Conclusion 3: Therefore, worker protections are a necessary condition of socialism.
This could only be true if either B or C are false. If one of those premises is wrong, then it’s you that needs to provide an argument or justification about why it is false.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I understand the syllogism. The problem is that your conclusion does not actually follow from your premises, and you still haven’t addressed the distinction I’ve been making.
Premise A is broadly consistent with the economic definition of socialism: workers collectively control or own the means of production.
Premise C is also uncontroversial: worker protections can be in the interests of the working class.
The problem is Premise B. You are assuming that a class possessing control over the means of production will necessarily use that control to advance all of its perceived interests, and then treating that assumption as sufficient to establish a necessary institutional feature of socialism. That does not follow.
Even if workers collectively control the means of production, they still have competing interests and preferences. Collective ownership does not magically produce unanimous preferences about wages, hours, workplace safety, benefits, working conditions, or how resources should be allocated. Workers can collectively choose policies that benefit them in some respects while sacrificing other interests.
More importantly, you’re confusing an expected consequence or political objective with a necessary definitional condition.
Your argument could establish something like:
“If workers control the means of production, they have the ability and potentially the incentive to implement worker protections.”
It does not establish:
“Any system in which workers control the means of production must necessarily have worker protections, and therefore worker protections are a defining condition of socialism.”
That’s the gap I’ve been pointing out.
And the fact that you can construct a syllogism doesn’t make the conclusion established. You have to demonstrate that the premises are sufficiently strong to entail the conclusion you’re drawing from them. Premise B is doing almost all of the work here, and it contains the exact assumption under dispute.
You also keep saying that I’m claiming socialism inherently doesn’t protect workers. That’s not my position either. Obviously socialist movements have historically advocated worker protections, and obviously worker ownership can be used to pursue them. I’m saying something much narrower: worker protection is not what defines socialism, and the absence of a particular set of worker protections does not logically establish the absence of worker ownership of the means of production.
Your Conclusion 2 is particularly problematic. “Workers are not receiving protections, therefore workers do not control the means of production” is simply affirming what you are trying to prove. You would need an independent argument establishing that worker control necessarily produces those protections. You can’t use the conclusion as evidence for one of its own premises.
So no, I haven’t failed to address your argument. I’m addressing the precise point on which your argument depends: you have demonstrated that worker protection can be an interest of workers. You have not demonstrated that it is a necessary institutional consequence of worker ownership, nor that its absence logically proves that workers don’t control the means of production.
Those are three different claims, and you’re treating them as though they’re interchangeable.