DBWI: What if the United States had survived into the 21st Century?

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

TBH, I've long since come to the conclusion that the problem with Socialism and Capitalism is that governments treat them as dogmas rather than what they are: lists of ideas you can pick and choose from.

But the EF has done that, along with India and Japan. Which is why the EF is such a great place to live: government regulation and the welfare state ensure a good standard of living for all, while a regulated market and private enterprise allow for greater economic diversity and flexibility

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

So, @GDIS Pathe, any thoughts on what could have made the US survive until the 21st century?

Capitalist countries, being as reliant on trade as they were, were ironically inherently more internationalist that their socialist counter parts. So avoiding the isolation of the US is a must. The US failure to intervene in the Vietnam War massively called the US' reliability into question, as it proved that (despite their domineering attitude towards their allies) they weren't willing to do their part in halting the Asian Domino Effect.

From there on it's just an endless cycle of the US failing to intervene when it should yet continuing to expect its allies to jump when it says so, leading directly to the Euro-American Split and the eventual collapse of its sphere of influence in the Americas.

 

[RiverDelta]

No offense, but you sound a bit like a conspiracy nut, like that Alex Jones ranting that the nationalists run our countries behind the scenes and something about making the frogs religious. How can it be capitalism without capitalists? And I don't think the Unions or the State are the same.

I'm not a conspiracy nut, I'm a left communist. I'm not saying there's some grand conspiracy where the capitalist and "communist" nations are ruled by some shadowy cabal. I'm saying that from any kind of actual Marxist perspective both are equally capitalist. At best, you could argue that the early Soviet Union and Maoist China had elements of what Mao might call "barracks communism", a term that he used only disparagingly.

Here's what I had to say about the oh-so-Marxist USSR, earlier:

Besides, capital still runs Russia and the other Marxist-Leninist "radical" social democracies. The law of value makes itself known through shifting changes in prices and wages and on what's produced in the country.

Labor is still alienated and there's a constant drive to push down wages and make labor more productive along the very same lines that countries like the United States did, and unemployment is often widespread in the country, dependent on economic downturns. On top of that, there's conspicuous social differences, wage differentials, and division of labor.

The Soviet Union and really Marxist-Leninist (Can we just call them Stalinist? After all, we know who really turned Leninism into Marxism-Leninism, and it wasn't Lenin or Marx) are oppressive capitalistic states. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

As for how there can be capitalism without capitalists, that's obvious. As anyone who's actually looked into Marxism can tell you, capitalism is merely personified by the capitalist, it isn't defined by the capitalist. Capitalism above all is defined by the law of value and the power of capital. As I said, not only does the state act as a capitalist in your so-called "socialist" states, the collective farms are merely a form of private property and the extensive black market is, well, a market. It's not for nothing that the expression "Soviet millionaire" exists in some circles.

Capitalists are merely the human personification of capital.

TBH, I've long since come to the conclusion that the problem with Socialism and Capitalism is that governments treat them as dogmas rather than what they are: lists of ideas you can pick and choose from.

But the EF has done that, along with India and Japan. Which is why the EF is such a great place to live: government regulation and the welfare state ensure a good standard of living for all, while a regulated market and private enterprise allow for greater economic diversity and flexibility

...Wow. Great. We've some how reached peak liberal. Or social democrat. Or "socialist" if the point of this thread is that socialism and social democracy are totally the same guys. It's obvious that this idiot believes wholeheartedly in the idea that "socialism is when the government does things and the more things the government does, the socialistier it is". Great socialist ideas like the welfare state and government regulation!

The fact that you can even propose that everyone but you's stupid in that you've come to this great realization that capitalism and your warped, childish, completely capitalist and bourgeois view of "socialism" can be reconciled to create something that totally isn't capitalism, guys....it really shows how little you know about what socialism is.

God, it's infuriating!

OOC: Please don't take this too seriously, I've always enjoyed DBWIing with you and stuff, theg*ddam*hoi2fan. My character's just...Well, this.

 

[Phalamus]

Ok, RiverDelta, I think it's about time for you to get back to your armchair and read Bordiga. Who knows, maybe communism will just magically appear overnight if you just do that and keep labeling every single successful revolutionary movement as capitalist. Do even have any concept of a transition phase?

 

[RiverDelta]

Ok, RiverDelta, I think it's about time for you to get back to your armchair and read Bordiga. Who knows, maybe communism will just magically appear overnight if you just do that and keep labeling every single successful revolutionary movement as capitalist. Do even have any concept of a transition phase?

Yeah, keep poorly citing shitty tankie memes.

Obviously you're some kind of Marxist intellectual who knows what they're talking about.

First, Bordiga's actually worth reading, you should try it sometime.

I didn't know that "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence", i.e. communism isn't something that comes from leftist revolutionaries enacting regime change, the contradictions in capitalism drive the creation of communism. Your "successful" revolutionary movements haven't succeeded in doing anything but creating a slightly different manifestation of capitalism, hardly worth the ethnic cleansings, mass imprisonment, wars of conquest, political repression, secret polices, and, and I almost forgot this one, the deaths of untold amounts of innocent lives in the name of a bourgeois revolution with red flags. Militants, leftists...and civilians.

Great job assisting the proletariat in their own liberation, I guess killing as many of the proletariat as possible for bourgeois causes to set up a new bourgeoisie totally is the same thing as the proletariat liberating themselves.

Yep, I don't see any issues there.

I've said a lot about the whole "Oh, left communists just call all of my totally socialist bourgeois dictatorships capitalist and call it a day" thing, so I'll focus on your next statement, that of the "transitional phase".

The transitional phase is the revolution itself, and that revolution is formed through the contradictions in capitalism, not the patronizing bullshit of leftists. Marx did talk about a "lower stage" of communism, as did Bordiga, who saw it as communism with rations. Marx used communism and socialism interchangeably, while referring to the "communist movement" also as communism. It's understanding that those two very different ideas might be confusing. Anyway, to summarize, people who refer to what Stalinists call "socialism" isn't Marx's lower phase of communism.

People who believe that socialism and communism are different know nothing about the history of those terms, their meanings, and indeed the history of the entire communist movement.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

...Wow. Great. We've some how reached peak liberal. Or social democrat. Or "socialist" if the point of this thread is that socialism and social democracy are totally the same guys. It's obvious that this idiot believes wholeheartedly in the idea that "socialism is when the government does things and the more things the government does, the socialistier it is". Great socialist ideas like the welfare state and government regulation!

The fact that you can even propose that everyone but you's stupid in that you've come to this great realization that capitalism and your warped, childish, completely capitalist and bourgeois view of "socialism" can be reconciled to create something that totally isn't capitalism, guys....it really shows how little you know about what socialism is.

God, it's infuriating!

OOC: Please don't take this too seriously, I've always enjoyed DBWIing with you and stuff, theg*ddam*hoi2fan. My character's just...Well, this.

OOC: I figured

IC: If everyone but me hadn't reached that conclusion, then the EF wouldn't be the place it is today

Yes, I'm a social democrat. Because it works. It combines what works out of two systems, and it uses that to grant as many people as possible a decent life while ensuring freedom for the individual.

Is it pure socialism? Maybe not. But as long as it delivers a good standard of living for the people of Europe and other nations, as long as it gives people things like socialised healthcare and the Basic Living Wage and such, and as long as it allows diversity of opinions...does it matter, as long as it works? It doesn't matter if a cat's black or white, as long as it catches mice...

 

[RiverDelta]

OOC: I figured

IC: If everyone but me hadn't reached that conclusion, then the EF wouldn't be the place it is today

Yes, I'm a social democrat. Because it works. It combines what works out of two systems, and it uses that to grant as many people as possible a decent life while ensuring freedom for the individual.

Is it pure socialism? Maybe not. But as long as it delivers a good standard of living for the people of Europe and other nations, as long as it gives people things like socialised healthcare and the Basic Living Wage and such, and as long as it allows diversity of opinions...does it matter, as long as it works? It doesn't matter if a cat's black or white, as long as it catches mice...

Yes, your exploitative capitalism built on wage slavery is marginally nicer than the other form of exploitative capitalism built on wage slavery.

Clearly the world's problems are solved!

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Yes, I'm a social democrat. Because it works. It combines what works out of two systems, and it uses that to grant as many people as possible a decent life while ensuring freedom for the individual.

EEEEEEEEEEEEW. If the 1900s proved anything its that Democracies are capable of electing men like Hitler and Regan. If you're going to embrace any pseudo-socialist ideology be like the Segundo Estado Novo and embrace Social Feudalism.*

*OOC: Think Manorialism, but with government regulations that mean the hereditary landlords need to provide the "proletarian-peasants" with food, shelter, and education.

 

[RiverDelta]

EEEEEEEEEEEEW. If the 1900s proved anything its that Democracies are capable of electing men like Hitler and Regan. If you're going to embrace any pseudo-socialist ideology be like the Segundo Estado Novo and embrace Social Feudalism.*

*OOC: Think Manorialism, but with government regulations that mean the hereditary landlords need to provide the "proletarian-peasants" with food, shelter, and education.

"Pseudo-socialist".

I'm assuming you're a tankie or something?

God, the irony. It burns!

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

I'm assuming you're a tankie or something?

Funny how you anarchists just turn yourselves in.
[insert KGB edit of the FBI "thanks for the tip" screen here]

 

[RiverDelta]

Funny how you anarchists just turn yourselves in.
[insert KGB edit of the FBI "thanks for the tip" screen here]

...Ew, please don't confuse me for a fucking narcho.

I'm a left communist. Like I've said before in the thread.

Although, thinking about it, narchos are idiots but at least in their ridiculous bourgeois moralizing they occasionally stumble upon a good idea or two by blind luck in between smashing windows and being moronic, but tankies?

Tankies are the unholy hybrid of utopians, capitalist cheerleaders, and bloodthirsty tyrant wannabes.

Read Marx or GTFO.

I've talked exclusively about Marxism and Marxist theory this entire time.

Like, that's all I've ever brought up, here.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

*sectarian marxist screeching*

You're just a counter revolutionary who probably thinks we shouldn't be supporting IRSIS in its battle against western backed Rojavan Imperialism!

ooc: let me know if you think my character is going too far

 

[RiverDelta]

You're just a counter revolutionary who probably thinks we shouldn't be supporting IRSIS in its battle against western backed Rojavan Imperialism!

ooc: let me know if you think my character is going too far

OOC: To be honest, I'm relieved that you OOC aren't this bad.

IC: I will grant that Lenin's probably worth keeping on there, along with Marx and Engels, obviously, and I'm glad that we agree that Trotsky was a loathsome self-promoter who didn't contribute much if anything to Marxist theory and who was responsible for creating the utter catastrophe that is Trotskyism, but you do list the usual suspects.

So are you a Stalinist, a Mao cultist, or god forbid a Third Worldist? If it's the last one, I don't know why you even consider yourself Marxist at that point, given that you've more or less pissed all over Capital.

The Cuban revolutionaries in those photos are unintentionally hilarious, though. Castro looks like the cliché "capitalist pig" archetype and Che has the worst haircut I've ever seen. This isn't to discount their revolutionary credentials - the rest of what I've posted here does that generally pretty well - I just find it hilarious.

Also, "sectarianism" and calls for "left unity" are usually used as a cheap way to marshall "socialists" under tankies until the tankies get powerful enough to purge out the non-tankie social democrats.

Thank God that the revolution is to come from the proletariat and capitalism's own contradictions instead of the lunatics, sociopaths, brainwashed children, cultists, and Trots that make up the left wing of capital.

The entire bottom two thirds of your shitty tankie meme consists of people who turned against the proletariat in one way or another, but, then again, you people never actually cared about petty things like the proletariat.

No, we need more red flags and mass executions! Only then will we have true communism™!

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

OOC: To be honest, I'm relieved that you OOC aren't this bad.

OOC: don't feel too relieved I'm actually alt-right.

jk jk

IC: I will grant that Lenin's probably worth keeping on there, along with Marx and Engels, obviously, and I'm glad that we agree that Trotsky was a loathsome self-promoter who didn't contribute much if anything to Marxist theory and who was responsible for creating the utter catastrophe that is Trotskyism, but you do list the usual suspects.

So are you a Stalinist, a Mao cultist, or god forbid a Third Worldist? If it's the last one, I don't know why you even consider yourself Marxist at that point, given that you've more or less pissed all over Capital.

The Cuban revolutionaries in those photos are unintentionally hilarious, though. Castro looks like the cliché "capitalist pig" archetype and Che has the worst haircut I've ever seen. This isn't to discount their revolutionary credentials - the rest of what I've posted here does that generally pretty well - I just find it hilarious.

Also, "sectarianism" and calls for "left unity" are usually used as a cheap way to marshall "socialists" under tankies until the tankies get powerful enough to purge out the non-tankie social democrats.

Thank God that the revolution is to come from the proletariat and capitalism's own contradictions instead of the lunatics, sociopaths, brainwashed children, cultists, and Trots that make up the left wing of capital.

The entire bottom two thirds of your shitty tankie meme consists of people who turned against the proletariat in one way or another, but, then again, you people never actually cared about petty things like the proletariat.

No, we need more red flags and mass executions! Only then will we have true communism™!

Are you seriously trying to say Foco isn't compatible with Marxism? Have you never read state approved literature? Next you'll be trying to say that Hitler didn't betray the National Socialist cause!

 

[RiverDelta]

@SealTheRealDeal Wait, are you a Strasserist?

Please tell me you're not a Strasserist.

You sound like a Ruskie or something, but...Where are you even getting your information, anyway?

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

@SealTheRealDeal Wait, are you a Strasserist?

Please tell me you're not a Strasserist.

You sound like a Ruskie or something, but...Where are you even getting your information, anyway?

Ivan Stirkovsky's "Great Proletarian War" Chapter 1, "Stalin only agreed to the partition of Poland because he correctly recognized the anti-Proletarian nature of the Second Polish Republic and mistakenly believed in the NASDAP's commitment to the German working class."

 

[RiverDelta]

Ivan Stirkovsky's "Great Proletarian War" Chapter 1, "Stalin only agreed to the partition of Poland because he correctly recognized the anti-Proletarian nature of the Second Polish Republic and mistakenly believed in the NASDAP's commitment to the German working class."

this bahah

 

[Deleted member 82792]

OOC: Anyone want to do maps and flags?

 

[Marklin]

OOC: I actually created a thread like this one a while back, in fact, it was my first thread! I ended up in the Gulag.

 

[ryhs]

OOC: Anyone want to do maps and flags?

Spoiler: My take on Europe map

As I swapped Spain with Yugoslavia, Croatia's playing TTL's Catalonia, and Asturia's cosovo.
Hopefully not too big of a wank for EF, but we need them to play the role of China, so probably even Turkey should be in.
Would be great for somebody to do North America