I’m a libertarian socialist, an anarchist, but not a utopian.
For me libertarian socialism is more of an ethic and a journey than a destination.
I don’t expect to see a libertarian socialist society realized in my life time, or in several dozen life times, if ever.
I’m thinking more evolutionary than revolutionary, be the change you want to see, individuals and small groups distancing themselves from authoritarian capitalism whenever and wherever possible.
I’m a minimalist.
Kind of getting sick of being a renter and a wage slave.
Lately been thinking about saving up, buying a campervan, living in it and starting my own business under the table.
While social liberalism, like all forms of liberalism/capitalism is still a slave system, it’s closer to my ideal and so, preferable to other forms of liberalism, namely classical and neo.
There’s no utopia, no such thing as a perfect society, but some conditions are preferable to others.
Cooperatives are also a way of distancing oneself from authoritarian capitalism.
How does that work? You form a collective that seizes businesses? Is collective organized like the USSR or another format? Under this system can I grow a garden for my family only or does the collective own everything in the garden and it’s up to the collective to decide what to do with the food? Which part of what the USSR did was ethical according to libertarian socialist principles?
What is the difference between Socialist Libertarism and socially liberal Communism?
Most of the time small business owners put 90 hour weeks in and a lot of their own resources for about five years before having a successful operation. However under a socialist model that seems to be pointless for anyone to do. You apparently don’t have any resources to put in because they were seized by the collective, or if you do have resources and put them in you only get a small fraction back as a small fractional collective owner.
Under free-market capitalism like pre-1930’s USA, the poverty rate decreased over time and rich-poor gap decreased over time. So capitalism is shown to be something that everyone benefits in practice. The post-1930’s USA was not capitalist and is not capitalist now. What you identify as “authoritarian capitalism” is fascism as Mussolini defined it , which isn’t capitalist. It also isn’t “crony capitalism” any more than crony socialism. I do believe that if big government didn’t swoop in, poverty would have continued its ongoing trend and would have been a generally speaking solved problem in the USA, and in that respect free-market capitalism is also near to a utopian economic system since in practice it has no known floor to the reduction of poverty.
The Republic form of government eventually lead to the end of capitalism in the 1930’s because Republics allow the collective more rights than any one individual. Specifically, the collective is allowed to seize personal income at any rate up to 100%, while any individual can be arrested in most places for seizing any amount of money at all from another person. The attempted power disparity between a Republic collective and any one individual within is infinite. This is considered a good thing by socialists for reasons I will try to understand, however, I attribute this to the core reason the middle class went on the decline in the USA after the end of the gold standard in 1971.
The money of the USA isn’t capitalist as it is owned by the USA government. The USA delegated their money authority to a group of elite bankers, which is economic fascism.
It’s 2023, not 1936 during the Spanish revolution, we’re nowhere near there yet, no one but the state is going to seize anyone’s business.
Like I said for me it’s a journey.
I would say minimize your participation in exploitive relationships; creditor/debtor, employer/employee, landlord/tenant, taxer/taxpayer, but if your poverty compels you to, minimize your exploitation in them as much as you can, any way you can.
Use your imagination.
It starts there, be the change.
Another format.
The USSR was a state.
Organization should be grassroots.
Think local militias organized democratically, where every able bodied adult resident can be a member.
Participation in the militia would be voluntary and there’d be no taxation.
Militias would help keep the peace.
Also, see demarchy and direct democracy.
We have different property norms than capitalists, but unlike communists, we do believe in private property.
You should be able grow whatever you want on your own property.
However, there should be reasonable limits to how much land you can own and how many natural resources you can take from public property like surrounding wilderness.
Self-employment and cooperatives would be permitted, but capitalism (wage slavery) and landlordism (leasing and renting housing) prohibited.
All existing capitalisms and landlordisms would be converted into cooperatives.
Charging interest and intellectual property would also be prohibited.
I’m a civil libertarian, not woke/a cultural Marxist.
I believe in free speech, the right to bear arms, bodily autonomy, due process and privacy.
I don’t see racism and sexism everywhere.
I believe in racial and sexual differences, I just don’t believe one is superior.
1920s classical liberalism inevitably led to 1930s social liberalism.
There were also many busts before 1929.
The Long Depression of the Gilded Age led to the introduction of social liberalism by Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal of the Progressive Era.
Despite, or because of his Square deal, the economy grew, including for the working and middle classes.
The Great Depression led to more social liberalism by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Again despite, or because of his New Deal, the economy grew, including for the working and middle classes.
1980s neoliberalism isn’t sustainable, it’s only a matter of time before it leads to major reforms and/or revolutions.
Capitalism has always been more or less crony in practice.
Every system has its corruption, you can’t parse theory from practice.
We were on Black Tuesday and still are today a fundamentally capitalist society.
Government cannot just seize property, it has to follow strict laws.
So long as people pay their taxes and follow capitalist property norms, property is rarely seized, and when it is, compensation is given.
There is no wealth tax, and income and sales tax are kept comparatively low to how high they could be and were in the mid 20th century.
Both income and sales tax are below 50%.
Capitalism leads to large gaps in wealth, which in turn lead to large gaps in power, and corruption, which in turn, lead to enormous gaps in wealth and so on, until we’re at where we’re at today; a handful of multibillionaires own as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity/4 billion people, a gap many, many, MANY times bigger than we’ve ever seen before in all of history.
That’s my biggest gripe with capitalism, there has to be caps on wealth or you wind up with this madness sooner or later.
There’s no such thing as freedom and democracy under such conditions.
Socialism can be seen as the middle path between communism (total equality), and capitalism (potentially unlimited inequality).
An aside; it’s not necessary to abolish capitalism altogether to put caps on wealth, you could cap wealth at 10, or 100 million dollars for example.
so do we just stop evolving and be hunter-gatherers?