USA Goes to War Against Iran

Capitalism, including state capitalism (socialism), will only have run its course when humanity reverts to pre-industrial conditions, which won't be pretty.

You mean this USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?

addendum: slow pony

I'm not.

That's not true.

Remind me of the full title of the Nazi party please?

Funny how the Russian socialists fought to the death against the German socialists. Something doesn’t quite add up with some regimes that put the word Socialist in their names.

Think of a small community that has to climb a mountain every day to get water. A huge portion of their labor just goes into basic survival. So they decide to redirect a big chunk of that labor into digging a well. While they’re doing it, they’re actually worse off with less immediate output, more strain.

That labor they’re storing up and redirecting - time, effort, resources put toward future production - that’s basically what we mean by capital.

Once the well is finished, everything changes. Water is easy to access, survival takes less effort, and now they’ve got surplus time and energy.

At that point, the “capital” they built - the well - has effectively done its job. It’s not something being accumulated for its own sake anymore; it’s already transformed the conditions. In a sense, it’s consumed itself by solving the problem it was created for.

That’s much closer to what Marx is getting at with the “only then” idea: you only get to that stage after the productive base is built out to the point where scarcity isn’t driving everything.

You’re comparing the name of a political party to how a state functions constitutionally.

It's the same with Bernie and AOC. They can say they're socialists but what they're calling for is pretty much the anti-thesis to what Marx meant by the term. In fact Marx might argue they're perpetuating the very structure socialism is designed to eradicate.

smol peen

So he's coming right and saying he's going to target civilian infrastructure?

If you are going to bomb them back to the stone age you start with the power plants.

Probably starts with the JAGs.

He's saying that for cats like you and Doyle who say, "Nah, bro, they might kill unarmed American citizens in the streets of America for standing up for brown people, but they would never bomb a school full of brown people in another country."

Since the stock market probably matters more to Trump than defeating Iran - whatever that even means, his focus on the strait I guess could suggest that he is subtly leaning toward de-escalation. But obv who knows.

Trump signals drawdown in Middle East as Canada, allies condemn Iran’s actions

U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States is “getting very close” to meeting its military objectives in the Middle East, as tensions escalate over Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a post on TruthSocial, Trump outlined what he described as key goals of the U.S. military effort, including degrading Iran’s missile capabilities, dismantling its defence industry and preventing it from developing nuclear weapons.

“Never allowing Iran to get even close to nuclear capability,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. must remain ready to respond “quickly and powerfully” if needed.

He also said the United States may look to reduce its direct role in securing the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting other nations that rely on the waterway should take on more responsibility.

“The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed … by other nations who use it,” Trump said, adding the U.S. would assist if asked.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11740734/trump-attacks-middle-east-iran/

Global News

Trump signals drawdown in Middle East as Canada, allies condemn Iran’s actions - National | Globalnews.ca

That's the point. We're not in disagreement

Maybe Marx missed the pace at which there would be new uses of labour in storing and redirecting. But as that comes to an end, capitalism comes to an end. Scarcity, if there is any, becomes more purely a political issue.

It's not clear how much marker mechanics are now. There's tons in the UK (railways, water, post office, Health, education, water etc et etc) that are clearly better socialised either now or in the past. The thatcherite worship of the markets in many areas has been a disaster.

It's a process and there's so much to do that I certainly wouldn't worry about the areas where the market is thriving. They will diminish as the 'wells' scenarios that John21 refers to, dry up.

I think it's a pretty solid bet that most of those things in the US should be and will be socialized sometime in the future. But it really isn't rocket science to understand that the possible benefits in that area doesn't become a +ev strategy to create a blanket application towards socializing things like smartphones or basic community centers and restaurants and a ton of other areas. There are improtant reasons why people flock towards an increase in consumer choice through privatized industries. But I think we already agreed on this, or maybe that was someone else im not going to check

You’ll notice that I’m not disagreeing with this point and I specifically said that there are market mechanics better suited for certain areas. These areas that you listed I agree have a natural tendency towards being better suited for nationalization/decentralized state-owned models.

I would call out for instance food production as being one where the market has been clearly better historically at distributing resources. State-owned food production has been, for the most part, a disaster at large scale, and has led to some of the worst outcomes of would-be socialist states (we can debate whether they are truly socialist or not, I don’t really care what you call them).

I also think that the middle way of strong regulations can be a better curb on market excesses than state-ownership models in many instances, and that cooperative ownership of market instruments is an area that can and should be pursued. Workplace democracy and collective bargaining are also middle ways that I find promising, as well as direct redistribution of resources over and against state-ownership has also been historically a great success that is always on the table as a tool for redistributing good outcomes.

Agree with you, of course they're social democrats ie capitalists.

But the USSR was so far removed from what Marx wrote about - the withering away of the state - that it's incorrect to call it a socialist state and socialists in the 70s and 80s spent a lot of time arguing with each other about whether it was state capitalism or a corrupt worker's state.

Food production has always needed a large pool of low paid workers. Capitalism does this better than socialism because under socialism almost no-one wants to do low paid hard work while under capitalism it's better than being extremely poor

Remove the problem of needing a low paid labour force and the main thing the 'capitalists' will be adding is inequality and controlling supply.

The US does pretty big subsidies for farming, rightfully so as I feel food production (not soybeans for export) is a national security issue.
If privatized, yet subsidized, food production/distribution is so good then should look into how to improve this hybrid system. I think there is a decent amount of people that would like to get into farming but land cost as a barrier to entry is huge.
Also John Deere is a bunch of mofo's, would be fine nationalizing that pos company for farm equipment.

That's not right, as the large agricultural co-operatives in Spain show. Farming is one example of work that gives workers a sense of pride, achievement and usefulness so it lends itself well to the cop-operative movement.

Being low-paid is not inherently bad, in the sense that it’s relative to what that low pay can actually purchase. You’d rather be low-paid in a system where there’s an abundance of food than low-paid in a system where excess food is discouraged by seizure or prosecution. That tends to be where the hypothetically possible good of socialist reforms buck up against the proven resource distribution of market mechanisms.

The US military knows it can't win a war it's pointlessly started so it wants to drag European countries in to share the blame for another "forever war".

The missiles that it's alleged were fired by Iran that fell short of Diego Garcia were probably a false flag Israeli operation designed to provoke fear in Europe, if they were even fired in the first place. Iran has denied firing these missiles, which is very odd if the attack had been intended as a warning to Europe that it's within range of Iranian missiles.

The UK government said there is "no assessment to substantiate" Israel's claim that Iran has long-range missiles capable of reaching London, and refused to say how close the missiles came to the British territory, which pretty much tells you everything.