​
Correct if am wrong, but as I understand it the Anarchists want to do away with state entirely, viewing it as inherently illegitimate and unjust.
While the Libertarian socialists, view the state as legitimate, but with great limits and constraints, preferring a "Night-Watchman" state.
Is this roughly correct?
​
I'm curious how people here view the concept of a “soul.”
By soul, I mean any non-physical aspect of a person that could constitute their consciousness, identity, or “self” beyond the physical brain/body. So I'm not strictly talking about a religious concept of a soul, or something that has to be supernatural.
Basically, do you guys believe that consciousness or the self exists in some form beyond the physical processes of the brain/body?
And if you do, how would that affect your views on things like mind uploading, brain-computer interfaces, replacing biological organs with artificial ones, or eventually replacing the body entirely?
I'm especially interested in hearing from people who don't believe in a soul, since that seems like it could lead to some pretty interesting conclusions about what makes someone “the same person” after extensive augmentation.
I'm personally a Materialist or Naturalist when it comes to the topic.
Which of the two are you a Transhumanist for?
Obviously, those two are not mutually exclusive, but are even tightened intertwined.
But if you had to lean towards one way or the other, which and why?
I am personally lean towards the quality of life, but am biased since I'm young.
Since this is the democratic socialism subreddit, I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of us want some kind of democratic socialist state. But, like...what comes after that?
What would your ideal socialist economy actually look like?
Would you want central planning? Local/decentralized planning? Markets? Or somethingelse entirely?
Personally, I’d probably go with a democratic market socialist state.
Not necessarily because I think market socialism is inherently superior or anything. I just think markets solve some of the information problems that traditional central planning has historically struggled with. There’s a lot of information involved in an economy, and trying to centrally plan all of it seems like an incredibly difficult task. The historical examples of shortages, surpluses, and other planning problems are pretty hard to ignore.
The Soviet Stereotypes came from somewhere.
I also like that markets retain a familiar aspect of everyday life. Not everything people want is necessary for survival or even objectively beneficial. Sometimes you just want some random thing because you want it, no?
Having markets in some capacity would allow people to retain a degree of individual choice over what they consume, rather than having every economic decision determined collectively or by some central planning authority.
So yeah, I'm curious, assuming we’ve already established democratic socialism, what does the actual economic system look like afterward?
What would your ideal socialist economy look like?
I’ve been thinking about central and local economic planning.
With central planning, most major economic decisions are made by a central government or planning authority. It can coordinate the economy on a large scale, but the downside is that a small group of planners may not have enough information about what people and individual businesses actually need.
With local planning, more decisions are made by municipalities, regions, workplaces, cooperatives, or other smaller groups. This gives people closer to the actual economy more control and may allow plans to respond faster to local needs. However, it could also make it harder to coordinate things across an entire country.
So my question is: What are their pros and cons, and which do you support and why?
Is local planning actually more practical than central planning especially for large states, or do large economies inevitably need some degree of central coordination?
And if you support a mix of planning and markets, where do you think the line should be?
Because nationalist movements have, at various points, co-opted socialist terminology and some socialist ideas, I was wondering what is the general consensus within the socialist movement is regarding nationalism.
Do socialists reject nationalism in ALL of its forms?
Some forms seem fairly obvious to me. Ethno-nationalism and racial nationalism, for sure are out, they seem fundamentally incompatible with socialist principles of equality and solidarity.
But what about other forms of nationalism, such as cultural nationalism?
And what about civic nationalism, which, as I understand it, defines the nation primarily in terms of shared citizenship, political institutions, and civic identity rather than ethnicity?
Is nationalism itself inherently antithetical to socialism, or is the relationship more complicated? In particular, is it possible to be a socialist while also identifying with or supporting a civic or cultural form of nationalism?
I'm asking this in good faith because I know socialism has a strong tradition of internationalism, workers of the world unite and all that, but I'm not sure whether internationalism necessarily means rejecting nationalism altogether.
I'm still pretty new to the rich and varied world of Socialist thoughts, so forgive my ignorance.
But a recurring problem that I keep hearing about in regard of Socialism, is the central planning. Or command economy, whatever you call it.
Both the Soviet Union and China had problems with it.
So why not Market Socialism? Market socialism retains social ownership while using markets to solve many of central planning’s information and incentive problems.
Further more, markets are established and people are familiar with it, and it also removes the problem of a central authority deciding what you get or not. So why not keep the markets?
Do do you guys think?
I was wondering, outside of the famous and rather dominate Marxist-Leninist tradition, what are the other Marxist traditions?
I know vaguely of say of Rose Luxembourg and her KPD, but what are the others?
The Social Democracy I envision is NOT just about welfare, social services and taxes on the rich, but I envision it to have Unions at its core, a social democracy gives workers the power to organize, negotiation and bargain with firms.
It will also form the bases into a gradual process into Socialism and Worker Cooperatives.
And I was wondering what are your thoughts about it?
Edit: sorry, horrible spelling.
Is it actually a thing?
I heard of it mentioned along side anarcho-communism, mutualism, collectivism, etc.
Is it actually a thing, and if so, what is it about?