Comments by "Regis" (@Timbo5000) on "Getting OWNED over Hitler's Socialism" video.

  1. 44:45 What is this? Someone who actually sees that corporations are incompatible with anarchism? Now I respect you even more, TIK, even if I'm more of a leftie. I'd sign up for such a society for sure. Still have a few points though. I actually watched the video by the way, so what follows is constructive. I do have to say I don't quite agree with your definitions of socialism and capitalism. I definitely admire your view of corporations being public in and of themselves, but being public is not the same thing as being socialist. I feel like your statement there is a bit too general and misses some nuances. Socialism as an ideology, encompasses a lot more than simply public control over the means of production. A corporation is a public entity in the sense of it being a body of multiple people functioning within said corporation (which indeed also makes the government a corporation), but capitalism nor socialism is opposed to the simple idea of a group of individuals banding together to form corporations. What socialism is against is the capitalists within this system being able to have ownership of that corporation and thereby also the labour of the workers within said corporation. Socialism wants every individual to be the owner of their own labour and wants to abolish the very idea of being able to own a company beyond your share of actual labour within said company. Whether you have an economy with worker-owned corporations or an economy with individuals owning their own labour, that is socialist because everyone in society owns the means of production by their own share of labour. Capitalism is a system based on the concept of capitalist investors being able to buy (parts of) a company, including the labour of the workers there (you buy labour by entering into a wage contract) and those singular investors reaping the profits of the labour done at that company. Because the workers don't own their own labour, but are instead selling it for a set wage, the net value that they create does not go to them as workers, but to the capitalist that owns their labour. These profits are then used to further invest in that company or invest elsewhere (or to get a huge pay for the capitalists as individuals), enacting economic growth/expansion. The idea of capitalism is that this benefits both the investors and the wage workers. The workers get a deal they agreed on (socialists would argue that it is not a choice because the market sets their wages and the entire point of the market is to keep those wages as low as they can possibly be without losing the worker to a competitor who pays better). The capitalists get the full reward for making the business possible in the first place and ensure that the economy expands, offering opportunities for more and more workers to get a wage as well as fulfilling in the needs of as many consumers as possible. Other characteristics are a (more or less) free market, (more or less) free private ownership, competition and more. There is nothing in capitalism that opposes the creation of corporations either. Corporations can exist in a capitalist as well as socialist setting, depending on how ownership within that corporation is organised. If either the state (representing the "proletariat") or all workers employed at that corporation owns the company, it is socialist. If individuals, not in their capacity as workers, but in their private interests as investors own a company, that is capitalist. Same for the state; it can exist both in a capitalist and socialist setting. You already know how it exists in a socialist setting by examples of authoritarian socialism seen in f.e. the USSR. But state intervention in the free market and capitalism? It all depends on the nature of that intervention. A state can nationalise industry for the sake of abolishing class conflict (auth. socialist), but a state can also partake in a capitalist economy by f.e. buying shares in a company or simply buying pencils from a corporation. In the same way an individual can own a company either as a capitalist investor (representing their own individual interest) or as one of many workers collectively owning the company they work at (being part of the socialist principle of collective ownership of one's own labour), a state can act either as a neutral actor on the capitalist market or as a facilitator of socialist principles. A state buying pencils from a company is not socialist. Even a state putting into place regulations on the free market to prevent big corporations from dominating the market is not socialist; they are simply regulating a capitalist market with the intention of protecting the capitalist principle of competition regulating market prices (which would be drowned out if a state of monopoly or oligarchy is achieved by big corporations). So your specific view of capitalism, which you call "true" capitalism, is not the only iteration of capitalism. There are man forms of it (as there are many forms of socialism) and yours is merely one of them. Probably the one I find the most admirable form, but that's besides the point.
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