Stalin Tonks: All this talk about donations and paywalls makes you sound like a capitalist, Robert. I am so disappointed in you.
First of all, I live in a capitalist country. You have to do what you have to do survive in whatever country you live in. If you want to survive in a capitalist country, you have to play by the rules of capitalism. And it’s not anti-socialist to be rich or to invest in or own businesses. For instance, the FMLN revolutionaries owned and invested in businesses, farms and ranches all over Latin America. All of the money went for revolution – guns, bombs, uniforms, supplies, wages for soldiers, etc. The father of the famous terrorist Carlos was a Venezuelan millionaire and Communist. That’s not a contradiction, and he doesn’t have to give all his money away. A Communist can be rich in a capitalist country. I would like to think he would do good things with his money though and not use it to rip off the people or exploit workers. Engels was a rich businessman.
I am not a capitalist. No exploitation, no capitalism. I am simply a worker selling his labor on the open market. All one man businesses are noncapitalist. It’s just one guy selling his labor on the market mostly to other workers. It’s workers paying other workers for some service. Also I am not marking anything up, although the profit motive and marking up products as a middleman is not necessarily capitalist and is completely compatible with socialism. I also feel that small businesses are an important part of a socialist country.
Anyway, I’m not really a Communist. I am just a socialist, and I am OK with social democracy where you have private businesses and even corporations and where up to 93% of the economy is private owned, as in Sweden for instance.
Democratic socialism allows a lot of capitalism in it. It just modified it and regulates it, and that is the socialist part as capitalists accept no limits whatsoever on their profits. Any state that limits the profits of Capital is automatically acting in a socialist manner. All regulation of business is inherently socialist. It has to be. Capitalists do not accept the state regulating their businesses to limit their profits in any way, shape or form. That’s their nature.
