Maybe we become more extreme in our existing beliefs. My political compass position drifted right from bottom left as I hit my thirties. After the Iraq invasion of 2003 and recessions following 2008 it swung back towards Ghandi. I became convinced that conservative politics isn’t working in my late forties and that has only been reinforced as I try to access the creaking UK healthcare system.
To be fair, the political compass is astrology that makes no actual point.
If conservative means “cautious and wary of unexpected results”, “disillusioned with methods that we tried and failed with” or maybe even “equipped with experience of successful and failed cooperation with various sorts of people”, then yes. Already before age 50, I’m spoiled with various good and bad experiences. I cannot exclude that as my tendency to explore decreases (psychology tends to affirm this trend), I may get prejudiced too. I may have to figure out something to counter it.
But if conservative means that I suddenly don’t want a society with equality and without hierarchy, then - nope.
Yeah I think they misunderstood what was happening cause they were getting wealthier as they got older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
There are plenty of nerds that are super conservative about their fandoms and what is allowed to happen with them and same for all kinds of niches but the idea we would get more conservative with money really assumed we would accumulate more of it and assets. But what people do have is their apps and thoughts and those… Those people will be just as conservative as the boomers are about their money as they get older.
I’m pretty old. Not very old, but old enough to be a legal adult. And I’m possibly the most liberal person in my family. I’ve been this way for years.
Liberal, or left?
A bit of both. I also don’t like capitalism.
you’re left or you’re not, you’re a plain liberal
Got it.
Don’t really see how you can be both tbh
The people who told me that were 100% boomers. There’s that idiotic saying “if you’re not liberal* when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no brains” ok boomer.
Note this is using the US meaning of liberal, not to mean “capitalist”.
The one I’ve heard replaces “brains” with “money.”
To the point at least. The impression I always got was that it was meant to imply you’d have money by then and not want to pay taxes.
I was slightly conservative when I was young. Now I don’t know what political orientation I have
Any opinions at all?
they probably are too privileged or can’t form an opinion by themself
I don’t know what it’s like to live under communism, but I do know what it’s like to live under capitalism and it’s grip tightens more and more with every passing year.
I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, was there any communist country which wasn’t also both a dictatorship and poor?
Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it’s always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things… there’s also war, and that applies to most of them too.
Capitalism doesn’t benefit the vast majority of us. But the purpose of capitalism is to enrich a fortunate few at the expense of the rest of us who will be reduced to perpetual wage slavery until we die. Capitalism is working a treat in that regard.
That point is def made in that link.
Have you read my comment?
I know capitalism don’t work, everybody does now.
That has nothing to do with the fact we didn’t manage to have one successful exemple of communism either…
I don’t have a post for this, but also as a testament to China’s poverty alleviation campaigns, world poverty is increasing if we exclude China.
When they write the history of the early 21st century, China’s uplifting of millions of people out of poverty will be one of humanity’s greatest acheivements.
Wrong, from the link I posted:
Capitalist hegemony has short-circuited people into buying wildly illogical and ridiculous propaganda like: “Lift yourselves up by the bootstraps” (which shows the almost religious power of capitalist propaganda, that the impossible can become possible), or “Communism doesn’t work”, when in fact Communism did work extremely well.
Examples from this post by /u/bayarea415, Stephen Gowans - Do publicly owned, planned economies work, Ian Goodrum - Socialism vs Capitalism and quality of life, and yogthos’s USSR acheivements post about the USSR specifically:
- USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US. source. Ended famines.
- Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.
- Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.
- Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.
- Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The “continuous” part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.
- USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960
- USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996., 2
- In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.
- All education, including university level, free. 2
- 99% literacy.
- Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.
- Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.
- Combatted sex inequality. Equal wages for men and women mandated by law, but sex inequality, although not as pronounced as under capitalism, was perpetuated in social roles. Very important lesson to learn.
- Combatted Racial inequality.
- Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.
- Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China’s in 2014.
- Housing was socialized by localized community organizations, and there was virtually no homelessness. Houses were often shared by two families throughout the 20s and 30s – so unlike capitalism, there were no empty houses, but the houses were very full. In the 40s there was the war, and in the 50s there were a number of orphans from the war. The mass housing projects began in the 60s, they were completed in the 70s, and by the 70s, there were homeless people, but they often had genuine issues with mental health.
- 66% of Russians polled in 2015 want the USSR back. The story is the same for all the former eastern-bloc countries: 72% of Hungarians say their country is worse off now than under communism, 57% of East Germans, 63% of Romanians, 77% of Czechs, 81% of Serbs (for Yugoslavia), 70% of Ukrainians, 60% of Bulgarians.
When it is claimed that a system works, we should ask, who it works for. Capitalism benefits a tiny number of rapacious capitalists, to the detriment of the rest of us, while Socialism works for the masses.
For an overview of the soviet experiment, watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut.
Also read this great article by Stephen Gowans, Do publicly owned, planned economies work?. Audio on youtube
Bonus vid about cyber-communism: Paul Cockshott - Going beyond money.
More sources: Socialism Crash Course, Socialism FAQ, Glossary.
That’s all awesome. So it’s still around, right? It didn’t collapse within one generation or anything, did it?
What do you believe to be the cause of the fall of the USSR?
It was overthrown by the USA, as the USA strangled most attempts worldwide in their cradles also.
Primarily via the arms race in the USSR’s case. You can read more about that here:
That’s a yes, it collapsed within one generation. Such an outstanding method of government!
If all it took, according to you, is one department of one nation to bring it down, it was not strong.
But we both know that’s not why it collapsed.
I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, was there any communist country which wasn’t also both a dictatorship and poor?
Most steadily improved their material conditions and did not have dictatorships.
Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it’s always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
Explain, please.
P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things… there’s also war, and that applies to most of them too.
Are you saying most Communist countries intentionally started wars?
Most didn’t? Can you give a few exemples then?
You don’t start a war unintentionally… but i didn’t say start, just being in a war.
Also i don’t imply it was because of communism, my point is that, how can we judge communism if other devastating sociological factors are involved.
Now, i don’t have a point if you say most of them were better for it, but i don’t know any who did so i’d love to educate myself…
A few examples include the USSR, Cuba, PRC, etc. Life standards dramatically improved, life expectancy doubled in the USSR and PRC and jumped around half in Cuba, literacy rates jumped to 99%+ from less than 50% prior, education access, healthcare access, food access, housing access, all dramatically improved. Wealth inequality also fell down dramatically.
Here’s an example of wealth inequality over time in Russia:
And how the Soviet Democratic process functioned:
So USSR was a dictatorship, the country was in ruin after WW2
The 3 factor i mentioned are there.
The data shows what everyone knows, capitalism increase inequality. But what it doesn’t show is how communism made the country improve, because it didn’t.
What i’m saying is, it couldn’t help because of the war and Stalin. We don’t know if it would’ve otherwise.
Cuba again is a dictatorship, and wasn’t rich.
The PRC is a dictatorship, China went on a horrible famine with Mao. Nowadays getting richer only because of how their economy is now fully capitalist.
So let’s say you had significant data that showed it improved some things socially. And let say you somehow managed to prove its causal and not coincidence.
I would still rather not say dictatorships like USSR or PRC are good to live under.
That’s my point, even if communism was good, dictatorship is a plague that makes any system a nightmare.
So USSR was a dictatorship
No, not even the CIA thought the USSR was a dictatorship. You can’t just make unsourced blanket claims based on your emotions.
the country was in ruin after WW2
Yes, they did around 4/5ths of the fighting against the Nazis in totality.
The 3 factor i mentioned are there.
If you conjure them into existence from your imagination, sure.
The data shows what everyone knows, capitalism increase inequality. But what it doesn’t show is how communism made the country improve, because it didn’t.
GDP per capita rose dramatically, wealth inequality dropped massively, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates trippled. The USSR had free healthcare and education, and guaranteed housing and employment. They ended famine, and made it to space from being a semi-feudal semi-industrialized nation 50 years prior. They democratized the government structure. Life absolutely improved not only under Communism, but because of it.
What i’m saying is, it couldn’t help because of the war and Stalin. We don’t know if it would’ve otherwise.
What on Earth are you trying to say? Of course the USSR had to focus on its military to survive, which impeded consumer good production, but life absolutely improved.
Cuba again is a dictatorship, and wasn’t rich.
Cuba is richer than under Batista despite a cruel embargo, and isn’t a dictatorship. You keep throwing out unsourced opinions as though they are facts.
The PRC is a dictatorship, China went on a horrible famine with Mao. Nowadays getting richer only because of how their economy is now fully capitalist.
The PRC practices whole-process people’s democracy, the famine under Mao was the last famine in China’s history of frequent famines, and China is Socialist, it has a Socialist Market Economy based on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics.
So let’s say you had significant data that showed it improved some things socially. And let say you somehow managed to prove its causal and not coincidence.
I have.
I would still rather not say dictatorships like USSR or PRC are good to live under.
You would have sided with the Tsars? The Kuomintang? The Russian Federation? What on Earth are you talking about, here? You’d rather live in societies with less freedom and lower quality of life metrics?
That’s my point, even if communism was good, dictatorship is a plague that makes any system a nightmare.
You have no point, only vibes and a firehose of falsehood. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
Sorry i’m harsh Cuba isn’t quite a dictatorship i give you that one (Although not quite democratic either), maybe that could be a good study.
But saying Stalin or Mao are not dictatorships is just delusional.
The CIA as a source is pretty funny though.
I get it Stalin didn’t quite have all powers, like that’s what it took to classify a government a dictatorship. As if one-party system couldn’t be complex.
(And yes socialist market economy, that really makes a world of difference from capitalist market)
Also to make things clear i wouldn’t have sided with tsar or anyone else than Lenin. I do believe in communism.
Now some improvements may be from communism, i hope so, but don’t pretend you can prove it more than i. It’s not like life expectancy, literacy rate or other factors alike couldn’t rise with another system. It’s not like you could eliminate the possibility of third factors in a time with so much change in all areas of life.
But i sure wouldn’t have followed Stalin in his totalitarian regime. I sure hope if communism was a solution today it would be democratic.
Are you a commie?
Of course, I’m a Marxist-Leninist. Most people on Lemmy are leftist of some sort.
Most of us here are communists. Anti-communist platforms like reddit already exist.
Not communism, but Putin.
This is the Maga flag. This is the “new conservative party”
What are you talking about?
“You will be more conservative as you grow older” is not a truth, but a threat. If you don’t become a conservative under their regime, you won’t become old.
You people so naive its toxic. Ill leave this here for reference about one of the many examples as to why communism is not the way to go:
Thank me later.
3 week old account
Only comment
Why not use your main account? Ban evasion?
As if total communism were the only alternative. And you call us naive.
It pretty much is in the long run.
Removed by mod
Are the tankies in the room with us now?
What is “tankiness?” Any support for AES?
Also, in AES countries it isn’t “privledged elite vs poor bastards.”
Seize the means of production
Honestly, if your goals include conserving an inhabitable environment for the human race in the future, conserving a semblance of wealth for everyone but the top, like, dozen people on Earth, conserving the rights of workers and consumers against an overwhelming opposition, conserving democracy for future generations (and all that against the best efforts of a supposedly “conservative” party), your parents may have been right.
What if my goals include family values, such as opportunity for my kids to earn a good living, live a long and healthy life, enjoy the environment, in a world better than the one I had?
Then you have to join in the fight for those things and educate yourself. This world is not getting better, and the reason for that is the productive political economic system in which we live.
I have the same values and I am a Marxist communist. That means I work for political struggle with the systems that oppress and exploit to for improving conditions for all, and also work to try and educate workers about the class dynamics of this struggle, and the revolutionary potential of the working class.
I’ve only gone further Left.
Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they’re working from the premise that you’ll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn’t true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can’t figure out why millenials aren’t getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.
What if you start to become better off, but realize so many other parents are unable to provide for their kids like you can, and you can’t hope to provide for your kids like the wealthy can? What if paying exorbitant amounts of money for your kids education drives home the point that we need to make that investment for all kids futures? What if you are more often on the hiring side and realize your well being depends on the next generation having opportunities and the means to successfully achieve them?
Then you’re a good person, which is a statistical minority. Most people will never intentionally vote against their economic self-interests by raising their own taxes (although you can trick them into voting against their economic self interests; Republicans have been doing that for years by using racist dog-whistles to attack entitlement programs and pushing discredited trickle-down economic theories).
Then you are alright with me. I think a large amount of our problems as a species come from those with a lack of empathy. If everyone thought like you, then we wouldn’t have the vast wealth inequalities and greatly varying qualities of life between working class and upper class.
On the other hand, if everyone had empathy in the first place, I think we wouldn’t have the economic systems that put profits over people.
The Mode of Production determines social thought, not the other way around.
You don’t think that more empathetic people would be involved in creating fairer modes of production? I think sociopaths and those lacking empathy are at least part of the reason that capitalism still runs rampant in the world, but its just my opinion.
If you downvoted me don’t know why, just adding my opinion.
I know plenty of people that grew up in capitalism and still have empathy, and also hate capitalism, so I guess I don’t understand exactly what you mean, either.
You don’t think that more empathetic people would be involved in creating fairer modes of production? I think sociopaths and those lacking empathy are at least part of the reason that capitalism still runs rampant in the world, but its just my opinion.
The base creates and reinforces the superstructure, which reinforces the base, not the other way around.
The base creates and reinforces the superstructure, which reinforces the base, not the other way around.
I don’t know what this has to do with empathetic people and sociopaths. I understand that the system that we live in is more likely to produce sociopaths than a Socialistic one, but I don’t think that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about them and their hindrance to our advancement, considering that they do indeed exist.
I usually appreciate you spreading knowledge, but I don’t really see what you are trying to add here. Nothing I wrote disagrees with anything you said, and vice versa.
You said if people were more empathetic we would have a better Mode of Production, but the process is reversed.
yup it applies only to the privileged class, and of course only people in that class would think that is the general experience.
Yeah, though there’s also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more, the idea being that you have less future to look forward to (since you’re closer to death than your birth) so instead you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it.
there’s also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more,
That’s more a consequence of the moment. Older people like stable material conditions. And with programs like pensions, public health care, and a safe suburban neighborhood with good amenities, they see the status quo as worth defending.
But swing through North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring (anyone remember that?) or pop over to the UK in the wake of the last election cycle or visit an impoverished neighborhood in Haiti or a bombed neighborhood in Lebanon and you’ll find plenty of elderly revolutionaries.
you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it
People may be nostalgic for their youth, but they are rarely nostalgic for being treated like a child.
And you’re going to find it hard to locate a South African native nostalgic for Apartheid or a Pole or Romanian who misses occupation or a Chinese national who pines for the Century of Humiliation.
Westerners coming out of their post war pre-Reagan Golden Era just have more to be nostalgic for.
Oh yeah, that’s definitely why older folks are socially conservative, although usually when I hear people say this (and definitely in the context of this meme) they’re talking about becoming fiscally conservative.
All of that is the same here in Germany. Check out the stats on home ownership here… But oh man are the kids flipping to the AfD (far right nazi party) quick and in huge numbers. It’s scary to see.
Honestly, that makes sense to me. It seems like when economic systems start breaking down for people, they turn to populism. It’s either left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism, or right-wing populism, which scapegoats minority or immigrant groups. Right now, the youth in the U.S. are interested in left-wing populism, but right-wing populism (AKA Trumpism) is the only thing making it into the political mainstream.
left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism
Left wing means ending Capitalism, not just “reigning it in,” which never works long-term.
Where are those youth in the US? While they seem loud online, why hasn’t that translated into votes?
Actually, youth turnout is pretty high right now, with record turnout being set recently for both midterms and presidential elections. In 2020, turnout for the under thirty crowd was 50%, a possible new record, and it was 30% and 27% in 2018 and 2022 respectively, which are 30 year highs. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party leadership prefers centrist candidates, and frequently puts its thumb on the scale to ensure that moderate candidates win, so that turnout isn’t translating into progressive politics.
Funny enough, just after I made the original comment, I read an article about how the youngest U.S. voters are starting to lean further right than before, so it’s possible the ship has sailed on this all together. Given how aggressively the right wing has been to trying to indoctrinate young voters, who are watching Democrats successfully suppress left-wing populism while Republicans embrace right-wing populism, it’s possible the youth are deciding that the far-right offers them only chance for change. I hope not, though, because then we’re screwed.
The youth in the US is mostly actually leftist, and they give them the choice to vote for a centrist or a right wing candidate. That’s a big part of the reason. Also, just the fact that the youth also votes less, on average, even those youth who identify as right wing.
I know because I am an actual leftist, and I didn’t vote for a long time into my adulthood, because it feels like a scam. I finally got over the fact that not participating in the vote is worse, but I completely understand the apathy amongst actual leftists in the US. We’ve had no true representation in our whole lives.
If you don’t vote for the centrist candidate, you can’t object to the right extremist.
Actually this does track that a lot of what I see online is people who seem unwilling to compromise: neither are what I want so both the same. You need to be willing to vote for the one closest to what you want, and work toward moving that leftward over time.
We had a huge success with “The Squad” getting enough attention before Biden’s first nomination to influence the party platform. As a minority voter, this path is more likely to succeed than not voting
Because for every loud voice you read on lemmy there’s 1000 boomers and nut jobs that either a) don’t use the Internet regularly b) don’t leave Facebook or c) hide away in right wing circlejerk sites like truth social and 4chan. A and B just being old, and none of them being people that can handle having their views challenged, which is definitely going to happen in a space like this.
German government should just ban the AfD and end with it.
While that sounds like a good idea, it’s not really a solution. You can’t just ban a political party because you don’t agree with it, that wouldn’t be democratic.
You 100% can, fascists are a national threat. Entertaining them via “civility” is nonsense.
The Nazi Party being banned was good, just not enough
Fuck this “goody two-shoes” bullshit, ban and repress.
