You’re in luck:
Nebula link:
Please let me know if you want me to split this off into its own thread. I really don’t mean to hijack the food thread.
Thank you, but I think this is a derail… 
(Edit: not any more, with our shiny new topic!)
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I more-or-less understand the broad strokes of the different philosophies, but socialism, communism and anarchism each have so many branches of their own… and there’s the whole “ask three leftists one question and you’ll get seven answers” issue… 
They all resonate with me to some degree too, so I haven’t been able to point to one yet and feel certain that “yup, this is me” yet. I believe in power to the workers; food, water, shelter, education, health care and internet for all; I’m firmly anti-capitalist and anti-work (but not labor); I’m pro-mutual aid. Right now my focus is on learning more where I can, and eventually I’ll find whatever label works for me. I’ll call myself “generally Leftist” until then.
(I know I need to read more theory, but it’s so dry and I don’t have the attention span for it at this point. YouTube videos, Twitch streams, Wikipedia and forums like here and TOS help a lot, but I’m still working on it.)
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I’m not a hard-core academic on the issue at all. Most of what I know was pretty much acquired in the same ways. The key idea that I’ve found helpful, and I think would be helpful in countering the idea that socialism is bad in the US is that it is an economic model. I think the video above does a good job of articulating it, but socialism and democracy are absolutely not mutually exclusive. I certainly grew up in the US with the general idea that communism/socialism were synonymous with Cuba, China, and the USSR. Since they were bad, therefore communism/socialism was bad.
Here are a few more videos from that channel that I think do a good job of answering questions I’ve had:
This one is less about socialism and more about one of the ways that capitalists have historically slowed social progress:
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That’s a good series. Here’s a good one about the ‘middle class’.
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In this definition of class (worker or capitalist dichotomy) a whole lot of people switch class at retirement, depending on security based retirement accounts and/or social security income. I would argue that this group is a messy mix of worker and capitalist class.
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That is a good point. One that would have been good for them to mention in the video.
Personally, I think that if you spend your working years, all 50 of 'em, most of your lifetime, working and saving up for that retirement, then when/if you age out of working and finally get to collect some of what you worked all those decades for, then you should still be considered honorary working class.
In the shorter term, I worked and invested many years until I finally had enough for a down payment and closing and moving costs to get a mortgage on a home. And yes, as a result, I could sell my investments and take out loans to do that, but that doesn’t take me out of the working class. At the end of it, I came as close as a little over $300 left in the bank, now with lots of debt. And I’ll be working for a long time to repay those loans and rebuild that savings.
A whole lot of retired people don’t really even get there, if they didn’t invest while they were working, or even if they did. Many go back to work as long as they physically can.
But even for those that can live by draining down their lifetime of investments, are they really getting an income from capital? Or just finally getting delayed payment for all the work they did? If it weren’t for wage stagnation, wouldn’t they have just gotten paid that money directly for their work in the first place?
You’re right that it’s a messy mix, and I think can be viewed both ways.
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It would seem that the Nazis were not entirely honest and forthright with their ideology…
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When you’re a hammer capitalism, everything looks like a nail situation to exploit for profit.
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It always gets my back up when people frame “rich people doing bad shit” as an -ism. So is the problem really with firms and accounting of assets? Conversely, if “doing business” is your thing, is it good for anyone in business to let rich people do whatever the fuck they want?
This framing has everyone on the left thinking that the field of economics is hopelessly corrupt, that money is the root of all evil, when it’s always every new generation of economists who point out the new ways that rich people are ratfucking our society.
So people who realize that the problem is rich people get shunted away from studying and changing how we deal with rich people. Any democratic action to deal with the problem is immediately fragmented by tankie idiots (sometimes secretly funded by rich ratfuckers) who gatekeep and tone police everything into stupid talking points about how markets and business are all bad, anyone who talks about healthy markets and healthy technology are just tools of Capitalism and… no concrete action. The rich are allowed to keep fouling democratic action because “this is one of the good ones, we should listen to them, and they can fund our action.”
History is littered by an endless stream of “This one is a real good one!” who turn out to be just as bad as every other rich asshole. All the tech billionaires from the 90s. Guess who they always end up funding in the end? The Bolsheviks, the Nazis, the Birchers, evangelical cults, crypto scams, “modular nuclear reactors”, etc. Just about every one of them take the mask off at one point or another. The one exception I can think of is Soros. If he hadn’t pissed in Maggie Thatcher’s cornflakes and incurred the wrath of every other rich piece of shit in the western world, would he have been inspired to help democracy out? I don’t think so, and at some point he’s finally going to keel over… and how much can he really do when every other gigantically rich asshole on the planet is just doing what they do?
“Capitalism” is a bullshit word with only one use, the same use as “the Jews” was used for, which is to distract people away from the fact that it’s the rich who are the problem. The problem isn’t money or technology or business or an ethnicity, it’s the rich.
sigh. I use a Albertson’s owned store for much of my shopping. There are competitors, even sorta close-by competitors, but when you walk to the store…
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I quit going to Kroger because a Meijer was built that is closer. Also, Meijer is Michigan-based.
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Socialism can’t really succeed without Democracy, but Capitalism does just fine.
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This is one of the biggest issues that I deal with in business coaching. Most of my clients are women. They have it ingrained in them that their time is not valuable. It’s so at the core. This is why women get preyed on by MLMs and by men who expect women to provide so much emotional support to them.
Learning to value your own time is a really important skill for changing how you make decisions and how you see your own role in your life.
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I think this goes well with your comments:
Also Nebula: