in setting oneself against the status-quo and against capitalism, which is the correct thing to do because the status quo and capitalism have many flaws, most people drift into a certain mistaken mode of thinking: capitalism is bad, and whatever is against capitalism is good.
this is a sort of moralistic mode of thinking. it works for individual relationships (john is bad, the enemy of john is my friend) but terribly for modes of social organization. capitalism is good compared to feudalism, capitalism is bad compared to communism. obviously marx understood this and any marxist could tell you that in theory capitalism is "historically progressive" - but look in practice and you'll find that the ire of the communist is always directed more strongly at the capitalist than at any worse alternative. were (somehow) a feudalist counter-revolution to break out in some far flung country, you can bet /leftypol/ would critically support it against US imperialism. we have had our contingent of Trump contrarians, and very few of them pre-2024 were advocating for him on the basis that he'd totally screw the US and clear the way for China to become a world power. no, if that happens it'll be a fluke.
this is important for two reasons:
- on the question of how to organize a capitalist economy, conventional economics is more right than it is given credit for. there is no rational reason for socialists to instinctively side with every loser under the status quo. in many cases, socialists should in fact be pushing for "neoliberal" policies that neoliberals themselves have chickend out on. why is it that of all bourgeoise, owners of coca-cola bottling plants are specially isolated from competition by regulation? why should car dealerships have a special carve-out from the market mechanism that gives them greater subsidies and while making the consumer - that is, often, a proletarian - pay more?
- most of the possible alternatives to the status quo are worse. you will see more and more language that vaguely evokes the pre-neoliberal status quo, and you shouldn't be baited into supporting it. a protectionist turn against free trade, more in-sourcing of strategic goods, greater domestic investment in (military) industry, and so on, funded of course by a stripping of social protections. if you thought living in a market focused only on trade was bad, wait until you get the thrills of a non-market focused only on war. if you think being ruled by a dictatorship of people who make products people use is bad, just wait until you're run by a dictatorship of dickheads who have the favor of the ruling oligarch and are granted state contracts at his whim.
the state is not your friend. even, really, if it is a socialist state and certainly not if it is a capitalist one. this is another area where one falls into polarized thinking: if the free market supermarket sucks, a state-run supermarket must be good, right? (in actuality, in both cases, the reason the thing sucks is because there is no incentive to be good. giving people money and letting them choose what they want really is in the top 5% of ways of making something be good!) for the most part the basic principle of life should be: just let people do things. (one should remember: daddy state is the primary source of restrictions on the right to strike! a "true" free market would set totally-free trade unions against similarly free private enterprise. idealistically, with the state still preventing outright murder, this really tilts the balance of power towards the proletariat!)
liberals, including social democrats, fundamentally blundered when they got mired in tax instead of focusing on regulation. the optimum capitalist economy matches light-touch regulation with high welfare spending, with negative social externalities handled by tax rather than regulation. (meaning that, if it really matters to you, you can just write a cheque and move on.) abundance types take a tilt in this direction but they've got most of the vices of the old liberals - what they really want is to sign a compromise budget with conservatives where they trade tax cuts and welfare means testing against their pet programs. they have no real enthusiasm for driving the coca-cola bottling bourgeoisie into the dirt because they're an affront to capitalism, let alone communism. (what marxists, but not liberals, can understand is that a core support group for Trumpism is "(petit) bourgeoisie in weird little regulated and protected sectors", so you can hit two birds with one stone by just stripping those regulations!
they are a subsidy for being an asshole! in britain, the situation is similar: most former nationalized industries were not privatized into a real market - those that were, like British Airways, turned out quite good - they were privatized into fake markets controlled by the state, and usually governed by the civil servants who used to run them as state-owned-enterprises. In other words, it's one big ruling class swindle!)
i could wrap all of this in warm language for you. i could flatter you by saying: look at china, look at how they love free trade and global stability under the strong rule of a communist party. do you really think you understand material development better than them? but that would be a cop out, you would just be accepting that china is good, rather than the general framework: that life is about trade-offs, and that you shouldn't accept a worse tradeoff just to own the capitalists. you shouldn't get lazy in your thinking.
tl;dr the "correct" answer to all the problems of the status quo is, counter intuitively: deregulation, higher welfare, and much more socialist organizing. most socialists fall into the trap of: pro-regulation, indifferent to welfare, and lazy when it comes to organizing. neoliberalism failed to deliver the former, never really understood that it should have delivered the former, but in recognizing why it failed one shouldn't fall into the trap of pining for the dead 1945-75 consensus.
now go ahead and argue with me.