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Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

>That's how life under socialism really is - envy and brutality combined with breathtaking incompetence.

Why do you think these are core to the ideas of Socialism? If by envy you are referring to envy of private property holders, have you considered that it could be something else? The Marxian and indeed anarchist analysis of capitalism brings in the ideas of exploitation, commodity fetishism and alienation. I think it is quite incorrect to characterise Socialism as envy of the wealthy.

With regard to incompetence and brutality, I don't want to get into a match of Whataboutism, though it should be pointed out that capitalism exhibits these qualities too, in the state defence of private property all the way to sweatshop labour and overproduction.

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The core but unspoken idea of socialism is a zero-sum world. Everything stems from that. Marx's labor theory of value is an attempt to explain how economy works given that premise. In a zero-sum world every profit indeed means loss for the other party; so employers' profits must come from workers exploitation.

There's no room for any improvement in this mindset. In a zero-sum world being more efficient at something and hence more profitable means you're stealing, either from customers or from less-efficient producers. Which really means any attempt at making things better is evil.

After a generation or two people start to internalize it, and you get a 'homo sovieticus' society which interprets any ambition as aggression - wanting a better life becomes synonymous with wanting to steal.

> The core but unspoken idea of socialism is a zero-sum world.

No, it's not.

> Marx's labor theory of value is an attempt to explain how economy works given that premise.

Even if that was true (a debate for another time) the LVT may be somewhat important in Marxism but is not central to socialism (which is much broader than Marxism.)

It directly is, otherwise exploitation via voluntary transactions becomes logically impossible.

>is not central to socialism

The whole point is that workers get their 'surplus labor' stolen. The concept doesn't exist without labor theory of value. Socialism without labor theory of value becomes a naked call to plunder without any pretense of justice.

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