- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336
“People who are barely surviving have extremely limited freedom,” he writes.
"All their time and energy go into earning enough money to pay for groceries, shelter, and transportation to jobs … a good society would do something about the deprivations, or reductions in freedom, for people with low incomes.
i hate it when I hear people making the claim that it is capitalism that has helped so many people in the world with better quality of life and more opportunities and better outcomes, etc.
Capitalism is a fucking disease that we need to rid ourselves of, it is worse than Ebola the way it infects our minds with the dumbest shit.
You know what has made lives better for billions of people? The washing machine and the cotton gin and fucking electricity.
Capitalism has fought against progress every step of the way.
Capitalism was nice when it first popped up. Because it was an improvement over feudalism.
Actually, it wasn’t that nice when it first popped up, considering the first capitalist ventures were colonialism (including the conquest of the Aztec and Incan empires and the east Indian tea company that was worse for India than Hitler was for Europe).
But it was relatively nice because before capitalism, most development needed to be done by the king, who had limited funds. Bankers had been building wealth and capitalism allowed them to become new sub kings with their own empires. More empires meant more development, which also means a lot of employment, so it did increase the quality of life for many people as they got paid to improve things around them and new products popped up.
But we’ve since outgrown the whole kings thing for control of a geographic or political region while corporations are still run like dictatorships (with the executive team acting as sub kings for the board, which acts as sub kings for the shareholders, where institutional investors dominate, which just makes the whole thing less transparent because those institutions also have similar command structures).
So while there is some truth to capitalism having had a positive impact, the overall story is more complicated than that (the plunder from colonialism made it look a lot better at a high price in the colonies, and it was a relative improvement to “only the lord of the land can develop it and benefit from that improvement”) and society has generally since rejected that model for running political regions but the economic model has yet to catch up.
The capitalists are resisting that change similarly to how the kings resisted changing from monarchies to republics and have been since around WWI and the fascist regimes of the 20s and 30s were a result of capitalists siding with them to prevent various leftist movements from gaining power.
Fucking well put!
Colonialism was pursued under the economic theory of mercantilism and capitalist thinkers explicitly separated their ideas from it (among other things by emphasis on the idea that the best kind of wealth is tools instead of gold and as a result the pursuit of wealth can be cooperative instead of zero sum game), but otherwise sure it all looks the same in the end. It’s not like capitalists ever stopped and said “No, don’t invade that country for its natural resources, that goes against our principles of making more money.”
Capitalism puts greed at the wheel and, naturally,
inventionsproducts are churned out, some really useful, some terrible. To make it work, you need to regulate hard to keep the greed from taking over the innovation.Suffering as a means of production is the heart of capitalism
This is absolutely shocking to anyone that hasn’t read basic theory. If this surprises you I strongly recommend you read the Principles of Communism to start.
None of the solutions he proposes is communism, BTW
I didn’t support him nor imply that he was communist, only that his conclusions can be reached by anyone who has read theory with the difference being that someone who has read theory can both identify the problem and the true solution.
Where the"true solution " is communism?
Unironically yes
Right. Which is what I presumed you meant in the first instance, hence my response.
What’s your solution? Rapidly inflate the size of government through social programs to compensate for the workers not owning their own labor?
Far-left and far-right regimes are just a cycle, society just goes from right to left and vice versa gradually, bad times make strong men and good times make weak men. That’s it.
Edit: The key is to be the strong man in any time.
bad times make strong men and good times make weak men.
This concept seem to be rooted in the idea that hard work makes you stronger. If you work 12 hours in a mine you won’t become the weightlifting world champion, you will also get no time to study, research or improve all the way around.
🤡
There is one big flaw with socialism: socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.
Thanks Reagan
*Milton Friedman
And every president since Reagan, including him.
Some of the comments in this thread really tell you why it takes a novel laureate to say this. Some of y’all do not have a basic understanding of history, economic systems, or what the term reactionary actually means.
The correct response to “neo liberal capitalism has contributed to the rise of fascism” should be “no shit, Sherlock”
It’s truly sad that that isn’t 100% of the comments here.
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed, y’all. That doesn’t mean all liberals are fascist, that means that fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism.
And just in case y’all also don’t know what that means, “liberalism” in that context isn’t “Obama liberal, Bush conservative,” it means the political ideology of liberalism, of which both Bush and Obama were proponents of.
ETA: I’m not engaging anymore… it’s not my job to teach y’all the difference between an economic system and authoritarian states. Also, your magic has no power here, I am an anarchist, not a stalinist. Please educate yourselves. If for no other reason, do it to make it easier to pwn the tankies or whatever the fuck
All right then… somehow in all of the history people wanted to get out of socialist/communist countries to the liberal ones so bad, that they had to build walls and shoot the trespassers.
Idk about you but I am gonna stick to the liberalism with solid amount of welfare and public services. However, you are free to move to Cuba or any other plethora of socialist countries to live however you want.
Papers pleaseAh yes the vuvuzela argument. Much easier than analyzing what the ideologies actually incentivize and lead to or using your eyes to take a look at the state of the world.
Complete brain rot. If LLMs reacted this way to every mention of socialism we’d think they needed more training. Chat GPT would express more a more nuanced and understanding-demonstrating answer than this. You should consider feeling ashamed.
I understand your frustration but you are misguided and ignorant. Education is truly a blessing to not repeat same mistakes from the past.
I am sure however that you are in extreme minority and pose zero danger to society. My sympathy remains. One has to believe in something. God, ufos or communism.
In a world dominated by capitalist realism I find that an ironic stance.
Socialism isn’t only implementable as an authoritarian state, but any attempt to implement it will be met with fierce resistance from “liberal” countries whose ruling class is not threatened by fascism but is threatened by socialism.
You’re fighting for the oppressor.
I am not fighting for anything. I am enjoying my life in a capitalist society. Thank you very much.
Enjoy it while you can, capitalism is actively destroying our climate and causing never before seen levels of wealth inequality. Fascism is the inevitable next step and is rapidly approaching. It will not perpetuate much longer whether by self-destruction, or hopefully, by replacement so that we can continue to thrive as a species.
That’s doomer speak from too much scrolling. I once too believed these things for a time but the world hasn’t ended, improved even. I am no longer as depressed and regained clarity of mind.
I hope you too can find peace and see the reason before all the time dwindles out like a sand from between your fingers.I am typing it lying on my huge bed, with cat at my side, full fridge, iPhone, iPad, car with full tank in the garage, 100 sqm apartment I own in the comfy part of the city. Steady, mostly passive income. Free healthcare working ok, education.
Why would I want communism? I would have to be not okay in the head
Some of y’all do not have a basic understanding of history, economic systems, or what the term reactionary actually means.
Do you?
The correct response to “neo liberal capitalism has contributed to the rise of fascism” should be “no shit, Sherlock”
That’s pretty much most of the comments in this thread
And just in case y’all also don’t know what that means, “liberalism” in that context isn’t “Obama liberal, Bush conservative,” it means the political ideology of liberalism, of which both Bush and Obama were proponents of.
I don’t think these two were ever liberal about anything. The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.
The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.
Socialists seem rather illiberal about the definition and allowed use of the word and concept of liberal. They hear “a liberal?” and think “a fascist!”. I suspect that this greatly plays into the polarization between tankies and limbrols here on lemmy.
For example a newer definition of fascism is 1. belief in inequality based on 2. a mythological identity (e.g. race which isn’t real). That is useful to talk about trumpism vs the neoliberal democrats. But socialists completely refute that and insist it’s both the same fascism because capitalism. And that is where any discussion ends in my experience. It’s like we’re dividing and conquering ourselves for the benefit of the fascists…
Of course they are right in terms of foreign policy, which is absolutely fascist towards “shithole countries” no matter who rules in the white house. Neoliberalism is: 1. belief in inequality based on 2. economic or class status 3. personal freedom to die in whatever way seems best to you.
And once the prosperity is distributed away with rising wealth inequality that does lead to plutocracy and then fascism. And I suspect the socialists are right that without an explicit socialist component in your ideology this outcome is inevitable.
But unfortunately their definitions are stuck based on outdated theories written before 1950.
You seem to be throwing around the term “socialist” in a similar naive way
What does capitalism do when there is nothing left to take? It keeps taking
It goes keto and eats itself.
That’s called autophagy, not keto.
It’s not exclusive to it, but I used the term intentionally to point out the how the capitalists target the “fat” and also the “muscle” in the system to create very expensive ketones.
If you’re suggesting that a ketosis state doesn’t produce autophagy, maybe check your sources.
A ketosis state doesn’t produce autophagy, autophagy is a constant ongoing process in your body. Inanition is a better word.
You know very well that I was referring to the higher intensity of autophagy going on. Useless semantics bullshit. Enjoy being blocked.
- gets proved wrong
- blocks people
Yup just what I expected of the average Reddit refugee.
If you’re not familiar with the keto fanbase, good for you, btw.
Not proved wrong.
I’m not wasting time with “but actually” memes.
Thing is…there is no real free market with proper competition, anyway. If there was such a thing, my groceries wouldn’t cost double now from what they were a mere five years ago (or quadruple, if looking at soda like Coke and Pepsi products). There is rampant collusion and price-fixing going on and not a damn government official seems to be doing anything about it. And yeah, the “but but the pandemic” excuse runs pretty thin as the years of this gouging continues.
The truth is, a real market is never actually truly competitive. In an unregulated market, competing firms always collude with each other to set prices and wages for the industry. “Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.
“Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
Those conditions of course don’t exist in the real world, best we can do is to regulate away market failures to approach the theoretical ideal. That’s the kind of thing ordoliberalism argues for, and it can indeed work very well in practice. Random example: You want companies to use packaging with less environmental impact. You could have a packaging ministry that decides which company uses what packaging for what, creating tons of state bureaucracy – or you could say “producers, you’re now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself”. What previously was an externality for those companies suddenly appears on their balance sheet and they self-regulate to use way more cardboard, easily recyclable plastics, whatnot.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
That’s not even remotely true. Natural monopolies exist because of how natural resources work, and oligopolies or undercutting of prices to destroy weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
if you want to implement unpopular policies, authoritarian regime is the way
That’s not necessarily true, many supposedly democratic regimes consistently pass unpopular policy and don’t pass popular policy. E.g. welfare state cuts to expenditure in education, healthcare and pensions in post-2008 EU, or the lack of progressive policy in USA healthcare.
It’s precisely this ignoring of the popular will that turns people to fascism
The market is authoritarian.
Bullshit. Fascists have been around for millenia longer than our peaceful mindsets. Back then it was more useful to be but recent advances in technology has made their usefulness nothing more than a nostalgic yearning for past and passed glories
I’m not entirely sure about millennia, but capitalism has been around for at least as long as currency has. That too has changed names but the idea of whoever is born with the most gets to steal the most is older than all existing civilizations.
What you’re saying is at best debatable, and it’s definitely not consensus in academia. Feudalism is substantially and fundamentally different from capitalism. Serfs worked the land not based on free contracts for a wage selling their labour as a commodity, but rather legally bound to their lord’s land. Access to consumer goods wasn’t through purchase as commodities in a free market, but through self-production and barter/debt within small communities. Peasants worked the land with their own means of production and made their own tools with their own means of production, and generally people weren’t hired working other people’s means of production.
Class struggle has existed for millennia, but capitalism is just the current predominant system of class struggle because through industrial development it overpowers preexisting systems that weren’t capitalist.
The reason capitalism leads to fascism is that inevitably capitalism will lead to untenable inequality. Injustice will be too great to ignore between the rich and the rest. This will lead to populism.
There are two forms of populism. One will seek to rectify the imbalances caused by capitalism. The other will seek to divert blame to minorities. If there were less blacks, immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. etc. then our society would not be in decay. One is much more useful to the Capitalist and so it will ultimately prevail. The capitalist will devote all resources to crushing the leftist populism up to and including directly funding fascism.
By the nine divines… Why does it take libs 80 years extra to reach the conclusions that Marxists have already described in detail in the last century…
He is not taking a Marxist position. Possibly agreeing with parts of the same analysis as Marx but definitely not the same prescription. Not every criticism of Capitalism is an endorsement of Marxism
He is not taking a Marxist position
Precisely that’s why it’s taken him 80 years longer than Marxists to reach that conclusion.
Not every criticism of Capitalism is an endorsement of Marxism
Which is why non-marxist anti-capitalist movements such as Salvador Allende’s socialism in Chile, or Mosaddegh’s Iran, inevitably fail within a few years due to the lack of understanding of class struggle and the history of capitalism.
I take it you have a Marxist state as a counter example showing it’s superiority and longevity?
USSR lasted much longer than Allende’s project, and Cuba is still ongoing
The question was superiority and longevity. Are you claiming those are both superior states as well?
The USSR and Cuba are much more desirable than the short-lived wannabe socialist regime that led to Pinochet’s dictatorship, yes, how do you not see this?
I used to be a libertarian and believed in the whole ‘freer the market freer the people’ shit…
But then I grew up.
Freer the market, freer the people… including the psychopaths with money and influence.