cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/36828107
ID: WookieeMark @EvilGenXer posted:
"OK so look, Capitalism is right wing.
Period.
If you are pro-capitalism, you are Right Wing.
There is no pro-capitalist Left. That’s a polite fiction in the US that no one can afford any longer as the ecosystem is actually collapsing around us."
So what? You don’t like the voluntary exchange of goods and services? Trade = capitalism. Furthermore you’d rather trust the government than the average individual? Yeah I get the desire for socialized medical care and welfare. Whatever. But even countries with socialized public services have private sectors. So let’s get more fundamental.
Capital = having money. Capitalism = engaging in trade, that is exchanging one asset or services for another for mutual benefit. Fascism != Capitalism. Government != Fascism Fascism = government + capitalism. More specifically there are certain hallmarks of fascism that sadly are showing up in western society. But capitalism alone does not equate to that. You don’t get an authoritarian regime by engaging in trade. You need to pass laws in order to get that. You wouldn’t even have corporations without government support.
So again I’m hesitant to throw in with the pro government movement when half of this whole fascism/corporate problem is government. I mean I’m against the whole monopoly on violence to begin with but saying voluntary interaction is bad but violence is good seems rather counterintuitive to me. You don’t need government to decentralize things or return the means of production to the people or whatever but still such things should be voluntary. That’s why open source is so revolutionary. It’s essentially a gift economy and doesn’t use transactions or violence. People give their time and labor away and everyone benefits. Code ensures transparency and decentralized distribution. Furthermore without patents and copyright from the private sector we wouldn’t have copy left and open source software. Just some food for thought there.
(Michael Perenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
Nah. It’s a form of economics that rewards supply following demand. I’m pretty lefty liberal and I’m 100% in favor of fair capitalism. For most things.
Capitalism is just a machine, a system, and I fully believe in intelligence and hard work being rewarded over sitting on your couch playing video games. Capitalism also requires a well regulated system, progressive taxes, safety nets,etc. There are also some areas where capitalism doesn’t work and another system should be used, such as health care, police, fire, etc.
However the idea that capitalism is right wing is bullshit. Maybe uncontrolled capitalism is right wing, but I take strong issue with the most effective economic system in the world being considered “right wing”, it’s not.
I’m 100% in favor of fair capitalism.
How funny! I am 100% in favor of magic pixie dust!
Capitalism is much bigger and more insidious than just a economic system. Despite irrefutable proof to the contrary, people still look at the world in this very limiting way that allows them to see capitalism as just this little neutral effective economic system. Its intellectualizing and abstracting reality to fit a narrative. The fact that you look at things in this narrow way, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary proves capitalism is not only an economic system but an ideology as well. And if it is both an economic system and an ideology, then where does the ideology come from?
Liberal ideology covers up the worst abuses of capitalism, fixates on the individual, guarantees rights it can’t protect in the face of capitalist expansion.
Liberal isn’t even an economic category to a liberal, it is a set of ideals that protect freedom and guarantee safety, prevent against corruption. Never mind that people have always been oppressed under liberalism, always been enslaved under liberalism. Liberalism is, and always has been a set of economic beliefs, that claim to guarantee certain human rights, through the individual ownership of private property.
I’m sorry, because I know that many liberals are extremely well meaning people, leftists who genuinely care about those rights. These people are exactly the ones this ideology hopes to trick. I’m sure that you personally are a good person with lovely friends, who donates to good causes, maybe shows up to a demonstration or two, votes for Democrats and believes in fair rational governance. But capitalism is just another form of class domination, one that hides its incredible cruelty through its total domination of every part of our lives.
The fact that you can’t see it should concern you. I assure you I am a rational and well meaning person. I’m an organizer and work hard to understand the forces at work, I’m not just repeating stuff I heard on the internet or whatever. Some of these thing I worked out when I was a well meaning liberal, whose curiosity unravelled my worldview. I can’t say that my views are perfect while yours are flawed, that’s not what I’m trying to accomplish. I just ask that rather than dismissing me and other critics of liberalism who are also on the left, consider that your very narrow view might be why you believe what you do. The same is consequently true of me too, its a basic philosophical problem. But i question myself on my views constantly, and I understand your tradition and history. I just wish you and other well meaning liberals understood it a little better.
100%
Uh oh, something not blatantly anti-capitalist! Here comes the down votes!
None of that is capitalism.
Capitalism is when a small number of people (an elite, by definition) control the majority of the Capital, which is property that can be used to conduct business and make money. What lefties call “the means of production.” Capital is things like factories, data centers, power plants, mines, large acres of land used for farming, and so on.
What you’re failing to describe properly is Markets. Markets aren’t evil, free trade between well-informed parties isn’t evil. Money, in fact, is the root of all evil but is not in itself evil. None of those things are Capitalism.
Wrong. Capitalism is not defined by its criticisms nor by any eventual outcome. Everything OP said is the definition of capitalism. Everything you’re saying are the criticisms of Capitalism which state that eventually, Capitalism will lead to that. Early capitalism does not have a small few controlling the majority of the means of production, but it is still capitalism.
That’s like saying Communist governments are defined by never reaching full communism, or that a First Past the Post voting system is defined by a two party system. Those are not what define those things, but they are the criticisms of them and their eventual outcomes without something new implemented to correct it.
It’s not like they reset the fucking market when they boot up capitalism. The king had the most money, the king’s heirs and friends still have most of the money. The small ruling elite come with the system, because they brought it.
Nothing you underlined indicate that it’s owned by a small number of people, just that’s privately/corporate owned.
1 person can own one business in a market, and a separate person can own a second business in the market. A million different people can own a million different businesses in that market. All are privately or corporate owned.
The way to uncover the nature of domination and exploitation, to prove that it isn’t just an economic system, is to instead of thinking of it as an objective thing with certain defining characteristics, but instead look at it as interconnected relationships that drive infinite growth, then it becomes apparent how it actually functions as a mechanism of class domination. The way you look at it, you only see the appearances of capitalism, you have an idealist view.
This is why so many people say things like “such a policy doesn’t make sense, its irrational.” But when viewed as a class struggle, it makes perfect sense, the system exploits the problems created by the relentless search for profit, by exploiting those problems for profit. Its the system that is irrational, and your desire to make it rational is well intentioned, but is basically just naval gazing. “This is what I learned it is so that’s what it is”. Its easier to see the illusions of capitalism for what they are than to hold on to them, but because they are a part of our identity, how we evaluate the world and our place in it, we don’t want to let them go. This is understandable.
But the stakes are higher than ever and the system is destroying, not building, killing and starving, not emancipating. This isn’t progress, its suicide.
The way anyone here looks at Communism is idealistic and Communist governments never fall into that ideal definition. Does that mean Communism is a bad thing? No. It simply means we haven’t found a way to make it work. Is Capitalism a bad thing? No. It can be great when it works. It’s just not working right now in Amurrica.
capitalism is right wing, correct.
but not all pro-capitalists are capitalists.
a pro-capitalist could be right wing, or they could be a victim of the powerful capitalist propaganda machine. this is how we get “bootlickers” and “temporarily embarrassed billionaires.”
more generally, OOP commits the sin of trying to wedge a specific category with economic meaning into a broad unspecific category which can have various economic manifestations depending on who you ask and at what time.
it’s an okay post. not particularly insightful and could use some workshopping.
object oriented programming <3
capitalism isn’t politically influenced? It’s a form of market trade?
Stop being schizo???
Acting as if the terms left and right aren’t completely arbitrary.
I was told it was because of the French revolution. Imho, I think the terms are mostly rigid concepts.
You could also be called a biologist. Capital is the equivalent of teeth and claws.
Capitalism is like fire. Unchecked, it will happily consume your house. Never the less, it’s an excellent tool for certain tasks. It must be handled with care and contained appropriately.
Right now, a lit of the world looks like London during the great fire. Capitalism has been allowed to run unchecked, and has gotten completely out of control. The massive dilemma is how to reign it in, without collapsing large chunks of society.
Abandoning Capitalism completely is almost as bad as letting it run unchecked.
Tf is this nonsense? Why do you think “a little capitalism” is a good thing? Just a sprinkling of exploitation to keep things spicy?
Marx identified that capitalism by necessity leads to an endless cycle of collapses. There is no way to avoid suffering under capitalism.
A fully planned system has also shown to become highly inefficient.
The the key phrase there is “under capitalism”. My point is capitalism can’t be the top level. If it is, then it will run away, exactly as Marx saw.
At the same time, it’s an incredibly effective tool. It allows for dynamic value assessment in a system that has minimal trust. It’s a perfect method of fairly distributing luxuries. It’s akin to a fire being useful when trapped in a fireplace, or a blast furnace. The problems occur when it’s allowed to run amock.
How would you go about fairly distributing limited luxuries, particularly when the value to a given person varies?
A fully planned system has also shown to become highly inefficient
Nobody was arguing that.
I don’t think you understand what actually is meant by the term “capitalism”. Capitalism does not mean free markets. Capitalism primarily means the ownership of the means of production in private hands. You can come up with a system which is highly regulated, to some degree even planned, which can still be considered capitalistic.
On the other hand, it is easy to imagine a socialist system whose economy consist solely of companies fully owned by the people that work there, i.e. the workers, while the companies themselves engage in a competitive and free market. It would be just like today, except workers have a say in who leads the organization, and how, in a democratic process.
In short capitalism != free market and vice versa.
How would you go about fairly distributing limited luxuries, particularly when the value to a given person varies?
I don’t think it should matter, at least not until we’ve guaranteed everyone their human rights. Nutritious food, safe shelter, clean water, medical care.
I don’t think we can afford to worry about luxuries until we solve the problem of affording people.
Right now, we have more than enough to support basic necessities for everyone. It’s mostly a distribution issue now. It’s also being fucked up by run away capitalism creating artificial scarcity.
You will have a hard time getting anyone to join a system that others nothing more than gruel, a grey jumpsuit and a dorm bunk.I would strongly suspect such a system of funneling thr excess to a few elites.
The question is, how to judge values, without a capital based system at all. What is a lead brick worth in corn, or bananas?
Of all things why would a lead brick or bananas or corn need value?
Give corn and bananas to people for free, give the lead brick to whatever science lab or nuclear power plant needs it for free.
If you want to talk about luxury value in a post-scarcity economy, choose something like coffee.
Firstly, I challenge the assumption that efficiency is the most important goal. This was addressed very convincingly almost 70 years ago in The Affluent Society:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Affluent_Society
This book explains that we should not use the same policies for a society which is constantly struggling on a knife edge between starvation and death. That was not the reality 70 years ago and is much less tha case today.
Even if we assume that efficiency is the most important goal, what you are actually arguing for is well-designed markets as the tool to achieve that. I question even this, since a profitable company is by definition less efficient than one that makes little or no profit, since profit is the extra wealth that the company extracts after paying all bills.
Even if we assume that a for profit market is the best way to manage resources and achieve efficiency, capitalism is fundamentally a bad model for that, since practices like hiding information from consumers or capturing regulators are great ways to increase profits without improving efficiency or managing resources effectively.
tl;dr fuck capitalism. 😉
I agree that a hyper focus on efficiency is a bad plan. At the same time, we would need some corrective mechanism.
A good example would be food preference. Say you have 3 food options, A,B and C. A is the easiest to produce, but bland. B and C are more difficult and so more limited. Some people love B but hate C, others vice versa. Some people would happily just have A, and use the excess value on other luxuries. How do you resolve this?
A limited capital based system would find it easy. Each person has an assigned value. They can choose how to distribute it. This dynamically finds the fairest distribution. By passing it to the farmers, they can choose how to direct effort.
As for regulatory capture, etc. That’s a sign that capitalism is getting out of control. It’s akin to your curtains starting to smoulder. It needs to be used like fire on a wooden ship, with extreme care and control.
I guess we’ll never know if the system you describe here would work, since it has never existed. Companies have been using induced demand, loss leaders, cross subsidies, bundling, marketing, and a million other similar tricks to limit consumers access to knowledge and confuse them since long before Adam Smith fantasized about capital as the best of all possible worlds.
That’s some fine hamburger intellectionlism, right there. Crass, to the pont, confidently incorrect and with a hint of ignorance of anything un-American.
Seeing a lot of that right now; i.e., incendiary, unidimensional, nonsensical hot takes. I think it’s best to ignore them, because there’s IRL work to be done and all this type of person does is blather for attention online.
True enough
Yes it is right wing… Obviously? Any other big news?
This is controversial and possiblt world-shattering to many who exist entirely within the American political bubble.
Well I’m from Germany
The down votes just mean it needed saying
I’d say the downvotes are because it’s so obvious it’s not even fiction
“People saying I am wrong prove I’m right!”
Greed is really the problem. Capitalism is just another apparatus without the means to solve it.
yeah uh, that’s why we invented government homie.
I think this is not really true. Capitalism means that even if you are not greedy you are forced to destroy all rivals and collect all capital for yourself… otherwise you will be destroyed.
I’d say that Capitalism encourages greed and amplify it.
That’s the Overton Window I’m talkin’ about
Yes, i believe: war is inherently a right-wing thing, and capitalism is the moral equivalent of war, just channeled into formulas.
I also believe that war is inherently unstable and only an unavoidable side-effect of technological progress. It decays naturally into peace, at which point left-wing takes over.
This isn’t changing people’s minds about crapitalism. Amerikkkans will keep calling liberals, “the left,” and liberals will keep loving crapitalism. This only shows how right wing Amerikkka is as a country. Liberals would much rather be forced to identify as right wing than as anti-crapitalist. These distinctions only bother the keft as we get conflated with liberals constantly. Nobody else gives a shit.
man i love satire, satire is my favorite.
Calling liberals and progressives pro-capitalist is less true than calling self-proclaimed leftists tankies.
The tankies are the ones making shit up and painting liberals as the bad guys and the tankie movement will remain a joke for as long as that continues.
At least libertarians had the balls to go try libertarianism, sure it results in bears but tankies will never try because it’s a victim mentality.
This is the dumbest shit I have ever read. My brain hurts and I almost feel bad for you, but that would require way more emotional labor than this reply is worth. I would honestly be fine with it if tankies would purge the liberals.
I would honestly be fine with it if tankies would purge the liberals.
Thank you for proving my point. Liberals aren’t trying to purge anyone. Seems like the main distinction between them and every other ideology.
The anti liberal stuff seems the same kinda brainrot trumpers have. Or as i like to call it The Dead Brain Sickness
The number of defensive whining from libs in the replies to the OP beg to differ lol, they clearly very much do give a shit. So you keep slapping them in the face with reality until they can’t hide from it anymore, and they have to make a choice.
Leftists coddling liberal feeling is just as productive (E: to progress) as liberals coddling fascist feelings, that is to say - it isn’t, at all. We’re long past the point of prioritising privileged feelings over marginalised lives.
How will communism fix anything? I have never seen addressed the fact that psychopaths want to rule
I have never seen addressed…
Because you’ve never actually looked in good faith and without your glaring bias.
? Great answer? Nickyoung.gif
My glaring bias against authoritarians? Lmao
it doesn’t. Communism hasn’t even had a good white paper written about it. Just some random eastern european schizo writing about the rich people or whatever.
