Our retirement is tied to it.
About defending capitalism (and not billionaires - who more often than not abuse this system). Some of us lived in other systems. And we understand any other system is way way way way worse.
There are however a lot of problems with capitalism and should be held on a very short leash. Or else monopoly happens. The most effective actions to keep capitalism at bay: strong anti-trust laws, strong worker protection (this includes a lot of stuff), wealth tax.
And be aware there are many flavours of calitalism. Most commonly people in USA are the most extreme where you have really “long leash”. And people see such capitalism as failing and want to replace whole system.
There are however a lot of problems with capitalism and should be held on a very short leash. Or else monopoly happens. The most effective actions to keep capitalism at bay: strong anti-trust laws, strong worker protection (this includes a lot of stuff), wealth tax.
Capitalism eats the leash, you can’t avoid this.
This is simply not true. And whole EU is doing this more or less effectively. But your government has to be very very careful since this sure can happen.
In recent years we have seen degradation of this leash. But EU commission started keeping up with global monopolies.
I believe also in USA they are making some antitrust changes after a few decades of sleeping.
In recent years we have seen degradation of this leash.
Proving me correct.
Read all my statements again. And apply strict mathematic logic.
Few years of degradation of antitrust laws and some effective reforms in this year alone does not in any way prove your point.
As the above commenter mentioned it is possible to stop it eating the leash so to speak. The main problem is keeping all of those protections actually in place. We don’t seem to want to codify worker rights or anything else important to the constitution.
Correct!
People who defend billionaires either have a vested interest, have actually bought that they’re 1000x smarter than normal people, or have some (possibly vague) abstract moral position that overrules the basic idea of fairness. Often it’s more than one.
Capitalism, as the term is commonly used, is poorly defined enough that you have to specify what it means here. Is it any kind of market? Is it large corporations? Is it every interaction being purely voluntary (somehow)? If you consider a big Soviet firm like Gosbank a “corporation”, all three could also be socialist depending on who you ask.
Since this is .ml, for the classical Marxist definition that it’s “private ownership of the means of production”, the arguments are mainly against the proposed alternatives, or just that private vs. personal is hard to demarcate, and nobody wants to share a toothbrush.
I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.
Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.
I guess the central premise of capitalism is that while every society has its haves and have nots, capitalism is supposed to encourage the haves to invest in the economy rather than hoarding their wealth. In return, they stand to get even wealthier, but a stronger economy ought to generate more employment and generally improve the lives of commoners as well.
Nitpicky, but that’s the premise of Liberalism, not Capitalism. Capitalism emerged not because it was an idea, but an evolution in Mode of Production. Liberalism is the ideological justification.
Unfortunately, in a never-ending quest to make wealth-generation more efficient and streamlined, employment is being eliminated through automation, outsourcing, etc. and the system is eating itself out from the inside. I doubt it can persist much longer, but what will replace it remains unclear. I pray that it will be something sensible that ensures everyone has their basic needs met and can still find rewarding pursuits in life. But there are so many ways it could go very wrong, and that includes staying on the current course.
Have you read Marx? He makes the case that due to Capitalism’s tendency to centralize and form monopolist syndicates with internal planning, the next mode of production is Socialism, ie public ownership and planning of the syndicates formed by the market system.
Many reasons. One major factor imho is the belief or illusion to be living in a meritocracy. Which would mean, that someone who’s rich has to have earned it and therefore criticism must stem from envy or jealousy. The same belief fuels the ideology of thinking of poor people to just be lazy leeches on society.
Many people do not grasp the sheer size of the disparity between the truly wealthy and everyone else.
I believe your comments is just a paraphrase of: “They are being stupid”
In my opinion this is a very toxic way of thinking and does not try to understand the arguments “the other side” presents.
They really think billionaires are like them, the only difference is that someone else goes to Walmart for them
Or they take capitalism as good and freedom as an axiom.
I assume they think they will be able to achieve the same status in the game that’s designed to literally oppress them and make them think they are cared by the billionaires.
It’s the American dream. What is the quote? We’re all embarrassed potential millionaires?
That’s why the “hustling culture” is so important and prevalent in our society right now.
Everyone “knows” someone that made bank with either youtube, selling some pyramid-scheme product, bitcoins, some collectibles, craft beer, lottery… you name it.Social media (and before that was TV) is selling us the idea that there’s a shortcut to becoming rich, you just need to find it, hustle, and you will become one of the rich persons.
That’s also why there’s so much cult of wealth and billionaires.
That said, a large portion of Millennials and after them have a rather negative view of billionaires and are rather skeptical of becoming rich, or even becoming home owners.
The worst one is Real Estate agent. Oh god I hate them so much.
Something like “Temporarily inconvenienced billionaires” I think?
This has been studied, and the ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ idea is actually wrong.
The real reason is because some people (especially conservatives, because it’s a core part of conservative ideology) believe that in order for society to work, a hierarchy must be maintained wherein the ‘deserving’ are at the top, and everyone else is in their rightful place. Any threat to the natural hierarchy will undo the societal order and bring chaos and carnage.
This is why Obama becoming president was such an affront – because his presence outside his ‘rightful place’ was an existential threat to the natural order.
This belief has its roots way back when feudalism began to fail and the moneyed classes needed to find a new way to retain their power – both capitalism and conservatism were born at that time, with ideologies shifting from birthright to ‘earned’ status, which enshrined the haves and have-nots into literally sacred structures of meritocracy and social darwinism, and colonialists specifically fostered strict adherence to the social order. It became ingrained culturally that adhering to your station, whatever it is, is crucial for society to function. That there’s honour in being a cog in the machine, and that not accepting your lot in life is a danger to everyone. (eta: this is mostly subconscious, but you can see it if you ask ‘why’ enough times of someone who idolises Musk, for example. You’ll eventually whittle them down to these themes.)
That’s a nutshell view of a complicated topic, but these people don’t believe they’ll strike gold one day. They believe people who are rich deserve to be treated as kings, for the same reason monarchist peasants did.
Any pointers where I can read more about that?
One place to start is this article from the Stanford Encyclopaedia on Philosophy: Conservatism.
It’s a lengthy read, but enlightening.
One highlight from the summary:
Most commentators regard conservatism as a modern political philosophy, even though it exhibits the standpoint of paternalism or authority, rather than freedom. As John Gray writes, while liberalism is the dominant political theory of the modern age, conservatism, despite appealing to tradition, is also a response to the challenges of modernity. The roots of all three standpoints “may be traced back to the crises of seventeenth-century England, but [they] crystallised into definite traditions of thought and practice only [after] the French Revolution” (Gray 1995: 78)
I recommend reading the sources linked in that article, as well.
eta: It’s worth noting that societies worldwide often see a resurgence in conservatism in response to social change, crises, and civil rights movements, which are without fail a fear response to threats to the social hierarchy. We can see this in real time.
I think you know why. Is this a real question or are you just fishing?
I genuinely want to know from those that defend them.
Pretty sure its fishing.
Many don’t even do it intentionally, they just don’t grasp concepts like Historical and Dialectical Materialism, which requires reading lengthy books to fully grasp. They may be anti-Capitalist at heart, but without a solid understanding of theory they play into bourgeois hands.
There’s also the fact that the ideas held by society are a reflection of the Mode of Production.
It doesnt even require that much reading of such subjects. All it takes is to not be brainwashed by media and politicians.
Critical thought and self awareness is all it takes
I’m sorry, but I entirely disagree. Dialectical and Historical Materialism are incredibly far-removed from standard American discourse and takes quite a bit to understand, oversimplifying it is dangerous. If all it took to be a Marxist-Leninist was critical thought and self-awareness, the US would have had a proletarian revolution already.
Usually it’s my friend Cowbee here who tells people to read things, but here I will:
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
“Brainwashing” is a reactionary myth (that originally comes from orientalist stories of Chinese hypnosis that were used to explain-away defectors in the Korean war) that is used to position the believer in a position superior to the masses (“sheeple”), and which only knows how to treat the latter condescendingly as blind followers of this or that, which is not how you do mass organizing if you want to succeed.
Should be mandatory reading, thanks for posting it!
Pretty sure they’d take everything you just wrote and say, “that sounds like critical race theory, which Jesus said was bad.”
Sure. The de-industrialization of America has been devastating for class awareness.
What de industrialization?
US is second largest industrial output and it has been rising.
Unless you mean jobs after NAFTA and code changes… Which is true but manufacturing employment is on the rise post covid reforms
The US shifted the vast majority of its production overseas, which is why it’s seen as a “service economy.”
US did offshore no doubt but it was not a vast majority. You can check the numbers, there was some decline in employment but US has high tech factories and industrial base is now growing quickly even with job growth since covid.
The reason it is largely a service economy is due to growth in service sector after industrialization. Once people got all their needs with goods met, they started buying service.
Think about all the food joints we have now for example. This is fairly recent thing. Sure food out always existed but not like this.
Also, people have god walkers, people buy insurance etc all this is kinda recent in big picture thing
I am aware of the process, the US produces the vast majority of its commodities oversees before “finishing” or “assembling” in the US. It’s Imperialism in action, where it hyper-exploits the Global South for super-profits.
Right but we started this here with claim that US de industrialized which I saying is not accurate and it is a common misconception thrown around.
It’s not because they think they can be billionaires, it’s because they’ve been taught (and in a minority of cases this is true) that they are better off going after the crumbs that billionaires leave them than trying some other system.
They sold a lottery ticket to the population and made it look like 99% of you can win when the odds are rigged like a gambling machine. Everybody would defend a gambling machine as “fair and balanced” with enough indoctrination. “The American Dream” was when everybody could afford everything on minimum wage but capitalism is a short term oriented goal where for profit is the only actual mission. Tell me how many people can be sacrificed for it and I would say everybody as climate change has proven and a trillion dollar industry has shown. These climate change activists are stupid enough to think they can take down big corporations with wallets older than some of them. Never in a million years as long as capitalism exists. Imagine 112 years of sitting on their asses and not until 10-20 years ago they decided to use tweezers to put some pressure on them. Now that the whole world is about to be changed completely and irreversibly they want to stop it. It’s basically a cancerous economy that only festers at the top of the economy sucking everything around it until theirs nothing left but the cancer.
The American Dream” was when everybody could afford everything on minimum wage but capitalism
Everybody except blacks of course…
Gold age of America wasn’t golden for everybody.
And after civil rights the regime punished the whites for siding with the blacks. So now we are all field ******
Lack of successful alternatives? It’s easy to find flaws with capitalism but every other system has its share of problems too.
People will find ways to accrue wealth and power even if you change the rules of the game. Sometimes people on this platform make it sound like socialism or communism can solve our problems. but it’s not that simple.
Socialism is the successful successor to Capitalism. Socialism isn’t an idea you implement, but a consequence of markets coalescing into monopolist syndicates that make themselves ripe for public ownership and planning.
This is the case only if you believe in Marx
What do you disagree with here? The idea that markets trend towards monopolist syndicates, naturally centralizing production? Or the idea that the Proletariat should sieze these syndicates and plan production democratically and centrally?
I’m not really disagreeing with you to be honest. I’m only saying that your views are the central idea of Marxism. Only Marxists believe in the conflict theory. I’m not a Marxist, but i do think socialism is the next most likely economic stage considering the current capitalist landscape. Whether it is the best path is what i don’t know.
I’m a Marxist-Leninist, correct, but the point of Marxism is that it doesn’t matter what individuals believe, Capitalism itself paves the way for Socialism just like Feudalism paved the way for Capitalism.
Hmm i don’t know about that. Saying that this one theory explains social change is kinda restrictive. There are other valid ideas that aren’t the conflict theory that might also result in social change. Think of idealist theories such as Hegel’s dialectical process which involves a thesis and antithesis. These theses eventually contradict each other to form a synthesis which eventually becomes its own thesis and vice versa.
I just like to keep an open mind about this stuff, as i don’t think social change boils down to just one theory.
Idealism is wrong, though, so focusing on it is useless IMO.
Marx has the best content on the topic, shit is so good it triggers daddy owners to this lol
I kinda like Marx sooo…
I would say I like some dead guy… But his work is foundational for any self respecting adult imho
With out Understanding these concepts you are ain’t fucking operating
Also, elites study him closely and a lot of the regime behavior is actually designed to suppress workers based on his writings.
Ohh the irony.
I think the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” idea is overstated, most people I interact with have a somewhat negative outlook on the economy and their future wealth.
I think the real issue is that no viable alternative is presented to most people.
The alternatives presented are Russian-style authoritarian oligarchy, Islamofascism, or a Venezuela-style “socialism” in which the narrative only focuses on poverty.
The PRC is absolutely a viable alternative, it’s a Socialist Market Economy that has been steadily transfering Private Property into Public Property as markets coalesce into monopolist syndicates, which are then capable of central planning.
They have the most wild form of capitalism there is. And they married it with a lot of corruption and zero political freedom. This is not an alternative. Please.
Agreed. You can’t argue with how effective it’s been for the country as a whole, but I don’t think i’d rather live there as an individual.
I would not live there. I value freedom and privacy. (In a healthy European way)
They have a Socialist Market Economy, and married it to a Dictatorship of the Proletariat following whole-process people’s democracy. One of the focuses of Xi’s presidency has been anti-corruption, along with steady socialization of the private sector. Read Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism. You have an ultra-idealist vision of Capitalism that is anti-Marxist. Private property is socialized by degree, not decree!
Yes I have seen you in other comments. And we both know what is the actual state and level of freedom, poverty, and capitalism and corruption in China. Maybe organize a protest in China.
I know you like their system, but for some reason you fail to see issues with their system.
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In Ireland we suffered under British Imperialism and capitalism for hundreds of years and we had our own famine and repressions.
Fact that us often ignored in Anglo world… Or when it is brought up… This oppression is different 🤡
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for a reason that you are listening songs from another country or reading books, that was not accepted by censorship
Man are you going to have a wild time reading the First Act of Supremacy of 1534 from the United Kingdom. Couple of follow up bangers from it like the Act of Supremacy in Ireland of 1560. All that happening distinctly before communism was even invented.
If censorship in Soviet Ukraine is your reason for defending capitalism, don’t let it go over your head that such things happened and continue to happen in capitalist countries and colonies too.
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Echo chambers suck, I’m sorry. It’s assbackwards when people dismiss real, lived experiences that don’t align with what they optimistically imagine those experiences would be like.
Not sure why you’ve got downvoted, but that’s the reason why all Baltic states had such a reaction when the invasion started.
That said, I would say that most of those states are highly socialistic despite having pretty much allergy to anything red and while preferring a capitalist system that doesn’t mean they want or support billionaires.
It could be because they arent even describing communism. These problems are easily found right now.
The problem here is that people dont even know what communism is and they end up giving these kinds of answers. Makes you think thats probably why they made a new account
Theres no genuine convo of why communism is bad.
It’s more because it’s a bunch of random assertions, falsehoods, misunderstandings, half-truths, and more with no substance to tackle and respond to without starting a lengthy struggle session.
The USSR absolutely was guided by Communist ideology, and was Socialist, that’s true. It’s also true that it wasn’t perfect. A good article to read is Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” because many people don’t understand Marxism and interpret it through an idealist, anti-Marxist lens. The article is pro-Marxist-Leninist, and anti-ultraleftist, and attempts to highlight the impossibilities of establishing an idealized form of Socialism through fiat, without strong development of the productive forces and centralization.
Centralization = corruption
Explain. You cannot achieve democratic control without centralization, because you can’t have inputs with no output.
Issue of centralization is regime and politics agnostic. More centralization just results in more corruption.
I am not sure how to run the society any other way but we know that current systems are corrupted by the ruling elites at our expense.
Legal system is unwilling to deal with it because the judiciary are just regime lapdogs used against working people when they get out of line.
Issue of centralization is regime and politics agnostic. More centralization just results in more corruption.
Again, please explain. This doesn’t logically follow.
I am not sure how to run the society any other way but we know that current systems are corrupted by the ruling elites at our expense.
Capitalism is, Socialism isn’t.
Legal system is unwilling to deal with it because the judiciary are just regime lapdogs used against working people when they get out of line.
In Capitalism, yes.
Have you read Marx?
Because my country, Ukraine, was under communists and it was not good time with all genocides, holodomor, repressions, red terrors and other things
Yes, but none of that is unique to communism, that’s just corrupt government. Anywhere that develops systemic inadequacies and a culture of impunity can instantly become such. That’s just something that is independent of the underlying system of economics. Like many capitalist systems like to point out that bourgeoisie who are after their own interest act as some check on the government who is usually in a power struggle for control. And that power struggle is what ensures no one side wins out.
But there’s nothing technically stopping the rich from becoming the actors of the government and when we as a society excuse profiteering in office, well then there’s no barrier from the rich just becoming the government. Which that’s just the French ancien régime that ultimately lead to the French Revolution.
So it’s NOT specific to just communism. It’s just that’s the most recent and easiest one to point out because of how blatant/brazen that system had become with it’s corruption. Even with all of the “nay-saying” that might happen with United States detractors with their usual hum of “Oh well they’re all corrupt!” Even with how passive some are with it, the corruption is nowhere near the level of being out in the open that was with the USSR. Politicians still weasel their way around because they know that there’s still some bottom level of ensuring checks on that corruption that exist. And we have those checks not because we are a capitalist society.
I think the idea that some economic system promotes some civic purity or prevents some form of government corruption is a bad linking of things that ought not be linked, because a pure capitalist society doesn’t magically inherit some barrier of corruption. That barrier has to be formed independent of the underlying economic system.
I’m not trying to detract from what happened under the USSR but that has way more to do with how power got consolidated post World War I and everything that lead to the toppling of the Russian Monarchy. The system of communism played a role in that consolidation of power, yes, but literally any tool could have been used if you have someone with the mindset of Vladimir Lenin who wanted to rapidly consolidate power during the Bolshevik revolution. I mean look at the current Myanmar Civil War and some of the ideas of General Min Aung Hlaing, no need for implementation of communist ideology there, he just wants to be in power, doesn’t believe that the current transfer of power is legitimate, and is willing to get a lot of people killed in proving that point.
I think given the current situation in the United States, the belief that you NEED communism to have totalitarianism is a dangerous linking of things that can actually happen independent of each other. You just need someone to wear down government legitimacy enough to start a civil war, that’s all you need. Everything else is just tools at your disposal to get that goal done.
So you have to understand the nuance here I’m trying level. I’m not saying it WASN’T COMMUNISM, what I’m saying is that it can be communism, but ultimately you just need someone who wants to consolidate power rapidly and exists in a society that will forgive abuses of power enough, sometimes that’s done by de-legitimizing the current system enough. That’s it, that’s all that’s required. Communism can play a role in that somewhere, but it doesn’t have to.
Under censorship you’ll not create . . . good meals
Are you saying that the Soviets censored recipes?
Yes. Food in the shop had a bad quality with a permanent deficit. Big amount of good food in modern country is making by a small business
This could be a language barrier thing, but it sounds like you’re talking about a production issue, not a censorship issue.
okay, despite the cultural and resource diversity, what prevented then in the Soviet Union from making normal food en masse for people like sushi or even shawarma? Why was there only sausage and chebureks, buns, vodka, beer everywhere? Because there is an order to do so and there is a chain of manufacturers, there was no initiative from below, although the country was supposed to be for the people. Due to the size of the state apparatus for serving the population, any initiative was lost. In the end, everything was done only when the old grandfather wanted to show off in front of the West :) there is nothing made of high quality in the Soviet Union, except for missiles that were sold to other countries to shoot at people :) and everything that served the military industry.
I’m going to avoid touching the rest of that and say that a centralized production not making sushi or shawarma is not the same as censoring those things. You can still make them at home, it’s not like fish, rice, and seaweed were beyond the reach of the existing production. Again, it sounds like a production issue.
and the main reason for the deficit was preparation for the war, not the desire to make people’s lives in the country better. Nothing prevented the Soviet Union with the Communists at its head from being an ally before the war with the Germans, attacking Poland together and attacking Finland, suppressing protests in Czechoslovakia and Hungary
I’m really struggling to follow some of this. Are you saying the Soviets didn’t need to fight Germany and didn’t need to take as much time as they could manage to prepare to do so?
Okay :) but everything was in deficit :) and this is not a production problem :) this is a problem of sick heads in power and a complete lack of empathy for the country’s citizens :) in relations between people, the deficit created corruption, with which Ukraine still has big problems. A habit was created to solve all cases not according to the law. People could not travel abroad without a large number of certificates and the personal permission of the local head of the party. Soviet engineers, having good talents, proposed different concepts of cars that were very modern, but the local leadership said no to any initiative from below. It was easier for them to simply copy Western equipment, or buy Western equipment and pass it off as their own, as Russia is doing now under sanctions. Now, under capitalism, you can protest and at most they will give you something like a fine for hooliganism. Under the Soviet Union and the Communists, there were no protests, or if there were, people were sent to Siberia, and their families were dismissed from their positions, and they had a label in front of state bodies that their family was unreliable. And the journalists did not say anything about it under the pressure of censorship, not even a hint. People learned all the information about the protests only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And something similar happens in any country that wants to build communism. People become communists in their eyes, often not for the sake of making the world better, but for the sake of getting back at a system in which they are marginalized and losers
So your describing surveillance capitalism
That’s how I see how Zuckerberg sends your grandfather to Siberia for lack of work and unwillingness to work, as it happened with my grandfather :) Don’t you think that you are exaggerating (so far) the level of problems in your country? All these problems of listening to you for the sake of selling goods are trifles compared to what any radical-communist-nazi who dares to power will do
Brainwashed since birth. GI Joe had the American Express slogan in an episode (“never leave home without it.”). Alvin and the Chipmunks had a story about the Berlin Wall propagandizing communism. All the bad guys in Cobra have accents.
This shit is vile and it was on my morning cartoons.
