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What's your opinion on communism?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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I object to the term "capitalism". The correct term is "classical liberal" (modern liberals are something else with very little in common). I boost capitalism because it is a result of freedom, and that also informs when I will limit my support for capitalism.
You appear to be using the term "capitalism" in a confusing way. From etymonline:
Words can change meaning and all that, but when people complain about capitalism, they don't mean what you're talking about. You seem to mean something like "well-regulated free market", and other people mean "broken, exploitative system that worships greed"
Capitalism isn't a result of freedom at all, it's actually the opposite. There are many examples I could give, but a simple one is land. There was a time where nobody could own land, it was considered a shared, public resource, that anyone could make use of. Under capitalism, land is made private, and restricted people from roaming there. The freedom of one person to own land is inherently taking away the freedom of others to roam or use that land.
Capitalism incentivizes hoarding as much wealth and power into as few hands as possible, encourages our most selfish, anti-cooperative impulses, hampers innovation, and inevitably leads to fascism.
The foundation of classical liberalism is "life liberty and property". The ability to own land is a large part of that.
There is no capitalist society, but many of them are versions of classical liberal - while the two have much in common there is a major difference at the core.
Every classical liberal society is also inherently capitalist. If your society is based around private ownership of the means of production and generating profit, you've got a capitalist society. Capitalism is the bedrock underlying liberalism. You're basically saying "we do not drive motor vehicles, we drive cars"
You have the relation backward. Liberalism underlies capitalism.
Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with liberal values. If the rights of the individual and equality are important to you, then you should oppose capitalism, because it is responsible for creating the greatest inequality humanity has ever seen, and for creating the most oppressive regimes the world has ever seen. Fascism is capitalism taken to it's logical conclusion.
Liberalism is a type of capitalism. It’s hard for me to understand why people can’t grasp this concept. It’s not a difficult one.
You have it backwards. liberalism came first and underlies capitalism.
the difierence is important because we e do capitalism because of liberalism - freedon - and not a devotion to capital.