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Why are folks so anti-capitalist?
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
449 points (75.9% liked)
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Man this debate is so US centric - as if there is only two choices: Unhinged, raging, exploitative, robber-baron capitalism OR Bolshevik Communism.
Typing this from one of the richest, strongest market economies in the world, which provides free health care, free education and generous e employment protections in the world. Everyone is happy, everyone is healthy, broadly, and capitalism exists next to a system of government that regulates to ensure the well-being of their citizens.
Social democracy people, it’s for real!!
I had to stop trying to engage in any political discussion online because it's so dominated by Americans and trying to talk some sense into them is like taking to an antagonistic, raging, gun-toting brick wall. I just got frustrated and it never goes anywhere, they're incapable of seeing past their blue Vs red and biased viewpoints.
Lmao yes blue vs red because either of those are communism or socialism
Maybe this is the trauma from the unhinged, raging, exploitative robber barons talking, but...
I can't in good conscience support any economic system that ties political power to economic power. One extreme will always do their best to accrue and centralize that power, and will be effective by virtue of the fact that the power creates more opportunities and ways to accrue more power. The other extreme will always be ineffectual because they shun that power, seeing the necessary rejection of certain values as inherently corrupt. The middle will struggle against both to maintain a status quo that always has a stronger pull toward the former group, effectively recreating the political ratchet.
I can't in good conscience support a system that allows people to effectively own others, regardless of how well they treat the people they own, regardless of how many owners one of the owned has to choose from. The dynamic has a strong tendency in favor of the owners and requires a lot more effort from the owned to fight that.
I can't in good conscience support a system that allows people to own pstches of the earth, especially beyond those which they occupy or personally use. Yes, I want everyone to have somewhere to live, and have that place be free from unwanted interference by others. No, i won't support a system that in theory has no hard limits against someone powerful enough buying up all the land and then renting it out to everyone else for a profit.
I can't in good conscience support a system that allows people to own ideas, and even necessitates them doing so to "earn their keep" (worth as a citizen/right to survive). I feel like I'm in bizzaro world when i think about how there are people oddly comfortable with the fact that people have put patents on living things, or that there are people who can tell you when, where and how you're allowed to express certain ideas/arts/mechanisms/songs/images/sounds/formulae under threat of being stripped of power you managed to accrue (whether or not it came from aforementioned ideas), imprisonment, and in some cases slavery.
I won't support any political system that doesn't give me at least as much power as everyone else. I have enough emapthy to realize that pure democracy is a better compromise than authoritarianism, especially considering most other people either feel the same or just want a system where their needs get met.
But mainly, it's just plain illogical ti support any given political system as an ends when 1. The world is a constantly changing place, and any rigidly defined system will inevitably fail regardless of how well it fits to the context in which it was created. And 2. I am aware of better alternatives—to paraphrase what some stranger once said to me: idealism is what we aim for, reality is the compromise we make; in other words: if politics is a negotiation, why lead with a compromise?
Hopefully this isn't too Murrica-brained. When I see news of proto-fascist movements on the rise in the UK, Brazil, Italy and Australia, or extreme class disparity in Singapore, China, and Japan, or ethnic "cleansing" in China, Turkey, Rwanda, and Liberia, or just something as simple as how common scams and fraud are from places like India and Nigeria—indicating a need to resort to intercontinental theft to survive—I feel like my experience of politics and economics isn't as limited to my geographic region as I'd like to believe.
I see a fellow social democrat and I upvote.
People here think that if you agree with private property and private incentive then you suck billionaires d*cks.
Man, there is a whole spectrum that is much more realistic than pure communism or socialism.
Every Social Democracy is built upon imperialism and exploiting goods and labor from the third world. Social democracies are the epitome of well it works for me and people who look like me but fuck everyone else. Plus social democracies almost always are very restrictive of who gets to participate in said social democracy since the state can only provide these services to so many people before things collapse because it fundamentally does nothing to break from the destructive capitalist systems. They also tend to be really really racist too.
Well, show me a single system (currently implemented, not ideal or imaginary) that isn't exploiting goods and labor from the third world.
Yeah that's kind of the point of systemic critiques buddy.
And that's why I'm saying social democracy is a realistic solution. The way the world works right now makes breaking this dependency something idealistic. So you can either fantasize with ideals all day long or you can get closer to your objective.
Being in favor of private property and private incentive does not even necessarily mean that you are pro-capitalism. Capitalism as the term is used has three defining features:
- Markets
- Private property
- Employer-employee relationship
One could have a non-capitalist economy that replaced the last one with democratic membership in the firm and still kept the other two features such as a market economy consisting of worker coops
Capitalism has pretty much one defining feature. The private ownership of capital goods. Worth also repeating that anti capitalists are opposed to private property (of capital goods) and not personal property (your house your car your toothbrush)
This understanding rejects all criticism of capitalism based on its denial of workers' control as not a critique of capitalism per se. It takes the position that an economy where all firms are worker coops is capitalist, which is strange due to labor's special role in controlling all firms.
Is the capitalist's appropriation of 100% of the product of the workers' labor not a defining aspect of capitalism?
It also makes climate critiques not of capitalism. Those involve private property in land
I don't think it rejects any of those things. When capital goods are privately owned then by definition the workers do not have autonomy or control. If the workers of a coop own the capital goods I would consider that collective ownership of capital goods. Not quite public ownership (you still have to be in the group to access it) but not private either.
Climate critiques are definitely in the realm of capitalism. Your house and your land you use to live on is personal property. But if you are running a factory or a farm for other reasons than for your own use then that then ceases to be personal property and falls into private property which is capitalism.
I've not seen a better difference between capitalism and socialism than capitalism is private ownership of capital goods while socialism is the collective or public ownership of capital goods. Social democrats are not socialist because they are not addressing the ownership of capital goods. They just share the profits via state provided safety nets and benefits.
This understanding is also inclusive of the different forms that socialism can take. State (🤮), Market, or Gift/Library/Communism. I'm open to other opinions on it if someone has critique or a better definition. This is just the one that's made the most sense to me over the last 7 years of me being a leftist
The employment contract not private property gives the employer the legal right to the whole product and control rights to the firm.
Why do you believe that privately owned capital goods imply a lack of workers' control? A worker coop remains a coop even if a third party rents them a factory.
Oh, you include private land ownership.
Modern social democrats are capitalist of course.
Socialists aren't the only anti-capitalists. "Market socialism" is not socialism.
I cannot fit more in a toot
Huh, I use capitalism solely to refer to the first two 🤔
The reason I include the employer-employee contract is the workers' self-management centering traditions of anti-capitalist thought. In a proper analysis, the employer-employee contract plays a much more crucial role in alienated capitalist appropriation that anti-capitalists like to point to, but cannot usually properly criticize. The employer-employee contract is where the workers give up the right to democracy and the right to the fruits of their labor
So you are defining an ambiguous term in order to better criticise it? That makes sense, but it might not convince people who have different definitions 🤔
Like I for example would consider a Co-Op where the employees own the company / have voting power over how its run to be a part of a capitalist system, hell, I'd even consider someone who makes a living as an artist where they own all their tools to be a part of a capitalist system... although I suppose that could also be considered socialist to some degree because the artist "owns" the means of production?
These definitions are kind of difficult to use...
Not defining the term. I am using the term how it is used. I hate to appeal to wikipedia, but they include wage labor in capitalism's central characteristics.
Happy to call economic democracy a variant of capitalism depending on the audience. It is odd tho with labor having a special role.
The difference from capitalism is the right to worker coop is inalienable in economic democracy, so working in a firm automatically grants control rights.
I am not a socialist, so cannot comment there
But the changing the last point also changes the second point. You can't have private property if you want democratic membership in the firm. It has to be communal ownership, otherwise you end up with an in group and an out group.
By democratic membership in the firm, I mean just the workers in the firm being members not the entire society because the workers in the firm are governed by management. Worker coops do not prevents individuals from owning private property in the means of production. In a worker coop, the whole product of the firm is joint property of the workers in the firm, but this is ironically necessary for private property's moral basis, which is getting the fruits of your labor
I guess it depends on the definition of private property and communal ownership. For me private property is synonymous with private ownership, meaning someone, not everyone, owns the means of production. With communal ownership I don't mean communal society, but rather ownership by a group. For example everyone within a company owning the means of production of said company would be communal ownership.
In that sense I disagree with coops not preventing individuals owning private property in the means of production, because that creates the same frictions that capitalism creates. If someone owns a part of the means of production that you need to create the product, then it creates a situation where they can use that ownership as leverage because without that part you cannot create the product. If their means of production are irreplaceable then they can demand more fruits of labor, because they own a key part of productions, which is essentially what capitalism is. If it's communal ownership there's no leverage because it's for everyone to use and nobody can demand more simply because they own a key part of the production.
The system I am describing has full private ownership. I am not taking the socialist position of collectivizing the means of production. Capital can be privately owned including by individuals. For example, an individual could own a factory and rent it out to a worker coop.
Key inputs would have more value. That does not amount to more fruits of labor because by fruits of labor, I mean the literal property rights to the production output and the liabilities for the used-up inputs not the value
Then it's not a non-capitalist economy.
Your example is literally capitalism. You use your capital and extract surplus value from the worker coop in the form of "rent".
The anti-capitalist tradition I am speaking from is descended from Proudhon and other classical laborists not Marx. I reject the labor theory of value.
The difference from capitalism is that legal system recognizes the employer-employee contract as invalid, and thus all businesses are required to be worker coops. I am fine with calling it capitalism if necessary, but many defenders of capitalism would not consider it to be so
Why do you reject the labor theory of value?
Marginal productivity theory is a better analysis. I don't approve of the ideological way economists present it though.
There is a need for a labor theory to recognize flaws in capitalism, but the labor theory that is needed is one of property (LTP) not of value after all capitalism is a property system. LTV is insufficiently decisive in its critique. At best, it says that workers are underpaid. LTP, on the other hand, demonstrates that workers legally own 0% of what they produce
Yeha, that's my point. They automatically put you in the far-right if you don't agree with a principle of communism.
Did anyone actually say they wanted specifically Bolshevik communism? Personally I just want to be free of all hierarchy which is almost like the absence of dogmatism in my opinion. Coercion still exists in social democracies by the way but I agree it's much better than the US.
Politicians in America have people on both sides hypnotized to equate socialism with bolshevik communism. That's a major reason why we can't move any meaningful distance left as a country, but we can move right at the blink of an eye. Socialism is a dirty word here, for no other reason than the fact that big corporations pay politicians to demonize it.
If my country ever gets to develops I wish it ends like yours today.
Where do u live?
he doesn't even have the gut to post his own country name cause he knows people will tear away the farcade of bullshit of his successful social democrat country.
Wow, edgy. I was typing it from Denmark, where I don’t live (I live in the U.K.). There aren’t many metrics where Denmark isn’t out in front, and it manages it inside of a social democratic welfare state that’s also one of the easiest places in the world to do business.