The flaw in capitalism and the flaw that makes it unmanageable is how over time capitalism will find ways to extract more for less.
This will always fall to the workers. The recent recession had tax payers bail out the banks as well as pay bonuses. all because banks got very greedy.
Its not a flaw, its working as planned. But yeah, our “market solutions”, basically any problem created by capitalism just gets exploited for profit. Even when the economy crashes its actually a good thing for the very rich, as it " disciplines" labor, moves people down and out of the middle class which lowers wages systematically, takes out a few competitors, etc.,
Even when the economy crashes its actually a good thing for the very rich, as it " disciplines" labor, moves people down and out of the middle class which lowers wages systematically, takes out a few competitors, etc.,
If you look at it, every crisis always results in transfer of wealth up. Covid was the biggest up to date.
There are other things unmanageable.
Like a nuclear superpower with vast fertile southern lands fit for growing grapes, sea access with fishing fleet, and all such, which had a significant part of population under threat of scurvy. Because capitalism makes logistics work, it’s the reason European colonial empires could exist.
Or the same nuclear superpower, which boasted widespread literacy and all that, except that conveniently ignored Central Asian areas mostly busy with growing, collecting and processing cotton. Damn right, my dear. These were, ahem, not very developed even in 1991.
Or the same nuclear superpower, which had a powerful standardization apparatus, but when you look at its tank models or anything else, the components which could be interchangeable were just slightly incompatible. They were designed by people with the same kind of education and understanding and context, for the same purpose, but, first, every defense plant or research institute or something wanted to have their standard and they did get it, second, due to secrecy and vertical administrative structure there were little communication between them.
Or a system of logistics, that turned into shit the moment that superpower decided to leave the chat, leaving populations of whole countries foraging for wood to not freeze at winter.
Capitalism works differently, because it (any human actually, you included) tries to get more with less. Non-market instruments are supposed to constrain it to doing that only honestly.
I would never advocate for a super power, I want a classless society, this means no political class either.
“Political Class” isn’t really a thing, though, unless you’re replacing Class with Category, in which case “plumber” and “janitor” would be distinct classes. Administration and management are forms of labor, and are necessary in large-scale complex production, even Anarchists concede this.
Well, we’ll see a lot of things tried.
If you’ve heard of the “new Medieval” concept, we are approaching it.
I like Star Wars as a really prophetic piece of culture (before Disney of course).
So - there was the original trilogy, with the set of symbols that is normal for us today, but wasn’t when the first movie came out. In some sense it warned of what would happen for more than a decade after it.
And there was the prequel trilogy, which it seems to be a fashion of calling stupid and bad, and Attack of the Clones is often called the worst movie of the prequels. Well, in implementation it may be not too good, but just like the original trilogy’s second movie is the deepest, the prequel trilogy’s second movie is the deepest. AotC too was prophetic, and in that prophecy we live right now.
Now there’s that issue with chronology, where the order of events is different, but it can be anything. It’s symbolic art, not a chart. In real life events can happen in any order.
So - Lucas wanted to make three more movies (discarding Disney crap), after RotJ chronologically. I don’t know what these would be, but logically AotC’s philosophy is between ESB’s and something which would look like that “new Medieval” I’ve remembered. BTW, it’s not a nice thing. Just inevitable in opinions of some people.
LOL, a post out of nothing.
Yes exactly.
Strong “I can fix him” energy out there.
You can be fine with the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism and still favor a wealth cap and abolishing laws like Citizens United that give money undue influence on politics. Extreme wealth concentration actually hurts capitalism by starving the spending economy of money. It’s a defect in the system that eventually spoils the system.
Innovation and entrepreneurship is not exclusive to capitalism. People innovated and undertook ambitious projects before capitalism, and they will be doing so after it.
There is nothing inherent to the private ownership of the means of production and the wage exploitation/human rental system we have now that mandates innovation and entrepreneurship. In fact the opposite is visible today, with big companies stifling innovation.
Lots of people on Lemmy forget that the choice between Capitalism and Socialism isn’t binary. Country picks individual policies that are capitalist or socialist in nature. All of the modern countries are a combination of both. Even USA has certain socialist policies. Most of Europe is roughly equally capitalist and socialist.
It’s just making a character build and picking perks. Capitalist policies aren’t bad (for the general public) by default. Depending on how and which ones are implemented, they can be beneficial to everybody.
Europe has many more Social policies than the US, but it is nowhere close to equally parts Socialist and Capitalist.
Socialism means that the Workers own the means of production, and there is no country in Europe where that is the case.
Social policies != Socialism.
It’s not about strictly “owning”, it’s about controlling. Control can be achieved in many different ways, including, but not limited to regulations. Socialism is an economic system, of which you can implements certain parts.
I didn’t say “social policies”. Socialist policies are a more specific subset of social policies, so all socialist policies are social policies, but not all social policies are socialist.
Regarding the European countries’ degree of being socialist, it of course depends on the country. But on average, you might be right, and perhaps using “equally” was an exaggeration.
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and when it does a whole bunch of stuff, its communism.
Hopefully that’s tongue in cheek, but it’s pretty much how a large (voting) segment of the population sees it. Freedom Good, Government Bad.
You’re thinking of Capitalism and Socialism as Private Property and Public Property, and as oil and water. That’s not how systems work in the real world, however. An economic system is determined by what is primary in an Economy, and at scale property relations are entirely mixed and inter-related. Having safety nets doesn’t make the Capitalist EU somehow “a mix,” and having markets doesn’t make the Socialist PRC Capitalist either.
You are partially correct, in that markets are a useful tool at lower stages of development and public ownership and central planning at higher stages, but that doesn’t seem to be where you were going with that.
The problem with this is the capitalists have a way of revoking rights when the working class has its back turned, and the privilege of making unlimited propaganda to make sure those backs stay turned and either complacent or focused on other things. The only way to prevent this is for the wealthy to answer to the people rather than the other way around, which means the working class must control the means of production. This is the capitalists’ lever of control as a class.
By making sure that society cannot produce anything without them, they get to control our material conditions, who lives or dies, what gets produced and how it gets produced, with no real regard for the people’s needs besides what coincidentally creates more capital for them. And they can direct this all in the particular way which convinces us that this is the natural order of things and we should actually be thanking them for the breadcrumbs they leave us when all is said and done.
Realistically, you cannot have one without the other. Anything else is leaving the door open to the capitalists to pull things back in their direction using their vast accumulation of wealth, which under capitalism directly translates to influence and power.
Thank you, that is such an important point! Many if not most issues in our world are non-binary, but facing this requires thinking beyond memes, which many people don’t want to do. Gotta swipe left or right, those are your two choices, or you’re a shill for the wrong side. It’s really discouraging, almost a New Conservatism - not in a political sense but in an insular thinking and circling the wagons sense.
Funny enough, reducing Communists to rigid thinking devoid of nuance is actually anti-Marxist. Nuance and looking at issues dialectically is core to Communist thought, it’s non-Marxists that paint Marxism as dogmatic and inflexible.
“The truth must lie somewhere in the middle” is one of the most overused and underexamined memes in public discourse this comment is about to collapse upon itself into an irony black hole
The US has a bunch of socialist policies, it’s just that the people who complain about socialism don’t know what it means.
Those have been withering away. They’re trying to get rid of the postal service, we’ve never had national health…I was reading about Slovenia who now has a mixed economy, with the government heavily involved in planning. The only way I see capitalism working at all is social democracy, but I’d much rather see socialism. Luxury goods for profit, necessities as service, progressive taxes with the top incomes, corporate and private, being taxed in the 90th percentile, to fund services, and heavy sanctioning of nations that hide wealth from non-citizens and lifting of sanctions on nations that do the same, as well as not trying to overthrow their governments as long as they are no threat to us. And arms de-escalation.
Classic example: “I don’t want Big Government Socialism messing with my Medicare!”