Yea, most criticism of capitalism today is a criticism of how modern capitalism works, which has a lot to do with its relationship with the state. Monopolies and communist dictatorships have the same fundamental issues. Market competition is the only real force towards maximizing social utility for the economy.
My favorite part is when they start denying countries like China and Sweden are communist or socialist on the basis that they have private property. They can't handle their ideologies being associated with evil regimes so they basically deny the possibility that socialist or communist regimes can even exist lol
China and Sweden are both mixed market economies with private business and varying degrees of state oversight. Neither is exclusively socialist or communist or capitalist. Both contain elements of private and public ownership of industry. Your argument lacks essential nuance
Right and your argument precludes that an actual socialist or communist system is all but impossible, which renders the entire conversation obsolete since every system has characteristics of all three. Thus your entire point is moot since there is still merit in associating a nation with the system it strives for. I.e. Sweden, while it has private industry, is indeed socialist. While China has private industry, is indeed communist.
China is in no way communist. Authoritarian? Extremely but they have a private sector not owned by the state, not to mention the biggest thing about communism theory, workers need to own the means of production. Socialist? Yeah. Capitalist? Yeah.
Sweden is very free market. But they have wide social policies. Therefore not socialist
Your definitions are overly simplistic and would preclude any socialist or communist state from ever existing. Such interpretations are short sighted and don't warrant being taken seriously. Read me and the other guys comments and maybe I'll reply, but I'm not starting over the same conversation from scratch.
China DID follow communist principles for decades, but clearly its current economy has nothing to do with that except political control. They have a stock market.
You're aware that the "China has a stock market" thing is a meme right? A stock market is just a device that allows people to invest or divest from companies, globally. As opposed to investment being restricted to select individuals and politicians. There is nothing axiomatically opposed about a stock market in a communist state.
I'm sorry, but your understanding of political economy is simply incoherent. The entire point of communism is the abolition of private property and capital markets in favor of collective ownership of the means of production. The existence of a stock market— a mechanism for trading ownership shares in private companies -- is fundamentally incompatible with the core tenets of communist ideology.
Now, you can certainly argue that China's economy today represents a form of "state capitalism" or "market socialism" rather than orthodox Marxism-Leninism. The Chinese Communist Party has strategically introduced market reforms and tolerated private enterprise in recent decades, while still maintaining a strong degree of state control over the commanding heights of the economy. But the notion that a literal stock exchange is somehow consistent with textbook communism is absurd on its face.
The fact that you think pointing this out is just a "meme" betrays a staggering ignorance of basic political and economic concepts. Words mean things - you can't just redefine communism to mean whatever you want to avoid grappling with its real-world track record. If your ideology is so fragile that it requires this kind of blatant doublespeak to sustain itself, perhaps that should prompt some deeper reflection.
A stock market facilitates the private flow of capital which is antithetical to communism.
Yes the US and other market economies have more economic freedom, but there’s a wider difference between China today and China before their economic reforms than between the US and China today in terms of economic policy.
I’m not an expert or have even been to China for that matter, but reading economic stories about China’s property bubble, these are the typical symptoms of a market economy, not Communism.
No state can be exclusively capitalist, socialist, or communist. It's impossible to avoid having minor characteristics of the other. I.e. in a capitalist society we still pay for socialist institutions like the police. So, how is private flow of capital antithetical to communism? Nevermind the asinine requirement that in a communist state currency doesn't exist. In a communist state there are still incentives to have profit, there are still incentivizes to create good products, it's just the beneficiaries of such companies are the working class as opposed to individuals. Now how is a stock market that allows the working class to be beneficiaries of a company's success antithetical to communism? Would you insist that in a communist state, the working class does not have the freedom to invest their money as the choose? Does being communist imply citizens do not have a choice to invest their own money as they see fit? Because communist countries will always have market driving forces. Even if they are exclusively publically owned. The presence of market driving forces for publically owned companies does not imply a lack of communism. Nor does giving the working class the freedom to voluntarily invest in such companies as they see fit.
I'm curious which one of your tenets refutes all this.
In other words, China was only Communist when it was poor.
Now that those Communist policies started paying dividends, we should consider how Capitalist they are.
It doesn’t matter to me what economic system did what. Chinas reforms since 1989 are a radical departure from how economics worked before in China.
I am saying currently China has property bubbles, private equity, gigantic publicly traded tech companies, billionaires and huge economic inequality. I mean their Gini coefficient is higher than Japan’s or Australia.
This sub is ridiculous lol. “I’m not starting this over from scratch” into “you have a child’s temperament”. We get it bro, your personal definitions make your opinions correct.
Communism is a cashless stateless society where the means of production are owned by the workers. So no it is not.
It is therefore a totalitarian socialist state.
The US owns all its land and can seize it if you don’t pay your property taxes. Are we communist? No dear sir.
It is not reductive and is accurate. People use such reasoning to avoid recognizing any such system to have ever existed. If you ask a person who thinks such as yourself for an example of socialism or communism, they can't name any, because any such system either deviates from an academic interpretation and or engages in humanitarian abuses not present in the same academic interpretation.
The entire basis of their arguments is a desire to defend an academically beautiful system that is in practice dangerous and terrifying. Which is why they use such tactics to repudiate any examples of these systems.
All due respect, I think you're missing the point. The goal isn't to find a "pure" real-world example that aligns perfectly with academic theories. Of course every economy is mixed to some degree. The point is to analyze the outcomes and trade-offs of different economic structures and policies.
Lumping countries into broad categories like "socialist" or "communist" based on stated aspirations, rather than actual practices, muddies the waters. Sweden's strong social safety net exists alongside a dynamic market economy - it's not the same as Soviet-style central planning. China's economy today has more in common with state capitalism than traditional communism.
The failures of authoritarian regimes like the USSR and Maoist China don't discredit all left-wing ideas. Likewise, the successes of the Nordic model don't validate full-blown socialism. We need a more granular analysis that looks at specific policies and power structures on their own merits.
Dismissing critiques of capitalism as naive utopianism is a cop-out. Reformers aren't calling for an overnight revolutio, but for pragmatic changes to rein in corporatism, expand economic democracy, and strengthen the social contract. You can disagree with their prescriptions, but engage with the substance of their arguments.
Lazy generalizations and guilt by association make for good polemic, but they shut down substantive debate. I'm happy to critique failures of nominally socialist states, but I won't disavow the entire intellectual tradition because a state claiming its mantle behaved badly.
This is just blatant philosophical sidestepping. The premise of your argument is the same as everyone else's, and it's precisely as you said, to:
>muddies the waters.
The premise behind such logic is to sidestep the fundamental reality that real socialism and communism are the most dangerous and evil systems to exist, because they empower the ruling class at the expense of the working class, which is the ultimate irony of the stated goals of each system. Both systems are deeply flawed at their roots and disempower the working class, which is why such systems always fail or inevitably embrace the virtues of capitalism.
Your use of the term "state capitalism" is indicative of your clear brainwashing. There is no such thing as state capitalism. Capitalism is, by definition, a system that operates at the explicit expense of the state. It is the axiomatic opposite of the nationalization of industry. Capitalism and incorporation of industry with the state is ideologically impossible. What youre referring to is just what communism is.
The academic version of communism is in practice what you mean by state capitalism. State capitalism is a misnomer pseudointellects use to sidestep the problem with communism, namely that such systems are impossible to achieve and only exist as thought experiments in the minds of young academics / idealists. The moment any such government is created, it immediately becomes a state capitalist system, which is why the creation of such terminology is deceptive because it implies that the academic variety of communism is still possible and that state capitalism is as well. But this is just clever deceit, because capitalism by definition precludes the state from having any interference, and the real outcome of installing a communist state is explicitly "state capitalism".
This whole charade you're doing is a farse, and it's to manipulate the uneducated who can't think for themselves. It's in the same vein as bastardizing the interpretation for liberalism, denying that fascists like mussolini were simultaneously socialists, etc. It's unethical. You're changing definitions to change the goal posts, to stay in the game, while your ideology is rotten from the roots up.
TLDR; state capitalism does not exist - it is just actual communism in practice.
I think you're projecting quite a bit onto my argument that I never said and isn’t there. I'm not trying to sidestep anything or deceive anyone.
You seem to be operating from a very rigid, ideological framework that doesn't allow for nuance or mixed systems. In your view, any state involvement in the economy is de facto communism, while "true" capitalism requires a complete separation of state and market. But that's simply not how most economists or political scientists understand these terms.
Capitalism refers to an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the pursuit of profit in a market economy. It does not preclude all forms of state intervention or regulation. Most capitalist economies today feature a mix of private enterprise and public provision, along with various forms of state action to address market failures, provide public goods, and pursue social goals. This is the "mixed economy" model that characterizes most developed countries.
Communism, in theory, refers to a classless, stateless, moneyless society with common ownership of the means of production. In practice, it has been associated with authoritarian one-party states that centrally plan the economy and restrict political freedoms. But there is a wide spectrum of left-wing thought between free-market capitalism and full-blown communism, including various forms of social democracy, market socialism, and participatory economics.
The term "state capitalism" is not some obscurantist neologism - it's a well-established concept in political economy, referring to a system where the state controls and directs key industries while allowing some private enterprise and market forces. This is a fair description of China's economy today, as well as Russia and other nominally "communist" countries in the past. It's a way of distinguishing actually-existing economic systems from idealized models.
My point is not to defend any particular system, but to advocate for a more empirical, less dogmatic approach to these questions. When taking this stance, the arguments about leftism voiced by the vast majority of people in this sub become facile and naive. Like your parroted arguments about China being communist… You guys are fighting windmills.
>In your view, any state involvement in the economy is de facto communism, while "true" capitalism requires a complete separation of state and market. But that's simply not how most economists or political scientists understand these terms.
Again you're just being deceptive. Everyone knows that no pure system exists, but that reality doesn't mean that the terms suddenly become useless and that everything is a variety of capitalism when it's not. Pretending "state capitalism" is a thing is as stupid as saying a democratic dictatorship or anauthoritarian republic is a thing. It is genuinely that stupid.
>The term "state capitalism" is not some obscurantist neologism -
That's the only thing that it is.
>Communism, in theory, refers to a classless, stateless, moneyless society with common ownership of the means of production. In practice, it has been associated with authoritarian one-party states that centrally plan the economy and restrict political freedoms. But there is a wide spectrum of left-wing thought between free-market capitalism and full-blown communism, including various forms of social democracy, market socialism, and participatory economics.
To be a communist is to be a walking contradiction. You can't create a communist state without first creating the totalitarian state. But that contradiction doesn't mean we can't use the word anymore, and the presence of market forces driving economics doesn't imply its capitalist. Again, you're just being deceptive over and over, changing definitions to be able to continue your advocacy of centralization of power.
Leftists have got to be the most unethical people alive today. Why do yall always insist on changing all definitions? Sheer lunacy
They generate the most profitable outcomes for firms, which often encourages and even necessitates socially harmful behavior. Profitable =/= socially beneficial.
It's not a belief, it's a fact. If you cannot rule out the influence of other factors on a given outcome, it is not valid to draw inferences about that outcome without considering those factors.
That's simply not how social science works. By your logic, we could never isolate the effect of any policy or institution because everything is connected to everything else.
Researchers use statistical methods precisely to tease out the impact of specific variables while controlling for confounding factors. It's not perfect, but it's how we learn anything about complex systems.
>That's simply not how social science works.
Most social science isn't science at all. It's people with preconceived notions using confirmation bias and cherry-picking to arrive at the conclusions they want. That's why the replication crisis is really bad in social sciences.
>By your logic, we could never isolate the effect of any policy or institution because everything is connected to everything else.
Precisely. If something can't be isolated, then it seems like it should be obvious that the effects cannot be isolated.
Sorry, under no reasonable definition is the Chinese economy communist.
I mean they literally have their own take on Leninism anyways (Leninism with “Chinese characteristics”) which is very openly divergent from Marx’s or Lenin’s intended Comintern end goal.
As in they don’t even consider *themselves* communist nor do they aspire to the western understanding of same.
Most people agree Sweden is socialist, in spite of Sweden having the majority of their industry and land privately owned. Some people on the left would infer from that they Sweden isn't socialist and is actually capitalist. Their logic stipulates that socialism and communism don't exist anywhere, basically
No. Sweden is capitalist and socialist. They aren't mutually exclusive. I'm confused why people talk about capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive. Communism, on the other hand, is mutually exclusive with capitalism and involves the state owning everything.
Capitalism = private ownership
Socialism = the government pursuing policies for the benefit of the general public, including higher taxes on the wealthy, lower taxes on the poor, workers rights and protections, public funding of education, national parks, and other "social goods". Socialism is in contrast to libertarianism which is basically "let corporations do whatever they want, the government stays out of it and let's Laissez faire capitalism do whatever it wants".
Communism = the government owns everything because it doesn't trust private ownership of anything.
What confuses me is why people think socialism is synonymous with communism.
It’s because Sweden isn’t China is closer to socialism but still isn’t there. The only example of proper socialism In my opinion is the Soviet Union China is very close and if they continue as they are they will become socialist eventually.
China has broken up Marxist book clubs in their universities. To say they're communist really isn't accurate for many reasons. They're a very centrally planned economy and have some communist principles for sure though.
Lol yes, private property does disqualify an economy from being communist or socialist. I beg you to read Marx. Not some Austrian who never touched grass before summarizing it badly, like the source text.
I've read Marx. That's how I know that if Marx was alive today he wouldn't be a communist, and if he was he would have written additional books to address the shortfalls of communism and the successes of capitalism, namely communisms tendency to create authoritarian systems and capitalisms success in making land ownership available to the working class, a reality that did not exist prior to capitalism
You haven’t really comprehended what Marx wrote if you believe this.
He seethed the way most Redditors seethe at the prospect of industrialists and capitalists making more money than the workers (ie himself, really). Hence creating a philosophy that called for violent dispossession of that same group.
His biggest criticism was actually on land ownership. His primary justification for communism would be it's shared ownership of land. Capitalism more than any other system has basically refuted the entire premise for his manifesto, namely that free markets allow the working class the highest probability to own land out of any system
Ok…and he advocated creating these communist structures via violent dispossession. The rest was magic hand waving about how people somehow transcend ethnic, religious and linguistic ties to identify more on the basis of what job they had.
What I’m trying to say is that Marx was long on theory baked primarily by financial jealousy with an ivory tower homo economicus view of human behavior.
The fact that capitalism has refuted his entire premise would cause him cognitive dissonance, not cheerful objective scientist acceptance. Smith ironically was a scientist, as capitalism is essentially a set of conclusions from empirical comparative study of the UK, France and a few other countries
You have critical levels of copium if you believe this.
You could just read leftcom writings if you want a Marxist reaction to degenerative worker states.
Most criticism of capitalism I see is actually criticism of liberal corporatism, and the person making the critique couldn’t actually give you an accurate definition of the core aspects of capitalist theory.
The issue we have with capitalism and it's relationship with the government is that companies are able to lobby the government to decrease regulations on them, while also bailing out massive financial "losses" brought on to these companies by parasitic CEOs and middle management, including but not limited to Public and private schools, construction companies, military contractors, automotive companies, etc.
American "capitalism* is functionally "socialism" for massive companies and wealthy families, while being unrelenting crushing inequality for everyone else.
>Yea, most criticism of capitalism today is a criticism of how modern capitalism works
Capitalism is capitalism. If the government has it's thumb in it, it's not capitalism - it's socialism.
What the United States has is one of if not the best system on paper. Theres a capitalist base that encourages growth and competition while having socialist ideals such as social security built on top of it.
Honest question.
What stops a monopoly from emerging in a truly laissez-faire economy? And why would a business operating for profit NOT then proceed to undertake any means necessary to raise profit margins? Slowly bringing the pot to a boil so the frog doesn’t jump out.
Here are some (but not all) of the methods used to improve profit margins. There are probably some duplicates or near-duplicates, and definitely some blank spots, but almost all of them are familiar to me in day to day dealings with various corporations.
### 1. **Pricing and Revenue Strategies**
- Price Discrimination
- Higher Prices
- Geographic Expansion
- Diversification
- Market Segmentation
- Localized Pricing
- Real-Time Pricing Adjustments
- Surge Pricing
- Bundling
- Psychological Profit Margin Methods
- Vestigial Brand Recognition/Reputation
- Scarcity and Urgency Tactics
- Anchoring
- Decoy Pricing
- Loss Aversion
- Social Proof
- Authority Bias
- Reciprocity
- Price Framing
- Emotional Appeal
- Consistency Principle
- Guilt Tripping
### 2. **Operational and Cost Efficiency**
- Economies of Scale
- Cost Reduction
- Technological Advancements
- Vertical Integration
- Exclusive Agreements
- Stockpiling Resources
- Delayed Payments to Suppliers
- Leveraging Debt
- Creative Accounting
- Skimpflation
- Service Reduction
- Increased Use of Contract or Gig Workers
### 3. **Market Control and Competitive Practices**
- Lobbying
- Patent Protection
- Predatory Pricing
- Acquisitions
- Regulatory Capture
- Litigation
- Patent Trolling
- Extending Patent Lifespans
- Non-Compete Clauses
- Long-Term Contracts
- Horizontal Integration
- Digital Lock-In
- Data Throttling
### 4. **Consumer and Labor Exploitation**
- Loyalty Programs
- Customer Data Utilization
- Planned Obsolescence
- Creating Artificial Scarcity
- Hidden Fees
- Penalty Fees
- False Advertising
- Bait and Switch
- Underpaying Workers
- Unsafe Working Conditions
- Union Busting
- Reduction or Elimination of Benefits
- Elimination of Retirement/Pension Plans
- Wage Suppression
- Complex and Opaque Pricing Structures
- Subscription Traps
- Quality Reduction
- Information Asymmetry
- Misleading Warranty Terms
- Addictive Design
- Mandatory Subscriptions
- Auto-Renewals
- Payday Loans and Predatory Lending
- Rent-to-Own Schemes
- Surveillance Capitalism
- Data Monopolies
- Tax Avoidance
- Corporate Welfare
- Neglecting Environmental Regulations
- Resource Overexploitation
So I guess my main question is, what theoretical force is there supposed to be to prevent any of that? The only reason we don’t still have child labor (in the US, at least theoretically) is because of the government. Anywhere that doesn’t care still sends children to die or waste away in dirty factories.
Believe me, there’s more wrong than right about the U.S. federal government. They enable a lot of problems and I think the rot runs too deep for it to be fixed at this point.
But like… What’s the alternative? Nothing? Because finance as a concept is amoral. Not IMmoral, Amoral, not pertaining to morality. A small mom and pop shop is comprised of a small handful of locals who ostensibly (ideally) participate in their local community. But Amazon is comprised of about 1.5 million human beings, and an entity that large no longer represents anything human, it is purely financial, and displays a significant number of the harmful/manipulative strategies listed.
dude. its the corporations using influence to tear down consumer protections that the government put into effect.
dissolving the state only speedruns late stage capitalism and returns most of us to slaves. not wage slaves. slaves.
People had criticisms of historic capitalism also. The failures of historic capitalism, necessitated the creation of new forms of capitalism which in turn failed and lead to what we have today.
What period of capitalism would you prefer and how would you propose to keep it in that state, without it breaking down leading to a new form?
A fully free market necessarily declines into a semi monopoly or oligopoly market. The reason being is that the first movers and successful companies in any market will eventually dominate the market as they buy out other competitors.
The reality is that the only thing stopping the eventual monopolization of any industry is either the state or perhaps a extremely idealistic company. But the idealistic company has to be willful enough to not sell out to the much larger oligopolies as it starts. Which often times is not enough. It also has to content with unfair business practices like dumping of goods, slander, etc in a totally unregulated market.
Obviously with state intervention you suffer from similar regulatory problems too as the companies can buy the politicians to enact regulation which creates barriers to entry. But in theory politicians aren’t ultimately beholden to the market place unlike companies are, they are for the people and given enough pressure from the people they’ll elect someone who will put regulation in place to benefit the population at large, often which breaks up monopolies if the companies are engaging in too much predatory pricing.
But the reality is that outside of communists and anarcho capitalism, who both wish to see the state destroyed and replaced with either market or social solutions to these problems. The best solution is a combination of both state and market solutions as that’s what every single country in the world has implemented. Every single country has a mixed policy which has some elements of market and state solutions with incentives that might push people into various directions.
The problem with memes like this is that they are so incredibly general that you can’t have a real discussion. The economy is far too complex in any state for it to be boiled down to saying any one fix, including a free market, is honestly the solution as every tweak will have unintended consequences including tweaks towards more state regulation or more free market solutions.
Op needs to provide specific examples for a real discussion to be had with specific laws or company case studies.
>A fully free market necessarily declines into a semi monopoly or oligopoly market. The reason being is that the first movers and successful companies in any market will eventually dominate the market as they buy out other competitors.
Not necessarily. In a fully free market there would be no government patent protections, letting competitors steal all of your r&d work for free and offer a competing copy with less invested, theoretically allowing them to sell it for less.
In theory it could lead to a never-ending cycle of innovating>copying>undercutting>innovating between competing firms. Each taking turns ripping the other off and saving on r&d costs.
This arguement completely ignores barriers to entry. What you state will work for maybe 3 rounds of innovation, then someone is gonna realize that you can make more money by denying competitors than you can trying to innovate.
> Not necessarily. In a fully free market there would be no government patent protections, letting competitors steal all of your r&d work for free and offer a competing copy with less invested, theoretically allowing them to sell it for less.
Hmmm, this would only be true of a company that lacks economies of scale. The entrenched incumbent would have economies of scale that a competitor likely doesn’t, certainly not a start up, furthering the monopolization of the industry. The only time your example might work is with tech.
> In theory it could lead to a never-ending cycle of innovating>copying>undercutting>innovating between competing firms. Each taking turns ripping the other off and saving on r&d costs.
I suppose. I still think the economies of scale would benefit whoever developed the product first. But if this was the case in your example you’d eventually have firms stopping R&D completely because why would you be the sucker to develop something if your competitor can easily copy and then undercut you.
Either way, both of these are evidence why no nations ever allow a fully free market solution to anything. It has tons of unintended consequences too. There’s no easy solution or perfect solution in our world.
> It's like they're children.
They basically are. They want freedom, but they don't want the responsibility that goes with it.
Basically like a child with daddy/mommy looking over
The bad outcomes come from lack of accountability to the populace. The only entities less accountable to the public are corporations, which is why everyone laughs at the libertarians when they argue that the world would be better with no governments.
The government will kill you for embarrassing them, or organizing a labor union that affects a political donor or whatever. A corporation will kill thousands to save 3/10s of a cent per ton of bananas.
You know idiocracy is anti capitalist right? It makes a joke of what would happen if corporations take over America. And you're right, it is very indicative of modern society, but really not in the way you think.
No, the joke in Idiocracy is: what happens when the dumb people outbreed the smart people? In 2006 the dumbest people were watching brain rot TV shows and parroting corporate slogans. The 2024 equivalent is people who get their political education from TikTok and parrot the propaganda of failed ideologies.
You find yourself a bit over your head, I see.
So, we don't live in a capitalist economy.
And what it describes/criticizes is exactly where we are and where we are headed.
It's frightening to realize that people like you vote.
Your "education" has seriously failed you.
Capitalism doesn't produce oligarchies, it produces oligopolies. It's an economic system, not a system of government. Of course you still need a state to enforce laws, such as contract law and property law. The state provides the -archy and capitalism provides the -opoly.
But I don't think that's what you mean by state intervention, I suspect you mean the state needs to directly intervene in the markets to prevent oligopolies. But oligopolies are not a bad thing, it simply means the marketplace has selected a small number of companies as "best in breed" for providing certain specialised services at scale. Provided transactions are voluntary and contract and property law is enforced, it's not an oligarchy. They can't command and dictate based on their wealth, they can only make offers, which can be accepted or refused.
If you're worried about rich people using their wealth and influence to affect politics, this can be remedied with laws around campaign financing. But it would be a one-off change of legislation, not a requirement for ongoing intervention in the markets.
It can be remedied by simply not voting for the people they throw their money behind. However, that is apparently a bridge too far for the average voter in this country.
Capitalism becomes oligarchical precisely through state intervention.
And hereby it becomes [fascism](https://open.substack.com/pub/mistermicawber/p/what-is-a-cult-what-is-fascism?r=110wl5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
Which is where we are.
How the hell does Nancy Pelosi keep getting re-elected overwhelmingly?
She’s been caught insider trading, her district has to print maps to show where the piles of public excrement are in the streets.
You get the Govt you deserve.
I wish people understood that most laws are actually written by Corps and lobbied into law, in return for campaign contributions.
The argument doesn't make sense.
Problems exist because capitalism can't exist without a state
No problem would exist if capitalism existed without the state?
There's absolutely no evidence of this, not in history. Capitalism is always run within a state bureaucracy it's impossible for one to exist without the other.
At the bare minimum, we use money and laws of the government to facilitate capitalism. Otherwise that would not be capitalism.
We can use money without the state being involved (Bitcoin) and we can transact without laws being involved (Robinson Crusoe gives Friday a fish in exchange for some berries).
I agree that it is preferable to have laws for a whole bunch of reasons, but it's wrong to say it would not be capitalism without them. Property laws can still exist as "gentleman's agreements" - I won't touch your stuff if you don't touch mine - without a state to enforce them.
The fact that there's no historical record of it being done this way doesn't make it impossible. There's also no historical record of self-driving cars, yet here we are. Things can change.
And you've missed the point of the post. It wasn't to say "no problems would exist in capitalism without a state", it was to point out the double-think of capitalism's critics (everything good in the modern world is thanks to the state, everything bad is thanks to capitalism).
This is as naive as a 19 year old talking about why Communism hasn’t really been tried in earnest and could totally work if people just acted the right way.
The fact that there's no Spider-Man doesn't mean there couldn't be one, Right?
Gentleman's agreements ? You live in the same Fantasyland communists do.
It makes you believe that capitalism has no flaws and government is just full of them. Which is a falsehood. Capitalism main flaw is it needs a state to run in.
Is this a terrible meme, do better.
My issue with this is not ignorance but hypocrisy. Most people say they hate capitalism while they live an absolutely capitalistic life. The same way way they advocate for high taxes but do their best not to pay them themselves.
Capitalism is not a voluntary system that you can opt out of. It necessarily grows, encloses, and consumes other forms of social life. It wasn't the fairy tale about deer and squirrel hunters in econ textbooks, it was a violent upheaval of social life enforced by aristocrats with waning power from the dying feudalist order. Even being a hermit hut dweller in the woods isn't even a fool-proof solution. The effects of capitalism reach far-remote places.
Also, wanting to pay less taxes while having higher taxes isn't a contradiction. You could want to pay less taxes, want capitalists to pay more taxes, or ideally just not have capital, and have more funds for social programs and less for war and corporate welfare.
Exactly. So you want others to pay more taxes, just like everyone else. It’s definitely a contradiction. If you want big government you have to pay for it. It’s like saying that volunteering is super important and insulting those who do not do it while you never volunteered in your life.
You can totally opt out of capitalism. Go live in a non-capitalistic country. Ah, they suck? Exactly, because other systems are not a fairy tale, same as the pre-capitalistic past. Or you think it was peaceful, generous, and people didn’t have to work to eat?
It's not lol, please read. I don't want "others" in general to pay more taxes, I want *capitalists* to, as payment for the rentseeking behaviors that fuck everything up for us.
If you really think you can just go elsewhere to opt-out of capitalism, or that any country in the world recognized by the UN is non-capitalist, you have never read any history and have no understanding of ideas outside of biased summaries by Austrian economists.
No serious scholar argues this. The real argument is that negative outcomes like inequality and environmental damage are inherent to capitalism's profit-driven logic, while the state played an essential role in curtailing that fundamental bias. Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding. Capitalism's cheerleaders are the ones guilty of contradiction, not its critics.
The best anti-capitalist thinkers acknowledge nuance - markets aren't all bad and the state isn't all good. What they offer is a systemic analysis of how private capital accumulation tendencies lead to crises and propose more democratic, egalitarian models. You can debate their alternatives, but at least represent their actual views, not this dumbed-down caricature. ‘Markets solve everything’ is baby shit. Markets produce profit, which only creates socially beneficial outcomes when the state intervenes to regulate socially harmful, but profitable behavior by firms.
Negative outcomes are inherent to life.
Only the most arrogant think they can come up with a solution that is so good that it can't wait to be voluntarily adopted but must be imposed by force.
>Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding
So, thank you state for the growth and innovation that naturally causes conditions for climate change. This makes the state the most terrible thing to befall humanity.
>You can debate their alternatives, but at least represent their actual views, not this dumbed-down caricature
The nature of memes is in large part to dumb things down, or its not very memetic. The beauty of this particular line of reasoning is it represents a very simplified and nonspecific contradiction I have been able to lead conversations through many times. You are correct that more intellectual anti-capitalists won't fall for this because they see nuance, but they will also never produce the premise necessary for me to lead them to such a contradiction. This does not, however, mean I have failed to accurately represent the much more pervasive stupidity we run into on reddit, which is what I was going for.
>'Markets solve everything’ is baby shit
I agree. Also I haven't and wouldn't say this.
State investment in research and infrastructure isn't inherently to blame for environmental damage. The problem is when the state fails to properly regulate industry and account for negative externalities. A more active, democratically-accountable state is essential for steering innovation towards sustainable and equitable ends. The worst ecological destruction has happened when capital has captured the state, not when the state has constrained capital.
Secondly, I get that memes trade in simplification, but there's a difference between abstracting concepts and grossly misrepresenting them. If your goal is just to score rhetorical points against the most simplistic possible version of an ideology, then sure, fire away. But if you actually want to change minds or have a substantive discussion, you need to engage with the strongest form of the opposing argument, not the weakest. Propping up an army of straw men might make you feel smart, but it's intellectually lazy. My serious engagement is a tone mismatch for a meme, sure, but I’m here and we’re chatting in good faith nonetheless.
Finally, I'm glad we agree that "markets solve everything" is baby shit. But if that's the case, why lean so heavily on "capitalism good, state bad" reductionism? A serious critique of capitalism needs to grapple with the complex interplay between states and markets, and the ways in which capitalist dynamics can undermine democracy and concentrations of private power can distort public policy. Ancaps and market fundamentalists are just the mirror image of tankie LARPers - both are substituting dogma for analysis.
I'm not saying the far left has all the answers. A lot of online "socialists" trade in shallow sloganeering and utopianism rather than hard-headed political economy. But the same is true of a lot of libertarian and conservative cheerleaders for capitalism.
I am going to break this into chunks, first chunk:
>State investment in research and infrastructure isn't inherently to blame for environmental damage. The problem is when the state fails to properly regulate industry and account for negative externalities. A more active, democratically-accountable state is essential for steering innovation towards sustainable and equitable ends. The worst ecological destruction has happened when capital has captured the state, not when the state has constrained capital
Reply:
>Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding
This quote, you recognize the state makes the primary conditions for environmental disaster possible. Which means no matter what addendums are made hence forth to future particularities, the fact remains *no state* would mean no climate disaster if one assumes the state is a necessity for the modern economy to exist.
>A more active, democratically-accountable state is essential for steering innovation towards sustainable and equitable ends
Well you hope it will be able to do that to fix the circumstances it made possible via "growth and innovation(that) came from socialistic state planning and funding." Hopefully, it will do that without creating even worse circumstances like it did when it aimed to liberate us from circumstances caused by other older states centuries ago.
>The worst ecological destruction has happened when capital has captured the state, not when the state has constrained capital
There can only be one sovereign in a nation, one ultimate power. If the "private" interests have ultimate power, then they are the true sovereign(the "government), and thus not "private" interests but instead "state" interests. So there's no "capture" in this case, but a new or changed state.
If the military(presumed to be the greatest force) answers to the politicians instead of private interests, then the politicians are the sovereigns by virtue of being able to anhilate private interest groups at will.
I am presuming the latter is true of the country that claims ownership of me, the US.
This means that whatever the state(accumulated descision making of the political elites) decides is what naturally represents its will. Subsequently, what you are calling "state capture" is actually just the reality of what the state wants being in opposition to what you think the state *ought* to want.
End of first chunk
I have Enchiladas to eat, I am not done and will move onto the next chunk, assuming my whims drive me to do so.
I’m going to consolidate back into this reply. I'm afraid you've fundamentally misunderstood my argument. Let me be crystal clear:
Your claim that "no state would mean no climate disaster" is simply false. The state is not the sole or even primary driver of environmental destruction - the profit motive and the externalization of ecological costs by private firms is. Even without modern governments, 8 billion people practicing industry and agriculture would devastate ecosystems. The state is a potential mechanism for constraining that damage and coordinating solutions, not the root cause. Your analysis is just flatly wrong.
Your attempt to attribute all the ills of capitalism to the state is equally misguided. Yes, political and economic power are intertwined - that's the point! But they are not identical. Capitalist incentive structures generate problems that government policy then has to address. Corporations seek profit, not the public good. Ignoring the inherent dynamics of markets and fixating on the state as the only source of coercion in society is incredibly naive political economy.
Finally, your glib dismissal of any attempts at reform or progress short of anarchist utopia is just ideological self-indulgence. Politics is about building coalitions and fighting for concrete improvements in people's lives, not pontificating about ideal end-states.
You are being what the meme represents by contradicting yourself. You said:
>Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding
>**otherwise *impossible* growth and innovation**
As in without this, the modern economy can not be the way it is.
Now you are saying:
>Your claim that "no state would mean no climate disaster" is simply false. The state is not the sole or even primary driver of environmental destruction
Then you say:
>the profit motive and the externalization of ecological costs by private firms is
Which is just a longer way of saying "it's capitalism fault."
>Even without modern governments, 8 billion people practicing industry and agriculture would devastate ecosystems
Without modern governments, and most of its forms leading up to now, there wouldn't be 8 billion people to devastate ecosystems as they do. We wouldn't be at this point.
>The state is a potential mechanism for constraining that damage and coordinating solutions, not the root cause
👇
>Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding
You can't grow things to where they are chaotically, you need central planning.
>Corporations seek profit, not the public good
And the state seek propagating it's status as the ultimate power, not the public good. It loves utilizing policies that we regard as capitalistic cause this is a fantastic pattern of power acquisition. This is the states will, and subsequently the consequences are the consequences of that will.
> Ignoring the inherent dynamics of markets and fixating on the state as the only source of coercion in society is incredibly naive political economy.
If something has sub-sovereign coercion its because the sovereign allows it directly or as a consequence of its own will.
>Finally, your glib dismissal of any attempts at reform or progress short of anarchist utopia is just ideological self-indulgence
I am not an anarchist, utopianist, or ideological. I recognize things as they are and regard all "oughts" as fantasies. I am a hard determinist and materialist, so my veiws just accepts whatever exists now and whatever is bound to come into existence in the future. I don't have agency in any of it, my will does not come from me. I am simply the manifestation of interactions that precede me, and I can only do what I am bound to do. One thing I do is call the state shit, and that is cause my passion has dictated this reality upon me.
>Politics is about building coalitions and fighting for concrete improvements in people's lives, not pontificating about **ideal end-states**
I don't believe in *end of history* hegelian crap. I think struggle never ends, people will suffer ever onward.
P.S. You keep attributing positions to me that I don't possess. This is ironic given how hung up(wrongly) you were about me strawmaning. So, I ask that you stop pushing positions onto me that I didn't claim to have.
Second chunk:
>Secondly, I get that memes trade in simplification, but there's a difference between abstracting concepts and grossly misrepresenting them. If your goal is just to score rhetorical points against the most simplistic possible version of an ideology, then sure, fire away. But if you actually want to change minds or have a substantive discussion, you need to engage with the strongest form of the opposing argument, not the weakest. Propping up an army of straw men might make you feel smart, but it's intellectually lazy. My serious engagement is a tone mismatch for a meme, sure, but I’m here and we’re chatting in good faith nonetheless
Reply:
>Secondly, I get that memes trade in simplification, but there's a difference between abstracting concepts and grossly misrepresenting them.
I actually made the meme because I have exposed this contradiction in individuals many times. You can go to my older replies from today and see them for yourself, but they might be a bit deep at this point.
>If your goal is just to score rhetorical points against the most simplistic possible version of an ideology, then sure, fire away
Thank you, I will.
>But if you actually want to change minds or have a substantive discussion, you need to engage with the strongest form of the opposing argument, not the weakest.
My philisophical veiws don't regard changing minds as possible unless the irrational passions dictating what they value cause them to want to change their mind in a way compatible with my veiws. The people that require a *steel man* are unlikely to want to change their mind, and ultimately won't if this remains so. So its hard to have passion for seeking such a thing.
>Propping up an army of straw men might make you feel smart, but it's intellectually lazy
As mentioned prior, the meme represents my lived experiences, one of the many occurring today. So the meme is in no way a strawman fallacy. I generally feel painfully stupid regardless of the circumstance because I can't even figure out why or how I "want," only thar I just "do." I am just acting in the only way I can.
>My serious engagement is a tone mismatch for a meme, sure, but I’m here and we’re chatting in good faith nonetheless.
I didn't mean to imply that your tone was improper. I merely pointed out that the meme is not for the purpose of a the best informed, but instead the people I more commonly run into on reddit. So, to assert it misrepresenting other more intellectually cultivated people is just not correct. I intended to have it represent the sort of people that it does.
End of second chunk.
Third chunk:
>Finally, I'm glad we agree that "markets solve everything" is baby shit. But if that's the case, why lean so heavily on "capitalism good, state bad" reductionism? A serious critique of capitalism needs to grapple with the complex interplay between states and markets, and the ways in which capitalist dynamics can undermine democracy and concentrations of private power can distort public policy. Ancaps and market fundamentalists are just the mirror image of tankie LARPers - both are substituting dogma for analysis
Reply:
>But if that's the case, why lean so heavily on "capitalism good, state bad" reductionism
I regard the whole organism as terrible, and I hold states accountable more so than every other organization because they are the sovereigns. They have more say in all things than all other things, so they are always most responsible.
>A serious critique of capitalism needs to grapple with the complex interplay between states and markets, and the ways in which capitalist dynamics can undermine democracy and concentrations of private power can distort public policy
If private entities can undermine the sovereign by being more powerful, then it's not the sovereign, the "private" entities are the sovereign. In which case, they aren't private entities in anything but name. They are instead the state... so I am still holding the state responsible.
If the sovereign is more powerful than private entities, nothing those private entities do is something the state doesn't will them to do.
>Ancaps and market fundamentalists are just the mirror image of tankie LARPers - both are substituting dogma for analysis
I agree, they live in a fantasy world.
I appreciate you trying to be actually logical in your stance even if I disagree with it.
I do want to point out that the worst ecological disasters have happened when the state has captured capital. USSR with the famine in Ukraine and the abuse of the sea in Eurasia (I forget which sea but the one that they have basically drained out of existence). Mao and his government policies to kill all pigeons and to divert rivers and many many other stupid projects. Pol Pot and all his bullshit.
The issue people have with the state is motivation. Capital has one motivation and it is always known and upfront, profit, state will claim 1000 different motives from protecting lower class, building infrastructure, expanding human rights, etc but ultimately the people that run the state are really only motivated on getting reelected. They also are almost always short sighted in their policy making to where you constantly must amend/update/get rid of them because they weren’t thought out or were purposely made weak.
In an ideal world we would let capital continue to focus on simply doing its thing and have a state that makes limited yet very meaningful policy interventions on behalf of the society that are actually thought out and effective.
I do agree that unbridled capitalism will inevitably snowball all the capital within the system into the hands of a few dozen firms/individuals and they will be in a position to push labor around. You need the state and capital to push and pull one another for society to receive maximum benefits but the state needs to limit its active involvement within capital or society will not receive the maximum value from capital. Without successful capital system it doesn’t matter how successful the government is the society will not benefit in the long run without a strong and healthy capital system
Sorry for the late response and the novel, but I appreciate you engaging in good faith and wanted to do your arguments justice. Thank you for your thoughtful response.
First, on the question of ecological disasters under communist regimes: you're absolutely right that the record of 20th century state socialism on environmental protection was abysmal. The Soviet Union and Maoist China in particular perpetrated some truly staggering ecocides in the name of crash industrialization and utopian social engineering. The Aral Sea disaster and the sparrow campaign are infamous examples of hubristic central planning leading to ecological catastrophe.
However, I would argue that these failures stem more from the pathologies of authoritarianism and, more specifically, the growth-at-all-costs productivism that communism shared with Western capitalisms, rather than from some inherent quality to state intervention in the economy per se. A democratically-accountable state apparatus— one that properly represents the long-term interests of its citizens and is constrained by robust civil society institutions— would be much less likely to run roughshod over the environment in that way. Whereas an oligarchic capitalist class, if unchecked, will often be more than happy to trash the commons for short-term gain.
Which brings us to your key point about motivation. I agree that the profit motive is a powerful driver of productivity and innovation. And I'm not suggesting we completely eliminate markets or private enterprise. But I also think it's naive to assume that firms will always be transparent about their intentions, or that the pursuit of profit will reliably align with the public good. History is replete with examples of companies lying, cheating, and stealing their way to windfall gains at grievous social expense.
So in my view, the trick is to harness the dynamism of markets while also maintaining robust democratic checks on private power. You need a muscular regulatory apparatus to enforce fair competition, safe working conditions, environmental standards, consumer protections, and so on. You need a strong social safety net to cushion the vagaries of the business cycle and ensure a decent standard of living for all. And you need strategic public sector investment to spur innovation in areas that may not be immediately profitable but are vital for long-term flourishing. This philosophy is dead-on-arrival for many in this subreddit, because they’re caught in ideological traps and platitudes that prevent them from engaging with appropriate complexity.
Getting that balance right is really hard, and reasonable people can disagree on the optimal mix. But I think the Nordic countries have shown that it's possible to combine a thriving market economy with a capacious welfare state and effective environmental stewardship. They're not perfect, but they're a lot closer to "successful capital system" and "successful government" than either the minimalist night watchman state or the hulking Stalinist Leviathan.
Of course, the Nordics also benefit from a host of cultural and institutional advantages that make their model hard to straightforwardly replicate elsewhere. But at the very least, I think they demonstrate the falsity of the stark "capitalism vs socialism" dichotomy that so much of our political discourse defaults to.
We have to resist the Manichean temptation of ‘government bad’. It heads all of the useful work off at the pass.
You’re right that the socialist/communist regimes enacted ridiculous policies maybe based more on their authoritarianism rather than because of the state but authoritarianism requires a robust state apparatus which is why in many cases the more robust the state the more absolute the power and therefore the inefficiencies. That does not mean that a strong state apparatus is bad because she’s an apathetic state is arguably worse. It also doesn’t mean that any state apparatus that is robust is authoritarian but nearly all authoritarian have robust apparati, thus why people become fearful when the state expands or becomes too domineering.
You’re also right that capital can snowball into an oligarchical system which is why the state must be built to prevent this but not at the cost of losing the dynamism of the market.
I think we agree with virtually everything but it seems when it comes to finding the right balance
You would prefer to err on the side of the state where as I prefer to err on the side of capital.
I have not made up my mind about the Nordic countries setup or really any other countries setup because i think it would take a lot of time of research to understand and appreciate a different countries setup and all its pros and cons and how it would be applicable on a much larger more complicated scale like America.
Communists lie because they're liars. That's why their responses are so often massive walls of text. Mince enough words, and maybe people won't notice that for all their shitting on the capitalist strawman they conjure up, they never offer a solution, much less an actionable plan.
Leftist here.
Yeah a capitalist state creates problems therefor it the states fault.
If it was socialist economy then it would be the socialist states fault.
The difference is a socialist state is more readily able to attempt to solve the problem.
Where as in a capitalist state we have to figure out how to make a dollars off it first.
Yes.
No system is perfect but personal a moral socialist state is superior to a moral capitalist state.
In that respect I would much rather support and create a moral socialist state.
Do you know any moral and successful socialist country? And before you jump to the Nordic countries, they are explicitly capitalistic.
I found socialism highly immoral but you may have good examples to the contrary.
Does OP believe a true free market would make things better genuinely?
Both capitalism and the state are not perfect and balance should be the goal. I’m not smart enough to know what that balance looks like unfortunately.
I do feel strongly that things would be worse than they are now with zero regulation and I think that’s a reasonable statement to make.
Most arguments about capitalism and the like consist of two groups of people, neither of which understand what they're talking about, making shoddy excuses for why their biological intuitions and cultural conditioning are "correct".
This sub is no exception. The breadth and complexity of concepts required to even begin to make sense of our civilization is beyond what most people can process or withstand emotionally, and in lieu of that they resort to ideological narrativizing.
Get a better hobby, or go to church or something.
Most people I see who are against "capitalism" are really just against unregulated capitalism. So the more likely scenario here is, well what about the failures? Well, capitalism isn't really supposed to handle that. That's why we have regulations.
Capitalism is doing great. Except for a few things. Those things are intended by some people but are incontrovertibly bad for most people. Accumulation of wealth in very few hands? That's a recipe for authoritarianism. Deadlocked at zero wealth because there is no way to get started? Capitalism literally isn't supposed to handle that, it only describes how to best allocate wealth... Not how to obtain starter wealth.
I think most anticapitalist folks are really what capitalism needs. If you point out the flaws in something and fix them then there isn't some sudden inflection or realization which causes people to choose another system. And choosing another system is absolutely possible.
You're aware that legal enforcement of private property rights (upon which capitalism depends) does not exist without a state, right? Like, that is what a state *is*. The sovereign party that is willfully enforcing law across some specific territory, even against the wishes of some.
Capitalism is merely a mechanism the powerful use to control. For most people money is what they use to live, but for the VERY rich it's just the unit they use to measure influence.
Capitalism works great on paper. Works pretty good on a small scale- but it breaks down when millions become billions. At that point it's so susceptible to corruption that it becomes inevitable.
It wasn't created? It just evolved. Lmao. All ideas and concepts are thought up and made up. Capitalism was as made up as the words I'm typing right now. Which means yea, it's super made up.
Funny, since I see more rabid “pro-capitalism” propaganda like this post, which has no actual basis in reality. We get it… if capitalism was a person you’d be the first on your knees deep throating him.
What on earth is this talking about.
Yes a first world economy couldn’t exist without a state, because a capitalist economy requires the state protection of private ownership of firms to be viable. Else someone with a bunch of guns could easily overthrow anything they’d like. The state protects the rights and privileges of capital.
They ARE one connected system, to claim that capitalism functions without state interference is to not actually understand what capitalism is.
I don’t know anyone who claims that the state is responsible for all good and the market for all evil. Anti-capitalist thought doesn’t even need a stronger state, so you’re building a Strawman to fight that doesn’t really exist.
If you are an anarchist it’s actually not a contradictory position. Not saying what’s right or wrong, I’m just saying there is a philosophy out there that holds both the state and corporations are two sides of the same coin.
Next you'll decry crony capitalism as if monopolistic intent isn't a feature of capitalism. The bad outcomes under a capitalism based system are a feature, not a bug.
I'm not saying there isn't a place for markets, but the capitalism you fetishize is worse. Without a centralized democracy to regulate a capital market, you end up with fudalism. That's why as we navigated away from fudalism into mercantileism, we saw the disruption of the ruling class and the dissemination of capital to many individuals. Same with the complete transition to capitalism. Next, we will see more of a transition to social democracy and then to a more socialism structured form of market. Capitalism creates too many negative effects for it to be tolerated by reasoned well-meaning individuals.
Market externalities and monopolies are known flaws with laissez faire capitalism that would exist without a state. These are two problems that regulations try to fix.
I mean, capitalism could literally not exist without states. Guys, can we just acknowledge capitalism has major flaws…even though it’s still the best economic system we’ve ever come up with
Errr even milton friedman said that capitalism works BECAUSE of heavy regulation. The problem with trying to blame the government as analogous to a capitalist economy is that there are bad actors specifically working against the goal of government regulation taxation etc ( conservatives refuse to allow capitalism to work by trying to gut the government and give handouts to the wealthy ).
Capitalism without an equally strong government able to reign in bad actors will never work.
Conservatives think theyre helping capitalisn by letting it run amock, truth is theyre just fighting to allow one sided bargaining where only the wealthy and powerful get a say in anything, yeah sure i can CHOOSE not to buy that car, but ultimately i have to have it for a real job.
Conservatism is ignorance personified
None of this makes sense within the context of the meme.
The meme is saying that if the state is to be credited by a given individual for the successes of capitalism, then it should be credited for the failings since without the state you can't have modern first-world capitalism, and the subsequent problems of such.
It has nothing to do with how much bureaucracy may be required for capitalism or various conservative relationships to that topic. I am also not a conservative, which I assume you imply but correct me if I am wrong.
Lastly, there's this that I'd like to address:
>The problem with trying to blame the government as analogous to a capitalist economy is that there are bad actors specifically working against the goal of government regulation taxation
The government is whatever the sovereign is in practice rather than in principle. The sovereign is the greatest power in the nation and has the actual threat of force(usually the military) to have the final say in all things. In the case of the US, that sovereign is the accumulated decision making of **many** politicians and bureaucrats. Whatever their collective interactions result in is the sovereigns will manifested, and nothing it ultimately chooses or allows can be contrary to its will. Which means if a "bad actor" convinces government to choose or allow a certain outcome, then that's the nature of the state as it actually is rather than how someone like you or I might want it to be. Our flaws are typically that of placing too much stock in our own value assessments and then expecting reality to conform to them as a consequence.
If I thought the state was what I wished it to be, then I would have a great deal of adoration for the state. This actually was the case during my childhood years. Now I know that the reality of the state is very different from what I wish it would be, and this has always been so. Now, I know most of its written policy is more a symbolic guide to its actualized structures and behaviors. Now I know the state is and has always been an ugly thing and has been the most integral component to making the disaster that is the modern era possible.
You understand that many countries have become increasingly more conservative and therefore distrust in the government became natural as they did less and less for the people while lining the pockets of wealthy powerful interests right?
Basically this, conservatism comes from an illogical mistrust of government, so as more conservative influences takeover government with that same asinine take on government the distrust becomes a negative feedback. Conservatism is a con job intended to both sew distrust in government abd weaken its influence to control powerful and evil people
>None of this makes sense within the context of the meme.
>It has nothing to do with how much bureaucracy may be required for capitalism or various conservative relationships to that topic
Wtf are you talking about its directly related. Good and bad can be attributed to either but only one ( the government ) do people have any say over how its done, and yes, capitalism without government controls is just slavery with more steps, its ultimate end goal is ALWAYS buy for a penny, sell for a thousand, whoever needs goods more ( to live, or just not have a shitty life or whatever ) will always be at a huge disadvantage and those with power are unstoppable.
Capitalism is great, BECAUSE of government policies that reign in its worst inclinations.
Government can be good or bad without capitalism, capitalism without a counter balancing government is pure evil.
>Wtf are you talking about its directly related
No, it's not.
> Good and bad can be attributed to either but only one ( the government ) do people have any say over how its done,
People don't have real say in government. Government does what it thinks can propogate its power above all else in order to prevent usurpation because governments that subordinate this get usurped. If it thinks the peoples' will conflicts with this, then it ultimately won't listen. If the government really cared about mass opinion, then it would use direct democracy. What it cares about more so is compelling the masses into *believing* they have more collective agency than they do. This is cause revolutions are an actual threat when the masses actually see what's going on and there's at least one group of ambitious counter elites happy to focus the resulting dissidant energy. Then, these new elites form a new state with equal consideration for the mass opinion only the illusions are new and resonate with the now hopeful and, most importantly, compliant population.
An example is that people think of moderm representstive democracies as a triumph against the elitism of aristocracies. The reality is that it further stabilizes and entrenches an elite class. With aristocracies, they had hoped that each person in power between the king, court, and nobles would be loyal on the basis of tradition and blood ties. However, you'd often end up with people constantly getting power by birth right that didn't agree with the regime created by their fathers because that's the reality of children, they arent usually perfect replicas of their parents. Kings could also just change court appointments on a whim if it suited them. So, the dynamics of pre-democractic governments could be very chaotic and precarious at times. This is very bad for any one group of elites in power at a given time.
In democracies, aspirants are chosen by the elites of political parties based on ideology and loyalty rather than by blood. Two factors consistently dominate popular vote. This is party loyalty and fame. In other words, the most familiar running members of a faction that the largest groups are loyal to. This gives party leaders a lot of control over who makes it to elections in the first place. They will tell aspirants what to do or support, and the ones that comply most consistently will be promoted to higher levels of public awarness. Through parties and the psycology of the masses, there is an internal mechanism for elites to ultimately decide who has a reasonable chance of winning elections. This isn't 100% perfect, as sometimes demagogues or new parties can usurp the current regime, but this happens at relatively low rates across more vast nations relative to monarchies.
Another thing that happens more in democracy is the inflated bureaucracies that politicians appoint. These see even more stability than policy makers cause the public doesn't need them to put on a spectacle in a show of confidence. Most of us seldom care who our individual bureaucrats are. So there are all these people with their hands on **major** levers of power for very long careers that pretty much slip under most peoples radar unless they **really** fuck up by pissing off the current regime.
>capitalism without government controls is just slavery with more steps,
It's not possible for capitalism to exist without government controls. Soveriegn backed currencies, regulations, and laws are all necessary just for it to function at any level. Even the notion of "deregulation" is a historical deception of the reality, that being regulations are merely changed in favor of new policies that the sovereign thinks would be good for its propagation.
Slavery is an interesting thing to bring up in a pro-state argument since every case of mass slavery to ever exist was backed by state institutions with thier own sets of regulations and laws in accordance with policies aimed at making it effective at scale.
>Capitalism is great, BECAUSE of government policies that reign in its worst inclinations
Government creates the inclinations of capitalism by setting up currencies, regulations, and laws that allow it to function. People wouldn't naturally do a modern economy if the government didn't set things up to heavily protect larger investments and returns than any one person could protect on their own. There wouldn't be an intense desire amongst private individuals to accumulate irrational amounts of wealth if there wasn't a universialized medium of exchange, that being currency.
There have been very old agrarian communities observed without the types of economies we associate with civilizations, without state interference. They typically work all day on subsistence levels because of that mode of living. In one case in Asia the state thought it could double such a communities output by giving them more efficient methods and competitive pay. They defied the very foundations of modern economic theory that mans wants are infinite by only working to the level of subsistence regardless, they just stopped working much sooner in the day. Only by being whipped by a plethora of state regulations and laws that make extra demands of our housing, land, transport, and self management are we then feeling pressured into wanting productive surpluses. Capitalism is only able to exist on a foundation of state coercion, it exists as it does because the state wants it to exist as it does.
>Government can be good or bad without capitalism, capitalism without a counter balancing government is pure evil
Capitalism without a counter balancing government ceases to exist, it can't be anything. Capitalism is a creation of the state, and it dominates the planet as a system because it's a really strong pattern of power acquisition that makes sovereigns competitive against other outside sovereigns. If there was a stronger pattern of power acquisition currently existing in practice, then the US would have never become the global hegemon and economies as we know them right now would be rare at any one time. Neither is true because the realities don't line up with how we want them to, unfortunately.
Srry i dont have the patience to read an essay on a reddit post from somebody with no understanding of government beyond "ME DONT TRUST GOVERNMENT DO NOTHING, I WANT I BUY THATS ALL I NEED"
Go back to college, they did you bad
I gave you a short and fast reply and your response starts with "wtf are you talking about" indicating the requirment for depth in the discussion.
So then I take the time to give a thorough reply that completely defies your overt mischaracterizing of my positions... but you refuse to read it and then insult me when I've been nothing but cordial.
So basically you just go around commanding people what to think and if they don't accept it immediately then you become rude and dismissive.
Here I thought extended educations were supposed to cultivate discipline and open-mindedness?
Your entire premise is "well government is untrustworthy, capitalism isnt government, ipso facto..."
Wtf am i supposed to do with that? Government is untrustworthy under specific leaders, its not generally untrustworthy, theres no way to engage somebody like that in a meaningful way, youre probably an anarchist or something im not sure
>Your entire premise is "well government is untrustworthy, capitalism isnt government, ipso facto..
If you'd read the comment you refused to read, then you know why that's not something I believe in. You'd know that I recognize capitalism as inexplicably linked to government and that the notion of its separation is subsequently irrational. Nowhere in this entire post, or any of my comments, will you find me advocating for stateless capitalism because I don't regard this as possible.
>Wtf am i supposed to do with that?
Actually read what I say rather than relying on a straw man fallacy. Actually read the comment that thoroughly represents what I actually think rather than what you pretend I think.
Just found this sub - is it all just everyone patting each other on the back telling themselves only “we get it” and calling every body else dumb?
These are the only posts I’ve seen lmao… I am sure people will be happy to hear you out after you’ve called them a fucking moron. Keep fighting the good fight guys.
Wouldn’t it be crazy if you isolate each of the components and compared and contrasted them to see some data proving or disproving your opinion on it??
Like comparing countries with a free market but no centralized government compared to countries without a free market but a centralized government and observing which has a better economy?
Humans made it about 300k years without too much issue. Only relatively recently with the advent of state organizations have things rapidly gone to shit.
Right. Civilization was a *paradise* when we were wholly subject to wild animal migrations and our agriculture had no protection from the tribe in the next valley over the hill.
When we couldn't predict the weather and thought it was controlled by the gods.
When we didn't have medical knowledge to cure diseases, heal injuries, and prevent/treat infection.
When a single drought could mean the end of our entire extended families.
When our diet consisted of like 12 things.
Everything's gone to shit since then.
Have you ever even heard the phrase, "nasty, brutish, and short?"
The state is a *goddamn miracle*.
No climate change
Nihilism wasn't a thing(which makes everything feel worthless)
We had caring communities rather than being a function of hedonistic decadence.
No threat of world war/WMDs
Our diets consisted of like 12 things *that we are actually supposed to eat and were dietarily healthier for it.
But hay, now I get to suffering a meaningless existence as a young cog, then I die a lonely and invalid cog. Praise the machine that is modernity!
>Right. Civilization was a paradise
I haven't and would never call anything a "paradise." To exist is to suffer. This can be more tolerable if you are in a situation of ignorance and constant striving amongst a supportive community with cultural illusions of meaning. Modern society has taken this possibility from me and maximized my suffering as a result. I will never forgive it.
As a Socialist. I personally have never met or talked to a fellow Socialist who gives credit to the state. Most socialists are anarchists.
This meme seems to go along more with Democrats and Progressives I'd say.
You haven't been around communists then, sure some of them say the stateless society is the end goal, but they want a fully centralized and totally managed economy before that. That's your average socialist/communist.
That's a fine point with Communist. Just don't group everyone is all I'd say. Every Communist may be a Socialist. But not every Socialist is a Communist.
Imagine being this bad faith that you always need to paint such wide strokes onto a group of people.
On a serious note - have you met leftists or communists in real life on a setting that wasn't inherently political or tense?
Marx wasn't ravenously anti-capitalism. He praised it as a necessary stage of development in his philosophy.
Also, the first line in the meme contains a post WWll term, so there's no logical reason to assume I was making up Marx quotes.
Yea, most criticism of capitalism today is a criticism of how modern capitalism works, which has a lot to do with its relationship with the state. Monopolies and communist dictatorships have the same fundamental issues. Market competition is the only real force towards maximizing social utility for the economy.
My favorite part is when they start denying countries like China and Sweden are communist or socialist on the basis that they have private property. They can't handle their ideologies being associated with evil regimes so they basically deny the possibility that socialist or communist regimes can even exist lol
China and Sweden are both mixed market economies with private business and varying degrees of state oversight. Neither is exclusively socialist or communist or capitalist. Both contain elements of private and public ownership of industry. Your argument lacks essential nuance
Right and your argument precludes that an actual socialist or communist system is all but impossible, which renders the entire conversation obsolete since every system has characteristics of all three. Thus your entire point is moot since there is still merit in associating a nation with the system it strives for. I.e. Sweden, while it has private industry, is indeed socialist. While China has private industry, is indeed communist.
China is in no way communist. Authoritarian? Extremely but they have a private sector not owned by the state, not to mention the biggest thing about communism theory, workers need to own the means of production. Socialist? Yeah. Capitalist? Yeah. Sweden is very free market. But they have wide social policies. Therefore not socialist
Your definitions are overly simplistic and would preclude any socialist or communist state from ever existing. Such interpretations are short sighted and don't warrant being taken seriously. Read me and the other guys comments and maybe I'll reply, but I'm not starting over the same conversation from scratch.
China DID follow communist principles for decades, but clearly its current economy has nothing to do with that except political control. They have a stock market.
You're aware that the "China has a stock market" thing is a meme right? A stock market is just a device that allows people to invest or divest from companies, globally. As opposed to investment being restricted to select individuals and politicians. There is nothing axiomatically opposed about a stock market in a communist state.
I'm sorry, but your understanding of political economy is simply incoherent. The entire point of communism is the abolition of private property and capital markets in favor of collective ownership of the means of production. The existence of a stock market— a mechanism for trading ownership shares in private companies -- is fundamentally incompatible with the core tenets of communist ideology. Now, you can certainly argue that China's economy today represents a form of "state capitalism" or "market socialism" rather than orthodox Marxism-Leninism. The Chinese Communist Party has strategically introduced market reforms and tolerated private enterprise in recent decades, while still maintaining a strong degree of state control over the commanding heights of the economy. But the notion that a literal stock exchange is somehow consistent with textbook communism is absurd on its face. The fact that you think pointing this out is just a "meme" betrays a staggering ignorance of basic political and economic concepts. Words mean things - you can't just redefine communism to mean whatever you want to avoid grappling with its real-world track record. If your ideology is so fragile that it requires this kind of blatant doublespeak to sustain itself, perhaps that should prompt some deeper reflection.
A stock market facilitates the private flow of capital which is antithetical to communism. Yes the US and other market economies have more economic freedom, but there’s a wider difference between China today and China before their economic reforms than between the US and China today in terms of economic policy. I’m not an expert or have even been to China for that matter, but reading economic stories about China’s property bubble, these are the typical symptoms of a market economy, not Communism.
No state can be exclusively capitalist, socialist, or communist. It's impossible to avoid having minor characteristics of the other. I.e. in a capitalist society we still pay for socialist institutions like the police. So, how is private flow of capital antithetical to communism? Nevermind the asinine requirement that in a communist state currency doesn't exist. In a communist state there are still incentives to have profit, there are still incentivizes to create good products, it's just the beneficiaries of such companies are the working class as opposed to individuals. Now how is a stock market that allows the working class to be beneficiaries of a company's success antithetical to communism? Would you insist that in a communist state, the working class does not have the freedom to invest their money as the choose? Does being communist imply citizens do not have a choice to invest their own money as they see fit? Because communist countries will always have market driving forces. Even if they are exclusively publically owned. The presence of market driving forces for publically owned companies does not imply a lack of communism. Nor does giving the working class the freedom to voluntarily invest in such companies as they see fit. I'm curious which one of your tenets refutes all this.
Actually the whole lying about their own demographics carried over. It’s why their real estate market is a dumpster fire.
In other words, China was only Communist when it was poor. Now that those Communist policies started paying dividends, we should consider how Capitalist they are.
It doesn’t matter to me what economic system did what. Chinas reforms since 1989 are a radical departure from how economics worked before in China. I am saying currently China has property bubbles, private equity, gigantic publicly traded tech companies, billionaires and huge economic inequality. I mean their Gini coefficient is higher than Japan’s or Australia.
Do you even know what communism or socialism is? Their argument does not such thing.
China is socialist not Sweden. Yes my definition of communism is correct. Eat it
The workers own the means of production in China?
You have a child's temperament. I think you're better suited to AITAH forums.
You’re the one who resulted to personal attacks when they got absolutely *dunked* on by fact.
This sub is ridiculous lol. “I’m not starting this over from scratch” into “you have a child’s temperament”. We get it bro, your personal definitions make your opinions correct.
You have a child’s understanding of economic systems.
Just dishing what I felt coming from you
lol if China is communist, then America is capitalist. Neither are either.
Every piece of land is owned by the state, and the state has the power to take over any business they want to. It is definitely communist.
Communism is a cashless stateless society where the means of production are owned by the workers. So no it is not. It is therefore a totalitarian socialist state. The US owns all its land and can seize it if you don’t pay your property taxes. Are we communist? No dear sir.
That’s unnecessarily reductive. We can independently analyze successes and failures of elements of mixed market economies.
It is not reductive and is accurate. People use such reasoning to avoid recognizing any such system to have ever existed. If you ask a person who thinks such as yourself for an example of socialism or communism, they can't name any, because any such system either deviates from an academic interpretation and or engages in humanitarian abuses not present in the same academic interpretation. The entire basis of their arguments is a desire to defend an academically beautiful system that is in practice dangerous and terrifying. Which is why they use such tactics to repudiate any examples of these systems.
All due respect, I think you're missing the point. The goal isn't to find a "pure" real-world example that aligns perfectly with academic theories. Of course every economy is mixed to some degree. The point is to analyze the outcomes and trade-offs of different economic structures and policies. Lumping countries into broad categories like "socialist" or "communist" based on stated aspirations, rather than actual practices, muddies the waters. Sweden's strong social safety net exists alongside a dynamic market economy - it's not the same as Soviet-style central planning. China's economy today has more in common with state capitalism than traditional communism. The failures of authoritarian regimes like the USSR and Maoist China don't discredit all left-wing ideas. Likewise, the successes of the Nordic model don't validate full-blown socialism. We need a more granular analysis that looks at specific policies and power structures on their own merits. Dismissing critiques of capitalism as naive utopianism is a cop-out. Reformers aren't calling for an overnight revolutio, but for pragmatic changes to rein in corporatism, expand economic democracy, and strengthen the social contract. You can disagree with their prescriptions, but engage with the substance of their arguments. Lazy generalizations and guilt by association make for good polemic, but they shut down substantive debate. I'm happy to critique failures of nominally socialist states, but I won't disavow the entire intellectual tradition because a state claiming its mantle behaved badly.
This is just blatant philosophical sidestepping. The premise of your argument is the same as everyone else's, and it's precisely as you said, to: >muddies the waters. The premise behind such logic is to sidestep the fundamental reality that real socialism and communism are the most dangerous and evil systems to exist, because they empower the ruling class at the expense of the working class, which is the ultimate irony of the stated goals of each system. Both systems are deeply flawed at their roots and disempower the working class, which is why such systems always fail or inevitably embrace the virtues of capitalism. Your use of the term "state capitalism" is indicative of your clear brainwashing. There is no such thing as state capitalism. Capitalism is, by definition, a system that operates at the explicit expense of the state. It is the axiomatic opposite of the nationalization of industry. Capitalism and incorporation of industry with the state is ideologically impossible. What youre referring to is just what communism is. The academic version of communism is in practice what you mean by state capitalism. State capitalism is a misnomer pseudointellects use to sidestep the problem with communism, namely that such systems are impossible to achieve and only exist as thought experiments in the minds of young academics / idealists. The moment any such government is created, it immediately becomes a state capitalist system, which is why the creation of such terminology is deceptive because it implies that the academic variety of communism is still possible and that state capitalism is as well. But this is just clever deceit, because capitalism by definition precludes the state from having any interference, and the real outcome of installing a communist state is explicitly "state capitalism". This whole charade you're doing is a farse, and it's to manipulate the uneducated who can't think for themselves. It's in the same vein as bastardizing the interpretation for liberalism, denying that fascists like mussolini were simultaneously socialists, etc. It's unethical. You're changing definitions to change the goal posts, to stay in the game, while your ideology is rotten from the roots up. TLDR; state capitalism does not exist - it is just actual communism in practice.
I think you're projecting quite a bit onto my argument that I never said and isn’t there. I'm not trying to sidestep anything or deceive anyone. You seem to be operating from a very rigid, ideological framework that doesn't allow for nuance or mixed systems. In your view, any state involvement in the economy is de facto communism, while "true" capitalism requires a complete separation of state and market. But that's simply not how most economists or political scientists understand these terms. Capitalism refers to an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the pursuit of profit in a market economy. It does not preclude all forms of state intervention or regulation. Most capitalist economies today feature a mix of private enterprise and public provision, along with various forms of state action to address market failures, provide public goods, and pursue social goals. This is the "mixed economy" model that characterizes most developed countries. Communism, in theory, refers to a classless, stateless, moneyless society with common ownership of the means of production. In practice, it has been associated with authoritarian one-party states that centrally plan the economy and restrict political freedoms. But there is a wide spectrum of left-wing thought between free-market capitalism and full-blown communism, including various forms of social democracy, market socialism, and participatory economics. The term "state capitalism" is not some obscurantist neologism - it's a well-established concept in political economy, referring to a system where the state controls and directs key industries while allowing some private enterprise and market forces. This is a fair description of China's economy today, as well as Russia and other nominally "communist" countries in the past. It's a way of distinguishing actually-existing economic systems from idealized models. My point is not to defend any particular system, but to advocate for a more empirical, less dogmatic approach to these questions. When taking this stance, the arguments about leftism voiced by the vast majority of people in this sub become facile and naive. Like your parroted arguments about China being communist… You guys are fighting windmills.
>In your view, any state involvement in the economy is de facto communism, while "true" capitalism requires a complete separation of state and market. But that's simply not how most economists or political scientists understand these terms. Again you're just being deceptive. Everyone knows that no pure system exists, but that reality doesn't mean that the terms suddenly become useless and that everything is a variety of capitalism when it's not. Pretending "state capitalism" is a thing is as stupid as saying a democratic dictatorship or anauthoritarian republic is a thing. It is genuinely that stupid. >The term "state capitalism" is not some obscurantist neologism - That's the only thing that it is. >Communism, in theory, refers to a classless, stateless, moneyless society with common ownership of the means of production. In practice, it has been associated with authoritarian one-party states that centrally plan the economy and restrict political freedoms. But there is a wide spectrum of left-wing thought between free-market capitalism and full-blown communism, including various forms of social democracy, market socialism, and participatory economics. To be a communist is to be a walking contradiction. You can't create a communist state without first creating the totalitarian state. But that contradiction doesn't mean we can't use the word anymore, and the presence of market forces driving economics doesn't imply its capitalist. Again, you're just being deceptive over and over, changing definitions to be able to continue your advocacy of centralization of power. Leftists have got to be the most unethical people alive today. Why do yall always insist on changing all definitions? Sheer lunacy
Man, as a libertarian, it's pretty sad to see such a good comment being downvoted and responded to with such weak reasoning.
What are your critiques of free markets?
They generate the most profitable outcomes for firms, which often encourages and even necessitates socially harmful behavior. Profitable =/= socially beneficial.
Interesting. What systems don't encourage socially harmful behavior?
No it's not. It's hurts your position but it's very accurate.
See my response above
I did that before I commented.
You cannot separate elements unless there's absolutely no relationship between those elements.
You cannot possibly believe that is true.
It's not a belief, it's a fact. If you cannot rule out the influence of other factors on a given outcome, it is not valid to draw inferences about that outcome without considering those factors.
That's simply not how social science works. By your logic, we could never isolate the effect of any policy or institution because everything is connected to everything else. Researchers use statistical methods precisely to tease out the impact of specific variables while controlling for confounding factors. It's not perfect, but it's how we learn anything about complex systems.
>That's simply not how social science works. Most social science isn't science at all. It's people with preconceived notions using confirmation bias and cherry-picking to arrive at the conclusions they want. That's why the replication crisis is really bad in social sciences. >By your logic, we could never isolate the effect of any policy or institution because everything is connected to everything else. Precisely. If something can't be isolated, then it seems like it should be obvious that the effects cannot be isolated.
Sorry, under no reasonable definition is the Chinese economy communist. I mean they literally have their own take on Leninism anyways (Leninism with “Chinese characteristics”) which is very openly divergent from Marx’s or Lenin’s intended Comintern end goal. As in they don’t even consider *themselves* communist nor do they aspire to the western understanding of same.
A actual free market is also all but impossible.
"I know Sweden has a stock market and a monarchy, but it's socialist. Bro. Bernie sanders said so. Trust me bro"
Evil? Is this econ or religion?
Authoritarian == Evil Which isn't a bad interchangability metric considering how things tend to go.
Sweden?
Most people agree Sweden is socialist, in spite of Sweden having the majority of their industry and land privately owned. Some people on the left would infer from that they Sweden isn't socialist and is actually capitalist. Their logic stipulates that socialism and communism don't exist anywhere, basically
No. Sweden is capitalist and socialist. They aren't mutually exclusive. I'm confused why people talk about capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive. Communism, on the other hand, is mutually exclusive with capitalism and involves the state owning everything. Capitalism = private ownership Socialism = the government pursuing policies for the benefit of the general public, including higher taxes on the wealthy, lower taxes on the poor, workers rights and protections, public funding of education, national parks, and other "social goods". Socialism is in contrast to libertarianism which is basically "let corporations do whatever they want, the government stays out of it and let's Laissez faire capitalism do whatever it wants". Communism = the government owns everything because it doesn't trust private ownership of anything. What confuses me is why people think socialism is synonymous with communism.
It’s because Sweden isn’t China is closer to socialism but still isn’t there. The only example of proper socialism In my opinion is the Soviet Union China is very close and if they continue as they are they will become socialist eventually.
Sweden is evil? No rulers, no state in China?
China has broken up Marxist book clubs in their universities. To say they're communist really isn't accurate for many reasons. They're a very centrally planned economy and have some communist principles for sure though.
Lol yes, private property does disqualify an economy from being communist or socialist. I beg you to read Marx. Not some Austrian who never touched grass before summarizing it badly, like the source text.
I've read Marx. That's how I know that if Marx was alive today he wouldn't be a communist, and if he was he would have written additional books to address the shortfalls of communism and the successes of capitalism, namely communisms tendency to create authoritarian systems and capitalisms success in making land ownership available to the working class, a reality that did not exist prior to capitalism
You haven’t really comprehended what Marx wrote if you believe this. He seethed the way most Redditors seethe at the prospect of industrialists and capitalists making more money than the workers (ie himself, really). Hence creating a philosophy that called for violent dispossession of that same group.
His biggest criticism was actually on land ownership. His primary justification for communism would be it's shared ownership of land. Capitalism more than any other system has basically refuted the entire premise for his manifesto, namely that free markets allow the working class the highest probability to own land out of any system
Ok…and he advocated creating these communist structures via violent dispossession. The rest was magic hand waving about how people somehow transcend ethnic, religious and linguistic ties to identify more on the basis of what job they had. What I’m trying to say is that Marx was long on theory baked primarily by financial jealousy with an ivory tower homo economicus view of human behavior. The fact that capitalism has refuted his entire premise would cause him cognitive dissonance, not cheerful objective scientist acceptance. Smith ironically was a scientist, as capitalism is essentially a set of conclusions from empirical comparative study of the UK, France and a few other countries
You have critical levels of copium if you believe this. You could just read leftcom writings if you want a Marxist reaction to degenerative worker states.
Market competition works best under a neutral system of laws protecting the rights of individuals
LOBBYISTS !!!!!!!
Most criticism of capitalism I see is actually criticism of liberal corporatism, and the person making the critique couldn’t actually give you an accurate definition of the core aspects of capitalist theory.
Yes this all the way. Idk if you saw but there are dumb dumbs making similar arguments about monopolies in the replies here.
Corruption is the common denominator.
Cronyism
The issue we have with capitalism and it's relationship with the government is that companies are able to lobby the government to decrease regulations on them, while also bailing out massive financial "losses" brought on to these companies by parasitic CEOs and middle management, including but not limited to Public and private schools, construction companies, military contractors, automotive companies, etc. American "capitalism* is functionally "socialism" for massive companies and wealthy families, while being unrelenting crushing inequality for everyone else.
>Yea, most criticism of capitalism today is a criticism of how modern capitalism works Capitalism is capitalism. If the government has it's thumb in it, it's not capitalism - it's socialism.
That a great opinion to have if you are only capable of rhetoric and ideals. The world is more complicated than that.
What the United States has is one of if not the best system on paper. Theres a capitalist base that encourages growth and competition while having socialist ideals such as social security built on top of it.
True, pragmatic government is what won the Cold War. We did socialism better than the soviets and we could actually fund it thanks to our economy.
Honest question. What stops a monopoly from emerging in a truly laissez-faire economy? And why would a business operating for profit NOT then proceed to undertake any means necessary to raise profit margins? Slowly bringing the pot to a boil so the frog doesn’t jump out. Here are some (but not all) of the methods used to improve profit margins. There are probably some duplicates or near-duplicates, and definitely some blank spots, but almost all of them are familiar to me in day to day dealings with various corporations. ### 1. **Pricing and Revenue Strategies** - Price Discrimination - Higher Prices - Geographic Expansion - Diversification - Market Segmentation - Localized Pricing - Real-Time Pricing Adjustments - Surge Pricing - Bundling - Psychological Profit Margin Methods - Vestigial Brand Recognition/Reputation - Scarcity and Urgency Tactics - Anchoring - Decoy Pricing - Loss Aversion - Social Proof - Authority Bias - Reciprocity - Price Framing - Emotional Appeal - Consistency Principle - Guilt Tripping ### 2. **Operational and Cost Efficiency** - Economies of Scale - Cost Reduction - Technological Advancements - Vertical Integration - Exclusive Agreements - Stockpiling Resources - Delayed Payments to Suppliers - Leveraging Debt - Creative Accounting - Skimpflation - Service Reduction - Increased Use of Contract or Gig Workers ### 3. **Market Control and Competitive Practices** - Lobbying - Patent Protection - Predatory Pricing - Acquisitions - Regulatory Capture - Litigation - Patent Trolling - Extending Patent Lifespans - Non-Compete Clauses - Long-Term Contracts - Horizontal Integration - Digital Lock-In - Data Throttling ### 4. **Consumer and Labor Exploitation** - Loyalty Programs - Customer Data Utilization - Planned Obsolescence - Creating Artificial Scarcity - Hidden Fees - Penalty Fees - False Advertising - Bait and Switch - Underpaying Workers - Unsafe Working Conditions - Union Busting - Reduction or Elimination of Benefits - Elimination of Retirement/Pension Plans - Wage Suppression - Complex and Opaque Pricing Structures - Subscription Traps - Quality Reduction - Information Asymmetry - Misleading Warranty Terms - Addictive Design - Mandatory Subscriptions - Auto-Renewals - Payday Loans and Predatory Lending - Rent-to-Own Schemes - Surveillance Capitalism - Data Monopolies - Tax Avoidance - Corporate Welfare - Neglecting Environmental Regulations - Resource Overexploitation So I guess my main question is, what theoretical force is there supposed to be to prevent any of that? The only reason we don’t still have child labor (in the US, at least theoretically) is because of the government. Anywhere that doesn’t care still sends children to die or waste away in dirty factories. Believe me, there’s more wrong than right about the U.S. federal government. They enable a lot of problems and I think the rot runs too deep for it to be fixed at this point. But like… What’s the alternative? Nothing? Because finance as a concept is amoral. Not IMmoral, Amoral, not pertaining to morality. A small mom and pop shop is comprised of a small handful of locals who ostensibly (ideally) participate in their local community. But Amazon is comprised of about 1.5 million human beings, and an entity that large no longer represents anything human, it is purely financial, and displays a significant number of the harmful/manipulative strategies listed.
When did capitalism ever not have a lot to do with the state?
Monopolies are the only and natural result possible from an actual free market.
dude. its the corporations using influence to tear down consumer protections that the government put into effect. dissolving the state only speedruns late stage capitalism and returns most of us to slaves. not wage slaves. slaves.
People had criticisms of historic capitalism also. The failures of historic capitalism, necessitated the creation of new forms of capitalism which in turn failed and lead to what we have today. What period of capitalism would you prefer and how would you propose to keep it in that state, without it breaking down leading to a new form?
A fully free market necessarily declines into a semi monopoly or oligopoly market. The reason being is that the first movers and successful companies in any market will eventually dominate the market as they buy out other competitors. The reality is that the only thing stopping the eventual monopolization of any industry is either the state or perhaps a extremely idealistic company. But the idealistic company has to be willful enough to not sell out to the much larger oligopolies as it starts. Which often times is not enough. It also has to content with unfair business practices like dumping of goods, slander, etc in a totally unregulated market. Obviously with state intervention you suffer from similar regulatory problems too as the companies can buy the politicians to enact regulation which creates barriers to entry. But in theory politicians aren’t ultimately beholden to the market place unlike companies are, they are for the people and given enough pressure from the people they’ll elect someone who will put regulation in place to benefit the population at large, often which breaks up monopolies if the companies are engaging in too much predatory pricing. But the reality is that outside of communists and anarcho capitalism, who both wish to see the state destroyed and replaced with either market or social solutions to these problems. The best solution is a combination of both state and market solutions as that’s what every single country in the world has implemented. Every single country has a mixed policy which has some elements of market and state solutions with incentives that might push people into various directions. The problem with memes like this is that they are so incredibly general that you can’t have a real discussion. The economy is far too complex in any state for it to be boiled down to saying any one fix, including a free market, is honestly the solution as every tweak will have unintended consequences including tweaks towards more state regulation or more free market solutions. Op needs to provide specific examples for a real discussion to be had with specific laws or company case studies.
>A fully free market necessarily declines into a semi monopoly or oligopoly market. The reason being is that the first movers and successful companies in any market will eventually dominate the market as they buy out other competitors. Not necessarily. In a fully free market there would be no government patent protections, letting competitors steal all of your r&d work for free and offer a competing copy with less invested, theoretically allowing them to sell it for less. In theory it could lead to a never-ending cycle of innovating>copying>undercutting>innovating between competing firms. Each taking turns ripping the other off and saving on r&d costs.
This arguement completely ignores barriers to entry. What you state will work for maybe 3 rounds of innovation, then someone is gonna realize that you can make more money by denying competitors than you can trying to innovate.
> Not necessarily. In a fully free market there would be no government patent protections, letting competitors steal all of your r&d work for free and offer a competing copy with less invested, theoretically allowing them to sell it for less. Hmmm, this would only be true of a company that lacks economies of scale. The entrenched incumbent would have economies of scale that a competitor likely doesn’t, certainly not a start up, furthering the monopolization of the industry. The only time your example might work is with tech. > In theory it could lead to a never-ending cycle of innovating>copying>undercutting>innovating between competing firms. Each taking turns ripping the other off and saving on r&d costs. I suppose. I still think the economies of scale would benefit whoever developed the product first. But if this was the case in your example you’d eventually have firms stopping R&D completely because why would you be the sucker to develop something if your competitor can easily copy and then undercut you. Either way, both of these are evidence why no nations ever allow a fully free market solution to anything. It has tons of unintended consequences too. There’s no easy solution or perfect solution in our world.
Or, the last one: the bad outcomes follow from not enough state power/taxes. It's like they're children. Idiocracy was a documentary.
Big government is what plants crave!
> It's like they're children. They basically are. They want freedom, but they don't want the responsibility that goes with it. Basically like a child with daddy/mommy looking over
The bad outcomes come from lack of accountability to the populace. The only entities less accountable to the public are corporations, which is why everyone laughs at the libertarians when they argue that the world would be better with no governments. The government will kill you for embarrassing them, or organizing a labor union that affects a political donor or whatever. A corporation will kill thousands to save 3/10s of a cent per ton of bananas.
You know idiocracy is anti capitalist right? It makes a joke of what would happen if corporations take over America. And you're right, it is very indicative of modern society, but really not in the way you think.
No, the joke in Idiocracy is: what happens when the dumb people outbreed the smart people? In 2006 the dumbest people were watching brain rot TV shows and parroting corporate slogans. The 2024 equivalent is people who get their political education from TikTok and parrot the propaganda of failed ideologies.
You find yourself a bit over your head, I see. So, we don't live in a capitalist economy. And what it describes/criticizes is exactly where we are and where we are headed. It's frightening to realize that people like you vote. Your "education" has seriously failed you.
Explain how you think Capitalism can avoid becoming an oligarchy without state intervention.
Capitalism doesn't produce oligarchies, it produces oligopolies. It's an economic system, not a system of government. Of course you still need a state to enforce laws, such as contract law and property law. The state provides the -archy and capitalism provides the -opoly. But I don't think that's what you mean by state intervention, I suspect you mean the state needs to directly intervene in the markets to prevent oligopolies. But oligopolies are not a bad thing, it simply means the marketplace has selected a small number of companies as "best in breed" for providing certain specialised services at scale. Provided transactions are voluntary and contract and property law is enforced, it's not an oligarchy. They can't command and dictate based on their wealth, they can only make offers, which can be accepted or refused. If you're worried about rich people using their wealth and influence to affect politics, this can be remedied with laws around campaign financing. But it would be a one-off change of legislation, not a requirement for ongoing intervention in the markets.
It requires a constitutional amendment after Citizens United, which means it’ll never happen.
It can be remedied by simply not voting for the people they throw their money behind. However, that is apparently a bridge too far for the average voter in this country.
Capitalism becomes oligarchical precisely through state intervention. And hereby it becomes [fascism](https://open.substack.com/pub/mistermicawber/p/what-is-a-cult-what-is-fascism?r=110wl5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web). Which is where we are.
Private hire militias to enforce self-created laws created by the largest fish of the industries.
So... Oligarchy.
This is an insane response lol
Um... we're trying to *avoid* feudalism, not resurrect it. Thanks.
I was just pointing out what happens with Anarcho-Capitalism :)
You know it’s insane when your only solution to a problem is more of the things that caused the problem in the first place.
You almost got the point.
Capitalists just follow the rules given to them by the Govt you voted for.
As if we’re ever presented any other choice but blue or red capitalism
Of course you have a choice, if both sides were bad, we’d all be destitute, hungry and living like Venezuelans.
Venezuela is in the state it’s in because of American interventionism.
Thank you for proving my point you have the government you deserve.
Wait, we have the government we deserve because we voted for them before we were born in some cases? Are you sure about that
Capitalists make the rules set by the government because they fund or “lobby” the politicians
Bingo you win the internet, and those politicians get into Office by idiot people voting for the same crap over and over and over.
No way I always wanted to win the internet. Cant argue with your point I wish more people had class consciousness
How the hell does Nancy Pelosi keep getting re-elected overwhelmingly? She’s been caught insider trading, her district has to print maps to show where the piles of public excrement are in the streets. You get the Govt you deserve. I wish people understood that most laws are actually written by Corps and lobbied into law, in return for campaign contributions.
The argument doesn't make sense. Problems exist because capitalism can't exist without a state No problem would exist if capitalism existed without the state? There's absolutely no evidence of this, not in history. Capitalism is always run within a state bureaucracy it's impossible for one to exist without the other. At the bare minimum, we use money and laws of the government to facilitate capitalism. Otherwise that would not be capitalism.
We can use money without the state being involved (Bitcoin) and we can transact without laws being involved (Robinson Crusoe gives Friday a fish in exchange for some berries). I agree that it is preferable to have laws for a whole bunch of reasons, but it's wrong to say it would not be capitalism without them. Property laws can still exist as "gentleman's agreements" - I won't touch your stuff if you don't touch mine - without a state to enforce them. The fact that there's no historical record of it being done this way doesn't make it impossible. There's also no historical record of self-driving cars, yet here we are. Things can change. And you've missed the point of the post. It wasn't to say "no problems would exist in capitalism without a state", it was to point out the double-think of capitalism's critics (everything good in the modern world is thanks to the state, everything bad is thanks to capitalism).
This is as naive as a 19 year old talking about why Communism hasn’t really been tried in earnest and could totally work if people just acted the right way.
*Gentlemen's agreements???* Be serious. Open a history book. Jesus Christ.
The fact that there's no Spider-Man doesn't mean there couldn't be one, Right? Gentleman's agreements ? You live in the same Fantasyland communists do. It makes you believe that capitalism has no flaws and government is just full of them. Which is a falsehood. Capitalism main flaw is it needs a state to run in. Is this a terrible meme, do better.
My issue with this is not ignorance but hypocrisy. Most people say they hate capitalism while they live an absolutely capitalistic life. The same way way they advocate for high taxes but do their best not to pay them themselves.
Capitalism is not a voluntary system that you can opt out of. It necessarily grows, encloses, and consumes other forms of social life. It wasn't the fairy tale about deer and squirrel hunters in econ textbooks, it was a violent upheaval of social life enforced by aristocrats with waning power from the dying feudalist order. Even being a hermit hut dweller in the woods isn't even a fool-proof solution. The effects of capitalism reach far-remote places. Also, wanting to pay less taxes while having higher taxes isn't a contradiction. You could want to pay less taxes, want capitalists to pay more taxes, or ideally just not have capital, and have more funds for social programs and less for war and corporate welfare.
Exactly. So you want others to pay more taxes, just like everyone else. It’s definitely a contradiction. If you want big government you have to pay for it. It’s like saying that volunteering is super important and insulting those who do not do it while you never volunteered in your life. You can totally opt out of capitalism. Go live in a non-capitalistic country. Ah, they suck? Exactly, because other systems are not a fairy tale, same as the pre-capitalistic past. Or you think it was peaceful, generous, and people didn’t have to work to eat?
It's not lol, please read. I don't want "others" in general to pay more taxes, I want *capitalists* to, as payment for the rentseeking behaviors that fuck everything up for us. If you really think you can just go elsewhere to opt-out of capitalism, or that any country in the world recognized by the UN is non-capitalist, you have never read any history and have no understanding of ideas outside of biased summaries by Austrian economists.
No serious scholar argues this. The real argument is that negative outcomes like inequality and environmental damage are inherent to capitalism's profit-driven logic, while the state played an essential role in curtailing that fundamental bias. Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding. Capitalism's cheerleaders are the ones guilty of contradiction, not its critics. The best anti-capitalist thinkers acknowledge nuance - markets aren't all bad and the state isn't all good. What they offer is a systemic analysis of how private capital accumulation tendencies lead to crises and propose more democratic, egalitarian models. You can debate their alternatives, but at least represent their actual views, not this dumbed-down caricature. ‘Markets solve everything’ is baby shit. Markets produce profit, which only creates socially beneficial outcomes when the state intervenes to regulate socially harmful, but profitable behavior by firms.
Negative outcomes are inherent to life. Only the most arrogant think they can come up with a solution that is so good that it can't wait to be voluntarily adopted but must be imposed by force.
>Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding So, thank you state for the growth and innovation that naturally causes conditions for climate change. This makes the state the most terrible thing to befall humanity. >You can debate their alternatives, but at least represent their actual views, not this dumbed-down caricature The nature of memes is in large part to dumb things down, or its not very memetic. The beauty of this particular line of reasoning is it represents a very simplified and nonspecific contradiction I have been able to lead conversations through many times. You are correct that more intellectual anti-capitalists won't fall for this because they see nuance, but they will also never produce the premise necessary for me to lead them to such a contradiction. This does not, however, mean I have failed to accurately represent the much more pervasive stupidity we run into on reddit, which is what I was going for. >'Markets solve everything’ is baby shit I agree. Also I haven't and wouldn't say this.
State investment in research and infrastructure isn't inherently to blame for environmental damage. The problem is when the state fails to properly regulate industry and account for negative externalities. A more active, democratically-accountable state is essential for steering innovation towards sustainable and equitable ends. The worst ecological destruction has happened when capital has captured the state, not when the state has constrained capital. Secondly, I get that memes trade in simplification, but there's a difference between abstracting concepts and grossly misrepresenting them. If your goal is just to score rhetorical points against the most simplistic possible version of an ideology, then sure, fire away. But if you actually want to change minds or have a substantive discussion, you need to engage with the strongest form of the opposing argument, not the weakest. Propping up an army of straw men might make you feel smart, but it's intellectually lazy. My serious engagement is a tone mismatch for a meme, sure, but I’m here and we’re chatting in good faith nonetheless. Finally, I'm glad we agree that "markets solve everything" is baby shit. But if that's the case, why lean so heavily on "capitalism good, state bad" reductionism? A serious critique of capitalism needs to grapple with the complex interplay between states and markets, and the ways in which capitalist dynamics can undermine democracy and concentrations of private power can distort public policy. Ancaps and market fundamentalists are just the mirror image of tankie LARPers - both are substituting dogma for analysis. I'm not saying the far left has all the answers. A lot of online "socialists" trade in shallow sloganeering and utopianism rather than hard-headed political economy. But the same is true of a lot of libertarian and conservative cheerleaders for capitalism.
I am going to break this into chunks, first chunk: >State investment in research and infrastructure isn't inherently to blame for environmental damage. The problem is when the state fails to properly regulate industry and account for negative externalities. A more active, democratically-accountable state is essential for steering innovation towards sustainable and equitable ends. The worst ecological destruction has happened when capital has captured the state, not when the state has constrained capital Reply: >Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding This quote, you recognize the state makes the primary conditions for environmental disaster possible. Which means no matter what addendums are made hence forth to future particularities, the fact remains *no state* would mean no climate disaster if one assumes the state is a necessity for the modern economy to exist. >A more active, democratically-accountable state is essential for steering innovation towards sustainable and equitable ends Well you hope it will be able to do that to fix the circumstances it made possible via "growth and innovation(that) came from socialistic state planning and funding." Hopefully, it will do that without creating even worse circumstances like it did when it aimed to liberate us from circumstances caused by other older states centuries ago. >The worst ecological destruction has happened when capital has captured the state, not when the state has constrained capital There can only be one sovereign in a nation, one ultimate power. If the "private" interests have ultimate power, then they are the true sovereign(the "government), and thus not "private" interests but instead "state" interests. So there's no "capture" in this case, but a new or changed state. If the military(presumed to be the greatest force) answers to the politicians instead of private interests, then the politicians are the sovereigns by virtue of being able to anhilate private interest groups at will. I am presuming the latter is true of the country that claims ownership of me, the US. This means that whatever the state(accumulated descision making of the political elites) decides is what naturally represents its will. Subsequently, what you are calling "state capture" is actually just the reality of what the state wants being in opposition to what you think the state *ought* to want. End of first chunk I have Enchiladas to eat, I am not done and will move onto the next chunk, assuming my whims drive me to do so.
I’m going to consolidate back into this reply. I'm afraid you've fundamentally misunderstood my argument. Let me be crystal clear: Your claim that "no state would mean no climate disaster" is simply false. The state is not the sole or even primary driver of environmental destruction - the profit motive and the externalization of ecological costs by private firms is. Even without modern governments, 8 billion people practicing industry and agriculture would devastate ecosystems. The state is a potential mechanism for constraining that damage and coordinating solutions, not the root cause. Your analysis is just flatly wrong. Your attempt to attribute all the ills of capitalism to the state is equally misguided. Yes, political and economic power are intertwined - that's the point! But they are not identical. Capitalist incentive structures generate problems that government policy then has to address. Corporations seek profit, not the public good. Ignoring the inherent dynamics of markets and fixating on the state as the only source of coercion in society is incredibly naive political economy. Finally, your glib dismissal of any attempts at reform or progress short of anarchist utopia is just ideological self-indulgence. Politics is about building coalitions and fighting for concrete improvements in people's lives, not pontificating about ideal end-states.
You are being what the meme represents by contradicting yourself. You said: >Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding >**otherwise *impossible* growth and innovation** As in without this, the modern economy can not be the way it is. Now you are saying: >Your claim that "no state would mean no climate disaster" is simply false. The state is not the sole or even primary driver of environmental destruction Then you say: >the profit motive and the externalization of ecological costs by private firms is Which is just a longer way of saying "it's capitalism fault." >Even without modern governments, 8 billion people practicing industry and agriculture would devastate ecosystems Without modern governments, and most of its forms leading up to now, there wouldn't be 8 billion people to devastate ecosystems as they do. We wouldn't be at this point. >The state is a potential mechanism for constraining that damage and coordinating solutions, not the root cause 👇 >Essential, otherwise impossible growth and innovation came from socialistic state planning and funding You can't grow things to where they are chaotically, you need central planning. >Corporations seek profit, not the public good And the state seek propagating it's status as the ultimate power, not the public good. It loves utilizing policies that we regard as capitalistic cause this is a fantastic pattern of power acquisition. This is the states will, and subsequently the consequences are the consequences of that will. > Ignoring the inherent dynamics of markets and fixating on the state as the only source of coercion in society is incredibly naive political economy. If something has sub-sovereign coercion its because the sovereign allows it directly or as a consequence of its own will. >Finally, your glib dismissal of any attempts at reform or progress short of anarchist utopia is just ideological self-indulgence I am not an anarchist, utopianist, or ideological. I recognize things as they are and regard all "oughts" as fantasies. I am a hard determinist and materialist, so my veiws just accepts whatever exists now and whatever is bound to come into existence in the future. I don't have agency in any of it, my will does not come from me. I am simply the manifestation of interactions that precede me, and I can only do what I am bound to do. One thing I do is call the state shit, and that is cause my passion has dictated this reality upon me. >Politics is about building coalitions and fighting for concrete improvements in people's lives, not pontificating about **ideal end-states** I don't believe in *end of history* hegelian crap. I think struggle never ends, people will suffer ever onward. P.S. You keep attributing positions to me that I don't possess. This is ironic given how hung up(wrongly) you were about me strawmaning. So, I ask that you stop pushing positions onto me that I didn't claim to have.
Second chunk: >Secondly, I get that memes trade in simplification, but there's a difference between abstracting concepts and grossly misrepresenting them. If your goal is just to score rhetorical points against the most simplistic possible version of an ideology, then sure, fire away. But if you actually want to change minds or have a substantive discussion, you need to engage with the strongest form of the opposing argument, not the weakest. Propping up an army of straw men might make you feel smart, but it's intellectually lazy. My serious engagement is a tone mismatch for a meme, sure, but I’m here and we’re chatting in good faith nonetheless Reply: >Secondly, I get that memes trade in simplification, but there's a difference between abstracting concepts and grossly misrepresenting them. I actually made the meme because I have exposed this contradiction in individuals many times. You can go to my older replies from today and see them for yourself, but they might be a bit deep at this point. >If your goal is just to score rhetorical points against the most simplistic possible version of an ideology, then sure, fire away Thank you, I will. >But if you actually want to change minds or have a substantive discussion, you need to engage with the strongest form of the opposing argument, not the weakest. My philisophical veiws don't regard changing minds as possible unless the irrational passions dictating what they value cause them to want to change their mind in a way compatible with my veiws. The people that require a *steel man* are unlikely to want to change their mind, and ultimately won't if this remains so. So its hard to have passion for seeking such a thing. >Propping up an army of straw men might make you feel smart, but it's intellectually lazy As mentioned prior, the meme represents my lived experiences, one of the many occurring today. So the meme is in no way a strawman fallacy. I generally feel painfully stupid regardless of the circumstance because I can't even figure out why or how I "want," only thar I just "do." I am just acting in the only way I can. >My serious engagement is a tone mismatch for a meme, sure, but I’m here and we’re chatting in good faith nonetheless. I didn't mean to imply that your tone was improper. I merely pointed out that the meme is not for the purpose of a the best informed, but instead the people I more commonly run into on reddit. So, to assert it misrepresenting other more intellectually cultivated people is just not correct. I intended to have it represent the sort of people that it does. End of second chunk.
Third chunk: >Finally, I'm glad we agree that "markets solve everything" is baby shit. But if that's the case, why lean so heavily on "capitalism good, state bad" reductionism? A serious critique of capitalism needs to grapple with the complex interplay between states and markets, and the ways in which capitalist dynamics can undermine democracy and concentrations of private power can distort public policy. Ancaps and market fundamentalists are just the mirror image of tankie LARPers - both are substituting dogma for analysis Reply: >But if that's the case, why lean so heavily on "capitalism good, state bad" reductionism I regard the whole organism as terrible, and I hold states accountable more so than every other organization because they are the sovereigns. They have more say in all things than all other things, so they are always most responsible. >A serious critique of capitalism needs to grapple with the complex interplay between states and markets, and the ways in which capitalist dynamics can undermine democracy and concentrations of private power can distort public policy If private entities can undermine the sovereign by being more powerful, then it's not the sovereign, the "private" entities are the sovereign. In which case, they aren't private entities in anything but name. They are instead the state... so I am still holding the state responsible. If the sovereign is more powerful than private entities, nothing those private entities do is something the state doesn't will them to do. >Ancaps and market fundamentalists are just the mirror image of tankie LARPers - both are substituting dogma for analysis I agree, they live in a fantasy world.
The last paragraph you gave contains nothing I would argue with.
I appreciate you trying to be actually logical in your stance even if I disagree with it. I do want to point out that the worst ecological disasters have happened when the state has captured capital. USSR with the famine in Ukraine and the abuse of the sea in Eurasia (I forget which sea but the one that they have basically drained out of existence). Mao and his government policies to kill all pigeons and to divert rivers and many many other stupid projects. Pol Pot and all his bullshit. The issue people have with the state is motivation. Capital has one motivation and it is always known and upfront, profit, state will claim 1000 different motives from protecting lower class, building infrastructure, expanding human rights, etc but ultimately the people that run the state are really only motivated on getting reelected. They also are almost always short sighted in their policy making to where you constantly must amend/update/get rid of them because they weren’t thought out or were purposely made weak. In an ideal world we would let capital continue to focus on simply doing its thing and have a state that makes limited yet very meaningful policy interventions on behalf of the society that are actually thought out and effective. I do agree that unbridled capitalism will inevitably snowball all the capital within the system into the hands of a few dozen firms/individuals and they will be in a position to push labor around. You need the state and capital to push and pull one another for society to receive maximum benefits but the state needs to limit its active involvement within capital or society will not receive the maximum value from capital. Without successful capital system it doesn’t matter how successful the government is the society will not benefit in the long run without a strong and healthy capital system
Sorry for the late response and the novel, but I appreciate you engaging in good faith and wanted to do your arguments justice. Thank you for your thoughtful response. First, on the question of ecological disasters under communist regimes: you're absolutely right that the record of 20th century state socialism on environmental protection was abysmal. The Soviet Union and Maoist China in particular perpetrated some truly staggering ecocides in the name of crash industrialization and utopian social engineering. The Aral Sea disaster and the sparrow campaign are infamous examples of hubristic central planning leading to ecological catastrophe. However, I would argue that these failures stem more from the pathologies of authoritarianism and, more specifically, the growth-at-all-costs productivism that communism shared with Western capitalisms, rather than from some inherent quality to state intervention in the economy per se. A democratically-accountable state apparatus— one that properly represents the long-term interests of its citizens and is constrained by robust civil society institutions— would be much less likely to run roughshod over the environment in that way. Whereas an oligarchic capitalist class, if unchecked, will often be more than happy to trash the commons for short-term gain. Which brings us to your key point about motivation. I agree that the profit motive is a powerful driver of productivity and innovation. And I'm not suggesting we completely eliminate markets or private enterprise. But I also think it's naive to assume that firms will always be transparent about their intentions, or that the pursuit of profit will reliably align with the public good. History is replete with examples of companies lying, cheating, and stealing their way to windfall gains at grievous social expense. So in my view, the trick is to harness the dynamism of markets while also maintaining robust democratic checks on private power. You need a muscular regulatory apparatus to enforce fair competition, safe working conditions, environmental standards, consumer protections, and so on. You need a strong social safety net to cushion the vagaries of the business cycle and ensure a decent standard of living for all. And you need strategic public sector investment to spur innovation in areas that may not be immediately profitable but are vital for long-term flourishing. This philosophy is dead-on-arrival for many in this subreddit, because they’re caught in ideological traps and platitudes that prevent them from engaging with appropriate complexity. Getting that balance right is really hard, and reasonable people can disagree on the optimal mix. But I think the Nordic countries have shown that it's possible to combine a thriving market economy with a capacious welfare state and effective environmental stewardship. They're not perfect, but they're a lot closer to "successful capital system" and "successful government" than either the minimalist night watchman state or the hulking Stalinist Leviathan. Of course, the Nordics also benefit from a host of cultural and institutional advantages that make their model hard to straightforwardly replicate elsewhere. But at the very least, I think they demonstrate the falsity of the stark "capitalism vs socialism" dichotomy that so much of our political discourse defaults to. We have to resist the Manichean temptation of ‘government bad’. It heads all of the useful work off at the pass.
You’re right that the socialist/communist regimes enacted ridiculous policies maybe based more on their authoritarianism rather than because of the state but authoritarianism requires a robust state apparatus which is why in many cases the more robust the state the more absolute the power and therefore the inefficiencies. That does not mean that a strong state apparatus is bad because she’s an apathetic state is arguably worse. It also doesn’t mean that any state apparatus that is robust is authoritarian but nearly all authoritarian have robust apparati, thus why people become fearful when the state expands or becomes too domineering. You’re also right that capital can snowball into an oligarchical system which is why the state must be built to prevent this but not at the cost of losing the dynamism of the market. I think we agree with virtually everything but it seems when it comes to finding the right balance You would prefer to err on the side of the state where as I prefer to err on the side of capital. I have not made up my mind about the Nordic countries setup or really any other countries setup because i think it would take a lot of time of research to understand and appreciate a different countries setup and all its pros and cons and how it would be applicable on a much larger more complicated scale like America.
Honestly, this person whines about people lacking nuance but themselves demonstrates a distaste for nuance in this discussion
Lol, the immediate petty downvote. Do it again.
lol what?
Huh?
Communists lie because they're liars. That's why their responses are so often massive walls of text. Mince enough words, and maybe people won't notice that for all their shitting on the capitalist strawman they conjure up, they never offer a solution, much less an actionable plan.
Leftist here. Yeah a capitalist state creates problems therefor it the states fault. If it was socialist economy then it would be the socialist states fault. The difference is a socialist state is more readily able to attempt to solve the problem. Where as in a capitalist state we have to figure out how to make a dollars off it first.
So Venezuela is the socialist’s state’s fault?
Yes. No system is perfect but personal a moral socialist state is superior to a moral capitalist state. In that respect I would much rather support and create a moral socialist state.
Do you know any moral and successful socialist country? And before you jump to the Nordic countries, they are explicitly capitalistic. I found socialism highly immoral but you may have good examples to the contrary.
Blanket statements always win the argument!
Truth is everything good and bad today came about due to both
Does OP believe a true free market would make things better genuinely? Both capitalism and the state are not perfect and balance should be the goal. I’m not smart enough to know what that balance looks like unfortunately. I do feel strongly that things would be worse than they are now with zero regulation and I think that’s a reasonable statement to make.
I don't think a "true free market" can exist.
Most arguments about capitalism and the like consist of two groups of people, neither of which understand what they're talking about, making shoddy excuses for why their biological intuitions and cultural conditioning are "correct". This sub is no exception. The breadth and complexity of concepts required to even begin to make sense of our civilization is beyond what most people can process or withstand emotionally, and in lieu of that they resort to ideological narrativizing. Get a better hobby, or go to church or something.
Most people I see who are against "capitalism" are really just against unregulated capitalism. So the more likely scenario here is, well what about the failures? Well, capitalism isn't really supposed to handle that. That's why we have regulations. Capitalism is doing great. Except for a few things. Those things are intended by some people but are incontrovertibly bad for most people. Accumulation of wealth in very few hands? That's a recipe for authoritarianism. Deadlocked at zero wealth because there is no way to get started? Capitalism literally isn't supposed to handle that, it only describes how to best allocate wealth... Not how to obtain starter wealth. I think most anticapitalist folks are really what capitalism needs. If you point out the flaws in something and fix them then there isn't some sudden inflection or realization which causes people to choose another system. And choosing another system is absolutely possible.
You're aware that legal enforcement of private property rights (upon which capitalism depends) does not exist without a state, right? Like, that is what a state *is*. The sovereign party that is willfully enforcing law across some specific territory, even against the wishes of some.
I want you to give me a quote where I say private property rights dont exist without the state.
That's *exactly* the problem, though. You don't say it. I sure do. And so should everybody.
I am sleepy, what I meant to say was: Give me a quote where I say private property would exist without the state.
Capitalism is merely a mechanism the powerful use to control. For most people money is what they use to live, but for the VERY rich it's just the unit they use to measure influence. Capitalism works great on paper. Works pretty good on a small scale- but it breaks down when millions become billions. At that point it's so susceptible to corruption that it becomes inevitable.
Capitalism evolved from past systems, it was not created consciously nor is it under the control of a group of people.
It wasn't created? It just evolved. Lmao. All ideas and concepts are thought up and made up. Capitalism was as made up as the words I'm typing right now. Which means yea, it's super made up.
Wow, you really proved that point.
Funny, since I see more rabid “pro-capitalism” propaganda like this post, which has no actual basis in reality. We get it… if capitalism was a person you’d be the first on your knees deep throating him.
I dont like modern capitalism, it's a blight made possible by centralized organization from the state.
The 3rd part is a non-sequiter. If A exists via support of B. It does not follow that B is to blame for all outcomes/actions of A.
The state predates the modern first-world economy. The notion of a first-world doesn't even exist until the cold war era.
"Therefore all good outcomes are also logically the states fault then"
Thats... what the second line of the meme sets as a premise to justify the third... ?
What on earth is this talking about. Yes a first world economy couldn’t exist without a state, because a capitalist economy requires the state protection of private ownership of firms to be viable. Else someone with a bunch of guns could easily overthrow anything they’d like. The state protects the rights and privileges of capital. They ARE one connected system, to claim that capitalism functions without state interference is to not actually understand what capitalism is. I don’t know anyone who claims that the state is responsible for all good and the market for all evil. Anti-capitalist thought doesn’t even need a stronger state, so you’re building a Strawman to fight that doesn’t really exist.
If you are an anarchist it’s actually not a contradictory position. Not saying what’s right or wrong, I’m just saying there is a philosophy out there that holds both the state and corporations are two sides of the same coin.
Anti capitalist is kinda like believing in the flat earth.
Next you'll decry crony capitalism as if monopolistic intent isn't a feature of capitalism. The bad outcomes under a capitalism based system are a feature, not a bug. I'm not saying there isn't a place for markets, but the capitalism you fetishize is worse. Without a centralized democracy to regulate a capital market, you end up with fudalism. That's why as we navigated away from fudalism into mercantileism, we saw the disruption of the ruling class and the dissemination of capital to many individuals. Same with the complete transition to capitalism. Next, we will see more of a transition to social democracy and then to a more socialism structured form of market. Capitalism creates too many negative effects for it to be tolerated by reasoned well-meaning individuals.
Market externalities and monopolies are known flaws with laissez faire capitalism that would exist without a state. These are two problems that regulations try to fix.
# this is just "i'm too scared to change uwu" but with more steps.
Another great economics post from this economics sub.
I mean, capitalism could literally not exist without states. Guys, can we just acknowledge capitalism has major flaws…even though it’s still the best economic system we’ve ever come up with
You can just reorder the slides and it goes the other way.
Errr even milton friedman said that capitalism works BECAUSE of heavy regulation. The problem with trying to blame the government as analogous to a capitalist economy is that there are bad actors specifically working against the goal of government regulation taxation etc ( conservatives refuse to allow capitalism to work by trying to gut the government and give handouts to the wealthy ). Capitalism without an equally strong government able to reign in bad actors will never work. Conservatives think theyre helping capitalisn by letting it run amock, truth is theyre just fighting to allow one sided bargaining where only the wealthy and powerful get a say in anything, yeah sure i can CHOOSE not to buy that car, but ultimately i have to have it for a real job. Conservatism is ignorance personified
None of this makes sense within the context of the meme. The meme is saying that if the state is to be credited by a given individual for the successes of capitalism, then it should be credited for the failings since without the state you can't have modern first-world capitalism, and the subsequent problems of such. It has nothing to do with how much bureaucracy may be required for capitalism or various conservative relationships to that topic. I am also not a conservative, which I assume you imply but correct me if I am wrong. Lastly, there's this that I'd like to address: >The problem with trying to blame the government as analogous to a capitalist economy is that there are bad actors specifically working against the goal of government regulation taxation The government is whatever the sovereign is in practice rather than in principle. The sovereign is the greatest power in the nation and has the actual threat of force(usually the military) to have the final say in all things. In the case of the US, that sovereign is the accumulated decision making of **many** politicians and bureaucrats. Whatever their collective interactions result in is the sovereigns will manifested, and nothing it ultimately chooses or allows can be contrary to its will. Which means if a "bad actor" convinces government to choose or allow a certain outcome, then that's the nature of the state as it actually is rather than how someone like you or I might want it to be. Our flaws are typically that of placing too much stock in our own value assessments and then expecting reality to conform to them as a consequence. If I thought the state was what I wished it to be, then I would have a great deal of adoration for the state. This actually was the case during my childhood years. Now I know that the reality of the state is very different from what I wish it would be, and this has always been so. Now, I know most of its written policy is more a symbolic guide to its actualized structures and behaviors. Now I know the state is and has always been an ugly thing and has been the most integral component to making the disaster that is the modern era possible.
You understand that many countries have become increasingly more conservative and therefore distrust in the government became natural as they did less and less for the people while lining the pockets of wealthy powerful interests right? Basically this, conservatism comes from an illogical mistrust of government, so as more conservative influences takeover government with that same asinine take on government the distrust becomes a negative feedback. Conservatism is a con job intended to both sew distrust in government abd weaken its influence to control powerful and evil people
>None of this makes sense within the context of the meme. >It has nothing to do with how much bureaucracy may be required for capitalism or various conservative relationships to that topic
Wtf are you talking about its directly related. Good and bad can be attributed to either but only one ( the government ) do people have any say over how its done, and yes, capitalism without government controls is just slavery with more steps, its ultimate end goal is ALWAYS buy for a penny, sell for a thousand, whoever needs goods more ( to live, or just not have a shitty life or whatever ) will always be at a huge disadvantage and those with power are unstoppable. Capitalism is great, BECAUSE of government policies that reign in its worst inclinations. Government can be good or bad without capitalism, capitalism without a counter balancing government is pure evil.
>Wtf are you talking about its directly related No, it's not. > Good and bad can be attributed to either but only one ( the government ) do people have any say over how its done, People don't have real say in government. Government does what it thinks can propogate its power above all else in order to prevent usurpation because governments that subordinate this get usurped. If it thinks the peoples' will conflicts with this, then it ultimately won't listen. If the government really cared about mass opinion, then it would use direct democracy. What it cares about more so is compelling the masses into *believing* they have more collective agency than they do. This is cause revolutions are an actual threat when the masses actually see what's going on and there's at least one group of ambitious counter elites happy to focus the resulting dissidant energy. Then, these new elites form a new state with equal consideration for the mass opinion only the illusions are new and resonate with the now hopeful and, most importantly, compliant population. An example is that people think of moderm representstive democracies as a triumph against the elitism of aristocracies. The reality is that it further stabilizes and entrenches an elite class. With aristocracies, they had hoped that each person in power between the king, court, and nobles would be loyal on the basis of tradition and blood ties. However, you'd often end up with people constantly getting power by birth right that didn't agree with the regime created by their fathers because that's the reality of children, they arent usually perfect replicas of their parents. Kings could also just change court appointments on a whim if it suited them. So, the dynamics of pre-democractic governments could be very chaotic and precarious at times. This is very bad for any one group of elites in power at a given time. In democracies, aspirants are chosen by the elites of political parties based on ideology and loyalty rather than by blood. Two factors consistently dominate popular vote. This is party loyalty and fame. In other words, the most familiar running members of a faction that the largest groups are loyal to. This gives party leaders a lot of control over who makes it to elections in the first place. They will tell aspirants what to do or support, and the ones that comply most consistently will be promoted to higher levels of public awarness. Through parties and the psycology of the masses, there is an internal mechanism for elites to ultimately decide who has a reasonable chance of winning elections. This isn't 100% perfect, as sometimes demagogues or new parties can usurp the current regime, but this happens at relatively low rates across more vast nations relative to monarchies. Another thing that happens more in democracy is the inflated bureaucracies that politicians appoint. These see even more stability than policy makers cause the public doesn't need them to put on a spectacle in a show of confidence. Most of us seldom care who our individual bureaucrats are. So there are all these people with their hands on **major** levers of power for very long careers that pretty much slip under most peoples radar unless they **really** fuck up by pissing off the current regime. >capitalism without government controls is just slavery with more steps, It's not possible for capitalism to exist without government controls. Soveriegn backed currencies, regulations, and laws are all necessary just for it to function at any level. Even the notion of "deregulation" is a historical deception of the reality, that being regulations are merely changed in favor of new policies that the sovereign thinks would be good for its propagation. Slavery is an interesting thing to bring up in a pro-state argument since every case of mass slavery to ever exist was backed by state institutions with thier own sets of regulations and laws in accordance with policies aimed at making it effective at scale. >Capitalism is great, BECAUSE of government policies that reign in its worst inclinations Government creates the inclinations of capitalism by setting up currencies, regulations, and laws that allow it to function. People wouldn't naturally do a modern economy if the government didn't set things up to heavily protect larger investments and returns than any one person could protect on their own. There wouldn't be an intense desire amongst private individuals to accumulate irrational amounts of wealth if there wasn't a universialized medium of exchange, that being currency. There have been very old agrarian communities observed without the types of economies we associate with civilizations, without state interference. They typically work all day on subsistence levels because of that mode of living. In one case in Asia the state thought it could double such a communities output by giving them more efficient methods and competitive pay. They defied the very foundations of modern economic theory that mans wants are infinite by only working to the level of subsistence regardless, they just stopped working much sooner in the day. Only by being whipped by a plethora of state regulations and laws that make extra demands of our housing, land, transport, and self management are we then feeling pressured into wanting productive surpluses. Capitalism is only able to exist on a foundation of state coercion, it exists as it does because the state wants it to exist as it does. >Government can be good or bad without capitalism, capitalism without a counter balancing government is pure evil Capitalism without a counter balancing government ceases to exist, it can't be anything. Capitalism is a creation of the state, and it dominates the planet as a system because it's a really strong pattern of power acquisition that makes sovereigns competitive against other outside sovereigns. If there was a stronger pattern of power acquisition currently existing in practice, then the US would have never become the global hegemon and economies as we know them right now would be rare at any one time. Neither is true because the realities don't line up with how we want them to, unfortunately.
Srry i dont have the patience to read an essay on a reddit post from somebody with no understanding of government beyond "ME DONT TRUST GOVERNMENT DO NOTHING, I WANT I BUY THATS ALL I NEED" Go back to college, they did you bad
I gave you a short and fast reply and your response starts with "wtf are you talking about" indicating the requirment for depth in the discussion. So then I take the time to give a thorough reply that completely defies your overt mischaracterizing of my positions... but you refuse to read it and then insult me when I've been nothing but cordial. So basically you just go around commanding people what to think and if they don't accept it immediately then you become rude and dismissive. Here I thought extended educations were supposed to cultivate discipline and open-mindedness?
Your entire premise is "well government is untrustworthy, capitalism isnt government, ipso facto..." Wtf am i supposed to do with that? Government is untrustworthy under specific leaders, its not generally untrustworthy, theres no way to engage somebody like that in a meaningful way, youre probably an anarchist or something im not sure
>Your entire premise is "well government is untrustworthy, capitalism isnt government, ipso facto.. If you'd read the comment you refused to read, then you know why that's not something I believe in. You'd know that I recognize capitalism as inexplicably linked to government and that the notion of its separation is subsequently irrational. Nowhere in this entire post, or any of my comments, will you find me advocating for stateless capitalism because I don't regard this as possible. >Wtf am i supposed to do with that? Actually read what I say rather than relying on a straw man fallacy. Actually read the comment that thoroughly represents what I actually think rather than what you pretend I think.
Best way to judge communism is by all the murders.
Just found this sub - is it all just everyone patting each other on the back telling themselves only “we get it” and calling every body else dumb? These are the only posts I’ve seen lmao… I am sure people will be happy to hear you out after you’ve called them a fucking moron. Keep fighting the good fight guys.
Wouldn’t it be crazy if you isolate each of the components and compared and contrasted them to see some data proving or disproving your opinion on it?? Like comparing countries with a free market but no centralized government compared to countries without a free market but a centralized government and observing which has a better economy?
> countries with a free market but no centralized government Which countries do not have a centralized government?
Capitalism and the government are both jokes because HUMANS ruin everything. To think otherwise is arrogant.
Humans made it about 300k years without too much issue. Only relatively recently with the advent of state organizations have things rapidly gone to shit.
Right. Civilization was a *paradise* when we were wholly subject to wild animal migrations and our agriculture had no protection from the tribe in the next valley over the hill. When we couldn't predict the weather and thought it was controlled by the gods. When we didn't have medical knowledge to cure diseases, heal injuries, and prevent/treat infection. When a single drought could mean the end of our entire extended families. When our diet consisted of like 12 things. Everything's gone to shit since then. Have you ever even heard the phrase, "nasty, brutish, and short?" The state is a *goddamn miracle*.
No climate change Nihilism wasn't a thing(which makes everything feel worthless) We had caring communities rather than being a function of hedonistic decadence. No threat of world war/WMDs Our diets consisted of like 12 things *that we are actually supposed to eat and were dietarily healthier for it. But hay, now I get to suffering a meaningless existence as a young cog, then I die a lonely and invalid cog. Praise the machine that is modernity! >Right. Civilization was a paradise I haven't and would never call anything a "paradise." To exist is to suffer. This can be more tolerable if you are in a situation of ignorance and constant striving amongst a supportive community with cultural illusions of meaning. Modern society has taken this possibility from me and maximized my suffering as a result. I will never forgive it.
As a Socialist. I personally have never met or talked to a fellow Socialist who gives credit to the state. Most socialists are anarchists. This meme seems to go along more with Democrats and Progressives I'd say.
You haven't been around communists then, sure some of them say the stateless society is the end goal, but they want a fully centralized and totally managed economy before that. That's your average socialist/communist.
That's a fine point with Communist. Just don't group everyone is all I'd say. Every Communist may be a Socialist. But not every Socialist is a Communist.
Imagine being this bad faith that you always need to paint such wide strokes onto a group of people. On a serious note - have you met leftists or communists in real life on a setting that wasn't inherently political or tense?
Wtf does your comment have to do with commies wanting a centralized state?
Marx never said this.
Marx wasn't ravenously anti-capitalism. He praised it as a necessary stage of development in his philosophy. Also, the first line in the meme contains a post WWll term, so there's no logical reason to assume I was making up Marx quotes.