this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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The notion that capitalism is the end-all be-all of how society functions/works.
It's more that this has been the most effective way of allocating stuff so far. Other systems have not been as effective so it is how most are doing it right now. There is no reason to believe that will not change.
I didn't mean it like that. My comment was about how a lot of billionaires, governments and politicians seem to believe that capitalism is the only system that can ever exist in a civilized society, and how there can be no alternative (some prominent influential figures that held this belief or something similar were/are Larry Kudlow, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Ronald Reagan).
There's also the fact about how in the 20th and 21st century there was a significant effort to undermine any alternative ideologies in the western liberal democratic world. The various anti-red campaigns by the US, Thatcherism that destroyed the significance of unions in order to completely remove any possibility of a revolution (and turn workers into free-market commodities), there was also this very recent event in 2021 where during Rosa Luxemburg peaceful memorial event in Germany, police suddenly came up to disrupt it, presenting false motives.
There might be something better, a society or a system that serves the many instead of the few, but such non-capitalist system would go against the interests of the rich and the ruling elite, so there's an active heavy pushback against it. Even when it comes to politics, the political left is definitely outnumbered at least in my country rather than political parties that lean to the center or the right, which are the parties that keep the status quo or even strengthen the elites further.
I'm approaching this from a leftist point of view, and my arguments are probably not perfect, but at least that's how I see it. Capitalism is definitely better for people than Monarchy/Aristocracy, but it could definitely be much better for the people.
Agreed it could be better the problem is in many cases the alternatives work out worse IRL.
Like democracy, it's the best bad answer.
Up to this point yes gut it us possible that will change.
Sure; nothing is ever set in stone, the future is always the future, and none of us can know what's in it.
Still, in the context of the current political climate, I think the "fuck capitalism" crowd leaves something to be desired. For instance, I'm all for nationalizing medical insurance as other capitalist countries have done.
However, the "no more private business ownership" crowd I think is asking for serious trouble. The preface is that if you get rid of capitalist influences democracy will not be as malleable and will always serve public interest without powerful capitalists to corrupt it... I think the case made by history is the opposite, without capitalistic forces the concentration of power in government leads to the destruction of consumer choice and inevitable corruption. In either system, the sticking point is an actively engaged and educated (and even more so, well informed -- degrees are not the goal, it's the information) public keeping an eye on the system, and I think that's where the 20th century United States failed itself leading to 21st century problems.
The problem is that current companies are authoritarian organizations as seen from the inside, there can still be competing companies and media without this internally authoritarian structure. Imagine every company was 51+% owned by it's workers, and they elected their senior/management staff. That would for what I understand capitalism as end it, but obviously would be vastly different from the few socialist attempts in history.
Here's the problem I have with that argument... Anyone arguing for this can go make such a company, but nobody has (or maybe few people have and it worked or didn't and I missed the memo). It's not a problem of large corporations or government suppression either. There are new successful small companies all the time, but they're not "51% owned by their workers."
So like... If you want any buy in outside of the bubble that already supports the idea, go actually do it. AFAIK, it's not illegal, there's nothing stopping such a company from existing other than A) nobody has sufficiently tried or B) it doesn't actually work.
Obviously they already exist and looking at cooperatives like that they mitigate most of the problems of private enterprise at least somewhat. The argument I'm making is that Private companies (especially large ones) are extremely dangerous to any system that tries to be democratic and because of the danger they pose shouldn't exist at all. I mean look at how much of US government is just captured by private companies and what effect that has (had) on politics in the country and on it's foreign policy as well.
The lack of education and an informed public is not the cause of the problems, it's one of the many symptoms. It's not like Bezos bought WaPo for sport. It's not like de santis and trump get fossil super Pacs by accident. It's not like super Pacs exist because voters love companies throwing tons of money into political messaging....
This is what I mean with Private enterprise is dangerous to democracy
These side effects were written into every liberal governments constitution by Bourgeoisie to protect their wealth from before democracy even existed. Sure there always were some concessions made towards people that weren't wealthy but obviously it was always the wealthy who had the greatest influence.
I don't care what particularly replaces it but this system must be changed so much to get rid of these perverse incentives that it should probably be called something else too.
Marx obviously is a good way of analyzing these failings of liberalism but he certainly is not the be all end all. Did you know for example that North eastern Syria has a constitution actively building a direct democratic rule in the region Constitution and Principles . The principles are anarchist or libertarian socialist in nature and certainly address the issues you had in terms of state authority and rush toward corruption and monopolization.
Theory and even practice of socialism obviously doesn't stop at Soviet or CCP "communism".