And most of the time you’d be right.
I wouldn’t say all problems are because of capitalism. I do believe that most of the problems I face are exacerbated by capitalism.
Capitalism acts like a car hurtling down a highway with no brakes, powered by the roaring engine of industry.
Its insatiable thirst for growth and profits accelerates industrial activity to reckless speeds, steamrolling environmental concerns in its pursuit of relentless expansion.
Industry isn’t the villain; it’s merely the engine being pushed to its limits by capitalism’s uncontrolled, destructive momentum.
can people on lemmy stop being right for once? you guys are always on point, say the earth is flat or something lol
Damn. What an accurate description. Nailed it.
Wherever there is a need there is potential for exploitation by greed. Of course capitalists without a leash are going to wreak havoc on everything.
Capitalism by definition is about exploiting labor and extracting wealth. Commerce is the ethical application of purchasing goods and services.
Why do you say commerce is specifically ethical? I’ve always considered it more neutral and up to implementation.
Ethical as in it’s goods and services for currency. Ethical in that no one is being exploited actively. Commerce requires legislation.
So the act of commerce is ethical but the source of the commerce might not be? I feel like I’m being really obtuse here and I apologize but goods and services could be stolen or forced and rarely is legislation enough. But I can totally see two unknowing people engaging in trade at their free will for items they don’t know are stolen.
I feel so pessimistic about the world at times that I find materialism and ethics just don’t mix.
Commerce deals with the distribution of value, production with the creation of it. So let’s say there is a widget factory. If one person “owns” it and thousands work to make widgets, their production is stolen through ownership, which causes deeper issues beyond the obvious as well.
Commerce doesn’t cause problems as it’s just resolving a situation of swapping the widgets you made for carrots. Barring some market-twisting forces like the stock market for example, a simple free market where you’re happy with the amount of carrots you get for the amount of widgets you get is fine.
The evil of capitalism is not that you can trade. The evil of capitalism is that you go to work, and receive a fraction of the product of your work while someone else who does not work at all receives a lot of it.
Technically the current capitalist western system would be socialist, if employment without ownership would be outlawed, and coops were the enforced norm.
♪ We live, We work, We buy/die ♪
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I think you’re making a discussion into a spit fight for the sake of feeling better about yourself. I ask because I want to understand and for no other reason.
I think the ethical part may have to do with the following from Wikipedia on commerce:
The diversity in the distribution of natural resources, differences of human needs and wants, and division of labour along with comparative advantage are the principal factors that give rise to commercial exchanges.
I do not see how the commercial part is necessary for the distribution of goods though and recognize it as the main culprit in making such a system unethical. I.e., supplying needs is good and necessary, however a commercial platform is not.
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Funnily enough, capitalist do the same thing. See a problem? Apply capitalism
I disagree and I’ll explain why for $20
$20? That’s amateur stuff. Buy my $999 course and you’ll learn from a master how to apply capitalism to problems!*
*For legal reasons, note that I did not say “how to apply capitalism to solve problems”
For profit reasons, neither did the capitalist
True. A distressing amount of the time, you can make far more money from a problem existing than from solving it.
Do you acceot Monero?
Blaming everything on capitalism is oversimplistic and reductive, to be honest.
Climate collapse is a result of industrialization and not capitalism, to start. Unless you want to explain how Stalin and Mao were still burning coal.
Whatever social economic model which can funnel power and authority to the very top is bond to ruin us. Humans are too greedy to sit at the top of such hierarchies.
Yep, that’s why decentralization is so important, and why leftist organizational structure ie decentralization and democratization of production is going to be so critical moving forward.
If only thats what politically active leftists actually pushed for.
Many do, not all of course. Factionalism hurts everyone, at the end of the day.
Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution are inseparable from one another. The failure of 20th century Socialist states to adequately address green energy goals can be attributed to rapid industrialization to attempt to keep pace with Capitalist entities.
Going forward, the reason why Green Energy isn’t the standard in the US is due to oil companies, not efficiency. The profit motive stands in direct confrontation with the good of all.
That’s just Climate Change, too. Capitalism’s failures of hierarchical and consumerist nature will exist as long as Capitalism exists.
Not every problem is because of Capitalism, but many are, and at the end of the day this is just a meme.
Besides what another commenter noted about indistrialization being product of capitalism and then fierce competition, here’s one more thing:
Do you see all those green activists buying reusable bags? Taking their bottles, recycling everything? Well, this has already been there in the past, and most notably - in socialist countries. Pretty much till its death USSR, for example, heavily favored reusable things, there just weren’t plastic bags and plastic bottles and all that waste, and recycling, especially of glass and metal and paper, was a super normal thing and people got money/trade-in for that.
What kind of f*cked up argument is that? I don’t think the climate models were quite as advanced back then.
They had no idea that influencing the global climate was even a possibility, so you can hardly judge the morality of their decision-making by how much CO2 they produced. Or do you want to blame them for not building enough solar panels as well?
The problem with capitalism in this regard is not that it produced a lot of CO2 back in the days, but that it won’t stop even after learning about the destructive effects.
The USSR totally knew about climate change being a thing. Climate change is not a “new thing”. Oil companies have known about it for almost a century now, they built their oil rigs to withstand rising sea levels for example.
The USSR did know about it as well, at least since the sixties: https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_329370_smxx.pdf
Fedorov’s article appears to be one of the earliest direct engagements with the problems associated with climate change and, more specifically, anthropogenic climate change in the Soviet Union. However, this theme received more concerted discussion and debate from the early 1960s. Two meetings of particular note took place in Leningrad in April 1961 and June 1962, both of which were organised by the Main Geophysical Observatory in tandem with the Institute of Applied Geophysics and the Institute of Geography and brought together a range of Soviet scientists, including geographers, in order to discuss the ‘problem of the transformation of the climate’ (see Gal’tsov, 1961; Gal’tsov and Cheplygina, 1962).
Notice how you are getting downvoted but no one is providing an argument against this. Even in the most directive form (fascist) of socialism, they still choose not to go with the better option for the world.
Yeah, fascism, so socialist that it is primarily concerned with increasing profits and power for the bourgeoisie.
Read the economy and class structure of german fascism, it is a good book on why what you just said was bullshit.
whines about reductionist rhetoric, uses insanely reductionist example
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Capitalism provides incentives to externalize as many costs as possible (such as pollution), and incentivizes and cannot even function without growth (which leads to more resource usage and pollution). Just because the forms of government/society under Stalin and Mao were also bad for people, doesn’t mean capitalism is not also bad for people.
And it’s the root cause vast majority of the time.
Not really
yes really
Really not really
whatever helps you sleep at night I suppose
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The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.
It’s funny cause it’s true.
It’s funny because it’s the dominant system and any other proposed system would handle the respective situation worse on average but is highly situational. You get into arguments that devolved into, “well, there’s massive starvation and war but at least we are all equal”
You’re expressing the notion of “capitalist realism” which is argued to be an effect of neoliberal ideaology. The idea that not only is capitalism the only viable solution, but you can’t even imagine a viable alternative. There’s a book of the same title that you’d probably get a lot out of since it might make you more critical of ideas you may have taken for granted, which is my personal favorite kind of book.
I can imagine plenty of viable alternatives. There’s plenty of arguments to be made that the USSR was just as productive as the US on a per capita basis. They addressed the productivity issues of decentralized socialism through centralization.
The issue comes down to the lack of dissent within the system. Private ownership provides a natural counterbalance to the power of the state. Even in the most ideal of democratic socialist systems, there is no functional check on the power of the majority to vote in their own benefit over minorities. Every government system regardless of its economic base has resulted in rapid expansion without a check on power, internally or externally.
You are right that I cannot imagine a viable alternative. Neither can you. You just think you have but have not addressed the core power problem. Mark Fisher is great at framing away this issue but it still exists and is the core issue with true leftist ideologies.
Actually the reason USSR failed was the state itself not being very agile. Different state entities would impede each other while fighting for funds, for their project to become standard (the competing projects would become standards as well, there’d be plenty of incompatible standards), for them to be more politically important (Politburo wasn’t a dictatorial institution).
Naturally in such a climate any cooperation between state entities would involve more complex and obscure diplomacy and deals than how it happens between companies in typical market economies.
So this:
They addressed the productivity issues of decentralized socialism through centralization.
is the opposite of reality. Productivity was USSR’s weakest side. It really honestly succeeded in some unexpected aspects, but efficiency is not one of them.
So, I agree. Decentralization of the Soviets was immensely worse early after the revolution though so they centralized early. The CCP early in its creation had the same criticisms of the USSR resulting in a much longer attempt at decentralization and actual famine.
Decentralization of the Soviets was immensely worse early after the revolution though
If NEP is what you mean by “decentralization” (because nothing else makes sense even remotely, Soviets by definition are a vertical structure, like a tree with its root being the center), then it’s generally accepted that NEP was the thing which allowed to restore Soviet Russia from a famished wasteland after the Civil War.
so they centralized early
They had almost a decade of slowly pushing out communist dissenters out of the political field (all non-communist leftists were already banned closer to the end of the Civil War, and the rest - hahaha), which may give you the wrong impression. However, they were heavily centralized from day one. That was part of the ideology. It’s not some European leftists we are talking about.
For these people political competitiveness or pluralism or due process in courts or human rights were not high on the list of priorities. Building industries to arm heavily and “spread the revolution” was.
Their ideal was some sort of a communist version of the German Empire.
I can imagine plenty of viable alternatives.
You are right that I cannot imagine a viable alternative.
Otherwise pretty basic points that any decent book on socialism or alternatives to capitalism basically addresses in the first chapter.
Basic points that I have never seen in any book on socialism and you are yet to provide. Maybe you should be the one reading more instead of vaguely suggesting that I do. Maybe then you could provide them.
I mean the most introductory book Blackcoats and Reds deals a lot with this and there’s a whole chapter on the weaknesses of stable socialist/ML states. Whatever you think is stable or good under a capitalist government is merely because the negatives you associate specifically with socialism are exported, but are actually far more severe.
I’m going through this one now, it’s framed as a thought experiment for a bottom up society: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo
This thought experiment is based on an unrealistic view not only of natural history but also of the human condition and modern economics. It is based on a view of how easy the perceived human condition was before the existence of larger society.
“In prehistoric times our deal seems to have been not so bad. During the Old Stone Age (50,000 years ago) we were only few, food (game and plants) was abundant, and survival required only little working time and moderate efforts.”
This period of hunter-gatherers was largely the experience of 90% of the time looking for food. It was only the emergence of sustained and coordinated agriculture requiring public works that this started to change. Modern industrialized agriculture has enabled populations not sustainable in that text and requires a larger coordination of people than a small commune can support. That text does not cover larger governance and relies on high-output lands to sustain itself, let alone others. If you cannot enable specialization, you cannot scale nor can you provide the lifestyle people are accustomed to enjoying post-WWII.
There are already communes like this everywhere and nobody is saying that you cannot start one. The only issue is people trying to force others into this system. It starts based on oppression regardless of feasibility.
On what grounds do you think that it’s worse for Workers to democratically control production, rather than a class of owners?
Do you think crops care about who shares ownership of them, and kill themselves if they are shared, rather than owned by 1 dude that employs other people to harvest it?
This doesn’t really address what he said.
Workers don’t vote themselves more work for the money. Less work equals less crops. Crops don’t care. This is why socialism as an economic base always devolves into directive work (which I would argue is actual state slavery)
There are other various options for socialism and anarchism of course. Unless you line out specifically which flawed system you propose we cannot address it. Anything that still has private ownership at it’s base is still capitalist though so most Western models such as the Nordics don’t count.
Also, corporations are not owned by one dude. This is the benefit of the corporate model over sole proprietorships at a societal level but whatever is most efficient in the end.
It’s true that people would be paid more for their labor, it’s false to equate that to underproducing food. You’re attaching mysticism to your claim, as though it’s inevitable that starvation would happen unless you have a Capitalist brutally exploiting workers and still having starvation despite food being literally thrown away. Co-operative farming exists and has existed in stable manners for the vast majority of human existence, and this is even easier as industrialization improves.
There are no “other options” for Socialism beyond Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. That is Socialism. If you mean there are other models than Marxism-Leninism, then of course, I’m not an ML myself. I’m anti-tendency and think each country has unique circumstances that will result in different paths to worker ownership, perhaps Syndicalism, or Market Socialism, or Council Communism, etc.
Whether the corporation is owned by a single Capitalist or several, the fact that the Workers have exactly no say and the Capitalists have all of the say remains the problem.
It is inevitable that starvation would happen because all of the systems you mention are inflexible to shocks and periods of instability and we do see this through history in socialist areas. That’s not even to mention the potential for genocide with all economic production in the control of the majority(in the most ideal circumstance)
The issue with claiming for those three systems is that it’s exactly what was attempted to set up in the USSR and under the CCP. Decentralization very quickly led to av massive collapse in production. It was swept under the rug and you don’t learn about it. Then the power consolidation started.
Even the most studied folks in the left will not make the claim that Marx was anything but a guide or an intent so don’t expect me to argue against it directly. I regret to the systems that actually developed and evolved and any recommended system should address their faults. Your three do not and I’ve not heard any that have.
Why is co-operative farming inflexible to shocks and instability? Wouldn’t it be more stable if the group can react democratically, rather than depend on several competing mini-dictators to not price-gouge and take advantage of instability for profit? I’m not just talking off of vibes, here, Worker Co-operatives, ie collective ownership of business, are shown to be far more resistant to economic shocks and more adaptable than Capitalist entities: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/building-and-sustaining-worker-cooperatives-in-the-us/
The USSR and Maoist China were developing countries just coming out of revolution, and both the Russian Federation and modern PRC remain developing countries. France was also highly unstable following the French Revolution, and became headed by Napolean, one of history’s most famous dictators. Pretending decentralization is purely to blame, rather than instability leading to centralization, is a weak point to make.
Why do you believe that no Leftist has attempted to learn from the mistakes of previous Socialist systems? That’s incredibly wrong, modern leftist discourse is oriented around how to achieve Worker Ownership in modern society, and avoid the problems that have plagued previous Socialist systems.
All in all, why are you on a leftist, decentralized site like Lemmy, if you hate Socialism so much? It’s interesting to see such cognitive dissonance, if you like Capitalism, then there’s Reddit.
Coops are perfectly allowed and acceptable in the current system. Literally no one is telling you that you cannot do this and there are many quiet communities doing it already. You simply are not going to be resourced for it unless it will provide something for the state. Neither would any corporation or sole proprietorship.
All of what you said is true but the collapse was so immediate that there was only cause. Additionally, the collapse immediately went away through collectivization. You can argue with myself and the socialist governments at the time but you are making excuses for them unasked.
I never claimed that modern leftists have not attempted to learn. The entire so called American left is a product of 60s radicals slowly realizing that the way to greater equity is through reform. It simply has capitalism at its base instead of group ownership.
Why are you on a nonprofit run economic alternative to Reddit if you don’t believe that the ultimate power in any market is consumer choice?
Because capitalism has famously prevented mass starvation and warfare.
Edit: Also communism has nothing to do with a vague notion of equality.
Well, you’re usually in the general vicinity of the root cause of any problem by that assumption.
99% of Lemmy, but unironically.
And here I was thinking it was religion
It’s definitely both. They also are both rooted in greed/control. Just come at us in different ways.
I hate how dated this is now
