In reality capitalism is one of the most authoritarian systems in history.
This statement is pretty disingenuous. First, authoritarian is a political system, not an economic one, but for the sake of argument let’s call authoritarian “the lack of personal choice or opportunity”. I feel like this definition captures the sentiment of the original post.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many flaws with the inequalities of capitalism, but it does provide much more freedom of opportunity than feudalism and substance farming in terms of economic systems. Those two have been the staple of civilization since its inception. Personally, I would choose the system where the deck is stacked against me, rather than the system where I don’t get delt a hand.
So no, I don’t think capitalism ranks as one of the most authoritarian systems in history. There are many changes we can make to reduce inequality and make the world “less authoritarian” though. Might be a better to push those ideas of improvement rather than pretending that we live in the worst time in history.
Well authoritarian can also describe systems of organization and I feel its apt here. The owner at the top dictates decisions. They hold all of the power in the relationship between owner and worker. Contrast it with a worker co-op being a socialist system where each employee has a stake in the company. The author is an anarchist historian and there was a time in recent history where politics and workplaces were intertwined at the height of Union power. The separation of politics in the workplace is relatively new.
I feel like comparisons like this don’t generally get made because capitalism is the default organising principle of the modern world, while feudalism (depending on where in the world we’re talking about) hasn’t been a thing for 150-800 years. People generally draw comparisons from what they experience and the experiences of those around them, not usually from history books.
Wealth is power. Economics are one side of the coin, politics is the other. They are not separate and cannot be separated.
Might be a better to push those ideas of improvement rather than pretending that we live in the worst time in history.
This feels like the british revisionism where they feel like they liberated the world while seemingly downplaying the violence and looting from half of the world.
They too probably peddled their propaganda like you do now that everyone under their imperialism lived better than they did before. Savages as they called them. And it’s fails to account for the violence it took to get to that point. Of course the people living in Britain lived a better life and had more opportunities than the rest of the world.
This is what the royal slaves probably think when comparing themselves to the poor people out of the kings palace.
Being a kings slave is much better than a slave for merchant. The merchant is going to exploit the slaves any way they can see fit, whereas the king has to at least maintain appearance of a “good” leader. And the king definitely didn’t become a king with peace and charity. That’s the current situation in rich-by-imperialism and poor countries. You feel like your king is the best king there is.
Capitalism succeeded by making the rich rich, and making the poor dream about being rich which was never possible in the system unless you’re really really smart or corrupt yourself to exploit others.
Let’s talk about ideas of improvement.
- British/French/Spanish/Portuguese pay reparation to its past colonies.
- US gives back the land to the native americans and stop calling themselves Americans
- China gives back Tibet to its people
- US is made accountable for all the coups and violence it caused around the world.
- US war criminals are tried in International court
You don’t think these actions were result of capitalism? because they provably increased their capital a whole lot more during their imperialism. Or you just want ideas of improvement for your specific use case? Let’s just forget history when convenient, right?
Personally, I would choose the system where the deck is stacked against me, rather than the system where I don’t get delt a hand.
Which systems are you talking about? You don’t think all the points listed above makes you privileged be in a metaphorical “king’s palace” than the “merchants home” to have more opportunities than the rest of the world?
I’m not saying other system would do better because the capitalists never allowed any other system to ever gain foothold, did they? So, what are you comparing it against? Some 100 year old event, where history is suddenlyrelevant?
I’m not even sure how did you reach that conclusion of not being dealt a hand? The propaganda is out of whack.
US gives back the land to the native americans and stop calling themselves Americans
That sounds like teenage fantasy nonsense.
Cool, US bad - but how? Like give a step by step plan.
Let’s suppose that I am a Mexican migrant and after decades of hard work I purchased a block of land in Chicago. You get your dream scenario. What happens to my block?
Now that the land belongs to someone else the few hundred million people in the US that are not native Americans where do they go?
Do I go back to Mexico? What if I’m from Spanish descent? Do I go back to Spain?
Does everyone go back to their ancestral lands? What happens if they don’t exist anymore? Or if the current populations don’t want them?
How far back in history do you go to give back land?
Do the descendants of say the Ottomans give back the whole of Turkey to the previous populations?
Where does Istanbul go? To the Greeks? Or to the Italians? Should the Greeks also try to find Trojan descendants to give back Troy?
Should everyone that doesn’t descend from Gaul get the fuck out of France?
Sounds a lot like blood purism with extra steps.
Give us your wisdom.
You make some valid points that I admit I didn’t consider. The british revisionism is an interesting analogy that I certainly didn’t consider when writing my comment.
Which systems are you talking about?
I was specifically comparing feudalism and subsistence farming to today’s capitalism. My entire point was arguing those two ways of life have dominated the most common or ‘modal human experience’ throughout history*. I believe the current state of the world provides more opportunity of choice for the modal citizen than either of those situations.
*History meaning of civilization, after the agricultural revolution, NOT the hunter gatherer experience.
I don’t think it’s constructive (or accurate) to call my post propaganda though. If your intent was to change my mind you’re starting off by taking a step backwards. If you’re trying to convince other readers of your position it might be effective, but I think I would be more willing to read a long comment if didn’t try to completely dismiss what it was replying to.
Capitalism and fascism go hand in hand.
something something fascism is capitalism in decay
Fascism is socialism, it can’t go hand in hand with capitalism.
did somebody tell you that, or did you get to this conclusion yourself?
I mean Mussolini told that to the world through his actions.
Mussolini invented fascism, specifically and deliberately as the antithesis of socialism, in a hate strop after having been kicked out of the Italian socialist party for not being remotely socialist. Ita why the first people fascists go for are socialists.
Fascism is peak corporatist-capitalism, without the pretence of a fair market or choice.
What were his socialist policies?
Mmm… Let me see…
He nationalised 75% of Italian businesses by 1935 and later took over all foreign assets, stocks and bonds held by private citizens and businesses.
He nationalised whole key industries, like railways and metallurgy.
He invested a lot into public sector and infrastructure and by 1925 Italy had food supplementary assistance, infant care, maternity assistance, general healthcare, wage supplements, paid vacations, unemployment benefits, illness insurance, occupational disease insurance, general family assistance, public housing and old age and disability insurance.
Mussolini also had plans to move the country to a planned economy a-la USSR, but he couldn’t implement it in time before the war.
He made trade union membership compulsory.
And much much more.
It is also important to remember that key people in Mussolini’s government believed that the Italian working class could not have the requisite numbers or consciousness to make revolution and required full maturation of capitalism as the precondition for socialist realization. Their policy was a gradual move to socialism with the help of an authoritarian state and slow nationalisation of everything instead of Russian style revolution. And people like Rossoni called industrialists and capitalists as “vampires” and “profiteers”.
Saying that fascists are not socialists is just plain wrong.
Only nazis try to convince people that the nazis / fascists were socialist. If it isn’t socialism for everyone, it isn’t socialism at all.
When you say “nationalised” you mean owned by the dictator, personally and not the nation state. A pathetic attempt at twisting history. Such was his hate for socialists and socialism, mussolini would roll over in his grave hearing your nonsense.
Yeah, Hitler nationalised a lot, too.
The programs you describe, benefits, pensions and so on might convince some that they are dealing with a socialist state, when in fact anybody in Europe would merely call them social. When it comes down to it, socialism, which indeed is constantly being conflated with a lot of things, is about the workers owning the means of production. Of course you know that! But it also has never been the goal of the Russian Avantgarde nor the fascists in the west. Both their systems were exploiting workers. This time in the „national interest“. About that they had different opinions, though.
Where did Hitler come from?
And no, sorry, fascism is socialism. Always was, always will be. You can’t bend the truth to suit your narrative.
Can you provide some reading for context? I’m looking into Mussolini and at least according to Wikipedia, where you seem to have directly lifted most of your points, the story is quite a bit more nuanced than you’re presenting.
Some quick things I found:
Although a disciple of the French Marxist Georges Sorel and the main leader of the Italian Socialist Party in his early years, Mussolini abandoned the theory of class struggle for class collaboration.
Economic policy in the first few years was largely classical liberal, with the Ministry of Finance controlled by the old liberal Alberto De Stefani. The multiparty coalition government undertook a low-key laissez-faire program—the tax system was restructured (February 1925 law, 23 June 1927 decree-law and so on), there were attempts to attract foreign investment and establish trade agreements and efforts were made to balance the budget and cut subsidies.[26] The 10% tax on capital invested in banking and industrial sectors was repealed while the tax on directors and administrators of anonymous companies (SA) was cut down by half. All foreign capital was exonerated of taxes while the luxury tax was also repealed.[27] Mussolini also opposed municipalization of enterprises.[27]
In 1924, the Unione Radiofonica Italiana (URI) was formed by private entrepreneurs and part of the Marconi group and granted the same year a monopoly of radio broadcasts.
The Pact of the Vidoni Palace in 1925 brought the fascist trade unions and major industries together, creating an agreement for the industrialists to only recognise certain unions and so marginalise the non-fascist and socialist trade unions. The Syndical Laws of 1926 (sometimes called the Rocco Laws after Alfredo Rocco) took this agreement a step further as in each industrial sector there could be only one trade union and employers organisation.
In 1930, the National Council of Corporations was established and it was for representatives of all levels of the twenty-two key elements of the economy to meet and resolve problems…One consequence of the Council was the fact that trade unions held little to no representation whereas organized business, specifically organized industry (CGII), was able to gain a foothold over its competitors.
A key effect that the Council had on the economy was the rapid increase in cartels, especially the law passed in 1932, allowing the government to mandate cartelization…Cartels generally undermined the corporative agencies that were meant to ensure they operated according to Fascist principles and in the national interest, but the heads were able to show that cartel representatives had total control over the individual firms in the distribution of resources, prices, salaries and construction.
A lot of these things seem to be directly in conflict with the elevation of the working class, but rather strictly state-corporatist and explicitly hierarchical in their implementation. Simply nationalizing industries doesn’t really equate to socialism I don’t think.
You got the nationalism part down.
Someone has never seen the “signs of fascism” list at the holocaust museum.
I keep bringing up the industrial gilded age where the govt literally waged a war on factory workers.
The workers of this country had to spill blood just for livable wages and safe working conditions and over the next hundred years we let these rich fucks destroy everything that was put in place to guarantee workers rights.
It’s to the point that a big part of me just wants to accept that this is just how humanity is. Doomed to chase profits and power until it destroys the whole species.
When the government uses violence to stop you from negotiating a contract, you’re not in a free market and therefore aren’t in a capitalist place.
You can have capitalism without a completely, 100%, utopian un-interfered with market. In fact, that kind of market has never and could never exist, yet we still have capitalism.
And they call socialists utopians.
The direct consequences of Capitalism as applied to reality can be considered the direct consequences of Capitalism. Utopian AnCAPism is just that, utopian.
It’s not utopian; they’ve just slapped a new name on feudalism. It’s very achievable.
It isn’t achievable. AnCap belief centers around a stateless Capitalism, which is an impossible contradiction.
Well then to clarify, the system they describe is achievable.
ITT people trying to split politics from economics like they can be isolated from each other.
A ward or charm? No, of course not. No such things exist.
But liberal democracy, from its inception, has very intentionally been a framework for the curation of political agency and self determination, which seeks to moderate the balance between authority and liberty in government.
capitalism is one of the least authoritarian systems if you look at what has been done in the past. its not great but its better than feudalism
It’s a class-based system, it’s inherently authoritarian.
In the United States, there have been about 1,300 strike-related deaths. Since 1877.
41,000+ people died from gun violence in the United States last year. A tiny fraction of that was “state sponsored,” i.e., police.
OOooOOooOOoHHhHHhH I’MmMm anNNn AAaAaNARCHiST.
Democracy is just mob rule, the majority are the authoritarians. Fk Democracy and the degeneracy it comes with.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
True. It’s sadly the best we can do.
Representative democracy is just mob rule, but the mob is smaller and well-compensated to not represent the masses.
The constitution explicitly recognizes that direct democracy decays to mob rule, which is why there are three co-equal branches with very different selection methods and leadership structures responsible for checking and balancing the powers of the others.
The problem they didn’t account for was the accumulation of such absurd levels of personal wealth that can be used to corrupt members in every branch to collude against the checks and balances they’re responsible for maintaining. Fk extreme wealth and the degeneracy that is required to create it.
