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This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.
Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:
- Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
- Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
- How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
- Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?
One of the tricky things with this is that for a lot of people capitalism is ideologically fused with democracy, human rights and freedom. Any talk of changing / reducing capitalism can be taken to mean a reduction in freedom, restrictions on human rights and limiting democracy. Some of that is cultural baggage and not based in reality but for some reason there hasn’t been a single case where an alternative was tried and people ended up better off on those metrics (maybe better off in other terms?). So there must be some connection there.
Correlation doesn’t imply causation. The reason past non-capitalist societies failed was they were based on an anti-market communist ideology. This led to them failing to apply market mechanisms in situations where they were useful and liberating. This feature is not inherent to opposing capitalism. Opposing the power of capital owners and workplace unfreedom of the undemocratic employment relationship is compatible with and enhances democracy, human rights and freedom
I agree, especially the last sentence.
In practice though, what has happened is capitalists use their money and power to push back against any popular social movement making a certain amount of state violence against them necessary. People end up in jail, disappeared, fall out of high windows, protests get responded to with tanks, etc. It’s either crush the capitalists as a class or have constant civil strife. Neither are great.
Sure, the worker’s human rights could be the same or better but the capitalists ‘human rights’ (as they see them) get reduced. And there’s not a sharp delineation between who is a worker and who is a capitalist. When who gets rights and who doesn’t is determined by politicians, then effectively no one has rights they can count on.
So yeah it’s all a big ball of mud all mixed together with worldviews, values, politics and different priorities. Pretty hard to say what’s objectively better all of the time.
I am a liberal, so I support equality before the law. The difference between economic democracy and capitalism is that the legal system would protect the inalienable right to workers’ control (see other comments here). This would be an extension of the recognized inalienable right to democracy into the economy. All firms would be structured as democratic worker coops.
There is no right to deny others’ rights.
How is anti-capitalism different from opposing other unjust power?