• Terevos@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Capitalism is the antithesis of fascism. Unless your definition of capitalism includes fascism.

    But capitalism is most simply the freedom to do with your money as you wish with no restrictions whatsoever. You can debate the merits or negatives of that all you want. But the fact remains that this is the definition. And that definition of capitalism is incompatible with fascism.

    • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The term “privatization” was coined to describe the economic reforms Hitler put into place. Hitlers brown shirts were employed by capitalists as strike breakers before his ascent to power. Capitalism and Fascism coexist quite happily.

      Watch the video ffs

      • Terevos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        But that’s not capitalism under any definition.

        That’s someone applying pure authoritarianism and fascism and naming it ‘capitalism’. But it doesn’t actually have anything to do with capitalism.

        • RonJonGuaido [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          sir, you have just committed the true-scotsman fallacy, i’m afraid we have to take away your posting privileges until further notice. thank you for your cooperation.

          • Terevos@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            True Scotsman is when you keep moving the goal posts. I just have one clearly stated goal post of a definition and have stuck with it.

            What most in this thread are committing is the strawman fallacy. Setting up a bad definition for capitalism and then saying all capitalism is bad when there are virtually no proponents of capitalism as defined by people in this thread (or the video)

            • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Capitalism requires a central authoritarian government that forces its people, through violence, to allow the enclosure of the commons by the capitalist class, and to then continue protecting the capitalist class’s absentee property claims. Any definition that doesn’t acknowledge that is nonsense.

        • immuredanchorite [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I can help you, kid. You seem to be quite lost. ‘Round these parts, we define capitalism as a political and economic system in which society is organized around the private ownership of the means of production (capital) and profit.

          Now, I getcha wanna understand the world and how you might feel free buying a quart of milk instead of a cow. We all get it. But pardner’ money has existed much longer than capitalism, and in other economic modes some individuals have had tremendous latitude to use money in different ways. But in each system there have been restrictions about the use of money, even under capitalism. That is why your definition is so utopian and useless. Its not real.

          Now pardner’ … how one individual relates to production within their economic system? Well, shucks, that thar is class. A serf was tied to the land to produce surplus food (value) for his lord, jus’ like the workin’ man is tied to his job. For the workin joe, he must rent his labor and time for less than the value it produces in order to make ends meat. The guy he is workin’ for? That guy is that capitalist. Now see, that thar sets them up fixin’ for a brawl, or what you might call an antagonistic class relationship. What is more, that poor workin’ joe might like his work, but as the boss man makes him worm harder and harder it robs him of his joy and connection to others. ‘Round these parts we call that alienation, pardner.

          deng-cowboy

          • Terevos@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Capitalism to Socialism is an economic scale.

            Fascism is a type of govenrment. Theoretically a benevolent fascism could possibly have a capitalism, but that would require the fascism to not interfere in the economy at all.

            For America, we are a mix of capitalism and socialism. Compared to the rest of the world were more on the side of capitalism, but these days, I think Canada might be more capitalist than we are.

            How fascist are we? Again that’s a scale, but there are definitely some aspects of fascism that we exhibit. We also exhibit socialism in some ways too.

            • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Benevolent fascism is by definition an oxymoron.

              No, America is all capitalism; the workers do not own the means of production.

              You exhibit no signs of socialism that I can see.

    • leftofthat [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      That’s not capitalism. Capitalism is when there’s a tiny umbrella in your drink. You can debate the merits or negatives of little umbrellas in drinks all you want. But the FACT remains that this is the definition. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

    • HamManBad [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Put another way, capitalism is the freedom for the wealthy to exert their power to the fullest extent. In this way, fascism is the fulfillment of capitalism because it empowered “leaders” in each industry to exert raw power over their underlings to their heart’s content. The first thing they did was break organized labor and arrest trade union leaders, because fascism is the antithesis of Marxism (even the fascists were very explicit about this) and Marxism is undisputably the negation of capitalism.

      • Terevos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Sorry… ‘arrest’? Who arrested? The police? Then you’re not talking about pure capitism, but about government collusion, which is the antithesis of capitalism.

        Marxism is compatible with fascism because you need the state to enforce a huge tax on everyone OR prevent the ability for workers to earn wages from employers directly (and instead get a paycheck from the state)

        • Lerios [hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          If we didn’t have a government - say tomorrow there was a complete government collapse and only corporations and people remained - do you genuinely think there would be no one arresting people? Do you think that walmart or disney or whoever would just let people steal from them? No, they would expand their security forces immediately, with no laws to stop them, no laws to say that they can’t just kill theives or people who might be theives or employees who try to quit, etc etc. No laws to say they can’t just reintroduce child labour or bulldose your house to make a parking lot. How is anyone going to fight them, when the rich have billions to raise an army with whereas normal people have comparatively nothing? It wasn’t always the police arresting or killing union people, it was pinkertons or other hired thugs.

          unregulated ancap bullshit becomes a land of warlords very quickly.

        • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          capitalism does not exist without a state. it is based on private property. a state enforces private property ownership. if there was no state, your ‘pure capitalism’; companies would simply seize property they want. there would be no ‘free-market’, just the ‘market’ of the biggest stick

        • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Hello, I am a libertarian. I like to carry around my own pocket dictionary which I have written all by myself and filled with complete gibberish. I expect everyone else to follow the definitions I have written here because I live an extremely isolated life and do not interact with anyone outside of the internet unless I am paying them. Also, make sure to ask me how I feel about age of consent laws! Thank you.

      • Terevos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yes. You have the freedom to negotiate your labor for money or goods or whatever else you want in exchange

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Does a sweatshop worker in Southeast Asia who has just been laid off from their job and cannot find another one because their economy has been hyperfocused on producing textiles due to globalisation and IMF loans and there is an ongoing recession and they don’t have the money to move away from their country nor could they anyway because of racist border policies have the freedom to negotiate their labor for money or goods or whatever else they want in exchange? Sounds to me like the capitalist has come away from that negotiating table and said “No, actually. You can starve to death.”

          This isn’t a hypothetical question. You owe an answer to 700,000 workers in Pakistan, a country in which 40% of the country is employed in the textile industry.

          • Terevos@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            In that case, the only reason they wouldn’t be able to find work is because of the anti-capitalist policies.

        • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          If the cost of my labor (irrespective of buyer) doesn’t offset the cost of living, do I still have freedom?

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          You have the freedom to negotiate your labor for money or goods or whatever else you want in exchange

          Coercion don’t real. If you get sick with a treatable but expensive illness, you have the freedom to fucking die if you choose! so-true

    • TheOtherwise [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      As someone who has mostly lurked this site since jan 2021…I’m pretty bummed with the federation. I would come here to get a reprieve from dogshit takes like this.

      Fucking libs, bro.

      • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I kind of agree tbh.

        On one hand it’s kind of funny, but seeing this sort of political (il)literacy regularly is also somewhat depressing

        If I wanted this caliber of baby-brained analysis I’d just go to r/politics or worldnews

      • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I made a userscript (like a browser extension but less work) to show only content from other instances (“dunk mode”), but it can just as easily be inverted! If you want to give it a try, just install something like TamperMonkey in your browser and then copy/paste and save this script:

        // ==UserScript==
        // @name         Lib Blocker
        // @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
        // @version      0.1
        // @description  Block federated users on hexbear.net
        // @author       YearOfTheCommieDesktop
        // @match        https://hexbear.net/*
        // @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=tampermonkey.net
        // @require      https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/CoeJoder/waitForKeyElements.js@v1.2/waitForKeyElements.js
        // @grant        none
        // ==/UserScript==
        
        function processComment(comment) {
            var link = comment.querySelectorAll('a[title="link"]');
            if (link.length >= 2 && (!link[1].href.includes("hexbear.net") && !link[1].href.includes("lemmygrad.ml"))) {
                comment.querySelector('button[aria-label="Collapse"]').click();
            }
            return true;
        }
        
        waitForKeyElements('.comment-node', processComment);
        

        This will auto collapse all comments not from hexbear.net or lemmygrad. I could make it hide posts too, but browsing by Local I never see lib posts anyhow, so I didn’t bother.

    • Yllych [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      you are wrong and your ideas have been wrong for over a century. Not only have the left wing not bought this line of thinking since like 1860, even capitalists who wish to entrench their class by understanding their economic positions don’t buy this lazy mode of thinking.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      That’s not capitalism, but it’s nothing new for a liberal to speak from a position of authority about something they know nothing about. Kind of like “debunking” Marxism without even skimming the Wikipedia page of its basic texts.

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      You’ve laid out a definition of capitalism here (I would disagree with it strongly, but leaving that aside), what is your working definition of fascism then? Because I don’t see anything inherently incompatible between say, Umberto Eco’s 14 tenets of fascism, and your definition of capitalism.

      • Terevos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Merriam Webster seems fine.

        Fascism - a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

        Any government interference with economics is anti-capitalism. So automatically, a large government is incompatible with capitalism.

          • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I can’t tell if it is a bit account, or a reactionary (libertarian?) truly detached from conscious thought; bearing witness to ‘Nazi Germany wasn’t capitalist’ and ‘socialism is when the government does stuff’ takes are absolutely hilarious, even swaths of reddit-logo don’t buy that garbage any longer.

            Further down, we’ve got the galaxy-brain take of “Remove power from the government and you’ll get corporations out of lobbying”…yes? Obviously?

            Much like if you want to stop getting door to door salesmen at your house, you can completely demolish it.

        • Abracadaniel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Also from Merriam Webster:

          Capitalism - an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

          Fascism - a political philosophy

          Capitalism - an economic system

          Clearly these are incompatible thonk

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Any government interference with economics is anti-capitalism. So automatically, a large government is incompatible with capitalism.

          This is entirely false. A powerful state is required to uphold and protect private property rights for capitalists. It’s also required to declare war on other states for not opening themselves up to capitalists and their businesses. See: the history of the West from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present. The governments of Europe sent their armies and navies around the world destroying civilizations and societes wherever they found them, and the capitalists followed in their wake, establishing markets protected by those troops, with cargo ships protected by those navies going to and fro. The modern situation is not so different, with the state providing police forces to protect the businesses and homes of the rich, establishing laws to protect them from major consequences, destroying rebelling countries with their armies for the capitalists to come in and seize what remains, and so on. The state also helps corporations with subsidies, such as Tesla. In 2008, you might remember that the state saved the banks from imploding.

          The market and the state are not opposites, especially when the bourgeoisie are in charge of the state, as the state is the apparatus through which their class interests are enacted. The market is a tool - often a brutal tool - that the state can employ to achieve its interests.

    • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      fascism is capitalism in crisis. it’s what happens when further profit cannot be squeezed further by cutting wages and raising prices.

      But capitalism is most simply the freedom to do with your money as you wish with no restrictions whatsoever.

      for the corporation-owning class, yes. but that’s not a good thing. they mostly use it to buy politicians so their corporations can fuck the rest of us over.

      • Terevos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        In pure capitalism, there’s nothing you can buy from the politicians. But the more socialist a government becomes, the more worthwhile it is to buy politicians.

        Remove power from the government and you’ll get corporations out of lobbying.

        • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          In pure capitalism, there’s nothing you can but from the politicians.

          Let me ask you a question. Was America a capitalist country from 1776 to 1860? Was it? And therefore, are slavery and capitalism compatible with each other? I’m asking you because I think you and I (and most of hexbear) have different answers to that question.

          • Terevos@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It was somewhat capitalist but with several issues that were anti-capitalism.

            1. Slavery of the kind that America engaged in is inherently anti-capitalist. Indentured servitude would be compatible though.

            2. There was a struggle of the Federal Government regulating gold and silver, central banking, etc. Eventually the Federal Government won full control over that in 1913.

        • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          In pure capitalism, the politicians are the ones that deploy the armed forces that allows you to maintain your property claims. There is every reason to buy them off.

    • ZapataCadabra [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Capitalism requires violence to enforce the laws of private property against the needs of the collective. This is the basic function of police under capitalism. When the collective uses things like democracy to undo the laws of private property for the good of the common people, the forces of capital use extra-legal violence to kill and intimidate the collective. The goal is to force private property back onto the people and rescind any collective gains they may have made. This is fascism.

      Look at the history of any fascist nation and this is the basic pattern. In fascist nations where the government isn’t toppled (Franco’s Spain and Pinochet’s Chile), the government rolls back the fascist paramilitaries and restores a form of liberal law and order that greatly empowers the elite and wealthy. The basic function of fascism is to stop the collective from taking power from the wealthy elite by any means necessary.

    • immuredanchorite [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      wow, that is like the worst definition of capitalism i have read yet. You should try reading more.

      capitalism is most simply the freedom to do with your money as you wish with no restrictions whatsoever

      Although I think you do have a point, liberal conceptions of capitalism, like yours, definitely imply that one can own another human being if they so wish. That is why in nearly every early instance of the liberal/capitalist political-economy slavery was an essential part of that economy. It is also why slavery still exists today, where some greedy individuals think that they have a “freedom to do with [their] money as [they] wish with no restrictions whatsoever

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Your comment is pure ignorance

      Capitalism is a historically bounded socio-economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their utilization for profit-making

      It is a social relation between those who have private property and those who do not, this social relation through the logic of labor mediated through private ownership; manifests as wage labor, state enforced property relations, and legal codes that shape contract and civil law

      Fascism is a militarized offshoot of siege liberalism, a stress response in the face of market crises that induces capitalists to intensify the rate of exploitation and accumulation through the racialization and then suppression of labor, even beyond its borders

      Fascists seek to maintain the hierarchy of capitalist property relations through homogenizing and regimenting the surrounding population, thereby destroying any social barriers that limit capital accumulation