Political Memes

Capitalism, to be fair, refers to a specific form of ownership. Namely, market-oriented economies with stock company firms (often limited liability) controlled predominantly by an investor class. This has some unique effects, both good and bad.

On the good side, since we're on Lemmy and the Marxist acknowledgement that capitalism destroyed the 'idiocy' of rural feudalism is altogether too rare:

• Capitalism relatively quickly redistributes resources to where they receive a (perceived) high Return On Investment. Clientistic and feudal societies de-emphasize this by creating extremely personal feedback loops for investment - capitalist society reduces (though definitely not eliminates) this incestuous closed-wealth cycle in favor of a cold, soulless system of maximizing gain. This also prioritizes technological and infrastructure development as a means of creating ever-greater ROI, which is a legitimate public good, even if done for soulless reasons.

• Capitalism reduces the ability of holders of economic power to independently employ force against others by decoupling the investor class and the managerial class, and thus reducing the social power of both. While capturing the coercive apparatus of the state is something that capitalists generally do, it is an additional step before force can be employed without serious risk of negative consequences, and one which can very easily go wrong if other elites see an opportunity to employ the letter of the law against a competitor. An investor, ultimately, does not control many, if any, personal forces with which to brutalize the oppressed or rival elites; they must go through the state, which, while generally amiable to the interests of the elite in general, is generally also not in thrall to any single elite and has many competing factions in it - some of which may even be in the vague interest of the working class - which can hinder or prevent such incidents of brutality.

• Capitalism, by the creation of a highly economically mobile investor class, creates class mobility which damages traditional castes and rigid aristocracies. The 'rags to riches' story is one that is greatly exaggerated by capitalist mythology, but nonetheless is an occurrence which is extremely difficult to achieve in other systems by comparison save by total acquiescence of the elite. Capitalism, thus, creates a sort of steady line from the working class to the middle class, and the middle class to nouveau-riche which steadily-if-slowly dislodges 'old money', reducing (though, again, definitely not eliminating) the influence of established client networks which extend the power of traditional elites beyond their nominal property holdings.

• Capitalism, by its demand for labor mobility, weakens the hold of traditional local elites and prejudices which tend to hold strong in sedentary societies with low labor mobility. While capitalist societies are certainly not immune to bigotry, it's also no coincidence that as capitalist and protocapitalist societies arose, traditional ethnic and religious restrictions and prejudices weakened. Capitalist societies, in this sense, resemble nomadic societies in their ability and willingness to integrate diverse populations, and by the mimicking of the aspirational middle class of the values of upper-class bourgeoisie, spread this more 'utilitarian' view of bigotry to the general population.

On the bad side, which will be a bit short because I presume most of us on fucking Lemmy, of all places, are aware that capitalism is dogshit in many, many ways:

• Capitalism's obsession with maximizing wealth (as wealth is the primary form of power for the investor class) and high fluidity of capital means that short-term gains are often prioritized over long-term gains. For most economic purposes, this is actually not that bad in and of itself - in a rapidly-changing capitalist society, long-term investments are much more likely to go awry. But as we've found out with the rise of the industrial revolution, the environmental effects of this have been ruinous and murderous as the extra 5% return on investing in coal has beat out both the march of human progress in developing renewables and the actual, literal destruction of the biosphere which enables human life and economic activity at the current level.

• Capitalism's decoupling of investors from consequences means that the destruction of firms, regardless of their greater social utility, is regarded as a very casual thing despite the massive damage it causes to the fabric of ordinary society. As long as the return is greater on the time scale the investors are worried about, no amount of public good will stop it, nor public outcry, since investors are generally numerous and hard to 'narrow in' on for reasons of creating a negative reputation. For every Bezos or Musk with a bad reputation, there are a thousand unknown vulture capitalists dismantling or enshittifying perfectly functioning firms for personal gain, and even knowing their names won't help - because unlike prior elites with narrow portfolios and areas of operation, investors are fucking legion - innumerable and everywhere.

• Capitalism's obsession with wealth as the primary means of accumulating power means the old notion of noblesse oblige, wherein the social contract could be invoked against the elite, is greatly weakened. Instead, our social contract is directly with the state, creating a 'middleman' situation wherein we struggle to make demands directly against capitalist elites, who are not reliant on our direct cooperation the way feudal and clientistic societies are. The capitalists do not need goodwill - the state they rely on needs goodwill. The capitalists need only cold, hard capital.

• Capitalism's obsession with wealth as the primary means of accumulating power and the focus on ROI means there is a certain self-defeating element to capitalism - left unrestrained, capitalism reverts to a clientistic system as one or a few capitalists obtain obscene wealth, then use that wealth to get average returns-on-investment... using ever-greater percentages of the total wealth of their society, accumulating more and more until they are capable of overturning all other elites and counter-elites in their society. With sufficient inheritance - which is more easily passed down than the social capital of feudal or clientistic societies - a few generations can create some truly horrific accumulation of wealth. Typically, this is stopped after some misery for general society by other elites making concessions to us filthy poors in exchange for support against Bad Elite(tm), or by counter-elites proposing radical reforms to damage the current accumulation of wealth/power, but can result in the total overthrow of capitalism in exchange for blatantly clientistic societies. As long as capitalism exists, this quiet struggle is essentially always ongoing, with elites trying to make it 'to the top' like this, other elites trying to stop them, and counter-elites wondering if there isn't a way of reform to stop it.