Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
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Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
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ID: WookieeMark @EvilGenXer posted:
"OK so look, Capitalism is right wing.
Period.
If you are pro-capitalism, you are Right Wing.
There is no pro-capitalist Left. That's a polite fiction in the US that no one can afford any longer as the ecosystem is actually collapsing around us."
Keynesian economic policy resulted in unprecedented prosperity for 60 years. It ended by Reagan's trickle down supply side economics.
Seems now there's a false dichotomy between supply side economics (which is an obvious failure) and communism (which was an obvious failure).
Crazy idea, maybe we should consider using economic policy that was proven to work? I guess that makes me hated by both the "right" and the "leftists" (two peas in a pod). So where would that put me in your made up political spectrum?
communism (which was an obvious failure)
Compare any communist country to a capitalist country at the same level of technological development and the communist country comes out ahead in wealth and happiness. Communism only seems like a failure because US and EU propaganda does a trick where they compare isolated (often literally blockaded) Communist countries to the wealthiest empires on the planet and say "look how much more money we have! Our system must be better!"
The trouble with Keynesian economics is that it created the conditions for Reagan's neoliberal revolution to occur, and any country that tries to recreate that economic system will fall into the exact same trap that America did, because the fundamental underlying problem in Capitalism is the ownership of Capital. Capitalists accumulate wealth, and they use that accumulated wealth to capture the system that is supposed to keep them in check, and they sabotage that system for their own profits, and they will do that every single time.
Compare any communist country to a capitalist country at the same level of technological development and the communist country comes out ahead in wealth and happiness.
Could you name an example of this happening?
North Korea was ahead of South Korea in economic development up to the 1960s, IIRC. Happiness is of course mandated by the party.
This has little to do with communism though. Centrally planned economies can transform an economy rapidly from agrarian to industrial, improve education and healthcare immensely. The Human cost for this is can be extremely high though.
I found this article on the subject which was pretty interesting. It seems they did develop faster right after the war:
The North Korean economy initially showed promise. North Korea controlled 80 percent of the peninsula’s coal and minerals as well as the vast majority of heavy machinery from Japanese colonial rule; this advantage allowed the country to rapidly industrialize in the first decade after the Korean War. With total power in its hands, the government ensured that all citizens attained primary and secondary education, and it leveraged its large supply of machinery and electrical power to produce goods and grain for its people.
Since then, obviously, they have fallen far behind
The Soviet Union also did pretty well overall. The Russian Empire went from a backwards feudal agrarian society and economy to a world superpower in a handful of decades. It wasn’t clear if the Soviet system might have superior outcomes until the 1970s. The Soviet Union ran into huge difficulties after the introduction of semiconductors and computers.
Happiness wise of course it’s mixed. The lack of political, artistic, and economic freedom made people‘s lives smaller and more grey. There was a huge desire among the population in the Soviet block to leave to a western country. The millions who died from hunger, forced labor, horrible conditions from the 1920s to 1940s certainly weren’t happy.
That sounds more like "pretty well initially" than "pretty well overall"; I guess it's an effect of the authoritarianism that they get stuck after a while, as people can stay in power even if they're not doing well
If there’s a ton of low hanging fruit to be picked and large developments possible just by sheer brute force, you can achieve quite remarkable effects. These brute force economic developments were effective, but not efficient.
A huge issue for the Soviets was the immense coverups of failures and underachievements. The plan demands a factory make 10,000 widgets per year. Failure is not an option, because you might get thrown into gulag as a saboteur. So they sacrifice quality or outright lie to meet the quota. If you get that all over the system, you end up with bad data and thus bad decisions.
I remember reading somewhere that one of the main reasons for the USSR's failure was that they immediately shot down any idea that had the tiniest bit in it that could be interpreted as capitalism-related. Even a suggestion that's 100% communist values but was using some capitalist-sounding terminology would get immediately disqualified and place it's supporters in hot water.
I think the USA - even if not as extremely - is doing the same thing but from the other side.
With such a mindset, "using economic policy that was proven to work" is outright impossible. Any policy that works (and not just in economy) will need to address the problems raised by all major ideologies - because even if an ideology got the solution completely wrong, at the very least that problems it was born from are real. Refusing to acknowledge these problems on ideological basis will not make them go away.
You're getting close, but you're still not quite there. The solution isn't to address all of the concerns of all the ideologies since that would be impossible. The solution is for people to realize that ideology is the problem. When we get to the point where we realize capitalism and socialism are tools that are good for different purposes we could have a healthy economy and we'd all be prosperous. But as long as we continue think in ideological terms which centers around creating false dichotomies that prevent us from using the best tool for the job we're always going to be living in a failed economy.
We'd be no better off living in a failed socialist economy run by the ideology obsessed than we are living in a capitalist economy run by the ideology obsessed.
In the end politics is always tribal, ideologies are just rationalizations made by a tribe to make them feel like they're the rational ones while the other tribes aren't. It's all bullshit.
“Perfect being the enemy of good [enough]” is also rhe argument republicans use against any liberal/social policy. If there are any flaws, we should do nothing at all.
Stop. Get help. Defining things to make sure your position is the right one and the only correct position is the one that does no harm to anyone and is in no way evil or exploitive. STOP.
It is not useful, it is not constructive. While you're lecturing about who has the correct beliefs to have a place at your little left wing table, a billionaire has gotten more wealth and power. Find common ground with people who work, and who believe in working to make the world better for society. It is more important to do something beneficial than to make sure you can't be logically judged poorly.
Go help someone. Go work to improve your community. Go find common ground with the people who are doing the same.
Left and right are completely arbitrary semantic categories so you can define them however you like, as long as it has a clear and internally consistent definition.
I’ve even seen ancaps who have almost the same definition as I do but completely reversed which is pretty funny but also gives me a headache.
What is Finland though? Social democracy seems pretty good but still fits in with capitalism as far as I can tell
Neoliberal, just like the rest of the "socialist" nordics (E: having socialised aspects to the state and or economy, or even being a "social democracy" does not socialism make), which are all on the exact same trajectory as the rest of us, only a few years behind.
Do you have an example of a properly socialist country that is doing better than the nordics?
Otherwise, perhaps we should look closely at the politics in the nordics for inspiration of what to do that actually seems to work?
Finland still pollutes the world at unsustainable levels, exploits the global south for raw materials and cheap labour, and is on a downwards trend to fascism like all of Europe. Liberal democracy only has one conclusion, and it's fascism.
Whatever social safety nets and programs they have will be dismantled as Western capitalism devours itself. As is happening all around Europe
Politically speaking, I don't believe there's such thing as "right" or "left" except in the relative sense. Even then it's questionable.
Edit: I'm really curious about what people downvoting think it fundamentally means for there to be an absolute political "center" from which there is an objective "right" wing and an objective "left" wing. Furthermore, I'd like to know what advantages this model has that makes you value it so much.
Right and left is a very rough but easy to understand model. In the US it represents the two big parties somewhat okay. You can also put political ideologies on this scale:
fascism - conservatism - liberalism - social democracy - socialism - communism
Centrism is more related to the Overton window, so what’s currently accepted by society as acceptable mainstream discourse. That means the center can include conservatives, liberals, and social democrats. However as the Overton window changes, centrism also adjusts. Centrism strives to represent a supermajority majority consensus.
That was well-thought-out and well-said, thank you.
I agree, politics aren't a line where some are in the right, some in the left and the center is some kind of mythological beast (if they are we are screwed, but they aren't)
Politics are complicated, politicians are simple. Capitalism isn't an ideology it's an economic system, it's as good or as bad as the mechanisms put in place to govern/control/rule it. It's supposed to be free but it can't be because no one can't trust corporations, it's also not supposed to be controlled by the State but when they inject money in it that's what they are doing.
Capitalism can work in any kind of environment, and fail too.
Personally I believe democracy is failing, technofeudalism is coming in hard for it. In my country we replaced nobility with politicians and they are the caste, the president is the King, if you defy the party stand you are kicked out, they claim to be socialdemocrats but all the social aspects are worse than 5, 10, and 20 years ago and although keynesian economics plays a part on the reason I believe it's democracy's fault.
Capitalism isn't an ideology it's an economic system
Well, it's both. All economic systems are ideologies with specific values and concerns.
it's as good or as bad as the mechanisms put in place to govern/control/rule it
This implies that economic systems can't be good or bad in themselves. But every implementation of capitalism (or any other economic system) is going to reflect that system's values, and those values can be judged to be good or bad. So I think it's reasonable to label different economic systems as "good" or "bad", so long as you precisely define the system and its values before judging it.
Capitalism is the fundamental belief in private ownership. That I can own a factory, a store, a restaurant, and therefore be entitled to the profits produced from them. Modern capitalism is inextricable from consumerism, from business, and from stock exchanges.
Capitalism is any resource or good harvested or produced that is not shared by all who produced it. Capitalism is the idea that some labor is more deserving of the fruits of production than other kinds of labor. Capitalism is violence against the working class. Capitalism is the means by which a new ruling class was created over the past 200 years that presently controls the entire world while utterly ravaging our environment and wasting more resources than we literally every could have thought possible.
You are NOT a leftist if you support capitalism. You are ANTI-WORKER if you support capitalism. If you want to support workers and if you want to support progressive leftist causes, ORGANIZE. Join your local anarchist community. Agitate, push leftist politics. Start mutual aid networks for vulnerable workers in your community. Support unionization efforts. Support striking workers. Participate in civil disobedience. Show up at protests. Organize demonstrations.
The world has never been changed by accepting the crumbs they threw at our feet. It was changed by those who refused to bow their heads. By the communities who resisted oppression and fought for their fellow workers. By people who fought for us all to live better lives. Count yourself among them.
Meh, I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but don't like black/white dichotomies (though I'm personally anti-capitalist). Unions most definitely care the businesses they work for make money. The more money the better, since union members can bargain for more. They have incentive to be pro-consumerist and to protect their business/industry. Even at the expense of others.
"Pro capitalism" and harm reduction are not the same thing. Some form of capitalist-like economics will exist until we achieve post scarcity economics. The best we can do until then is work towards that end, while also working to minimize the harms imposed by material and labor scarcity.
This is just another stupid purity test by people who care more about their own righteousness than actual action. You can call my praxis whatever you want. I don't care.
We've been post-scarcity on a global scale for decades if you count the essentials. We've been producing all the food that's needed to feed the world, and that's with only 2% of people working on agriculture in the developed world.
The reason for housing shortages is also due to policy, not because we somehow don't have the resources and labour to build enough.
I think it’s important to clarify that markets and the use of money are not exclusive to capitalism. Under capitalism, the point of markets is to accumulate money absent of any actual project or goal, and money is the way the capital holding class keeps score. In other systems, the point of markets is to connect people who have some item with people who need or want that item and money is the means of exchange. Markets are fine for distributing excess materials and labor, once people’s basic needs are met.
Markets can efficiently allocate resources and they also foster competition. That enables decentralized innovation and optimization.
A major error of many leftists is to see markets as undesirable. There are always markets. Rightwingers often confuse an unregulated market with a free market, which is very misleading. Markets need regulation in order to be free.
Markets are fine for distributing excess materials and labor, once people’s basic needs are met
You can achieve that for example by having the market for housing and food be dominated by publicly owned enterprises.
It is not enough to be correct. You also have to be smart. And telling people who could be won over that actually, no, you're not on our side, you're one of them—"you are Right Wing"—is a monumentally stupid opening move.
Stop telling people they are right wing. A lot of people—especially those most susceptible to right-wing rhetoric—think that who they are is fixed. Instead, insist that they are people who want the best for others (even if you don't think that's true enough yet). Tell them that they're dragging around the anchors of right wing ideology, and that if they want things to be better, those ideas—which harm most people for the benefit of an unscrupulous few—should and can be left behind.
You're still not going to win very often, but at least you aren't throwing the game immediately.