this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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What do you call it if I don't like capitalism, but also don't think it's even possible for any governing body to remain both competent and non-corrupt for long enough to make a centrally managed system work?
maybe you've got anarchist sensibilities.
Im also not dumb enough to think everyone will play nice when states no longer exist.
No one, certainly no anarchist suggested they would. So that's a really weird thing to assert. Just completely irrelevant, non sequitur. Hardship and tragedy will always occur even without the existence of a state. But if you want atrocity, mass oppression/suppression you need the state.
Yes there is the argument that the state is theoretically capable of being a net benefit. The problem is the reality where the state struggles to even stay net neutral. Generally outright oppressive corrupt realistically. Even the best states.
But if you want atrocity, mass oppression/suppression you need the state.
Any sufficiently large gang, left well enough alone for long enough, will become the de facto state.
Your own local anarchist conclave may all be friendly and would never do such a thing to their neighbors. But if the next one down the road decides they need your land and resources, and if they outnumber and outgun you, then you're just done for. No one will come to help defend you. No one will arrive to mete out vengeance afterward.
The state holding an implied monopoly of violence is what enables said state to enact their atrocities, but is also what prevents smaller groups from falling into the same trap.
We don't have territory wars within the US states because if you start shooting at your neighbors, the police arrive. They are a higher authority that can compel punishment for your crimes. Say what you will about the cops (trust me, I've got a lot to say, and most of it ain't nice), but the threat of the police compels civil behavior from people who would be otherwise disinclined to it.
Another key part of that, is that the police force is effectively inexhaustible. There may be, factually, a limited number of cops that exist in America, but in practice, if you just start blasting at them, you'll never see the end of it. You'll be hunted by police and feds and SWAT teams until you achieve death.
In smaller, more localized communities, none of this remains true. You may have local peacekeepers, folks in your community that serve the same function that police would in a different environment, but they aren't going to be numerous enough or authoritative enough to combat an outside threat. When a bike gang rolls up with a dozen shotguns, and you have, say, five peacekeepers in your commune, the bike gang is getting whatever they want, one way or another.
And here we have the primary argument that prevents me from supporting anarchism as a realistic political standpoint. We can all chant "Abolish the state!" all we want, but when the state is gone and someone takes advantage of their absence, we return to the "might makes right" era of human history, which has, historically speaking, brought about many of the very worst times to be a living human being.
Any sufficiently large gang, left well enough alone for long enough, will become the de facto state.
Again this is kind of non sequitur. No one argued that they wouldn't. States are definitionally just gangs that have been legitimized.
Your own local anarchist conclave may all be friendly and would never do such a thing to their neighbors. But if the next one down the road decides they need your land and resources, and if they outnumber and outgun you, then you're just done for. No one will come to help defend you. No one will arrive to mete out vengeance afterward.
And? None of these are gotchas of any sort. Even that case is still preferable to the state doing it. If the state does it does that make it better/more acceptable. And at that point wouldn't that group be a burgeoning state anyway? This is why anarchist are strong advocates of arming the populace.
The state holding an implied monopoly of violence is what enables said state to enact their atrocities, but is also what prevents smaller groups from falling into the same trap.
Smaller groups are capable of less total violence at scale. That's like saying, more violence is justified, otherwise we would effectively have less violence. It doesn't make the sense you seem to think.
Oh and there is also a huge difference between the state acknowledging that it is at War for territory. And not being at war for territory. In the United States my people are constantly at war with the state to preserve what little territory we've been left. Let alone get back what the state stole. But it's okay because the state did it therefore it's okay. Otherwise some roving gang might have gotten much smaller section of it. And that would be so much worse than losing nearly all of it as we did.
And no community is an island. You keep mentioning "my community" as if that is all there is. Or that having neighbors and allies is impossible. All you arguments realistically just boil down to "we need the state, or else the state". Classic circular reasoning.
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So in political science broadly and especially foreign policy, the default is to assume that states themselves exist in an otherwise anarchic environment with no supernatural rules. Only responses to their own behavior, to the extent that another state can actually impose that on them, exist to potentially 'govern' them.
States are literally an abstraction, the fundamental reality is anarchy.
States also tend to not play nice with each other, nor with their own subjects.
So an abstraction that puts you in its prisons when you break their rules doesn't seem very abstract to me.
You've missed the point.
I can put you in a dungeon if you break my rules.
... when a person acts this way, they tend to be viewed as a serial killer or perhaps vigilante or terrorist.
What's the difference?
Scale of power? Perception of legitimacy or moral justness?
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Although it might seem contradictory, something can be abstract and concrete at the same time. These are relative qualities.
Relative to anarchy, the state is abstract. It depends upon a socially shared model of thinking that gets acted out by individuals. Take away this layer of abstraction and you are left with anarchy, i.e. the precursor of the state.
Prison is itself an abstraction, though its consequences feel very concrete to a prisoner. All of your thoughts and feelings are abstractions, and yet they seem concrete to you.
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Socialism doesn't have to be centrally planned.
There's market socialism for that. Socialism/communism just means the workers own the means of production, you can do that in a market system with a bunch of competing worker owned cooperatives. No giant Soviet state required.
Anarchist, mayhaps
If you're in favor of a balance between a free market and regulation to cover capitalism damages on people, you may be social democrat, like Bernie Sanders and most of the left in EU.
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You don't need central management. You just need to have workers keep the proceeds of their labor instead of uninvolved shareholders and "owners".
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Ngl, this desire to flatten the entire range of human political thought into a single dimension is pretty right-wing
Well, thats more of a general thing for extremists. That happens to be independent of left or right. Just watch Lemmings down vote brigading.
That being said: generally of anybody tries to break any complex problem down to a simple answer you should be very careful what you do next. Thats how scams work and long existing political problems like right wing populism still exist for a reason. Yes, its complicated. A guillotine won't solve that. Yes I'm taking to you... ;)
"Eating the rich" won't help either, but taxing the shit out of them might do away with some of the problem for some time, so this would be better than doing nothing and letting people get so angry they fall for the populist scam.
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No True Scotsman can be a capitalist either, they said
There's a lotta people that also think using a system of currency is all capitalism is and is what they want to be rid of. But you can still have money without capitalism.
I knew someone once who thought capitalism was basically all forms of commerce. Like there was no trade before capitalism i guess. Don't understand how they thought the world worked for most of the last few thousand years.
Course a distressingly number of people in this thread seem to think similarly. Which makes me sad for the world.
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There’s little I detest more than when someone makes an absurd yet completely sincere claim and just doesn’t elaborate whatsoever.
I guess I should go to Mars or something since that seems to be the norm among our species
That's cap. You can be pro-capitalism in some form and still be on the left wing of politics.
But of course, this is extremely subjective.
You can be pro-capitalism in some form and still be on the left wing of politics.
Pro capitalist and socially progressive is just called liberal.
The problem here is that part of the left deny that liberals are on the left.
Pedantic structuralism is right wing. Period. If you are obsessed with any modernist philosophy, you are right wing. There is no structuralist left. That's a polite fiction children on the Internet tell themselves as they argue about which outdated political dogma they have pinned to their jacket.
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I know there's a lot of people who say "look, I know, capitalism sucks, absolutely, but it's the only thing that works right now!"
This absolutely shouldn't stop you from dreaming big, my friend.
Europe is great because of a huge number of fully public or heavily tax subsidised services.
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I mean even if you believe this Marx at least suggested the benefits of industrial capital should be retained somehow. Whether that's by fencing it in, simulating it entirely, or by disciplining capitalists directly you do realistically need some form of industrial production.
Normalize including an argument with hot takes
North Korea has markets nowadays where currency is traded for goods, even if they also have government rationing and almost total government control of the economy. China does not only have markets where currency is traded for goods but also has the whole stock exchanges and billionaires thing. The democratic socialist states of northern Europe also follow capitalism, even if the government is heavily involved in both the economy and is giving out large amounts of welfare. Capitalism is very broad. You can absolutely be left wing if you live in the USA and want capitalism to work more as capitalism works in the Nordic countries. In a way you can therefore be pro capitalist and left wing. However I kinda get what the guy in the post means but I still want to be clear that you can be left wing and not want to abolish currency at the same time.
Currency, and this is going to be astonishing to hear, isn't capitalism. Capitalism is the system of economics where owners of capital control the profits from that capital, even if they can't get those profits without the labor of others. It has fuck-all to do with literal currency which has existed since far before Capitalism and will exist far after it as well.
Neither socialism nor communism are incompatible with currency cause that's just a way of expediting the exchanging of goods. Instead of social debt, people exchange currency instead for goods or services. Makes keeping everything straight quite a bit easier. Hoarding it is problematic in any system, since the whole point of currency is to, again, aid in the exchange of things.
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Capitalism is the part where having money makes money. Markets are a different thing.
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Gonna left it there for those who agree with that dude :
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