Even checked Capitalism results in fascism, as Capitalism is entirely unsustainable and eventually results in the crisis that enables the rise of fascism.
Maybe so. Maybe capitalism can never remain checked because the temptation to acquire more wealth will always end up winning. You'd like to think that people are better than that, buuuuut...
Which system IS stable? AFAICT every system ever has allowed some people more power than others and those people cleave more power to themselves over time. This appears to be how most empires fall
Good question! The oldest government still in operation appears to be San Marino, a tiny country near Italy, at around 415 years. Considering that even at a small size it's only been around that long despite civilization being around 6000 years old, I think it's safe to say we haven't managed a system that has real staying power yet.
There's hunter-gatherer tribes that have been more or less stable for over a thousand years. It's said that the Nez Perce have lived on the Columbia River for 11,500 years.
I mean we do have a pretty good indication of a quite large impending factor which may cause a lot of them to collapse in the coming years, and which could collectively be attributed to them pretty well, especially within the last 50 years.
That is an interesting argument, but where is the proof? Economics is a very murky "science" as it is, a broad statement such as "capitalism is inherently unstable" needs some healthy data backing it up.
The same argument could be made about communism, as an economic system it doesn't have the best track record.
Socialism seems to have a pretty good track record. But even in socialism there are issues, especially around ensuring a steady supply of kids coming through, once population starts falling the cracks start appearing.
That is an interesting argument, but where is the proof? Economics is a very murky "science" as it is, a broad statement such as "capitalism is inherently unstable" needs some healthy data backing it up.
Marx makes his case for it in Capital, specifically Volume 3, Chapter 13-15, though it's easier to digest Wage Labor and Capital and Value, Price and Profit. Essentially, competition forces prices lower, and automation and increased production lower the price floor. Automation is pursued because it temporarily allows you to outcompete, until other firms can produce at the same price, forcing prices to match at a new floor. This continues. It's more like gravity than an invisible hand, there do exist ways to push back against it, but the overall trend is negative, as the Rate of Profit falls to 0.
The same argument could be made about communism, as an economic system it doesn't have the best track record.
It can't, because Communism abolishes this system. Communism has a good track record when properly put into historical context and is definitely the correct goal to pursue.
Socialism seems to have a pretty good track record. But even in socialism there are issues, especially around ensuring a steady supply of kids coming through, once population starts falling the cracks start appearing.
Socialism is just the precursor to Communism. The USSR, Cuba, PRC, Vietnam, Laos, etc. are/were all Socialist, building towards Communism, I don't see why you say Communism has a bad track record but Socialism has a good track record, that seems contradictory. Further still, I don't see what birth rates have to do with anything.
While I appreciate that Marx made a case, this is not data or evidence. It seems intuitively true, but that doesn't really move you closer to real proof.
Essentially, competition forces prices lower, and automation and increased production lower the price floor. Automation is pursued because it temporarily allows you to outcompete, until other firms can produce at the same price, forcing prices to match at a new floor. This continues.
I'm not sure if you are trying to imply automation is a good or bad thing. Looking through history, the industrial revolution was bad for the workers of the time, but in the long run massively improved the living standards of everyone. Automation is a net good in my opinion. Competition is simply an accelerator, this is not really tied to the economic system being used. In capitalist or communist systems, firms that are protected from competition (by what ever means) do not innovate as fast or as effectively (see Intel as a great example of this).
Socialism is just the precursor to Communism.
While this can be true, it is not necessarily true.
I don’t see what birth rates have to do with anything.
As your population ages, the costs to care for them raise at an increasing rate. If you don't have enough new workers to stabilize the economic base, the burden that an aging population places on the younger generation grows until it becomes untenable.
I'd say that Marxism at least is fatally flawed. The idea that you start a Communist society by gathering all power to a central council is the issue. Once power is obtained it's never willingly dispersed. This has been the fate of existing all communist governments
That relies on the assumption that what's good for the economy is good for the capitalists, they always make sure that capitalism occasionally goes up in flames to take advantage of social unrest.
Considering the capitalists have forced the world to arbitrarily measure the "economy" by measuring how willing rich people are to play in the rich man casino...
In Germany there was a battle between left and right back then. The economy boomed in the 20s and faltered in the 30s. Capitalists saw the threat of socialism looming just behind Poland and so they supported fascism.
The Nazis funneled billions into large businesses. It was unsustainable and morally multi-level wrong, but they skimmed a lot of profits from these agreements. They got rich, while the economy started to collapse - even before the war.
Even after the war, most of them got away. They kept much of their wealth.
In fact, fascism often gains support from middle class desperation, with the blessing of the booj who prefer it over communism (which tends to rise from the lower classes during similar times of desperation)
One is a form of economy, the other is an ideology of societal oppression. Fascist governments have run capitalist, communist, and socialist economies. Historically, more fascist governments have developed from socialist nations than capitalist. That doesn’t make fascism inherently socialist either.
The meme would be more accurate in stating that fascism is a failure of democracy than capitalism.
That's not really accurate, fascism is specifically a reactionary attempt to "turn the clock back" to "the good old days," it's focused on class colaborationism and nationalism.
There’s nothing specific about fascism. The term was coined during Mussolini’s reign, and has taken many forms since. Kershaw famously wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."
The only consistent components of fascism are an autocratic government and a dictatorial ruler, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible nationalism through suppression of opposition.
You're leaving out the inherent focus on Corporatism and Class Colaborationism, which are key components of historically fascist countries like Italy under Mussolini or Nazi Germany. You're also leaving out nationalism and xenophobia, the necessity of an "enemy," and more. Fascism rarely shows all symptoms of fascism, but by your definition is just becomes "bad government."
Fascism is a specific and flexible form of a bad government/economic structure with its own set of rising factors and characteristics, not every cruel act by a state is fascist.
Eco's 14 points on fascism are not entirely complete, but do paint a far better picture than what you're working with here.
While they are common traits, they are not requirements to be considered part of fascist ideology. While used by more famous fascist governments, they are not necessary to impart the general ideology of fascism through authoritarian control by a dictator.
For example the Spanish Falange was considered a fascist movement. It supported conservative ideas about women and supported rigid gender roles that stipulated that women's main duties in life were to be loving mothers and submissive wives. There was no economic system defining the fascist movement.
What is the "general ideology of fascism?" You've stripped fascism of its defining characteristics and defined it as "bad," which isn't particularly useful for avoiding fascism or preventing it.
You've stripped it of historical context and now it's just something that can happen, sometimes, for no reason.
Where did I write “fascism is bad?” It is a vague ideology that is centrally defined as I stated above.
For example, Oxford defines fascism as an extreme right-wing political system or attitude that is in favour of strong central government, aggressively promoting your own country or race above others, and that does not allow any opposition.
There is no specific economic system required for a government to be considered fascist. Historically, fascism has grown out of more socialist nations than capitalist. That doesn’t make fascism inherently socialist either.
Joseph Stalin stated in a speech in 1924: Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie's fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.
The definition skews depending on the source. The qualities change depending on the government. The policies vary depending on the leader. The only consistent factors are the ones I stated earlier.
Fascism in the most vague sense that you can get while still being accurate is enforcement of a hierarchy, practically no social mobility, based on traits like ethnicity, sex, wealth, etc. supposed to be the "natural order" of society; often involving some sort of mythological/religious/idealized "past" or predecessor society/civilization which was then upended by some sort of evil group(s) (the targetted groups/scapegoats), which stole from us and which are an evil that need to be stopped. This, of course, is slightly different from how Mussolini's fascism was originally visualized – which was a corporatist nationalist dictatorship about "might"/the strong coming out on top (translated into militarism) justified by religion/mythology (in fascist Italy's case about being the successor to the great ancient Rome and seeing through to a greater Roman Empire) – but it's how the world has become to understand the concept of fascism as time went on.
This is the reason many see capitalism as sort of "diet fascism" – it's entirely about a hierarchy based around socioeconomic class/groups, with highly restricted social mobility (although not completely closed off as fascism's is), and it's seen that your place in the hierarchy in a hypothetically purely capitalistic system is the natural order of things – your place in the hierarchy is supposedly based on how hard you work, rich people are rich because they've simply worked smarter and harder than the people under them, and anyone can go up the hierarchy if they simply just are a better person. Of course, in reality we know this doesn't work and among other things generational wealth & systematic roadblocks created by the wealthy play a major factor in this hierarchy, but I digress. The reason classical liberalism / free market capitalism hates class equality, hates a system like socialism which calls for abolishing unjust hierarchies, is because it sees the abolition of the socioeconomic/class-based hierarchy as going against the natural order and forcibly placing people in the "wrong" places in the hierarchy (all on the same level) when some people deserve to be below others because they're lazy, illegal immigrants, "criminals", etc. In essence, they see equality not as equality, but as an "upside-down" hierarchy where the former upper class is forced below the formerly marginalized groups; to a more privileged person, equality feels like oppression. Capitalism needs an underclass to function, in a capitalistic system people with certain traits always have an unequal distribution throughout the hierarchy (scapegoated/marginalized groups significantly tending to pool at the bottom with only a few "token" examples truly traversing upwards, and people closer to the top of the pyramid being less and less prone to falling down the hierarchy). It sounds a lot like fascism, because fascism and capitalism are ideologies/systems with loosely equivalent structures but capitalism being far less pronounced.
Additionaly, classical liberalism & moreso conservative capitalism are centered around reggressing to a supposed "golden age" of the past where things were better before "they" ruined it (whoever "they" is and what specifically "they" did is vague and changes from belief to belief but usually includes taxation/redistribution of wealth/power away from the people at the top of the hierarchy, or some shift in the hierarchy). It's like a much less pronounced form of the mythologized predecessor civilization/society of fascism, instead of hundreds or thousands of years ago it's more like 30-40 years ago.
Fascism in the way we currently understand it doesn't even strictly require dictatorial/autocratic rule, it can be enforced in a technically "democratic" system as long as certain groups are excluded from the democratic process. Of course, the line between democracy, broader oligarchy, narrower oligarchy, and autocracy becomes blurrier the more of the population you exclude, since democracy is more of a spectrum than anything, but generally there's a lot of possible fascist systems where people would still consider it democratic enough. Your perspective is pretty deeply tied to which group you belong to as well – the average German thought Nazi Germany was a democracy even when Poland was invaded and throughout much of the war, but obviously the Roma and Jewish populace being genocided would definitely not agree. Capitalism does this exclusion to a large extent too – just usually not in the form of outright completely banning a group from participating – and the upper classes have signficantly more say in the democratic process, to the point where the upper classes can choose to completely eliminate options they collectively dislike enough from the equation regardless of the consent of the lower classes.
Overall while fascism and capitalism aren't a complete overlap, fascism is for the most part a progression of capitalism (or, as more and more people see it, capitalism is a derivation of fascism and/or feudalism where we keep trying to patch up the flaws using a few socialist/progressive/democratic qualities) and pretty much requires a capitalist (or capitalist-adjacent) system to exist. Fascism can't use, say, a socialist system because socialism inherently requires working towards the abolition of the power structures/hierarchies which fascism is based around. Of course, in fascist systems the supposed "superior" class often has power redistributed to them in the form of e.g. social welfare benefits and infrastructure investments, which isn't straight up classical liberalism obviously, but that doesn't necessarily violate capitalism/the capitalist power structures as a whole, it's just using a different form of capitalism in order to keep the currently-not-scapegoated but also-not-highest castes content and thinking that things aren't so bad.
If you have any questions about this or can't see the reasoning of certain parts, I'm sure I (or someone else) will be happy to answer it for you.
The only consistent components of fascism are an autocratic government and a dictatorial ruler, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible nationalism through suppression of opposition.
This is authoritarian nationalism, not fascism. All fascism is nationalist and authoritarian, not all nationalism or authoritarianism is fascist. Bismarck, Churchill and Erdogan are/were authoritarian nationalists, but I wouldn't call any of them fascist.
They're not defining fascism, they're listing the consistent components. Their post is completely agreeing with your statement: "All fascism is nationalist and authoritarian, not all nationalism or authoritarianism is fascist."
This is just false. There's no interpretation of 'communist economies' that applies to any fascist state ever. Two of the core characteristics of fascism are anti-liberalism and anti-Marxism, which covers basically all socialism. Fascist leaders (even the national-syndicalism types like Mussolini) have an odd relationship with capitalism, but ultimately I don't believe they moved towards socialism either.
Historically, more fascist governments have developed from socialist nations than capitalist.
Apart from Francoist Spain, I can't think of a single example of a fascist government which succeeded a socialist government.
How so? I understand the relationship of fascism and capitalism. But it stands to reason a similar social framework could arise from socialism, especially during the transition from capitalism to socialism. Think Khmer Rouge
Okay so everything after "I understand the thing" proves you don't understand anything. You literally don't have any functioning definition of fascism at all. Socialism is the transition state. And the Khmer Rouge weren't socialist (you can tell because they were US funded during the cold war).
Maybe not, but patronization won’t help. Maybe explaining how this definition doesn’t apply to the Khmer Rouge. Fascism is a vague term. Was it authoritarianism? What separates it from fascism? Can socialist countries be authoritarian? Does that make them fascist if they’re not capitalist?
From the peanut gallery, aka me..... Most business are run under a more fascist principle.
I'm not talking about how the business operates in the market, or whatever.... I'm talking about internal organizational behaviour.
Things are often very "my way or the highway", with management, owners, etc.
Of course, not all businesses, but most follow some fairly fascist ideologies. They'll tell you where to be, what to bring, what to do, when to stop... And hey, where are your papers? .... I mean... Where is your company issued identification card?
They'll watch what you're doing, monitor and surveil you as much as they are legally allowed, govern every moment that they can, of every day you're working there.
Capitalism and the pursuit of profit is their objective, the governance is fascist.
Business leaders engage in fascism.
.... Why are we surprised that this brain rot is leaking out into actual politics? Trump is literally known for running businesses.... Mostly into the ground/bankruptcy, but still. His whole thing is him being the boss. The ruler and Lord dictator over his tiny island. How are we so surprised that he's a fascist? Shocked picachu
The best move the Nazis made was convincing everyone that yeah, the Nazis lost and are gone forever.... They're literally hiding in plain sight.
It should be of little surprise (and much more widespread knowledge) that just about everyone with money in the 1930s financially supported the actual Nazi party, including but not limited to Henry Ford and George W Bush's grandfather.
I actually disagree with the meme; capitalism is always fascism, just sometimes has a better PR team.
Fascism is a reactionary attempt to "turn back the clock" to the glory days of Capitalism before it decayed as much. Capitalism necessarily results in crisis, at which points occasionally the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie, the "middle class," work together against the lower classes, ie the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat. It usually rises as a response to climbing Socialism as the train of thought among the Proletariat.
It isn't necessarily modeled after anything, history isn't driven by ideas but Material Conditions and class conflict.
That's not what fascism is. Fascism isn't "when there are shitty strict rules". In fact, classical fascism is a (failed) class collaborationist ideology where the state was supposed to mediate between interest groups of workers and bosses. protip: it didn't. workers got screwed. (see corporatism, from the root word corpus, not corporation). Nazism didn't do any of that but even they had their own garbage state-run labor front.
But the point being, those business are beyond even fascism. It's straight-up pure raw capitalist dictatorship.
Also a result of the inevitable decline of Capitalism and Imperialism, which is what we are seeing in America, a desparate and incorrect ploy to "turn the clock back" to the "good old days."
It can't be beaten electorally, it will remain until it either succeeds or Capitalism itself is escaped and we transition to Socialism.
I don't see a decline in US capitalism or (US-style) imperialism anytime soon. It seems extremely well positioned to continue to be the #1 world power and influencer, even if its regional political and economic influence wanes a bit. US foreign policy is that of a bully in the sandpit who breaks any toy denied to him. Domestically, from the outside it looks like an absolute shitshow, with the masses cheering with hysteric enthusiasm as they are thrown one by one to the lions.
US influence is waning, and the Global South is throwing off the shackles of the US. It won't happen immediately, but with weakening Imperialism will come weakening domestic conditions until it cannot be sustained any longer.
I actually watches the first season of the boys recently. Killer show. Its stunning that any real person could have ever looked up to Homelander in any capacity.
Fun fact: The nowadays conservative (and IMO right leaning) German CDU has originally considered capitalism to be the reason for outbreak for WW2. They wanted to form a new Christian Socialism, which would've united Christian ideals with a socialistic (not marxistic) economy. The so-called Kölner Erklärung was written in 1945 as a basic idea for where Germany should head from perspective of the CDU.
These ideas didn't last for long and got replaced by a conservative fiscal policy. But it is good to keep in mind that even in the CDU there were people who recognized that capitalism ultimately has a strong tendency to fuel fascism. In Nazi Germany, the main capitalists worked closely with the NSDAP - Krupp, Bosch, Hugo Boss (who famously designed the Nazi uniforms), Volkswagen were all lead by rich capitalists who saw (and gained) profit by the actions of the Nazis. It makes me sad that even the SPD, the so-called Social Democratic Party, long forgot what it means to fight for socialism and equality, and instead embraces neoliberalism with a touch of social politics.
It makes so much more fundamental sense for the followers of Jesus to embrace socialist values as opposed to the tendency of Christians to follow both conservative and capitalistic politics.
I'm an atheist but I was raised Christian Catholic and the stark contrast between the religious texts and parables with the actions of the average Christian or the Church was a great contributor to my rejection of religion. I still see value in some of the teachings (be nice to others, people before material things) and always took them closer to socialism values than the Supply Side Jesus right-leaning Christians adopted.
Same. I always wondered how ideas like giving what you can, loving thy neighbour, and forgiveness to the extreme somehow results in Supply Side Jesus, "Protestant work ethic", jail time for addictions, "law and order" politics, etc..
These people have strayed so far from the teachings and I'm not sure how they can claim to follow them and then blame homeless people for being homeless.
Exactly, like all religions anybody can dig into the texts and find a justification for their personal and political views but the Jesus I was brought up with, while I don't believe he existed, had some pretty decent key points (forgiveness, love, sharing, empathy, charity...). These contrast strongly with the judgemental, conservative, nationalist, racist "Christians".
They would probably have hung this "rebellious, commie jew" themselves today if their much-awaited second coming had taken place.
Dont forget the red scare whenever capitalism even thinks about faltering to remind us all of the evils of just giving hungry people food or letting them see a doctor.
It's brilliant IMO (I haven't seen the latest season but the one before ... season 3 did feel like it was losing its way a bit).
The thing with mainstream super hero stuff is that it seems to very much about supporting the status quo without really examining it. Generally, the MCU has been pretty guilty of this AFAICT. It's also why Winter Soldier is probably the best MCU film IMO ... Captain America becomes "the enemy" by standing up for his principles and destroys shield.
The Boys is about examining the status quo and so stands out massively compared to all of the other mainstream superhero stuff.
It's just too fucking dark for me. I don't dislike a gritty show necessarily but I couldn't make it through more than the first few episodes. It seemed good, but damn I have plenty of problems and shittiness in my real life, I like my entertainment to make me feel better, not worse. 😀
One's an economic school of thought, the other a political one, so obviously you can have both at the same time or even working together. Coincidentally corporate business is mostly anti-fascist right now because social diversity and progressiveness is where the money's at
I can only guess you've used one of the words out of context. If it was fascism, I have nfi what the meme is trying to say by linking Superman to capitalism in the same way Homelander is easily linked with fascism.
If the joke instead about fascism, then maybe something positive and relatable to it would make sense. Patriotism is what I think of since Superman loves America, but shows little concern for anyone else and this sentiment could start festering domestically, especially if the love for country becomes ultra-nationalistic.
There is a saying, something along the lines of 'politics is the shadow that economics casts over society'. Now obviously there is no one to one correlation between a country's economic and political systems, but rich people often respond to calls for economic reform by trying to make the public fight among themselves. Fascism is one possibility, 'culture war' is another, bread and circuses a third, and so on.
Trying to think of that one time fascism was economically beneficial to capitalists... Nope. I can't recall one.
Edit: Oh, wait. If you were supplying a side against fascism, it's always been very beneficial. I know that's in contrast to the meme, but supports your point in a "round peg; square hole" kinda way.
You...literally just linked a list of suppliers to a regime. Which, of course, had to exist in order for the regime to be sustained. Which of course lost supply as the sustainability diminished.
Do you know how many companies were passive or against it? It's a little more... Quite a bit more. Millions(?) more. You've essentially just tried to correlated registered businesses with the entire economic school of Capitalism. "If it's a registered business, it's Capitalism, huuur."
Come on, I can think of better counter-points than that.
Wait, did you think people were saying that the Nazis were for every Capitalist on the planet? No, we were talking about Nazi Germany and some Western companies.
You've fundamentally misunderstood what everyone was talking about.
Trying to think of that one time fascism was economically beneficial to capitalists... Nope. I can't recall one.
Almost all fascist politicians were supported by local elites who thought they could control them. Sometimes they could; sometimes the fascists got too strong to be controlled.
That's the general recipe of ultra-nationalistic fascism, yes. You're not making much of a point and you're also disregarding all the other instances of fascism.
A common thread being control, some times that can be through a local economical channel. That's not immediately "Capitalism" and actually quite unrelated.
All fascism is nationalist. There's no 'other instance'. And a common theme in the rise of fascism is a compromise between the rich (capitalists, local gentry, etc.) and the fascist organisation, where the former bankrolls the latter in return for maintaining their economic and social position / backdoor deals / protection. Further, this usually happens as a result of some marginalised group - factory workers, serfs, women, etc. getting too uppity.
That's the point of having two similar yet distinct characters. Most people don't look at capitalism and see fascism, they appear distinct to most, so having them both be Homelander would be a poor visual analogy.
To me, an ignorant person who has only begun to seriously question capitalism after being exposed to lemmy for about a year, this visual analogy seems to imply that capitalism and fascism are thought to be distinct in the eyes of the maker of this meme, though. I think the suggestion of having them both be homelander conveys a different message which seems to be the consensus here: they are different sides of the same coin.
Admittedly, I'm out of my element here but I'm enjoying the exposure.
No you nailed it. The meme is a poor metaphor because it implies that the system has ever been superman or that OP believes it to have been superman.
Or that capitalism only behaves like Homelander when times are tough.
For many people Capitalism has always treated them like Homelander. For many people they've never seen the Superman fascade.
So this meme reads as though the creator only recently learned some world history, or has some privilege in life but is becoming aware of reality for others.
You could also fix it by just having Homelander say "I'm you!"
Depends on the writer. You get a superman DC writer, homelander probably gets treated like every other fascist superman beats up. If it's a "the boys" writer, homelander probably uses kryptonite to rip superman in half in a graphic full-page spread or some shit. You're also gonna be dealing with, are we dropping superman into the relatively hopeless universe of the boys, are we dropping homelander into the DC universe, where he'll probably be right st home with like 30 different characters almost exactly like him, will we come up with some portal stuff, what's going on there
So I dunno, depends on the writer. Ke personally I'd prefer if superman won, cause it's more hopeful and less garth ennis-y.
Yes, sadly. During the dissolution of the USSR, millions of people died, literacy rates plumetted, safety nets were plundered by opportunistic Capitalists, and the State was sliced up and sold for parts. This privitization was a disaster for the common worker.
I’ve been so sad to see the privatization of NASA. It feels very similar to me. SpaceX celebrating about launching a rocket into low earth orbit after spending billions in taxpayer money. How is this progress? We could do it back in the 60s with the equivalent computing power you can find in a $7 wristwatch today. Why didn’t we just keep building on our success, no we had to privatize, so that we could reach a beautiful end goal where space would not be for science and exploration funded by the people with its fruits improving humanity.
No we all had to pull together so spacex can build a massive taxpayer funded toll booth and every time America would like to visit the stars some billionaires can collect their cut. And people cheer
Now go check out how much each launch of the shuttle cost ($1.5 billion per flight) and compare it to the costs by SpaceX. The shuttle was launched 135 times, SpaceX has had more launches than that in the last 3 years. That tiny computer got us to the moon, but it wasn't enough to make rockets or boosters be able to land or be reusable. And don't bring up the farce of reusability of the shuttle. The number I recall from back when it was still flying was a 75% overhaul to get it flight ready.
Elon may be an enormous asshole, but SpaceX has taken what they got from NASA and moved it to the point where they're one of a handful of groups who could get us back to the moon, and doing better than any corporation on that front (China may surpass them, and Artemis only counts as a long-term concern if they can do more than 5 or 6 launches ever, which is not the current plan).
I mean arguably we could've done all of that with nasa if nasa had received a similar level of funding to SpaceX, but that's kind of getting into alt-history.
NASA spent more than that on the Shuttle program alone, and we got 135 launches and a dozen dead astronauts, so that is demonstrably false.
NASA is great, and did a lot of great things. We also got a lot of great technology (and some questionable shoes) because of it. But NASA suffers from the same thing Blue Origin does, bureaucracy and a top-down attitude with respect to developing technology. (They also suffered from a lot of government pork.) It's a good system for developing new things from scratch with a clear goal, but it rarely works well for taking existing technology and wringing the most effectiveness you can out of it.
Besides all this, the shuttle program suffered from ties to the military, which put in expensive requirements that didn't help the whole thing, either.
If NASA got out of the rocket launching business and contracted out that part of their mandate to others, they would have a lot more money to spend on other things, such as research, both pure and practical.
Yes, which is why it is important to protect communist projects from capitalist backed coups, like the presidential coup that illegally and undemocratically dissolved the USSR
Quite funny of you to mention undemocratic in the context of the USSR, as if it had been a democracy even one day of its existence.
And about illegal, most of the times a country and its constitution is absolved its technically illegal. I can only think of the German constitution that actually has clauses on how to legally phase it out.
as if it had been a democracy even one day of its existence
It was literally a democracy for its entire existence. Now, during the last couple decades it wasn't as democratic as proletarian democracies like Cuba Vietnam and China, but it was still more democratic than bourgeois "democracies"
And about illegal, most of the times a country and its constitution is absolved its technically illegal.
Okay but was it good that the Russian president ordered tanks to bombard the Soviet parliament building until the parliament surrendered? Is that your take? Even when it led to the installation of "bourgeois" democracies and a humanitarian crisis not seen outside of war?
Just now the nations which made up the USSR are meeting old life expectancy metrics. And that is uneven, some of them still haven't, some of them are doing better.
Also LOL you are German, you'd know a thing about reducing Soviet life expectancy. Your nation killed more than 25 million Soviet citizens, 1/6 of the total population. Maybe you have an imperative to do some research on what Soviet democracy was from their perspective instead of regurgitating anticommunist shit out your mouth like a good little anti-communist German.
Ah right so we go ad-hominum now? Frankly pretty low of you. Also it just sounds like a way to say that I am not allowed to have any differing opinion, simply because of my country's past. Makes me want to find out where you're from and tell you you're not eligible to say anything because your country fucked up badly in the past.
You expect me to believe that USSR votes weren't rigged from the get-go? Next you tell me the GDR was an actual democracy. To be fair I actually didn't know that there were elections, which in hindsight should be obvious considering that they had a parliament. They still had dictators of much the time
As for the violence part, not that I am supporting that, but frankly it seems to be pretty much part of the Russian identity. It's not like the USSR was not to take a friendly approach to any kind of civil unrest at all.
Ah right so we go ad-hominum now? Frankly pretty low of you. Also it just sounds like a way to say that I am not allowed to have any differing opinion, simply because of my country’s past. Makes me want to find out where you’re from and tell you you’re not eligible to say anything because your country fucked up badly in the past.
No, you are not personally responsible for your country being incredibly anticommunist. I know what my country has done in the past, it has happened to some of my ancestors and living family. Which is why I am skeptical of the things my country tells me about its opponents, as I am encouraging you to be by emphasizing to you what is in the political atmosphere you find yourself breathing.
You expect me to believe that USSR votes weren’t rigged from the get-go?
Do you have any evidence that they were?
Next you tell me the GDR was an actual democracy.
If was. And women and LGBT people lost a lot of rights during reunification. Not to mention the plundering of nationalized industry by the capitalist class, greatly decreasing the wealth of the rest of the country.
I would suggest reading "why women had better sex under socialism, and other arguments for economic independence"
To be fair I actually didn’t know that there were elections
It takes a lot to admit this. I would suggest taking this as a moment to reflect on what you actually know vs what you think you know.
They still had dictators of much the time
Uh, no? Even during the height of WW2 Stalin still answered to a committee.
As for the violence part, not that I am supporting that, but frankly it seems to be pretty much part of the Russian identity. It’s not like the USSR was not to take a friendly approach to any kind of civil unrest at all.
Frankly this is kinda racist and beneath you from the moments of reflection I've seen in this interaction.
Look I'd actually support socialism or at least strong social-capitalism. Just wanna make that clear.
Arguing certain things worked way better during the GDR does not at all refute my point of it not being a democracy apart from on paper. Child care for one worked incomparably better than it now does. Privatisation and more importantly the dissolvement of companies did not go well and is certainly still a problem. Actually it caused neo-feudalism in parts of the former GDR.
Stalin being officially reproachable does not actually mean he was reproachable. The kind of socialism the USSR practiced is in my opinion not all better than a well restricted capitalism. But to be fair, that is subjective and I am financially not in any kind of trouble.
It was not meant to be racist, the history of violence in Russia since I am vaguely aware of its history, does speak of itself. Certainly in the years since the founding of the RF, has violence among the people and state-sanctioned been a common thing. The wide-spread unrestricted violence can be openly observed in Ukraine. If you look at any macro-violense theories you see my point proven. All and I mean all factors for mass-violence are fulfilled.
Also if anything, my comment was xenophobic, racism is something different
Hey, it looks like your heart is in the right place, I would really suggest you read a bit about participatory democracy and whole process people's democracy (although the latter has a lot of misinfo about it) I would also try to understand the socialist argument from one party democracies and how they lead to more generative conflict (that is, collegeal onflict that genuinely resolves problems and addresses needs in a way that achieves democratic consensus)
I would also suggest reading some marx who talks a lot about how even regulated capitalism cannot function. I would not start with capital though.
I think it's more that strong men leaders get backers when the majority want them. All kinds of leaders are out there at all times, people swap their support to whichever they feel like at any given time. So when times get tough, half the population will side with power concentration, primitive but simple leadership structures. The other half want power decentralized and consensus to be required, the agreement of the majority, not be left with obedience to authority, which eliminates the ability for consensus or agreement. Nobodies needs matter except the needs at the top.
It's actually probably absolutely necessary that the GOP see Trump as sharing their interests. If you had to give up your power, you'd want to give it to whoever shares the most do your interests, so their exercise of power is more likely to benefit you. You wouldn't willingly give to to someone whose interests were furthest from yours. And what an irony that Trump has convinced them their interests align. If we could break that assumption, people would find it much harder to hand over their power. But since Trump literally doesn't care if he collapses America, he's willing to give them things they want, regardless of the wisdom of it.
There was a drastic drop in life expectancy, housing rates, lots of starvation and excess deaths, and drops in literacy rates and so forth following the collapse of the USSR. The rise of the USSR was a drastic improvement upon Tsarism, and the fall of the USSR was a drastic decrease.
The USSR absolutely had its own set of issues, but the collapse of the USSR in the early 90s represented a massive setback that only recently the Russian Federation has begun to overtake, metric-wise.
1924 is when Stalin took power, not when the USSR was founded. Put I guess it's true that he improved the situation in Russia with imperialism to it's neighbors so technically for Russia itself it was a pretty good ride still.
I'm aware, I'm familiar with the history of the USSR. Life expectancy rose gradually throughout the history of the USSR as it industrialized, it didn't just happen under Lenin and plummet under Stalin. Secondly, the USSR was not Imperialist in the sense of extraction, Russia didn't have higher quality of life on the backs of other Soviet States, but was industrialized first and was a leading indicator overall.
That's not to say Stalin was some hero or something, or that there weren't issues, but this gradual improvement was due to industrialization above all else.
Yea, industrialization improved things in like every country that did it but saying the USSR was not imperialist is wild to me. Resources from the annexed territories were being shipped to Russia on a regular basis, literally one of the reasons that made the Holodomor so deadly in Ukraine while Russia itself was mostly spared. Smuggling was insanely common here in the Baltics to ensure the locals could keep what they make and not suffer from famines as well.
Wasn't it basically the CIA conspiring with your military to get rid of Allende & steal back your metal factories? I remember watching a documentary years ago
Capitalism is a form of economic organization, fascism is a form of government (or just a form of social control), antithetical to democracy or socialism.
You can't separate economic structures from State structures. Fascism is specifically a far-right entrenchment of Capitalism as a response to Capitalist decay.
yeah its totally just a crazy coincidence that fascism only arises in capitalist countries and that it does so when capitalism is facing a crisis, Im sure that the fact that the word privatization was coined to describe nazi economics is also just a coincidence, and certainly pinochet making all his economic policy based on the recommendation of the Chicago school of economics is also just a coincidence. The nazis giving medals to renowned pile of sub-human garbage and of course capitalist hero henry ford most also be just a coincidence. At every turn the fascists make it clear that they are capitalist and yet libs are so fucking deluded that they cant even recognize their own allies in the maintenance of capitalism.
I think a big issue is that people call things that are not capitlatist "capitalist". The US is called capitalist, but it has the largest government in the history of the world, that is not capitalism.
Capitalism cannot exist without a government. Capitalism reaching the stage where large Capitalists wield the State both domestically and internationally to fuel their profits does not make it no longer Capitalist, that's like saying a tree isn't a plant because it is no longer a seed.
Please read Wealth of Nations, and A Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith clearly laid out what capitalism is, and you have no clue what that word means.
I was gonna disagree, but I couldn't actually think of a functioning stateless ideology which allows private property. Anarchism is inherently for abolishing private property, so that's out already. That mostly just leaves you with "anarcho-"capitalism which is just replacing the government with an ultra-capitalist power structure and decimating social mobility, it's just an undemocratic state but shittier...
Yep, trying to untie Capitalism from the states that accompany it is usually just a futile attempt at keeping the Capitalist State's sins separate from Capitalism.
If there was no government, and the capitalist organization hosted their means of violence internally or by hiring thugs like the Pinkertons, would it stop being capitalism?
What is a "State" or "Government" in the first place? If the Capitalist organization controlled its own means of defense, then we would see corporate wars and absorption. If there was a central mercenary force that everyone subscribed to for protection and peacekeeping, this is essentially a nightwatchman state, and you merely have a limited state.
All in all, Capitalism maintains itself through threat of violence, and monopolizes said threat. Without that factor, Private Property Rights depend on individual respect, which doesn't ultimatley matter.
There's also the issue of banking and currency, which needs to be backed up and maintained.
We never really laid out what it means to be a "State." Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, and gets into technicalities.
For Anarchists, the State is a monopoly on violence. Workers having unified horizontal coalitions and equal power, in their eyes, counts as stateless.
For Marxists, the State is the portion of Government that enforces Classist society. Get rid of class contradictions, and the elements that make up those contradictions, Private Property Rights for example, and you achieve Statelessness, even with a government.
Using either of the previous definitions, Capitalism still fails to exist without a State, it requires a monopoly of violence and class society to exist.
Yeah, so the state is always a problem, from what I can see in your comments. But there can be other bad actors who aren't government (we see them in every society) and they need to be dealt with one way or another, preferably in a way that the community approves of, and all of a sudden we have laws and government, which is a more general definition of Statehood.
So what I'm seeing here is that people who seem to think everyone will agree on how things should be done use the name for the group that enforces the rules, good or bad, that other people agree with as an epithet, while studiously ignoring that they will need similar bodies to deal with the bad actors within their society, since the only place where an ideal society exists is in the imagination.
Not that I have a problem with ideals, they can help provide a road map to get to where you want to be, and perhaps a achievable interim goals that are also worth striving for.
Then that entity, be it Pinkerton or gang or army, would be government. Sure, it could also devolve below capitalism, but capitalism need government structure of some sorts, it cannot exist without it.
That makes no sense. How is our economic system highly controlled in the US? Corporations run rampant, with scant regulation compared to some places like Europe.
A government's size being big doesn't instantly equal less capitalism if that government doesn't do as much as it could to reel in corporate interests.
Case in point, our government here in the US is big but is controlled by corporate interests to such a degree that despite knowing about human made climate change since the late 60s, basically nothing has actually been done about it. Or how whenever there is any push for even a public option to live alongside private insurance, insurance companies go into overdrive running ads and paying politicians to push back against it so it never gets brought up after an election season.
That makes no sense. How is our economic system highly controlled in the US? Corporations run rampant, with scant regulation compared to some places like Europe.
Economic systems and Political systems do not exist independent of each other. They are intertwined.
A government's size being big doesn't instantly equal less capitalism if that government doesn't do as much as it could to reel in corporate interests.
Sure, that's not what I am talking about. Capitalism cannot exist without a state to verify Private Property rights.
Case in point, our government here in the US is big but is controlled by corporate interests to such a degree that despite knowing about human made climate change since the late 60s, basically nothing has actually been done about it. Or how whenever there is any push for even a public option to live alongside private insurance, insurance companies go into overdrive running ads and paying politicians to push back against it so it never gets brought up after an election season.
Again, my point is that stateless Capitalism does not and cannot exist.
I agree, but the bigger the government the less capitilism there is because they are controlling the system. I am not saying its good or bad, but the economic system is highly controlled.
Jeff Bezos has spent millions of dollars on union busting to prevent his workers from collectively bargaining for better wages. This massive chunk of the workforce then continues to work for less than they are worth because of his illegal tactics. This creates a systemic downwards pressure on wages across the entire workforce. Investors in the capital class gave Amazon a blank check to crush retailers for decades while losing money, because they knew at some point he would have a grip on the market and could stop providing high quality goods and start pumping out cheap garbage from companies like KYZGURK and BULJCOW and reap in massive profits. The capital class destroyed the retail sector and now you get the “convenience” of every purchase making him profits while the items you buy consistently decrease in quality.
Musk admitted to pushing the hyper loop, knowing it was unworkable, to try to prevent California’s high speed rail project. There’s no bullet train I can hop on to get to LA right now because of the power he flexed.
Musk just said he would put $45m a month into a trump super pac, his wealth makes him think that he should get to decide the outcome of our election. He purchased twitter and now has control over the algorithmic feed consumed by millions of my countrymen, directly influencing their thoughts and feelings an any range of topics.
They both contribute to the government to write laws favorable to them, reducing their tax burden and increasing mine. They promote candidates that are aligned with their corporate interests and if those interests include eroding workers rights and moving negative externalities into the environment that has the water I drink, the air I breathe, and the food I eat, fuck me.
Bezos owns the Washington post and can move public opinion in whichever way he wants. If he wants people to think that net neutrality sucks, he can spend all day having the columnists churn that shit out, changing both politicians and the public’s sentiment on the topic by cherry picking data and presenting the most one sided arguments imaginable.
Jeff bezos has conflicts with his workers, and his system revolutionized how we buy things.
There’s no bullet train I can hop on to get to LA right now because of the power he flexed.
This is false, it was not going to happen.
How exactly did they harm you? "They both contribute to the government to write laws favorable to them, reducing their tax burden and increasing mine" - this would be the takeaway I would like you to have, not the propaganda about how they mistreat people. I get what you are saying, but the capital is not what harms you, its how they interact with the thing the can harm you, the government.
It’s clear that you believe the government is the bad thing here. I see you completely skipped over all my points about how their market manipulation harms the consumer and the worker. That manipulation is purely from them having a bunch of money and using it to their advantage and does not require a government boogie man.
It’s not that I can’t see the point you want to make, they corrupt the government and then the governments power is the thing that hurts me. First it’s wrong because if we were some sort of anarchy society, bezos using investor money to undersell and falsely outcompete the rest of the market until he has a stranglehold on the economy and can exact a tax on every item sold would still happen.
The fact that you don’t think high speed rail can be built, despite it existing all over the world, is just your opinion. The fact that musk has said he promoted the hyperloop in hopes of pulling funding and support from high speed rail is a thing that happened in reality
Let’s say that we took the power away from the government. Poof just like that they can’t regulate how much rat shit is in your Amazon prime food or if Elon can dump the toxic waste from his battery production in your drinking water. The harm of regulatory capture and lobbyist power just gets replaced with capitalists directly harming you. How is that better?
They both are spending tons of money to spread propaganda to influence public opinion and elections is the first and easiest to point out.
They also both own major news outlets that defend them publicly and are very influential of public opinion.
Both have through their businesses received government subsidies, in effect having us tax dollars go to their pockets. This cycle is repeated through the influence they buy by spreading propaganda, using lobbyists, using money as a tool within the government apparatus to generate more money for their companies and in turn for themselves.
Why does influencing public opinion and elections matter to you?
I like your last paragraph, I think it distills it nicely. Its not that they directly harm you, they influence the government which is allowed to harm you.
If you don't think that influencing public opinion matters in a democratic republic, I invite you to learn about Hitler's rise to power, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi party in Germany, and the holocaust. Using the same propaganda techniques used by the Nazi party, misinformation is used to influence public opinion. This is especially true on Elon's Twitter, but Bezos has used the same techniques to attempt to union bust.
Millions of people died as a result of the propaganda campaigns of the Nazi party. I fear history is about to repeat itself in the usa.
But the times are not tougher by themselves, they become tougher because of capitalism itself. So it was Homelander all along
"I'm the natural evolution of unchecked you."
Even checked Capitalism results in fascism, as Capitalism is entirely unsustainable and eventually results in the crisis that enables the rise of fascism.
Maybe so. Maybe capitalism can never remain checked because the temptation to acquire more wealth will always end up winning. You'd like to think that people are better than that, buuuuut...
Which system IS stable? AFAICT every system ever has allowed some people more power than others and those people cleave more power to themselves over time. This appears to be how most empires fall
Good question! The oldest government still in operation appears to be San Marino, a tiny country near Italy, at around 415 years. Considering that even at a small size it's only been around that long despite civilization being around 6000 years old, I think it's safe to say we haven't managed a system that has real staying power yet.
There's hunter-gatherer tribes that have been more or less stable for over a thousand years. It's said that the Nez Perce have lived on the Columbia River for 11,500 years.
Yeah, but for the purpose of looking at stable governments in cities, hunter-gather societies aren't a helpful comparison.
Good points but my question is more about governments that work at the scale of a nation state.
Yep, and it's also inherently unsustainable and will collapse.
There are a lot of capitalist countries that haven't collapsed yet. We'll need longer than our lifetimes to see proof that it can never work.
But I suspect that people in power just aren't good enough to keep it from going bad eventually.
It's more that it's unsustainable. Collapse can be delayed, but not outright prevented as long as the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall exists.
It's already "bad," just constantly decaying.
I mean we do have a pretty good indication of a quite large impending factor which may cause a lot of them to collapse in the coming years, and which could collectively be attributed to them pretty well, especially within the last 50 years.
That is an interesting argument, but where is the proof? Economics is a very murky "science" as it is, a broad statement such as "capitalism is inherently unstable" needs some healthy data backing it up.
The same argument could be made about communism, as an economic system it doesn't have the best track record.
Socialism seems to have a pretty good track record. But even in socialism there are issues, especially around ensuring a steady supply of kids coming through, once population starts falling the cracks start appearing.
Marx makes his case for it in Capital, specifically Volume 3, Chapter 13-15, though it's easier to digest Wage Labor and Capital and Value, Price and Profit. Essentially, competition forces prices lower, and automation and increased production lower the price floor. Automation is pursued because it temporarily allows you to outcompete, until other firms can produce at the same price, forcing prices to match at a new floor. This continues. It's more like gravity than an invisible hand, there do exist ways to push back against it, but the overall trend is negative, as the Rate of Profit falls to 0.
It can't, because Communism abolishes this system. Communism has a good track record when properly put into historical context and is definitely the correct goal to pursue.
Socialism is just the precursor to Communism. The USSR, Cuba, PRC, Vietnam, Laos, etc. are/were all Socialist, building towards Communism, I don't see why you say Communism has a bad track record but Socialism has a good track record, that seems contradictory. Further still, I don't see what birth rates have to do with anything.
While I appreciate that Marx made a case, this is not data or evidence. It seems intuitively true, but that doesn't really move you closer to real proof.
I'm not sure if you are trying to imply automation is a good or bad thing. Looking through history, the industrial revolution was bad for the workers of the time, but in the long run massively improved the living standards of everyone. Automation is a net good in my opinion. Competition is simply an accelerator, this is not really tied to the economic system being used. In capitalist or communist systems, firms that are protected from competition (by what ever means) do not innovate as fast or as effectively (see Intel as a great example of this).
While this can be true, it is not necessarily true.
As your population ages, the costs to care for them raise at an increasing rate. If you don't have enough new workers to stabilize the economic base, the burden that an aging population places on the younger generation grows until it becomes untenable.
I'd say that Marxism at least is fatally flawed. The idea that you start a Communist society by gathering all power to a central council is the issue. Once power is obtained it's never willingly dispersed. This has been the fate of existing all communist governments
Fascism is simply Capitalism when the Capitalists succeed enough
Not entirely.
Germany wasn't having a very successful economy when Nazism started.
Nor did Italy or Spain.
That relies on the assumption that what's good for the economy is good for the capitalists, they always make sure that capitalism occasionally goes up in flames to take advantage of social unrest.
Considering the capitalists have forced the world to arbitrarily measure the "economy" by measuring how willing rich people are to play in the rich man casino...
That's the point.
In Germany there was a battle between left and right back then. The economy boomed in the 20s and faltered in the 30s. Capitalists saw the threat of socialism looming just behind Poland and so they supported fascism.
The Nazis funneled billions into large businesses. It was unsustainable and morally multi-level wrong, but they skimmed a lot of profits from these agreements. They got rich, while the economy started to collapse - even before the war.
Even after the war, most of them got away. They kept much of their wealth.
In fact, fascism often gains support from middle class desperation, with the blessing of the booj who prefer it over communism (which tends to rise from the lower classes during similar times of desperation)
One is a form of economy, the other is an ideology of societal oppression. Fascist governments have run capitalist, communist, and socialist economies. Historically, more fascist governments have developed from socialist nations than capitalist. That doesn’t make fascism inherently socialist either.
The meme would be more accurate in stating that fascism is a failure of democracy than capitalism.
That's not really accurate, fascism is specifically a reactionary attempt to "turn the clock back" to "the good old days," it's focused on class colaborationism and nationalism.
Fascism is wholly anticommunist.
There’s nothing specific about fascism. The term was coined during Mussolini’s reign, and has taken many forms since. Kershaw famously wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."
The only consistent components of fascism are an autocratic government and a dictatorial ruler, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible nationalism through suppression of opposition.
You're leaving out the inherent focus on Corporatism and Class Colaborationism, which are key components of historically fascist countries like Italy under Mussolini or Nazi Germany. You're also leaving out nationalism and xenophobia, the necessity of an "enemy," and more. Fascism rarely shows all symptoms of fascism, but by your definition is just becomes "bad government."
Fascism is a specific and flexible form of a bad government/economic structure with its own set of rising factors and characteristics, not every cruel act by a state is fascist.
Eco's 14 points on fascism are not entirely complete, but do paint a far better picture than what you're working with here.
While they are common traits, they are not requirements to be considered part of fascist ideology. While used by more famous fascist governments, they are not necessary to impart the general ideology of fascism through authoritarian control by a dictator.
For example the Spanish Falange was considered a fascist movement. It supported conservative ideas about women and supported rigid gender roles that stipulated that women's main duties in life were to be loving mothers and submissive wives. There was no economic system defining the fascist movement.
What is the "general ideology of fascism?" You've stripped fascism of its defining characteristics and defined it as "bad," which isn't particularly useful for avoiding fascism or preventing it.
You've stripped it of historical context and now it's just something that can happen, sometimes, for no reason.
Where did I write “fascism is bad?” It is a vague ideology that is centrally defined as I stated above.
For example, Oxford defines fascism as an extreme right-wing political system or attitude that is in favour of strong central government, aggressively promoting your own country or race above others, and that does not allow any opposition.
There is no specific economic system required for a government to be considered fascist. Historically, fascism has grown out of more socialist nations than capitalist. That doesn’t make fascism inherently socialist either.
Joseph Stalin stated in a speech in 1924: Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie's fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.
The definition skews depending on the source. The qualities change depending on the government. The policies vary depending on the leader. The only consistent factors are the ones I stated earlier.
Fascism in the most vague sense that you can get while still being accurate is enforcement of a hierarchy, practically no social mobility, based on traits like ethnicity, sex, wealth, etc. supposed to be the "natural order" of society; often involving some sort of mythological/religious/idealized "past" or predecessor society/civilization which was then upended by some sort of evil group(s) (the targetted groups/scapegoats), which stole from us and which are an evil that need to be stopped. This, of course, is slightly different from how Mussolini's fascism was originally visualized – which was a corporatist nationalist dictatorship about "might"/the strong coming out on top (translated into militarism) justified by religion/mythology (in fascist Italy's case about being the successor to the great ancient Rome and seeing through to a greater Roman Empire) – but it's how the world has become to understand the concept of fascism as time went on.
This is the reason many see capitalism as sort of "diet fascism" – it's entirely about a hierarchy based around socioeconomic class/groups, with highly restricted social mobility (although not completely closed off as fascism's is), and it's seen that your place in the hierarchy in a hypothetically purely capitalistic system is the natural order of things – your place in the hierarchy is supposedly based on how hard you work, rich people are rich because they've simply worked smarter and harder than the people under them, and anyone can go up the hierarchy if they simply just are a better person. Of course, in reality we know this doesn't work and among other things generational wealth & systematic roadblocks created by the wealthy play a major factor in this hierarchy, but I digress. The reason classical liberalism / free market capitalism hates class equality, hates a system like socialism which calls for abolishing unjust hierarchies, is because it sees the abolition of the socioeconomic/class-based hierarchy as going against the natural order and forcibly placing people in the "wrong" places in the hierarchy (all on the same level) when some people deserve to be below others because they're lazy, illegal immigrants, "criminals", etc. In essence, they see equality not as equality, but as an "upside-down" hierarchy where the former upper class is forced below the formerly marginalized groups; to a more privileged person, equality feels like oppression. Capitalism needs an underclass to function, in a capitalistic system people with certain traits always have an unequal distribution throughout the hierarchy (scapegoated/marginalized groups significantly tending to pool at the bottom with only a few "token" examples truly traversing upwards, and people closer to the top of the pyramid being less and less prone to falling down the hierarchy). It sounds a lot like fascism, because fascism and capitalism are ideologies/systems with loosely equivalent structures but capitalism being far less pronounced.
Additionaly, classical liberalism & moreso conservative capitalism are centered around reggressing to a supposed "golden age" of the past where things were better before "they" ruined it (whoever "they" is and what specifically "they" did is vague and changes from belief to belief but usually includes taxation/redistribution of wealth/power away from the people at the top of the hierarchy, or some shift in the hierarchy). It's like a much less pronounced form of the mythologized predecessor civilization/society of fascism, instead of hundreds or thousands of years ago it's more like 30-40 years ago.
Fascism in the way we currently understand it doesn't even strictly require dictatorial/autocratic rule, it can be enforced in a technically "democratic" system as long as certain groups are excluded from the democratic process. Of course, the line between democracy, broader oligarchy, narrower oligarchy, and autocracy becomes blurrier the more of the population you exclude, since democracy is more of a spectrum than anything, but generally there's a lot of possible fascist systems where people would still consider it democratic enough. Your perspective is pretty deeply tied to which group you belong to as well – the average German thought Nazi Germany was a democracy even when Poland was invaded and throughout much of the war, but obviously the Roma and Jewish populace being genocided would definitely not agree. Capitalism does this exclusion to a large extent too – just usually not in the form of outright completely banning a group from participating – and the upper classes have signficantly more say in the democratic process, to the point where the upper classes can choose to completely eliminate options they collectively dislike enough from the equation regardless of the consent of the lower classes.
Overall while fascism and capitalism aren't a complete overlap, fascism is for the most part a progression of capitalism (or, as more and more people see it, capitalism is a derivation of fascism and/or feudalism where we keep trying to patch up the flaws using a few socialist/progressive/democratic qualities) and pretty much requires a capitalist (or capitalist-adjacent) system to exist. Fascism can't use, say, a socialist system because socialism inherently requires working towards the abolition of the power structures/hierarchies which fascism is based around. Of course, in fascist systems the supposed "superior" class often has power redistributed to them in the form of e.g. social welfare benefits and infrastructure investments, which isn't straight up classical liberalism obviously, but that doesn't necessarily violate capitalism/the capitalist power structures as a whole, it's just using a different form of capitalism in order to keep the currently-not-scapegoated but also-not-highest castes content and thinking that things aren't so bad.
If you have any questions about this or can't see the reasoning of certain parts, I'm sure I (or someone else) will be happy to answer it for you.
This is authoritarian nationalism, not fascism. All fascism is nationalist and authoritarian, not all nationalism or authoritarianism is fascist. Bismarck, Churchill and Erdogan are/were authoritarian nationalists, but I wouldn't call any of them fascist.
They're not defining fascism, they're listing the consistent components. Their post is completely agreeing with your statement: "All fascism is nationalist and authoritarian, not all nationalism or authoritarianism is fascist."
This is just false. There's no interpretation of 'communist economies' that applies to any fascist state ever. Two of the core characteristics of fascism are anti-liberalism and anti-Marxism, which covers basically all socialism. Fascist leaders (even the national-syndicalism types like Mussolini) have an odd relationship with capitalism, but ultimately I don't believe they moved towards socialism either.
Apart from Francoist Spain, I can't think of a single example of a fascist government which succeeded a socialist government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fascist_movements_by_country
Fascism is inherently capitalist, the communist "version" is called national communism or national bolshevism
National bolshevism is not communist version of fascism, it's neonazi ideology and it's anticommunist too just trying to coopt the aesthetics.
Interesting. I think you have a point.
The post you replied to has serious issues, please see the other replies for more info.
Their point is literally fascist propaganda
How so? I understand the relationship of fascism and capitalism. But it stands to reason a similar social framework could arise from socialism, especially during the transition from capitalism to socialism. Think Khmer Rouge
Okay so everything after "I understand the thing" proves you don't understand anything. You literally don't have any functioning definition of fascism at all. Socialism is the transition state. And the Khmer Rouge weren't socialist (you can tell because they were US funded during the cold war).
Maybe not, but patronization won’t help. Maybe explaining how this definition doesn’t apply to the Khmer Rouge. Fascism is a vague term. Was it authoritarianism? What separates it from fascism? Can socialist countries be authoritarian? Does that make them fascist if they’re not capitalist?
From the peanut gallery, aka me..... Most business are run under a more fascist principle.
I'm not talking about how the business operates in the market, or whatever.... I'm talking about internal organizational behaviour.
Things are often very "my way or the highway", with management, owners, etc.
Of course, not all businesses, but most follow some fairly fascist ideologies. They'll tell you where to be, what to bring, what to do, when to stop... And hey, where are your papers? .... I mean... Where is your company issued identification card?
They'll watch what you're doing, monitor and surveil you as much as they are legally allowed, govern every moment that they can, of every day you're working there.
Capitalism and the pursuit of profit is their objective, the governance is fascist.
Business leaders engage in fascism.
.... Why are we surprised that this brain rot is leaking out into actual politics? Trump is literally known for running businesses.... Mostly into the ground/bankruptcy, but still. His whole thing is him being the boss. The ruler and Lord dictator over his tiny island. How are we so surprised that he's a fascist? Shocked picachu
The best move the Nazis made was convincing everyone that yeah, the Nazis lost and are gone forever.... They're literally hiding in plain sight.
It should be of little surprise (and much more widespread knowledge) that just about everyone with money in the 1930s financially supported the actual Nazi party, including but not limited to Henry Ford and George W Bush's grandfather.
I actually disagree with the meme; capitalism is always fascism, just sometimes has a better PR team.
Which is a big thing in The Boys. The company and The Seven™ are all about that PR.
Businesses use feudalism, with the monarch (CEO), court (board), and several levels of lords and vassals.
Wasn't fascism modelled after early feudalism?
There were obvious differences, fascism has more nationalism and racism, IMO, but at the core, aren't they extremely similar?
I'm no expert on either. I just know enough to get myself into (and hopefully out of) trouble in these discussions.
Fascism is a reactionary attempt to "turn back the clock" to the glory days of Capitalism before it decayed as much. Capitalism necessarily results in crisis, at which points occasionally the Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie, the "middle class," work together against the lower classes, ie the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat. It usually rises as a response to climbing Socialism as the train of thought among the Proletariat.
It isn't necessarily modeled after anything, history isn't driven by ideas but Material Conditions and class conflict.
That's not what fascism is. Fascism isn't "when there are shitty strict rules". In fact, classical fascism is a (failed) class collaborationist ideology where the state was supposed to mediate between interest groups of workers and bosses. protip: it didn't. workers got screwed. (see corporatism, from the root word corpus, not corporation). Nazism didn't do any of that but even they had their own garbage state-run labor front.
But the point being, those business are beyond even fascism. It's straight-up pure raw capitalist dictatorship.
More like fascism is just what comes next after late stage capitalism if it makes it that far.
Don’t worry, feudalism is still the end game.
I'm looking forward to being called Dennis and working in the mud all day ranting about different governments.
Excuse me, old woman!
There's some lovely filth down here!
Also a result of the inevitable decline of Capitalism and Imperialism, which is what we are seeing in America, a desparate and incorrect ploy to "turn the clock back" to the "good old days."
It can't be beaten electorally, it will remain until it either succeeds or Capitalism itself is escaped and we transition to Socialism.
I don't see a decline in US capitalism or (US-style) imperialism anytime soon. It seems extremely well positioned to continue to be the #1 world power and influencer, even if its regional political and economic influence wanes a bit. US foreign policy is that of a bully in the sandpit who breaks any toy denied to him. Domestically, from the outside it looks like an absolute shitshow, with the masses cheering with hysteric enthusiasm as they are thrown one by one to the lions.
US influence is waning, and the Global South is throwing off the shackles of the US. It won't happen immediately, but with weakening Imperialism will come weakening domestic conditions until it cannot be sustained any longer.
I actually watches the first season of the boys recently. Killer show. Its stunning that any real person could have ever looked up to Homelander in any capacity.
Oh, believe it or not, that gets even worse! Some people are insane.
The most recent season has a surprising amount of sexually assaulting Huey though. The first time they even play it for laughs.
ToUgH tImEs BrEeD ToUgH mEn
Fun fact: The nowadays conservative (and IMO right leaning) German CDU has originally considered capitalism to be the reason for outbreak for WW2. They wanted to form a new Christian Socialism, which would've united Christian ideals with a socialistic (not marxistic) economy. The so-called Kölner Erklärung was written in 1945 as a basic idea for where Germany should head from perspective of the CDU.
These ideas didn't last for long and got replaced by a conservative fiscal policy. But it is good to keep in mind that even in the CDU there were people who recognized that capitalism ultimately has a strong tendency to fuel fascism. In Nazi Germany, the main capitalists worked closely with the NSDAP - Krupp, Bosch, Hugo Boss (who famously designed the Nazi uniforms), Volkswagen were all lead by rich capitalists who saw (and gained) profit by the actions of the Nazis. It makes me sad that even the SPD, the so-called Social Democratic Party, long forgot what it means to fight for socialism and equality, and instead embraces neoliberalism with a touch of social politics.
It makes so much more fundamental sense for the followers of Jesus to embrace socialist values as opposed to the tendency of Christians to follow both conservative and capitalistic politics.
I'm an atheist but I was raised Christian Catholic and the stark contrast between the religious texts and parables with the actions of the average Christian or the Church was a great contributor to my rejection of religion. I still see value in some of the teachings (be nice to others, people before material things) and always took them closer to socialism values than the Supply Side Jesus right-leaning Christians adopted.
Same. I always wondered how ideas like giving what you can, loving thy neighbour, and forgiveness to the extreme somehow results in Supply Side Jesus, "Protestant work ethic", jail time for addictions, "law and order" politics, etc..
These people have strayed so far from the teachings and I'm not sure how they can claim to follow them and then blame homeless people for being homeless.
Exactly, like all religions anybody can dig into the texts and find a justification for their personal and political views but the Jesus I was brought up with, while I don't believe he existed, had some pretty decent key points (forgiveness, love, sharing, empathy, charity...). These contrast strongly with the judgemental, conservative, nationalist, racist "Christians".
They would probably have hung this "rebellious, commie jew" themselves today if their much-awaited second coming had taken place.
BoseHugo BossThank you, is corrected :)
Dont forget the red scare whenever capitalism even thinks about faltering to remind us all of the evils of just giving hungry people food or letting them see a doctor.
Dam, i fully slept on The Boys. Thoughts its just a Watchmen 'supers in real life' rip off. First season on par with Breaking Bad for me
It's brilliant IMO (I haven't seen the latest season but the one before ... season 3 did feel like it was losing its way a bit).
The thing with mainstream super hero stuff is that it seems to very much about supporting the status quo without really examining it. Generally, the MCU has been pretty guilty of this AFAICT. It's also why Winter Soldier is probably the best MCU film IMO ... Captain America becomes "the enemy" by standing up for his principles and destroys shield.
The Boys is about examining the status quo and so stands out massively compared to all of the other mainstream superhero stuff.
It's just too fucking dark for me. I don't dislike a gritty show necessarily but I couldn't make it through more than the first few episodes. It seemed good, but damn I have plenty of problems and shittiness in my real life, I like my entertainment to make me feel better, not worse. 😀
Same. I like dark stories as much as the next person, but it hit way too close to home with real world politics for me.
Imo the second season gets even better, I'm obsessed rn
It doesn't really hold it's quality. Season 3 gets more about the shock humor than the story.
superman would obliterate homelander
Yeah just pour a jug of milk out and homelander dies
"Who are you?"
"I'm you if Batman didn't have a ring what makes you a removed ass"
One's an economic school of thought, the other a political one, so obviously you can have both at the same time or even working together. Coincidentally corporate business is mostly anti-fascist right now because social diversity and progressiveness is where the money's at
I can only guess you've used one of the words out of context. If it was fascism, I have nfi what the meme is trying to say by linking Superman to capitalism in the same way Homelander is easily linked with fascism.
If the joke instead about fascism, then maybe something positive and relatable to it would make sense. Patriotism is what I think of since Superman loves America, but shows little concern for anyone else and this sentiment could start festering domestically, especially if the love for country becomes ultra-nationalistic.
There is a saying, something along the lines of 'politics is the shadow that economics casts over society'. Now obviously there is no one to one correlation between a country's economic and political systems, but rich people often respond to calls for economic reform by trying to make the public fight among themselves. Fascism is one possibility, 'culture war' is another, bread and circuses a third, and so on.
Trying to think of that one time fascism was economically beneficial to capitalists... Nope. I can't recall one.
Edit: Oh, wait. If you were supplying a side against fascism, it's always been very beneficial. I know that's in contrast to the meme, but supports your point in a "round peg; square hole" kinda way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust
Fascism has always been done by and for Capitalists.
You...literally just linked a list of suppliers to a regime. Which, of course, had to exist in order for the regime to be sustained. Which of course lost supply as the sustainability diminished.
Do you know how many companies were passive or against it? It's a little more... Quite a bit more. Millions(?) more. You've essentially just tried to correlated registered businesses with the entire economic school of Capitalism. "If it's a registered business, it's Capitalism, huuur."
Come on, I can think of better counter-points than that.
Wait, did you think people were saying that the Nazis were for every Capitalist on the planet? No, we were talking about Nazi Germany and some Western companies.
You've fundamentally misunderstood what everyone was talking about.
Superman, Homelander, and fascism on the rise in the leading capitalism nation?
What did you think it was about?
Fascism has always been beneficial for Capitalists, because it was always extremely profitable, the entire point of fascism. Simple.
Almost all fascist politicians were supported by local elites who thought they could control them. Sometimes they could; sometimes the fascists got too strong to be controlled.
That's the general recipe of ultra-nationalistic fascism, yes. You're not making much of a point and you're also disregarding all the other instances of fascism.
A common thread being control, some times that can be through a local economical channel. That's not immediately "Capitalism" and actually quite unrelated.
All fascism is nationalist. There's no 'other instance'. And a common theme in the rise of fascism is a compromise between the rich (capitalists, local gentry, etc.) and the fascist organisation, where the former bankrolls the latter in return for maintaining their economic and social position / backdoor deals / protection. Further, this usually happens as a result of some marginalised group - factory workers, serfs, women, etc. getting too uppity.
This meme's got the spirit, but not a great visual metaphor
Why ?
Both images should be homelander.
That's the point of having two similar yet distinct characters. Most people don't look at capitalism and see fascism, they appear distinct to most, so having them both be Homelander would be a poor visual analogy.
To me, an ignorant person who has only begun to seriously question capitalism after being exposed to lemmy for about a year, this visual analogy seems to imply that capitalism and fascism are thought to be distinct in the eyes of the maker of this meme, though. I think the suggestion of having them both be homelander conveys a different message which seems to be the consensus here: they are different sides of the same coin.
Admittedly, I'm out of my element here but I'm enjoying the exposure.
No you nailed it. The meme is a poor metaphor because it implies that the system has ever been superman or that OP believes it to have been superman.
Or that capitalism only behaves like Homelander when times are tough.
For many people Capitalism has always treated them like Homelander. For many people they've never seen the Superman fascade.
So this meme reads as though the creator only recently learned some world history, or has some privilege in life but is becoming aware of reality for others.
You could also fix it by just having Homelander say "I'm you!"
What a crossover that would be
Homelander V Superman
Snyder's Superman is more insufferable than Homelander
Depends on the writer. You get a superman DC writer, homelander probably gets treated like every other fascist superman beats up. If it's a "the boys" writer, homelander probably uses kryptonite to rip superman in half in a graphic full-page spread or some shit. You're also gonna be dealing with, are we dropping superman into the relatively hopeless universe of the boys, are we dropping homelander into the DC universe, where he'll probably be right st home with like 30 different characters almost exactly like him, will we come up with some portal stuff, what's going on there
So I dunno, depends on the writer. Ke personally I'd prefer if superman won, cause it's more hopeful and less garth ennis-y.
And unregulated hyper-capitalism is what happens when communism fails
Yes, sadly. During the dissolution of the USSR, millions of people died, literacy rates plumetted, safety nets were plundered by opportunistic Capitalists, and the State was sliced up and sold for parts. This privitization was a disaster for the common worker.
I’m sure after decades of capitalism they are doing fine now.. right?! Oh no
Technically, they are just now approaching the metrics they had in the USSR, so they are getting there! Just slowly and unequally.
I’ve been so sad to see the privatization of NASA. It feels very similar to me. SpaceX celebrating about launching a rocket into low earth orbit after spending billions in taxpayer money. How is this progress? We could do it back in the 60s with the equivalent computing power you can find in a $7 wristwatch today. Why didn’t we just keep building on our success, no we had to privatize, so that we could reach a beautiful end goal where space would not be for science and exploration funded by the people with its fruits improving humanity.
No we all had to pull together so spacex can build a massive taxpayer funded toll booth and every time America would like to visit the stars some billionaires can collect their cut. And people cheer
Now go check out how much each launch of the shuttle cost ($1.5 billion per flight) and compare it to the costs by SpaceX. The shuttle was launched 135 times, SpaceX has had more launches than that in the last 3 years. That tiny computer got us to the moon, but it wasn't enough to make rockets or boosters be able to land or be reusable. And don't bring up the farce of reusability of the shuttle. The number I recall from back when it was still flying was a 75% overhaul to get it flight ready.
Elon may be an enormous asshole, but SpaceX has taken what they got from NASA and moved it to the point where they're one of a handful of groups who could get us back to the moon, and doing better than any corporation on that front (China may surpass them, and Artemis only counts as a long-term concern if they can do more than 5 or 6 launches ever, which is not the current plan).
I mean arguably we could've done all of that with nasa if nasa had received a similar level of funding to SpaceX, but that's kind of getting into alt-history.
NASA spent more than that on the Shuttle program alone, and we got 135 launches and a dozen dead astronauts, so that is demonstrably false.
NASA is great, and did a lot of great things. We also got a lot of great technology (and some questionable shoes) because of it. But NASA suffers from the same thing Blue Origin does, bureaucracy and a top-down attitude with respect to developing technology. (They also suffered from a lot of government pork.) It's a good system for developing new things from scratch with a clear goal, but it rarely works well for taking existing technology and wringing the most effectiveness you can out of it.
Besides all this, the shuttle program suffered from ties to the military, which put in expensive requirements that didn't help the whole thing, either.
If NASA got out of the rocket launching business and contracted out that part of their mandate to others, they would have a lot more money to spend on other things, such as research, both pure and practical.
Yep, Capitalism has been a disaster. I cannot wait for it to finally be a footnote in history.
Yes, which is why it is important to protect communist projects from capitalist backed coups, like the presidential coup that illegally and undemocratically dissolved the USSR
Quite funny of you to mention undemocratic in the context of the USSR, as if it had been a democracy even one day of its existence. And about illegal, most of the times a country and its constitution is absolved its technically illegal. I can only think of the German constitution that actually has clauses on how to legally phase it out.
There was a fucking referendum where people voted for not dissolving the Union and it was ignored. It can't go more undemocratic than that.
What do you mean by the USSR not being democratic? They practiced Soviet Democracy.
Technically Belarus and Russia are democracies
Sure, those aren't the USSR.
It was literally a democracy for its entire existence. Now, during the last couple decades it wasn't as democratic as proletarian democracies like Cuba Vietnam and China, but it was still more democratic than bourgeois "democracies"
Okay but was it good that the Russian president ordered tanks to bombard the Soviet parliament building until the parliament surrendered? Is that your take? Even when it led to the installation of "bourgeois" democracies and a humanitarian crisis not seen outside of war?
Just now the nations which made up the USSR are meeting old life expectancy metrics. And that is uneven, some of them still haven't, some of them are doing better.
Also LOL you are German, you'd know a thing about reducing Soviet life expectancy. Your nation killed more than 25 million Soviet citizens, 1/6 of the total population. Maybe you have an imperative to do some research on what Soviet democracy was from their perspective instead of regurgitating anticommunist shit out your mouth like a good little anti-communist German.
Ah right so we go ad-hominum now? Frankly pretty low of you. Also it just sounds like a way to say that I am not allowed to have any differing opinion, simply because of my country's past. Makes me want to find out where you're from and tell you you're not eligible to say anything because your country fucked up badly in the past.
You expect me to believe that USSR votes weren't rigged from the get-go? Next you tell me the GDR was an actual democracy. To be fair I actually didn't know that there were elections, which in hindsight should be obvious considering that they had a parliament. They still had dictators of much the time
As for the violence part, not that I am supporting that, but frankly it seems to be pretty much part of the Russian identity. It's not like the USSR was not to take a friendly approach to any kind of civil unrest at all.
No, you are not personally responsible for your country being incredibly anticommunist. I know what my country has done in the past, it has happened to some of my ancestors and living family. Which is why I am skeptical of the things my country tells me about its opponents, as I am encouraging you to be by emphasizing to you what is in the political atmosphere you find yourself breathing.
Do you have any evidence that they were?
If was. And women and LGBT people lost a lot of rights during reunification. Not to mention the plundering of nationalized industry by the capitalist class, greatly decreasing the wealth of the rest of the country.
I would suggest reading "why women had better sex under socialism, and other arguments for economic independence"
It takes a lot to admit this. I would suggest taking this as a moment to reflect on what you actually know vs what you think you know.
Uh, no? Even during the height of WW2 Stalin still answered to a committee.
Frankly this is kinda racist and beneath you from the moments of reflection I've seen in this interaction.
Look I'd actually support socialism or at least strong social-capitalism. Just wanna make that clear.
Arguing certain things worked way better during the GDR does not at all refute my point of it not being a democracy apart from on paper. Child care for one worked incomparably better than it now does. Privatisation and more importantly the dissolvement of companies did not go well and is certainly still a problem. Actually it caused neo-feudalism in parts of the former GDR.
Stalin being officially reproachable does not actually mean he was reproachable. The kind of socialism the USSR practiced is in my opinion not all better than a well restricted capitalism. But to be fair, that is subjective and I am financially not in any kind of trouble.
It was not meant to be racist, the history of violence in Russia since I am vaguely aware of its history, does speak of itself. Certainly in the years since the founding of the RF, has violence among the people and state-sanctioned been a common thing. The wide-spread unrestricted violence can be openly observed in Ukraine. If you look at any macro-violense theories you see my point proven. All and I mean all factors for mass-violence are fulfilled.
Also if anything, my comment was xenophobic, racism is something different
Hey, it looks like your heart is in the right place, I would really suggest you read a bit about participatory democracy and whole process people's democracy (although the latter has a lot of misinfo about it) I would also try to understand the socialist argument from one party democracies and how they lead to more generative conflict (that is, collegeal onflict that genuinely resolves problems and addresses needs in a way that achieves democratic consensus)
I would also suggest reading some marx who talks a lot about how even regulated capitalism cannot function. I would not start with capital though.
That's so accurate.
Surely it was a tough pick between using Superman or Captain America in the top panel.
I think it's more that strong men leaders get backers when the majority want them. All kinds of leaders are out there at all times, people swap their support to whichever they feel like at any given time. So when times get tough, half the population will side with power concentration, primitive but simple leadership structures. The other half want power decentralized and consensus to be required, the agreement of the majority, not be left with obedience to authority, which eliminates the ability for consensus or agreement. Nobodies needs matter except the needs at the top.
It's actually probably absolutely necessary that the GOP see Trump as sharing their interests. If you had to give up your power, you'd want to give it to whoever shares the most do your interests, so their exercise of power is more likely to benefit you. You wouldn't willingly give to to someone whose interests were furthest from yours. And what an irony that Trump has convinced them their interests align. If we could break that assumption, people would find it much harder to hand over their power. But since Trump literally doesn't care if he collapses America, he's willing to give them things they want, regardless of the wisdom of it.
God the GOP are the fucking worst.
Russia has had a tough ride since 90ties of the last century which is pretty much explained by this.
Bro, they’ve had a tough time since like...the entirety of their history.
More like since 1924
There was a drastic drop in life expectancy, housing rates, lots of starvation and excess deaths, and drops in literacy rates and so forth following the collapse of the USSR. The rise of the USSR was a drastic improvement upon Tsarism, and the fall of the USSR was a drastic decrease.
The USSR absolutely had its own set of issues, but the collapse of the USSR in the early 90s represented a massive setback that only recently the Russian Federation has begun to overtake, metric-wise.
1924 is when Stalin took power, not when the USSR was founded. Put I guess it's true that he improved the situation in Russia with imperialism to it's neighbors so technically for Russia itself it was a pretty good ride still.
I'm aware, I'm familiar with the history of the USSR. Life expectancy rose gradually throughout the history of the USSR as it industrialized, it didn't just happen under Lenin and plummet under Stalin. Secondly, the USSR was not Imperialist in the sense of extraction, Russia didn't have higher quality of life on the backs of other Soviet States, but was industrialized first and was a leading indicator overall.
That's not to say Stalin was some hero or something, or that there weren't issues, but this gradual improvement was due to industrialization above all else.
Yea, industrialization improved things in like every country that did it but saying the USSR was not imperialist is wild to me. Resources from the annexed territories were being shipped to Russia on a regular basis, literally one of the reasons that made the Holodomor so deadly in Ukraine while Russia itself was mostly spared. Smuggling was insanely common here in the Baltics to ensure the locals could keep what they make and not suffer from famines as well.
Are there any examples of Open market capitalist countries becoming Fascist dictatorships?
Germany and Italy.
Every single fascist country was capitalist before.
Chile
To be fair: not by our own account.
Wasn't it basically the CIA conspiring with your military to get rid of Allende & steal back your metal factories? I remember watching a documentary years ago
RemindMe! 4 months
Spain
All fascist dictatorships.
It will get way worse from there.
This applies to literally every form of government.
No, you stupid western swine. That's just westoid propaganda!
However I, too, wasn't aware China's historic fascism problem was the result of capitalistic woes.
Everyday i learn new facts from .ml, like China invented capitalism (take THAT, Sumer!!1).
Capitalism is a form of economic organization, fascism is a form of government (or just a form of social control), antithetical to democracy or socialism.
You can't separate economic structures from State structures. Fascism is specifically a far-right entrenchment of Capitalism as a response to Capitalist decay.
yeah its totally just a crazy coincidence that fascism only arises in capitalist countries and that it does so when capitalism is facing a crisis, Im sure that the fact that the word privatization was coined to describe nazi economics is also just a coincidence, and certainly pinochet making all his economic policy based on the recommendation of the Chicago school of economics is also just a coincidence. The nazis giving medals to renowned pile of sub-human garbage and of course capitalist hero henry ford most also be just a coincidence. At every turn the fascists make it clear that they are capitalist and yet libs are so fucking deluded that they cant even recognize their own allies in the maintenance of capitalism.
I think a big issue is that people call things that are not capitlatist "capitalist". The US is called capitalist, but it has the largest government in the history of the world, that is not capitalism.
Capitalism cannot exist without a government. Capitalism reaching the stage where large Capitalists wield the State both domestically and internationally to fuel their profits does not make it no longer Capitalist, that's like saying a tree isn't a plant because it is no longer a seed.
Please read Wealth of Nations, and A Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith clearly laid out what capitalism is, and you have no clue what that word means.
Cool, what part did I miss? Also Adam Smith died hundreds of years ago, so I am not sure why he would be the go to for this.
Capitalism is a system of economics. It can exist with or without a government also existing.
Capitalism cannot exist without a government of some sort, as Private Property Rights are only legitimized by the threat of violence.
I was gonna disagree, but I couldn't actually think of a functioning stateless ideology which allows private property. Anarchism is inherently for abolishing private property, so that's out already. That mostly just leaves you with "anarcho-"capitalism which is just replacing the government with an ultra-capitalist power structure and decimating social mobility, it's just an undemocratic state but shittier...
Yep, trying to untie Capitalism from the states that accompany it is usually just a futile attempt at keeping the Capitalist State's sins separate from Capitalism.
If there was no government, and the capitalist organization hosted their means of violence internally or by hiring thugs like the Pinkertons, would it stop being capitalism?
What is a "State" or "Government" in the first place? If the Capitalist organization controlled its own means of defense, then we would see corporate wars and absorption. If there was a central mercenary force that everyone subscribed to for protection and peacekeeping, this is essentially a nightwatchman state, and you merely have a limited state.
All in all, Capitalism maintains itself through threat of violence, and monopolizes said threat. Without that factor, Private Property Rights depend on individual respect, which doesn't ultimatley matter.
There's also the issue of banking and currency, which needs to be backed up and maintained.
Given this paradigm, how would you describe anarchy and communism?
We never really laid out what it means to be a "State." Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, and gets into technicalities.
For Anarchists, the State is a monopoly on violence. Workers having unified horizontal coalitions and equal power, in their eyes, counts as stateless.
For Marxists, the State is the portion of Government that enforces Classist society. Get rid of class contradictions, and the elements that make up those contradictions, Private Property Rights for example, and you achieve Statelessness, even with a government.
Using either of the previous definitions, Capitalism still fails to exist without a State, it requires a monopoly of violence and class society to exist.
Yeah, so the state is always a problem, from what I can see in your comments. But there can be other bad actors who aren't government (we see them in every society) and they need to be dealt with one way or another, preferably in a way that the community approves of, and all of a sudden we have laws and government, which is a more general definition of Statehood.
So what I'm seeing here is that people who seem to think everyone will agree on how things should be done use the name for the group that enforces the rules, good or bad, that other people agree with as an epithet, while studiously ignoring that they will need similar bodies to deal with the bad actors within their society, since the only place where an ideal society exists is in the imagination.
Not that I have a problem with ideals, they can help provide a road map to get to where you want to be, and perhaps a achievable interim goals that are also worth striving for.
Then that entity, be it Pinkerton or gang or army, would be government. Sure, it could also devolve below capitalism, but capitalism need government structure of some sorts, it cannot exist without it.
That makes no sense. How is our economic system highly controlled in the US? Corporations run rampant, with scant regulation compared to some places like Europe.
A government's size being big doesn't instantly equal less capitalism if that government doesn't do as much as it could to reel in corporate interests.
Case in point, our government here in the US is big but is controlled by corporate interests to such a degree that despite knowing about human made climate change since the late 60s, basically nothing has actually been done about it. Or how whenever there is any push for even a public option to live alongside private insurance, insurance companies go into overdrive running ads and paying politicians to push back against it so it never gets brought up after an election season.
Economic systems and Political systems do not exist independent of each other. They are intertwined.
Sure, that's not what I am talking about. Capitalism cannot exist without a state to verify Private Property rights.
Again, my point is that stateless Capitalism does not and cannot exist.
I agree, but the bigger the government the less capitilism there is because they are controlling the system. I am not saying its good or bad, but the economic system is highly controlled.
Yet lobbyists exist. Every single government official is sponsored by companies via super PACs
Yes exactly, those lobbyists exist because there is a huge amount of power to take so they can control us.
Yea the people with the capital have the power. Capitalism.
What power do Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have over you?
Are you serious?
Jeff Bezos has spent millions of dollars on union busting to prevent his workers from collectively bargaining for better wages. This massive chunk of the workforce then continues to work for less than they are worth because of his illegal tactics. This creates a systemic downwards pressure on wages across the entire workforce. Investors in the capital class gave Amazon a blank check to crush retailers for decades while losing money, because they knew at some point he would have a grip on the market and could stop providing high quality goods and start pumping out cheap garbage from companies like KYZGURK and BULJCOW and reap in massive profits. The capital class destroyed the retail sector and now you get the “convenience” of every purchase making him profits while the items you buy consistently decrease in quality.
Musk admitted to pushing the hyper loop, knowing it was unworkable, to try to prevent California’s high speed rail project. There’s no bullet train I can hop on to get to LA right now because of the power he flexed.
Musk just said he would put $45m a month into a trump super pac, his wealth makes him think that he should get to decide the outcome of our election. He purchased twitter and now has control over the algorithmic feed consumed by millions of my countrymen, directly influencing their thoughts and feelings an any range of topics.
They both contribute to the government to write laws favorable to them, reducing their tax burden and increasing mine. They promote candidates that are aligned with their corporate interests and if those interests include eroding workers rights and moving negative externalities into the environment that has the water I drink, the air I breathe, and the food I eat, fuck me.
Bezos owns the Washington post and can move public opinion in whichever way he wants. If he wants people to think that net neutrality sucks, he can spend all day having the columnists churn that shit out, changing both politicians and the public’s sentiment on the topic by cherry picking data and presenting the most one sided arguments imaginable.
Jeff bezos has conflicts with his workers, and his system revolutionized how we buy things.
This is false, it was not going to happen.
How exactly did they harm you? "They both contribute to the government to write laws favorable to them, reducing their tax burden and increasing mine" - this would be the takeaway I would like you to have, not the propaganda about how they mistreat people. I get what you are saying, but the capital is not what harms you, its how they interact with the thing the can harm you, the government.
I hear your point it’s just wrong.
It’s clear that you believe the government is the bad thing here. I see you completely skipped over all my points about how their market manipulation harms the consumer and the worker. That manipulation is purely from them having a bunch of money and using it to their advantage and does not require a government boogie man.
It’s not that I can’t see the point you want to make, they corrupt the government and then the governments power is the thing that hurts me. First it’s wrong because if we were some sort of anarchy society, bezos using investor money to undersell and falsely outcompete the rest of the market until he has a stranglehold on the economy and can exact a tax on every item sold would still happen.
The fact that you don’t think high speed rail can be built, despite it existing all over the world, is just your opinion. The fact that musk has said he promoted the hyperloop in hopes of pulling funding and support from high speed rail is a thing that happened in reality
Let’s say that we took the power away from the government. Poof just like that they can’t regulate how much rat shit is in your Amazon prime food or if Elon can dump the toxic waste from his battery production in your drinking water. The harm of regulatory capture and lobbyist power just gets replaced with capitalists directly harming you. How is that better?
They both are spending tons of money to spread propaganda to influence public opinion and elections is the first and easiest to point out.
They also both own major news outlets that defend them publicly and are very influential of public opinion.
Both have through their businesses received government subsidies, in effect having us tax dollars go to their pockets. This cycle is repeated through the influence they buy by spreading propaganda, using lobbyists, using money as a tool within the government apparatus to generate more money for their companies and in turn for themselves.
Why does influencing public opinion and elections matter to you?
I like your last paragraph, I think it distills it nicely. Its not that they directly harm you, they influence the government which is allowed to harm you.
If you don't think that influencing public opinion matters in a democratic republic, I invite you to learn about Hitler's rise to power, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi party in Germany, and the holocaust. Using the same propaganda techniques used by the Nazi party, misinformation is used to influence public opinion. This is especially true on Elon's Twitter, but Bezos has used the same techniques to attempt to union bust.
Millions of people died as a result of the propaganda campaigns of the Nazi party. I fear history is about to repeat itself in the usa.
jeff bezos personally came to my apartment, punched me in the face, and stole the remote to my vibrating butt plug, and now he has power over my butt.