'Neoliberal capitalism' has contributed to the rise of fascism, says Nobel laureate
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-11/joseph-stiglitz-the-road-to-freedom-neoliberalism-fascism/104210670Open linkView original on lemm.ee807
Comments310
The reason capitalism leads to fascism is that inevitably capitalism will lead to untenable inequality. Injustice will be too great to ignore between the rich and the rest. This will lead to populism.
There are two forms of populism. One will seek to rectify the imbalances caused by capitalism. The other will seek to divert blame to minorities. If there were less blacks, immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. etc. then our society would not be in decay. One is much more useful to the Capitalist and so it will ultimately prevail. The capitalist will devote all resources to crushing the leftist populism up to and including directly funding fascism.
Unless. We have to spread these ideas to as many people as possible. We can't afford to call it early.
*unregulated undemocratic capitalism
Some might even call it ancap. Proto-fascism.
What does capitalism do when there is nothing left to take? It keeps taking
It goes keto and eats itself.
That's called autophagy, not keto.
It's not exclusive to it, but I used the term intentionally to point out the how the capitalists target the "fat" and also the "muscle" in the system to create very expensive ketones.
If you're suggesting that a ketosis state doesn't produce autophagy, maybe check your sources.
You know very well that I was referring to the higher intensity of autophagy going on. Useless semantics bullshit. Enjoy being blocked.
Yup just what I expected of the average Reddit refugee.
If you're not familiar with the keto fanbase, good for you, btw.
Not proved wrong.
I'm not wasting time with "but actually" memes.
Line must go up and up! I work at a company that has been booming on the stock market, and the pressures for "line must go up always" don't seem sustainable
We're gonna find out as soon as AI, automation, and robotics are more cost efficient at performing most functions than humans.
My expectation is genocide/mass murder, as there are somewhere between 10-100x more people than the planets resources can sustain long term, at a developed world rate of consumption and the current level of technological efficiency/advancement.
Okay but how does AI/Automation/etc. cause a mass murder if the preoccupying assumption of automation is, quite literally, increase of technological efficiency and advancement?
That's a classic one. All the money flows to the top. It leaves the majority of the population without jobs or money. If there are no serious welfare programs, people get very angry and hungry. Humanity is hardwired to start to revolt, riot and plunder in the face of large inequalities and with the astronomic levels it will be massive. The Hamptons and other places like it will be burned to the ground. It'll be very ugly.
It seems like our only hope is that maybe the uber rich will decide that turning the world into a bloodbath just to max out their high score isn't how they want to spend their time on Earth. I'm not optimistic on that front.
That's several chapters of my country's history book summarized
Who do you think will control the kill bots? It'll be the ultra wealthy who lead the remaining governments and corporations. Populations have historically revolted under severe economic stress, even when unemployment reaches 30-50%, and capitalism requires people receiving money in exchange for labor, so they can pay for goods and services; at a certain level of automation/unemployment that cyclical system shuts down. Robots don't get paid, and they don't buy goods or services.
When that happens the ultra wealthy will no longer have any need for the unemployed majority. They will have a means to suppress them (kill bots, wealth, political power), and numerous ecological/environmental reasons to cull the population down to a more manageable, sustainable size.
Thing is…there is no real free market with proper competition, anyway. If there was such a thing, my groceries wouldn’t cost double now from what they were a mere five years ago (or quadruple, if looking at soda like Coke and Pepsi products). There is rampant collusion and price-fixing going on and not a damn government official seems to be doing anything about it. And yeah, the “but but the pandemic” excuse runs pretty thin as the years of this gouging continues.
The truth is, a real market is never actually truly competitive. In an unregulated market, competing firms always collude with each other to set prices and wages for the industry. "Free market" ideology is based on nonsense, they've proven this over and over.
In a free market, aren't you free to collude with your competitors in order to fix prices?
In a Hayekian free market, yes. Most (all?) actual free markets prohibit cartels, though.
There's no such thing. All markets are regulated. Even ones dominated by cartels. Markets do not meaningfully exist without regulation. The only question is how they're regulated.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
Those conditions of course don't exist in the real world, best we can do is to regulate away market failures to approach the theoretical ideal. That's the kind of thing ordoliberalism argues for, and it can indeed work very well in practice. Random example: You want companies to use packaging with less environmental impact. You could have a packaging ministry that decides which company uses what packaging for what, creating tons of state bureaucracy -- or you could say "producers, you're now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself". What previously was an externality for those companies suddenly appears on their balance sheet and they self-regulate to use way more cardboard, easily recyclable plastics, whatnot.
Definitely wouldn't solve the problem as they'd just find the cheapest method of disposal to match the letter of the law and go about their day.
Corporations don't self-regulate. They regulate the regulators. They work and then later buy the refs.
Those are illegal. Already were before. I'm not talking about a hypothetical, here, the policy is over 30 years old.
Yeah if they do that were you are then maybe elect better politicians. They sure as hell try it over here but it's not nearly as much as an issue as e.g. in the US.
I dunno if I were in Germany I wouldn't be so smug about electing politicians that prevent a slide into fascism.
Are you actually trying to make a point or did you simply want to be hostile.
My point is that it's not as simple as setting "common sense" neoliberal rules when the corporations actively evade them. The problem in the US is also more complicated than you're making it, here we need to basically redo a court which is full of people on lifetime appointments in order to roll back their ruling that political corruption is basically free speech.
That's not even remotely true. Natural monopolies exist because of how natural resources work, and oligopolies or undercutting of prices to destroy weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
It can't happen given perfect rationality as it's not in the rational interest of the majority to allow a minority their monopolies.
It's a fucking theoretical model. The maths check out, that's not the issue the issue is that it's theory, with very glaring limitations.
Funnily enough, not even neoliberals believe in the free market regardless of how much they spout its nonsense.
Thatcher was one of such neoliberals, she would always talk about how people should become self-sufficient and governments shouldn't interfere in the free market for it to truly work and so on, but during her rule she was spending billions in subsidies for corporations (aka government interference in the free market). Of course, they weren't called subsidies in the paperwork but some other bullshit like "public investment", but their effect was still the same.
In the USA, the FTC is actually taking grocery store chains to court over collusion and price fixing, presumably will target specific brands once more data gets released via the court proceedings.
So there are government officials doing things about it, but nobody ever seems to give them any fucking credit and every few years we vote in new politicians who gut the agency.
This is news to me! You got a link to a credible source? I’d love to read it so I can hopefully change my opinion some.
EDIT>> Found it on my own, and it's the FTC, not the FCC.
And this was posted one day ago, so I would think I could be forgiven for that :)(Seems it's been in the works since March, at least) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/grocery-cost-inflation-investigation-b2594782.htmlInvestigation report form March LINK
April actions LINK
2 days ago LINK
Also they sued to stop the Albertsons Kroger Merger LINK
Everything else I said was pure assertion on my part, but the point still stands
Thanks! That's definitely more than I found. I didn't know it goes back to March. Much appreciated.
Well you can find various FCC lawsuits going back decades but nobody ever talks about any of that stuff.
I think you mean FTC, but I'll research to learn more. Thanks!
FTC oversees securities exchanges, primarily. Things like the stock market.
The best bureaucrat we have is Lina Khan and all the wealthy donors on both sides want her gone.
Is the pandemic really the main claimed reason in the US? Here in central Europe it seems that since February of 2022, all products have been coming exclusively from Ukraine, so that is why they just had to become more expensive you know...
That joke was good, but it's old now. Everyone should understand that it was due to the peak of oil/gas prices due to the Ukraine war, that had cascade effects on the price of transportation, fertilizer, energy, groceries...which then compounded into general inflation with some price gouging too to keep it from going back as quickly.
If you want to keep that from happening again, gradually reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for your security, not just to "be green".
Many businesses in the US still cling to that trope, yes. We all understood that it was to a be a temporary issue in 2020 and 2021, but businesses took that to mean they could just never drop their prices now that people were willing, at the time, to pay for it. I'm not talking luxury goods either, I'm talking about staples to maintain life, such as meat, vegetables, and even water prices have risen. This is untenable for many, many people.
Some of the comments in this thread really tell you why it takes a novel laureate to say this. Some of y'all do not have a basic understanding of history, economic systems, or what the term reactionary actually means.
The correct response to "neo liberal capitalism has contributed to the rise of fascism" should be "no shit, Sherlock"
It's truly sad that that isn't 100% of the comments here.
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed, y'all. That doesn't mean all liberals are fascist, that means that fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism.
And just in case y'all also don't know what that means, "liberalism" in that context isn't "Obama liberal, Bush conservative," it means the political ideology of liberalism, of which both Bush and Obama were proponents of.
ETA: I'm not engaging anymore.. it's not my job to teach y'all the difference between an economic system and authoritarian states. Also, your magic has no power here, I am an anarchist, not a stalinist. Please educate yourselves. If for no other reason, do it to make it easier to pwn the tankies or whatever the fuck
I really, really hate that expression. It's like it's purposely designed to alienate people with mostly good intentions telling them they're no different from horrible people they hate with a fiery passion.
Saying it means something other than what it plainly does mean doesn't make it any better. Maybe it means that to you, but any slogan you have to explain is a shit slogan. All it does is signal membership in your in-group while telling everyone else who hears it that you're part of their out-group.
This is a problem with slogans and not just this slogan. Another one is "ACAB" which people get upset about because they know someone who is a cop and they don't think that cop is a bastard... But "policing has systemic issues that hurt marginalized people disproportionately, primarily exists at the intersection between haves and have nots in a way that mostly serves the capitalist ruling class rather than creating justice" doesn't fit in a sign.
okay but all cops, conclusively, ARE bastards, and we should say it so no idiot idealistic kids think they can join and be the good one.
because its true, and they are. all of them.
if one ever stopped being a bastard, they would stop being a cop pretty quick. usually via training accident.
I'm not so sure training to be a cop has any impact on whether your parents were married 18+ years before.
The police aren't going anywhere. The path you described means no one who wants to better the system should join.. so it will always just be people who want to abuse power. Am I reading your proposal wrong? We should workshop this.
Edit: re-read what I wrote and realized it sounded dickish instead of constructive. Sorry about that, my dumb lump of a brain thought it sounded a lot different when I was writing it.
the system cannot be improved 'from the inside', 'reform from within' has not worked in the past four hundred years of constant trying, when institutional culture was far less entrenched.
what has changed, that it would magically work now? that the fucking mythical good-cop king under the mountain will return and save us all by making the often literal neo nazi death squads whose soul reason for existing is the maintenance of hierarchal violence and wealth/class disparity be nice and cool and prosocial?
Last 400 years what has changed? A lot. I'm not saying the police are going to change anytime soon, but women have only had the ability to vote for 25% of that. That was a big change. The end of legalized slavery outside of incarceration hasn't been around that long either... Kinda big one might say. Before I die I hope to see large improvements in rehabilitation during incarceration as efforts are growing world wide.
We can live with hope and keep pushing towards a better life for people, or we can cower in fear and think nothing will ever change. Hell, 20 years ago a universal healthcare system in the U.S. would have been thought impossible to ever occur, now I think that it could happen in the next 20 years if people get out and vote for it.
For every inch we take there is always backlash and sometimes we lose ground. We just need to hope we don't lose decades, if not a 250 years come this election.
okay but, like, specifically, this specific question:
what specific changes have happened? what did the police 'reforms' after 2020 fix? have the rates of innocent people gunned down in the streets in the woods in their homes gone down in the past four years? what about the time before that? or before that? or before that? your proposal has failed, constantly, invariable, without one exception, since before the invention of the steam engine. it's not even stupidity anymore; it's insanity.
stop cowering. stop restricting your horizon of action to the things your oppressors tell you you're allowed to do. look for the gaps. look the the real solutions. try playing a non-pacifist run of 'wolfenstein', see if you do any better.
good aesthetics and good vibes ≠ good intentions
and its the vibes that liberals really care about. its the obsession with feelings and aesthetics over truth. which is also why it's such fertile soil for fascism to grow in. scratch a liberal, break the good vibes, snap them out of it, make them look at a homeless person, and they go fasch real quick. they certainly do a lot of shit fascists would approve of, they just kick some sand over it after. for example: the homeless purges about to sweep through california were ordered by a liberal, with the broad approval of liberals.
the concentration camps for migrants were built as much under liberals and fascists. as long as they dont have to see it, any amount of horror is fine. if it helps them not see suffering, any amount of horror is encouraged. they're nice, they're pleasant, but they are not friends, and the assumption that we're natural allies, that they can behave as badly as they want and still count on left support is how american politics got as fucked as they are.
exactly this just the natural end result of capitalism, the end goal has always been complete control by the ruling class.
Do you?
That's pretty much most of the comments in this thread
I don't think these two were ever liberal about anything. The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.
In order, but not quoting because mobile app and lazy:
Yes.
I said some.
They were both liberal, in that they were both proponents of liberalism, as in "liberal democracy." Not liberalism as left of center. Liberalism as in market economies and private property.
I'm also not necessarily associating liberalism as a whole to fascism. All zits are zots, but not all zots are zits, you dig? Fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism and capitalism, but it doesn't mean liberalism is fascistic or that it is inevitable. It means that when liberalism is threatened, in decline, backed into a corner by its own contradictions, fascism is one way that it defends itself so that the status quo can be maintained. It just depends on which part of the status society/the ruling class/those in charge value more. The personal freedom bit, the private property bit, the lifestyle of the rich bit? Social democracy is another way that liberalism defends itself, favored by those who value the other end of the spectrum. Fascism is a reaction to growing tensions around those contradictions and growing support for things like social democracy and actual socialism.
Also, this article specifically cites neo liberalism, an ideology of its own, and an outgrowth of liberalism, but liberalism itself. The shittiest form liberalism takes without going full fash IMHO, but it's hard to define "shitty" in any sort of academic sense. But fuck Reagan and Thatcher.
What specifically got called out was neoliberalism. While ordoliberalism was briefly called neoliberalism the general understanding of the term is "Whatever nefarious shit the Atlas network is currently up to". Things like conflating the free market with unregulated markets (which are anything but free), trickle-down economics, ludicrously excessive rent seeking behaviour, like say privatised pension funds, publishing ratings calling countries "nanny states" for having warnings on cigarettes because yes the tobacco lobby is very much part of that ilk, really the list is pretty endless: It's pure class war. War creates victims, those victims need handling, and misdirection of ire is a very convenient strategy, "It's not the billionaires who own everything who are at fault that you can't make rent, it's the immigrants".
It's not just Marx who is rotating in his grave, Adam Smith is very much spinning with at least the same RPM. It's after all his own work which gets abused by those people.
As to the more sensible liberalisms -- they largely got captured. The EU has a strong ordoliberal bent actually regulating markets ((it's in fact constitutionally a social market economy), but that neolib shit is still eating away at it and many people, even policy makers, can't really tell the difference.
Socialists seem rather illiberal about the definition and allowed use of the word and concept of liberal. They hear "a liberal?" and think "a fascist!". I suspect that this greatly plays into the polarization between tankies and limbrols here on lemmy.
For example a newer definition of fascism is 1. belief in inequality based on 2. a mythological identity (e.g. race which isn't real). That is useful to talk about trumpism vs the neoliberal democrats. But socialists completely refute that and insist it's both the same fascism because capitalism. And that is where any discussion ends in my experience. It's like we're dividing and conquering ourselves for the benefit of the fascists..
Of course they are right in terms of foreign policy, which is absolutely fascist towards "shithole countries" no matter who rules in the white house. Neoliberalism is: 1. belief in inequality based on 2. economic or class status 3. personal freedom to die in whatever way seems best to you.
And once the prosperity is distributed away with rising wealth inequality that does lead to plutocracy and then fascism. And I suspect the socialists are right that without an explicit socialist component in your ideology this outcome is inevitable.
But unfortunately their definitions are stuck based on outdated theories written before 1950.
Nope. The primary reasoning is "a liberal?" "They're going to create conditions conducive of fascism". That specifically applies to neoliberalism which really is modern-day feudalism, to each billionaire their fiefdom. Fascist politics allow them to distract the proletariat from the actual source of their plight, it allows them to bribe a couple of people to get the laws they want instead of orchestrating complicated astroturf campaigns. It affords them legal privileges impossible in proper democracies.
The secondary reasoning is a hard to avoid slippery slope: Belief in inequality is a very neoliberal thing, you have "the valiant productive people" and "the lazy masses". Illusions of false merit, people born into money legitimately believing they're self-made, considering anyone who doesn't want to hustle or exploit others meritless, therefore it's "just natural and just" if they end up homeless and without health insurance. Have you listened to The Wall lately. The Pink Floyd album.
You seem to be throwing around the term "socialist" in a similar naive way
All right then… somehow in all of the history people wanted to get out of socialist/communist countries to the liberal ones so bad, that they had to build walls and shoot the trespassers.
Idk about you but I am gonna stick to the liberalism with solid amount of welfare and public services. However, you are free to move to Cuba or any other plethora of socialist countries to live however you want.
Papers please
Ah yes the vuvuzela argument. Much easier than analyzing what the ideologies actually incentivize and lead to or using your eyes to take a look at the state of the world.
Complete brain rot. If LLMs reacted this way to every mention of socialism we'd think they needed more training. Chat GPT would express more a more nuanced and understanding-demonstrating answer than this. You should consider feeling ashamed.
I understand your frustration but you are misguided and ignorant. Education is truly a blessing to not repeat same mistakes from the past.
I am sure however that you are in extreme minority and pose zero danger to society. My sympathy remains. One has to believe in something. God, ufos or communism.
In a world dominated by capitalist realism I find that an ironic stance.
Socialism isn't only implementable as an authoritarian state, but any attempt to implement it will be met with fierce resistance from "liberal" countries whose ruling class is not threatened by fascism but is threatened by socialism.
You're fighting for the oppressor.
I am not fighting for anything. I am enjoying my life in a capitalist society. Thank you very much.
Enjoy it while you can, capitalism is actively destroying our climate and causing never before seen levels of wealth inequality. Fascism is the inevitable next step and is rapidly approaching. It will not perpetuate much longer whether by self-destruction, or hopefully, by replacement so that we can continue to thrive as a species.
That’s doomer speak from too much scrolling. I once too believed these things for a time but the world hasn’t ended, improved even. I am no longer as depressed and regained clarity of mind.
I hope you too can find peace and see the reason before all the time dwindles out like a sand from between your fingers.
I am typing it lying on my huge bed, with cat at my side, full fridge, iPhone, iPad, car with full tank in the garage, 100 sqm apartment I own in the comfy part of the city. Steady, mostly passive income. Free healthcare working ok, education.
Why would I want communism? I would have to be not okay in the head
🎵 The price of convenience will be our defeat 🎵
I'd also reccomend Skyline Blvd, John's Song and Times New Roman. Oh and Sleepwalker, from the Destroy What Destroys you album
Cool but you are even more guilty than me if you just wait for some idealistic, mythical system to solve all problems instead of acting with what is here. Now.
You were sold some horseshit ma’am/sir
Capitalism was nice when it first popped up. Because it was an improvement over feudalism.
Actually, it wasn't that nice when it first popped up, considering the first capitalist ventures were colonialism (including the conquest of the Aztec and Incan empires and the east Indian tea company that was worse for India than Hitler was for Europe).
But it was relatively nice because before capitalism, most development needed to be done by the king, who had limited funds. Bankers had been building wealth and capitalism allowed them to become new sub kings with their own empires. More empires meant more development, which also means a lot of employment, so it did increase the quality of life for many people as they got paid to improve things around them and new products popped up.
But we've since outgrown the whole kings thing for control of a geographic or political region while corporations are still run like dictatorships (with the executive team acting as sub kings for the board, which acts as sub kings for the shareholders, where institutional investors dominate, which just makes the whole thing less transparent because those institutions also have similar command structures).
So while there is some truth to capitalism having had a positive impact, the overall story is more complicated than that (the plunder from colonialism made it look a lot better at a high price in the colonies, and it was a relative improvement to "only the lord of the land can develop it and benefit from that improvement") and society has generally since rejected that model for running political regions but the economic model has yet to catch up.
The capitalists are resisting that change similarly to how the kings resisted changing from monarchies to republics and have been since around WWI and the fascist regimes of the 20s and 30s were a result of capitalists siding with them to prevent various leftist movements from gaining power.
Fucking well put!
Colonialism was pursued under the economic theory of mercantilism and capitalist thinkers explicitly separated their ideas from it (among other things by emphasis on the idea that the best kind of wealth is tools instead of gold and as a result the pursuit of wealth can be cooperative instead of zero sum game), but otherwise sure it all looks the same in the end. It's not like capitalists ever stopped and said "No, don't invade that country for its natural resources, that goes against our principles of making more money."
Capitalism puts greed at the wheel and, naturally,
inventionsproducts are churned out, some really useful, some terrible. To make it work, you need to regulate hard to keep the greed from taking over the innovation.Suffering as a means of production is the heart of capitalism
its not the means, its the product.
Just look at all the shit on Amazon to know that capitalism puts out a bunch of garbage all that stuff is a waste of resources.
Capitalism that is bounded by strong regulations that are consistently and fairly enforced by government (the people) entities isn't that bad.
It's when those regulations get watered down or just removed in the name of "freedom" that we get what we have now.
Any form of capitalism that permits the accumulation of wealth will lead to deregulation and economic collapses with increasing frequency.
In other parts of the world total literacy, universal healthcare and more was made without capitalism.
Propaganda conflates industrialization with capitalism continually, obscuring the possibility of any other economic system.
By the nine divines... Why does it take libs 80 years extra to reach the conclusions that Marxists have already described in detail in the last century...
Most people who were paying attention to the world when 1929 happened and witnessed the consequences up to 1945 are dying now. The people who were paying attention to the world when 2008 happened haven't seen how the story ends.
Oddly, 1929-1945 and 2008-2024 are the same distance apart. Were you trying to do that or is it just eerie coincidence?
eheh, I'm a pessimist, what can I say 😅
Mainly because we spent 80 years being told to snitch on our neighbors and that commies are the devil himself come to wipe the world clean of good moral people.
It's still going to be a long time till Marx is given an objective position in western society, if ever.
because they live in a delusional fantasy world where belief in things corellates with warm fuzzy feelings more than congruence with material reality, "truth" is socially reinforced, and... shit, shit this reminds me of something.
He is not taking a Marxist position. Possibly agreeing with parts of the same analysis as Marx but definitely not the same prescription. Not every criticism of Capitalism is an endorsement of Marxism
Precisely that's why it's taken him 80 years longer than Marxists to reach that conclusion.
Which is why non-marxist anti-capitalist movements such as Salvador Allende's socialism in Chile, or Mosaddegh's Iran, inevitably fail within a few years due to the lack of understanding of class struggle and the history of capitalism.
I take it you have a Marxist state as a counter example showing it's superiority and longevity?
USSR lasted much longer than Allende's project, and Cuba is still ongoing
The question was superiority and longevity. Are you claiming those are both superior states as well?
The USSR and Cuba are much more desirable than the short-lived wannabe socialist regime that led to Pinochet's dictatorship, yes, how do you not see this?
Well of course it has, fascism is the end result of capitalism. Some would say it's natural conclusion.
I wonder what sort of echo chamber you must live in, in order to believe this
Late stage capitalism?
Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis, when economic elites, landowners and business owners feared that a revolution or uprising was imminent. Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential socialist revolution.. Then Fascists allied themselves with the economic elites, promising to protect their social status and to suppress any potential socialist revolution. There's more specifics here if you want them.
Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system - the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.
hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha
hahahahah ' hahahahaha
hahaahahahahahahahahahaha
What a lemmy moment.
10/10 argument. You lost
No, you just made a likely bad faith argument he couldn't be bothered to engage with.
There has been a rise in far-right parties in many countries, many of which don't officially label themselves as fascist for plausible deniability, while spouting clearly fascist rhetoric. Their current scapegoats of choice include (but are not limited to) immigrants and lgbtq people.
But if you're not being disingenuous, what do you think fascism is?
Extremist organizations exist always and everywhere - what both of you fail to understand is that they're very small (although sometimes loud) minorities.
A totalitarian movement in pre ww2 Italy, that killed a lot of people.
What do you think it is?
Just to be clear, your argument was Checks notes "Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system" had the proof "the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2." was truly a masterclass.
It's like you had this well thought out idea, and really just made sure everyone understood that yo-
sorry, hahahahhahaha i just cant, every time I read it I laugh again, hahahahah thank you so much this made my day.
Enjoy being ratio'd though, the view is incredible from up here.
You live in your own little world, aren't you?
By people as misguided as you.
Nah. This is all on you.
If you took 5 minutes to look into elections in Europe and in US, you'd see that far-right are becoming more dominant in elections, white nationalists and neo-nazis are openly having marches on streets and attacking the "enemy" (like immigrants or muslims), Russia is pretty much an unofficial fascist state right now and so on.
You're right, resurgence of fascism never happened, but it is happening right now.
No, you're just one of radicals on the opposite side of political spectrum. Everyone with the wrong opinion is called fascist these days.
Bait used to be believable
This isn't a bait. I tried once explaining the differences between fascism and nazism and guess what? Got acussed of being fascist. The only reason was because others didn't like my argument.
What, you think Stiglitz is some kind of dangerous tankie now? Jfc, talk about muddying the waters. The forces that motivated the germans to "seek shelter" from markets with the nazis are the same pushing people to vote for Le Pen, AfD today.
Even Orban's little dictatorship is a product of the sovereign debt crisis of the EU in 2014. If neoliberals are so blind that they lose touch with their people, voters will seek shelter from market forces either to the left or to the far-right, depending on how they understand what is happening.
producesextracts wealthProduces. Wealth comes from efficient allocation of resources - capitalist free markets are really good at it.
Efficiency under capitalism?
We waste tremendous amounts of food but people go hungry.
We produce absurd levels of clothing, much of which is destroyed and sent to landfills without being worn, but there are people who need it.
We have more houses than unhoused by a huge factor.
Capitalism optimizes for profit and profit only. Sometimes that leads to good outcomes, sometimes it leads to bad outcomes.
It's not "efficient" in terms of taking care of people's needs. It's only efficient in terms of producing profits for the owner and investor classes.
This waste may look big in absolute numbers, but probably isn't meaningful as percentage of total economy - we're wealthy so many of us can afford to be a little wasteful.
Usually bad outcomes are the corner cases - I'm perfectly aware that they exist (harmful monopolies, CO2, ect.) But it's the role of solid legal framework to deal with these issues.
On the other hand you have at best no idea what sort of pathologies can arise in alternatives to capitalism, and at worst it can be repeat of the of USSR or North Korea.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Exactly, capitalist markets are really good at extracting resources from the land and labour from the people to make a profit, they just don't know where to stop until it's too late, unless they are regulated.
They're also getting increasingly more efficient at funneling profits to the top, rather to the greatest value producers: labourers. This is wage theft. Get it all the way to 100% and you have slavery.
Though important to note that slavery does not just meant you don't get paid. Though I don't think anyone needs a splainer on that.
You're trying to paint production in a negative way, while in reality competitive markets converge to most fair prices
Law of supply and demand dictates that too low wage will fail to attract workers, while too high wage will result in product that is too expensive and won't attract customers willing to buy.
It's a beautiful, self regulating communication network that pays well for stuff that is in demand and pays little for things nobody wants
Yep, nothing inefficient about an intern commuting via plane from South Carolina to New York everyday because it's much cheaper than living in New York. /s 🙄
I would argue that it was not capitalist benevolence that kept social peace for 80 years, it was partly the existence of the USSR that forced capitalist governments to make concessions to the social state to prevent communist influence from expanding westwards, flawed as it was.
Capitalism is neither benevolent nor malevolent - it just happens it has most aligned incentives between egoistic actors
Really, really not. People were escaping from socialist USSR republics to western countries. This is why USSR decided to build a wall - their disfunctional system couldn't compete
The New Deal is an example of capitalists understanding that you need to make some concessions to keep the peace, I'd call that sorta benevolent.
About the USSR: yes, people escaped it, but there was a chance that democracies would flip communist if you squeezed the population too much, so there was a political incentive to creating social policies to control capitalist forces. Without fear of the USSR agitators and backing, they had less incentive to compromise a.k.a. TINA.
Fascism was maintained in several European countries way beyond 1940s, such as my homeland Spain. There were also fascist regimes after WW2 outside Europe, such as in Chile or arguably in South Korea and Taiwan.
The real world.
lemmy.ml isn't the real world
You dont have to be a tankie to understand that the neverending capitalist search for growth leads to exploitation and eventually backlash.
Thanks Reagan
*Milton Friedman
And every president since Reagan, including him.
ya thats not a bug thats a feature
Yes. That is how it works. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate these outcomes. It actually takes concerted effort through propaganda and misinformation to maintain the level of cognitive dissonance we have about it.
USA #1! EAT IT COMMMIES!
USA: "Here we own nothing and are happy. Eat it commies!"
if you want to implement unpopular policies, authoritarian regime is the way
The depressing thing is that fascists are popular enough to gain power. The populist pose, some scapegoating of minorities, and a dash of lying about their goals, is enough to win over many voters, and in a first-past-the-post system it doesn't matter if the majority of the people don't like them.
Pretty much sums up the UK since 2010.
Sums up many places, unfortunately.
The market is authoritarian.
That's not necessarily true, many supposedly democratic regimes consistently pass unpopular policy and don't pass popular policy. E.g. welfare state cuts to expenditure in education, healthcare and pensions in post-2008 EU, or the lack of progressive policy in USA healthcare.
It's precisely this ignoring of the popular will that turns people to fascism
A lot of economists don't listen to anything Joseph Stiglitz says, because he's not from the Chicago school. Economics is so stupid.
dismal, even
Except "dismal science" wasn't meant as a critique.
no shit, Sherlock. Still, glad to see it in the news.
I used to be a libertarian and believed in the whole 'freer the market freer the people' shit...
But then I grew up.
Freer the market, freer the people... including the psychopaths with money and influence.
In other news, meteorologist says the sky is blue.
This is absolutely shocking to anyone that hasn't read basic theory. If this surprises you I strongly recommend you read the Principles of Communism to start.
None of the solutions he proposes is communism, BTW
I didn't support him nor imply that he was communist, only that his conclusions can be reached by anyone who has read theory with the difference being that someone who has read theory can both identify the problem and the true solution.
Where the"true solution " is communism?
Unironically yes
Right. Which is what I presumed you meant in the first instance, hence my response.
What's your solution? Rapidly inflate the size of government through social programs to compensate for the workers not owning their own labor?
I would be more open to these sort of arguments if they weren't being promoted or perpetrated by actual dictatorships.
I feel like, as an american, I can't really talk shit about other countries being dictatorships.
Hurrhurrhurr yes comrade us americans, we should learn to accept Xi Jinping into our hearts. /s
yes, anyone who has literally any problem with my shit head oligarchs whose dogs overthrow democracies 3x a day is OBVIOUSLY a pupped of the nefarious xi jinping, who is different from our proudly gaslighting oligarch vampires because he has to hop everywhere, instead of having a cool cape, and also likes trains. (which, to be fair, is a pretty fucking huge difference with the climate doing what it is)
Look, the USA are no saints by any metric, but on a comparative scale to actual dictatorships you'd have to be a concaveman to think they're one of the baddies.
cool, like iran! yeah, those guys are bad. we had nothing to do with that. or the current russian regime! totally not an american project. or afghanistan.
the american empire is the fucking pandora of dictatorships, but without any hope in the box.
Exhibit A
so who DOES have the right to criticize you?
Joseph Stiglitz is an American economist, not a dictatorship, and he's advocating for better capitalism.
I wasn't calling Joseph Stiglitz a dictatorship, I was calling Russia and China dictatorships and they often use the same words to different ends. The fact that this is crossposted to Hexbear and lemmy ML isn't doing the post any favors, either, those places are flowing with pro-CCP propoganda.
As much as this can be a productive conversation analyzing the faults of the system we live in to reform and fix it, it can also be used as justification for voting against our interests, violence, and subterfuge. It's unfortunate, but that is our context.
This is not an article about communism or socialism or dictatorships or any of the other things you're talking about.
No but it is an article whose headlines use the same words as pretend-anarchist/socialist dictatorships when they try to stoke flames online to promote political division and violence.
Jfc I feel like a skipping record, how do you not understand the context of the conversation you're in? Did you get dropped off in the middle?
I think I don't understand the context because you're not responding in context, you're just continuing an imaginary conversation you've had elsewhere because you saw some keywords.
You seem really upset about me discussing how genuine this sentiment is and where it leads. Are you feeling defensive about something?
Are you questioning whether Joseph Stiglitz is a secret communist? Because that's the only genuine sentiment at play for your top level comment. If you instead wanted to call out some other poster and argue with them about communism, maybe you should have replied to that person?
Or maybe you should have read the article before you commented so you wouldn't have to be trying to figure out a post hoc justification about the nonexistent context making your comment correct all along.
kill enough people, eventually you'll get a genuine piece of shit who deserved to die.
similarly, if you talk enough shit (and they do), you'll eventually be right. kind of like a stopped clock, you know? shitty people can be right about things, and that doesn't make them any less shitty. arguably doesn't even make them right.
What a stupid analogy.
what about it is stupid?
The part that normalizes mass murder.
no, its pretty normal. lotta people will get pissed about it if you object. ship's already sailed on that one. we swim through a river of innocent blood. only ever that, our entire lives. pointing out the statistics of the more obvious instances of it isn't pro or anti.
im not a fan of this state of affairs, BTW. just where we are. is≠aught.
A lot of dumb takes in the comment section here. It's astounding the conclusions people come to. Joseph Stiglitz is absolutely right, but a lot of you need to view societies in a less rigid, linear, and positively Manichean manner.
Class conflict from inequalities keeps resulting in the same patterns across many different countries and throughout history and we're supposedly black and white thinkers for calling it out? Bernie keeps saying the same thing over and over too, but that's because it's true.
Bernie's not saying "Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" and insisting that all forms of capitalism inevitably lead to fascism. All forms of capitalism are bad (or, at least, worse than socialism), but the idea that fascism is just an outgrowth of liberalism, and of liberalism specifically, ignores... so goddamn much history. The atmosphere in here is very anti-SocDem.
Liberalism allows asymmetric power between the wealthy and the working class and the wealthy aren't threatened by fascism, but they are threatened by socialism. That's one of the ways in which liberalism leads to fascism.
When times are good liberals don't directly try to implement fascism, but as times get tough and the working class begins to have unrest then fascism is the direction the pressure releases in, because given the choice the capitalists will take it over socialism every time.
Not reining in capital is the fault of liberalism
If we're counting that as 'leading to fascism', wouldn't that be true of every system with power imbalances?
Fascism has a specific definition that also relates to capitalism but otherwise you're right that those in power will cling to power.
Fascism is one such outcome that occurs when capitalism is under threat.
In that case, when you say "Liberalism leads to fascism", what you mean is "Liberalism creates the preconditions necessary for fascism", just like liberalism creates the preconditions necessary for socialism.
Not exactly. Part of the characteristics of liberalism is that it's supportive of capitalism and capitalism can be regulated but will tend to move towards increasing power imbalances, artificial scarcity, and environmental destruction.
Those things cause strain on a liberal society, and that strain leads that society to go into turmoil. Populism begins to happen, but collective resistance to the capitalist ruling class is strongly suppressed while other forms of harmful populism like racism and desire for war are allowed to fester or even amplified.
Capitalism is the dog, but liberalism is the neglecful owner that lets go out the leash
So, TL;DR: copy Europe?
Parts of it, sure. But not all of it. Europe hasn't been immune to the current rise in fascism. But there are clearly some countries in Europe that are fairing better than others.
YoU dOn’T kNoW wHaT lIBeRaL mEaNs
This feels like an appeal to authority. He's an economist, not a political scientist. His Nobel prize was in contributions around screening, which is important but has jack shit to do with fascism. And he's held some opinions before that were highly controversial to say the least, like advocating for the breakup of the eurozone. Just because he says it and he has a shiny prize doesn't mean it's right.
Doesn't mean he's wrong either.
I can see many pathways from neolib capitalism to oligarchy to fascism.
I think you may just be anti-intellectual and looking for any hook to discredit the discussion.
Anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of fascism too :)
First, the definition of appeal to authority, since it's one of the most misunderstood fallacies. Citing someone based on their area of expertise is not appeal to authority. The problem is when you cite the stated opinion of someone, but their area of expertise is not directly relevant to that opinion. I'm a software developer, I could give you an expert opinion on various topics in that area. But outside of topics I am an export on, appeal to authority.
I didn't say he's necessarily wrong. But at the same time, he got his Nobel prize by being an economist who made a substantial contribution to economics. He is not an expert on fascism. His expert opinions in economics often run counter to many other credible expert economists, so you should consider those other expert opinions as well and not just listen to the person who tells you want you want to hear. That's certainly not anti-intellectual.
Experts and intellectuals should absolutely be considered to better understand a subject, but they're not some infallible oracle of truth. They contradict each other, are often limited by an ivory tower environment, and operating in the same societal context as everyone else.
Right, because orthodox economists are so good at listening to what political scientists are saying.
The scholars outside economics have been screaming about it for years.
But it seems it takes one of their own for them to maybe potentially consider the possibility that there might exist some specific corner case in which they might need to ponder the necessity to listen. And even then, economics reductionists will still pretend it's suspect.
Marxism and socialism are not the answer to the ills of capitalism, though. People don’t necessarily want to be responsible for organizing production, and group dynamics which plague capitalist societies will crop up again, leading to unequal distribution of resources, and again fascism.
Such anti-social group dynamics are almost always resultant from the natural levels of greed and self-preservation which people possess, like favoring people from their religion or culture over others.
Capitalism needs to be controlled and made reasonable via high tax rates to reduce funding for lobbying. Under prepared and ill informed masses do not need to be given controls over production. There are also many who want people to give up individual liberties to live in communes. Fuck off with that, no one wants to live in your fucking commune with you.
I disagree, something has to be born out of capitalism. Shits on life support right now.
I think a gift economy would be best but, if we keep thinking behaviors like greed can't be legistlated, we'll never get ahead.
Could you tell me what you believe socialism to mean?
As long as we keep antiquated monetary based economic and political systems there will be no emancipation of all. We don't need money and things to dictate who gets what. (shelter, food, water, love, community, education...) those should be already granted to everyone because we have the resource, knowledge, and capabilities to do so. We have people going without essentials only because the rich and powerful want it that way.
I agree to an extent. What do you suppose would replace money? Labor vouchers? Moreover, there needs to be a transitionary period to phase out money.
My point being, the changes we need have to be reformational. Expedited reform is the only sensible path forward.
Ya I don't think it'll be something that happens fast or within our lifetime. But there's no rational reason for us to not starting to provide some essential needs today. The US throws out enough food to feed everyone in our country now. But it's preferred to over produce so shelves look full and then throw out whatever doesn't sale. Literally insanity when millions of Americans go to sleep hungery
Nothing in this article is about Marxism or socialism.
I mean maybe you won't join my cult on day one, but soon.....
There is one big flaw with socialism: socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.
Nothing in this article is about socialism.
The elimination of private property and the shifting of ownership from the rich to the people doesn't change the power required to regulate/administer anything. Either way the same amount of regulation is needed, and the same amount of administration is needed. Capitalism is just dictatorship in the workplace, and it needs to end yesterday.
To put it another way, compare two cities.
City A:
City B has the exact same population, infrastructure requirements, etc. It is basically a carbon copy of city A. However in city B the means of production is democratically controlled (and therefore owned).
Both cities have the same food requirements, the same amount of concrete needed, the same amount of everything is needed identically between them. The implementation of socialism doesn't change the amount of political power needed to keep things running. It has however, shifted the political power away from the dictatorship of the CEOs and company board members to the vote of the people. Here in the U.S. we (on paper) wouldn't tolerate a dictatorship in the government. So why the fuck do we tolerate it in the workplace? The workplace should be a democracy too (and not the shitty failed kind of democracy that is the U.S. government).
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Bullshit. Fascists have been around for millenia longer than our peaceful mindsets. Back then it was more useful to be but recent advances in technology has made their usefulness nothing more than a nostalgic yearning for past and passed glories
Max Weber would argue different.
Weber died in 1920. Fascism had literally only existed by name for a year before he died. He was not arguing about fascism, hence fascism never being mentioned on that Wikipedia page.
This was what I was responding to, and the way it's worded it seemed (to me at least) they were saying capitalism is barely a century old.
Oh, I see. My mistake.
Were they? That parses as "fascism, an outgrowth of capitalism, is a century old".
Man has been around for thousands of years athis current sociointelligent level. It is not hard to extrapolate the current fascist mentalities back through the ages all the way through our barbarous past.
Italy was not first. There was the mongols, the greeks, the spartans and probably many more that only rated a blurb in the history books
You are conflating monarchy with fascism for some reason.
The Mongols were governed by the Khan, who was an emperor.
The Greeks had multiple kings of the various polises (aside from Athens for a while), until they were united under Alexander the Great, who was an emperor.
The Spartans were Greek, so it's weird you listed them separately.
Fascism and monarchy are both authoritarian, but authoritarianism is not fascism.
I'm not entirely sure about millennia, but capitalism has been around for at least as long as currency has. That too has changed names but the idea of whoever is born with the most gets to steal the most is older than all existing civilizations.
Eh, you're both wrong. Fascism is an invention of the 20th century and capitalism is mostly an invention of the 19th century (although The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776). Both ideologies have very deep roots that you're conflating with their dominant modern expressions. Capitalism is specific ideology built around market economics, but markets alone are not capitalism. Likewise fascism is a specific authoritarian ideology, but authoritarianism is not in itself fascism.
capitalism superceded mercantilism about 2 centuries ago. it's nowhere near as old as currency
What you're saying is at best debatable, and it's definitely not consensus in academia. Feudalism is substantially and fundamentally different from capitalism. Serfs worked the land not based on free contracts for a wage selling their labour as a commodity, but rather legally bound to their lord's land. Access to consumer goods wasn't through purchase as commodities in a free market, but through self-production and barter/debt within small communities. Peasants worked the land with their own means of production and made their own tools with their own means of production, and generally people weren't hired working other people's means of production.
Class struggle has existed for millennia, but capitalism is just the current predominant system of class struggle because through industrial development it overpowers preexisting systems that weren't capitalist.
Far-left and far-right regimes are just a cycle, society just goes from right to left and vice versa gradually, bad times make strong men and good times make weak men. That's it.
Edit: The key is to be the strong man in any time.
This is a classic fascist talking point. The ideology is coming from inside the house on this one.
🤡
Research about human history and you will know what I'm talking about, the same phenomenon it's seen in all the human history, it is just now it's at global scale but it will be the same when humans get into the space, far-left and far-right will keep fighting each other for resources and power.
Edit: There is no transcendence until you are a cold dead ass, until then you will need to pick a side, if you are smart enough you will pick the side of the winners.
The side of the winners it's the side of the ones who pull the strings.
So Finland pulled all the strings when they fought the USSR? Are you sure about that?
And while we're on the subject of the USSR, I assume you think that the people who had all the power in Imperial Russia were not the czar and his noblemen, considering they ended up on the losing end of a firing squad.
Whose writings specifically should we research? You do know that the study of history is not usually about objective facts, but interpreting historical accounts around those facts, right?
There is no consensus agreement on human history. Or fascism. If you want us to do research that argues your point, you'll need to tell us who we're supposed to read.
I would turn this right around and suggest you yourself look up the "Fremen mirage", it's very readable, and more or less a direct dissection and dismantling of the precise interpretation of history you present here.
This concept seem to be rooted in the idea that hard work makes you stronger. If you work 12 hours in a mine you won't become the weightlifting world champion, you will also get no time to study, research or improve all the way around.
That's what those on top say every time there is an economic crisis: "just a passing storm", time to buy low. But every time there is irreversible damage that accumulates until the ship suddenly sinks.