Why are folks so anti-capitalist?
Why are folks so anti-capitalist?
Hi all,
I'm seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I'm wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I'm pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn't the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I'm happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
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I'm really not trying to be a dick, but uhh... Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it's own sake.
Let's start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don't mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists.
And, if you're not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
It's not illogical to be pro-Capitalism while not owning any "means of production" if it means you still have better outcomes.
There are no true Capitalist countries and no true Socialist countries. It's not even a spectrum; it's a giant mixed bag of policies. You can be for some basic capitalist principles (market economy, privately held capital) and for some socialist policies (safety nets, healthcare) and not be in contradiction with yourself. There's more to capitalism than the United States.
I think OP was seeing a lot of "burn the system down" talk. Revolutions aren't bloodless, instantaneous, or well directed. Innocent people will die and generations will suffer. It's stuff only the naive, the malicious, or the truly desperate will support. And if you're here posting it on the daily, I don't believe you're that desperate.
Global warming is upon us. If something doesn't drastically change, now, our entire species is going to die.
And some people will be hoarding money until the last, bitter second.
Hmmm, its those kinds of extreme statements that make me a bit suspicious. Is global warming really an extinction level event? I can imagine terrible civil wars over resources and increasing displacement from natural disasters, but total eradication of the human race is afaik not a possible result of global warming.
It's kinda like when they called it world war 1 and 2 - it didn't actually include the entire world, but it did include so many countries that people considered it to be the world. The amount of people that could die or be affected by global warming could kill billions. Billions.
Hmmm... words used in not-satiric circumstances where the true meaning isn't the intended meaning is a bit confusing...
If global warming doesn't completely wipe us out, we'll finish ourselves off with nukes.
I think this conflates capitalism with lack of coordination. We could fix global warming today via regulation. Even if our government was socialist, it would probably still not be curbing emissions due to trying to achieve some other non-capital goal.
Second, there isn’t any need to falsely imply our species is going to die because of climate change. No model points at that. Billions of people having crappier lives and dying sooner should be enough motivation.
We're ~ 5 degrees from mass crop failure and famine, and that's pretty well documented.
"Billions of people having crappier lives" is a weird way of describing starvation.
Because the models don’t support your statement.
Billions WILL have worse lives due to this. A very small subset of that will be because they are on the verge of starving.
Yup, that is the goal. Juuuuust short of desperate. That is where we are aiming for most of our population to live.
That’s way too simplistic. It’s not just big corporations that block each and every measure to mitigate climate change.
Ask a small home owner, or car owner, why they are against climate change measures. They will point out that their life would need to change, and that’s why.
Climate is fucked primarily because people are unwilling to look around the next corner. That corporations are the same is more a property of them being comprised of people rather than capitalism per se.
Capitalism would work with wind and solar parks just as well as with coal.
And yet, the giant oil corporations lied about climate change and subverted efforts to develop renewable energy back in the 80s when it could have actually helped. They did that to line their pockets, fucked over the entire world, and have had no repercussions for it. Don't act like it's the people's fault. A large large portion of the damage to the climate was done so executives could save an extra .1% of profit for themselves.
No, a large portion of the damage done was so regular people could keep driving their oversized cars, eat out of season food, and cheaply heat their homes. Socialism does not require good environmental policy. Capitalism does not prohibit it. Climate change is a human problem.
Ask a small home owner, or car owner, why they are against climate change measures. They will point out that their life would need to change, and that’s why.
It's perhaps a little tangential to the "merits of capitalism" topic, but it's worth noting that the circumstances that caused such a large percentage of the U.S. population to own single-family houses or cars -- the Suburban Experiment -- is substantially the result of deliberate policy choices by the Federal government starting around the 1930s:
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Euclid v. Ambler established the legality of single-use zoning, which enabled the advent of single-family house subdivisions that outlawed having things like front yard businesses, destroying walkability.
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The Federal Housing Administration was created, which not only published development guidelines that embodied the modernist1 city planning ideas popular at the time (they literally had e.g. diagrams showing side-by-side plan views of traditional main-street-style shops and shopping centers with parking lots, with the former labeled "bad" and the latter labeled "good"), but also enforced them by making compliance with those guidelines part2 of the underwriting criteria for government-backed loans.
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The Federal government passed massive subsidies for building highways, while comparatively neglecting the railroads and metro transit systems.
Of course, that isn't to say that there wasn't corporate influence shaping those policies! From the General Motors streetcar conspiracy to the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, it's obvious that the automotive industry had a huge impact. It's less obvious -- or perhaps I should say, less "provable" -- that said influence was corrupt (in terms of, say, bribing politicians to implement policies the public didn't otherwise actually want) rather than merely reflective of the prevailing public sentiment of the times, but I don't disbelieve it either.
TL;DR: I'm not necessarily taking a position on whether it was proverbial "big government" or "big business" to blame for America's car dependency, but I am saying that it's definitely incorrect to characterize it as merely the emergent result of individual choices by members of the public. Those individual choices were made subject to circumstances that both government and business had huge amounts of power over, and that fact cannot be ignored.
1 For more info on "modernist city planning" read up on stuff like the Garden City movement started by Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that Wright himself helped write those FHA guidelines, but I can't find the reference anymore. : (
2 It would be irresponsible not to point out that redlining and racial segregation were massively important factors in all this, too. However, this comment is intended to focus on the change in urban form itself, so hopefully folks won't get too upset that I'm limiting it to this footnote.
Oh I can assure you, the sentiments are no different here in Germany, where no such experiment has been done in any large scale.
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I would reply asking if the people that are making these claims are actually the labor. Are service workers actually the ones producing anything? Western labor is compensated quite well relative to the rest of society which is why these ideas never go anywhere in the West. If you are not an actual laborer, why are you so pro-labor power?
Labor != Physical labor or producing physical things
Sure but in terms of a general strike, you will know the labor that really matters and what doesn't. Critical labor in the West is compensated accordingly by the market, even by Western standards.
Historically this has certainly been one of the biggest problems with anti-capitalist rhetoric; usually it's a bunch of fairly well-off college-educated intelligentsia telling labor that akshually their problems are caused by alienation and wage value theory!
The result in Russia was the Going to the People movement, which was a dismal failure and resulted in revolutionary vanguardism.
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Well I mean it's unclear to me that we're much worse than previous points in history. I'd rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I'm owned by the local lord in his castle.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn't serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we've got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding "yeah it's time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there". It's easier to make things worse than to make things better.
Let’s start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don’t mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I guess? I've wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I'm a programmer, so I've toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don't own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists. And, if you’re not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
I'm guessing you'd consider me a pawn, but I don't. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker. I've worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the "actual capitalists". But I promise they don't give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy. In my view, it's a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.
Well I mean it's unclear to me that we're much worse than previous points in history. I'd rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I'm owned by the local lord in his castle.
You'd rather have the climate crisis as it currently stands. I think you'll change your tune on that in coming decades but by then it'll be far too late to actually do anything about it. You're also more insulated to it's effects than many millions of people around the world who are already losing their lives, homes, livelihoods, etc and this is only a sniff of what's to come. Also, peasants in feudal times on average had more time off, made more money comparatively, and were able to travel more (yes, even serfs) than your average American currently. The chains just look a little different, they aren't gone.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn't serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we've got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding "yeah it's time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there". It's easier to make things worse than to make things better.
We've got 8 billion people to feed and are doing a terrible job of it. Take under half of Elon's wealth alone and you could feed the entire world, yet instead we laud these modern day dragons for their "success," instead of slaying them for the good of the people. It's easier to make things worse for you, than better for you. Billions of people currently suffering terribly for the profit of others would vehemently disagree. Also, just because the unknown is uncertain doesn't mean it should be feared. We know capitalism isn't working for the planet itself, yet people would rather stick to it because it's enriched a small fragment of humanity. You happen to be in the side of the boat that isn't currently underwater, but make no mistake that the water is pouring in.
I guess? I've wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I'm a programmer, so I've toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don't own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
You are not a capitalist.
I'm guessing you'd consider me a pawn, but I don't. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker.
You are a worker, so why look out for the interests of an entirely different class that doesn't do the same for you?
I've worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the "actual capitalists". But I promise they don't give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy.
Therein lies the exact problem: profit is the only motive. And to get profit, capitalists have shown they are willing to do everything, damn the consequences to others, to society, to the planet. Climate change isn't a whoopsie, starving, desperate people aren't a whoopsie, train derailments aren't a whoopsie, even most wars (every American involved war since WW2) are not a whoopsie. They are all the predictable results of capitalists choosing to rake in more profits at the expense of you and I.
In my view, it's a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.
Why would they need to set up their own governments when they control ours? How exactly are they constrained? Google is arguably more powerful than most nations' governments. Sure, most of that is soft power, but if trends continue it won't stay soft for much longer.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history.
That's interesting, because to me it's very clear. After all, small isolated pockets of people ruining their economy and the environment they depend on is quite a bit different from all of humanity everywhere doing this.
That's an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Personally, I think the fact that the median person in capitalist nations has enough food to eat is a pretty big plus! I don't think that's been the case throughout most of history.
That’s an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Well, of course the data on what our actions (much of which are due to and based upon capitalism) are doing to are environment and climate, and inevitably must lead to given the implicit but incorrect assumption of infinite resources of that system, is everywhere and basically impossible to ignore these days, isn't it? And, almost as easy to find is the data on other cultures killing themselves off (in the, at the time, limited scope of their part of the planet) due to their actions, such as Easter Island.
You don’t own your own home and you feel this way? Yeesh. Have fun paying your landlord’s mortgage for the rest of your life as buying a house becomes more and more difficult.
If you have to work in order to pay your bills you are not a successful capitalist. And it doesn’t matter whether you freelance or not.
I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one
Why? Either way, everybody dies.
or either of the world wars
Instead of dying from mustard gas, we're all going to die from heat and starvation. Yay.
or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
Today, you get to choose which lord owns you, and change lords on occasion, but other than that it's pretty much the same thing.
I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
Give it a couple of years, because the world is going to get a lot, lot worse than it currently is (which is already pretty bad, for folks around the world). The World Wars will be nothing in comparison, and at least a nuclear war would be a relatively fast end.