There are injustices that result from the uneven development of capitalism, which warrant something like the developmental protectionism the 19th century US practiced, but ultimately it's a net positive for all. Not even Marx denied this, in fact he believed what we call "imperialism" is progressive. You can see why.
Connection to Western markets is the single most powerful force of development and modernization that lays the foundation for independence and equal development, while left-wing "anti-imperialism" has been one of the bigger unmitigated disasters of the 20th century.
While copyright is an issue, it exists for a reason. If we did not protect patents, inventors would seek out a state that did. You don't unleash innovation by abolishing copyright, and you can't do so unless you do it on a worldwide scale. This is why socialism is doomed to be inefficient and stupid if it's short of a world system, which would fail.
Capitalism definitely unleashed innovation. The growth of the common market and wage-labor in place of serfdom, slavery, and controlled local markets, old institutions capitalism's revolutionary nature did away with, directly led to the industrial revolution.
It really isn't. Today's far-left is trying to rediscover older and more dead variants of socialism after its big break in 1917 was derailed, but they are all poor attempts at a juke. There's a reason the definition of socialism narrowed from the early 19th century up until the mid-late 20th century, where the left just liberalized and became more moderate. The old left died and everyone retreated from economic issues into cultural ones until the recent middle class squeeze. Now we're just repeating things.
We have seen people on the internet try to revive historical currents on the ultra-left, like libertarian socialism, anarchism, left communism, etc. They are noble and have good criticisms of 20th century socialism, but they are crank meme ideologies.
Some people have tried to rehash the right-wing of socialism, drawing from everything from mutualism, Fabianism, market socialism, democratic socialism, etc. They create non-competitive societies that would be overtaken, especially in the post-1945, integrated, and globalizing world.
The article you linked is uninformed, and I have some respect for socialism and Marxism.
I think people also need to distinguish between capitalism and consumerism. Capitalism is alright, Consumerism is garbage imo.
I can not imagine how better the world would be if Dodge v Ford was ruled differently. Its basically "Think of the shareholders", even at the expense of the workers. It has been ruled against a few times, but it already did its damage and solidified that shareholders are more important then workers.
If anyone wants to read more about it, have a wiki link.
It's not that simple though. The government invents things in partnership with the heights of business and by utilizing the wealth and skillsets created by the market developing a society, and its incentive for doing so is for reasons the left particularly despises: it's an arms race of "imperialists".
So it might not be the private sector that has a total claim to innovation, but capitalism overall certainly does.
This is unlike a socialist government, which would be attempting to innovate by itself. But even outside of one, you see diminished innovation. More healthcare advances come from our country, not the rest of the developed world which the progressives will cite as the ideal norm we are 'lagging' behind.
"But ARPANET" is not an argument against loss of innovation given socialism. We will be less competitive, it's just a matter if the trade-off for stability is worth it.
Most major medical breakthroughs came through Keynesian styled government research facilities, not private ones.
Keynesianism is not socialized healthcare, you're talking about government funds for university research programs. That doesn't have much to do with my claim that we are more innovative than other developed countries we are supposedly lagging behind in healthcare policy, or that socialists cannot take credit for the product of state cooperation with business, which is indirectly dependent on a society developed by the market. But that aside, with our aging population private innovation has adapted and dwarfed public in the pharmaceutical industry.
https://www.policymed.com/2011/02/nejm-the-private-sector-discoveries-account-for-79-90-of-pharmaceutical-products.html
The original argument was that capitalism holds back innovation or that it can be done without it. I don't see any reason to believe the second claim, honestly. Looking at the source of most innovation in history, the West, I see plenty of reason to believe capitalism's revolutionizing of society unleashed us.
Socialism isn't for creating, it's for reaping what's sowed. It's socializing distribution to match the kind of socialized system of production we have in contrast to the rest of human history.
Cronyism like we have now which is the cancer of capitalism is capitalism in name only
Now t just capitalism, growth in general. Look at what the Soviets did to their land.
Unchecked, unaccountable, poorly regulated capitalism is bad for the environment but the problem doesn't lie solely with capitalism. We can fix our system like we could fix other systems.
«it's slavery because you get no more than what you need from the community instead of sweet, high-calorie $$ bill»
So they really weren't kidding when they say people will rather see the end of the world than the end of capitalism. I'm not saying communism is good and you should love it, but you didn't even try to project into it proper. You jumped straight to the lowest-hanging fruit.
Imagine someone from a non-globalized microcosm trying to attack capitalism by saying «whoa i'm going to get paid paper how tf am I not going to starve is this slavery?». Please think your post through and work your way up from the assumption that you WILL get compensated for your work under socialism, then point out the problems that will actually happen.
Not really, they fail because they take their undeveloped areas and isolate them from wealth and other ideologically thawing forces, then degenerate into nationalist dictatorship that the left makes a weird exception for.
Every country struggles with the interests and influence of others, and the original liberal revolutionaries dealt with the same interventionism. The socialists and left-wing nationalists are in the same position and I see no reason to make special apologies for their failures.
Also, we can look at economies separated from us but beyond our reach, which attempted to modernize on their own. They were backwaters who built a noncompetitive modern economy on a bubble. They only succeeded at creating a country ready for actual growth come liberalization. By the admission of their own ideologues in places like China and Russia, let alone the proxy regimes dependent on their aid, they never reached past a phase of 'primitive accumulation' and provisional state capitalism. They inefficiently climbed out of agrarianism and semi-feudal conditions, that's it.
It was economically stifling.
The political separation was also stifling. Anti-imperialist revolutionary movements generally created governments that never climbed past nationalist despotism and and dependency on aid, while at the same time their existence kept regions unstable. This is ironic, since the same sort will eagerly seek a popular front with liberal-democracy and suddenly be for their intervention in a war because they realize that nationalists just straight up kill them.
Anyway, this is all why Marx was a huge free trader. "Imperialism", or the expansion and consolidation of the world market, was historically progressive for him and you can see why. You could argue the left's support for national liberation was a sign of their premature revolution created by an unexpected opportunity in WW1, and then subsequent desperation in isolation.
I mean, it was Marx's. It's not even really debatable, there are studies showing even colonialism, which is mercantile and destructive of local competition, developed regions. A liberal and capitalist international order, on the other hand, is just straight up better than whatever the far-left offers in the meantime. It's so much better that they benefit from letting it develop the world and creating universal conditions that are "ripe" for whatever they're trying to do.
Instead, the third international was premature. The world was still largely backwards, and it led the far-left to support ironically reactionary, democidal shitholes which helped tar its reputation. It even led them to support people who killed leftists, like Turkish and Chinese nationalists. Other regimes who were more socialist purged their left-wing, like in Vietnam and Cuba.
Fanon kool-aid aside, connection to our markets fosters peace and growth. It's the best path to modernization, and unlike its opponents it actually sows the seeds for national independence and equal development. You are much better off advancing your national interests within this arrangement. Anti-imperialism, on the other hand, stifles development and historically kept backwards countries dependent on aid. This is why both Mao, Tito, and Hoxha hated the USSR and didn't support its proxies in the third world.
You know, if this is the totality of your view, there isn't a discussion to be had. You've proclaimed a truth, and that's all there is to it, isn't there?
Socialism isn't bad, and I support aspects of it in our lives but to imagine we can just remove capitalism from our world and the things that ail us will go with it is nothing short of a pipe dream. Maybe it's a dream someone had from smoking a pipe even.
I think it is absurd to suggest that the assassination of a key figure in any sort of movement wouldn't have an effect on said movement.
Her plan to save capitalism is socialism? Who woulda thunk.
No offense, but this kinda just sounds like the "crony capitalism" or "corporatism" argument, which i think is just semantic handwaving. If you can understand how the accumulation of capital leads to most of the worlds known injustices, you can understand that consumerism and commodity fetishism are inherent features of capitalism.
Sorry but this is a really shit retort to the post he made. He showed you why neither of you know what you’re talking about and you just... doubled down and called him a Luddite? I think you should have a read of what he actually posted.
Its fine opposing socialism but you should make an effort to know a bit about what you’re disagreeing with instead of sitting on a misinformed high horse.
Every political system deals with the opposing interests and actions of others. Again, do you blame European reaction for the degeneration of 1789 into Bonapartism? The far-left for the failure of Weimar? The failure of an upstart system in the face of adversity rests on its weaknesses, not the exploitation of them that is inevitable. Obviously you don't ignore the latter, but making conclusions based on it and externalizing blame can lead you to bad ideas and lack of reform. Using that logic, the solution to the problems of left-wing anti-imperialism is just more of it. Fight harder, and if you still lose it's because of structural inequality. People who think like this look like they're in a mental prison to me.
Oddly enough, I guarantee at the same time this side of the aisle makes no apologies for any failures of Trump and Brexit as it hits bumps in the road. Unlike populist dictatorships in the backwaters of the world, their weaknesses are a product of being on the wrong side of history and their gains are a threat to freedom. It's poisonous thinking that's blatantly based more on race than class, a legacy of the WW1-era evolution of the left in the "age of imperialism and war" that, contra Marx, declared capitalism to no longer be progressive and led the far-left to see a division between reactionary and progressive nationalists.
I think capitalism is still largely progressive and that the market is a much better way of dealing with inequality of nations and backwardsness than anti-imperialism or socialist internationalism. The market's tendency towards equilibrium and rewarding niche affords the space for non-Western national interests, the development of a middle class politically mature enough for democracy, and correction of the historically uneven development of capitalism.
International socialism and anti-imperialism, on the other hand, subordinated lesser countries indefinitely, inefficiently developed them, and otherwise preserved strife and backwardness. They are not actually corrective forces. This is because anti-imperialism was never meant to be anything but a short-term foreign policy strategy to strike at ex-colonial powers and open the way to the world system that was actually supposed to create equality of nations and political thaw. Short of that you get the failures I am describing and, no, they're not the fault of the West.
We can see the market alternative in action. Absent the left, these states just opened themselves up to investment. They're doing better, and many of them didn't even have to become democratic. Libya, Syria, Vietnam, China, Cuba, etc. all historically liberalized their economies late in the 20th century without importing Western ideals. Today we see the rise of BRICS countries and regional challenges to liberal unipolarity.
The unfortunate nature of the market is that you don't need to politically liberalize to take advantage of it, undermining fundamental angle of anti-imperialists against liberalization that suggests it's a force of white cultural imperialism, Western political domination, or "neocolonialism".
It definitely began in the 60s, but it wasn't until the fall of communism and the rise of neoliberalism that it could seriously gain influence on the Western left. I see it and democratic socialism as trying to pick up the pieces while regrouping.
I say libertarian socialism and anarchism are crank meme ideologies because their appeal is based on being a big juke to our popular memory of socialism. It's not a serious alternative. Try immediately abolishing the state and instituting a decentralized gift economy, assuming the stars align and there's a kind of mass spontaneity on a sufficient international scale that you don't need a system of rationing and therefore a state, then watch it balkanize along unequal ethnic, racial, or national lines that exist past class divisions or get overthrown by foreign powers. Better yet, watch it get overthrown by some vanguard party.
Libertarian socialism is nothing but the Western far-left's kneejerk rejection of Lenin's interpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the lower phase of communism because of Stalinism, creating a drive to find a shortcut to the higher phase. It's just the left in retreat.
why and how are socialism and capitalism mutually exclusive? Nobody is calling for a completely planned economy, what they want is one that allows everybody to rise in an egalitarian way not this mass concentration at the expense of broader society.
And sitting on our asses with a clearly broken system because change might be scary does what exactly?
I didn't say they were...?
I'm not in any way, shape or form disparaging aspects of socialism, socialism based democracies or otherwise. I just believe that at the end of the day, you also need to keep an active and healthy market. That's capitalism. Many people are calling for an end to this, and by even defending the basic idea of capitalism it seems that there's an implication I don't want any form of socialism at all. I'm canadian for christs sakes.
ya the fascists of europe did pretty well connected to the global market, as did many third world dictatorships in south america and southeast asia, capitalism is just an economic system at its heart, the political system it resides in can be wildly different such and it can thrive even in the harshest regimes such as china, russia or iran.
Dude, did you realize that your article you used quotes back to a broken link of the homepage? Also the articles are being written by the president of Rockepointe Corporation who specialize in for-profit medical education.
So what of it? I'm not saying change is scary, and implying that my critique of someones abdication to destroy an incredibly valuable aspect of our societies is as meager an issue as just being "scary".
I genuinely have to ask why people believe completely tearing things down to build something new will be so great. It won't be, it will still be just as flawed afterwards, in different ways that people will grow to resent over time.
I want change, but I also want that change to be fucking thoughtful. If you think just because you're a "reformed luddite" that means all of the thoughts you have about this are prudent or poignant that's just not good enough. They need to be thought about and discussed and if someone opposing your view gets a "you're scared" level of response from you what kind of discussion or thought do you want put into this change?
So I guess we should've just reformed the Roman Empire and or stuck with Constitutional Monarchies.
Yeah we should totally just do either of those options in a totally false dichotomy.
How good is your history? The destruction of those systems lead to short term damage in a severe and significant manner. What followed were not better systems by leaps and bounds. It took the gradual abdication of powers from states, kings, nobles and otherwise over long periods of time for things to really get better. You sound like someone who wants to tear down the system and erect a new one and that will just solve the problem. It will not, my point isn’t “we can’t change” like you keep arguing absent any reason to believe I’m arguing that point,. My point is that change needs to be thoughtful.
Why are you responding to that with nothing but empty arguments or false dichotomies? Emotional appeals aren’t the argument here
Liberal and democratic societies do not go to war with each other as a rule, and international trade binds nations together in general.
With the gradual triumph of the West through the 20th century, we have entered an era of unprecedented peace with less war and violence
https://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143285836/war-and-violence-on-the-decline-in-modern-times
I'd worry more about inequality than imperialism, honestly. I do not see a case for "anti-imperialism" in the global south, it was always a stupid idea. Western economic leadership is progressive and, because of the nature of the market, lays the foundation for its own decline in influence and a more equal relationship. Left-wing alternatives in history have never come close to doing this. That's why the socialist states had so many splits, and why former "national liberation" types in the global south all opened up their economies when communism collapsed and the aid ran out. They're better off for it, and it didn't even require much for political change. Most of these countries hardly Westernized in the time being.
Like I said, "anti-imperialism" was largely a failure and held the world back.
Here's the study
We obtained the total number of approvals of new-drug applications, according to chemical type and type of review, for the 18-year period from 1990 through 2007 from the FDA's Web site26 and by a request under the Freedom of Information Act. During this period, the FDA approved 1541 new-drug applications but granted priority review to just 348 applications (22.6%) (Table 2). Of the 1541 total approvals, 143 (9.3%) resulted from PSRIs.
NEJM
Even if state-funded research was more important, that doesn't really touch on my claim that countries with single-payer healthcare are less innovative on average. They're not the same thing.
"But REAL Communism has never been tried before"
Much like real communism, real capitalism has. I'll admit that I'm outright idealistic if I really expect things to go back if you will but it'd be a much drastic improvement over the state we are at today.
Honestly, this. If you're calling for the destruction of capitalism, you're probably grossly misinformed.
Capitalism is an amazing system that has increased the average quality of life significantly. Markets must be regulated to account for externalities (i.e. pollution), but other than that the free market does a shockingly good job of moderating itself. Government plays an important role in regulating the market so that we don't get Rockefeller 2.0 and so that we have high quality education and public services for all citizens, but it's not like you need to choose between Capitalism and Social Services. They can easily coexist.
The fuck are you on about no it wouldn't bring capitalism to its knees. Labor would just be automated and capitalism would keep chugging on.
Secondly businesses fortunately (in my case unfortunately) have a vested interest in hiring people instead of robots and paying them decent wages for political brownie points. All the car and aircraft manufacturers do this like crazy and is why a Boeing 747 is built in places all over the world so they can brute force themselves into the political spectrum as a sort of micro government. It stimulates growth for the cities and helps bring financial stability and therefor political stability.
Now I want to make a distinction between western companies like say KUKA or Apple, and eastern companies like foxconn. Western industrial companies pay their employees well because not only do they not want to have to deal with unions but they also don't want to get lambasted by the press for inhumane, OSHA or ISO violations. There is bureaucracy set in place that protects the workers because the workers fought hard for those protections which in all honesty is a tiny fraction of the company's profits to put in place and its far more expensive to compensate families than it is to install a guard railing or a robot or two.
In contrast if workers want to negotiate better pay in say Africa (cough Angola cough), China or India, governments of which see no problem in violently cracking down on protesters, the police are called and a good baton bitch slapping party happens with the protesters on the receiving end while the media censors the whole event. A toxic government breeds toxic companies which in turn breeds a toxic work environment.
Whats happening right now is the world market has not met equilibrium and by the time it does we'll have produced so much crap it might as well be the same price as if we were letting 3rd world governments exploit their workers.
Globalization
Its historical examples, like the Paris Commune, Spain, or Makhno are even more dismal failures than "state socialism"
Missed this gem. Reminder that Adolphe Thiers had to ally with the germans to wipe out the commune. We're talking about a french ruler surrendering to the enemy to ask them for help squashing an anarchist uprising.
The commune did not fail. At its peak, the commune was a textbook exemple of self-determination and secession at the heart of the metropolis. Everything was working better for the people involved in the commune than at any point in their lives as exploited french citizen.
Again, you have a bad understanding of causality here. You're assuming that all these non-capitalism systems collapsed because they were not viable, and you just eclipse the part where the bourgies of the world unite to stamp them underfoot.
This says very little about anarcho-socialism, and everything about the capital's death grip on the global political sphere. «my ideology is the best because it works dilligently at eliminating any other ideology through brute force, therefore there's no better alternative».
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