Comment on Is it possible to be a leftist, but still really enjoy capitalism?

frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Aside from your odd definition of capitalism and its outcomes, which other people have addressed, the answer to the headline question is: yes.

Karl Marx, for example, is famously very critical of what he saw as the inherent exploitation in capitalism. He believed that you could not have capitalism without exploitation and that it was therefore an unethical system that should be defeated and superseded by a new economic system without exploitation. He also held that capitalism was inherently contradictory and that it therefore not only should be destroyed, but that it must be destroyed.

However: even Marx acknowledged that capitalism was an enormous improvement on the previously existing social system of feudalism, because it also produced far greater wealth through the development of new technology (this is a key difference between Marxism and the earlier ‘utopian socialism’, which saw technology itself as an evil, and which his theories largely replaced).

Marx also welcomed the fact that capitalism destroyed (as he saw it) some earlier forms of oppression (albeit while introducing new ones). Marx’s letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on his re-election discusses the American Revolution and Civil War in precisely these terms.

So, you can enjoy the greater (obviously not ‘infinite’!) abundance of goods that capitalism has produced, you can acknowledge its positive impact on technological development and its material improvements of the lives of millions of people and be not only a leftist but a fully orthodox Marxist… just so long as you also acknowledge that capitalism is also an exploitative and self-destructive force that should, can and must be defeated.

source
Sort:hotnewtop