The Capitalist ideal is that you don’t need a state, cause if everyone only maximizes their own wealth with no barriers for the market, it will somehow work out to everyone’s best interest in the end.
If a global trillion $ corporation does shitty things, people will freely choose to buy from a newly sprung up competitor who doesn’t do that.
Homeless people won’t freeze in the street cause a benevolent billionaire will choose to help them.
And somehow, that system can keep growing exponentially forever in a world with limited resources.
We’re as far away from ideal functioning Capitalism as from ideal functioning Communism.
Comment on You have nothing to lose but your brains
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoIt’s a shitty utopia thought up by a grumpy German philosopher from a bygone era where he thought that all the issues of Germany during the Industrial revolution could be solved by having all the resources, land, and means of production be publicly owned and operated as well as have the redistribution of them go from ability to need. He thought that this was the silver bullet solution to everything. He thought because there’s a theoretical equality of outcome, there would no longer be class division tearing society apart. Therefore, there will no longer be crime or discrimination or a need for money or even a state… as that’s the reason why these things exist in the first place. It should be noted that he thinks that the state would dismantle itself after the utopia is achieved just because, and it’s not just the government but also the state apparatus so things like the military, public schools, the courts, the media, etc would also get dismantled.
So basically it’s just a fantasy of anarchist society that doesn’t have state, money, or classes where all the people magically agree and get together to publicly manage all the means of production and redistribute all the resources in such a way where everybody has exactly what they need all the time. Oh, and all of this will happen after a violent revolution that overthrows capitalism followed by a transitional tyrannical socialist state that supposed to represent the workers that’s going to rule with an iron fist to bring about the necessary social conditions to realize communism. That’s the state that will voluntarily dismantle itself when communism is achieved.
The ideology is such a fucking joke that it can’t even withstand basic criticism and logical reasoning. It’s no wonder that it has literally failed every single time it has been tried. Hundreds of attempts across different time periods, lands, cultures, and circumstances. At one point communist countries controlled over 1/3 of the planet… and yet they all failed. Every single one is a failure. They all either collapsed, turned into authoritarian shitholes, or reverted to capitalism in some way. The opposite never happened. Capitalism is not good, it’s a very flawed system and idea, but at least it functions to some capacity. Marxist communism is so delusional and unsound that it literally doesn’t function. No amount of “MUH THEEREES” will change the reality of communism being a meme.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The thing is that capitalism isn’t an ideology like communism. Capitalism is a purely economic system. There are ideologies built around it, but capitalism itself is not one. Capitalism can exist under wildly different ideologies and produce wildly different result. India, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Iceland are all capitalist but they very different from each other. That’s because capitalism is more like a tool. Communism actually tries to layout how a society should ideally be run economically, politically, and socially. The counterpart to capitalism is not communism, but socialism.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I disagree. Capitalists are definitely pushing towards running everything in society on economic principals, letting private businesses take over public infrastructure, social services, culture, communication and defense.
It just isn’t fully realized anywhere (yet).Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean the US isn’t the definition of capitalism. It’s just one hundreds of examples. There are other countries that do capitalism way better like Denmark for example.
Also a big part of capitalism is the idea that different factions will compete for influence. The idea is that the different fingers of the invisible hand (the government, the public, capitalists, corporations, institutions, NGOs, the media, etc) are going to keep each other in check. If tension breaks and things fall out of balance then you basically get a dystopia. That’s why checks and balancing is one of the most crucial things to any successful capitalist system. It’s also the reason why capitalism in the US is heading down the wrong direction. Money in politics has thrown everything out of whack.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
It’s a shitty utopia thought up by a grumpy German philosopher
You know he wrote a book specifically attacking utopian communist projects, called Socialism: Scientific and Utopian. This should tell you everything else you think you know in the subject was just some guy making shit up to stop you from actually educating yourself.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You have to be an actual idiot to treat this subpar philosopher as some prophet and crappy works as the gospel. They hold ZERO legitimacy. He can claim that communism was not a utopia all he wants, but it’s literally an idealized fantasy of what a perfect society looks like, that’s what a utopia is by definition.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
My point is you have no idea what communists are trying to achieve or have achieved. Also he was an economist lol.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My point is you have no idea what communists are trying to achieve or have achieved.
You don’t have any basis for this claim besides the fact you’re mad that I’m openly critical of Marx and this shitty ideology. If that was the case then you would’ve provided your case, but you haven’t and you probably won’t. Communism is very much a utopia no matter how much you twist it. It’s fits the definition to a T. Marx pretending his utopia isn’t a utopia and then going to attack other people for their utopias is like a closeted homosexual denying their sexuality and being homophobic to cope with their reality.
Also he was an economist lol.
He was both
bunchberry@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You are just ranting about something you clearly have no idea what it is. Nothing you have said is even close to relevant to anything Marx wrote. Someone told you to hate it so you hate it, but you cannot even articulate anything Marx actually said or wrote.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is pure cope. I’ve read a few of his works like Das Kapital, Critique of the Gotha Program, and the Communist Manifesto and it is what opened up my eyes to how much of an idiot this guy was and how shitty his idea are in both theory and practice. You’re just mad because you bought into the bullshit and can’t accept that the rest of the world is also educated on his works, but come to a different conclusion because they have basic critical thinking skills.
bunchberry@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Lying about having read books is just pathetic dude. If you read a word he wrote you could respond to a word he wrote rather than invent complete delusions out of your behind. You’re now trying to psychoanalyze me and attack my character. You have zero ability to actually respond to ideas because you are too intellectually incurious to actually engage with them at all.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You’re full of shit. You’re just mad because I’m openly critical of this shitty ideology instead of blindly accepting it like you. Keep in mind, everything you said here applies directly to you. Instead of asking me what I disagreed with it, you arrogantly assumed that I was ignorant and can’t define the ideology solely because you can’t accept that there are people who understand the ideology and hate it.
I could’ve told you to fuck off right then and there, but I actually gave you an honest summary of what the ideology is. Once again, instead of responding to what I said, you refused to accept that other people disagreed with your incredibly myopic worldview and you arrogantly assumed that I was ignorant and haven’t read any of his works. You even went out of your to insult me by calling me brainwashed, because apparently to you, that’s the only way people can ever disagree with his holiness, Karl Marx.
Once again, I could told you to fuck off, but I decided to just tell you the works that I read. You could’ve just started a discussion based on them. Instead, you rejected what I’m telling yet again, and arrogantly assumed that I was lying because how can anybody possibly disagree with the holy scriptures of the prophet Karl Marx after reading them? That clearly impossible.
All your comments follow the same pattern of: You reject the criticism that’s right in front of you -> you make a bunch of character attacks -> you pretend that I’m incapable of responding or articulating criticisms even though they’re, again, right in front of you. In fact, I’m the only one who has been articulating thoughts and criticism, you haven’t provided shit. You haven’t addressed anything that I said and you haven’t provided anything of substance of your own. All of you’ve done is cope with whats in front of you and attacked my character 3 times in a row without ever bothering to engage with me in good faith even once. Now you’re after doing this, you’re going to have the conceit to accuse me of attacking your character? You’re accusing me of being incapable of engaging in good faith? What a fucking hypocrite you are.
I was waiting for you to start saying something worthy of a discussion at some point, but it’s clear at this point that you’re not going to do that because you’re the one who’s incapable, not me. I think now is the right time to tell you to fuck off.