Comment on We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas
Hapankaali@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Strange, lived in capitalist societies all my life, yet none of these seem familiar (except climate change).
Let’s see who’s really behind that mask!
shitty US policies
Betcha you live in a neoliberal state.
Your own countries shitty policies are catching up to you.
And the very same billionaires driving the current US state of affairs have plenty of money left over to capture your political class as well.
And they will, unless your society gets active now about it, and doesn’t wait until AfD takes over, or whatever.
Yeah, honestly the prospects aren’t looking great, though the problem is not so much “billionaires […] captur[ing] [the] political class” as much as unregulated social media algorithms capturing the lumpen proletariat.
mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
depends on your definition of capitalism
Hapankaali@lemmy.world 2 days ago
An economic system characterized by the private ownership of the means of production, and state regulation to protect the right of private ownership.
mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
There are a lot of different kinds of production, so that older definition isn’t really that relevant in the globalized world.
There isn’t really any single definition of capitalism, I dont think even Marx defined it in a single sentence himself. But I think an important aspect of modern capitalism is capital owning far more than just the means of production, going to the point where capital determines social and political power. An economy where capital has dictatorial control over people’s lives and even over entire governments.
By my definition, a private share company is capitalist, while a family business or a coop is not capitalist, even though they are all private businesses with economic protection from the government. The question is whether political power comes from your money, or from social activity and democracy.
Its also important to note that an economy can be dominated by capitalist activity, but can still have government protections keeping capitalist activity out of certain sectors, such as public healthcare or welfare.