this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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It's an unfortunately nuanced subject, where people don't agree on the underlying definitions of words. For instance, I think you're confusing "capitalism" with "democracy". You can have authoritarian undemocratic capitalist countries, where you can't talk shit about your government.
For me personally, I think communism has too many issues to actually try, but I like some of its theoretical tennants when compared to that of capitalism. Those goals are something to strive for. The spirit of communism is helping eachother and rewarding work, and the spirit of capitalism is sacrificing others for personal gain
I think a lot of people don't want to admit that most political ideas ranging from communism to capitalism are half baked labels we stick onto a collection of beliefs about what works best to solve certain problems. If you got rid of the labels you might just ask the question of what works and where the money will come from
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but I appreciate your comment nonetheless. To me there's nothing anti capitalist about sharing or wanting to take care of the people around you.
Well that's just wrong. Capitalism is about profit, it's anti capitalist to take care of others unless you're profiting off of them. I'm not saying that I'm for or against capitalism, I'm just correcting your assertion.
Capitalism is about free markets. The arrangement of wage labor is an emergent result of allowing people to enter only into economic relations they consent to.
To take care of others for free is entirely fine, if it’s what you want to do. That doesn’t conflict with capitalism at all. The only difference is that under a free market people do that when they choose to, not when they are compelled to.
And what actually happens is that people choose to a lot.
That's the cartoon version of capitalism just like how "socialism is when the government does something" is the cartoon version of socialism. Capitalism just means that the means of production in a society are owned and controlled by private owners instead of by workers or the government as a proxy for workers. It says nothing about whether people are compelled to be greedy or anti-sharing or something.
Capitalism is about taking everything you can, to act as a balance against everyone else doing the same, because the fundamental assumption is that greed is the natural state for people and we shouldn't try to fight it. Under capitalism, competition doesn't just apply to businesses in markets, it extends to everything: people must compete with those around them for resources (be it jobs, or food, or retirement investments), making human connection a primarily adversarial relationship.
Now nothing says that you must apply capitalist principals to every aspect of your life if you live in a capitalist society, but it slowly becomes the norm. Eventually, the reason people take care of eachother because is indirectly benefits themselves, rather than because its a good thing to do... And when that's your justification, it's easy to stop doing it.
It's all about establishing norms about how people should treat eachother. Under capitalism the norm is adviseraial by design, but under communist it was supposed to be cooperative. It didn't even up working that way, but that is the ideal we should strive towards.
Edit: fix typos