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This, it seems to me, is what ideologues always do: redefine the term so that an existing real-world thing doesn't count as an example of it. Communists did thi
by gruseom 17y ago
This, it seems to me, is what ideologues always do: redefine the term so that an existing real-world thing doesn't count as an example of it. Communists did this with the Soviet Union (sure they're bad but a real communist society would never be like that). Ideological proponents of capitalism do it today: the US system isn't really capitalism because the government is too much involved. And extreme-programming software projects that fail weren't really following the process. To me this is an unhelpful line of argument that is preoccupied more with labels and beliefs than with what is actually going on.
- lotharbot 17y agoNowhere did I argue that our system is not really capitalist. I just noted that the specific criticism given wasn't a criticism of capitalism itself, but of the government system of regulations and legislation that we have tied to capitalism. It would be similar to, for example, criticizing the Soviet Union for corruption and calling it a critique of socialism, or criticizing a software company for stealing another company's code and acting like that was a critique of the extreme-programming process they were using. Valid criticism, sure, but not of the thing it's said to be of. There are plenty of valid criticisms of capitalism, communism, socialism, extreme-programming processes, and so on. But there are also plenty of criticisms that are misattributed to one of those things, which IMO harms our ability to create solutions to the problems.