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> it generally seems like alternatives to capitalism perform worse (world wars, Stalin murdering 16 million, Mao's five year plan). > Except in edge cases whic
by anth_anm 8y ago
> it generally seems like alternatives to capitalism perform worse (world wars, Stalin murdering 16 million, Mao's five year plan).
> Except in edge cases which might not really be capitalism
Oh well then those weren't real communism either. /s
You aren't wrong, but it's worth noting that the US protection of capitalism (more or less) was a pretty awful force throughout the 20th century.
- dnautics 8y agoabsolutely. "War is a Racket" is on my desk right now. But literally everything was terrible in the 20th century. Still yet, as a proportion of world population things in the 20th century were arguably better than before, and the sins of state-sponsored capitalism were vastly vastly smaller in magnitude than state-sponsored "alternatives-to-capitalism", without even taking credit for the huge swaths of population whose quality of life has risen from subsistence due to it. Would you rather have one Stalin or five x (US invasions of Haiti, Nicaragua, and Iraq)? I know which I pick, every time. Moreover, in its idealized form, capitalism has less of the state, whereas in its ideal form, marxism/communism has strong involvement of the state, versus classical socialism/anarchism in the Proudhon/Benjamin Tucker sense. There's even an essay by Tucker from the 19th century where he predicts the rise of leninism, gulags, venezuela-like conditions etc, as a natural consequence of Marxism, long before they even happen.