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Huge numbers moved out of grinding poverty in China and India. Its not even debatable.
by distant_hat 8y ago
Huge numbers moved out of grinding poverty in China and India. Its not even debatable.
- claudiawerner 8y agoTrue. I'm very anti-capitalist but no modern anti-capitalist disagrees that capitalism has (and must, to work) given people what Marx called double freedom.
- andrenth 8y agoWhy do you remain anti-capitalist if you understand that?
- claudiawerner 8y agoBecause I view capitalism (or, strictly speaking, capital) as authoritarian (mandating human energy be expended to its ends, working in tandem with welfare states towards administered living), exploitative (the labour produced by wage labourers in aggregate is less than the aggregate profit created due to their labour) and allowing only an ever-shrinking space for genuine human expression (it degrades art by forcing it to be marketable and commodified). I'm not alone in this; even pro-capitalists agree that a relationship can be exploitative even if both parties benefit in some way - they just disagree that capitalism is the cause of such a relationship which we can see the world over. I think the argument for capitalism improving peoples' lives by measurable degree is a valid one, but it is only as valid as the argument that feudalism (for instance) improved the lives of those without any sustenance or access to land at all. I think we have the capability to do better than pursuit of profit.
- andrenth 8y agoBut how specifically do you think we can do better? Can it be done without a different kind of human being that does not pursuit his own self-interest?
- Treegarden 8y agomaybe double freedom is better then starving of famine in the rice fields working 16 hour days?
- claudiawerner 8y agoI never said it wasn't. But like all things there are multiple aspects, not merely 'pros' and 'cons'.