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Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any c
by zanny 6y ago
Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation.
Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country is buried in homeless and something like 1 in 5 persons is food insecure (probably higher now in the pandemic). If you fail in "winning" at capitalism to some degree you are supposed to feel fortunate shelters and soup kitchens exist. Sometimes. Society has broadly rejected them as the socialism they are and underfunds or destroys them where able.
Its also why drug addiction is totally out of control. Desperation and social isolation by our culture creates whole populations of people to be exploited by drug profiteers. Many other nations don't do this by catching people before they get that despondent or miserable and by helping (rehabilitation) rather than hurting (prosecution) those that get that bad.
The process is cyclic. The desperation feeds into the hate feeds into the predation feeds into the exploitation feeds into the desperation. But breaking out of it requires class consciousness that is opposed at every level - at the bottom by the animosity and inability to trust and at the top by the profits and power reaped through the harm done.
- baconandeggs 6y ago> Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. Life is built on competition, life pits all participants against one another. Resources are not infinite.
- ozim 6y agoResources are not infinite but human imagination is. We already produce more food than needed, there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons. Main point is that humans are intelligent and we can choose where and how we compete or if we don't want to compete at all. Holocene extinction is mainly because humans collaborated in much better way than any other animal can. Life might be build on competition but we see how powerful collaboration is.
- baconandeggs 6y ago> there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons. That there's always been hunger in the world, even when we didn't produce more food than needed tells you production of food is not the resource limiting the distribution of food, other resources are. Even with all the imagination and collaboration of every communal government in the world to a scale never seen before in history, hunger is still a huge problem, because food is not the only resource, everything is a resource: time, interest, emotions, infrastructure, goods, distribution, people, communities, everything, and they compete with one another for our time and attention. Everything is in competition, even your ideas and mine right now, and that's a good thing, but the first step to try and better our situation is to accept the reality of the natural world and not fight against it.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoAsk the hundreds of millions of murdered Chinese or a Russian how well alternatives to capitalism work out. Maybe the problem isn't the economic model.
- zanny 6y agoStalin and Mao, and their successors, were totalitarian dictators. Trying to call the states they commanded socialist is as disingenuous as most other arguments in defense of capitalism. Its like saying the National Socalist German Workers Party was socialist or in the interest of workers. Instead it might just be that those of evil intent will co-opt the hallmarks and language in the peoples interests to undermine their efforts and seize power in their stead for their own tyrannical ends. But yes, if you want to participate in a socialist revolution, make sure your movement isn't taken over by fascists.
- lr4444lr 6y agoYou think socialist and communist counties don't have drug addiction problems?
- tehjoker 6y agoThey do if they are poorly run. The critique a socialist would make is that it is mechanically impossible to run a capitalist society in a fashion that reduces desperation to an appreciably low level. There are fewer theoretical reasons a socialist society should have this problem though practically any particular government and situation can get messed up.
- zanny 6y agoIf a socialist state fulfills its mandate to provide what it can for the betterment of its peoples condition than it would see many fewer cases of addiction than traditional capitalist economies with little or no socialism as a safeguard against destitution. See the Nordics, as per usual.