this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Leftism
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There is no particular way that capitalism is "supposed to work".
It is a system occurring in a particular historic period, having emerged from particular historic antecedents.
You seem to be characterizing capitalism as though it has some kind of character that is natural, metaphysical, or even teleological.
Anyone extolling capitalism as essentially benevolent, as framed around some set of pure ideals, is engaged in apologetics.
As for your characterizations of socialism, I think you are emphasizing specific historic developments more than the broader history and objectives of the movement.
It might be helpful for you to investigate the differences between statist and anti-statist tendencies within socialism.
Can you define capitalism, real quick?
Capitalism is the societal system that began to take form within the historic period following the gradual collapse of the feudal order in Europe, but that became truly well formed in the wake of the industrial revolution.
Capitalism is characterized by the unbounded accumulation of private wealth by a small cohort of society, by asserting exclusive control over the means by which wealth is generated, and by claiming as profit a share of the value generated by the labor of the rest of society, depriving them from realizing the full value of their labor.
Alright so we're talking about different things.
Capitalism is private ownership of capital.
Capital is a revenue producing asset.
You're describing the social systems that form around capital and capitalism, which I agree are largely both presently and historically bad.
"Should" statements are moral statements. When it say capitalism should work a certain way, I mean that it must work a certain way in order to be moral.
What we have doesn't work that way.
Socialism and communism treat capital differently. As far as I understand the definitions:
Socialism refers to social/government ownership of capital, which is then supposed to benefit all members of the society.
Communism refers to no ownership of capital, or community ownership of capital the the broadest sense. All revenue produced is distributed to the people based on their needs.
I use these definitions outside of structure or information or morality, because we can talk about those once we agree on what we're talking about.
Private ownership of the means of production leads to division of society into classes with mutually antagonistic interests, boundless accumulation of private wealth, and workers being deprived of the full value of their labor.
Such are the inevitable structural consequences following from the protection of private property.
They cannot be wished away. If you accept private property, then you also accept a fantasy, from not understanding the material criticism of capital as a totalizing societal system, or you accept the consequences as I have identified them.
Socialism, and equivalently communism, is the political movement seeking the abolition of private property, and the class antagonisms that it requires and produces, toward the development of a classless society, in which the public asserts direct cooperative control over the economy.
Some movements have invoked the strategy that substantial state control over the economy would characterize a transitional stage occurring before the economy would be directly managed by the public.
However, socialists broadly reject state control of the economy as an ultimate objective, because state bureaucracy simply reproduces the same kinds of class antagonisms characteristic of capitalism, placing those within the state against those outside.
Anti-statist tendencies of socialism seek for the public to develop direct control of the economy without the control of the state.