this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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They are a supporter of capitalism but in the terminology of socialist critique they are not a capitalist, as in a member of the capitalist class who owns the capital and therefore does not need to use their labor to earn money. This is in contrast to the proletariat or worker class who must use their labor to earn a living.
Many people in the world are impoverished, but what causes that? Was that caused by the lack of capitalism there? I assure you most people in poverty in the world are living under a capitalist system.
One factor in the impoverishment of the global South is due to people manipulating markets because of their ownership of the means of production. They are able to shift manufacturing to where they can get the most profit, while governments benefit from their business at the detriment of their citizens who are pushed into poverty by the corporations and governments who reduce regulations to benefit the capitalist class.
Those are good points, and in fact my college thesis was on the capitalist class vs the proletariat as it related to the global economy. In fact I researched it for months, so I'm familiar with the pro and con arguments about labor and market manipulation. It's true that many economies in the world are impoverished, but not because of lack of capitalism, because of the "animal farm" model of social economy - some groups will always believe they are entitled to a bigger slice of the pie, and will horde it or hide it before they ever let it trickle down.
Those economies generally ARE as capitalistic as ours in the U.S. As for the South - that's a regional problem of impoverishment and can be legitimately traced in part to enslavement of the already downtrodden. But once established that pattern is held in place by corporate greed and lobbyists for deregulation that favors the rich. I don't disagree with that - it's the way of the world that we live in.