this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Just as a true socialist country has never existed, a true capitalist country has never existed. Economies are always mixed.
Ssshhhjttt, don't be reasonable, you're gonna make them cry
If only we could imagine what a truly capitalist country would look like in the future! Like, I don't know, we call this genra something like cyberpunk?
But that also exists for my side, yk, Orwellian. Brave New World too.
Yes. But you know of a capitalist utopia? Because there are many communist utopia.
Usually media about utopias aren't very interesting. But yeah many people have imagined capitalist utopias.
On the contrary. Star trek is a well known utopia, and it's definitely not capitalist. You didn't mentioned a capitalist utopia still.
Much of Robert Heinlein's "Future History" series fits the bill
I can't think of any fictional utopias that are entirely utopian. I didn't know Star Trek was utopian. I can think of a lot of medias that condemn different forms of central planning. I can't think of any forms of media that condemn Georgism, or anarcho-socialism- does that mean those ideologies are good?
That may have something to do with the fact that there is no such thing as "true capitalism." Capitalism is as "true" as it can possibly get.
There can be no "mixture" between socialism and capitalism. If the means of production isn't controlled by workers it means there is no socialism to "mix" in the first place.
If “true communist country” is taken to mean “libertarian socialist country”, which then it seems fair to say that a “true capitalist country” has never existed in the sense of a “libertarian capitalist country”. Taxation, commercial regulation, and public ownership (public land, utilities, schools, parks, roads, transportation, etc.) are all contrary to the capitalist ideology.
Lol! No, they aren't - capitalists have always understood that they need the protection of a state... it's only a realtively small fringe of not-so-rich ideologues that loudly pretends otherwise.
"Capitalist ideology" isn't coherent - it doesn't have to be, because the only purpose it has to serve is to provide pretexts and justifications for whatever the power and privilege of the wealthy requires. That's why capitalists are perfectly happy to fund fascists into power when liberal regimes prove incapable of dealing with working-class revolt.
You can’t use what you believe to be “true capitalism” in practice to prove that the practice is true capitalism. Yes, Lockean-adjacent ideologies require a government tasked with the protection of property, but you may have noticed that none of the examples I gave serve that purpose.
You are confusing capitalists with those who have benefitted from capitalism. People in power seldom support a system that allows them to easily lose power should a better alternative arise, despite those mechanisms being a foundational component of the efficient-market hypothesis.
Respectfully, I don’t see the benefit of making this argument. To claim that socialized aspects of a generally capitalist society are not actually socialist is to claim that what are often the best aspects of the society do not support your beliefs. The fact that the “winners” of capitalism are incentivized not to be capitalists is a glaring problem; why not focus on that?
No, but it might help to explain that there is no such thing as "true capitalism" because capitalists have never needed "true capitalism" - that is, unless you want to argue with the people who obsessively calculate Jeff Bezos's net worth.
Are you not aware that your taxes fund the police? You know... the violent institution that was specifically invented by the capitalist class to protect the property of capitalists from the very people capitalists parasitize off?
There is no point in trying to sound smart when it's blatantly obvious that you can't see what's going on right in front of your nose, Clyde.
No... I don't think I am.
So this "efficient-market hypothesis" isn't worth the paper it's written on?
No surprises there.
The term socialism has a very hard and uncompromising meaning which it has retained no matter the efforts spent trying to warp it. Unlike concepts such as fascism and capitalism, socialism actually requires logical consistency in order to be useful to the people it has always been intended to be useful for.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... and if you claim that anything has been "socialized" in a capitalist society (apart from all the real costs that the working-class has to bear in such a society) you need to provide evidence for that.
The mix is that the control is mixed, for example through regulation but private ownership. As well as some production is fully state run. Socialism is generally understood to not be exclusively worker control, but include other forms of collective control- such as state control.
Generally understood by whom? If your understanding of socialism means state control it probably means your ideas of it doesn't have much coherence at all.
My understanding of socialism is that it describes collective control of the means of production, collective control can take many forms, including state control
Control by a bunch of party bureaucrats and apparatchiks who, like their counter-parts in corporate capitalist countries, are only interested in maintaining and expanding their own power and privilege in no way constitutes anything that can be called "collective" with a straight face - period.
The term "socialism" has a very hard and uncompromising meaning - it becomes utterly meaningless when it becomes whatever "Dear Brother Comrade Leader" says it is.