this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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You know your “capitalism” will inevitably turn into “corporate capitalism.” If there is a free market and competition then there will be winners and losers and the winners will grow larger while the losers disappear. Eventually there will be so few competitors that monopolies will form which are able to charge monopoly prices while paying workers almost nothing. We define this monopoly version of capitalism as imperialism, but if you describe it as crony capitalism you still can recognize that capitalism will inevitably evolve that way.
If capitalism inevitably becomes imperialism, then wouldn't the evolution of communism into something akin to Soviet Russia also be inevitable? Both are extreme worst case scenarios of a decent idea
I'm of the opinion that overcentralization of power inevitably leads to disaster. The people in New York can't truly understand the issues in Texas any more than the people in Texas can truly understand California's issues and Canada would have an even harder time truly understanding those same issues. The people who are working to fix problems should be close to those problems
The Soviet union allowed for self-governance of regions. The Soviet Union is not an extreme case. That is like saying that the States of the USA deciding to join as a country is an extreme case. Do your reading lad!
Successful socialism has only formed with Marxism Leninism because we understand a state has to be able to defend itself from imperialists. Libya, Bolivia, and others fell because they failed to defend themselves. I don’t see why this is a problem. The USSR and China have achieved vast improvements in quality life and technological advancement all while having collective ownership. The USSR’s degeneration and dissolution are truly tragic, but they can be avoided like China has. Marxists study the mistakes of the past and adopt what works. China realized they could thrive without a strict planned economy and they now have the largest economy, which unlike past largest economies has defeated internal poverty. Are you saying just because mistakes were made it wasn’t even worth it to leave feudalism for socialism?
What are you trying to say here? I think I know what you're trying to say but it's weird that you're narrowing in on the Russian Soviet Republic.
It was kind of a clumsy way of putting it, but I was basically trying to say that you can't just point at one thing and say "this idea always leads here". You can make an educated guess at the general direction if the system is abused, but you can't be certain.
A system needs to be carefully maintained to stay in its best state as long as possible. We haven't invented the perfect system yet, so pretty much everything we have will eventually fall apart. We just need it to last 'til we can make something better
It’s not just making a hasty generalization. Everywhere capitalism has occurred it has evolved into imperialism or the victim of imperialism. Nowhere exists where your ideal capitalism exists. The whole world is either imperialist or industrial capitalist or socialist. How do you expect industrial society to exist with individuals owning their means of production? The only way is collective ownership. The last non-Marxist country that I can think of where everyone owned their own means of production was Libya in Gaddafi’s time, but of course they were invaded by the imperialists and now there are open air slave markets there. It’s funny how every state that meets your definition of capitalism has called themselves socialist in some form or another. Even in early capitalism it wasn’t good. There was slavery and colonialism. Was it only pure in the 1600s? Even then there was colonialism and highly profitable “exploration” and extraction ventures.