this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
791 points (96.6% liked)
Lefty Memes
4276 readers
643 users here now
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.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I’m open to learning. How does capitalism avoid the infinite concentration of wealth into the hands of one eventually?
Every system has flaws, to be sure - e.g. in Saudi Arabia, which is as anticapitalist as possible due to the government owning everything, all wealth is concentrated in the monarch - and capitalism is no exception. My answer to you has to be specific to certain types of goods, because for other types, capitalism will absolutely fail in the manner you describe and needs government regulation not to.
In this context, I will use "fail" to mean the failure you asked about, only 1 wealthy person.
Example where capitalism will generally not fail, and, in fact, has never failed in recorded history: restaurants. If our mysterious wealthy person attempts to own every restaurant simultaneously, someone else will open a rival restaurant and the plan will fail (and even if somehow no one could open a rival anywhere, people could choose to eat at home). No one in any country has ever managed to own every restaurant at once.
Example where capitalism will absolutely fail over time: oil. It is trivial, given enough time, for one person to eventually own all access to oil - Rockefeller is a great example of someone working hard at this, successfully.
I appreciate the thoughtful and intelligent response.
I will not move the goalposts and change 1 to some arbitrary small number. I will instead ask how do we prevent capitalism from concentrating wealth so much that, like a black hole, it overcomes degeneracy pressure and collapses, changing its own rules to benefit those at the very top and prevent the possibility of actual competition? This is the bastardization that we have today in the USA, and to me, this seems like the inevitable conclusion. It tends to concentrate wealth and power and to not be capitalism anymore. This extreme consolidation eventually warps its own mechanisms, becoming not very different from top-down, planned economy -- just a badly-designed, ad-hoc, self-serving one.
The reality is that economic systems aren't black and white. I don't think we have true unregulated capitalism anywhere, and you admit there are areas (like healthcare) where capitalism is truly stupid or easily reaches critical mass to prevent competition (like oil).
This is a such a strawman.
If only 1.000 persons owns all restaurants its stupidly bad too.
But that's not the question I was asked. Answering the question I was asked doesn't make my answer a strawman.