Kinder Capitalism?
The unfortunate truth is that there seems to be no way to gradually transform from capitalism to a more just economy like socialism. History as well as a quick analysis of both ideologies teach us that social democracy, the popular halfway-station between these two systems, is bound to relapse back to full-on capitalism.
source: YouTube
It's a dilemma that I and a lot of leftists struggle with. Most of us don't want to see a revolution, as those are almost always violent, and most leftists, myself included, don't like violence. It's sad then, to have to admit that the way of small incremental steps, from "capitalism in your face", to "capitalism with a friendly face", to no capitalism at all has always failed, and is bound to always fail in the future. Even now, when we live in a world where 8 filthy rich individuals own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world population, the term "wealth redistribution" makes the hairs on the back of the necks of millions of poor and middle class people stand up. The method of redistributing wealth from the top to the bottom through progressive taxation is highly unpopular. Which amazes me because we already have constant wealth redistribution from the bottom to the top, in the wrong direction.
Why do so many poor and working class people feel the need to protect the filthy rich by opposing higher taxes on those rich individuals? That's easy: the rich own all the media, all the TV stations, all the newspapers, all the online social platforms, and they use them to great effect. They've used all the platforms they own, which includes Hollywood and other entertainment platforms, to brainwash the public into believing that capitalism is the best we can do, that capitalism "is just the way it is", and that all other systems ever tried have done only harm. "Communism has killed 100,000,000 people!!", they scream... Really? Do you really want to measure dicks here? How many people have been killed in capitalism? How many people are starving to death right now because of capitalism? Trust me, you don't want to go there if you want to defend the ideology that guarantees the existence of widespread abject poverty, that causes wars for resources and wealth, and that incentivizes more wars through a vibrant military industrial complex.
Social democracy is capitalism with its sharpest edges dulled. It's "capitalism with a friendly face" where the rich pay more taxes, so that the young can get a free education and the old have some decency and dignity in their autumn years. That's what we're told here in the rich part of the world. But that's only half true. Our social democracy is in great part funded by the exploitation of poor and developing countries. It's neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, just a continuation of colonialism and imperialism. Only difference is that we now don't go out to conquer and enslave black and brown people, we don't use weapons and soldiers anymore, although sometimes we still do that too, but instead we use the weapons of finance, lending and international trading rules to suck those countries dry through unelected institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. When defenders of capitalism claim that it raised so much people out of poverty, they're just misinformed by the media that wants us to believe that, they're fooled by poverty line that's artificially kept way too low by the World Bank.
Rich countries can afford to have "capitalism with a friendly face" because poor countries are left bearing the burden of "capitalism in your face" in the capitalist world-economy. So that's not an option if, as a leftist, you have any consideration for international solidarity within the working class. Is revolution the only option then? My answer is "no, not in this climate." There's one common trait between populism on the extreme left and the extreme right; they both have no love for the filthy rich. That's why Trump in America and Boris Johnson in England and many more right wing populists could rise to power; they, just like the left, promise to take care of working class people. Trump promised to "drain the swamp". And we all saw how his presidency ended; with a violent storming of the Capitol with the intended goal to steal the elections. That was almost a coupe, almost a revolution... Accelerationism in the current socioeconomic world climate only serves the far right. And incrementalism doesn't serve the far left. Which leaves me with the sad conclusion that right now social democracy is the best we can hope for here, to the detriment of the poorest half of the world's population...
That was a pessimistic rant, I know. But it's the truth as I see it; we're a long way of from creating a better, fairer world in which we don't let the capitalists decide everything for us. Capitalism is a race to the bottom in which every nation deregulates its business environment and reduces tax rates for the rich in order to attract or retain economic activity in their jurisdictions; every country tries to offer their work-force for as low a price as possible and every business is constantly on the hunt for that cheap labor. Until they don't even need that anymore... I'll leave it here; watch the video for a slightly more optimistic view on all this.
Breadtube, Debate-Bros, and The Problems of The Western Left
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I think an even more unfortunate truth, with all respect in the world given to the author personally, is that "capitalism" does not even exist. It's the pilfered term of a Rothschild golem, a rhetorical hired gun, an ideological henchman - Karl Marx.
Emma Goldman's esteemed opinion notwithstanding, the scribbling of a coffee-house philosopher is not the same thing as his making a discovery. But try telling that to embittered, power-hungering exiles, all over Earth.
Marx's prescription for the ills of a free market economy was called socialism. It was not better conceived of than its fellow, but in this case we've got a definition anyway, since others (almost always Kautsky) later found a way to inject some good ideas into his nonsense (only to be reviled for it by him as a "pedant and a philistine").
As an aside, this is how the very decent and sane social democracy was born, from whence we get things like the social safety net. NOT the same as socialism! Socialism means a fully state-owned economy. Private property is stripped from the citizen and lorded over by the corrupt bureaucrat. It's a terrible disaster, just as slavery and colonialism - proto-socialism - were before it. The free market is to blame for nothing.
Eight-hour breadlines and two World Wars, in the end, were the bountiful harvests of mankind as a result of these foully-planted seeds. In the next generation the socialist world movement begun by Marx cellularly divided into Communism and Fascism. Both had a straightforward plan for harnessing capitalism - the death camp and the gulag. Both advocated annihilation to any market they could not control. As the horrified rest of Earth looked on, these two titanic pit bulls used their rival socialism cults to plunge a continent into utter darkness.
As for what your typical Marxist claims "capitalism" to be, e.g. half an economic principle discovered and half an economic system grown mad with excess, I'll just say this: it seems easy to make anything in creation look bad, summing it up in mere terms of its bodily functions, as Marx did to the free market we built the world atop of. Imagine letting Marx fill out a dating ad for you!
Oops, Matt Gaetz must be on my mind...
One more thing: I like what you said up here, "the rich own all the media, all the TV stations, all the newspapers, all the online social platforms," and so on. I couldn't agree more. Actually, the evidence is compelling that all American news has to go through Thomson and Reuters to get approved, and they are and have been under the firm control of the most notoriously rich family in modern history - the Rothschilds, the same people who built communism as a way to extract even more resources from the people than we are giving them now. Russia and China are both severely under the control of people whose loyalties lie firmly with this same family, and they are also predominant here. The things you say are wrong with the world because of "capitalism" have been systematically dreamt up and inflicted on the human race by the Rothschilds and whatever it is they represent, my heart tells me it cannot all be the fault of just one family. I think they're like curators for it.
Anyway, dude, thank you for caring. But please read up on the Congress of Lazar, the 1815 Rothschild plans for a socialist One World Government, and the true reason the Romanov dynasty of Russia ended before you take any more shots at the free market. Taking that away from you is why all this has been done.