Hi @littlejoeward!

Thank you so much for your comment and a big apology for the delay in getting this reply to you! I'm finally on vacation so that shouldn't happen anymore for a while! Allow me to make no further delay and jump right in because this looks like a very fun discussion to be had!

Okay so your definition of capitalism is actually a very interestin one but I'm not sure that's what capitalism purely is. A working definition might be something like "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state:"

As you can see, there's not really any mention of a free-market in there. In fact, the notion of a free-market, and what might called "laissez-faire capitalism" is actually a version of capitalism: "Classical Liberalism".

I agree with you though that neo-fascism as you defined it and classical liberalism are totally at odds. Neo-fascism is also the antithesis of "letting the free-market choose".

China for example is one of the most capitalist societies in the world right now (at least it is the largest capitalist economy in the world); but there is no such thing as letting the free-market decide in China - or there is, but businesses can be closed down by the government for no reason, profits can be confiscated for no reason, etc.(I live there)

Basically where I disagree is that classical liberalism says "the private sector will take care of it" whereas capitalism says "capital will take care of it".

Classical liberalism, libertarianism, etc. are all freedom and rights based approaches to capitalism. It is capitalism regulated by the people. But actually capitalism can and does run amok when it gets divorced from the people's control.

Because capital just serves the interest of capital. Capital just wants to grow from itself. That's it.
A banker loaning out 100% of his money 10 times over (fractional reserve lending) is pure capitalism. It's just making more capital from capital. And it can get really nuts when we let the ideology of capitalism trump our common sense.

I agree, classical liberalism and libertarianism are quite common-sense based views of how to get the productive and beneficial aspects of capital working for us without letting the megalomaniac, out-of-control aspects take over and drive the whole process to insanity...

But capitalism in of itself is devoid of any safeguards because all it says is that dudes with no authority (by no authority I mean lacking the legitimacy of being a public figure in the state apparatus, accountable to the state's public) can do whatever they feel to control and steer trade, industry and commerce... So if those private individuals are sick fucks (like the guys running the top corporations now), the whole thing can get mad...

Again, China is the most capitalist system I've ever seen in my life. It is pure capitalism over there, and the irony is that the only social taboo and politically incorrect thing you can say in China is "This is not a socialist country"

I can scream from the top of my mouth "Chinese people descend from apes, black people are an alien species from another planet, whites are albino-mongol hybrids, the sky is green, Santa Claus is real" for years and they will never haul me off, but the minute I say "This is a capitalist country" I will be taken in, interrogated, tortured, deported, or executed. (Not in any specific order)...

In my 2 years living there, that fact has told me more about what I needed to know about the world than anything before... And it's funny how just as the "Left" in the West has completely run amok worrying about trans-bathrooms and gay marriages and toxic masculinity and all of this stuff...

They've economically sabotaged REAL SOCIALIST countries that were actually fighting capitalism: Maduro's Venezuela, Qaddafi's Lybia, and the list goes on...

PS: I'm not saying Bernie Sander's "Keynesian" economics is "socialism". Far from it. Keynesian economics has proved to not work, whereas classical liberalism and libertarianism has proven it mostly does... And that'd be another fascinating convo about whether the state can intervene in free markets when problems arise, and I would agree: It should not, and it can not.

But there's a big difference for me between regulating and nationalizing.

Nationalizing a country's natural resources, even if their exploitation is outsourced to private corporations, but then using the capital from the nationalized resources to make public-investments (even if they are outsourced to private corporations) for infrastructure, technological-transfers and infusing the country with foreign capital does seem to be a solid plan...

Too bad it's never really been pulled off successfully... One just has to look at capitalist Brazil and capitalist Nigeria to see what capitalism truly does when it is not reigned in by an educated, integrated and cohesive community...

True capitalism doesn't let the market decide. That kind of thinking started in the 1970s in America with the birth of neoliberalism (globalization and hyper-financialization and capitalism on crack and steroids...)

Notice the neo before the word liberalism and you will see where the perversion and corruption of liberalism started, and why today's "libertarianism" is the branch of classical liberalism that continued into the present... And even then: there are still card-carrying libertarians like Ronald Reagan I think called himself a libertarian which was a joke... Adam Kokesh running on the end the Federal Government platform: that's a libertarian :)

Seriously, true capitalism is non-normative, it's non-ethical... Capitalism is capital for the sake of more capital. It's a means of converting resources into what we need. Yes, market dynamics do have an impact on capitalism's ability to work, because it is very hard to disentangle capital and market. But there can be market without capital, and capital without market. (I mean just look at the 4th industrial revolution, and robots... In that sense, if you don't need workers, and your workers don't need wages... I mean, why not get rid of the market all-together?)

I think the reason that market and capital got so entangled was always about how to get labour and capital to interact... If you don't need labour, you don't need a market.

Just some thoughts I had when I read your really good comments. I totally agree that in a free market we can harness the best of everyone's creativity and productivity, that we generate more abundance by working together and cooperating through market forces (and that a bit of healthy competition helps keep us all in check)... I can tell you are a libertarian at heart, and so am I so we really don't disagree about anything

Where I disagree is confusing capitalism with classical liberalism... That's what neoliberalism did and I am very much anti-neoliberalism... It's because people have been bamboozled and confused by advertising, propaganda, in universities and TV... I mean the whole mainstream is so infected with neoliberalism and I find it so sickening...

We need to move in the direction of (the original?) values that helped make capitalism into something not only sustainable but ethical and bearable... There have been times during the last 275 years where capitalism was just so evil and it's been super necessary for people to organize and introduce those measures that reign it in and make it work for everybody and not just 1 guy sitting at the top of the world? (The devil lol?)

That's also why it's sad that in America people have been so brainwashed with neoliberalism just like people, let's say in China, have been so brainwashed with Social-Democratic Marxism...

I agree that Classical Liberalism has been the most elegant manifestation of capital (and even then, capitalism still runs amok... Fuck)

I believe capitalism was just a historical period, and we are moving towards less and less capitalist solutions for a world with more and more freedom.

If we can harness mankind's creative potential and put it in a good way to work for us!

Thanks for reading my friend!! And sorry if I went on crazy tangent and this makes no sense lol! Xx