That 47% in the US, which has the most extreme cut throat capitalism for all who are not wealthy, still don’t agree with this statement tells us a lot about the power of repeating a narrative over and over again to people.
As it exists today
At least half of that 47% believe capitalism works every time except this time.
“Capitalism” as a concept cannot work.
- If you allow it to run its course unfettered, you’ll end up with monopolies. This is how you get gilded age style misery for most of the people.
- If you try to regulate it somewhat, you’ll end up with corporations capturing your institutions and establishing monopolies in all but name. This is how you get socialism for the wealthy and brutal capitalism for most (current state of affairs).
This is how you get socialism for the wealthy and brutal capitalism for most
“Socialism for the wealthy” is not a thing and it’s actually harmful slogan, please stop using it, it’s just capitalism as intended.
“Share agreeing”
India truly is a powder keg at the moment. i see the end to the BJP pretty soon, and most people have a hatred for the Congress party. There is a vacuum there waiting to be filled. Unfortunately, there is no vanguard and political education is garbage so I’m skeptical of the dream.
China being that low surprises me
bear in mind that china basically did the industrial revolution in like, a single generation…
if you go from people being subsistence farmers, to living in dogshit housing in dirty cities, to something that the rest of the world considers mind-bogglingly futuristic; all in such short time that your parents have photos of their childhood farm… yeah capitalism probably seems pretty decent then.
It’s still majority communist of course, but I think a part of it is just that political education and affiliation to the communist party isn’t a mandatory requirement for the general population, so a lot of the population of the PRC is apolitical.
Also since the CPC runs things really well, (ie things like wages going up 4x in the past 30 years), politics becomes a less vital / life and death part of your life.
it’s the only place where capitalism does more good than harm for the average person at the moment.
The PRC is not capitalist, it’s a mixed economy where the socialist / state-planned sector predominates, and a smaller, restricted capitalist sector.
Is China State Capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
I agree that China is not state capitalist, it very much is socialist. But I’d argue they use capitalism as a tool (not as an ideology).
I.e., use capitalist modes of market development to socialize production in new markets. Then socialize the capital after that’s established. I see this as one of the ways they’ve developed their light industry sections
I’m gonna be honest, I haven’t read all of your links, we may very well be mostly agreeing
We need to detangle “markets” from “capitalism,” just like public ownership in capitalist economies is not “a slice of socialism.” Economies are deeply interwoven and support the principal aspect of the economy, this is what determines identity. The US is not a socialist economy for having a public sector, nor is this public sector a socialist sector. There are private and public sectors, what determined the identity is the principal aspect, as well as the class that dominates the state.
Yes I agree, when I said markets I was thinking of, eg, EVs. Where China lets private companies compete and expand in a very (imo) capitalistic fashion to create the market for EVs itself. If China continues to be socialist they’ll socialize the capital when it is developed “enough”
This doesn’t mean China is capitalist, they are using it.
Well, yeah. Just look outside. Capitalism has made a handful of people uncontrollably wealthy and irreparably damaged the world, while leaving many people either in outright poverty or barely holding on.
Japan with their toxic working culture only so low?
wtf, Japan?
Japan seems to do capitalism pretty well. It has it’s issues, but compared to other countries capitalism causes fewer problems.
I think part of the issue with capitalism is actually democracy. Democracy breeds incompetent governments, and with a competent government faith in capitalism can last longer than it otherwise would.
Japan seems to do capitalism pretty well. It has it’s issues, but compared to other countries capitalism causes fewer problems.
They have a currency crisis every other year for a couple of decades.
The average person doesn’t really care about a currency crisis.
They very much care about not being able to afford things or their savings evaporating.
Spoken like someone who vastly overestimates the economic status of “the average” person due to their own relative privilege.
Japan has a demographic crisis, it’s collapsing economically, and it has created an atomized consumerist society where everyone is isolated. Not exactly my definition of doing well. Meanwhile, you’re confusing the broader concept of democracy with liberal democracy. Democracy only exists for the ruling class, and under capitalism it’s people who own capital.
There are two main things people in most wealthy countries need but lack: options for employment and housing. The demographic crisis in Japan makes achieving both of those things more likely, and the government also has far smarter policies around housing and industrial policy than other western countries.
Juvenal famously said “give them bread and circus and they’ll never revolt”, but in the modern age it should be “give them stable housing and employment and they’ll never even think of revolting”.
That argument falls apart even under minimal scrutiny. The problem is usually affordability and security rather than absence of housing, and Japan’s demographic crisis is not a magic fix. A shrinking population might mean more empty houses in rural areas, but Tokyo is going to stay prohibitively expensive and plenty of workers are stuck in low wage jobs which are precarious. Japan’s policies are not uniformly smarter either, it has real housing and workplace problems just like every other capitalist shithole. And Juvenal’s line was not about giving people good jobs and homes, he was referring to distracting the Roman mob with free grain and cheap entertainment so they would not think too hard about who ran things. Turning it into a compliment for modern Japan is a bit ironic.
Have you ever lived there?
Even Bin Laden expressed his views on capitalism way back when saying it doesn’t work…we’re not free.
Allez les bleus!
Humans are strange animals. cause the counter argument is why do they vote the opposite way. take for example France, the left can’t garner more than 30% of the vote, if we dissect further which part of this left is at least verbally anti capitalistic, than this ratio falls to 13%.
Because the “left” they let you vote for in any Western capitalist country is always incompetent and does fuck all for the general public by design. So young people naively vote for them, get their hopes up, get disappointed, and either stop bothering to vote after a few cycles (or just go through the motions of voting for whoever they despise the least knowing it doesn’t do anything) or end up in the other direction on the far right complaining about the ineffectual libs (which is what they want).
They’re not going to let you vote for someone who’s actually anticapitalist or could actually threaten the aristocracy. The right have successfully set up strawman leftist parties that don’t work and everyone hates and tries to make you think that’s all the left is (at least that’s my personal conspiracy theory).
may be the words you were looking for are “controlled opposition”, the western left is just a sham facade put up buy the capitalist and financed by the capitalist so that the real left becomes invisible. they are infiltrated by the careerists paid for the elite class.
Anticapitalism, and especially antineoliberalism, is not a monopoly of the left.
It’s because people are led to believe that the extreme right is defending the working class against the establishment. The disillusion will hit hard I hope.
So the lower class is basically dumb and can’t recognize its interests from its enemie’s interests
All we need to do is convince the corporations and power brokers that there is big money in getting rid of capitalism. /s
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