My hope would be that we can transition peacefully to a hybrid model with the rising power of unions, gradual emergence of worker cooperatives, and increased demand for socialized health care and affordable housing.
However, I think it’s more likely that things will have to collapse first. Especially with violent accelerationist types doing their thing. Unfortunately, it’s far easier to destroy systems than it is to repair them.
You probably know it, but just in case that you (or anyone reading this, who might agree with you) don’t: give the texts of The Fabian Society a check. They’re rather close to what you’re proposing with a peaceful transition; I have my criticisms against it as a Marxist strictu sensu, but I bet that you’ll have a blast with it.
Care to explain why?
I’m proposing to check their texts out because it’s a good way to get theoretical background to back up your beliefs, if you believe in a peaceful transition. (Here’s a link to a good one, by the way.)
It’s also useful for Marxists, given that Marxism always interacted with other left-wing trains of thought. So by reading this stuff you get a better historical context on why Marxism defends some policies instead of other policies.
Yea I wasn’t doubting you, I just wanted for your to add some small explanation/context as to what these texts had
I have reservations about unions. While it does give employees bargaining power, it sometimes does it to a fault. We see this with police unions in the US as it stops bad apples from getting proper punishment, and as a result, they get slaps on the wrist. I imagine that it would be equally as hard to fire somebody in other industries like medicine unless there’s a 3rd party (like an arbitrator or court) enforcing these decisions.
Also, without any legislation in the US, I’d argue that unions will stay incredibly difficult to form, and even if they do, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they can negotiate with companies fairly. Companies out there (I believe Dish is an example) have spent 10 years stalling negotiations with unions, and it’s all practically legal.
Have you seen this?
Why it’s so hard to imagine life after capitalism? https://youtu.be/PaASqPnpq5Y
My hope would be that we can transition peacefully to a hybrid model with the rising power of unions, gradual emergence of worker cooperatives, and increased demand for socialized health care and affordable housing.
None of this has anything to do with capitalism tho.
Like, capitalism can and should be the economic engine driving these positive outcomes.
The current strategy of venture capital is not success, but sabotage
It’s not good enough for you to be doing well, you have to strangle the competition and introduce yourself as an unremovable bottleneck
For example, becoming the intermediary between concerts and concert goers. The fees charged and the trouble caused is worse than if they hadn’t been there.
Amazon makes examples out of any business that dare challenge it’s dead zone around it.
VC money is meant to crush the competition and lock in the consumer to charge rent.
Why would they ever want worker control, or unions?
Why would the private healthcare industry ever stop lobbying against socialized healthcare? Why would a capitalist success ever lead to the political change necessary for it when the doctrine of capitalism is privatization
Why would any commercial real estate firm allow affordable housing to exist when they can scalp it on investment properties and leave them empty? Why build affordable housing when the margins are small?
Capitalism isn’t a savior, it’s just locally optimal to the people with capital.
VC money is meant to crush the competition and lock in the consumer to charge rent.
This is not anything close to correct lol. VCs specifically do not invest in mature companies or they aren’t VCs.
Why would any commercial real estate firm allow affordable housing to exist when they can scalp it on investment properties and leave them empty? Why build affordable housing when the margins are small?
All housing built helps other housing come affordable because it increases supply. You are correct that there is little purpose intentionally building less valuable housing
I mean not really? Because currently capitalism as an economic engine is actively preventing these outcomes. And basically by design. How do you explain that?
A lot of capitalist countries have free healthcare. So how is capitalism preventing that?
Because in those countries it was regulated enough?
The question you need to answer is why countries like the US don’t and if you disagree that capitalism didn’t have anything to do with it
Well yes, regulation is often needed to ensure that markets remain free and the USA is a great example of how that can fail.
The USA is also a good example how the markets can get in the way of the regulation and of free markets. The players in the free market don’t really benefit from being in a free market. They have every incentive to change that.
How do you explain that?
it isn’t true, so I don’t
“Defeated” implies being stopped by an external force, I don’t see that happening.
It will collapse under it’s own weight in less than a century.
Let’s hope it’s the next too big to fail/stock market crash.
It seems as if capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. Not saying I know a better way per se but its in there all the same
Edit: to put it in Pokémon perspective: capitalism is Ghost type and its super-effective against Ghost type
What are some examples of capitalism destroying itself?
Capitalism, minus a strong guiding hand as described by Adam Smith, invariably leads to monopolies, or near enough. When that happens, either through a single strong monopoly or a small group of companies, the market doesn’t work and price gouging rises. You don’t have to look further back than the past couple years at inflation. Every study I have seen blames inflation almost completely on price gouging and market failing to work for consumers. Think record prices (and corresponding record profits) of companies across the board. If you want specific examples, check out the long history of Walmart and the negative effects its stores have on local competition and local earnings. Or the profit taking of gas companies. Or super market chains. Or…
People who love Capitalism always seem to have missed high school history/econ and have this ignorant belief that laissez-faire is the best. Even though proven to be shitty. This belief in trickle down bullshit has resulted in 50 trillion dollars going from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. If that’s not capitalism destroying itself, I’m not sure what else to say.
Or as Leonard Cohen sang so succinctly,“The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / that’s how it goes / everybody knows.”
I mostly agree with this. But I can imagine saying basically any system minus x core feature will go to shit.
Regulation is not a core feature of capitalism. It’s just a really good idea
Is that capitalism destroying itself tho? I mean in a purist way, what you describe is capitalism changing so it does do something but what it ends up in is called late stage capitalism so did it really destroy itself or merely “evolved”? Yes in that stage it is worse for 99.99% of people compared to before but maybe that’s somewhat intended? And most importantly is that stage (more) stable or not.
The vacuum can only suck up crumbs for so long until it runs out of crumbs.
In other words, the greedy aren’t letting capitalism be the cycle system it needs to be, it’s a funnel.
Either the crumbs will run out and the system will collapse, or people won’t take kindly to giving up their final crumbs and overpower the vacuum.
Any one sane person is only a few missed meals away from acting insane. Any sane society is only a few missed meals from falling apart.
Yes but you really didn’t answer my question. It’s also debatable if we’re anywhere near that point at this stage
If a structure is stealing bolts from its lower structure to further amass a larger structure on top it is going to collapse.
A closed system designed to be a cycle that doesn’t return anything to the bottom will eventually collapse.
If rain never comes to replenish the earth the clouds are only stuck with each other to canibalize.
The concept of enshittification.
Granted, the concept applies specifically to platforms, but the idea is basically what capitalism is:
- Be good to everyone
- Be good to suppliers (supply-side economics)
- Be good to shareholders and, subsequently, alienate both users and suppliers of content. The platform collapses.
Late-stage capitalism is when shareholder wealth is maximized at the expense everyone else. So you have 3 billionaires with 50% of the wealth of all humanity or something, the middle class squeezed into oblivion, and a roiling undercurrent of pure fucking rage ready to sever heads like watermelons from a vine.
I think you can say that’s immoral. I’m not sure you can say it will destroy the whole system or that this is an inevitability of any capitalist system.
Is there actually any record of this destroying the capitalist system though? To my knowledge, every time this happens, its just replaced with more extreme and violent capitalism.
…the more extreme and violent capitalism is the evidence. It can only do this so many times…
That’s not how it works. Nor it is useful, since a more extreme and more violent capitalism causes more, worse victims until it, in your terms, “collapses” - that is, is replaced by an even worse capitalism.
Applying the concept from the micro (enshittification of the platforms) to the macro (enshittification of the economic system) is brilliant.
What’s true of the lesser must be true of the greater
So why isn’t my glass of Campari drifting randomly across the table, under Brownian movement??? [/shitty drunkard joke]
Serious now. On economic matters I think that you’re right.
I thought that was how Dragon Type worked.
Can’t it be true for both? 😁
I could’ve sworn there was only one type this worked for.
Surprise!
It’s nice to see you again. How have you been?
Can’t complain ;)
Why would you want it defeated?
The most successful and happiest countries in the world are the Nordic countries, which are capitalist economies.
I think it’s because people see capitalism as one thing, while in reality they are implemented very differently.
The nordics are not successful only on their capitalism. It’s because it is regulated, and because the money is distributed more fair than in other countries.
The Nordic countries are also on Earth, which we are destroying. Some of their wealth comes directly from that destruction. Norway is the 5th and 3rd largest oil and natural gas exporter, respectively, making their happiness the result of good social policy that makes up for capitalist inequality which is directly funded by destroying the Earth and fueling capitalism elsewhere.
Even setting the climate aside (a ridiculous thing to do, really), the Nordic model isn’t possible to sustainably replicate elsewhere on Earth on capitalism’s own term, because we can’t make every country a net exporter of the most desired commodities for obvious reasons, or the beneficiary of complex historical circumstances, like neutrality during ww2 (Sweden), or a long-time colonial power (Denmark).
Put another way, there is no Nordic model available for Bangladesh, whose workers work six days a week in factories to make the cheap clothing that happy Norwegians wear. Norways needs Bangladeshes to keep their standard of living.
In a previous job, I spent a good amount of time in a Bangladeshi garment factory. That specific factory in which I worked had been on strike a few years prior, requesting a raise to dozens of dollars per month. That’s not a typo – per month!. The police fired into their picket line, killing and wounding hundreds. This fall, Bangladeshi garment workers went on strike again, demanding a tripling of the minimum wage from its current ~75USD per month.
The urban poverty that makes my life possible, so far away, out of sight and out of mind, is an absolute fucking disgrace. We should talk about it daily. When they go on strike, as those garment workers are now, every single westerner ought to strike in solidarity, even if motivated by nothing but shame. Instead, we don’t even know that it’s happening, at least in the anglosphere.
I’ve since become convinced that there’'s only one path to a just and verdant world – international solidarity. Communists and anarchists have filled libraries with ideas for what that might look like. I’ve read some tiny sliver of that corpus. If you actually want to know why some of us want capitalism defeated (beyond the anecdote that I just relayed), or if you’re curious how much better some of us think the world could be, I’d be happy to point you towards books that spoke to me.
What books spoke to you?
Going to give a wide range of answers based on topic, so you can pick up what interests you. Happy to give more if none of these appeal to you.
If you work in tech, Stafford Beer’s Designing Freedom. It’s very short, accessible, and full of so many big ideas about what computers are for that it exposes the tech industry’s absolute fucking poverty of vision.
If you’re interested in deep dives on more technical topics, David Graeber’s Debt. It’s a fucking tome, but it’s also amazing. So much of what we take for granted in our world is completely arbitrary and made up, but no less powerful, and there’s nothing quite as arbitrary and powerful as the concept of debt.
If reading a cinder block based on an internet stranger’s recommendation is too much for you, maybe try Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, or his The Utopia of Rules instead, depending on which topic interests you more. Graeber is a great place to start because he’s accessible but also his mind isn’t limited by the confines of capitalist realism in a very special way. He was truly one of our best.
If you want something that’s extremely light and fiction, I recommend William Morris’s News from Nowhere. It’s extremely cringe in a way that only 100-year-old socialist utopian fiction could be. It’s excessively sincere, even naive, in a way that rings hollow to our cynical modern selves, but it’s such a short read, and it’s so adorable. I like the way that he challenges the concept of work. I think that the modern left should revive that line of criticism. I also enjoyed that you can see early versions of things that we associate with more modern movements in his utopian vision, especially degrowth and reforestation/environmentalism, not just for “the environment,” but with nature as a part of and inseparable from the human experience.
Finally, if you like philosophy, and you want in depth analyses of capitalism, and don’t mind something that’s maybe less accessible, I recommend Adorno and Horkheimer’s essay The Culture Industry. It was written in the 1940s, and it reads prescient today. They saw the rise of capitalist mass media as more than just a threat to independent thought, but a pacifying, homogenizing, almost all-consuming force. If you want something longer than The Culture Industry, and probably slightly less accessible, I recommend their Frankfurt School colleague Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man. He basically argues that capitalism, and more specifically what he calls “technical rationality,” has conquered our culture and our very ability to reason, at scales big and small.
Do you own theluddite.org?
Yup!
Cool! I love your site!
Aww thanks so much friend 💖 I’m so glad to hear that!!
This answer right here chief 👆
It’s probably not sustainable for one.
Cuz rich gets richer and they steal my wages. Fuck em.
Gens Y, X, Z, and soon A are being taught by conservatives that capitalism can’t be reformed, and therefore are digging capitalism’s grave with their own hands.
You want reasonable restrictions on firearms? Conservatives say that can’t be done because of the 2nd amendment. They’re basically teaching gens Z and A that the 2nd amendment needs to be eliminated and those generations might actually have the numbers to do it eventually.
It will be the same with capitalism. You want reasonable regulations and taxation to reign in the abuses of the rich and corporations? Conservatives say you can’t do that because the free market must be supreme.
Conservatives will dig the grave of capitalism by continuing to fight against any reforms that would make capitalism more livable for future generations.
There’s currently no external forces that can defeat capitalism.
We have to do it on our own. Eat the rich. Guillotine the techno-feudal lords. Confiscate and coöperativize their infrastructure resources.
Climate change or nuclear war wiping out humanity
After mother nature kills every last human being.
It’s unlikely to happen without some kind of apocalyptic event. Communist societies works very, very well on a small scale; you can have communes with maybe as many as a few hundred people, because everyone is connected to everyone else. That all falls apart when you start talking about anything bigger. Capitalist societies don’t seem to need that direct relationship in order to function.
I think that the best we can hope for is some kind of reform that blends parts of capitalism with socialism, and sharply constrains that rights of the capitalist class.
I don’t think that we’ll even get that though; I think we’ll get Cyberpunk 2077.
Destruction of Earth.
When we start talking to each other again without paid influence.
The troubles facing us all, middle class and below, are the same troubles. We need to practice working together locally to build something bigger before major movements are likely to work out. How do we rebuild community nonprofit hubs?
I think society will collapse first, likely due to mass displacement and migration due to climate disasters which will make more people willing to accept fascism.
Capitalism is still preached in Usa, like socialism is preached in North Korea.
But capitalism is dead and gone.
Today we have neo-feudalism, or some call it techno-feudalism.
I honestly think it’ll implode in a few decades. The wage gap will continue to grow, we’ll get charged more for less, and the minimum wage won’t go up much at all. Conservatives will continue to blame everything on anyone else they can (like immigrants). And I think at some point things will just… break. I’m not sure what it’ll look like, but I think it’s going to be ugly. Things will get much worse before they get better.
I’m normally a pretty upbeat, positive guy, but I’m not sure how else this could realistically go down.
With thunderous applause.
