When liberals talk about “capitalism lifting people out of poverty”… okay, most of us have a retort about fast, radical improvement of life under a different economic system… but you succinctly responded to that sentiment while suggesting something better.
I didn’t intend to be overly praising of capitalism, as I think was inferred. I just meant to point out that happiness can be found anywhere. It doesn’t have an absolute starting point, like temperature or something. There’s a thing called the hedonic treadmill.
the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.
If you’re born in a pit of hell prison and suffer regular brutality, you’re still going to know happiness.
That’s all I was getting at. Thanks for the praise though!
I’m confused reading this here of all places. That’s a mythos pushed by capitalism as part of the portrayal of history as a linear progression of improvement with capitalism being justified as part of that improvement.
Life was nasty, brutish and short.
And this part sounds very much like the civil/savage colonial narrative that pretends societies were inherently more savage before and have now “evolved” (guess who takes on the label of having “evolved” most of all - colonizer systems).
Some conditions for some people were worse, sure. As a whole, saying it was overall worse is ahistorical nonsense. You could argue technological improvements that came with industrialization, advances in science, medicine, etc., lessened a lot of suffering for people who could actually access those improvements and benefit from them. But then we are talking about when they could benefit, not as a given. Which is very relevant to a discussion like this. Some people are suffering a lot more than others. I support you in saying in such a context that “plenty of happy moments” can be had within that regardless, but it is part of the reality we’re dealing with.
I would much rather live under modern capitalism than feudalism. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still awful, but a different kind of awful. I like not being the property of the local landowner, even if I do have to spend most of my money each week on rent. Capitalism is a “better” system than those it replaced, our job as socialists is to replace capitalism with a better system, but we don’t do that by pretending capitalism is just all pain and suffering all the time.
I don’t even know where to begin with how ignorant of a take this is. You think the worst of capitalism is paying for rent? How about the homeless people whose tents get bulldozed? You think this is all about how you personally experience capitalism, is that it? We don’t need to give capitalism credit in order to replace it with something better, that’s an asinine position to have. If you are a colonized person trying to liberate from a settler occupier would you say, “Well it’s better under the settler than it was before, but our job is to replace it by ousting them”???
Did I say it was the worst? No. I’m not unaware of how fucked up a system it is, saying “two things are bad” doesn’t mean “so one is fine and we shouldn’t complain ever.”
We don’t defeat capitalism by pretending it is something it isn’t is my main point.
You implied that’s the worst aspect of it you could come up with in comparing it to feudalism, claiming that it’s a better system.
We don’t defeat capitalism by pretending it is something it isn’t is my main point.
And who exactly is pretending it’s something it isn’t? Vaguely claiming it’s a better system than in the past is being misleading about what it is, if anything. What benefit is there in this insistence on giving it credit? That’s not identifying what its mechanisms are and how to approach working toward better in a dialectical way. That’s walking backward on the importance of pointing out why what we want is better than what is already there. Why would you cede ground to the capitalists and their rhetoric of a superior system? It makes no sense.
There’s no “ceding ground” being done here. There’s nothing “dialectical” about refusing to observe the reality of capitalism, it’s utility as well as its treacherous inevitable failure. If you don’t recognise what people see in it, in an honest way, you make it harder for yourself to critique it.
Capitalism is, in my opinion, an inevitable stage of history. Until we see how some other similar cultures’ socio-economics develop in the galaxy we can’t know this for sure.
That’s a mythos pushed by capitalism as part of the portrayal of history as a linear progression of improvement with capitalism being justified as part of that improvement.
This is the reality I’m afraid. Capitalism is most definitely a necessary stage, as Lenin would agree.
Capitalism has its uses, as the Chinese model clearly shows. Under a DOTP only, it must be controlled and dismantled piece by piece. Otherwise it will take over all democratic institutions, enslave people in perpetuity, at least until it destroys the environment. If I were living in Feudal times, I would advocate for Capitalism as a furthering of history. You cannot skip this phase as the USSR found out.
…were inherently more savage before and have now “evolved”
There was certainly a gap of justice and life was shorter due to lack of medical progress. It’s just historical fact and not chauvinistic to point this out.
I was wondering if a misunderstanding of China was fueling this nonsense. China is a DOTP as you described. We are talking about a dictatorship of capital, not a DOTP. These are two different things. How can you talk to me of “realities” when you bastardize the distinctions between concepts, conflate the kind of system a country such as the US has vs. China, say “you can’t skip this phase” based on a single socialist project the USSR (attempting to push a universalized dogma off of one example while ignoring all of the other factors that went into the USSR’s history as compared to China’s, completely antithetical to a scientific approach to socialism).
You do not know what you’re talking about and no amount of votes on a web forum will change that fact.
Things were worse before capitalism. Life was nasty, brutish and short. Plenty of happy moments were had.
Love this response.
When liberals talk about “capitalism lifting people out of poverty”… okay, most of us have a retort about fast, radical improvement of life under a different economic system… but you succinctly responded to that sentiment while suggesting something better.
I didn’t intend to be overly praising of capitalism, as I think was inferred. I just meant to point out that happiness can be found anywhere. It doesn’t have an absolute starting point, like temperature or something. There’s a thing called the hedonic treadmill.
If you’re born in a pit of hell prison and suffer regular brutality, you’re still going to know happiness.
That’s all I was getting at. Thanks for the praise though!
Oh, I absolutely didn’t take it that way! Sorry if that was confusing
I’m confused reading this here of all places. That’s a mythos pushed by capitalism as part of the portrayal of history as a linear progression of improvement with capitalism being justified as part of that improvement.
And this part sounds very much like the civil/savage colonial narrative that pretends societies were inherently more savage before and have now “evolved” (guess who takes on the label of having “evolved” most of all - colonizer systems).
Some conditions for some people were worse, sure. As a whole, saying it was overall worse is ahistorical nonsense. You could argue technological improvements that came with industrialization, advances in science, medicine, etc., lessened a lot of suffering for people who could actually access those improvements and benefit from them. But then we are talking about when they could benefit, not as a given. Which is very relevant to a discussion like this. Some people are suffering a lot more than others. I support you in saying in such a context that “plenty of happy moments” can be had within that regardless, but it is part of the reality we’re dealing with.
I would much rather live under modern capitalism than feudalism. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still awful, but a different kind of awful. I like not being the property of the local landowner, even if I do have to spend most of my money each week on rent. Capitalism is a “better” system than those it replaced, our job as socialists is to replace capitalism with a better system, but we don’t do that by pretending capitalism is just all pain and suffering all the time.
I don’t even know where to begin with how ignorant of a take this is. You think the worst of capitalism is paying for rent? How about the homeless people whose tents get bulldozed? You think this is all about how you personally experience capitalism, is that it? We don’t need to give capitalism credit in order to replace it with something better, that’s an asinine position to have. If you are a colonized person trying to liberate from a settler occupier would you say, “Well it’s better under the settler than it was before, but our job is to replace it by ousting them”???
Did I say it was the worst? No. I’m not unaware of how fucked up a system it is, saying “two things are bad” doesn’t mean “so one is fine and we shouldn’t complain ever.”
We don’t defeat capitalism by pretending it is something it isn’t is my main point.
You implied that’s the worst aspect of it you could come up with in comparing it to feudalism, claiming that it’s a better system.
And who exactly is pretending it’s something it isn’t? Vaguely claiming it’s a better system than in the past is being misleading about what it is, if anything. What benefit is there in this insistence on giving it credit? That’s not identifying what its mechanisms are and how to approach working toward better in a dialectical way. That’s walking backward on the importance of pointing out why what we want is better than what is already there. Why would you cede ground to the capitalists and their rhetoric of a superior system? It makes no sense.
There’s no “ceding ground” being done here. There’s nothing “dialectical” about refusing to observe the reality of capitalism, it’s utility as well as its treacherous inevitable failure. If you don’t recognise what people see in it, in an honest way, you make it harder for yourself to critique it.
Capitalism is, in my opinion, an inevitable stage of history. Until we see how some other similar cultures’ socio-economics develop in the galaxy we can’t know this for sure.
This is the reality I’m afraid. Capitalism is most definitely a necessary stage, as Lenin would agree.
Capitalism has its uses, as the Chinese model clearly shows. Under a DOTP only, it must be controlled and dismantled piece by piece. Otherwise it will take over all democratic institutions, enslave people in perpetuity, at least until it destroys the environment. If I were living in Feudal times, I would advocate for Capitalism as a furthering of history. You cannot skip this phase as the USSR found out.
There was certainly a gap of justice and life was shorter due to lack of medical progress. It’s just historical fact and not chauvinistic to point this out.
I was wondering if a misunderstanding of China was fueling this nonsense. China is a DOTP as you described. We are talking about a dictatorship of capital, not a DOTP. These are two different things. How can you talk to me of “realities” when you bastardize the distinctions between concepts, conflate the kind of system a country such as the US has vs. China, say “you can’t skip this phase” based on a single socialist project the USSR (attempting to push a universalized dogma off of one example while ignoring all of the other factors that went into the USSR’s history as compared to China’s, completely antithetical to a scientific approach to socialism).
You do not know what you’re talking about and no amount of votes on a web forum will change that fact.