This is widely misunderstood. Liberalism doesn’t start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it’s hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership. Even most contemporary forms of anti-capitalism have sort of come to terms with the idea that some form of capitalist structure is a near inevitability in the context of material and labor scarcity, and that beyond that you are really just debating different forms of harm reduction. And that’s really the important thing - to understand that we are all just talking harm reduction here. The idea of eliminating capitalism entirely is a bit like curing cancer. It’s a long term goal which requires technology and conditions which simply do not exist at this time, but there is not like some weird faction in the medical community which is ideologically opposed chemotherapy because it doesn’t go far enough, like there is in (outdated) leftist philosophy.
Liberalism doesn’t start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it’s hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership.
This is a misunderstanding of what socialists mean when they say we need to abolish private property. To socialists, private property and personal property are two very different things. Private property (also sometimes referred to as the means of production and sometimes but not always includes real estate) is specifically used to turn a profit, whereas personal property (stuff like your TV, couch, food, bed, car, etc.) is property that is owned by individuals. Socialists do not believe that personal property should be abolished, but they think that private property should.
That being said, my personal beliefs are that we should have an economic system that guarantees all basic human needs to all humans, which includes housing, food, healthcare, water, sewage, power, internet, heating/cooling (depending on location and climate) while giving the workers ownership over the businesses that they work for (essentially forcing large corporations to become worker-owned co-ops) while incentivizing small businesses to continue to be created and invested in. I’m not sure how to feel about forcing small businesses to be worker-owned co-ops, since I feel like that would decrease incentives to start them and invest time and money into them.
Professor Richard Wolff calls this socialism or Marxism, but it doesn’t have the centralization of economic power that previous socialist experiments had, with the USSR being the largest example.
This is widely misunderstood. Liberalism doesn’t start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it’s hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership. Even most contemporary forms of anti-capitalism have sort of come to terms with the idea that some form of capitalist structure is a near inevitability in the context of material and labor scarcity, and that beyond that you are really just debating different forms of harm reduction. And that’s really the important thing - to understand that we are all just talking harm reduction here. The idea of eliminating capitalism entirely is a bit like curing cancer. It’s a long term goal which requires technology and conditions which simply do not exist at this time, but there is not like some weird faction in the medical community which is ideologically opposed chemotherapy because it doesn’t go far enough, like there is in (outdated) leftist philosophy.
This is a misunderstanding of what socialists mean when they say we need to abolish private property. To socialists, private property and personal property are two very different things. Private property (also sometimes referred to as the means of production and sometimes but not always includes real estate) is specifically used to turn a profit, whereas personal property (stuff like your TV, couch, food, bed, car, etc.) is property that is owned by individuals. Socialists do not believe that personal property should be abolished, but they think that private property should.
That being said, my personal beliefs are that we should have an economic system that guarantees all basic human needs to all humans, which includes housing, food, healthcare, water, sewage, power, internet, heating/cooling (depending on location and climate) while giving the workers ownership over the businesses that they work for (essentially forcing large corporations to become worker-owned co-ops) while incentivizing small businesses to continue to be created and invested in. I’m not sure how to feel about forcing small businesses to be worker-owned co-ops, since I feel like that would decrease incentives to start them and invest time and money into them.
Professor Richard Wolff calls this socialism or Marxism, but it doesn’t have the centralization of economic power that previous socialist experiments had, with the USSR being the largest example.