Share Funny Videos, Images, Memes, Quotes and more

This is extremely “wasn’t real capitalism,” and I could use this argument to say that the United States still isn’t capitalist, as slave labor remains a cornerstone of multiple state economies and present in most of them, to say nothing of international trade.

Yep, the US isn't purely capitalist, its a mixed economy, from the logic of Milton Friedman its fair to say its nearing 50% capitalist. There have been times where its been nearing 70% but never much more than that. But the same is true the other way, to my understanding there have essentially never been purely socialist economies. Furthermore, the US has individual fields within its economy where how capitalist it is differs- like I would say the internet is generally a bit more capitalist.

maximalist libertarian fantasy land (check the company towns of the Gilded Age for something closer to that)

Far from it. Company towns were often Neo-fuedal state-like entities where they held an illegitimate claim to the land oftentimes and would legal use violence to enforce their rules.

for a slew of reasons not the least of which being that capitalism is not a philosophical framework, it’s an objective mode of production,

Capitalism is an economic system requires private control of the means of production, for real private control that requires a free and fair market. I could go into that more if you want, but I think I'll address it somewhat later.

capitalism is what invented and executed the establishment of chattel slavery to begin with!

That's not true. Capitalism is not "earning a profit and people being greedy". Capitalism is private control of the means of production, as said in another comment private != state, and when you have authority to regulate people(as in legislate and dictate to them) you are a state-like entity. If I decide to point a gun at you and force you to work for me so I can then barter with others from the profits of your labor, that is not capitalism.

Again, you’re appealing to a maximalist libertarian fantasy, not looking at it from the standpoint of private ownership and commodity production.

Capitalism does not require commodity production. And it is not solely private ownership, it is private ownership and control. De facto and de jure. "You own the factory but the government tells you what to produce" is not capitalism, you don't truly own it from my perspective, and you definitely don't control it.

“They killed people, which isn’t part of capitalism” and “They destroyed other people’s stuff, which isn’t part of capitalism” are just silly statements.

Silly yet true.

The KKK weren’t trying to go back to feudalism, to classical slavery, to ancient agrarianism, or to hunter-gatherer society, and they weren’t trying to invent some new mode of production like, say, utopian socialists liked to write about. They were quite happy with the existing mode of production and (as you narrated) smashed labor organization against the capitalists. The fact that that they didn’t follow John Locke’s writings like the Holy Bible and indeed the fact that they insisted on the domination of white capitalists do not contradict that.

Yep, they may be the least anti-capitalist of these three groups, but they still did not care about attacking capitalism if(and it does) contradict the goal of white supremacy.

Then capitalism has never existed.

Yep, not as a sole economic system of economy, as talked about previously.

From a Marxist perspective (if you’ll allow me), a capitalist society is a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, that is to say the capitalist class collectively steers the state, which means outliers even among the capitalist class can be punished if the majority want that to pass. That doesn’t change the essential nature of society as operating practically along the lines of private ownership – even if capitalists are not individually gods of their domain – and commodity production.

That's more of political system of corporatocracy, and y'know, isn't actually the definition of capitalism. But yes, if that is how you define capitalism, I oppose that.

what actually transpires in a union is collective bargaining.

But this I disagree with, there was organized individual bargaining- because I don't believe collectives exist.

You might be surprised to find that the Marxist position is one of supporting what some people refer to as “enlightened self-interest,”

Eh, Marx was not the most collectivist.

rather than psychically subsuming yourself to the collective at your own expense and with no benefit.

I'm glad we agree, but this is what some real people actually advocate.

That’s part of why I think the “individualist/collectivist” framework is silly

To me it is less about beliefs on individual matters, and instead about priorities. The most extreme individualist believes that only individual people exist and they're the only thing that matters, the most extreme collectivist believes that there is no such thing as an individual person outside a collective- and only collectives or a specific collective matters. I agree there are very few people of that extreme a collectivist stance, but they do exist, a lot of chronically online "race realists" are like that.

You know that capitalism is named after capital, right? Yeoman subsistence is not capitalism, there is no commodity production, no vector for capital.

Capital can be anything that is used for labor of a good, even if the good and the capital are both produced by an individual themselves. Though I do disagree with the classical definition where "means of production" and "capital" are the same thing, because I would say the modern definition of capitalism requires private control of the means of production- and would include labor in the means of production.

what capitalism has actually done all over the world is create those classes and make production increasingly centralized and socialized

Already discussed our different definition of capitalism so I won't repeat it here.

We might imagine it otherwise, but we have no reason to believe that it is particularly capable of behaving differently, much less ever will.

This is where I will disagree, the internet being the closest to a capitalist economy out of to my knowledge anything that's ever existed- though still far from being entirely capitalist- is one of the most fractured and easily "disrupt-able"(I hate techbro words) markets- and that's despite the excessive state intervention fighting to build monopolies through intellectual property law and massive contract awards.

is some bizarre joke invented by economists and their ilk.

I support your animosity towards economists(at least most of them).

I personally think that has about as much of a claim to the title of “ideological capitalist” too, as compared to someone who just wants the world to run on private ownership, because we call those “libertarians” already (or, if you insist, “ancaps”).

Fair, actually my favorite terms are privatist, or voluntarist- they're the most explicit.

When I look at Hitler running on a platform of eradicating the Jews and the Bolsheviks and capitalists give him money, and then he does what he said he would, how should I interpret that? Should I say those companies were anything less than deliberate benefactors to what he perpetrated?

No my point isn't that they didn't work to support it, its that they weren't the core motivators behind it. Hitler wasn't fighting to help the companies, the companies just saw that if they were cozy to him he probably would.