what else can capitalism become, especially without extremely strict regulation and wealth/income caps- all things these people are against? and to the extent that the state has its hand in the economy, is it not ONLY to benefit corporations? they’re not regulating these companies or anything to any meaningful degree. so if the government is bad because they only serve big business, even in their own completely nonsensical analysis, doesnt that still make capitalism the problem?

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[–] Dialectical_Idealist@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 14 minutes ago

Seems like our modern-day problems are never problems with capitalism itself, but problems in the past were problems with socialism.

[–] DengistDonnieDarko@hexbear.net 30 points 15 hours ago

real capitalism has never been tried nerd

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 16 points 14 hours ago

From Wikipedia: "The initial use of the term "capitalism" in its modern sense is attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850 ... and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1861". Two socialists, not describing an ideal, but rather describing reality (or, in other words, capitalism just is crony state capitlism).

[–] axont@hexbear.net 53 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Capitalism is good when I, a mediocre white person, can make enough money to flip real estate on the side and make at least $350k per year and pay little to no capital gains tax and then buy a used snowmobile dealership

Capitalism is crony capitalism when there's a big financial and real estate sector run by billionaires who make it hard for me, a mediocre white person, to flip real estate on the side and also I have to pay capital gains tax meaning I am precarious in my position as a snowmobile dealership owner

[–] Lyudmila@hexbear.net 5 points 8 hours ago

What if we try a capitalism where we just give everyone $350k per year and we have no snowmobile dealerships or real estate

[–] polpotkin@hexbear.net 9 points 13 hours ago

Ok ok but what if everyone owned capital rather than just a few people. Like some sort of law that enforces fair ownership. Maybe seize the means of production in some sort of redistribution scheme.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 42 points 18 hours ago

look! I made a meme where an interplanetary fascist mass murderer says the thing I believe to be true!

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 26 points 17 hours ago

You can have laissez-faire free market capitalism for about 30 minutes before the big capitalists establish a state.

[–] BadTakesHaver@hexbear.net 53 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

in this caption we are meant to agree with the guy who in the show tries to enslave the entire planet

[–] jared@mander.xyz 23 points 19 hours ago

It's a story as old as written history.

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 39 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

economically illiterate

CHUDs “fucking love economics” the same way they accuse the left of “fucking loving science”.

Everyone’s an anti-intellectual until it’s time to disregard economics.

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 20 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Liberals love economics too. Except instead of “it’s simple really, let me explain to you the supply-demand curve” the liberals will say “let me explain why this program for Pell Grant recipients benefits you metaphysically although not actually, and here’s why you should love it”

[–] corgiwithalaptop@hexbear.net 11 points 15 hours ago

Imagine you have two cows: morshupls

[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 18 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Liberals who think like this imply they do not comprehend the centrality of contract, property, corporate, copyright and patent laws to a capitalist society or that these concepts are so hopelessly abstract in their head that it might as well have the same relevance as mentioning bowling or botany

Just wtf do they think a state is? These people have no idea what capitalism is

[–] godlessworm@hexbear.net 11 points 15 hours ago

they think “the state” is just someone standing next to a money printer with a list of DEI based welfare programs to send bags of cash to (when they aren’t making oppressive age of consent laws)

[–] WoodScientist@hexbear.net 11 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

People can't recognize the difference between capitalism and commerce. You don't need to completely end private property and free enterprise in order to end capitalism. Hell, even the Soviet Union at times found keeping some small private businesses around made a lot of sense.

I don't want a world where people can't work for themselves, provide services directly to others, etc. Every restaurant and bar doesn't need to be run by a central planning committee. But giant conglomerates that control the employment of tens of thousands? Maybe that's the kind of thing the private market shouldn't be running. We can let people operate their own modest independent businesses without also letting Walmart exist. We can let people earn enough modest profit from the fruits of their labor to make starting new businesses worthwhile, without also allowing people to hoard such vast fortunes that they become geopolitically dangerous. We can have commerce without capitalism. I want a world where people can work for themselves without having to work for someone else or for the government. That doesn't mean I want a world where you can become a billionaire by playing labor arbitrage with the hard work of thousands of other human beings. We can let people own their own homes without also allowing industrial-scale landlording.

Commerce and capitalism are not the same thing. We can have commerce without capitalism. Commerce existed long, long before capitalism, and it will exist long after capitalism has been relegated to the history books.

[–] godlessworm@hexbear.net 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

out of curiosity, how would employment look in a situation like that? if there’s a small privately owned business, is the owner expected to do all of the work themselves? does the entire amount of profit get divided evenly among the owner and all workers? if not then i have to disagree, because then you have exploitation happening. one person earning more than everybody else in other words means everybody else takes a paycut to pay for that one person to have more than everyone else. and even on a small scale that’s a very slippery slope and it comes with social implications that are in my opinion detrimental to society as well as bad for each person’s individual mental development in that it reinforces that relationship and normalizes the exploitation and competitive mindset at its core. there’s nothing inherently wrong with competition but society needs to be set up in a way that socializes people into a mindset of cooperation rather than competition. as the dialectics are in motion and socialism becomes more and more realized this should be the natural result. the same idea applies to what happens when private ownership is allowed. what that looks like evolves over time and people adapt to those conditions and we end up where we are now.

[–] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 3 points 9 hours ago

USSR had workers' cooperatives, but didn't allow full-fledged private businesses after NEP was ended.

[–] XxFemboy_Stalin_420_69xX@hexbear.net 5 points 14 hours ago

We can let people operate their own modest independent businesses without also letting Walmart exist. We can let people earn enough modest profit from the fruits of their labor to make starting new businesses worthwhile, without also allowing people to hoard such vast fortunes that they become geopolitically dangerous. We can have commerce without capitalism.

wow i couldn't disagree more. beheading small business tyrants for their crimes against the workers is going to be the best part of the revolution and it'd be better not to have one at all if we're going to let "modest independent businesses" continue to earn "modest profit" afterwards

[–] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 42 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Turns out libs are projecting when they say "Oh, communists just say that the USSR/China/etc. 'weren't real communism.'"

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 42 points 19 hours ago

Real capitalism has never been tried outside of the Republic of Venice sans-troll

[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 29 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

If only good, selfless people become our overlords via accumulating all capital, it will all work out completely and utterly fine. What? What do you mean people die and are replaced by their failchildren?

Even the very most charitable way to think about it breaks down after one generation. You buffoons. You idiots.

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 28 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

So the solution to the failings of capitalism is to create immortal billionaire god kings. Got it

[–] corvidenjoyer@hexbear.net 4 points 12 hours ago

So the solution to the failings of capitalism is to create immortal billionaire god kings. Got it

speech-r

wait, what are you doing?

"So much good undone... for what reason?"

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 16 points 18 hours ago

“No you see you need to trust porky more. Your distrust in porky hypnotizing him into being greedy. Subsidize our gov-I mean, our betters and they will act against their interests and be less greedy.”

[–] SchillMenaker@hexbear.net 10 points 16 hours ago

The only functional capitalistic alternative to "crony capitalism" is China. The libs don't want that though because they're too economically and politically illiterate to understand, well, economics and politics I guess.

Did that work? Did I own them hard enough to change their minds?

[–] GoodGuyWithACat@hexbear.net 15 points 17 hours ago

He's right that most people don't hate capitalism (even though they should).

They hate the effects that capitalism has on their lives and have no coherent model to explain it.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

They're just too philosophically illiterate to understand how things develop and change over time.

[–] ComradeSpahija@hexbear.net 4 points 14 hours ago

What no object permanence does to a mf

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 22 points 18 hours ago

if you remove all the onerous regulations around child slavery, landlordism, privately owned security services, human trafficking, heavy arms manufacturing, human experimentation, organ harvest, and sexual exploitation... crony corporatism will cease to exist and the bright, radiant future of market fundamentalism will emerge.

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 20 points 18 hours ago

Capitalism? Like the drug dealer?

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 11 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

I hate more the term "late stage capitalism". Late stage implying that the "normal" capitalism is totally acceptable.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 32 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

“Late stage capitalism” is supposed to mean when the contradictions in capitalism heighten to the point where the market cannibalizes every other aspect of the political economy. It’s part of a Marxian analysis of how capitalism evolves, it just gets generalized to “the dystopian aspects of current-day capitalism.”

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 11 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

That's the thing, when l see libs using the term they use it focusing on the big techs and the cyberpunk ultra surveillance capitalism and I always feel that the person using it is totally okay with everything else in capitalism minus the big tech.

[–] hankthetankie@hexbear.net 20 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

I always seen it as the imperial core falliing into fascism as a last dying breath. Imperialism is the last stage of capitalism

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Totally okay to bomb and exploit other countries but my country exploiting their own citizen? Unacceptable, we have to go back.

[–] hankthetankie@hexbear.net 6 points 16 hours ago

Just as Nazi Germany was about lebensraum ( access to new markets and resources) todays capitalists need the same.

[–] corvidenjoyer@hexbear.net 12 points 18 hours ago

There are different stages of capitalism though.

[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 11 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The heinous late stage capitalism, compared to the joys of child labor during the industrial revolution.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

In theory their conditions improved by capitalism but damn it's hard to imagine that factory labour in coal powered factories with near 0 ventilation was better than field labour under a hot sun.

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 9 points 16 hours ago

No this is actually false, the living conditions of 19th century capitalism for labourers were substantially worse than subsistence farming, so much so that the only reason capitalists could even get people to work in factories was the enclosure movement, which forcibly kicked people out of commons, making it impossible to grow your own food, and thereby forcing people to either work in factories or starve. It wasn't until the late 19th century that, for example, life expectancy began rising in England, the home of the industrial revolution, and that was only because England had begun to outsource the most horrific of its jobs to its larger empire, using imperialism to bribe the working class English folk with quality of life improvements. Capitalism actually lowers living standards for all but the wealthiest; it just so happens "the wealthiest" began to include workers in the imperial core.

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The worst part is that "late stage capitalism" as a term isn't even real. It's a corruption of "late capitalism," a concept invented (at least in the English speaking world; in German it's a much older concept) in the 70's to describe neoliberal financialised capitalism (as opposed to industrial capitalism) that had just been unleashed upon the world, most famously in the book Late Capitalism by Ernst Mandel and Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson. Both of these writers use the term "late capitalism" not meaning "late stage capitalism" ie this is the last version of capitalism and it's close to collapsing, but "late" as in "the latest." So really "late capitalism" is "capitalism as of late" or "the latest stage of capitalism," not "the last stage of capitalism." The term has taken on a meaning of its own, morphing into this "late stage capitalism" by commentators who don't actually read these works and don't really know what it means, wishcasting "late stage capitalism" as a fact of the world rather than a fundamental misinterpretation of a long standing term.

[–] hankthetankie@hexbear.net 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

However the both Marx and Lenin had a word on late stage capitalism. Perhaps not the phrase but the stages." Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 5 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, and neither lived until now and I think both would agree that what they wrote about was not the last stage of capitalism. Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism was mostly correct for his time, but imperialism today (especially the American financialised imperialism that Michael Hudson has so thoroughly explored in Superimperialism) is meaningfully different and "higher" than Lenin's rather vulgar imperialism, which was naked territory grabbing and domination. Unfortunately we've yet to see "late stage" capitalism, nor will we until capitalism itself is smashed. For it's not on track to destroy itself any time soon, and every crisis it's encountered it's been able to absorb and change to suit its needs rather well. Capitalism will not die of its own accord, it must be killed.

[–] Dirt_Possum@hexbear.net 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I think you might be a little off here. I really appreciate that you brought up Ernst Mandel's and Fredric Jameson's works, but I have to disagree about them not intending the word "late" to mean "closer to the terminal end." Without going and spending a bunch of time digging for quotes, it seemed pretty clear to me that they were referring to the concept that there are certain stages to capitalism (as already noted both Marx and Lenin discussed) and not using the word just to mean "the most recent" not to mention that would be an odd way to phrase it. I also agree with you that Michael Hudson (and slightly more tangentially Edward Said) have further developed the concept of modern imperialism beyond Lenin's analysis, but that said, Lenin's conception of imperialism was not at all vulgar, not even in comparison to modern Marxists additions to it. Have you read Lenin's work on imperialism? He specifically developed it beyond the idea of "naked territory grabbing and domination" of old school colonialism to mean what it means today, including how Hudson mean and use it.

Capitalism will not die of its own accord, it must be killed.

Distinction without a difference. Capitalism will be killed because of its own inherent contradictions which make its killing an inevitability.

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 1 points 13 hours ago

I have read Lenin, and yes it's a bit more complicated since he does talk about financial imperialism but not in the same way things have developed post war. Also this is Jameson, in the introduction, describing his choice of "late."

What 'late' generally conveys is... the sense that something has changed, that things are different, that we have gone through a transformation of the life world which is somehow decisive but incomparable with the older convulsions of modernization and industrialization, less perceptible and dramatic, somehow, but more permanent precisely because more thoroughgoing and all-pervasive.

And Mandel on "late":

... will enable us to explain THE history of the capitalist mode of production and above all the THIRD phase of this mode OF production, which we shall call late capitalism', (page 42)

Neither of these convey the idea that this is the last stage or a terminal stage, just another, most recent stage. And indeed Mandel does try and claim late capitalism is different than the imperialism described by Lenin, writing

the structure of the world economy in the first phase of late capitalism is distinguished by several important characteristics from its structure in the age of classical imperialism. (page 69)

[–] hankthetankie@hexbear.net 4 points 16 hours ago

I don't think Marx nor Lenin said it would. However the options are not capitalism or socialism, the options are socialism or extinction. Or call it barbarism.

Just like a cancercell capitalism need to expand to survive even if it kills the host in the process.

Sure you can control the water in the post apocalyptic desert . That way it would adapt.

[–] Florn@hexbear.net 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I've never seen this show, is that really a line?

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 8 points 16 hours ago

if this is a for real question no, the guy speaking is basically Goku's Dad but if they had mustaches instead of monkey tails (philtrum = the place where the mustache go, they're Viltrumites~!)

[–] fox@hexbear.net 1 points 15 hours ago

No, it's a superhero show and that dude is the Superman analogue. In that scene iirc he's telling his wife that the Pentagon is too on his ass and they can solve their own problems