this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Car based infrastructure
the stock market
capitalism
A lot of people are saying Capitalism. Is it straight up capitalism that is the scam or the myth of financial mobility? (the American dream)
There's a lot of trouble with definitions regarding capitalism. (I'd call them intentional since muddying the waters serves the people who benefit from our current system.)
Pick any person who is complaining about "capitalism" right now.
If you proposed a system where everything was structured the same as it is right now, HOWEVER instead of shareholders and owners possessing companies, every, single company was a worker cooperative (owned and controlled by its workers) then I am 95% sure the anti-capitalist you picked would
With some minor variation. (Tankies don't think it's possible to maintain such a system without monopolizing violence. Anarcho-communists wouldn't be too happy about the scope and financial power of state and federal governments, and would seek to pare them down. Democratic socialists would think it was perfect. Little disagreements like that.)
But I think most other people (people who aren't anti-capitalists) would think "that's just a form of capitalism" if I described the above.
In fact, if I said,
Most ordinary people would consider that a form of capitalism. (Even though calling it capitalism is, technically, highly inaccurate). So it's a difficult conversation to have. Because most "anti-capitalists" disagree with most "pro-capitalists" on the basic definition of what they are fighting or defending.
I'm actually convinced that a lot of "pro-capitalists" are more eager to defend the free market system than they are to defend transferable, stock-marketable, individual ownership of the means of production. I think they would compromise on the latter if they could safeguard the former.
That's almost anarcho-syndicalism, which I am a proponent of some of the ideas of, but it leaves capital and government generally intact. That's probably the easiest way we could transition away from capitalism as we know it and not collapse the system entirely. It sounds almost feasible.