• OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Capitalism (strictly defined as the private ownership of the means of production) can’t exist without the premise of private property being protected by laws that are collectively agreed upon, enforced, and adjudicated by peers within your community.

    This implies that any capitalist society is compatible with democracy, as in, “the will of the masses controls society” and not as in “you get to vote for genocidal liberal who will make us richer, or genocidal fascist who will make us richer”

    • DeepGradientAscent@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      This implies that any capitalist society is compatible with democracy, as in, “the will of the masses controls society”

      Correct.

      Capitalism is an economic system, while democracy is a political system.

      To repeat myself a bit, my argument is that capitalism can’t exist without collective agreements on legislation, enforcement, and adjudication, along with strong protections for an individual’s rights.

      In the United States, we technically have a democratically-elected representative federal republic (on paper). This is one of many political systems where capitalism can exist, if we’re defining it strictly, as I’d mentioned above.

      And to be absolutely clear:

      If you believe that supposed self-described “socialists”, “communists”, “leftists”, and other “cHaMpIoNs Of tHe PeOpLe” have never been or are incapable of being genocidal maniacs, please promptly fuck your own face with your tankie butt-plug and jump off the nearest cliff.

      I will never entertain any authoritarian of whatever economic stripe or their apologists for even a nanosecond.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Capitalism is an economic system, while democracy is a political system.

        Economics is politics. The two are intertwined in every practical regard.

        To repeat myself a bit, my argument is that capitalism can’t exist without collective agreements on legislation, enforcement, and adjudication, along with strong protections for an individual’s rights.

        This is ahistorical. Colonialism does not require consensus or respect for individual rights and is a central feature of any capitalist system that is successful enough.

        If you believe that supposed self-described “socialists”, “communists”, “leftists”, and other “cHaMpIoNs Of tHe PeOpLe” have never been or are incapable of being genocidal maniacs, please promptly fuck your own face with your tankie butt-plug and jump off the nearest cliff.

        Oh yeah, socialists have done some horrible things. They pale in scale to the crimes of capitalism. The British empire, the nazi empire, the American empire. Socialism is a less violent system but that doesn’t mean that violence stops.

        I will never entertain any authoritarian of whatever economic stripe or their apologists for even a nanosecond.

        If you support capitalism you literally support an informal caste system where a small caste owns the collective accumlated fruits of labor of the whole human race stretching back to the start of agriculture, where any attempt to change the state of affairs that has any chance of success gets jakarta methoded. That is much more authoritarian than a red terror.