Capitalism is the telos of exploitation, looting, plundering, and enslavement.
It built colonial and neocolonial empires. The slave trade. Mass ecocide driving the planet to ruin.
All so a few people could own the means of production and steal everyone's surplus labour value.
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So you are saying Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, etc were capitalists? Because I don't know think he is saying that. Are you saying feudalism is superior?
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No, I'm saying capitalism pillaged and plundered and exploited *as well* as systems before it did.
He's saying it transcended those things. It didn't.
It just made them global, industrialised, more efficient, and existentially threatening.
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I never get what people are doing when they rail against capitalism. I never understand their definition nor there solution. " I woke up with a sore neck! $@&#! Capitalism!
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Here is a question:
If we kill the ability to accumulate vast, billionaire fortunes, clearly there will be less inequality - given the tremendous work those shits put into hoarding.
But would our species-level rapacity stop? Would overconsumption halt? War?
My feeling is no.
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If anything, capitalism grew *from* those structures & processes... it's a dysfunctional c&c system, but it is just that - it isn't a root cause.
If you take your point about feudalism, capitalism is more like a dysfunctional sovereign than a system unto itself, I think.
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All of these polluting megacorps, exploitative billionaires and so on are bootstrapped on top of industrial technologies that lack any historical precedent, unless you're a biblical literalist or something.
There is no telling how bad we could make alternative control systems.
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I think there are two roots to this problem that capitalism did not create, and the end of capitalism will not solve (in and of itself):
- the human organism is massively maladapted for the environment we engineered, and our hegemony is an ecological risk unto itself
- pollution
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So my feeling is, until we get really serious about how to solve a 10 billion plus population boom, or our ludicrous destructive capabilities vs. our very limited species-level coordination, or the staggering inefficiency of our tech, capitalism remains an academic issue.
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Here's the idea I don't trust:
The idea that people will get together worldwide and agree that capitalism kinda sucks and should be replaced AND that they figure out how to create a system that pollutes minimally, repairs ecosystems, distributes resources equitably...
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I don't think there is any grand sweeping ideological solution, except working to empower people a bit more and helping them to make better decisions.
It just seems completely at odds with all of human history to ascribe this level of *effective, coordinated* agency to large groups.
A few fanatics get together and break shit. Structures collapse. People organically build new stuff. Life goes on, in unexpected new directions.
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We've done it before in times of crisis. Total war, for instance.
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