we need to abolish capitalism - capitalism inevitably leads to fascism
Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining.
The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed.
So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups.
To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked.
That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time.
Thank you! I wrote it a while back and copy/pasted it from another comment of mine, and sadly I don’t have a corpus of writing to share with you, but I’m an anarchist, so I’d encourage you to check out an Anarchist FAQ to learn more about my world view.
The idealistic kill capitalism but I don’t have a replacement. So common, so boring, so never going to happen. The systems collapse ball is already rolling, survive and you can attempt whatever half thought through anarchist dream you have in mind. I swear this place goes full college freshmen some days.
Do you think we can build a successful alternative to capitalism without first building consensus that capitalism is not serving the needs of the working class?
I definitely agree that it’s hard, but all the most worthwhile things are. It’s obvious that the status quo cannot continue as it is, don’t you think we need to actually work on building a better future rather than being too afraid of the dangers associated with change to start on that journey? We can learn from history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Honestly, 100 mil or even 50 mil is more than enough for any human to live a carefree life, without the need to work ever again and without any material want or need.
But we would be fine without a wealth cap too, if we got rid of the concept of inheritance. Make as much money as you can or want, but actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps and when you die it all gets returned to the people (and not your nepo babies).
Sadly, capitalism cannot be reformed - of course laws can be passed that would improve the situation, but because the wealthy can just accumulate more wealth, and thus power, they can change the laws again in the future to benefit themselves - thus they can repeal any reforms you impose on them. There is only one path to long-term success - complete abolition of capitalism.
What would you replace it with? Your lofty ideal is a recipe for disaster for the working class until you have a fully-formed, tried and tested replacement system ready to drop in place. Until you’ve done that, you’re just foolishly damning millions of people to worse suffering.
That’s something we need to collectively work on - because we all have different needs and perspectives, no one person, no matter how educated, can just come up with the structure of a whole new society by themselves. We need to start by recognizing that our current system does not serve us, then we need to form consensus on how we can replace it.
I’d encourage you to read an Anarchist FAQ for more information:
the specifics of how to structure a non-hierarchical society must remain open for discussion and experimentation
give them a “you won capitalism” certificate and then tax their wealth above 999 million by 100%
we need to abolish capitalism - capitalism inevitably leads to fascism
Incredible write up, did you come up with that or is it a quote? I’d be quite interested in reading more if it’s available.
Thank you! I wrote it a while back and copy/pasted it from another comment of mine, and sadly I don’t have a corpus of writing to share with you, but I’m an anarchist, so I’d encourage you to check out an Anarchist FAQ to learn more about my world view.
The idealistic kill capitalism but I don’t have a replacement. So common, so boring, so never going to happen. The systems collapse ball is already rolling, survive and you can attempt whatever half thought through anarchist dream you have in mind. I swear this place goes full college freshmen some days.
Do you think we can build a successful alternative to capitalism without first building consensus that capitalism is not serving the needs of the working class?
Getting people to agree to torch government is easy. The new government is the hard part no has done well historically.
I definitely agree that it’s hard, but all the most worthwhile things are. It’s obvious that the status quo cannot continue as it is, don’t you think we need to actually work on building a better future rather than being too afraid of the dangers associated with change to start on that journey? We can learn from history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Half a bil is way more than enough.
Honestly, 100 mil or even 50 mil is more than enough for any human to live a carefree life, without the need to work ever again and without any material want or need.
But we would be fine without a wealth cap too, if we got rid of the concept of inheritance. Make as much money as you can or want, but actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps and when you die it all gets returned to the people (and not your nepo babies).
Sadly, capitalism cannot be reformed - of course laws can be passed that would improve the situation, but because the wealthy can just accumulate more wealth, and thus power, they can change the laws again in the future to benefit themselves - thus they can repeal any reforms you impose on them. There is only one path to long-term success - complete abolition of capitalism.
Oh i don’t try to defend it or keep it alive, lol. With the changes needed to make capitalism work for everyone it would no longer be capitalism.
What would you replace it with? Your lofty ideal is a recipe for disaster for the working class until you have a fully-formed, tried and tested replacement system ready to drop in place. Until you’ve done that, you’re just foolishly damning millions of people to worse suffering.
That’s something we need to collectively work on - because we all have different needs and perspectives, no one person, no matter how educated, can just come up with the structure of a whole new society by themselves. We need to start by recognizing that our current system does not serve us, then we need to form consensus on how we can replace it.
I’d encourage you to read an Anarchist FAQ for more information:
If you haven’t developed a working replacement then you’re just fantasizing about “something better”.
Do you believe that a better world is impossible?