Our society is not without faults. Our domestic and foreign policies are also often flawed. To correct failings, we need people who point them out, however unpopular that may be. We should be enabling a wide framework of public discourse, not seeking to silence people. To date, we haven’t quite reached the level of hysteria of 1950s McCarthyism, but we are perhaps coming close.
Cool. Now, let’s start getting into whether communism is “extremism” or not, rather than just begging the question.
Any talk of communism is a “red” herring when it comes to this topic. Russia isn’t in any way officially, notionally, or superficially communist.
People still be calling Russia communist even though the Soviet Union famously fell under Boris Yeltsin
… and people calling themselves communist still leaping to its defence, for some inexplicable reason.
Yeah I don’t get that one either.
Maybe they lie…?
It’s more the idea that a lot of communists have that “anything that challenges American global hegemony = automatically good.”
Colloquially referred to as “Tankies”. America = Bad, therefore Not America = Good mostly sums up Tankie takes, but more properly Tankies is a pejorative for authoritarian communists, usually apologists for China and the CCP nowadays. IIRC originally it referred to communist parties in Western countries that excused Soviet actions during the Prague Spring and such, although I’d say that is an obsolete term.
I didn’t realize that was even open for debate…
That’s because western propaganda has destroyed your ability to learn or think critically about anything left of capitalism. It’s not really your fault, it’s trillions spent on creating that mentality.
No, it’s because communism is an extremist ideology. You literally can’t go farther left on the political spectrum than communism. That is the very definition of extremism.
By the way, capitalism is not a political ideology. It’s an economic one. I am a capitalist, but a centrist Libertarian one. I used to consider myself left of center, but the insanity of the left since Oct 7, 2023, has caused me to shift right of center.
Using the left and right spectrum is idiotic and not indicative of how extreme an ideology is. It’s like… 6th grade understanding of the nuances and philosophy of political, economic, and social issues and was created to make capitalism seem like a reasonable centrist position.
Actually, it sounds more like you’re dismissing a standard political spectrum model to make communism sound less extreme than it is. Would you feel better if I used the word ‘radical’ rather than ‘extreme’?
So extreme and radical to you are just “the further away an ideology is from our current form of capitalism, the more extreme it is” then?
No, extreme is the further away an ideology is from centrist/moderate ideologies. At one end of the spectrum is fascism, at the other is communism.
And who gets to dictate what defines a centrist or moderate ideology?
“Economics” aren’t political?
You contradict yourself.
By your own logic, if capitalism isn’t a political ideology then neither is communism.
The fact that you wrote these in the same comment lets everyone know that either you are ignorant, or you are extremely misinformed on the subject at hand.
Communism is inherently a political/economic ideology. Capitalism is primarily an economic ideology with political implications.
You are misinformed. Communism has ‘political implications’ the same way that capitalism does. See the list of communist ideologies on Wikipedia for a primer.
Okay, it’s become clear that you really have no clue what you’re talking about. You have a good rest of your life man, I truly mean that.
Capitalism is indefensible from a libertarian perspective. A central libertarian tenet is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. However, the capitalist employer-employee contract inherently involves a violation of this tenet. The employer gets 100% of the legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of the enterprise. Despite workers’ joint de facto responsibility for using up inputs to produce outputs, workers as employees get 0%
@canada
It’s been a long time since I’ve read any of this stuff - do you have a reference for the claim about legal and de facto responsibility?
That being said, I would argue that they are not incompatible but rather that capitalism acts as a constraint on liberty. That being said, it is the economic system in which liberty is maximized relative to any other system. No doubt that’s why it has persisted.
Liberty and longevity are not directly related. History has in fact shown the opposite. Like… capitalism is only a few hundred years old at most, and has only existed in its current form since the 18th century. Compare that to systems of fuedalism, monarchism, places that have had oppressive regimes since conception like Saudi Arabia. Also look at how our current form of capitalism has subsisted largely on the backs of usee countries being bled and made to kneel by usar countries, which is arguably the largest contributor to its perceived longevity.
Sorry, by “persisted” I didn’t mean to imply that it’s the oldest. More that it is surviving where other systems have failed.
Article: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
Video: https://youtu.be/c2UCqzH5wAQ
Either one introduces the argument against capitalism based on the liberal principle of imputation.
Economic democracy, a market economy where worker coop is the only firm legal structure, maximizes liberty much better than capitalism
@canada
Interesting theory. Does this exist on any large scale anywhere in the world?
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
https://www.usworker.coop/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
@canada
This comment demonstrates what the parent comment said.