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refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months agoI think that a Milton Friedman/Ronald Reagan style of anarcho-capitalist idiology will eventually become popular in any capitalist system, as capitalism demands endless growth at its core.
You can put some patchwork on top of it (social democracy-style regulations and safety nets), but since people are allowed to have enough power to buy governments and influence media conglomerates, it will just revert back into what we now call late stage capitalism.
Although even if we cap income, politicians are surprisingly cheap to buy. $10000 slipped into the right pocket could influence the vote enough for a deregulation-bill to pass, not to mention privately-owned media has the need to make a profit, and they’re going to want to make more profit so much, that they’ll do whatever it takes to do so.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I think what you describe is important to be aware of, and as things are now it rings mostly true. But I’m not entirely sure. Wasn’t USA even more capitalistic in the late 1800’s? then it turned towards actually improving conditions under and after the great depression. Which went reasonably well until the late 70’s, where it probably peaked with Jimmy Carter. Ironically the oil crisis reversed the direction. But I suspect the direction can be reversed again.
AFAIK Russians considered the 70’s as late stage capitalism, but instead it was the Soviet Union that collapsed.
But again as things are now USA with Republicans getting ever more extreme it is going really really bad over there IMO, But USA is a very poor democracy, where an undemocratic or at least far from ideal 2 party system is protected by first past the post elections, that undermines democracy, together with a flawed system of freedom of speech that allows the press to spread outright lies without repercussions.
Most EU countries have better and stronger democracies, and I don’t think we are seeing late stage capitalism taking over here. Although we have some right wing tendencies, that are mostly driven by high immigration from the middle east, immigrants that on average don’t adapt well into our societies. Compared to the compassion of democracies in that regard, we have seen almost zero compassion from communist countries, so with regard to human values, socialism/*communism seems to not be the answer.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
According to Professor Richard Wolff (economic historian and Marxist economist), capitalism fails on average every 47 years. The late 1800s to the Great Depression was about 50-ish years; the Great Depression to the 70s oil crisis was about 30-40 years (depending on when you start timing it, if post-Depression or during); the Reagan-era 1980s deregulation to 2008 was 30-ish years, 2008 to COVID was 12 years.
The USSR failed for many reasons. One of which is totally their fault, where they didn’t adopt computers early enough. Another big fault, though, is the Cold War, where the US did everything in its power to overthrow Communist idiology wherever possible (see: Korea and Vietnam for extreme examples). That also includes economic sanctions, like we see today with the US and Cuba. When the US sanctions a country, they don’t do as well as when they have the ability to trade. This is because the US is a massive global economic superpower that produces a lot of important things needed to run a society, like medicine, technology, food, etc.
I’m not as well versed in current-day European politics, but do communist countries even exist in modern day Europe? If they do, then they’re probably poorer due to the probable economic sanctions levied by capitalist countries (the US generally forces countries that it trades with to also sanction US state enemies, which includes all countries considering themselves Communist, other than China since China became a massive economic superpower, in part due to the US establishing free trade agreements with Permenant Normal Trade Relations with China). I’m just guessing on this front, though. I also am not as well versed as to the timelines of social democracy on Europe, but I have been seeing more economicly right wing voices in European politics as of late.
Social democracy probably extends that 47 year timeline a bit, but deregulation will usually come at one point or another, since corruption can still exist. Not that Communism doesn’t have corruption issues either, because it definitely does. The issue is centralization of power. Marxist-style Anarchy might be an option, but TBH I’m not well versed enough on that subject to really comment on it or give an opinion on it.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There are no European countries that are communist anymore.
The only communist country that has ever done well economically is China, and that was after they threw away socialist dogma, and allowed capitalism in their economy.
I live in Denmark, which is part of Scandinavia, and we have been using the social democratic model since 1924 when we got a social democratic prime minister, who is also our longest sitting prime minister with 15 years.
Yes we are seeing an unfortunate turn to the right in recent years, as I mentioned before, probably to a large degree because of Immigration from the middle east. Where the right claim they will stop immigration. But probably also because we have seen socialism/communism is a failed model that simply doesn’t work.
Social democracy on the other hand does work pretty well, and is probably the strongest at protecting the population and observing human rigts. But currently people don’t want a humane government, they want the immigration to stop, because it threatens our democracies and economic model with a high degree of social welfare.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
100 years is quite a long time to maintain social demcracy.
While the right is using immigration to gain political power, I think if there wasn’t increased immigration, they would find some other way of gaining power. Idk which came first, but a lot of right wing politicians globally are taking notes from the US right (mainly Donald Trump), and the move towards fascism is gaining ground in many places right now, unfortunately. I can only comment on the US, really, but I believe in the US that this is successful due to people having economic hardship, which leads them to have more extreme idiologies (either socialism or fascism).
I hope Denmark will be able to maintain their social democracy and show that fascism is not the way.
Unfortunately, according to Marxist theory, social democracy will inevitably devolve back into straight capitalism, or worse. I hope Denmark can prove it wrong.