- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336
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The reason capitalism leads to fascism is that inevitably capitalism will lead to untenable inequality. Injustice will be too great to ignore between the rich and the rest. This will lead to populism.
There are two forms of populism. One will seek to rectify the imbalances caused by capitalism. The other will seek to divert blame to minorities. If there were less blacks, immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. etc. then our society would not be in decay. One is much more useful to the Capitalist and so it will ultimately prevail. The capitalist will devote all resources to crushing the leftist populism up to and including directly funding fascism.
One is much more useful to the Capitalist and so it will ultimately prevail. The capitalist will devote all resources to crushing the leftist populism up to and including directly funding fascism.
Unless. We have to spread these ideas to as many people as possible. We can’t afford to call it early.
*unregulated undemocratic capitalism
Some might even call it ancap. Proto-fascism.
What does capitalism do when there is nothing left to take? It keeps taking
It goes keto and eats itself.
That’s called autophagy, not keto.
It’s not exclusive to it, but I used the term intentionally to point out the how the capitalists target the “fat” and also the “muscle” in the system to create very expensive ketones.
If you’re suggesting that a ketosis state doesn’t produce autophagy, maybe check your sources.
A ketosis state doesn’t produce autophagy, autophagy is a constant ongoing process in your body. Inanition is a better word.
You know very well that I was referring to the higher intensity of autophagy going on. Useless semantics bullshit. Enjoy being blocked.
- gets proved wrong
- blocks people
Yup just what I expected of the average Reddit refugee.
If you’re not familiar with the keto fanbase, good for you, btw.
Not proved wrong.
I’m not wasting time with “but actually” memes.
Line must go up and up! I work at a company that has been booming on the stock market, and the pressures for “line must go up always” don’t seem sustainable
We’re gonna find out as soon as AI, automation, and robotics are more cost efficient at performing most functions than humans.
My expectation is genocide/mass murder, as there are somewhere between 10-100x more people than the planets resources can sustain long term, at a developed world rate of consumption and the current level of technological efficiency/advancement.
Okay but how does AI/Automation/etc. cause a mass murder if the preoccupying assumption of automation is, quite literally, increase of technological efficiency and advancement?
That’s a classic one. All the money flows to the top. It leaves the majority of the population without jobs or money. If there are no serious welfare programs, people get very angry and hungry. Humanity is hardwired to start to revolt, riot and plunder in the face of large inequalities and with the astronomic levels it will be massive. The Hamptons and other places like it will be burned to the ground. It’ll be very ugly.
It seems like our only hope is that maybe the uber rich will decide that turning the world into a bloodbath just to max out their high score isn’t how they want to spend their time on Earth. I’m not optimistic on that front.
uber rich will decide that turning the world into a bloodbath just to max out their high score
That’s several chapters of my country’s history book summarized
Who do you think will control the kill bots? It’ll be the ultra wealthy who lead the remaining governments and corporations. Populations have historically revolted under severe economic stress, even when unemployment reaches 30-50%, and capitalism requires people receiving money in exchange for labor, so they can pay for goods and services; at a certain level of automation/unemployment that cyclical system shuts down. Robots don’t get paid, and they don’t buy goods or services.
When that happens the ultra wealthy will no longer have any need for the unemployed majority. They will have a means to suppress them (kill bots, wealth, political power), and numerous ecological/environmental reasons to cull the population down to a more manageable, sustainable size.
China is way ahead on this kind of automation.
Thing is…there is no real free market with proper competition, anyway. If there was such a thing, my groceries wouldn’t cost double now from what they were a mere five years ago (or quadruple, if looking at soda like Coke and Pepsi products). There is rampant collusion and price-fixing going on and not a damn government official seems to be doing anything about it. And yeah, the “but but the pandemic” excuse runs pretty thin as the years of this gouging continues.
The truth is, a real market is never actually truly competitive. In an unregulated market, competing firms always collude with each other to set prices and wages for the industry. “Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.
In a free market, aren’t you free to collude with your competitors in order to fix prices?
In a Hayekian free market, yes. Most (all?) actual free markets prohibit cartels, though.
In an unregulated market
There’s no such thing. All markets are regulated. Even ones dominated by cartels. Markets do not meaningfully exist without regulation. The only question is how they’re regulated.
“Free market” ideology is based on nonsense, they’ve proven this over and over.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
Those conditions of course don’t exist in the real world, best we can do is to regulate away market failures to approach the theoretical ideal. That’s the kind of thing ordoliberalism argues for, and it can indeed work very well in practice. Random example: You want companies to use packaging with less environmental impact. You could have a packaging ministry that decides which company uses what packaging for what, creating tons of state bureaucracy – or you could say “producers, you’re now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself”. What previously was an externality for those companies suddenly appears on their balance sheet and they self-regulate to use way more cardboard, easily recyclable plastics, whatnot.
or you could say “producers, you’re now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself”
Definitely wouldn’t solve the problem as they’d just find the cheapest method of disposal to match the letter of the law and go about their day.
Corporations don’t self-regulate. They regulate the regulators. They work and then later buy the refs.
Definitely wouldn’t solve the problem as they’d just find the cheapest method of disposal to match the letter of the law and go about their day.
Those are illegal. Already were before. I’m not talking about a hypothetical, here, the policy is over 30 years old.
Corporations don’t self-regulate. They regulate the regulators. They work and then later buy the refs.
Yeah if they do that were you are then maybe elect better politicians. They sure as hell try it over here but it’s not nearly as much as an issue as e.g. in the US.
I dunno if I were in Germany I wouldn’t be so smug about electing politicians that prevent a slide into fascism.
Are you actually trying to make a point or did you simply want to be hostile.
My point is that it’s not as simple as setting “common sense” neoliberal rules when the corporations actively evade them. The problem in the US is also more complicated than you’re making it, here we need to basically redo a court which is full of people on lifetime appointments in order to roll back their ruling that political corruption is basically free speech.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
That’s not even remotely true. Natural monopolies exist because of how natural resources work, and oligopolies or undercutting of prices to destroy weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
It can’t happen given perfect rationality as it’s not in the rational interest of the majority to allow a minority their monopolies.
It’s a fucking theoretical model. The maths check out, that’s not the issue the issue is that it’s theory, with very glaring limitations.
Funnily enough, not even neoliberals believe in the free market regardless of how much they spout its nonsense.
Thatcher was one of such neoliberals, she would always talk about how people should become self-sufficient and governments shouldn’t interfere in the free market for it to truly work and so on, but during her rule she was spending billions in subsidies for corporations (aka government interference in the free market). Of course, they weren’t called subsidies in the paperwork but some other bullshit like “public investment”, but their effect was still the same.
Is the pandemic really the main claimed reason in the US? Here in central Europe it seems that since February of 2022, all products have been coming exclusively from Ukraine, so that is why they just had to become more expensive you know…
That joke was good, but it’s old now. Everyone should understand that it was due to the peak of oil/gas prices due to the Ukraine war, that had cascade effects on the price of transportation, fertilizer, energy, groceries…which then compounded into general inflation with some price gouging too to keep it from going back as quickly.
If you want to keep that from happening again, gradually reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for your security, not just to “be green”.
Many businesses in the US still cling to that trope, yes. We all understood that it was to a be a temporary issue in 2020 and 2021, but businesses took that to mean they could just never drop their prices now that people were willing, at the time, to pay for it. I’m not talking luxury goods either, I’m talking about staples to maintain life, such as meat, vegetables, and even water prices have risen. This is untenable for many, many people.
Some of the comments in this thread really tell you why it takes a novel laureate to say this. Some of y’all do not have a basic understanding of history, economic systems, or what the term reactionary actually means.
The correct response to “neo liberal capitalism has contributed to the rise of fascism” should be “no shit, Sherlock”
It’s truly sad that that isn’t 100% of the comments here.
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed, y’all. That doesn’t mean all liberals are fascist, that means that fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism.
And just in case y’all also don’t know what that means, “liberalism” in that context isn’t “Obama liberal, Bush conservative,” it means the political ideology of liberalism, of which both Bush and Obama were proponents of.
ETA: I’m not engaging anymore… it’s not my job to teach y’all the difference between an economic system and authoritarian states. Also, your magic has no power here, I am an anarchist, not a stalinist. Please educate yourselves. If for no other reason, do it to make it easier to pwn the tankies or whatever the fuck
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed, y’all.
I really, really hate that expression. It’s like it’s purposely designed to alienate people with mostly good intentions telling them they’re no different from horrible people they hate with a fiery passion.
That doesn’t mean all liberals are fascist, that means that fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism.
Saying it means something other than what it plainly does mean doesn’t make it any better. Maybe it means that to you, but any slogan you have to explain is a shit slogan. All it does is signal membership in your in-group while telling everyone else who hears it that you’re part of their out-group.
This is a problem with slogans and not just this slogan. Another one is “ACAB” which people get upset about because they know someone who is a cop and they don’t think that cop is a bastard… But “policing has systemic issues that hurt marginalized people disproportionately, primarily exists at the intersection between haves and have nots in a way that mostly serves the capitalist ruling class rather than creating justice” doesn’t fit in a sign.
okay but all cops, conclusively, ARE bastards, and we should say it so no idiot idealistic kids think they can join and be the good one.
because its true, and they are. all of them.
if one ever stopped being a bastard, they would stop being a cop pretty quick. usually via training accident.
I’m not so sure training to be a cop has any impact on whether your parents were married 18+ years before.
The police aren’t going anywhere. The path you described means no one who wants to better the system should join… so it will always just be people who want to abuse power. Am I reading your proposal wrong? We should workshop this.
Edit: re-read what I wrote and realized it sounded dickish instead of constructive. Sorry about that, my dumb lump of a brain thought it sounded a lot different when I was writing it.
the system cannot be improved ‘from the inside’, ‘reform from within’ has not worked in the past four hundred years of constant trying, when institutional culture was far less entrenched.
what has changed, that it would magically work now? that the fucking mythical good-cop king under the mountain will return and save us all by making the often literal neo nazi death squads whose soul reason for existing is the maintenance of hierarchal violence and wealth/class disparity be nice and cool and prosocial?
Last 400 years what has changed? A lot. I’m not saying the police are going to change anytime soon, but women have only had the ability to vote for 25% of that. That was a big change. The end of legalized slavery outside of incarceration hasn’t been around that long either… Kinda big one might say. Before I die I hope to see large improvements in rehabilitation during incarceration as efforts are growing world wide.
We can live with hope and keep pushing towards a better life for people, or we can cower in fear and think nothing will ever change. Hell, 20 years ago a universal healthcare system in the U.S. would have been thought impossible to ever occur, now I think that it could happen in the next 20 years if people get out and vote for it.
For every inch we take there is always backlash and sometimes we lose ground. We just need to hope we don’t lose decades, if not a 250 years come this election.
okay but, like, specifically, this specific question:
what has changed, that it would magically work now? that the fucking mythical good-cop king under the mountain will return and save us all by making the often literal neo nazi death squads whose soul reason for existing is the maintenance of hierarchal violence and wealth/class disparity be nice and cool and prosocial?
what specific changes have happened? what did the police ‘reforms’ after 2020 fix? have the rates of innocent people gunned down in the streets in the woods in their homes gone down in the past four years? what about the time before that? or before that? or before that? your proposal has failed, constantly, invariable, without one exception, since before the invention of the steam engine. it’s not even stupidity anymore; it’s insanity.
stop cowering. stop restricting your horizon of action to the things your oppressors tell you you’re allowed to do. look for the gaps. look the the real solutions. try playing a non-pacifist run of ‘wolfenstein’, see if you do any better.
good aesthetics and good vibes ≠ good intentions
and its the vibes that liberals really care about. its the obsession with feelings and aesthetics over truth. which is also why it’s such fertile soil for fascism to grow in. scratch a liberal, break the good vibes, snap them out of it, make them look at a homeless person, and they go fasch real quick. they certainly do a lot of shit fascists would approve of, they just kick some sand over it after. for example: the homeless purges about to sweep through california were ordered by a liberal, with the broad approval of liberals.
the concentration camps for migrants were built as much under liberals and fascists. as long as they dont have to see it, any amount of horror is fine. if it helps them not see suffering, any amount of horror is encouraged. they’re nice, they’re pleasant, but they are not friends, and the assumption that we’re natural allies, that they can behave as badly as they want and still count on left support is how american politics got as fucked as they are.
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exactly this just the natural end result of capitalism, the end goal has always been complete control by the ruling class.
Some of y’all do not have a basic understanding of history, economic systems, or what the term reactionary actually means.
Do you?
The correct response to “neo liberal capitalism has contributed to the rise of fascism” should be “no shit, Sherlock”
That’s pretty much most of the comments in this thread
And just in case y’all also don’t know what that means, “liberalism” in that context isn’t “Obama liberal, Bush conservative,” it means the political ideology of liberalism, of which both Bush and Obama were proponents of.
I don’t think these two were ever liberal about anything. The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.
In order, but not quoting because mobile app and lazy:
Yes.
I said some.
They were both liberal, in that they were both proponents of liberalism, as in “liberal democracy.” Not liberalism as left of center. Liberalism as in market economies and private property.
I’m also not necessarily associating liberalism as a whole to fascism. All zits are zots, but not all zots are zits, you dig? Fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism and capitalism, but it doesn’t mean liberalism is fascistic or that it is inevitable. It means that when liberalism is threatened, in decline, backed into a corner by its own contradictions, fascism is one way that it defends itself so that the status quo can be maintained. It just depends on which part of the status society/the ruling class/those in charge value more. The personal freedom bit, the private property bit, the lifestyle of the rich bit? Social democracy is another way that liberalism defends itself, favored by those who value the other end of the spectrum. Fascism is a reaction to growing tensions around those contradictions and growing support for things like social democracy and actual socialism.
Also, this article specifically cites neo liberalism, an ideology of its own, and an outgrowth of liberalism, but liberalism itself. The shittiest form liberalism takes without going full fash IMHO, but it’s hard to define “shitty” in any sort of academic sense. But fuck Reagan and Thatcher.
The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.
What specifically got called out was neoliberalism. While ordoliberalism was briefly called neoliberalism the general understanding of the term is “Whatever nefarious shit the Atlas network is currently up to”. Things like conflating the free market with unregulated markets (which are anything but free), trickle-down economics, ludicrously excessive rent seeking behaviour, like say privatised pension funds, publishing ratings calling countries “nanny states” for having warnings on cigarettes because yes the tobacco lobby is very much part of that ilk, really the list is pretty endless: It’s pure class war. War creates victims, those victims need handling, and misdirection of ire is a very convenient strategy, “It’s not the billionaires who own everything who are at fault that you can’t make rent, it’s the immigrants”.
It’s not just Marx who is rotating in his grave, Adam Smith is very much spinning with at least the same RPM. It’s after all his own work which gets abused by those people.
As to the more sensible liberalisms – they largely got captured. The EU has a strong ordoliberal bent actually regulating markets ((it’s in fact constitutionally a social market economy), but that neolib shit is still eating away at it and many people, even policy makers, can’t really tell the difference.
The term liberalism has a wide history, associating it as a whole to fascism sounds a stretch.
Socialists seem rather illiberal about the definition and allowed use of the word and concept of liberal. They hear “a liberal?” and think “a fascist!”. I suspect that this greatly plays into the polarization between tankies and limbrols here on lemmy.
For example a newer definition of fascism is 1. belief in inequality based on 2. a mythological identity (e.g. race which isn’t real). That is useful to talk about trumpism vs the neoliberal democrats. But socialists completely refute that and insist it’s both the same fascism because capitalism. And that is where any discussion ends in my experience. It’s like we’re dividing and conquering ourselves for the benefit of the fascists…
Of course they are right in terms of foreign policy, which is absolutely fascist towards “shithole countries” no matter who rules in the white house. Neoliberalism is: 1. belief in inequality based on 2. economic or class status 3. personal freedom to die in whatever way seems best to you.
And once the prosperity is distributed away with rising wealth inequality that does lead to plutocracy and then fascism. And I suspect the socialists are right that without an explicit socialist component in your ideology this outcome is inevitable.
But unfortunately their definitions are stuck based on outdated theories written before 1950.
They hear “a liberal?” and think “a fascist!”.
Nope. The primary reasoning is “a liberal?” “They’re going to create conditions conducive of fascism”. That specifically applies to neoliberalism which really is modern-day feudalism, to each billionaire their fiefdom. Fascist politics allow them to distract the proletariat from the actual source of their plight, it allows them to bribe a couple of people to get the laws they want instead of orchestrating complicated astroturf campaigns. It affords them legal privileges impossible in proper democracies.
The secondary reasoning is a hard to avoid slippery slope: Belief in inequality is a very neoliberal thing, you have “the valiant productive people” and “the lazy masses”. Illusions of false merit, people born into money legitimately believing they’re self-made, considering anyone who doesn’t want to hustle or exploit others meritless, therefore it’s “just natural and just” if they end up homeless and without health insurance. Have you listened to The Wall lately. The Pink Floyd album.
You seem to be throwing around the term “socialist” in a similar naive way
All right then… somehow in all of the history people wanted to get out of socialist/communist countries to the liberal ones so bad, that they had to build walls and shoot the trespassers.
Idk about you but I am gonna stick to the liberalism with solid amount of welfare and public services. However, you are free to move to Cuba or any other plethora of socialist countries to live however you want.
Papers pleaseAh yes the vuvuzela argument. Much easier than analyzing what the ideologies actually incentivize and lead to or using your eyes to take a look at the state of the world.
Complete brain rot. If LLMs reacted this way to every mention of socialism we’d think they needed more training. Chat GPT would express more a more nuanced and understanding-demonstrating answer than this. You should consider feeling ashamed.
I understand your frustration but you are misguided and ignorant. Education is truly a blessing to not repeat same mistakes from the past.
I am sure however that you are in extreme minority and pose zero danger to society. My sympathy remains. One has to believe in something. God, ufos or communism.
In a world dominated by capitalist realism I find that an ironic stance.
Socialism isn’t only implementable as an authoritarian state, but any attempt to implement it will be met with fierce resistance from “liberal” countries whose ruling class is not threatened by fascism but is threatened by socialism.
You’re fighting for the oppressor.
I am not fighting for anything. I am enjoying my life in a capitalist society. Thank you very much.
Enjoy it while you can, capitalism is actively destroying our climate and causing never before seen levels of wealth inequality. Fascism is the inevitable next step and is rapidly approaching. It will not perpetuate much longer whether by self-destruction, or hopefully, by replacement so that we can continue to thrive as a species.
That’s doomer speak from too much scrolling. I once too believed these things for a time but the world hasn’t ended, improved even. I am no longer as depressed and regained clarity of mind.
I hope you too can find peace and see the reason before all the time dwindles out like a sand from between your fingers.I am typing it lying on my huge bed, with cat at my side, full fridge, iPhone, iPad, car with full tank in the garage, 100 sqm apartment I own in the comfy part of the city. Steady, mostly passive income. Free healthcare working ok, education.
Why would I want communism? I would have to be not okay in the head
🎵 The price of convenience will be our defeat 🎵
I’d also reccomend Skyline Blvd, John’s Song and Times New Roman. Oh and Sleepwalker, from the Destroy What Destroys you album
Cool but you are even more guilty than me if you just wait for some idealistic, mythical system to solve all problems instead of acting with what is here. Now.
You were sold some horseshit ma’am/sir
i hate it when I hear people making the claim that it is capitalism that has helped so many people in the world with better quality of life and more opportunities and better outcomes, etc.
Capitalism is a fucking disease that we need to rid ourselves of, it is worse than Ebola the way it infects our minds with the dumbest shit.
You know what has made lives better for billions of people? The washing machine and the cotton gin and fucking electricity.
Capitalism has fought against progress every step of the way.
Capitalism was nice when it first popped up. Because it was an improvement over feudalism.
Actually, it wasn’t that nice when it first popped up, considering the first capitalist ventures were colonialism (including the conquest of the Aztec and Incan empires and the east Indian tea company that was worse for India than Hitler was for Europe).
But it was relatively nice because before capitalism, most development needed to be done by the king, who had limited funds. Bankers had been building wealth and capitalism allowed them to become new sub kings with their own empires. More empires meant more development, which also means a lot of employment, so it did increase the quality of life for many people as they got paid to improve things around them and new products popped up.
But we’ve since outgrown the whole kings thing for control of a geographic or political region while corporations are still run like dictatorships (with the executive team acting as sub kings for the board, which acts as sub kings for the shareholders, where institutional investors dominate, which just makes the whole thing less transparent because those institutions also have similar command structures).
So while there is some truth to capitalism having had a positive impact, the overall story is more complicated than that (the plunder from colonialism made it look a lot better at a high price in the colonies, and it was a relative improvement to “only the lord of the land can develop it and benefit from that improvement”) and society has generally since rejected that model for running political regions but the economic model has yet to catch up.
The capitalists are resisting that change similarly to how the kings resisted changing from monarchies to republics and have been since around WWI and the fascist regimes of the 20s and 30s were a result of capitalists siding with them to prevent various leftist movements from gaining power.
Fucking well put!
Capitalism puts greed at the wheel and, naturally,
inventionsproducts are churned out, some really useful, some terrible. To make it work, you need to regulate hard to keep the greed from taking over the innovation.Suffering as a means of production is the heart of capitalism
its not the means, its the product.
Just look at all the shit on Amazon to know that capitalism puts out a bunch of garbage all that stuff is a waste of resources.
Capitalism that is bounded by strong regulations that are consistently and fairly enforced by government (the people) entities isn’t that bad.
It’s when those regulations get watered down or just removed in the name of “freedom” that we get what we have now.
Any form of capitalism that permits the accumulation of wealth will lead to deregulation and economic collapses with increasing frequency.
We’re beyond that. Capitalism is a disease.
In other parts of the world total literacy, universal healthcare and more was made without capitalism.
Propaganda conflates industrialization with capitalism continually, obscuring the possibility of any other economic system.
By the nine divines… Why does it take libs 80 years extra to reach the conclusions that Marxists have already described in detail in the last century…
Most people who were paying attention to the world when 1929 happened and witnessed the consequences up to 1945 are dying now. The people who were paying attention to the world when 2008 happened haven’t seen how the story ends.
Oddly, 1929-1945 and 2008-2024 are the same distance apart. Were you trying to do that or is it just eerie coincidence?
eheh, I’m a pessimist, what can I say 😅
Mainly because we spent 80 years being told to snitch on our neighbors and that commies are the devil himself come to wipe the world clean of good moral people.
It’s still going to be a long time till Marx is given an objective position in western society, if ever.
because they live in a delusional fantasy world where belief in things corellates with warm fuzzy feelings more than congruence with material reality, “truth” is socially reinforced, and… shit, shit this reminds me of something.
He is not taking a Marxist position. Possibly agreeing with parts of the same analysis as Marx but definitely not the same prescription. Not every criticism of Capitalism is an endorsement of Marxism
He is not taking a Marxist position
Precisely that’s why it’s taken him 80 years longer than Marxists to reach that conclusion.
Not every criticism of Capitalism is an endorsement of Marxism
Which is why non-marxist anti-capitalist movements such as Salvador Allende’s socialism in Chile, or Mosaddegh’s Iran, inevitably fail within a few years due to the lack of understanding of class struggle and the history of capitalism.
I take it you have a Marxist state as a counter example showing it’s superiority and longevity?
USSR lasted much longer than Allende’s project, and Cuba is still ongoing
The question was superiority and longevity. Are you claiming those are both superior states as well?
The USSR and Cuba are much more desirable than the short-lived wannabe socialist regime that led to Pinochet’s dictatorship, yes, how do you not see this?
“People who are barely surviving have extremely limited freedom,” he writes.
"All their time and energy go into earning enough money to pay for groceries, shelter, and transportation to jobs … a good society would do something about the deprivations, or reductions in freedom, for people with low incomes.
Well of course it has, fascism is the end result of capitalism. Some would say it’s natural conclusion.
Thanks Reagan
*Milton Friedman
And every president since Reagan, including him.
ya thats not a bug thats a feature
Yes. That is how it works. It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate these outcomes. It actually takes concerted effort through propaganda and misinformation to maintain the level of cognitive dissonance we have about it.
the level of cognitive dissonance we have
USA #1! EAT IT COMMMIES!
USA: “Here we own nothing and are happy. Eat it commies!”
if you want to implement unpopular policies, authoritarian regime is the way
The depressing thing is that fascists are popular enough to gain power. The populist pose, some scapegoating of minorities, and a dash of lying about their goals, is enough to win over many voters, and in a first-past-the-post system it doesn’t matter if the majority of the people don’t like them.
Pretty much sums up the UK since 2010.
Sums up many places, unfortunately.
The market is authoritarian.
That’s not necessarily true, many supposedly democratic regimes consistently pass unpopular policy and don’t pass popular policy. E.g. welfare state cuts to expenditure in education, healthcare and pensions in post-2008 EU, or the lack of progressive policy in USA healthcare.
It’s precisely this ignoring of the popular will that turns people to fascism
A lot of economists don’t listen to anything Joseph Stiglitz says, because he’s not from the Chicago school. Economics is so stupid.
dismal, even
Except “dismal science” wasn’t meant as a critique.
no shit, Sherlock. Still, glad to see it in the news.
I used to be a libertarian and believed in the whole ‘freer the market freer the people’ shit…
But then I grew up.
Freer the market, freer the people… including the psychopaths with money and influence.
In other news, meteorologist says the sky is blue.
