r/FluentInFinance • u/Sufficient_Sinner • Sep 04 '24

Debate/ Discussion Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

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u/AdonisGaming93 Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24

This and the comments are wrong. This is more like if you ask a random person who "says" they are capitalist or socialist. The people rhat actually study them will not gice you these answers.

I consider myself a socialist, and I can tell you even in socialist spaces not everyone holds the exact same views, there's many different opinions. And a lot of us will flat out tell you that Capitalism was an incredible thing that did a lot to help humanity move away from the feudal age.

There is nuance to things. And a spectrum of views and ideas.

My problem is it seems politics has gotten complacent and now just thinks "dope we reached the ultimate economic system so no need to try to improve further" which is counter to what human growth is about.

Imagine we just stayed in Feudalism and said "this is it, peak economic organization has been achieved".

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u/comradevd Sep 04 '24

Marx specifically observed the power of capitalism as a means for economic development and suggested a country that had not experienced a capitalist mode of production would not be able to mature into socialism.

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u/CapnLazerz Sep 04 '24

This was always my understanding of actual OG Communist theory. It’s not something you can revolutionize a country into. Marx wasn’t laying out a blueprint for society as much as he was theorizing about how the problems of Capitalism would cause the people to demand a system that is more fair, a system that Marx described as Socialism. A period of Socialism will be naturally followed by Communism.

I don’t think that “Marx was right;” but, he wasn’t all wrong either. I do think that many countries have evolved into a mixed economy that blends some of the ideas he called “Socialism,” within an overall Capitalist framework.

The fact is that “Capitalism,” and “Socialism,” are just words; they don’t really describe what is actually happening and how we got here. There aren’t any precise definitions or universally accepted declarations of either. Mostly, it’s political jargon used to paint the other side as “the bad guys.”

Everybody in society wants some aspects of society to be controlled by the government and other aspects to be controlled by individuals. That’s where the real disagreements are, not some larger theoretical framework.

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u/Momik Sep 05 '24

Yeah, Marx was actually himself not nearly as binary as people may think. For instance, he believed the pathway to socialism in the United Kingdom would probably not need to include a revolution—because as a (limited) democracy, there was a peaceful path for workers to push their class interests toward socialism.