“Weirdo ideological reasons” such as belief in equality of opportunities, belief in universal free education, healthcare and pensions, belief in worker rights or belief in the right to housing and of employment. Those weird to you?
What we’ve got now looks more like a corporate oligarchy. The free market only applies to small players
Tell me, how free was India to develop in free competition against England in the 19th century? How free was Congo to compete against Belgium? Oh, wait, you’re only talking for a white minority, I see. When exactly was capitalism better, when English children lost their fingers trapped in machinery in coal-powered factories in England in the 1850s and died at 30-ish years of age? Maybe it was better in 1917, when the ambitions of capitalism and imperialism triggered WW1 and ground tens of millions of lives? Or was it good in the 1950s/60s when the US murdered millions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Korea through the most horrific bombing campaigns just because they didn’t want to be capitalist? What good capitalism are you exactly talking about?
Huh, what an ignorant peasant. Thou proclaimeth that thou doeth not like toiling away all thine day in the fields under the scorching sun and giving most of the produce as tributes to thine lord. But, thou use the protection of the lord. Hypocrisy, I tells thou
Western chauvinism makes non-whites 2nd class citizens. It’s a guise for enslaving the whole global south. Fuck western chauvinism. Defending it means you don’t value 80% of humans.
Capitalism can co-exist with socialism in the same economic system
Lemme guess: “socialism is when the government does stuff. And the more stuff it does, the more socialist it is. And when the government does a real lotta stuff, that’s communism”
Spoken like a true chauvinist. The UK murdered tens of millions more in India alone under the guise of the values of enlightenment than Islam has in the past century and a half.
You’re wrong. Capitalism is, by definition, a “winner takes it all” system. The logical endpoint of competition between private entities is the consolidation of one of those entities, and once economy of scale plays a role, reversing that is almost impossible. And once a private entity has significantly more economic power than the others, it can manipulate regulations and consequences. Capitalism explicitly rewards by design being greedy
Capitalism, by definition, is a system not a tool. “Free market” may be a tool. “Private ownership of capital” may be a tool. “Free contracts of employment between individual economical agents” may be a tool. But the conjunction of those things is what defines the system of capitalism.
Electing officials is mostly complex in capitalism, where the interests of the poor majority are in direct contradiction with the interests of a wealthy elite.
Cause the Uyghurs, amongst other ethnic groups, have something to say to that
What do they have to say? Have you seen polls in Xinjiang or Tibet of degree of satisfaction with the government? I guarantee you they’re much higher than in Catalonia, Quebec, Scotland or any of the Chinatowns/Chicagos of the US.
You mean, only the ones they care about?
Come on, tell me the economic growth in Xinjiang compared to the rest of the country, and now do the same for Scotland. Give me the actual data, and then tell me, to my face, that the Chinese government doesn’t care about its ethnicities more than western governments. For fuck’s sake, have you seen the rate of incarceration of black people in the USA? About one in four black men in the USA go through the prison system in their lives.
let’s not forget that they also repress like hell
That’s your perspective as a westerner. My country, Spain, has political prisoners such as Carles Puigdemont, a so-called “Ley Mordaza” (mouthgag law) has been implemented for 15 years against protestors, and if you go to the USA they have masked agents kidnapping people, putting them in unmarked vans and deporting them. I seriously don’t think china is significantly more repressive than that. Unless you’re willing to concede that Spain and the USA are fascist, why would you say that for China?
Now let’s imagine the opposite in Berlin: what if, instead of a group of old men wearing weird wigs, it was actual representatives of the people chosen through democratic centralism? It’s not like there’s no way to know what people wanted, there was literally a referendum. Why would I want separation of power if all power in my country should be democratic? Separation of powers is a tacit admission that the powers aren’t democratic, hence needing different people to create “checks and balances”.
The thing is, how much of a hurdle has the separation of powers been for fascists? I’d say not a whole lot. In my opinion, it’s been much more of a hurdle to pass progressive policy instead, e.g. the rather recent case of the Berlin rent cap repeal. The democratic will of the people of Berlin, via direct referendum, was repealed because a group of old men in a tribunal said that it’s illegal. American politics, as an outsider, are essentially like that: democrats making progressive promises in campaign, and then “we didn’t get to do it because we didn’t have a supermajority :(”, whereas characters like Trump will just get there and say “yeah, no, I’ll do whatever the fuck I want”.
Sure buddy, China has a lot of fascist traits, such as being extremely sensitive towards different ethnical groups in the country (go to a history museum in China and you’ll see that they have specific signs discussing the different ethnicities at the period), lifting a billion people from poverty, land redistribution, quality social services and no use of militarism for the past half century. But I guess that, for you, not getting to vote once every 4 years for the lesser evil who will regardless defund the social services and pursue austerity policy is the highest expression of anti-fascism.
If democracy patently doesn’t work under the separation of powers, what compells you to believe it’s an essential principle to maintain democratic institutions?
11·1 year ago
“Weirdo ideological reasons” such as belief in equality of opportunities, belief in universal free education, healthcare and pensions, belief in worker rights or belief in the right to housing and of employment. Those weird to you?