It makes sense. Most people have no idea about most of it. You have stuff. You buy and sell stuff. Ezpz.
Any alternative is demonised and fought about and undermined and misinformation’d.
Propaganda and suppression of the left was successful and certain crumbs had to be given in the past decades, currently there’s still enough comfort that many will defend their current status. A comfortable person isn’t going to start asking or rocking the boat, it’s in their interest that the boat is on the steady ride.
Deflection, gaslight and disciplining of those who find themselves in the “have not” becomes a way of comforting yourself that the ride was always within your capability and not dependent on the exterior mechanisms or just plain luck to be born in the lineage of “haves”.
Because the people that “rage against capitalism”, tends to put a lot of rollover effects occurring due to no guardrails. Onto being a fault of capitalism, rather than a fault of government.
We could tax inheritance 100% and most of the rollover issues are gone.
We could provide healthcare, public transportation and many other services. While maintaining a capitalistic based system.
Infinite growth is not a necessity of capitalism, that’s a necessity for consumer franctic societies.
Right now there’s a lot of countries looking towards Scandinavian models, they’re capitalistic by nature and imo still lack guardrails against intergenerational wealth. Inequality is skyrocketing everywhere, but that’s not a fault of capitalism. It will happen in unregulated capitalistic setups, but capitalism is really effective at guiding companies into providing the goods the populations need - And we have not theorised a better system yet.
The major problem here is that you aren’t looking at the system in its totality, and this leads you to make false conclusions. The reason capitalism cannot work and truly have guardrails is because the state is not a neutral entity, it belongs to whoever the ruling class of society is and takes on a definite form. Scandinavian countries are imperialist, relying on unequal exchange, and this is how they at least pacify their working class.
The solution is socialism. Workers already run the world, we should own it too.
Capitalism has always sounded great in theory, just the way you described. But in practice it has never worked, it always results in the accumulation of wealth in few hands, who can then use that power to subvert democracy and get their way.
Why do you think inheritance, wealth, etc is taxed too little? Because wealthy elites have abolished and prevented those taxes through lobbying/corruption. Many countries had the exact social democracy model you describe, but abolished and privatized these systems because rich people paid the media and politics to make it happen.
Not to mention this analysis focuses only on material wealth. Capitalism brings with it a complete alienation, communities don’t own their land, people don’t own their work, and everything that was once a common good is slowly commodified and robbed of its soul. Art, music, relationships, capital fijds a way to monetize it eventually. But now we have online shopping and fast food! Hooray, happiness achieved!
we have not theorized a better system yet
That’s an incredibly offensive claim. You just spat in the faces of nearly two centuries worth of academics and thinkers in myriad disciplines that have worked tirelessly, in the face of often violent or even fatal backlash from capital powers, to create and implement alternative concepts. Not to mention humans have experimented with various ways of living together for our entire history before capitalism.
it always results in the accumulation of wealth in few hands, who can then use that power to subvert democracy and get their way.
But that’s not really capitalisms fault. We’ve seen higher degrees of inequalities in socialist countries and feudal economies could be claimed the inequality is a part of the design.
It’s due to a lack of government rules.
Capitalism brings with it a complete alienation, communities don’t own their land, people don’t own their work
It opens up for the possibility of either owning your work or owning the value (wage) of your work. 2 millennia ago, when everyone worked in their own workshops and sold to the market, that was ultimately also a capitalistic economy.
Communities now can own their land, because everything is a commodity. Under other systems, the government, noble or other highly ranked owns the land and leases it out - We could argue that’s still happening under capitalism, through property taxes.
I’m curious if you can expand on the alienation.
That’s an incredibly offensive claim
Yet you’re not highlighting any, because capitalism is a tad too efficient. The alterations we seek out to do, does not stop capitalism; Just changes the goals of it and the late stage setup to move more power/capital back to the people.
Capitalism includes the capitalist state, which is why these supposed guardrails do not exist. Further, capitalism with guardrails still has fundamental problems like the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, crisis of overproduction due to an inability to be coherently planned, not to mention surplus value exploitation leading to enshittification and all the problems with the profit motive.
It’s a lot simpler than what everyone here is saying tbh. They don’t know what it is. Most of them think capitalism is just markets existing. Or some other random definition they made up in their head. So they’re defending the imaginary version of it that they made up, which of course they like.
In fact the Epstein class wants you to be miseducated about capitalism. They have class consciousness and want that we don’t.
successful brainwashing.
If you believe food comes from a field, you will defend the field. If you believe the food comes from the supermarket, you will defend the supermarket.
Because the last 50-100 years of Western political-economic development (especially, but it goes back longer than that to a lesser degree, and is more prevalent in America) has “bourgeoisified” vast swathes of the population, to the extent that there is not even a handful of causes but an entire ecosystem of hundreds of them.
A proletarian is at it’s most basic a person who owns next-to-nothing. The archetypical proletarian rents an apartment, takes public transit, works without a contract, does not own his own tools, and holds no shares in stock. While peasant revolts did occasionally happen, even the minor allowances given to the peasant class in some countries - virtual land ownership; livestock, tool, and vehicle ownership; and a thriving middle class of landholding, employing peasants - were enough to completely neuter revolutionary sentiment among the peasants.
Policies which “buy common people into” the system of Capitalism are what lead them to supporting the system or, at least, opposing its complete dissolution. To avoid writing an entire essay, I’m just going to list some of the policies that I believe contribute to the bourgeoisification of Western workers:
(1). Invested retirement funds instead of pensions
(2). Suburban home ownership
(3). 13% of Americans are part of the employing class
(4). Car culture over usable public transit
(5). Valorization of the “small business owner”
(6). The death of shop-floor Union organizing in favor of “union-as-a-service”
(7). Domination of unions by labor-aristocratic forces, and the resulting ties to liberal political parties
(8). The offloading of economic extraction onto colonized peoples, including so-called “internal colonies” of racial minorities and immigrants, whose political rights are suppressed.
(9). Voter suppression more generally - it is more difficult for poorer people to vote than wealthier people
(10). Control of media, including social media, by the middle and upper classes. You are more likely to see bourgeoise perspectives reflected not only on legacy media but most forms of social media as well (think small business tyrants and their wives posting on NextDoor, Facebook, etc., or “influencers” on youth media).
And so many more reasons.
Those that benefit from it spend a lot of money on trying to make sure the majority of people don’t realise it’s fucking them over
Because they think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires rather than wage slaves.
Stockholm syndrome.
Ironically enough, I wish we had stockholm Democratic Socialism while also suffering Stockholm Syndrome.
They get told all those horror stories about ‘the others’ who hate us for our freedoms and want to rule the world, where they have to work real hard and still can’t afford a house, and the regeeeem is spying on them all the time.
We wouldn’t want to live like that would we?Because they’ve been taught it’s the best system and only one that works.
The majority of people are resistant to change in general and can’t imagine a better world than what they know. The majority of people are focused on themselves without looking at the big picture.
Decades of intense cultural manipulation and suppression of any pro-communist media. Also, the whole economic base affecting the superstructure thingimajig.
or basically, we da baby and the ruling class are the fisherman:
Because they benefit from it?
This is only part of it because the vast majority of people do not benefit from capitalism. Not anymore at least. Of those in the working class who defend capitalism I would say most are victim to the constant stream of propaganda that the media pumps out at the behest of the capital owning class. It’s something that starts from birth in most western nations and permeates into the narratives people are taught in school in a way that requires deliberate and consistent work to unlearn and break away from.
this. i remember a few years ago i was somewhere that folks had put on the macy’s t-day parade. it was the first time i’d really noticed the intensity of the propaganda. most of the themes and music were just about acquiring material things and how good and normal that is. the propaganda was so strong it made me viscerally uncomfortable to watch.
I dont want to interrupt but im still waiting on my money from the election in Berlin. We were promised a bonus if you win.
What do they have to do with that?
Even more benefit from a social market economy, which might be an optimal sweet spot if done right.
Capitalism with a larger social safety net is still capitalism, and it relies on the exploitation of workers in the Global South to function. As the Global North’s capacity to imperialize the Globe South deteriorates, so too does its ability to bribe its own workers at home with treats.
That’s why I wrote “if done right”.
A truly social market economy also has to make sure that workers along the whole supply chain have to get similar rights and treatment as local workers.Besides that, centrally planned economies (being the opposite to plain free market capitalism), also don’t really shy away from exploiting the resources of poorer countries.
(Looking e.g. at imperialistic China here).China isn’t exploiting anyone. You really need to start questioning what your own empire accuses its enemies of. Previously:
- The Atlantic, 2021: The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
- Jason Hickel, 2026: Is China doing “colonialism” in Africa?
- Deborah Brautigam, 2019: A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme
- 📺 Michael Hudson & Radikha Desai, 2024: The truth about China’s economy: Debunking Western media myths
China isn’t exploiting anyone.
Total Imports 2025 EU / China:
Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products $467.75B / $442.95B
Plastics $68.38B / $56.48B
Pearls, precious stones, metals, coins $56.12B / $118.02B
Articles of apparel, knit or crocheted $53.13B / $3.74B
Articles of apparel, not knit or crocheted $48.56B / $5.79B
Iron and steel $44.08B / $30.86B
Edible fruits, nuts, peel of citrus fruit, melons $31.17B / $20.69B
Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatics invertebrates $29.23B / $19.93B
Rubbers $26.46B / $20.57B
Footwear, gaiters and the like $26.30B / $5.70B
Copper $18.63B / $74.63B
Oil seed, oleagic fruits, grain, seed, fruits $18.63B / $57.02B
Pulp of wood, fibrous cellulosic material, waste $11.87B / $21.98BSo, looking at the absolute numbers, China is eploiting the world’s resources in a similar fashion as the old style European Union, so I have to disagree.
I won’t comment on the content of your provided reports and youtube videos (of which at least two look a little… juicy… at first glance), as me just providing you with a bunch of counter-reports and videos, whose reliability you would question in a similar way as I am questioning yours, won’t change anything.
Country X importing from country Y doesn’t magically equate to country X exploiting country Y. Exploitation is a matter of unequal exchange, and not every exchange is unequal. Exchanges coerced through classical imperialism or through neoliberal debt trap peonage are unequal.
Looking at the top 3 exports of China (by a wide margin before anything else):
Electrical, electronic equipment $1016.58B
Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers $603.82B
Vehicles other than railway, tramway $248.31BThat’s all high price stuff.
Combined with its huge trade surplus, this is a classical “Buy cheap resources - sell expensive highly processed commodities back” scheme, the same as e.g. the uprising European industrializing nations employed as a strategy during their colony exploiting times (and to some degree still do in a similar fashion as China).
No, there is nothing equal here.
No arguments there
EDIT: I mean “can’t argue with that”. Just incase what I wrote originally didn’t make sense
