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But THIS time, we'd get it right! (media.piefed.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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Curious about how this goes but not masochistic enough to enable comment notifications...

Hope some enjoy!

But THIS time, we'd get it right!
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[–] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No, it is not a post hoc fallacy. The claim is not simply that death and dictators occurred after capitalism rose to dominance. The claim is that the economic incentive of infinite profit explains why these events happened. Specific wars were fought in to protect the interests of multinational corporations; the CIA installed dictators (e.g., South America, Africa), in order to stop the spread of socialism; there are slave laborers mining minerals in the Congo so that Tim Cook can make another billion.

If you want to get philosophical, perhaps we could agree that it is a category error to say that an economic system of commodity production caused death and dictators in the technical sense of causation. It would be better to say that these events find their ground or explanation in the incentives of capitalism. But I doubt most people care about this distinction.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The incentive is that resources are lootable, that doesn’t change by swapping out one ideology for another. We can point to the post-WWII eastern bloc, Cuba, and Afghanistan as examples of USSR installing dictators. Ideologies tend to be too myopic in their understanding of reality, all systems have a tendency to form into dominance hierarchies, that’s the core issue. Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    I won't brush away the missteps and abuses of certain leaders. We must, however, place these injustices in their proper context.

    Socialist countries faced opposition from the most economically and politically powerful nation in the history of the Earth. Given the successes that socialist economies did achieve -- in providing healthcare, housing, transportation, food, jobs, etc. -- can you imagine how much more successful they could have been had the United States helped instead of destabilized them at every turn? But the US could not peacefully allow us to develop socialist production of goods for direct consumption. This economic model is a direct threat to the capitalist's appropriation of profits.

    Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.

    I hope you're right, but time will tell.

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