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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Economic value of a person isn't something that runs out and gets left behind only in capitalism.
There are some defining traits of capitalism that a movie could probably attack. I'd start with the obnoxious responsibility haven of the stock market. It's inherently detrimental because it incentivises people who make the companies they represent do worse. I'd also take some shots at IP trolls, though I'm not really sure if that's inherent to capitalism.
I'm not 100% sure what responsibility you're referring to regarding the stock market, but if you're pointing at short-term profits at the cost of long-term status - that's not a capitalism-specific issue. It's worse because of the reach of investors, but that's more related to technological advancements.
So that's also not good enough. Any other ideas? Or can anti-capitalist movies just not exist?
Ahh sorry, I had a typo. Haven became haven't.
That's actually exactly what I mean! The mechanisms of influence will always propagate themselves. You can use control to expand your control, so you have a power grabbing feedback loop! That is a failing of every economic model, but especially so with capitalism. In the US, we can vote on what the government does itself, but most of what is done is done privately or by corporations. Therefore having money means your vote decides more of what happens in the world. That's self propagating control.
But that's my point - under different economic systems, investors have a similar reach. Since you're requiring the anti-capitalist message to be unique to capitalism, and capitalism has no unique features, there can't be any anti-capitalist art, right?
Well there's definitely unique features. There just aren't any in the description of the movie that I read.
Can you list some? As I've already said, I am not aware of any features that define capitalism which aren't also present in some other economic system.
I think it might have been in another thread where I was trying to come up with some. I think the stock market's way of giving more vote to people with more money is a particularly capitalist fail.
Isn't that arguably how every system has worked? Say we're going back a couple centuries - power mostly lied with banks and those who already had money, since their loans were important for many businesses. Look for example at the Fugger family - incredibly rich bankers with control over much of the European economy, and they were literally venture capitalists in the 15th & 16th century. Money has always given people leverage, the stock market is just a codified form (that still isn't fully equal due to different kinds of shares, so really no different from previous power structures).
Yeah, I pretty much agree. Every system has a manner of "be subjected to the process or the weather".
So there literally can't be anti-capitalist art, as capitalism has no unique defining features, and only art focusing on those features can be anti-capitalist, right?
I mean, you can attack capitalism with an irrelevant argument and call it an attack on capitalism, but it won't be a very good attack. It's like me trying to say Johnny Cash songs are bad because he's ugly.
Saying capitalism is bad because the people in charge are abusive doesn't help in pointing out why we shouldn't use capitalism. Kings and whatever communist leaders are called can also be abusive and it's not because their system is inherently bad.
My point is that a weak argument can hardly be called "the greatest anti capitalist movie".