this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
176 points (89.3% liked)

Flippanarchy

331 readers
16 users here now

Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.

Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.

This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.

Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to [email protected]

Rules


  1. If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text

  2. If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.

  3. Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.

  4. Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.

  5. No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.

  6. This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.

founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This is widely misunderstood. Liberalism doesn't start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it's hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership. Even most contemporary forms of anti-capitalism have sort of come to terms with the idea that some form of capitalist structure is a near inevitability in the context of material and labor scarcity, and that beyond that you are really just debating different forms of harm reduction. And that's really the important thing - to understand that we are all just talking harm reduction here. The idea of eliminating capitalism entirely is a bit like curing cancer. It's a long term goal which requires technology and conditions which simply do not exist at this time, but there is not like some weird faction in the medical community which is ideologically opposed chemotherapy because it doesn't go far enough, like there is in (outdated) leftist philosophy.

[–] Keeponstalin 2 points 1 month ago

I Strongly disagree. The capitalist mode of production is axiomatic to Liberalism. Private ownership of the means of production is what is being referenced, not personal property.

I also strongly disagree about a capitalist structure being an inevitably and impossible to eliminate in the modern age. The alternative, a socialist mode of production, where companies are owned and governed democratically by all the workers, is completely viable. It's a democratization of the workplace. People over profits instead of the current profits over people.

Locke saw individual liberty as defined through private property, contract, and market—in other words, by individual ownership of economic possessions that could not be arbitrarily usurped by the state. Freedom for Locke amounted to more than absence from external restraint; it also meant living in conformity with a nonarbitrary law (to his left critics, a protocapitalist law) to which the individual had consented.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Liberalism doesn't start with axiomatic capitalism as a first principle, but rather acknowledges that it's hard to have individual liberty without the concept of individual material ownership.

This is a misunderstanding of what socialists mean when they say we need to abolish private property. To socialists, private property and personal property are two very different things. Private property (also sometimes referred to as the means of production and sometimes but not always includes real estate) is specifically used to turn a profit, whereas personal property (stuff like your TV, couch, food, bed, car, etc.) is property that is owned by individuals. Socialists do not believe that personal property should be abolished, but they think that private property should.

That being said, my personal beliefs are that we should have an economic system that guarantees all basic human needs to all humans, which includes housing, food, healthcare, water, sewage, power, internet, heating/cooling (depending on location and climate) while giving the workers ownership over the businesses that they work for (essentially forcing large corporations to become worker-owned co-ops) while incentivizing small businesses to continue to be created and invested in. I'm not sure how to feel about forcing small businesses to be worker-owned co-ops, since I feel like that would decrease incentives to start them and invest time and money into them.

Professor Richard Wolff calls this socialism or Marxism, but it doesn't have the centralization of economic power that previous socialist experiments had, with the USSR being the largest example.