- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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People in this thread: BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFE EXPECTANCY?!?!
Bro you really want to argue life expectancy in favour of the ideology that argues whether curing a patient is makes business sense?
Your long life expectancy is thanks to science, which has existed for a far greater percentage of human history. To argue it’s because of capitalism is dumb as hell.
Also life expectancy took a nosedive when the Soviet Union fell. Wonder why.
context for those unfamiliar with the reference https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html
People in this thread: BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFE EXPECTANCY?!?!
Bro you really want to argue life expectancy in favour of the ideology that argues whether curing a patient is makes business sense?
Your long life expectancy is thanks to science, which has existed for a far greater percentage of human history. To argue it’s because of capitalism is dumb as hell.
We’re also literally watching it nosedive in the west and skyrocket in china but unfortunately the west is full of morons such as the one in this very thread who think that “everyone starved in medieval times” and that capitalism somehow liberated us from it
hey wait, let’s ask John Steinbeck how capitalism ACTUALLY TREATS AFFECTS FOOD SECURITY
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
huh
For the people who are dunking on this by saying that historically things have been fucked up:
I think the point of the tweet is that systemic development doesn’t stop at capitalism.
I’m pretty sure lots of educated people during the feudal era were saying that it was the best system available and at least they were dying less often than the Romans.
This is why liberals claim capitalism isn’t a specific material circumstance, but an abstract set of values, or simply when trade exists. They want to make it seem like capitalism is an intractable part of human existence that’s existed for as long as we have. One time I was talking to a guy who didn’t seem to be joking who told me capitalism began when the universe did, because chemicals trade electrons.
Communism is when covalent bond
Pretty sure it’s when ionic bond cause your can’t spell union without ion. Checkmate commie
capitalism began when the universe did, because chemicals trade electrons
Type of shit they’d say in Starship Troopers
You’re right. At least under feudalism we had job security. We should return to tradition /j
Capitalism replaced feudalism, and socialism is replacing capitalism.
I mean, tbf Feudalism and Capitalism isn’t all that different from one another. The only difference is that Feudalism has the hierarchy embedded into government via the monarchy whilst Capitalism’s hierarchy is enforced by corporations controlled by a different select few people.
Whether Socialism actually does replace Capitalism we have yet to see, I’d definitely prefer it over Capitalism.
Feudalism doesn’t necessitate endless growth on a finite planet. It had other terrible contradictions, which were solved by capitalism by introducing new contradictions wich lead to crisis faster, more often and with more devastating effects.Of course, I wouldn’t want to go back to having Lords own all the land, but wait, we still have those, they’re called landlords.
No, they are quite different. Both are class societies, but feudalism was tied to agrarian production, while capitalism is driven by industrial production. It’s less about hierarchy and more about class. As for socialism, it’s already usurping capitalism, the PRC is the world’s largest and most important economy and it’s in the developing stages of socialism.
Usually the way Marxists analyze the difference between systems like Feudalism and Capitalism, the focus is on how production is carried out, and what kinds of property exist. Under capitalism, generally, industrial capitalists who own private factories transform money into commodities (capital and labor, where labor imparts its value on the capital) which are sold back for more money than the capitalist paid (the surplus coming from labor, which isn’t fully compensated). Feudalism is characterized because instead of the principal mode of production being industrial, it’s agrarian and relies on serfs working on their lord’s land for some period of time, then being allowed to work on their own lands.
The fact that the structure of who owns what kind of property is different is very important. In a lot of ways, this change in how production is carried out (what is called the material base) is more relevant in deciding the direction society is headed than how the government is organized (society’s superstructure). The superstructure is shaped by the social relations in the base, but it can only maintain the base.
‘Feudalism’ in how it operated was also incredibly varied and regional, power was less concentrated.
Motherfucker, people were already commenting on how ACTUAL labor relations for LITERAL SERFS weren’t ACTUALLY as bad as wage labor (a form of slavery if you’re not too brainwashed to realize what it means to have to work for a wage TO SURVIVE) in the motherfuckong 1800s
This isn’t the own you think it is, it’s just an admission of your vast and all encompassing ignorance
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.
Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread
Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it’s some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.
But the wage laborer only “chooses” to work because they’ll starve in the streets otherwise. The employer only has the privilege of benefiting from their work by owning the means by which they can do profitable work. They EXPLOIT THE WORKERS’ SURVIVAL NEEDS and in doing so reap shares of profit from their labor that would make the cruelest medieval lord envious.
And now, you dumb motherfuckers sit here, reading all this, and think, oh, so you want to return to feudalism? like that in any way makes sense
How about ending the exploitation of labor entirely? That’s what socialism seeks to do. But you dumb motherfuckers are out here acting like your fucking landlords do you any favors (while somehow pretending to yourselves they’re any different from the evil feudal lords capitalism supposedly saved you from)
Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it’s some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.
Beautiful.
Why are you assuming I’m pro-capitalism? It was joke (thus the /j) because I found the framing of OP’s argument strange because (at least to me) it seemed more like an argument for fuedalism than socialism.
I do now realize that I am incorrect with my initial assumption and thus I get why my joke wasn’t very well received. I probably shouldn’t have made it. Though I am confused as to why you made so many assumptions about my beliefs just from a dumb joke I probably shouldn’t have made. If anything, I’m more anti-capitalism than pro-capitalism.
yeah, it’s really too bad that these are the only options
