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Why People Say Capitalism is Violent
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Capitalism is not violent and greedy. Humans are violent and greedy.
Economic systems and sociocultural organization principles are irrelevant and attributing historical human violence to them is fallacious.
No, I specifically did not make any such argument, and made a statement about this in my conclusion because I anticipated that someone would attempt to dismiss what I said by deliberately misinterpreting it and then putting words in my mouth. Did you even read my entire post?
The person that made this cartoon cares, and clearly so do you, as you both want to pin it on a particular source for purely emotional reasons, which is evidenced by the fact that you have made no rational argument based on fact and instead have attempted to dismiss what I wrote while presenting zero evidence for your own point of view.
"Guns don't kill people, humans kill people." "Capitalism isn't the problem, humans are."
Humans are the problem. You're right. Yet, humans use guns to kill people. Humans use capitalism to be greedy and violent.
If capitalism wasn't a tool to be used, humans wouldn't use it. The tool makes the problems when used, so get rid of it.
This is the most persuasive argument in this thread so far... but I'm not sure it's valid (which is disconcerting because I do think the guns argument is valid but like you said it's the same it very similar argument)...
I think the part that is different is the scale of scope. For violence, modern firearms immediately peg the board in the red. I'm not sure that capitalism does that.
Capitaliam is an abstract concept, an umbrella term used to encapsulate a somewhat loose grouping of economic behaviors and theories. Humans might use capitalist ideas to justify greedy or violent actions, but they don't "use capitalism to be greedy and violent".
The distinction matters because my point is that capitalism is not the source or instrument of violence, but rather a description of and rationalization for human behavior. The violence happens whether or not you conflate the behaviors of the people committing violence with capitalism.
Ultimately I think it would be more accurate to conclude capitalism because violence and greed, not violence and greed because capitalism.
Capitalism is not an abstract concept at all: private ownership of the means of production. Sure, there are many economic theories to go on from there, but how does it change anything to the criticism of this very core idea?
Without additional qualifications on the term capitalism, that is a terrible definition of capitalism.
marx coined the term, and using his definition is the only way it makes sense.
Feel free to come up with a better definition. It's the one you'll find in most dictionaries and textbooks. Of course there are more elements to it depending on the exact philosophy (more or less free market et al), but in the end, it all boils down to exactly that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
capitalism is, in fact, the instrument. the extraction of wealth from the labor of the preparation is violence
I think you have not actually made a case for this claim, and it isn't obviously true. To me it seems obviously untrue. The organizational structure of human society is very often a driving force for harm, because harm is simply what happens when we fail to solve the nontrivial problem of human cooperation. People with good intentions can be a part of a larger dynamic in which they are overwhelmingly incentivized to be a part of that harm, and may even be absolutely prevented from not being a part of it. Hateful people with bad intentions can be themselves a product of these failures. You can't reduce this to the moral choices of individuals because individuals may have no knowledge or agency over the systems that shape their world and force their hands.
I think "violence" might not be the best word for this, but it isn't "fallacious".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moloch
I think changing the wording from "capitalism is violence" (or harm). "To capitalism enables violence" resolves the wiggle room in the argument.
Probably, but personally I think the violence/harm would happen (and does happen) regardless of capitalism/communism/feudalism/Marxism/anarchy/barter economy/etc.
Saying that the violence/harm happens because of capitalism is like saying that rain happens because there are clouds in the sky. There's concurrence, but neither is the cause of the other, they are both the products of underlying meteorological conditions.
Hard agree.
You are attacking a strawman.
Some societies are violent more so than others.
A social system is not simplistically the cause of all violence, and neither is any violence due to causes simplistically detached from the social system in which it occurs.
Violence is latent in capitalism.
It produces massive disparities in wealth and privilege that could not for very long be sustained except by the constant threat of force against those who are deprived, marginalized, and otherwise disadvantaged.