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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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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.
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.
Hard agree.