Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
lol
Rothbard is the reason we associate Libertarianism with the Right. He’s the one that suggested calling themselves Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists. Before him, Libertarianism was a Socialist thing and had little to do with Capitalism.
Basically, modern Libertarians stole the term from the Left to re-brand themselves as something they weren’t and to create this guise of pretending to care about people’s liberty and freedom—which they also don’t because Rothbard supported and advised Fascists and had no problem with slavery or indentured servitude.
The Right loves to steal and re-define terms used on the left.
The anti-capitalist left should steal the term classical liberal from them: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf
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It’s literally right on the wiki page under right history.
Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Ayn Rand. Go together like PB and J, mhm.
Marx - Libertarian with a tendency for statist apologia (laid out foundations of socialism as a means-to-an-end), envisioned communism as a stateless society with no hierarchies to oppress the people. A society without any power structures or hierarchies that enable an individual’s agency to be denied is a perfect libertarian state. That’s the basis for Marx’ criticism of religion.
Lenin - Statist and literal leader of a state, more or less socialist in the traditional sense of using a state to bring about a post-state communist society. In the eyes of a radical libertarian, he sold his soul to the devil by compromising with statism for a short-term advantage. And sure enough it led to the not-libertarian Stalinism.
Ayn Rand - Peak neoliberal. Thinks that market-based economics should not only dictate commodity distribution, but everything up-to-and-including sexual identity, eugenics, and the evolutionary fate of humanity. Allows little-to-no opportunity for the individual to pursue their own ambitions, find their own purpose, or to exert agency unless they are of the exceedingly few monopoly-winning elites. The kind of economics that led to monarchies in past eras. The antithesis of the tenets that libertarianism was coined to represent.
So no, they don’t go together at all. In fact they are three perfect examples for demonstrating the libertarian-authoritarian continuum.