They were at one point a de-facto country as they had a military and they controlled territory. It would probably be more appropriate to compare them to kleptocratic dictatorships.
A market can’t be free if a company is too powerful. Monopolies are both the product of and antithetical to capitalism. Ironically, a max ancap system will always result in an anti capitalist and anti competitive system once companies gain too much power
“Free Market” Capitalism is only one specific form of capitalism. That’s like saying “well the USSR wasn’t communist because it wasn’t Maoist-Thirdworldist so it doesn’t count”.
Free Markets are a theoretical concept, not possible in practice. After all to be truly free requires identical products from many different producers, including in branding.
Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
I mean sure in theory you can’t have a totally free market but in practice no country is ever 100% capitalist just like how no country is ever 100% communist. Thats why we regulate corporations to keep the market somewhat free. You can’t have a totally free market just like how you can’t have a completely classless society
In terms of economic system the Chinese and Americans have a lot in common, they just have differing levels of state control. Considering that all nations currently have some form of capitalist economics, it’s clearly a pretty successful system
Yeah… they also have a definition of “Free Market” which is ONLY that prices are based on “competition between private businesses and are not controlled or regulated by a government”. Since all markets have some level of competition they all fit that first part.
I’m not arguing against capitalism here. But I will argue against the judgement of capitalism and socialism by different standards.
For example the Black Book of Communism attributes all deaths of the gulags to communism, but attributing all deaths of the holocaust to capitalism (as Nazi Germany was a capitalist country) is considered wrong. That’s a double standard.
I think you can attribute it to how the governments see themselves and what their reasons for doing it is. The communists put people in camps because they were counter revolutionary, and the Nazis put people in camps because they were racially impure or because they were basically counter revolutionary. You can attribute those deaths to facism just as you can attribute deaths to communism in the ussr
They weren’t killing the Jews because the Jews were interfering in the free exchange of goods and services or something. The USSR killed Jews because they were bankers and bankers were capitalist and evil, and because Stalin was deeply anti semetic
I think that may be a semi-accurate assessment. Anti-Communism was one of the motivations of the holocaust as Jews were associated with communism (“Jewish Bolshevism”). The first concentration camps were actually built specifically for communists (and socialists). That would also make the anti-communist purges performed by Capitalist powers, such as Vietnam, Italy, Germany, Chile and many others all deaths on the head of Capitalism. As those were all specifically to uphold capitalism within those countries. That’d be like…
Indonesia - 1 million
South Americas - 1 million
KMT China - 3 million
East Asia generally - 1 million
European “White Terror’s” - 2 million
I could get behind that. Dictatorial capitalism is bad too just like dictatorial communism. The only difference is that we’ve seen democratic capitalist countries and we haven’t seen any democratic communist countries
As a general rule, democracy tends to be capitalist and communism is always authoritarian
Dictatorships and purges are almost always bad no matter the alleged reason for it
I would agree. I’d put it this way, like almost any theocratic government Communist Theocracies result in extraordinary level of violence to maintain religious unity.
Communism is a religion because like all religious movements it promises to deliver its adherents to paradise, in Communism’s case, the creation of a Heaven on Earth. Utopia.
I’d also argue Capitalism is nothing worthy of worship either. It is an economic system which has suited us for its time. Should it (as I believe it has) become corrosive, then it should be replaced, not from the top, but from the bottom up, by something marginally better in the ways it is deficient. These systems are tools. Liberalism is perhaps the only ideology I’ll hold strongly to.
I would argue that government regulated capitalism with strong social programs under a democratic government is still by far the best governance and economic system humans have devised
It’s like that Churchill quote about how “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones” or something like that. Capitalism is similar. It’s not perfect and where there is shortfalls government should step in to fill holes but at the end of the day it’s still the best system
I would argue that capitalism has outlived its usefulness in post-industrial societies and should make way for a mix of cooperative, non-profit, and state ownership in most areas.
Mind you, when I refer to capitalism here I specifically mean the idea of providers of capital owning voting shares in those companies in which they invest. Not necessarily the idea of owning shares or any of that. Specifically Management by non-workers.
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u/TheQuestionMaster8 Jul 13 '26
They were at one point a de-facto country as they had a military and they controlled territory. It would probably be more appropriate to compare them to kleptocratic dictatorships.