i boosted this video a couple times already but want to stress that it's great! in a mere 20 minutes it:

- ELI5's the historical meaning and origins of capitalism, communism, and other jargon

- addresses the "but communist countries killed millions" argument

- uses this language to crystallize an argument about how the internet came about, turned shitty, and how to fix it

https://invidio.us/watch?v=L01iiJz8Thc

tyvm @strypey

@pho4cexa @strypey Interesting talk and worth watching. I'm sympathetic to many of his criticisms, but also critical of his framing.

He frames capitalism in the worst possible way, even though it's often used to refer to a market economy with private property and he frames communism in the most favorable way.

A free market economy does not require a star topology and the price mechanism doesn't require it either.

@pho4cexa @strypey

Also, ~40 million died in China, ~7 million in Ukrane and ~2 million (25%) in Cambodia. All states that had Communism as their stated end-goal.

Those deaths were avoidable, were all in the name of Communism and he doesn't address them at all.

@jcbrand @pho4cexa
> Those deaths were avoidable, were all in the name of Communism and he doesn't address them at all.

Because they're irrelevant to the way he uses the term, as he explains when he gives his definitions. As #DavidGraeber shows in his book 'The Democracy Project', political terms can have (at least) two totally different meanings, one based on a founding ideal, one based on notable historical failures to fulfill that ideal. So it is with the term "communism".

@jcbrand @pho4cexa Many equally terrible things have been done in the name of building and defending capitalism from communism (eg the Vietnam War):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-capitalism-stalinism-economic-model

Does that mean anyone who makes a pro-capitalist argument has to share responsibility for all that? I would say no, because like Dymitri, those people are using the term in a totally different way from its critics.

@strypey @jcbrand @pho4cexa

I am moving away from describing present day economies as merely "capitalist" or "communist" because reality doesn't match the original ideologies.

China, Cuba, Venezuela etc. didn't move to communism. They operate under "state capitalism" whereby the means of production are centrally managed by totalitarian regimes.

America (and the bulk of "western" nations) are "corporatist" whereby means of production are consolidated within protected corporations.