Mastodawn

🌊 #woke 2d ago

The roaming US #ExtremeRight is now successfully attempting to penalize #transidentity and any #activism in favor of #lgbtqia #rights. The most compationate attitude a #transgender person can expect from them is to be considered mentally ill and necessitating #conversiontherapy, which is nothing less than grave violations of basic #humanrights. While the #trump regime seems to be targeting only a tiny minority, their criteria will soon look a lot more wide-ranging.
https://youtu.be/o0MNrd96SjU

The Attack On Trans People Is Ramping Up

YouTube

🌊 #woke 2d ago

While #transidentity and other varieites of #genrderorientation or #sexualorientation, seem to concern only a tiny minority, the issue at stake literally concerns everyone who isn't a rich white cis-hetero male over 50. And that issue is #patriarchy and #capitalism, which, together, ensure that anyone. who isn't wealthy male cis-hetero WASP is to be tightly controlled and exploited or even exterminated, if they are too "subversive". This concerns #LGBTQIA+, but right after, #jews and #muslims.

AKingsbury 2d ago

All sorts of people are controlled all sorts of ways, and it's not capitalism that does it. Indeed, capitalism clearly prescribes FREE markets, open exchange, etc. It's a powerful tool to uplift the poor.

No, the primary instrument of oppression is the government. Ask yourself this; who has more power over you, right now; Jeff Bezos, of the local chief of police? Which one can send an armed man to your home with impunity?

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury Actually, #capitalism has been literally built on the exploitation not only of former "serfs" in Europe,, but also of slaves and resources taken over by European capitalists through colonization. Free market has always only been for those who possess something to sell or to produce goods to sell. That is a minority of people. Everyone else is just there to serve these dominants, sometimes against an under-valued salary, sometimes just to be able to keep their life.

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury #Capitalism bourgeoisie has always been able to engage the #government in their own interest, be it through placing people of their own cast in government, or by blackmailing government with suppression of labor and moving it abroad, in countries with more friendly government. Basically, #capitalists have been able to wriggle their way out of responsibilities with the help of more or less corrupt governments.

AKingsbury 2d ago

You're deeply confused about what capitalism is. Capitalism clearly and directly forbids such things as slavery; slavery is in obvious contradiction to the very concept of a free market. Likewise government suppression of labor; also not in accord with a free market.

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury Actually, you are the one who is deeply ignorant of the history of #capitalism. Because modern slavery and modern Western empires were literally born out of #capitalism. What made modern slavery illegal weren't capitalists, but humanists who felt that human dignity was more important than the wealth of a few privileged. If some considered themselves "liberals", most were socialist. And decolonization was the revolt of those colonized.

AKingsbury 2d ago

Again, it's impossible for slavery to have been born from capitalism. Capitalism clearly directs free markets, which are in direct contradiction to slavery. Now, you can say that there were free markets and slavery which existed separately but at at the same time, and that's historically accurate, but to say that slavery is capitalistic is the product of either ignorance or dishonesty.

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury You are definitely the one who is in deep confusion. You're confusing capitalism with free market and these are not the same things, even if capitalism fares better under a free market. Capitalism is just a type of economy based on the possession of the means of production and the capacity to get the human ressources necessary to run the production. Whether they are free or not doesn't matter. Slaves allow just for much cheaper labor costs than employees.

I never aid capitalism and free markets are the same thing, nor anything of the sort. Capitalism demands free markets, but that is not a complete description of it.

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury Free market doesn't mean everyone is free. It simply means that those participating in the market are doing it freely. But since the beginning of #capitalism in the 15th century, whole swaths of the populations in capitalistic societies weren't free and not allowed to participate in this "market". Slaves, considered as mere living sub-human objects, were lumped together with the rest of the capitalistic means of production and considered way cheaper than hired people.

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury And the USA was founded on two "oriiginal sins": 1) the partial extermination of native populations as well as the stealing of their lands and resources; 2) Slavery. Before the "founding fathers" declared the US independence from the British Kingdom, they actually debated whether they should keep slavery or not. It was decided they should, because, otherwise, the whole country's economy would collapse. And in the 18th c., they were already well deep in a capitalistic system.

AKingsbury 2d ago

>It simply means that those participating in the market are doing it freely.

Partially, yes, and this shows why capitalism, which demands free markets, by its very nature forbids slavery. A slave, by definition, is not working voluntarily.

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury So, according to your definition, the US weren't a capitalistic economy before it granted women and people of color equal rights and freedoms, that is, around the 1970's? And neither were most European countries and their colonies? What part of the world was capitalist then?

AKingsbury 2d ago

PURELY capitalist? No, of course not. We've had government interference in markets since long, LONG before the 1970s. I can't think of a single example of an entire nation that was purely capitalist in the 70s, or indeed is today. Now, plenty of individual markets lack meaningful direct government interference.

AKingsbury 2d ago

Of course, jumping to that question from a discussion of slavery is a complete non sequitur; women in the US were not slaves in the 1970s, nor were people of color, with the exception of slavery that's permitted under the thirteenth amendment (which applied to people of any race or gender, and still does).

🌊 #woke 2d ago

Women were never slaves? For a long time, they literally belonged to their fathers until marriage, when they would be transmitted like a luggage to their husbands. Fathers and husbands had every right on them, including to beat them to death or to let them die through neglect and disawowment. Women had pratically no rights and they certainly had no economic rights. The only difference with slaves is that they could'nt be sold on a public market.
@AlexanderKingsbury

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury And I'm not talking of the Middle-Age. I'm talking of 16th to early 20th century America. And until the 1970's, women still couldn't work and have their own bank account without their fathers' or husbands' permission. How could they be free agents of the market under these conditions? As for people of colors, they were subjected to segregation laws until the civil right movements, which made it pretty hard for them to partake in the "free market".

🌊 #woke 2d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury If according to you, slavery and patriarchy are incompatible with capitalism, one must conclude that the USA never were a capitalist economy until the 1970's, nor were most Western countries and their colonies. So, I'm asking you again: what were they?

AKingsbury 1d ago

"Women were never slaves?"

Not what I said. Try reading again.

🌊 #woke 1d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury Oh you didn't say "never" and that changes everything? Like what? And you haven't answered my question: when has the US become a capitalist economy, since it has relied on slavery for a good part of the first 2 centuries of its history and then on near-slavery mode of exploitation, without reckoning with the fact that until the 1970's, people of color and women were legally heavily discriminated against and thus not free to partake in a "free market".

AKingsbury 1d ago

Not only did I not say "never", I specifically referred to one nation and a historically rather short time period. It's not useful or productive to ignore what people have actually said and instead imply they have said something entirely different.

We do not rely on anything even remotely close to slavery, nor have we for quite some time.

I never said that the US ever became a capitalist economy. SOME of our markets are essentially free, but far from all.

🌊 #woke 1d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury Well, unlike you, I'm not cutting history and geography into isolated bubbles. You were telling me that capitalism has nothing to do with the present political backlash against minorities and when I told you that capitalism has always gone very well hands in hands with political power, including tyranny, with slavery and colonialism as good examples, you just tried wriggle out of this tight spot by focusing on temporal and geographical spécificités, in complete isolation.

🌊 #woke 1d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury At this point, I'm not even sure you actually have a definition for capitalism and free market, because, following your logic, the US economy isn't capitalistic or only partially capitalistic, and apparently, wasn't capitalistic in the 18th and 19th century, since it relied heavily on slavery and so on.

AKingsbury 1d ago

" You were telling me that capitalism has nothing to do with the present political backlash against minorities"

Again, not what I said.

And you hardly put me in a "tight spot". Your claims, again, can only be supported by either ignorance or dishonesty. Capitalism clearly prescribes free markets, which are in direct contradiction to slavery. To say that capitalism supports or even permits slavery can be said only by the ignorant or the dishonest person.

🌊 #woke 1d ago

@AlexanderKingsbury Ok, I see that you definitely don't know at all what you are talking about. I see no point continuing, as you are just going in circle, refusing point blank to engage with what I say. This is a waste of time. Have a nice week-end.

AKingsbury 1d ago

This coming from someone who cannot even read what is being written, or else who cannot parse it? Can't say I will miss your commentary. Good day.