Einherjar86
Active Member
Poorly response.
If Dakryn agrees with that article, it certainly doesn't put it in the camp of "most libertarians;" let's face it, he's a bit specific.
That said, I'm not sure I agree with everything in the article. If what we have today is "crony capitalism," it isn't necessarily the progressivists who have made it that way; it's also due to the influence of major corporations during the Progressive Era who saw the benefit (to them) of less competition. If the state of capitalism now has been heavily influenced by the corporations themselves, it would seem to me that we're very much in an even more capitalist society. There is no objective truth on what constitutes capitalism; it evolves with time, and if capitalist entities promote the change, it doesn't make sense that we're less capitalist (or not "true" capitalism) now.
Walter Benn Michaels writes that, when Gorbachev said that the essence of socialism is competition, it demonstrated how socialism was "turning into capitalism." Another possibility is that socialism was just evolving. This is the purist argument Žižek speaks of: claiming the reasons capitalism isn't working is because we have an adulterated form of it.
It really boils down to how both systems aren't that different. Arguing that our society needs to be more capitalist also often promotes a regression to an earlier kind of pastoral, communal barter system society, which would certainly free us of government oppression but would also send us back to a more archaic way of life and prohibit any further technological progress (in all likelihood). Libertarians who suggest this stricter, free market kind of capitalism are also often communitarians, supporting privatization of schools and the regulation/activity of the ecomony at a communal level.
If Dakryn agrees with that article, it certainly doesn't put it in the camp of "most libertarians;" let's face it, he's a bit specific.
That said, I'm not sure I agree with everything in the article. If what we have today is "crony capitalism," it isn't necessarily the progressivists who have made it that way; it's also due to the influence of major corporations during the Progressive Era who saw the benefit (to them) of less competition. If the state of capitalism now has been heavily influenced by the corporations themselves, it would seem to me that we're very much in an even more capitalist society. There is no objective truth on what constitutes capitalism; it evolves with time, and if capitalist entities promote the change, it doesn't make sense that we're less capitalist (or not "true" capitalism) now.
Walter Benn Michaels writes that, when Gorbachev said that the essence of socialism is competition, it demonstrated how socialism was "turning into capitalism." Another possibility is that socialism was just evolving. This is the purist argument Žižek speaks of: claiming the reasons capitalism isn't working is because we have an adulterated form of it.
It really boils down to how both systems aren't that different. Arguing that our society needs to be more capitalist also often promotes a regression to an earlier kind of pastoral, communal barter system society, which would certainly free us of government oppression but would also send us back to a more archaic way of life and prohibit any further technological progress (in all likelihood). Libertarians who suggest this stricter, free market kind of capitalism are also often communitarians, supporting privatization of schools and the regulation/activity of the ecomony at a communal level.
