Yanis Varoufakis on capitalism's incompatibility with democracy

[Purplecat]

I’d say that the two are incompatible on a more fundamental level than Yanis is discussing here.

We say that we live in a democratic society, but when it comes to economics and property, that’s completely untrue.

The fundamental tension between the two is this- The principle of democracy is one person one vote- that we all have an equal say on the decisions that matter in our lives. The principle of the capitalist market is completely different. There, it’s one dollar (or euro, rouble, yen, whatever), one vote. People with more money have a greater say in directing what the economy produces, how the products of that economy are distributed, who gets access to the those products of the economy (such as food, shelter and so on). And given that we spend a large proportion of our time and effort on work within that capitalist economy in order to live, we actually find that the extent of democratic rule over our lives is very limited indeed.

If you go one step further than this- the concept of private property embeds countless local tyrannies into the system as well. Beyond the logic of the market, the concept of private property is that there are no votes about what happens with it. Each property owner is a petty dictator over that property, which is the ultimate negation of democracy.And it’s this “freedom” that the so-called “Libertarians” want to defend. The right to absolute local control. So their hostility to democracy is very simply explained.

[Wanderfound]

🚩Millicent Ⓥ neo-Dukeist 🏴 🛠️ 🔇 (churusaa)

[jhbadger]

Yes, libertarians are awful, etc. But you can’t deny that there really is still a (small) chunk of the left that really is into going down that road and still takes Marx seriously and wants to destroy capitalism rather than simply regulate it. Having relatives who experienced the misery of “real, existing socialism” in East Germany and Bulgaria, I know I don’t want capitalism to be overthrown. If everybody would be clear that when they want “socialism” they mean a Scandinavian regulated capitalist society and not a centralized command economy as in the Soviet Union and its client states, a lot of this confusion would be cleared up.

[Wanderfound]

The Berniecrats are SocDems, but most [1] of the DSA are actual Socialists [2].

However, that does not make them Soviet style Marxist-Leninists. There is a wide spectrum of socialism between Norway and Stalin.

.

[1] Ocasio-Cortez appears to be from the more SocDem side of things.

[2] i.e. they believe that workers should control the means of production.

[gracchus]

@jhbadger

But you can’t deny that there really is still a (small) chunk of the left that really is into going down that road and still takes Marx seriously and wants to destroy capitalism rather than simply regulate it.

In North America it’s a very small chunk of the left, small enough to be a fringe group. And most of them aren’t asking for a Soviet-style command economy. But listening to American conservatives and Libertarians you’d think anyone advocating for a social-democratic welfare state is a raging tankie; the confusion you deplore is mainly their fault.

[the_borderer]

Fascism is usually syncretic in its policies, at least in the beginning. This is why it is considered to be the Third Position, neither socialist nor capitalist.

It usually ends up as crony capitalism if they are given power.

[anon85905360]

[lorq]

@gracchus

I’ll listen to this later, but I disagree with

We’ll get back to you when you’re responding to the lecture at hand. Next!

[Wanderfound]

@gracchus

What’s missing in both views is an appreciation of the societal value of a strong middle class (including unionised blue-collar workers) to create a stable and beneficial equilibrium between liberal democracy and capitalism – one we enjoyed in the U.S. for three generations.

Late-stage capitalism does indeed co-opt the political sphere in the way Varoufakis describes, but to get there it first needs to decimate the middle class to the point where the remnant is too busy being set against each-other and against the proletariat to pay attention to the top 1% (or 10% or 20%, depending on how one reckons these thing) and corporate entities taking control of politics.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

[gracchus]

Your point? Do you consider the preservation of liberal democracy to be a revolutionary goal? A conservative one? A reactionary one?

My sense from reading Marx is that he would consider it a (small-c) conservative goal, as it attempts to keep a status quo in place.

@lorq

We’ll get back to you when you’re responding to the lecture at hand. Next!

Have you listened to the lecture? Is Cory mischaracterising Varoufakis’ position?

As a reminder, his first graf (to which my comment was responding) reads as follows:

It’s a not-very-well-kept secret that elements of the libertarian right believe that democracy is incompatible with capitalism […]; and as this persuasive and fascinating lecture and Q&A with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis (previously) shows, the feeling is mutual.

[Wanderfound]

@gracchus

Do you consider the preservation of liberal democracy to be a revolutionary goal? A conservative one? A reactionary one?

Conservative, most of the time.

@gracchus

Your point?

Mostly just doing my historical free-association thing.

But also observing that the gradual destruction of the middle class was a thing that Marx & Engels predicted, along with the tendency of the middle classes to respond to that by defending their own position of relative privilege.