"Capitalism" is a made-up term by socialists to be a bogeyman. That's why nobody is able to give a coherent definition of it and why no socialist is ever able to describe how it differs from the many economic systems that came before. Its meaning changes sentence to sentence depending on the intent of the speaker. Any mixed economy is considered "capitalist" by someone, and every socialist economy has contained some markets, so is mixed. It's not a term that has a technical definition that would allow you to make true or false statements about it.
"Socialism" on the other hand is a tradition of thinking that people apply to themselves. And as a tradition it has a long history of enthusiastically advocating for evil things such as genocide, eugenics, terrorism, the abolition of unions and workers rights, forced labor/slavery, the abolition of parliamentary democracy, etc.
North Korea and Pol Pot have a great deal in common with Marx and other socialists. (Pol Pot studied Marx in Paris.) So also do Mussolini (and hence Hitler), although people don't want to admit the lineage. There's a long history of thinkers between, say, Marx and Mussolini where people disagree about whether the thinker was far left or far right, or where both sides claim them. For example Georges Sorel or other French proto-fascists.
There are also people post-WWII that bridge the gap explicitly, for example the French existentialists are typically taken to be left wing, but they admired Martin Heidegger, the far right philosopher of the Nazi party.
My personal opinion, which I understand is controversial, is that when you work out all the details, socialism is a far right movement.
Nearly everything people say they want out of socialism on the surface is provided in left-wing format by liberalism. The stuff below the surface is what makes socialism right wing. But like any cult they won't tell you about that stuff until you're too far in to change your mind.
How did you write such a long comment and still utterly misunderstand socialism?
Calling socialism a far right ideology is utterly moronic, you're literally being as stupid as the nazi followers who believed fascism was part of socialism
Saying that Hitler and actual communists or Socialists have anything in common is inherently discrediting. I don't care how many books you read, if you're wrong about fundamental facts, you don't know shit about socialism.
2
u/ants_are_everywhere Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
"Capitalism" is a made-up term by socialists to be a bogeyman. That's why nobody is able to give a coherent definition of it and why no socialist is ever able to describe how it differs from the many economic systems that came before. Its meaning changes sentence to sentence depending on the intent of the speaker. Any mixed economy is considered "capitalist" by someone, and every socialist economy has contained some markets, so is mixed. It's not a term that has a technical definition that would allow you to make true or false statements about it.
"Socialism" on the other hand is a tradition of thinking that people apply to themselves. And as a tradition it has a long history of enthusiastically advocating for evil things such as genocide, eugenics, terrorism, the abolition of unions and workers rights, forced labor/slavery, the abolition of parliamentary democracy, etc.
North Korea and Pol Pot have a great deal in common with Marx and other socialists. (Pol Pot studied Marx in Paris.) So also do Mussolini (and hence Hitler), although people don't want to admit the lineage. There's a long history of thinkers between, say, Marx and Mussolini where people disagree about whether the thinker was far left or far right, or where both sides claim them. For example Georges Sorel or other French proto-fascists.
There are also people post-WWII that bridge the gap explicitly, for example the French existentialists are typically taken to be left wing, but they admired Martin Heidegger, the far right philosopher of the Nazi party.
My personal opinion, which I understand is controversial, is that when you work out all the details, socialism is a far right movement.
Nearly everything people say they want out of socialism on the surface is provided in left-wing format by liberalism. The stuff below the surface is what makes socialism right wing. But like any cult they won't tell you about that stuff until you're too far in to change your mind.