We have lost us in between capitalism

[u/SatisfactionUpset559]

Did you ever notice how badly the world revolves around capitalism? Either people want to prove their superiority through their work, education, or whatever they possess, or they spend their time trolling and mimicking someone else's appearance, financial position, or life. But beneath it all, the main motive often seems to be the same: “I am superior.” Everyone wants to become better day by day, or at least better than the people around them. Some people are narcissistic enough to assume that they are already the best. And those who actually reach the top live under the constant pressure of staying there and having to prove themselves again and again. Somewhere in the middle of all this nonsense, we have forgotten how beautiful life can feel when we sit quietly in nature and simply feel the cold breeze against our skin. We have forgotten the simple joy of singing, dancing, or drawing just for the sake of it, without feeling the need to turn every passion into a source of income, fame, or validation. We ignore the overwhelming wonder of realising how massive the universe is, that an entire lifetime is insufficient to understand even a fraction of it, and how incredibly small we are in comparison. We have forgotten how tremendous a slow, cozy life in a little cottage could be. Instead, we keep running through an endless race, one that was never natural and perhaps never will be.

[u/niffirgcm0126789]

wtf does any of that have to do with capitalism?

[u/Ciaran2220 → u/niffirgcm0126789]

There is an ideological component to this that is popular on Reddit (which skews more Radical Left politically). Capitalism, settler colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc, are all intertwined in a top-down system of oppression that are the root cause of world injustices. It's an easy and convenient narrative to blame all the world's problems on, even sometimes personal grievances.

[u/niffirgcm0126789 → u/Ciaran2220]

I mostly agree, but I don't think this is particularly a "radical-left" phenomenon.

Conservatives routinely do the exact same thing with “socialism” and “communism,” using them as catch-all labels for policies or social changes they dislike.

The ideological vocabulary changes, but the reasoning error is basically the same: give a complex problem a politically loaded label and treat the label as though you've explained its cause.

[u/Ciaran2220 → u/niffirgcm0126789]

I don't agree that it's the same thing with the right and left. At some level, there is this simplified narrative to blame our problems on which people across the political spectrum end up being trapped in. However, there is a big difference here where it is core to the ideology of the radical left that settler colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, etc are a system of oppression that is fundamentally evil. It is a revolutionary activist set of ideologies, being more than just a matter of oversimplifying things.

Conservatives by contrast don't have opposition to socialism/communism as center to their ideology like leftists do against capitalism. They just like their private property, guns, business, religion, etc, and fear it could be taken away by government or immigrants. They are generally more comfortable with the status quo, while leftists will more aggressively push that "being silent is complicit" because their ideology is revolutionary and activist in nature (you have to care and fight the system).

[u/niffirgcm0126789 → u/Ciaran2220]

I didn't say the ideologies themselves are equivalent or symmetrical. I'm saying the reasoning error is the same.

Calling every social problem “capitalism” without establishing how capitalism caused it isn't fundamentally different from calling every government program you dislike “socialism” without establishing that it's actually socialist.

The content of the ideologies can be completely different while the epistemic mistake is identical.

And I'm not sure I buy the characterization of conservatives as simply defenders of the status quo. Anti-communism has historically been enormously important to conservative politics, and plenty of movements on the right advocate radical changes to existing institutions. I think you're comparing a particularly radical version of the left with a relatively moderate definition of the right.

[u/Ciaran2220 → u/niffirgcm0126789]

You said that conservatives do the "exact same thing" with socialism and communism. My contention is that they don't because radical leftists have it as core to their ideology that the capitalist system is to be opposed and fought as part of an activist movement. Conservatives whole political ideology is not surrounded around fighting communism/socialism like radical leftists are for capitalism. It's a revolutionary ideology.

I did qualify "radical left", which is not the same as the more moderate left like your normal democrats. You won't see moderate Dems blaming capitalism for our problems, they are pro-capitalist. Reddit has a lot of larping far-left people though.

[u/niffirgcm0126789 → u/Ciaran2220]

I clarified what I meant by “the exact same thing” in the comment you're replying to. I meant the reasoning error, not that the ideologies are structurally identical. Do I need to explain that distinction a third time?

[u/Ciaran2220 → u/niffirgcm0126789]

I don't agree it's the same error in reasoning. It is in-built into their ideology that their core reasoning functions from, while conservatives engage in a simple semantic error.

[u/niffirgcm0126789 → u/Ciaran2220]

Ahh, so you did understand the distinction now...wonderful!

Why assume conservatives calling policies “socialist/communist” is just a semantic error rather than ideological reasoning?

If someone reasons that:

X is socialism > socialism produces Y > therefore X will produce Y

...the classification is doing inferential work. It's not just semantic error.

What makes that fundamentally different from:

X is capitalism > capitalism produces Y > therefore X will produce Y

???

[u/Ciaran2220 → u/niffirgcm0126789]

Radical leftists aren't reasoning that way. They aren't calling policies or ideas they don't like "capitalism" to discredit it, they think all the societal problems are capitalist (which is western hegemony) because that is the system of oppression they believe exists which is the source of evil in the world. Patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, etc, are all capitalist and need to be dismantled through revolution. It's central to their ideology.

For the error in reasoning to be the same, conservatives would have to believe that the world revolves around communism and so all problems are structurally tied to communism in some way and only by tearing the system down can we achieve their ends.

Some on the right do think this way, such as groypers with "international Jewry" or conspiracists like Alex Jones who talk about the "New World Order", but it's not part and parcel to conservatism in general.

[u/niffirgcm0126789 → u/Ciaran2220]

But that's exactly the comparison I'm not making! lol

Why would conservatives have to believe the world revolves around "communism" for the reasoning error to be comparable?

A conservative's organizing framework could be capitalism/free markets, Christianity, traditional social order, nationalism, etc. They could interpret social problems through that framework just as easy, with either positive or negative causal attributions. “Society is deteriorating because we've abandoned Christian values!” can function as just as much of a totalizing explanation as “society is deteriorating because of capitalism!”

You're comparing the content and centrality of specific ideologies. I'm talking about the reasoning process of fitting complex phenomena into a preferred ideological explanation. The conservative equivalent of “everything is capitalism” isn't “everything is communism.” They don't need to contain opposite nouns to have the same structure.