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thrance | 4 days ago

> property is enforced, contracts are enforced, and people are allowed to trade consensually without (much) interference from men with badges and guns.

Capitalism isn't about that at all. It is about private ownership of the means of production, and that's it. It says nothing about freedom to or freedom from. And indeed, most humans alive today have very little to their names, and they have very limited agency to change things.

> But based on history

Don't fall into capitalist realism.

discuss

order

akramachamarei|4 days ago

Forgive me for using my "personal" definition. It's a kind of colloquial meaning, perhaps not the "official" one. (As a side note I find "freedom from" to be an abuse of terms, and is better essentially expressed as a right to.) In the spirit of personal meaning and not attempting to litigate concepts which have been laboriously elsewhere, what is your vision of society? What does it look like when productive capital is not privately owned? And would private ownership of capital be in some sense prohibited de facto? Can this society be democratic? "Liberal"?