What does finance capitalism serve? When look at the progress of original capitalism, when compared to feudalism especially, there were some clear long term benefits. But what has the capitalism of the neoliberal era done?
Doesn’t the existance of the US and UK in the neoliberal era for so many years just mean that we found a way to be fascist while maintaining the liberal-democratic order and bourgeois freedoms?
Or could a modern socialist state wield the teaching of financial capitalism in a progressive manner that can be seized for the benefit of the people without such a socialist state being imperialist or engaging in un-fair or un-equal exchange across borders?
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When look at the progress of original capitalism, when compared to feudalism especially, there were some clear long term benefits.
Progress is not the same thing as beneficial. Progress is simply when something advances to a next stage in its life cycle. Capitalism was certainly progressive compared to feudalism, but only in the sense that it represented a forward motion in time for class society. In terms of morality, capitalism produced the greatest period of mass suffering and death ever recorded in history. No feudal society or even slave society was able to impoverish and kill literal billions of people.
I want you to understand this, more than 1% of all people who have ever died have died as a direct result of capitalism. 100 million from lead poisoning, roughly 10 million per year from tobacco. over 100 million Indians, tens of millions of native Americans. 200 million from WW1 and WW2 (direct + indirect casualties) and the list somehow goes on and on. We have historical records that show that human height fell as a result of capitalism. At its peak, capitalism caused 90% of the human population to live under extreme poverty.
What does finance capitalism serve? But what has the capitalism of the neoliberal era done?
Finance capital is not the same thing as neoliberalism. Finance capital is the merger of bank capital and industrial capital. Finance capital is progressive because it represents the highest level of monopolization that a capitalist society can achieve. Finance capital develops the infrastructure and social relations that a socialist society could use to achieve absolute monopolization.
Neoliberalism on the other hand is the period that comes after the collapse of the post-WW2 Keynesian order. You can think of it in terms of a human life cycle. The Keynesian stage was the elderly stage of the capitalist empires in Europe and the youth stage of the American one. In the neoliberal era, the European empires are on life-support and 90% in the grave already, while the empire in America has become old and can only go downwards. It is in this sense that the neoliberal era is progressive. Unfortunately for the capitalist empires, there is no one who can keep America on life support
Doesn’t the existance of the US and UK in the neoliberal era for so many years just mean that we found a way to be fascist while maintaining the liberal-democratic order and bourgeois freedoms?
Partially. The capitalist empires have certainly refined their method of control over the past decades, but they have also significantly weakened. Whenever a capitalist empire has to enact violence, it does so quite freely. Just take a look at Gaza, or Iraq, or Libya.
https://redsails.org/the-relationships-between-capitalists/
Progressive in the sense that it “is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself.”
The development of capitalism to the highest stage, to the point of fragility, implies a very high stage of socialist alternative to be birthed out of a genuine working class movement, correct?
Finance capitalism serves neocolonialism, neoliberalism also serves neocolonialism. Neocolonialism came first. Finance capitalism emerged to solve the coordination problems of neocolonialism. Neoliberalism emerged to solve the ideological problems of both neocolonialism and finance capitalism.