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philipallstartoday at 9:18 AM2 repliesview on HN

Capitalism explicitly wants to separate power decisions, e.g. "throw that man in jail" from money decisions, e.g. "consumer demand shows we should build more of widget X and less of widget Y".

Things like Communism, Fascism, monarchy want to combine them, so the government/leader has the power and the money decisions.


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vintermanntoday at 9:36 AM

Capitalism only means unconditional private property rights in the means of production. It doesn't require separation of powers or anything else, it can and has historically worked great with fascism.

"Money decisions" are also absolutely power decisions. The power concentration isn't even mainly in the decisions of the rich, but simply in that they are rich. You need to work building yachts rather than bake bread because the yacht buyers have so fabulously much more money to spare than the bread buyers. And the money they don't spend is even more powerful since it controls society's investments. Our society orbits around wealth, that's what capitalism is in practice.

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roenxitoday at 9:30 AM

There are famously capitalist countries that are monarchies (like the UK), so as written that has to be wrong. There isn't really a definition of what "capitalism" means, although we can be fairly confident it involves people owning capital. Arguably it means that the people who own the capital should control the lion's share of political power (which, coincidentally, is how the US works).

The thing that makes communism (and fascism to a lesser extent) anti-capitalist are that it rejects the idea people should be allowed to own and control capital. So there is a clear incompatibility with communism even if the exact nature of capitalism isn't clear.

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