Can capitalism be authoritarian?
And if so, what’re some characteristics that distinguish authoritarian capitalism from other forms of authoritarianism?
In one sense, capitalism and authoritarianism seem like opposites.
Capitalism is at least one way to do a free market.
In theory, a market free from force, fraud and largely free from state intervention, except for whatever taxes are required by the state to prevent force, fraud and enforce contracts.
Market socialism and distributism may be two more ways of doing a free market.
But because people(s) differ in talent, tenacity and luck, and because of how property is defined in capitalism, over time, capitalism leads to enormous, unnatural imbalances of wealth, which in turn leads to enormous imbalances of power/authority.
People can be bought, legally or under the table, courts, politicians, academia, media.
They can also be blackmailed, extorted and assassinated.
Capitalists end up having most of the surplus time, energy and resources, consequently it’s a lot easier for them to organize, to further their interests than it is for working people, consequently government and markets are rigged in their favor.
Capitalism inevitably leads to crony capitalism.
And as GDP, and income inequality multiplies at an accelerating pace, without revolutionary pushback, capitalism just gets more corrupt over time.
This is one way capitalism invariably becomes authoritarian.
Increasingly capitalism ends up behaving more like mafia, like organized crime than a ‘proper government’, insofar as proper government is even a thing.
The people often still have legal rights and freedoms on paper, they’re just routinely ignored.
What’re some other ways capitalism can and does become authoritarian?
Capitalism is a form of economic egoism/individualism.
Liberalism (more in the classical sense of that word, think civil liberties, I never use liberalism to mean woke/cultural Marxism) is a form of social egoism/individualism.
Capitalism, at least conceptually, tends to go with liberalism and representative democracy.
Society, government and economics, liberalism, representative democracy and capitalism respectively.
It can be challenging to get a society based on self-interest as opposed to altruism/collectivism/self-sacrifice to accept authoritarianism, so how does capitalism become authoritarian?
How does liberal/libertarian capitalism devolve into authoritarian capitalism?
Step one; Over time, those with greater talent, tenacity and luck rise to the top.
Also, those who’re avaricious and cutthroat, ruthless.
Step two; Over time, all the low hanging economic and technological fruit/opportunities get picked/seized.
Step three; Crony capitalism, rules for thee, not for me/double standards, as income inequality grows, increasingly the rich rig government and the economy in their favor.
Whatever it takes; bribery, blackmail, extortion, assassination.
They mix with organized crime.
They circumvent taxes and regulations.
They print money from nothing and receive a lot of corporate welfare, meanwhile the people receive little-no social welfare.
They even engage in drug and human trafficking.
Four; As technology develops and weaponry becomes far more destructive, the state convinces the masses they can’t be trusted with the new, more destructive weapons, even with some of the old, less destructive ones.
Unfortunately what the masses don’t fully realize is, government is largely ran by sociopaths.
As weaponry inequality between the state and its citizenry grows, the rich and powerful have even less to fear from the massses, further emboldening them to rig things and commit crimes.
Five; Fight disease with disease.
As man’s environment, food and medicine becomes more artificial, synthetic and industry dumps toxic chemicals into our air, food and water supply, new diseases appear and some old ones proliferate.
These diseases are blamed on stupid things like ‘climate change’ or ‘viruses’ rather than the real culprits.
These diseases are used to tax, regulate, track, trace and coerce us into becoming more dependent on big pharma rather than turn to detoxification, whole foods, fitness and wholistic medicine.
They want to keep us in a sick, dumbed down state, just healthy enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to swallow and regurgitate the propaganda.
Six; Fight illiberalism with illiberalism.
As opportunities get scarce and income inequality continues to grow, so does illicit drug use, crime and terrorism.
Peaceful opposition to both crony liberal capitalism and liberal capitalism itself grows too, but peaceful opposition can’t be tolerated either.
Those who can be bought become controlled opposition, pseudo-populist politicians who promise the moon but deliver next to nothing and their NPC talking head supporters.
Those who can’t be bought, and they are a rare breed, are censored, deplatformed, doxed, detained and assassinated if necessary.
See McCarthyism, the war on drugs, the war on terror and neo-McCarthyism.
Their political opponents are always extremists; Marxists, fascists, anarchists, never sane, rational, legitimate opposition to the status quo.
See what happened to populist Huey Long in the midst of the depression, and the Kennedys.
The world becomes a more dangerous place.
They use these crises/emergencies, real and imagined to ‘temporarily’ (permanently) suspend our rights and freedoms.
In a modern, crony liberal capitalist casino where the house always winner takes all society largely based on self-interest, you have to scare the shit out of people in order to justify suspending their rights and freedoms.
And you have to pretend like they’re not really losing anything by having to do x or give up y, it’s good for them too, or at least not bad.
Our ruling class aren’t liberal capitalists, they aren’t social justice ecowarriors or national and social conservatives either, they don’t give a damn about any of that, they are crony, illiberal, authoritarian capitalists.
They distract with the culture war from the class war.
If they do redistribute money, it’s always someone else’s, from the middle to the bottom, never from the top to the bottom or middle.
Also worth mentioning, maybe elections were always rigged, but if they weren’t before, they probably are now in our digital electronic age.
Different flavors of authoritarian capitalism, ‘left, right and center’, that’s all we really have in the world today, and the western authoritarian capitalist model versus the Brazilian, Russian, Indian or Chinese authoritarian capitalist model.
For the foreseeable future this is it, what we’ve got.
Authoritarian capitalism has won out against all the others.
I don’t have any hope in this system, I’m not investing anything in it, just using it.
Soviet Russia is Authoritarian Command Capitalism.
It departed from Marxist theory by denying working control of the means of production.
Imagine confusing economics with politics.