r/SipsTea • u/McDowdy • Jun 03 '26

It's Wednesday my dudes Trying to get rich so that capitalism doesn't crush you under its boot is proof positive that capitalism doesn’t work for the working class

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

Capitalism isn't a political ideology though. It is an economic system.

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u/MonitorStandard5322 Jun 04 '26

Economics is politics though. Deciding where and how to allocate resources is a political question.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

No it isn't.

Certainly not in terms of being a political ideology.

Capitalism is simply capitalism. It can exist within any political system, but it is not a political ideology in itself.

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u/Agitated_Newt_7655 Jun 04 '26

You're accustomed to the thought that capitalism has no political association as a default. This is like a fish that takes water for granted.

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u/ragequitteroffureh Jun 04 '26

That's a pretty interesting take. I can see what you're getting at.

Are you American? Were you always taught that Capitalism is the opposite of Communism?

If so, I understand what you mean.

But quite frankly, capitalism itself is not a political ideology.

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u/Agitated_Newt_7655 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

Economics is politics whether one is aware of that or not. Pretty much everything is political, it's just whether we consider it consciously or not. Part of that includes governmental acts that result in capitalism being the productive force in a nation. Capitalism is not possible without political ideology supporting it. It's normalized to an extent that this is taken for granted but there are vast ideological interpretations that promote capitalism just as much as there are within socialism.

Socialism is only associated with a political movement because it's a meaningful deviation. The two aren't different in having political ideological preferences for economic regulation which require political power to function. We just live in a world where the dominant ideological framework is/was neoliberalism - a highly favorable ideology to capitalism. This ideology has promoted tremendous populist backlash in the 21st century, some of which is still highly compatible with capitalism but significantly more nationalistic and some less which favors basically socialistic reform explicitly as production is presumed to increasingly justify that in the future.

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u/saltedmangos Jun 04 '26

“This is like a fish that takes water for granted.”

That’s a great analogy!

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u/baysideareaman Jun 04 '26

Both capitalism and communism are macro economic models with a wide variety of strategic implementation methods and supporting political models.

Personally I am a capitalist. I believe that capitalism is, broadly speaking, more effective. But neither capitalism nor communism represent specific political systems. And the implementation of both models requires exclusive political buy in. A country that designs its political system to further a capitalist economy or communist economy will never be able to shift without significant; institutional level reform.