Rob Urie: Will It Be Socialism or Barbarism for the Twenty-First Century?

Yves Smith reposts Will It Be Socialism or Barbarism for the Twenty-First Century? by Rob Urie, author of Zen Economics, artist, and musician who publishes The Journal of Belligerent Pontification on Substack

Illuminating the depravity of late-stage capitalism is a fools errand without alternatives. The US— Left, Right, and Center, is beholden to the logic of capitalism. The ‘Left’ response to the failure of Covid-19 mitigation policies has been libertarian, not ‘Left.’ Lest this come as a surprise, libertarianism is the ethos of capital that claims that corporate executives and oligarchs should be ‘free’ to exploit labor, pollute with impunity, and cheat on their income taxes. It is the ethos of unaccountable power. It is approximately as compatible with Left politics as European fascism of the twentieth century was. The point: the US desperately needs Socialist and Communist political alternatives. Deference to libertarianism will leave fascism as the only ‘logical’ alternative.

Emphasis Mine

Capitalism desperately tries to maintain the myth that there is no alternative to itslef. This is why every supporter of Capitalism repeats the mantra that "Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried."

With the maintenance of Capitalism, the political spectrum becomes Libertaianism to Fascism. Both ends fails because they rely on Capitalism. The difference is the amount of state involvement.

This also explains why some supporters of Capitalism conflate Fascism and Socialism as they believe that government control is identical to Socialism without considering the underlying economic relations. Those economic relations are about who controls the means of production: Capitalists or workers. One could characterise Anarchism as Libertarian Communism (no state, only a confederation of worker and resident collectives).