good god even among non leftist spaces the general message of robin hood is agreed to be "You take from the rich and give to the poor", how the fuck do you arrive at the point he's just opposed to nobility and clergy
Robin Hood famously loved the free enterprise and the Chicago school
When people have no historical understanding of the transition from feudal monarchies to the democratic state and liberal capitalism. When monarchies started getting dissolved and governments democratized, aristocrats and royalty-adjacent people were at severe risk of losing their position in society, and sought to find a new way to preserve their status. The people of feudal aristocracy who formulated this movement were literally the origin point of "conservatism", as in conservation of the aristocratic hierarchies within a society that was transitioning out of its previous basis for those structures. When they no longer had the appeal to autocratic leadership to substantiate their high placement in social hierarchy, they moved to the next best thing, which was money, profit, and private property as vehicles to wield influence over people lower in the social strata.
When you understand all that, Robin Hood works just fine as a character of anti-capitalist, or at least capitalism-critical, sentiment, because the same power structures that the rich and powerful used in feudal times were laundered into the capitalist framework via the profit motive and private property.
I genuinely believe that a lot of liberals just don't have a connection between vast property ownership and the nefarious amounts of influence that gives a person in society. Like, they see a Bezos or a Gates hoarding ludicrous amounts of land and only regard it as an investment vehicle scaled to massive wealth earned elsewhere, to preserve their wealth on that very individualistic level. They don't have the framework to connect the sheer mass of perpetual wealth that such land ownership entails and the amount of power a person holds over society because of it.
Most liberals see property ownership as "having a private home and maybe a few acres of real estate with a vacation house upstate" rather than "owning half the arable land in Iowa" or "controlling the nation's largest aquifer".
It's very much an out of sight, out of mind perspective.
A lot of versions/interpretations center Robin as being a supporter of King Richard the Lionheart. In this framework: robbing from the rich and giving to the poor was not entirely pure altruism and rejection of nobility, but more a rejection/rebellion of Prince John's specific authority and moral leadership.
Eitherway: its pretty fucking pedantic.
Just watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) in which Kevin Costner returns from the Gulf War with Morgan Freeman, his Arab translator, and exacts revenge on the tax-loving, gun-confiscating Alan Rickman who tried to take over while he (Costner) was away
Lol, you should check out Robin Hood (2018) with Taron Edgerton. They actually went the complete flipside on the politics...which would be good but man oh man are they on the nose.
Robinhood existed in nascent capitalism. A few social changes started in the 13th century that paved the way for capitalism: plunder of the arab world, inclosure, and mass criminalization of the populace.
At multiple points Robinhood saves his comrades from the gallows or vice versa, and he's portrayed as living in a deer park. Deer parks were inclosed peasant commons reserved for the aristocracy to hunt on. This means that two of the institutions robinhood opposed (inclosure and mass criminalization) were nascent capitalist institutions.
Robinhood was an anti capitalist.
Well, except for the part where he fought in the crusades. That wasn't great, but at least he used that military service to kill the sherif of Nottingham.
Well, except for the part where he fought in the crusades.
One could argue that defending your turf from colonization by an outside force is also anti-capitalist.
The 13th century crusades were an attemp by Catholics from Europe to conquer Jerusalem for the church. The Roman, viking and norman invasions of England had already happened.
The 13th century crusades were an attemp by Catholics from Europe to conquer Jerusalem for the church.
As part of a broader turf war between "Christian" kingdoms of Europe and the "Moorish" kingdoms of the Middle East for land in and around the Mediterranean. The fixation on Jerusalem was ideological, but since you needed to occupy the Mediterranean coastline to manage it, the fight had a great deal of material economic consequence. The English crusading down south just so happened to also have a vested interest in sailing past the Iberian Peninsula without getting picked off by Barbary Pirates.
Barbary Pirates - aligned with the various Muslim occupiers of southern Europe - were harassing and enslaving English sailors as early as the 1500s. Raids through the Iberian peninsula were happening as far back as the 710s.
Huh, didn't know that, that would have been cooler than him fighting as a cavelryman in the middle east.
how the fuck do you arrive at the point he’s just opposed to nobility and clergy
Because that's what Hollywood told me in the latest remake and they've never lied to me before.
What's fun is that socialist states tend to have more "small business" than capitalist ones because people have trades and hobbies that they do on the side when they aren't forced to work 80 hours a week to feed their families. It's the inevitability of capitalist monopoly and forced proletarianization of the tradespeople that kills "small business".
I feel like they're taking about small fiefdom style small business though, like landlording and restauranteuring which are essentially slave exploitation and not creative/innovative personal business.
Also :lenin-shining:
Good lord, imagine being a franchise owner...
Did you build the store?
No, I lease it.
Do you make the food?
Nope, my staff does that.
Did you come up with the recipes?
Nah, but we have 36 types of wing sauce.
The absolute best is when some dipshit outright says "my store runs like a well-oiled machine even when I'm gone"
And I'm just like :mao-aggro-shining:
What are the chances that his reason for hating Disney is that they make female and non-white main characters?
Account posts heavily in meme/D&D/Anime subs (along with the occasional thirstyboi comment on cosplay stuff)
You don't need to guess
But capitalism is also supposed to be about small businesses
According to who?
Thats my own view. If capitalism ia about individual ownership then i believe it should be about individuala ans not industries
Lmao, the dude's brain is melting out of his ears at the sheer cognitive dissonance.
You know when someone has no theory when they say capitalism is about anything, like some morals to uphold rather than the consequences of how property is divided.
I mean, capitalism can have small businesses, I don't give a shit. fuck small business too.
That was the line that jumped out at me. Like in what world does capitalism do anything for the small business owner? The goal of capitalism is to extract wealth from labor and then hoard as much of that wealth as possible to subjugate the less-thans. Not "hoard as much as possible and also give some breaks to small business owners." Capitalism is literally about crushing competition, even if in the short run there is a competitive playing field. Eventually Amazon or Walmart is the end state.
Fuck, dude, just play Monopoly.
THAT'S CAPITALISM.
it's all fun and games until this guy's house is flooded by sea level rise or burns down from wildfires
he can always sell his house to aquaman if that happens :expert-shapiro: it’s the free market after all
I work.for the government
Lmao that'll show them. It's a well know fact that the more stuff the government does, the more socialister it is
Im very confused.
Son, I am disappoint
When you definitely understand capitalism and its relationship to bourgeois "democracy"
Capitalism just means where individuals control markets as opposed to government.
🤦♂️
I like the part where the guy is like "Pssh, are you seriously saying wage labor wasn't a thing before capitalism?" and all the people who actually know history are just :yes-chad:
In a way I kinda feel sorry for them because I only started taking interest in the material reality of history after/as I became a socialist. Before that I had kind of internalised the Flintstones version of history where you have basically the same economic relations but with funny clothes.
Hahaha that's true I guess, at some point I started noticing how much fiction that takes place in the past basically has capitalism but dressed as feudalism
RPGs and fantasy video games are a frequent offender in this. Every village and outpost has a fully functioning commodity market, complete with globally equalised prices and stable currency, neatly divisible by 100 for copper/silver/gold.
Uncommon doesn't mean it didn't exist.
I fucking hate reddit. It's just pedantic assholes all the way down.
"you say capitalism created wage labor, but technically a small handful of people in the middle ages experienced something that could possibly under the right circumstances be described as wage labor if you squint, so you're 100% wrong about everything! I'm very smart!"
fuck off
Too true. I even knew I was opening myself to this pedantic bullshit when I wrote my comment, but I'm just beyond caring at this point. I'm not twisting my language in a pretzel to appease :reddit-logo: dorks.
Capitalism has problems the same as any system
Both sides. Also, there is no difference between good and bad things, aktuly, you idiot. You imbecile.
