Bailouts and subsidies are what come to mind for me
Failure and success are two very elastic terms. The default unspoken definitions of failure and success are wildly disparate for capitalism and communism. Liberals usually only have to find an example of someone being better off than people were in the charicature of the USSR we know from cold war propaganda in order to declare capitalism a success, whereas communists have to demonstrate communism creating an utopian paradise on earth ovenight in order to say it is successful.
Get the liberals to define the criteria for failure and success and get them to apply them equally to socialism and capitalism.
Once you've done that, ask them if millions of people dying from easily curable diseases are a success. Ask them if them if millions starving to death each year while food is being thrown out somewhere else for the most frivolous reasons are a succes. Ask them if having homes standing empty while people freeze to death in the streets is a success.
And mention capitalism's greatest success: climate change. Untold millions will have their livelihoods, their communities destroyed. Some of the most populated places on earth will be rendered uninhabitable. People will starve and die in wars over the remaining resources. Nothing of significance will be done to avert the disaster, the leaders of capitalism will try to scam each other with green gizmos until they're under water , not because they are stupid or evil but because capitalism as a system is structurally incapable of doing what needs to be done to keep this at bay. If this isn't considered a failure, I don't know what is.
Every workplace that is a dictatorship instead of a democracy is a success of capitalism. Every person that goes hungry while there is more than enough food to feed everyone is a success of capitalism. Everyone person that goes homeless while there are empty homes is a success of capitalism. The success of capitalism is the failure of humanity.
I really like this answer . Often the best thing to say to these kind of questions is short and to the point, cutting through the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter.
"Every workplace that is a dictatorship instead of a democracy is a success of capitalism."gonna remember that line specifically.
You see, capitalism is more like a vampire
Capitalism: "im gonna morb"
Capital is dead labor, which, Morb-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more it Morbs
You can point out that capitalism does not extend its benefices to the developing world whom resources are extracted from
This is a really important point, IMO. US Americans are heavily propagandized with the idea that capitalism has lifted the global south out of poverty. That fact about nearly all of the improvements in living standards in the global south since the mid 20th century coming from China is a key one to start de-worming brains.
The main problem is that capitalism is the dominant economic system, so even when it fails and states collapse and billions die for no reason other than "line go down", the successor system is usually still capitalism (or would be perceived as such by your average person). That later point is important as well: people think capitalism is just when you buy and sell things, like when there's a market. The person you're talking to might have no idea what defines capitalism in the first place, so you might be having two different discussions in your heads.
The important thing is to have clear ideas of what constitutes failure. Multiple categories in your own head with examples locked and loaded. Folks here have already given good examples. I'll try adding a few.
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Allegedly stable system shits itself every 8-12 years and has to be rescued by the state at the cost of the common person. AKA, "the business cycle", predicted by Marx among others over 150 years ago.
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Is in a constant state of failure for the vast majority of humanity, as despite producing so much stuff and food and transportation, it fails to distribute equitably. In fact, by design it distributes inequitably and creates a regime in which countries, regions, continents are starved to maintain economic hegemony. Example: the US forcing poor countries to deindustrialized and import food. You can even see this in the imperial core, where children still go hungry.
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Imperialism generally. Those poor countries forced to take on food dependence are nearly universally poor because they're forced to undersell their labor and adopt a colonial extraction regime where foreign interests own their production. Countries that try attempt to reject this system are characterized as dangerous, socialist, and targeted for destruction. During the Cold War, this was often a self-fulfilling prophecy, where a country would forcibly buy back its own assets (land, natural resources, factories) that had been stolen under colonialism, then the US would sanction them and train + arm oppositional paramilitaries to coup that country, forcing them to work with and buy weapons from the only other superpower, and one willing to deal with them: the Soviet Union. Every country that tries to go food independent, does basic land reform, tries to turn its natural resource extraction into a domestic driver of economic independence and diversification is targeted for death by capitalist interests.
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The rate of profit tends to fall, creating longer-term cycles of crises that result in major - and violent - shifts. The "solutions" to these crises create all-new ones. The petrodollar and its consequences. Financialization (good luck buying a house or getting healthcare). Neoliberalism generally. And, fundamentally, war, war profiteering, and "rebuilding".
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Speaking of profitability and neoliberalism: the stripping bare of social services, product inventories, life-sustaining materials. Look at post-Soviet states generally. Their services and guarantees were stripped, undemocratically, virtually overnight. The rapid reintroduction of raw capitalism was overtly monstrous and killed more people in the region than WWII, but it was social murder so the West doesn't care.
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Capitalism is failing in front of your eyes re: climate change. It is intrinsically incapable of putting people before profits, and emissions are a way to be profitable so capitalism says you can get fucked when it comes to global warming.
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Capitalism fails so hard and so consistently that it also requires a massive propaganda machine running 24/7 to convince you that everything is fine, actually. That climate change stuff? Don't worry, we'll make the cars electric and install some solar panels and it'll all be good and green. Recycle that water bottle to save the planet. Buy a Tesla and we'll be fine. You think there's a recession right now because everything's expensive and you can't find a job that pays well enough? Stupid fucking poors, that's not how Sir Paddington Goldbottom defined a recession in 1879 and by his metric of stock prices and the power to hire, we're doing great! Not getting paid enough? Get a better job, don't unionize! Can't find a better job? You're a low-skilled worker that needs to make themselves more valuable. Get in that grindset! Can't afford to go to school? Should've thought about that earlier, it's your own fault you didn't go into [current fad that requires economic stability to even begin in]. Inflation is up so the science says we've gotta get wages down, sorry those are just the facts. Those [x race] people in that country over there? They're why you lost your job, they're why your grandma died without healthcare, and they're going to get us if we don't get them first. Protect freedom and democracy! In other words: every failure of capitalism has created absurd and massive propaganda efforts to distract from the systemic issues it causes by focusing on a scapegoat: the poor, individual choices, a race, a gender or gender identity, a sexuality, a country of origin, other countries in general, moral decay generally, or my favorite: this is just how things have to be, scientifically, so that's why your community has to suffer in poverty and violence while military contractors get paid infinite money to kill brown children in school buses in [foreign country].
Look at post-Soviet states generally. Their services and guarantees were stripped, undemocratically, virtually overnight. The rapid reintroduction of raw capitalism was overtly monstrous and killed more people in the region than WWII, but it was social murder so the West doesn’t care.
If socialism "failed" so hard, why did quality of life in the USSR only deteriorate so dramatically following the illegal dissolution of the union and capitalist restoration? If capitalism is such a good system, quality of life should improve, not crash.
Yeah it's a great example for that reason, and also for explaining imperialism. The former Soviet Union got the imperial periphery treatment, not the core treatment.
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No bigger indictment of the failure of capitalism than seeing homeless people and then you look up and see all the high rise, towering sky scrapers in the background. If this can be called successful then the word has lost its meaning or the person who said that has a rotten belief system.
(1) It's failing most people right now. You can point to individuals within capitalist societies, but you can also point to most nations. Only a few individuals and nations have really benefited from capitalism.
(2) Climate change and our inability to respond to it are a direct result of capitalism's drive for infinite growth.
(3) Historically, I'd summarize the argument of Late Victorian Holocaust as an example of the failure of capitalist markets and the disastrous consequences of "free market fundamentalism."
(4) In a more limited sense, there's the periodic boom/bust cycle.
Actually a decent answer cause now that i think about it someone saying this is probably too far gone or too pampered to have ever experienced the brutal and dehumanizing exploitations of this system. So probably best to not waist time with them lol.
Yeah there's nothing wrong with that perspective at all especially if one brings that same energy and willingness to speak up IRL . In all seriousness of course any real socialist not only has a raging belief in others but a deep love for the entire world( 🌽 but true) . Remember that we can have as many people believe in a vague idea of Socialism or outright Communism but nothing changes until labor is organized collectively enough to truly challenge the bourgeoise, the landlords, the police , the fascist, the bureaucrats and so on and so fourth :zizek-preference: . we must be less alienated from each other , we are going to truly have to act in totally new ways if there is ever going to be real change. READ , Attend local protests , join an org, volunteer somewhere, talk with co workers , pass theory around etc etc. No amount of "agitprop" will get us anywhere at the end of the day(and I'm talking to MYSELF here too) .
Uhh... You can just start listing off all the catastrophic failures of capitalism that occur pretty much every ten years like clockwork. dot com, 2008, 2020, the oil thing in the 70s, black friday.
Like if someone says that to you with a straight face they're either arguing in bad faith, or preposterously ignorant.
Ah, but you see, that is not real capitalism. It's only what happens to white PMC's in airconditioned offices in the imperial core that counts.
Haiti is actually an interesting case: essentially a failed state but certainly a capitalist one, (attempted to be) based on exports and labour.
USA: capitalist country par excellence, well over a million covid deaths with a population of ~330 million
China: communist country, ~5k COVID deaths with a population of 1.25 billion
You could try to bring some bigger historical perspective and answer with a question:
Would the average Roman ever ask if the Roman empire failed? What about the Egyptians? Everyone living during the medieval and colonial eras never believed their own society had failed. Would the average Spanish or British person in 1750 predict their empires would be reduced to nothing in less than 200 years? Sure critics and haters also always existed but the majority of the population would never believe the point of no return unless they were engulfed in some sort of crisis or war that inevitable changed their material conditions and the foundation of their society.
The first step is to realize the difference between failed and failing and it is possible to see the inevitable end of an economic system or society even as you participate in it, it means failing is an ongoing process and your perception of that process will depend on where and how comfortable you are as part of the audience.
Once you lead with this perspective it is easy to contrast how living in the third world and suffering from all kinds of poverty related issues an preventable diseases would prove to you the system is "failing" if not failed already , while being a rich fuck living in the richest American/European cities would lead you to believe capitalism is great, full of innovation, the whole "Rockefellers did not have microwaves" bullshit.
If the person can't put themselves on the shoes of the majority of the population outside the western influence then you should point that this person is not realy sympathetic to what is best for humanity as a whole but rather completely biased by their own fortunate circumstances.
They are the Roman patricians believing the empire will live on, its too big to fail, maybe it will all be alright in the east, and most importantly There Is No Alternative because "the barbarians" are just right outside.
just as an interestin aside theres actually a lot of literature declaring, predicting, and bemoaning the falling roman empire. usually wrapped in pagan or christian pretenses---we abandoned the gods, we're not christian enough yet sorta stuff
Well noted, we also have to make a distinction between doomsday mythology(eschatology) and the sort of social economic analysis that is realy necessary.
A modern historian could go back to 100 AD and reliably point to every single point of failure that is inevitably going to lead to the collapse. the question of the Roman collapse becomes a fact even if it hasn't happened yet, but contemporary normal people would probably not acknowledge that with the exception you mention.
