'Neoliberal capitalism' has contributed to the rise of fascism, says Nobel laureate

The reason capitalism leads to fascism is that inevitably capitalism will lead to untenable inequality. Injustice will be too great to ignore between the rich and the rest. This will lead to populism.

There are two forms of populism. One will seek to rectify the imbalances caused by capitalism. The other will seek to divert blame to minorities. If there were less blacks, immigrants, gays, Jews, etc. etc. then our society would not be in decay. One is much more useful to the Capitalist and so it will ultimately prevail. The capitalist will devote all resources to crushing the leftist populism up to and including directly funding fascism.

What does capitalism do when there is nothing left to take? It keeps taking

Thing is…there is no real free market with proper competition, anyway. If there was such a thing, my groceries wouldn’t cost double now from what they were a mere five years ago (or quadruple, if looking at soda like Coke and Pepsi products). There is rampant collusion and price-fixing going on and not a damn government official seems to be doing anything about it. And yeah, the “but but the pandemic” excuse runs pretty thin as the years of this gouging continues.

Some of the comments in this thread really tell you why it takes a novel laureate to say this. Some of y'all do not have a basic understanding of history, economic systems, or what the term reactionary actually means.

The correct response to "neo liberal capitalism has contributed to the rise of fascism" should be "no shit, Sherlock"

It's truly sad that that isn't 100% of the comments here.

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed, y'all. That doesn't mean all liberals are fascist, that means that fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism.

And just in case y'all also don't know what that means, "liberalism" in that context isn't "Obama liberal, Bush conservative," it means the political ideology of liberalism, of which both Bush and Obama were proponents of.

ETA: I'm not engaging anymore.. it's not my job to teach y'all the difference between an economic system and authoritarian states. Also, your magic has no power here, I am an anarchist, not a stalinist. Please educate yourselves. If for no other reason, do it to make it easier to pwn the tankies or whatever the fuck

i hate it when I hear people making the claim that it is capitalism that has helped so many people in the world with better quality of life and more opportunities and better outcomes, etc.

Capitalism is a fucking disease that we need to rid ourselves of, it is worse than Ebola the way it infects our minds with the dumbest shit.

You know what has made lives better for billions of people? The washing machine and the cotton gin and fucking electricity.

Capitalism has fought against progress every step of the way.

By the nine divines... Why does it take libs 80 years extra to reach the conclusions that Marxists have already described in detail in the last century...

"People who are barely surviving have extremely limited freedom," he writes.

"All their time and energy go into earning enough money to pay for groceries, shelter, and transportation to jobs … a good society would do something about the deprivations, or reductions in freedom, for people with low incomes.

Well of course it has, fascism is the end result of capitalism. Some would say it's natural conclusion.

Thanks Reagan

ya thats not a bug thats a feature

if you want to implement unpopular policies, authoritarian regime is the way

A lot of economists don't listen to anything Joseph Stiglitz says, because he's not from the Chicago school. Economics is so stupid.

no shit, Sherlock. Still, glad to see it in the news.

I used to be a libertarian and believed in the whole 'freer the market freer the people' shit...

But then I grew up.

In other news, meteorologist says the sky is blue.

This is absolutely shocking to anyone that hasn't read basic theory. If this surprises you I strongly recommend you read the Principles of Communism to start.

I would be more open to these sort of arguments if they weren't being promoted or perpetrated by actual dictatorships.

So, TL;DR: copy Europe?

A lot of dumb takes in the comment section here. It's astounding the conclusions people come to. Joseph Stiglitz is absolutely right, but a lot of you need to view societies in a less rigid, linear, and positively Manichean manner.

YoU dOn’T kNoW wHaT lIBeRaL mEaNs

This feels like an appeal to authority. He's an economist, not a political scientist. His Nobel prize was in contributions around screening, which is important but has jack shit to do with fascism. And he's held some opinions before that were highly controversial to say the least, like advocating for the breakup of the eurozone. Just because he says it and he has a shiny prize doesn't mean it's right.

Marxism and socialism are not the answer to the ills of capitalism, though. People don’t necessarily want to be responsible for organizing production, and group dynamics which plague capitalist societies will crop up again, leading to unequal distribution of resources, and again fascism.

Such anti-social group dynamics are almost always resultant from the natural levels of greed and self-preservation which people possess, like favoring people from their religion or culture over others.

Capitalism needs to be controlled and made reasonable via high tax rates to reduce funding for lobbying. Under prepared and ill informed masses do not need to be given controls over production. There are also many who want people to give up individual liberties to live in communes. Fuck off with that, no one wants to live in your fucking commune with you.

There is one big flaw with socialism: socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.

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Bullshit. Fascists have been around for millenia longer than our peaceful mindsets. Back then it was more useful to be but recent advances in technology has made their usefulness nothing more than a nostalgic yearning for past and passed glories

Far-left and far-right regimes are just a cycle, society just goes from right to left and vice versa gradually, bad times make strong men and good times make weak men. That's it.

Edit: The key is to be the strong man in any time.