What is Capitalism?
The generation of money as a by product of trade has been going on for a few millennia. You have wool I have cotton, we exchange and now we both have wool and cotton. So good so far.
Then at some point coin/currency was invented so I didnt necessarily need to have either wool or cotton to obtain either.
The creation of value that was placed and decreed on coin/currency is the early precursor to modern day capitalism.
Things start to get more complicated in last few centuries with the concept of debt.
Economists feel free to step in and educate me on the issue.
Then at some point coin/currency was invented so I didnt necessarily need to have either wool or cotton to obtain either.
The creation of value that was placed and decreed on coin/currency is the early precursor to modern day capitalism.
Things start to get more complicated in last few centuries with the concept of debt.
Economists feel free to step in and educate me on the issue.
Comments (61)
When I studied economics, the key matters of capitalism revolved around the questions of: Who owns the means of production? Who gets the profits? How should labour be treated? Hence the notion of wage slavery.
How one reacts to these issues will depend on worldviews. Is there such a thing as kind capitalism? Is capitalism best when it has socialist brakes to protect society form the worst excesses of neo-liberal fundamentalisms? Should we let markets rip and scrap legislation and taxation in the service of libertarian profit making?
You tell me. Whatever you decide will depend not on capitalism so much but on how you think an entire society and culture should operate. Websites abound with interpretations and statistics. It's like the interminable debate about true understandings of Bible verse.
Then there is the free market, which is also held up by the forced non-allowance by government decree of monopolies. They call this, in economic terms, "Pace the race", and also, "share the flair".
There is non aristocracy in a Capitalist society; people have unequal opportunities, but anyone can strike it rich. They call this, in economic terms, "the buck of luck".
The ruling class, opposed to what many believe, is diverse; there is the upper echelon, who direct the company's future by having the majority of voting shares, but basically anyone can own dividend-bearing shares, and voting shares, in as many companies as they want, and as long as their money can be stretched. They call this, in economic terms, "The wretched stretch".
Capitalism suffers, from time to time, of an over-production crisis. This is when the people have too many goods that don't need replacement, and therefore nobody buys anything for a while; workers can't earn, they get laid off, and they can't spend; by the time they need to spend, because the goods wore out finally, they can't buy because they hadn't had an income for a long time. In economic terms it is called "poverty ain't novelty".
On the other hand, when people are buying like crazy, because they have jobs that provide them with a good income, and there are plenty of well-presented gimmicks to buy, then money changes hands quickly; everyone becomes well off; they buy shit, they spend money, and the more money they spend, the more the unit price of shit goes up, because of the other trend: the elasticity of demand over supply. This is called in Economic terms "Where's the money, Honey?"
Good thread. It's a great question.
Like many things in political science, sociology, and economics, it's one of those words that is used a lot but is very rarely defined -- I think of something along the lines of "God", although that's admittedly an extreme example.
Capitalism is a socioeconomic system. Like other socioeconomic systems -- e.g., feudalism -- it has some unique features which differentiate it from others. What is the unique feature?
Many say it's markets -- but those have been around since time immemorial.
Some say it's the profit motive -- but profit has been around a long time indeed.
Others say it involves ownership, particularly the ownership of the "means of production." The idea of ownership and the control over production seem to pre-date "capitalism," though.
Perhaps it's a combination -- one which seems to have arisen after the middle ages and especially with the industrial revolution.
Personally, I like Richard Wolff's tentative definition: capitalism is defined by the relationship between the employer and employee. Like the Lord and vassal/serf, or the master and slave, a unique relationship is the defining feature.
I like Wolfe and he knows more about this than I do. There's a lot to unpack in the idea of 'defined by the relationship between...' it brings me back to the means of production, profits, and wage slavery - out of which that relationship is built. :wink: But I take your point about these existing above and beyond capitalism. Of course so do relationships between workers and owners - in feudalism, say. Is capitalism a system or a relationship? Or is it a bit of both? And how many forms of capitalism are there?
Not employer and employee, however.
If you designed a government to establish public safety to some manageable degree, to protect private property, to enable complex and mediated methods of trading by enforcing contracts, and then further stipulated that government was not to interfere in any other way with the activities of its citizens except when and to the degree that it can demonstrate it is necessary to maintain such a system of ordered liberty, then youd have capitalism. Markets and trade and finance and division of labor, none of that is behavior exclusive to capitalist societies, but capitalist societies are those whose governments are constrained from interfering in these activities except as demonstrably necessary, and providing the underpinnings (again, public order, property, contracts, etc.) without which the scope of such activities might hit natural limits.
That you can take this as a partial definition of a type of government is clear from the various mixed models which incorporate all of this but empower government to serve other ends as well. Even in such mixed models, the point would be that government does certain things, but specifically refrains from doing things it conceivably could putting a cap on income, say, something obvious like that, which is inconceivable in any sort of capitalist society, even if it spends lavishly on public goods like education or on anti-poverty programs, and so on.
TL;DR. Capitalism maybe not so much an economic system as a political one, a type of partial government.
Personally I'd say the relationship was equivalent just less evolved. How would you see the differences?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
:up: :sparkle:
It is the system where the market is the only capable of promoting laws and regulations, not the lawmakers represented in the Parliament.
Being sincere, inside capitalism the markets and "central banks" act as a true legislative power.
[quote=marxists.org]
Capitalism
The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.
Wage labour is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own the means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital). In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a free act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.
Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labour. In societies which produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction. In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time. That extra labour is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.
The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power). The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.
Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as primitive communism and feudalism. It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the cash nexus which characterises capitalism. The transcendence of the class antgonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism.[/quote]
The term was once a socialist bugaboo but has become familiar with overuse. In the mouths of critics and defenders alike capitalism confounds more than it clarifies, though, because if capital is the portion of wealth which is applied to the production of more wealth, then any system that does not consider the ownership and management of capital is unthinkable. All systems are capitalist. The differences lie only in who ought to own the capital, whether public or private, employer or employee, the collective or individual, and so on. Even Lois Blanc, who arguably coined the term, says as much (the appropriation of capital by the few, to the exclusion of the many).
Capitalism is just the free market economy.
The rise of the corporation and technology, mostly.
The corporation is a legal fiction created by states, and has become the vehicle of plutocracy. Its owners are also major employers. Its talked about as if its a person which legally it is. A nice scenario for those who own lots of shares.
The start of the industrial revolution, where people went from mostly working in their homes, on their property, or in a small business to working in factories / mills was brought about by a change in technology.
"Free" of what?
"Free" for whom?
Anthropogenic climate change (at least) since the mid-1800s demonstrates one catastrophic way the "market economy" has not been "free".
:mask:
I agree. The big fish eat the little fish. Except for the Sherman Anti-Combines act in the USA, and similar laws elsewhere.
Perish or thrive. Freedom. No control other than protection for personal safety, private and public property, and freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.
This is the reason China historically, and the USA recently have become political and economic giants. If you don't apply yourself, you rot and die. You want to make it? Work hard, even as a beggar or as an industrial mogul.
The perfect system for evolutionary forces favouring the survival of the strongest and the best. The bottom 3% gets left to rot.
Other places have similar controls, and got nowhere, like Haiti, Bangla Desh, The Tchad, (if it's still called that... maybe it's Upper Volta now?) etc. This is due to the lack of their background in heavy industrialization.
1. free of governmental restrictions.
2. free of conscientious decision making.
3. free of overlords and their capricious demands.
4. free of insane rulers, free of laws that impede healthy and easy changes that favour trade.
3. not free of its own environmental impact.
:ok:
:up:
So was I. In America this has been the case since the second half of the nineteenth century.
Randian-fantasy capitalism does away with systematic exploitation (SE). SE is necessarily a part of capitalism, and necessarily not a part of Randianist libertarianism (RL). RL praises the individual effort, and independence from others individually and societally. Those independencisisms are not compatible with the capitalism i described, because exploitation is heavily dependent on non-individual-freedomism.
Please don't curse in mixed company, it unsettles the horses. :wink:
Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein (just to name a few) glorious indeed.
:rofl:
Sy?d,
[quote=Lucio Tan]Everything is for sale if the price is right.[/quote]
:chin:
:sweat:
However, future development, based on a normal capitalistic trajectory, needs advanced automation in order to maximize further profit. Industries today are close to maximizing their profit due to there just not existing enough people. Facebook, as an example, are pushing free internet to poor nations, not as a sign of goodwill, but to get more people onto their platform.
So if future industries start to rely more and more on advanced automation and more and more people go unemployed as people can't transition into new job titles as easily as during the industrial revolution, then a new form of economical system needs to be created that can cover life quality for an entire population. Some suggest UBI as a solution, but that's just short term and it doesn't really create a system where finances flow organically. It would generally be that corporations pay 75% taxes on their profits in order to cover a UBI system that would then go straight back into the corporations from people buying their products as well as being part of the tax being used to finance infrastructure that also goes into corporations who handle such work. On top of this, the only work being done by humans are technical jobs managing automation and engineering improvements, as well as government people and artists and creative people doing "high art", meaning, not content produced by AIs but art commercialized through specific individuals (a whole other discussion, but anyway).
In the end, automation will both be a blessing and a curse for capitalism and we are yet to have a system that can function within this kind of future scenario. If we are partially destroyed by climate change or some large-scale world war, then we will have decades of "normal" capitalist work after it that will postpone the automation revolution, but one day it will eventually come and by then we need to have a functional economy in place that replaces capitalism and free market democracies as we see them today.
All these different terms get confusing, but the basic idea is free trade vs forced community sharing. When government interferes with free trade, then the problems of capitalism emerge.
Communities sharing is good. Thats the positive value communism is based on. But when its FORCED it leads to unintended consequences.
Trying to control nature always leads to unintended consequences. We have to work WITH nature, not against it.
Echoes of Adam Smith my fav Scot btw.
In terms of the latest tech developments which will either stall and stagnate or slowly advance with the use of clever robotic automation for the means of producing it begs the question as to the redundancy and shift of human consciousness and perhaps labour.
With over abundant workforce and general population education needs to play an important part in skilling them towards this new future.
Tech gizmos can be helpful or they can be a dangerous distraction to mental well-being.
Depression, loneliness, detachment from reality through lack of real social interaction and thus reduced basic social skills remains an issue to be addressed.
It takes a village to raise a child but what we have now is the village idiot given a platform to troll chatbots and not provide for his wife in the bedroom
Clever that entrepreneurs are certainly taking advantage of incompetent government. Richard Branson for example sued the fuckers. Dont know if he actually won.
This is the thing about people like Branson and other types of entrepreneurs they have no limits as to who they target to extract money from.
As my ISP is indeed VIRGIN MEDIA Im staying clear of the fucker.
Consider: After Capitalism by David Schweickart (re: economy democracy). No doubt, the 'automated future' you mention is trending, so to speak, but it's not inevitable, or an inescapable prospect.
Correct! You see and Ive read Christoffers point he has made. Although not truly misguided in terms of cost savings automaton goes only so far as the human engineers ingenuity is able to automate certain tasks.
Lets take mining of raw materials as an example or even oil drilling which is where the real money is. Human prospecting still remains crucial for the identification of certain oil rich sites. Machines will still be able to identify these so called rich areas of oil. Clever AI will do the trick but the programmer still has to deploy the bloody machine in the first place
I agree and I don't. Yes, the wealth should be redistributed in a way to make humans live humane lives. That I agree with.
I would like to improve on that by saying that satisfying basic needs is not going to make anyone happy. People need education, entertainment, sex, hobbies, pastimes, and a feeling that their existence is meaningful.
These are tall orders, and I don't know that in an infinitely affluent society they can be achieved. The very fact that people don't have everything they want give meaning to their lives: "Let's get that which is missing." To some it's getting published, to some it's winning the Oscars, to some it's finding love in life, to some it's having children and raising them, and to some it's finding food from day to day, so they don't perish.
Once everything gets fulfilled, the meaning and purpose of one's existence is gone.
One need (not basic) is greed. It can never be fulfilled. Those billionaires are indeed lucky fellers, because they always can thrive for something.
For those who have fulfilled their lives' goals, and for those who have given up on that, there is always the Crack Cocaine.
Maslow hierarchy of needs has clearly demonstrated this. Dont know why i didnt quite mention it.
True.
NB: Post-scarcity humans incapable of making themselves happy in some way especially without harming others or themselves will probably be 'conditioned' to slowly or rapidly or suddenly euthanize themselves in various 'clean & painless' ways.
(I have an answer to this question, but I wonder if you have the same one.)
Slightly pessimistic outlook which could potentially be true but highly unlikely. Not wanting to envision utopia I think things will most likely remain the same if not get better. I do in fact it will get better being a firm believer of quality over quantity in terms of the level of citizens in a given future society.
I dont see how a society that will slowly euthanise itself can be seen as optimistic in any given context perhaps you could elaborate ?
Scarcity of resources will not mean any of the things you have forecasted. It will probably mean reduced population and whether the overall level of happuness will increase or decrease is and will be something that is hard to predict for sure.
Ok fine. Without speculating too much into the future or post-humanism for that matter I firmly believe that human beings are still evolving. Being in a symbiotic and not parasitic relationship with whatever future tech enhancement in terms of our ability to make sense of the ever increasing sensory input which society should most likely address and whether it is worth perusing either ignore this development is something that should be consider be each sentient human being
Because its the future were talking about and an enhancement of a human beings cognitive ability will give them an advantage in a competitive capitalistic society.
An offshoot of my original post for sure but still relevant
Well, this isn't doing a lot to dissuade me from Marxism's work on capitalism.
My belief is that markets cannot exist without a government -- they are as artificial or natural as any other social arrangement. That's because property rights are not naturally endowed upon us -- naturally speaking, we can take whatever we're strong enough to take (and in terms of a social species, that usually translates into numbers of people more than raw individual strength). It's only by creating an artificial market that people begin to trade things, since taking them directly has a punishment associated with it.
How do you form a government without a market?
Do you realise government is a product that is marketed and sold?
Government means you sell your self-sovereignty, freedom, rights to someone else, who in return gives you a sense of security by making your decisions for you and telling you what you want to hear.
Every virtue has shadow vice, and vice versa.
So that freedom is branded as "chaos" and slavery is branded as "security"
Each person is their own state, own governor, but other insecure beings sell you the lie that they can do a better job governing you than you can yourself.
Through collective action. It's not necessarily but is usually violent collective action.
Whatever a state's genesis, though, in maintaining a modern state we usually engage in violent collective action or the threat of said violent collective action in our negotiations with other states (and in the policing of our own citizens) The old economic definition of a state being the firm which has a monopoly on the use of violence.
I don't know what violent action means if there is not yet any rights or property.
I do admit rights and property are hard ideas to comprehend, but I think they are based in instinct prior to the arising of some being governing another being. Even dogs defend what they see as their territory and their autonomy.
In a sense before monopolised government we were all equally the government. And arguably, even now we are all members of government, as supposedly we the people control the government. They work for us, not we for them, at least thats the claim. But really its a trade, and in trade each works for the other as well as for themselves, so we employ the government and the government employs us.
Sorry this isn't really specifically about what capitalism is. To me capitalism is the default when there is property. People trading whatever they want to trade for whatever someone else wants to trade.
Can people be sneaky and trick you into a bad deal? Yes. Capitalism is not to blame for that any more than free thinking is to blame for bad thoughts.. And the solution is education and better self-government. Not electing others forcefully restrict how we trade.
You did not give reasons; only personal views. I can't argue with your personal opinions not expressed as philosophical assertions.
I have reasons that can be supported, but since you guys on this thread with so much personal gusto and with so much curious intensity have shown your utter lack of interest in what I have to say that I'll keep them to myself.
Hey hey now. Not sure if youre putting me in that bracket. Although I express personal opinion on the above matters I do tend to outline it with some reason behind it rather than just one sentence opinion of personal tastes.
Quoting 180 Proof
A psychological fact. As far as Maslow's conjecture, it's neither an argument nor a scientific model. You're the one "expressing personal opinions", gmba.
Name a reason why the world would not jump onto advanced automation the first chance it gets. It is just as inevitable as how the wheel changed the world. No one would oppose it, except those who oppose the consequences of it and call for a ban on automation, but which government would choose to ban advanced automation seen as it would exponentially improve the national economics of that nation?
Quoting Deus
Even though full-scale advanced automation isn't happening yet, we have kids in schools today actively working towards a job that will most definitely be dead in a couple of years. Politics around education and the faculties themselves aren't equipped to change since they aren't even entertaining the scenario of full-scale advanced automation. They act upon the status quo, they never act upon what will be. Advanced automation will happen fast. The point is when we have generalized robotics that can be adapted based on the user training them rather than having a software programmer doing it. This would mean that a clothing company that requires a robot to fold and organize clothes in a store according to a set plan can teach that robot one time how to fold clothes, hang clothes, and take care of the store chores and then multiply. Over time, these robots will become more advanced, faster and better at their tasks and can also be sold as "store template workers" to speed up the training phase. All of a sudden you have a or multiple stores that only have one human employee, the one who talks to customers, with that job also being in danger by socially trained robots.
Point is that we will have a point when a general-purpose robot becomes a reality and from that point, if it is inexpensive and reliable in day-to-day work, it will almost completely change the western world overnight. No company will look at their expensive human workforce, then look at a workforce of robots who cost just a fraction compared to the humans and go "yeah, I love to lose money".
There's no coincidence that Tesla is developing such robots since Elon Musk is trying to push the edge on how effective manufacturing can get. Human workers have limits and cost money, so with the world's most advanced self-driving system, he can just repurpose that to cover other tasks than just driving. Tesla might be the first industry in the world to become fully automated in all areas of production at their factories. If his goal of selling these robots becomes a reality, we will have the first general-purpose robots existing in society. If successful, in that they lower costs for companies, that would be an exponential factor for the automation industry, leading to more and more companies wanting to work on general-purpose robotics and the industry would explode into a new era.
Politics and education will lag far behind that development because it will happen too fast. We will have an era of mass unemployment and we will probably see UBI become implemented as a desperate attempt to save the world economy from a total collapse. That's in the western world, imagine the consequences for third world countries or nations on the brink of becoming rich due to how western industries put people in low-income jobs there. Advanced automation will make no sense to have in these countries because it's cheaper to just build factories closer to home when the workforce is just robots. Western industries will abandon these nations and their economy will collapse to a much worse state than before. There will be civil wars and also even wars against the west. Of course, some companies in these nations might use robots as well, maybe even catch up with competing products, but once again, education and politics lag behind. If leaders of a third world nation were aware of this development, they would right now make a policy of educating many people in engineering and automation technology. Since western societies are so filled with TikTok-numbed kids and adults, we will see a surge in any nation that jumped onto this development fast for a desperate population in need of jobs.
India is a good example of this since there are a lot of technicians in India who work within industries primarily from outside of India. If all of them focused on purely Indian companies, that also take advantage of automation, they could easily become a dominant factor in the future where western companies lag behind.
The conclusion is that advanced automation will radically change the world as it looks today. It's going to be a total transformation in the same style as the industrial revolution. With massive shifts in labor types and how people live their lives. Since culture is often defined by how our economy and work affect our lives, it will radically transform culture worldwide.
Sprinkle in the outcome of climate change and we will see a massive change over the coming hundred years that is unprecedented compared to the previous hundred years.
(Viking longboat incoming )
But can you regulate your gluttony with the ever increasing amount of SPAM?
Maybe stick to sushi and if you cant catch it yourself buy it from a fishmonger
Sounds profitable for me :yum:
Of course, a world disaster could end humanity and it will not, but if no such things happen, it is inevitable because it is a natural progression of how we manufacture tools. Humans have never stopped improving on the tools that we have and advanced automation is a pretty effective tool over previous tools. So, in conclusion, it is inevitable if nothing else happens.
Quoting 180 Proof
Has anything ever changed the course of maximization of production just because some people get run over by it? And even so, it's not all just doom and gloom, advanced automation can also free people from working to death. Like, stopping cheap child labor because robots are cheaper is a positive outcome, regardless of whether the company has any intention of helping the children or not by that decision.
Has the world been helped by the industrial revolution? Did our living standards and life quality increase because of how the world shifted from before the industrial revolution? Of course.
Quoting 180 Proof
All of those ideologies, ideas, and inventions are the result of value-driven, human factors. Progress, on the other hand, happens regardless. You could destroy the world and remove all books and information about everything and the surviving humans will build up a new society and they will continue the progression of tools from what they had.
The progression of tools, inventions, and machines does not have anything to do with how we value them or think of them. A better hammer will be a better hammer, always. So a better robot will be a better robot, always.
Therefore, if humanity isn't totally destroyed, we will eventually reach a point of total automation. So the question is, what would that economy be like? What would that world look like?