What is the definition of capitalism? Is it compatible with people owning the things they produce?

squaresinger, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I know I am doing your homework here

The reason I am posting this anyway is that I hope you’ll learn something from it. Please read it and try to understand it.

The first thing to say here is that capitalism/communism is not a binary thing at all, even though many people (especially from the US) seem to believe.

Instead, there is a whole spectrum between pure capitalism and pure communism. In fact, there has never been any large-scale real-world implementation of either pure capitalism or pure communism.

But let’s start with definitions.

Pure capitalism

In a pure capitalistic system, the state basically doesn’t exist. This is often called anarchocapitalism, because for pure capitalism to exist, you also need an absence of government => anarchism.

In such a system there is no regulation, no taxes, none of the basic services are provided by a government. Instead, money is king. In pure capitalism money doesn’t equal power, it is the only power. There is only a completely free market as the only mechanism that is supposed to balance anything out.

Pure communism

In a pure communist system, there is no private sector and even no private property. The whole power lies solely with the state, money has no meaning. For the state to be able to really govern everything that a capitalist system does with money, it pretty much needs full control over everything.

Why can pure capitalism not work?

In a pure capitalist system, if you have more money, you have more power, which makes it easier to gain more money, and with more money comes more power and so on. Without any regulation the free market is unstable and tends towards monopolies. Basically, once you gain an advantage over your competitors, you can use your money to suppress or buy out your competitors until there are none left. If anyone tries to enter your market segment, you just buy them out or e.g. buy their suppliers. (Google Standard Oil for a good example.)

So for the free market to work, you need to have regulation.

The other side here is that in a completely free market, employers have ample options to exploit their employees. Until they band together, strike/revolt/start a revolution, and make sure that the free market isn’t as free any more, meaning that they get treated fairly and get a bigger share.

Why does pure communism not work?

Well, even the Sowjet Union wasn’t a pure communistic system. There is some level of personal property that people need to have as an incentive to work. If it doesn’t matter what you do at work and you always get the same reward, no matter whether you even show up for work, then your system will also fall apart.

What exists between capitalism and communism?

There’s a massive spectrum in between. There are countries that are quite capitalist, like the US. Here you have a mostly capitalist system, but basic services are still provided by the state.

There is social market economy, like many European countries are using. Here you have state-owned companies in all important sectors, that have to compete with private companies. More than just the basic needs are covered by the state.

And then you have something like the UDSSR, which is mostly communist, but you are still allowed to have some private property.

Back to your questions: Since your answer above likely included the word “capital”, what is capital?

Capital is any kind of property belonging to persons, that can be used to influence the behaviour of others by trading. Money, companies, stocks, real estate, basically anything that can be sold. Depending on the specific system, even humans.

How does capitalism empower people to own what they produce? Or, how does capitalism strip people of their control over what they produce?

The question really misses the point. If you have the capital, it the product will belong to you. If you don’t, it won’t.

Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist?

Again, misses the point. If you are a slave who produces something and then has the task to sell it for your master, you definitely aren’t a capitalist.

If you are the master, who doesn’t produce and doesn’t sell, but earn from the work of others, then you are a capitalist.

If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished?

False dichotomy. Neither a pure capitalst nor a pure communist society exists.

Say you create and sell some product regularly (as above), but have more orders than you can fulfill alone. Is there any way to expand your operation and meet demand without using capitalist methods (such as hiring wage workers or selling your recipes / process to local franchisees for a cut of their proceeds, etc)?

Again, false dichotomy. Cooperation also exists in a communist-oriented (or even a theoretical pure communist) system.

And actually, even in a capitalist-oriented system you don’t have to use any of these methods. You can just cooperate with others on a same level. E.g. I build X to sell. I could ask someone to join and that person could run their own business side-by-side doing the same thing. We wouldn’t need to have a business partnership at all. Both independently build and sell. Of course, that would mean that I’d have no control over the other guy and I don’t earn money from their work. But there’s no law telling me I have to.

Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Why is the distinction important?

Yes, google it yourself.___

arvere, 10 months ago

I think your misundertand the concept of private property and communism. Which could be skewing your opinion on the matter

sudoreboot, 10 months ago

Specifically conflating private and personal property.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

In pure communism, there is no private or personal property.

But there has never been any purely communist society of significant size or duration, specifically for this issue. There have been a few short-lived small-scale experiments, like e.g. the “United Order” the Church of Jesus Christ tried to implement in the 1830s among it’s members, but even with this being a voluntary thing among a religiously motivated group it didn’t even last a year.

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago

I have to agree with @arvere, you aren’t working with an accurate definition of communism. You said pure communism revolves around the state which is explicitly false. Pure communism is, by definition, moneyless, classless, and stateless. Historically, there have been state-socialists who believe that sort of system can provide a viable alternative to grassroots revolution in transitioning from a capitalist to a communist society. However, pure communism is anarchic, there is no state. Cooperation is spontaneous.

Additionally, it does not preclude personal property: items an individual keeps for personal use, e.g. your house, your car, your TV. What it does preclude is private property: items an individual keeps to charge others for their use, e.g. a rental property, a taxi, a movie theater.

Respectfully, you might want to brush up on your communist theory.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

I might have simplified, but the points remain exactly the same.

If the system (Question, who is the system?) precludes (Question, who precludes?) from renting property (Question, who determines what what renting is?), there needs to be a system in place that needs to enforce all that.

Otherwise you aren’t talking about communism, you are talking about anarchism. Anarchism has no inherent link to communism, so if communism is supposed to exist at all, it needs a government. There is no way around it.

If we go by your distinction between personal and private property, what is to stop anyone from renting out their personal property? If I have the coolest movie projector in the community, what is stopping me from charging for access in an anarchist society? If I have more, I can make more and then I’m a capitalist again.

But explaining one impossible construct (pure communism) with another impossible construct (anarchism) doesn’t make the first one more probable.

Anarchism is inherently a non-stable system. You have natural power imbalances and anarchism has no mechanisms to balance them out. An anarchist society where no democratic processes are used leads directly to mafia-like organisations taking control.

Anarchism is based on the idea that a power vacuum is sustainable.

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Anarchism has no inherent link to communism

Where did you get that idea? Anarchism is explicitly a left-wing political ideology that emerged from general socialist thought. The two are intimately linked in their development, and heavily influenced one another with the “purest” form of either by their own principles independently culminating in anarcho-communism. You can debate the viability of this system all you like, but the definition of the term is what it is.

It is defined as implicitly free of hierarchies, including the state. If you want to talk about a system with a state, you’re no longer taking about communism. We can talk about pragmatic incarnations of socialist policy, we can talk about the conditions necessary to foster a communist society, we can talk about the consequences of either. But if the subject is the definition of communism, none of that is relevant.

If we go by your distinction between personal and private property, what is to stop anyone from renting out their personal property?

A lack of money for one. The existence of other cool projectors, if you didn’t build the cool projector by yourself, that can be communally held. If you built it yourself, and decide to hoarde it yourself, presumably other members of the community would hesitate to share their cool stuff with you. Patents and IP are private property, so anyone with skill in projector-making can try to copy it.

If you recognize the benefit of sharing your cool stuff in exchange for others sharing their cool stuff with you, everyone gets to use lots of cool stuff. If you hoarde the cool stuff you personally invented, no one will let you use the cool stuff they personally invented, and you’ll only get to use the cool things you personally invented.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Have you never heard of anarchocapitalism?

arvere, 10 months ago

I believe they might have the etymology in common - probably because the word anarchism became sort of a synonym for any type of “chaos”, but anarchism as a political movement is widely known as an extreme left-winged ideology! Which is explicitly against all forms of institution, specially corporations

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Anarchocapitalism is the direct result of anarchism if you put any little bit of realistic thought into that matter.

You always have an imbalance of power between people. There’s always someone who is stronger, more intelligent, more charismatic and/or who has more stuff. Because people aren’t exact replicas of each other.

Communist anarchism thinks that everyone is going to play nice, and even those with more power will just yield that and be nice.

Anarchocapitalism is the more realistic view on the same situation: Whoever has a bit more power will use that power to gain an advantage. That advantage will increase that person’s power and that person will come to dominate the society, and will eventually take the role of the government.

This situation is essentially the mafia in any society where the government leaves enough of a power vacuum that somebody else can snatch some power.

I recommend reading up on real-world anarchism experiments, e.g. Kowloon Walled City, which directly turned into an anarchocapitalist nightmare town, or Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark, which basically reinvented democracy but still calls it Anarchism.

Christiania is actually a really fun story. It starts with the government giving up on some military barracks. Squatters moved in to form an anarchist society. So they get together, everyone starts making their home there. But then there are things that need to be organized together, so they make up small councils that they call Områdemøde. These councils discuss local issues and decide who to send to the higher level council, the Fællesmøde, which decides stuff for all of Christiania. It’s of course not democracy here, and the people who are sent to the Fællesmøde to represent the different Områdemøde, they are of course not elected politicians.

Residents have to pay money that goes into a pot to finance upkeep of community resources and areas. These payments are mandatory, but of course they are not taxes.

When 10 residents died in 1979 from overdoses, the Fællesmøde started to decide hard rules for the community. One such rule was that hard drugs were not allowed to be sold, owned or consumed in Christiania. Of course, these rules weren’t laws, just mandatory rules. To enforce these rules, some strong men were enlisted to patrol Christiania, and remove offenders from the commune. They’d call Copenhagen’s police to the entrance of Christiania and hand those offenders over to be dealt with by the official police. Of course, these strong men weren’t Christiania’s police.

In the 80s, the Bullshit Motorcycle Club basically invaded Christiania and made a center of their drug operation. Residents of Christiania, the police and the Hells Angels united to get rid of the Bulllshitters and since then biker jackets are banned in Christiania. Again, not to be confused with a law, this is just a mandatory rule.

TLDR:

This anarchist community is a straight-up democracy with councils, representative democracy, laws, taxes and an informal police force.

Anarchism, by definition, cannot exist. It either turns into democracy if people work together, or into a dictatorship if someone manages to play the masses.

arvere, 10 months ago

thanks for sharing the stories. I’m not myself an anarchist, as I also agree with that reasoning.

however, not being practical doesn’t prevent people from defending it from an idealistic point of view. and to be fair, I think we always have to be open-minded about the limitations imposed by our contemporary mindset - remember that some people can’t even conceive a world without capitalism because of them, where it could be perfectly possible (and we should probably do it hehe)

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago

I’ve also heard of vegan milk.

As others have pointed out, it’s an oxymoronic misnomer used by right-wing “libertarian” neo-feudalists. The hierarchy inherent to capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with anarchism.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Same as anarchism is inherently incompatible with humans.

Over the last few thousand years there hasn’t been a single documented case where an anarchist society stayed anarchist if more than a handful of people participated for more than a handful of weeks.

And yes, extremists on all sides of the spectrum dream of a world where no government tells them what to do. That’s not unique to communists.

But regardless, it’s a fever dream, and discussing it as if it was a real thing is a lot like saying that midi-clorians are fundamentally incompatible with Jedis and lightsabers.

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago

You’re further deviating from the initial point.

If you want to opine about the finer points of the implementation of a system, be my guest. I won’t pretend that human civilization, at present, is compatible with the tenets of communism. One day, maybe.

But if you’re going to talk about a system, talk about the system. Don’t strawman a McCarthyist Frankenstein of right-wing propaganda to make your point. Engage the concepts as they are defined, and speak to the deficiencies in the actual system as they exist.

Are there problems with communism? Maybe, probably, sure. None of them come from authoritarian states, because communism has no authoritarian states. We’re there lots of regimes who claimed to be communist for the PR? Totally, definitely. There were lots of shitty attempts at ornithopters and DaVinci helicopters before the Wright Brothers too, doesn’t invalidate the thence unrealized principles of aerodynamics.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

No, not really. My point was that communism in reality cannot exist with a strong government. You said that pure communism depends on anarchism.

Anarchism is strictly impossible. And if the dependency is impossible, communism in that style is as well.

The fundamental issue is that any group of people that interact with eachother will at some point have disagreements/conflicts where an agreement cannot be reached. At that point, one group of people will get their wish and the others won’t. And depending on the circumstances, either the most powerfull will decide (=>dictatorship, monarchy, mafia pseudogovernment) or the majority decides (=>some form of democracy).

So with anarchism being impossible on the most basic level, anarchistic communism is also ruled out.

And yes, anarchocapitalism is about equally as realistic as it instantly devolves into a corporate dictatorship.

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago

I repeat, if you want to talk about the viability of various schemas, go ahead. I’m sure you think you’re much smarter than every communist theorist to ever live (unironically, I really do believe you think that). I’m sure you are doubtlessly certain of what is and isn’t possible, and I’m sure you can’t derive any additional nuance from reading those who have dedicated extensive thought and analysis to the topic

Nonetheless, I think even you can understand that strawmanning is the refuge of idiots with no actual merit, and whether or not you think communism is “possible”, it is best to actually talk about the topic instead of some silly oxymoron (like “authoritarian state communism”)

As futile as it sounds, I do think you might benefit from anarcho-communist research. I’ll leave it at that.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Ok, show me a single example of a community of at least 1000 people who managed to keep an anarcho-communist stable for at least a year.

I think, that’s a super low bar. Any remotely viable social system should have been able to clear that bar in hundreds or thousands of instances.

So it should be easy to give just a single one.

Tbh, being a theorist doesn’t mean you produce viable stuff. There are more than enough examples of larger schools of theorists who never produced anything remotely viable across many different fields.

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Again, not the topic. My only point is “Don’t misrepresent the topics you’re debating”

I don’t think communism is presently viable. I do think communism might be viable in coming generations, maybe.

My political acumen is negligible. My semantic acumen, however…

Even if communism will never work, characterizing it by a central state is categorically false. Your words are wrong. If you want to talk about authoritarian states masquerading as communism to engender public appeal, say that. That’s not communism though. If you want to argue against such a state, do that. Still not communism.

If you want to argue against the merits of a non-hierarchic, moneyless, classless, stateless, anarchic system, feel free to do so while you call it communism. But don’t call something that isn’t communism “communism” and then say that communism doesn’t work for the reasons your strawman non-communistic “communism” doesn’t work. Use the right words.

I’m not here to fix your politics, I’m here to fix your words.

imaqtpie, 10 months ago

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/fce9f804-0394-46f8-b905-f95c6f0138ea.webp

I’m not so sure your political acumen is negligible, but your semantic acumen is certainly impressive.

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago

This is absolutely worthless. I shall cherish it always.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Ok, now I get where you are coming from.

I still disagree. While there is a single “pure” form of capitalism (which is basically “let the market run wild without any kind of intervention”), “pure” communism is much less easy to put in a bucket, since it derived mainly from the concept of “not capitalism”. But in what way it is “not capitalism” is not so simple.

You are talking about social anarchism or anarcho-communism, which are both forms of anarchism or communism, but neither are “the” anarchism or communism. There is also e.g. individualist anarchism, which is totally anarchism as well, but puts a very non-communist spin on it.

In the communism category, there are multiple other different schools of thought, e.g. various forms of Marxism, which think that a strong state is necessary to balance the capitalistic tendencies of an unregulated economy, other forms of Marxism which think that that would be just state-capitalism, Leninism, which totally thinks that a string state is necessary, Pre-Marxism which had no plan about anything and religious communism which essentially trades a strong state with a strong church.

Argueing “This is the only theoretically pure kind of communism” or even of anarchism is mostly besides the point.

And yes, I am also guilty of that in my first post, where I summarized all of communism into the versions that are even remotely viable to be stable, and they all require a strong state (or whatever you want to call a central power that is strong enough to keep an inherently instable system stable).

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago

What gave you the idea that capitalism is a singular pure concept and communism is not? Either your definition of capitalism is so simplified that there’s an singular communistic counterpart, or your definition of communism is so specific that there are dozens of capitalistic counterparts. Be consistent. You haven’t been talking about communism at all.

Your “communism category” is compromised solely of decidedly not-communistic transitory states, some with the stated goal of eventually facilitating communism. They are by definition not communism by virtue of being states. You call them communism because they have been called such by several non-communists: authoritarians leaders trying to sway their population, terrified capitalists trying to deceive the proletariat, ‘temporarily-embarassed-millionaires’ parroting pundit talking points.

Read the literature: communism, real communism, is by nature anarchic. It is definitely free of hierarchies, coersion, profit extraction. Anarchy, real anarchy, is by nature communistic. There can be no money in anarchy, because money creates class and class creates hierarchy.

Anarcho-capitalism is a fake idea. Private property is inevitably leveraged into power, and the power vacuum doesn’t stay empty long. The only true anarchism is spontaneous cooperation in a purely horizonal democracy. Any deviation from anarcho-communism is no longer anarchy, and no longer communism.

Again, is communism sustainable? Probably not right now, definitely not at any point in the past, probably not for quite some time, if ever. Doesn’t legitimize fake masquerade communism wrapped around the decidedly non-communistic authoritarian government as an example of the ideology.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

It’s all fake ideas. You sound exactly like a member of some religious sect claiming that all the other religious sects “don’t believe in the true God”, because they don’t fit into your neat little box.

How is anarchocapaitalism (which is unsustainable and hasn’t ever really existed) more or less a “fake idea” than anarchocommunism (which is unsustainable and hasn’t ever existed)?

How can an idea even be fake?

agamemnonymous, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Not sectarian, mathematical.

It’s an oxymoron, like vegan milk or square circle. It is a contradiction, logically impossible. Implicit to capitalism is the employer-employee hierarchy, and hierarchy is by definition antithetical to anarchism.

squaresinger, 10 months ago

Same as anarcho-communism then.

Anarcho-capitalism is based on the idea that there is no state or other entity that prohibits what you are allowed to do, so you are free to make any kinds of contracts that you like, which then leads to a form of unregulated capitalism. That’s a logical progression that sounds very plausible. They define anarchism here as having no government and allowing everyone total freedom in their interaction with other people.

Anarcho-communism is based on the idea that there is no hirarchy and that it is prohibited to enter any contracts that would implicitly form a hirarchy. But to ensure any kind of prohibition, you need somebody tasked with making sure it doesn’t happen. And that in it self is a hirarchy and thus a contradiction.

You’d even need some body that is able to discern between the edge cases between regular cooperation (which anarcho-COMMUNism requires) and employee-employer relationships. And then you’d need some organisation that enforces this kind of judgement. And you need a system of penalizing the parties.

That is a very strong contradiction to me.

agamemnonymous, 9 months ago

No actually, very different.

there is no state or other entity that prohibits what you are allowed to do, so you are free to make any kinds of contracts that you like

With a state or any other entity, who enforces the contracts?

That aside, capitalism specifically (distinct from market economies which I reiterate are not in and of themselves capitalistic) is defined by profit, which is defined as the difference between the sale price of an item and the cost (including labor). If there is no capatal-owning employer and wage-earning employee, it’s not capitalism. If there is, it cannot be anarchy.

Musings about contracts (which, again, require some authority to enforce anyway) are not relevant to capitalism. The existence of contracts is neither necessary not sufficient for capitalism; certainly they can and do exist in capitalism, but they are not a defining feature. The employer-employee hierarchy isthe defining feature.

Communism (actual communism) depends on spontaneous, voluntary cooperation. Every “communist state” was not communist, but rather some individual or group’s conception of a suitable transitory government to establish the conditions necessary for communism to emerge. I will not argue that their conceptions were indeed suitable, because I don’t believe they were. Personally, I think we are at least several generations and a great deal of technological advancement away from the conditions necessary for communism.

We could probably do pretty decent co-op-based market socialism, which I would actually personally advocate, but this isn’t a conversation about presently practical socio-economic ideologies. This is a conversation about the definition of communism. And the definition of communism (not of socialism, or transitory-states-with-the-eventual-end-goal-of-communism) is a moneyless, classless, stateless, non-hierarchic (and, consequentially, anarchic) society based on spontaneous, voluntary cooperation.

If it involves a hierarchic state, it ain’t communism. Simple as.

Whatever that hierarchic-state-claiming-to-be-communism is, you can certainly argue against for its many flaws. I’ll happily join you. But that thing ain’t communism, and the second a state pops out of actual communism, it by definition stops being communism.

Words matter.

squaresinger, 9 months ago

That’s exactly my point though: Anarchism in any form is a contradiction. Communist anarchism is not less of a contradiction than capitalist anarchism.

Capitalist anarchism is, as you say, lacking an authority that enforces contracts and that authority will spontaneously appear due to the (translated from German) “right of the stronger”, meaning whoever is stronger will enforce contracts and the other party is out of luck. That’s what could be observed in real-life examples like the Kowloon Walled City, where the Triads became the de-facto government.

Communist anarchism depends on the stronger playing nice and not forcing their will on the other people and it also depends on people not banding together to form a democracy to oppose the stronger people/stop them from forming the de-facto government.

Capitalist anarchism is instable since it directly drops into an Oligarchy.

Communist anarchism is a direct contradiction.

agamemnonymous, 9 months ago

What are you going on about? You’re not reading what I said, and at this point this level of “ignorance” really seems deliberate and in bad faith.

Anarchy isn’t “no regulations”, it’s “no hierarchies”. Yes, “no regulations” is considerably easier to accomplish (temporarily) than “no hierarchies”, but that’s not what the word means. If you want to talk about unregulated capitalism, do so. There’s nothing anarchic about it though. As you admit, capitalism spontaneously generates hierarchy in a vacuum.

“No hierarchies” is substantially more difficult to attain, but that’s what the word means, and the synonym is communism. I’m not here, like you apparently are, to speak to the pragmatism of that ideology. I will repeat, slowly, since I’ve done so many times without your understanding and I wish to do so no longer:

COMMUNISM IS NOT STABLE IN THE PRESENT WORLD

THAT IS IRRELEVANT TO ITS DEFINITION

THE EXISTENCE OF AUTHORITY PRECLUDES COMMUNISM

IDEOLOGIES WITH AUTHORITY ARE NOT COMMUNISM

MANY AUTHORITIES HAVE CLAIMED TO BE COMMUNISM

THEY ARE LYING, IT IS A CONTRACTION

I’m not going to keep saying the same thing. I’m done. Either you can’t read or you’re trolling, deliberately misunderstanding in bad faith. Reread my statements. I thought my last post quite deftly cut to the heart of it, you keep taking past me to a conversation I’m not having. You’re taking to yourself, or a ghost of the conversation you think you’re having, or there’s an inefficiency in translation.

Review my posts. I’m done. Das Gespräch ist kaputt. There is no continuation.

squaresinger, 9 months ago

Someone’s got a temper, and someone believes he’s the only one who is allowed to define terms.

Seems like a case of “ex falso quodlibet”.

agamemnonymous, 9 months ago

Emphasis, not anger. Necessary due only to your continued disregard.

I did not define my terms, I used their definitions. You’re the one trying to provide unique definitions.

Again, I’m done. Everything I have to say I’ve said already. Review for clarity.

squaresinger, 9 months ago

Purpously forking the discussion here, since it’s two separate points and I don’t want one to overshadow the other.

Capitalism theory is ex-post, while communism theory is ex-ante.

Or to put it differenlty: Capitalism just happens while communism is a design.

Every single society that has ever existed spontaneously forms hirarchies.

So capitalism theory is about how to mitigate or exploit (depending on what side of the discussion the theorist is on) these hirarchies.

Communist theory instead is like a what-if-fanfiction to capitalism. What if nobody wants power? What if nobody wants an advantage?

There are essentially two ways communist theorists go. Either they split the world into bourgeoisie vs proletariat, believing that they are two separate species of humans and only the bourgeuisie wants hirarchy, so if they kill them everyone else has no wish to ever have an advantage over others, which is obviously flawed thinking. The proletariat is not in power because they can’t, not because they wouldn’t want to.

The other option is to proclaim the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (a term coined by Marx and Engels, which I guess, according to your definition aren’t real communists either then), embrace hirarchies and have a central instance that governs and enforces their view of communism.

There’s a simple reason why hirarchies emerge. People aren’t identical. There’s always someone who is more intelligent, has more knowledge/experience, is more charismatic, speaks/writes better, can naturally get people to follow them. Boom, there’s a hirarchy.

And if that person is consistently the person others turn to, this hirarchy becomes solidified.

Talidos, 10 months ago

I’ll toss my two cents in

What is capitalism?

Capitalism is a form of economy where individuals are allowed to obtain, keep, and distribute capital as they see fit, so long as they have the means to do so.

What is capital

Capital is a combination of property and money. Property being the things you own, with money being a measure of potential property you don’t yet own.

How does capitalism empower people to own what they produce?

It’s at the core of the concept. Individuals are allowed to obtain, keep, and distribute capital as they see fit. You and you alone own your capital.

I see a lot of comments saying workers are not allowed to own what they produce. That their employer takes it from them. I feel this is flawed and possibly comes from a place of frustration. So let me ask this: What does an employed worker produce?

If that worker is a self employed craftsman making sprockets, the answer’s clear. They produce sprockets. They can then go out and sell those sprockets for goods, services, or money as they see fit.

If that worker is employed by a sprocket making company; they still make sprockets, but that’s not what they produce. They produce labor. Which they’ve chosen to sell to the sprocket company for money and/or other benefits. They may not care about sprockets themselves, don’t go to sprocket conventions, and certainly don’t want to deal with figuring out how to sell all the sprockets they’re making. It’s a better deal to sell your labor and use the profit you make off your employer to do the things that actually interest you. It’s your employer’s job to handle everything else.

Note that selling your labor is no different than selling capital. You set the price you’re willing to accept, and your employers (who are your consumers) can accept that price or not. That doesn’t mean you can set your price at any number and expect it to stick. Just like how the price of sprockets is dependent on consumer need and competitive prices, so is the price of your labor.

Bonus Questions!

Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist?

If you also exist in a capitalist economy, then yes.

If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished?

No. Capitalism cannot exist if you don’t have control over your own property.

Say you create and sell some product regularly (as above), but have more orders than you can fulfill alone. Is there any way to expand your operation and meet demand without using capitalist methods (such as hiring wage workers or selling your recipes / process to local franchisees for a cut of their proceeds, etc)?

Yes. Ideally you raise your prices so fewer people buy your product while you still make the same profit as if you were filling those extra orders. Alternatively, you can work to optimize your production methods to create more product in the same amount of time. Be it finding more efficient methods you can practice to make each product, or creating or purchasing equipment which can make each product faster. The balance between price and optimization is up to you.

Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Why is the distinction important?

It’s a term to describe a type of business. No different than “corporation” or “partnership” or “nonprofit”, among others. The distinction’s important in that there’s value in being able to describe different types of businesses.

jemorgan, 10 months ago

I think this answer misses the mark a little bit with regards to the context of what it is about capitalism that causes so much controversy.

People who critique capitalism aren’t usually advocating for an economic system completely devoid of private ownership (though some are). They’re often raising issue with a certain type of capital ownership.

Say you’re the owner of a sprocket manufacturing corporation, and I’m a worker. You yourself don’t work, you just inherited a sprocket empire from your grandfather, who founded that sprocket empire using funds from selling his emerald mines that were worked by slaves.

I put in an honest days work 5 days a week, and in those 5 days, I produce $2000 worth of sprockets. It costs $10 per week to maintain the sprocket machines, $10 per week for electrical power to cover my sprocket making activities, $30 per week to repay the loan that was taken to build the factory, and $50 per week in other miscellaneous expenses needed to allow me to make sprockets.

That means that of the $2000 worth of sprockets I produced, $1900 of profit was generated.

You pay me a salary of $500 per week, and collect $1400 per week from my (and each other laborer’s) work.

The point of criticism is that you’re accumulating wealth, which other people had to work to produce, without doing any work yourself. You’re simply a parasitic freeloader on society because of an arbitrary concept of “ownership” over something that you don’t use personally.

Some responses to these criticisms include the following:

“You should just negotiate for a higher salary, or go work somewhere that’s paying more.”

This is the example from classical economic theory, and there are a whole handful of reasons that it doesn’t work. The voluntary exchange between a worker and a capitalist (meaning one who owns the means of production) isn’t actually (fully) voluntary. A worker who finds his working conditions unsatisfactory can’t reasonably just choose not to work. The threat of financial ruin, homelessness, and starvation act as a metaphorical gun to the head of the laborer giving the capitalist a significant negotiating advantage.

Add to this the fact that it’s been theorized and demonstrated that capitalism tends toward regulatory capture and monopoly, and you have a situation where the means of production become more and more concentrated in the hands of a group of elites, while the workers’ bargenaining power becomes weaker and weaker due to less competition in the labor market.

“The capitalist deserves the profits that they extract because of [this work that they’ve done]”

If the owner of the factory is functioning as a floor manager, they should be paid a fair salary for being a floor manager. If they’re working as a director, they are entitled to a director’s salary. These critiques of capitalism aren’t saying that there should be no hierarchy in an enterprise (though some alternatives to capitalism do call for that). Just that the only people who are entitled to the wealth from something that’s produced are those who are working to produce it.

This same thing goes for other forms of capital ownership too, by the way. Landlords are a classical example. I’ve heard it claimed that landlords are entitled to their rents because many of them work so hard at repairs and managing their properties. They’re totally entitled to be compensated for any labor they engage in, but the wealth that they extract from tenants far exceeds the value of the labor that they supply. Which is kind of the whole point of rental property, if “investors” couldn’t extract a passive income (income in excess of work performed), they wouldn’t be buying homes and then renting them out.

Talidos, 10 months ago

Oh, I agree there’s plenty of pros and cons to talk about regarding a capitalist economy. There’s also plenty to talk about regarding the form capitalism has taken in our global and local economies. However, that’s for the other discussion OP mentioned. This one is only about defining what capitalism is.

To that end, and in regards to your critique about parasitic owners living off the labor of workers, I’d like to pose another question: Does a capitalist system require workers and employers?

I would say no. It’s entirely feasible for everyone in a capitalist society to produce and trade their own sprockets. It would be up to each individual to either inherit a given trade from someone who’s retiring, or else find something society needs that they can fulfil. Our current use of capitalism may largely contain organized businesses built on employer/worker relationships, but that’s not a defining trait of the system.

The cost and price of sprockets is also not a defining trait of capitalism. You’re free to set your own price on any sprocket you own. You could ask for a handful of dirt as payment, or you could ask for the literal moon. Is the moon a fair price for your sprocket? That’s debatable, and largely decided by your consumers

jemorgan, 10 months ago

Of course the market forces that are naturally present in a purely capitalist economy require there to be workers and employers.

In the scenario that you described, are you suggesting that instead of 10,000 people working at TSMC, we’d have 10,000 semiconductor factories that are built, operated, maintained, cleaned, and supplied by 10,000 individual people?

We can use an even simpler scenario. I believe that you’re suggesting that instead of the way that the food service sector currently works, it would instead be possible under capitalism for all food-service workers to individually sell served food to customers, presumably from their own kitchens.

In that scenario, what happens when Bob McDonald offers 10 of his friends to come work in his kitchen for an hourly wage, and they’re able to produce better food (due to specialization) for a lower price (due to lower overhead per worker)? Bob (and the countless other people who will undoubtedly copy his success) will outcompete the slower, more expensive kitchens. Individually owned and operated kitchens will be driven out of business. Then small, 10-person kitchens will start to struggle against larger kitchens and chain kitchens that have been able to spread the costs over multiple locations.

Before long, it will be impossible for a Sally Jones to open and run her own kitchen alone. In order to just break even, Sally’s prices would be significantly higher than the food sold at Bob McDonald’s chain. The cost of her premises will be higher relative to the amount of food she can produce on her own, the cost of the ingredients themselves will be higher because of bulk purchase prices vs retail, the cost of preparing the food will be higher because she doesn’t have access to an industrial onion chopper that can peel and chop a 50lb bag of onions in 30 seconds.

Market forces make it impossible for an individual to compete, due to the economies of scale. This is the same reason that over time, corporations under capitalism merge and restructure as they tend toward a monopoly.

I might be totally misunderstanding what you’re suggesting. If what you meant was that instead of the 10,000 TSMC workers each having their own chip foundries, that they’d all still work at the same factory, but that they’d have collectively funded and built the factory, and that they each individually work for themselves at the factory and share in the money they get from selling chips, then I’d agree that that’s an awesome system. It’s still not really possible under capitalism, because if that’s what you’re describing, it is actually called socialism.

sunbeam60, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I think you’ve written a good, neutral summary critique that increases our common ability to debate this. Thank you.

I would argue, however, that your example makes it sound especially egregious as the profit margin in your example is 95%. The advantage of capitalism, according the people who support it (like I do), is that other sprocket making companies exist and together they bring the profit margins down and down and down (due to competition), forcing continual innovation to bring it back up. Thus, not only is the profit margins typically much, much smaller (1-10%), but society collectively advances, which benefits the workers too as the produce they need to acquire increases in quality and lowers in price.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

So I agree with you when arguing against monopolies.

jemorgan, 10 months ago

This is a really good point, and I’m glad that someone who’s got a decent understanding of basic economics is replying to me.

The 95% profit margin was definitely to make a point, as you pointed out. And as you said, according to conventional thinking on capitalism, market forces should push that down to a fair equilibrium.

I think that the issue I was hinting at is that there is a fair amount of contemporary thinking that provides pretty convincing arguments that the nature of capitalism necessarily tends towards consolidation and monopoly over time. The classical model of a baker charging too much on an island, so someone else opens a bakery, doesn’t really work too well when we’re talking about telecom companies and media conglomerates. Once a high-tech segment has consolidated enough, it becomes impossible for anyone other than large companies to enter the market. And when those large companies are actually owned by a larger parent company, we start to see the failures of the classical market forces to produce a ‘fair’ equilibrium due to monopolization.

We definitely aren’t at the point of total failure yet, but in my opinion the trend line isn’t hard to spot. And I think the bigger issue is that due to regulatory capture, there’s not much we can do to patch the sinking ship.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I see a lot of comments saying workers are not allowed to own what they produce. That their employer takes it from them. I feel this is flawed and possibly comes from a place of frustration.

That’s not frustration. The viewpoint you are describing (that workers are not allowed to own what they produce) actually comes from a different definition of “capital” and “capitalism” than the one you are using. And that difference in definitions is why I created this post. And I appreciate your answer. It lets me highlight the differences in definitions and the consequences of those differences. Because in the case of capitalism, the difference in definitions are actually more important than any difference in values or priorities.

You noted that people are saying “workers aren’t allowed to own what they produce in capitalism.” But those people are not referring to capitalism as you have defined it.

Capital

Capital is a combination of property and money. Property being the things you own, with money being a measure of potential property you don’t yet own.

I’m sorry, but no one who disagrees with you thinks that the ability to accrue property and money deprive workers of control over what they produce. Not even Marx and Engels. Not even Mao or Stalin. Certainly, property and money can we wielded in such a way that they become capital. But until then, property and money are merely wealth.

The definition used by people like Marx and Engels – or by the entire field of economics – is: capital is property that allows or speeds up the production of goods. A mine. An oil rig. A McDonalds burger conveyor-belt-oven-thingy. A 3D printer. In other words, the word “capital” is about the function of the property. Not its value. A painting can cost $1,000,000 and still not become capital. Because no one will ever operate that painting to cook burgers. Or to mine ores.

Capitalism

Now “the ability to own commodity-producing property” is still not quite sufficient for a system to become “capitalism.” In fact, Marx and Engels didn’t want any capital to be destroyed at all in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Because even under the definition of “capital” that communists still to this day believe in, the existence of capital and ownership of it are still not inherently a source of coercion.

There’s another crucial piece to the puzzle that leads to people complaining about the whole system:

In capitalism as a system, some form of employment contract always allows the owner of capital to own everything produced using that capital.

For example, the oil rig owner – according to employment contracts – owns all of the oil produced using the oil rig. But not only did the owner not need to work the rig to extract the oil: the owner also did not need to weld the seams or turn the screws to build the oil rig. All the owner needs is official ownership of the oil rig and a system that acknowledges their right to everything the oil rig produces, (regardless of who needed to input their labor to turn the oil rig into anything other than a metal sculpture in the ocean.) and with those two things, they are entitled to all of the proceeds of the rig.

Now, hopefully, you can see that, provided a worker has entered into such a contract, “workers are not allowed to own what they produce” is not a statement born from frustration: it’s just true by definition. It’s not saying “the worker is NEVER allowed to own anything they ever create in this society.” It’s saying: “within the relationship laid out by the employment contract, the worker who operates capital is not entitled to the direct consequences of their labor.”

Now, whether the worker benefits from this arrangement is another picture, but in accepting an employment contract, the worker is entering into a dynamic where they do not own the outcome of their own labor.

Bonus Question #4

Which is why bonus question #4 (the difference between a workers’ cooperative and a company that uses these employment contracts) is extremely important to understanding the consequences of the difference between these definitions. You even touched on its importance in your earlier replies, saying yourself:

If that worker is employed by a sprocket making company; they still make sprockets, but that’s not what they produce. They produce labor. Which they’ve chosen to sell to the sprocket company for money and/or other benefits

(Aside: what you’re describing here is literally Marx’s theory of alienation.) But more importantly,

I’m assuming the sprocket company “produces” sprockets by your definition of “produce.” Well, in a workers’ co-op, the workers vote in the decisions of the company. They elect the CEO (if there is one) and the managers. They take shares of the profits. They are the company. And if the workers are the company, and the company produces sprockets, then the workers are once again – just like if they were self-employed, but with the benefits of efficiency and networking that come from being part of an organization – producing sprockets. They are no longer (as Marx would say) alienated from the results of their labor.

In other words, the co-op is a form of self-employment according to the definitions you appear to be using. Which makes the distinction between cooperatives and other kinds of companies… massive.

The people saying, “capitalism strips workers of the results of their labor” love workers’ co-ops. Love them. Despite you probably defining the workers’ cooperative as “another example of capitalism”, not even avowed Marxists would in any circumstance suggest that the worker co-op “disallows workers from owning what they produce.” In fact, they strongly believe the opposite. To them (and to Marx himself) the worker cooperative operates under an entire opposing paradigm to the worker contract. And to them, it is therefore a rival philosophy to capitalism.

You don’t have to accept their definitions. You don’t need to believe Marxist definitions are correct. You can believe co-ops are capitalist all you want.

But please: try to understand that when people criticize “capitalism,” they are (I 100% guarantee) referring to something far more narrow and far more specific than what you call capitalism.

Talidos, 10 months ago

I get the sense I’ve touched a nerve here. Though I’m not sure where.

I would like to mention I never suggested the frustration comes from workers not being able to own anything at all. Though I still believe what you said about workers not being entitled to the direct consequences of their labor is flawed. Similar to someone saying “I spend all day pulling oil out of the ground, but I’m not allowed to own any of it”. That’s a fair complaint, and I’d suggest any oil rig worker who wants to get paid in oil should absolutely negotiate for that with their employer. What I was trying to explain is the “direct consequences of their labor” is the compensation they’re paid for providing said labor. You, as a worker, sell your labor for a price, same as any other transaction. If you will, your “sprocket” in this situation is the labor you provide.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

What I was trying to explain is the “direct consequences of their labor” is the compensation they’re paid for providing said labor. You, as a worker, sell your labor for a price, same as any other transaction. If you will, your “sprocket” in this situation is the labor you provide.

I get that the worker is not the only reason the sprocket exists. I understand that he uses someone’s else alloy-pouring lava-pitcher to pour molten steel into a sprocket cast someone else owns. Whoever owns those things and consented / instructed for them to be used in the above manner shares responsibility (might even be more responsible) for the creation of that sprocket. But the sprocket still doesn’t exist until the worker poured the alloy.

The fact that the worker then didn’t create a sprocket, or produce a sprocket, or cause a sprocket to exist – is an alienating step only found in certain kinds of businesses. (And those are the only kinds of businesses anti-capitalists dislike).

For example, a worker can walk into a worker co-op, pour the same kind of alloy heated in the same kind of furnace into a cast that is shaped the exact same, but the worker at this co-op (unlike the worker for the private company) has now created a sprocket.

I’m pretty sure you would agree, right? Because he co-owns the company and he had a democratic voice in the acquisition of the company’s tools? He is responsible for all of the things that caused that sprocket to be created. No other factors were more involved than the worker-owner’s contributions and decisions.

So even though the co-op worker did the exact same thing using the exact same kinds of machinery as the private company worker, would you agree that the sprocket (which only existed after he poured the alloy) was a direct consequence of the co-op worker’s actions? (Whereas it was not a direct consequence of the private employee’s actions)

Talidos, 10 months ago

No. Both workers have created a sprocket, which exists as a direct result of their actions

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

Okay… I’m a bit confused… but I think you are saying the worker in the private company provides – as his main product – labor, even though he’s still directly responsible for the creation of the sprocket that he poured. And that he is rewarded for his labor, which is his primary contribution, even though he receives no direct reward for the creation of the sprocket.

Am I understanding you? Please ignore everything below this if I’m not understanding you.

On the other hand, if I am understanding you correctly, please read on: the worker in the co-op performed the same task. And unlike the private worker, the co-op worker is given a reward for more than just his labor. He’s given a vote in who the sprocket is sold to, a vote in the price set when the sprocket is sold, a vote in the exact mixture of ores going into the sprocket, and (without needing to ask for a raise, without needing to change jobs) the worker in the worker co-op gets a voice in how much he gets paid, what hours he gets scheduled, and how much vacation and sick leave he is allowed.

The worker in the worker co-op gets a voice in general. Agency.

I don’t see how those two things just seem like different flavors of “company” to you. One strips the worker of everything but his labor. The other gives him a voice.

To me, that makes them opposites.

jlou, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

The workers should not have to negotiate for their inalienable rights to appropriate the fruits of their labor, the moral basis for private property. A system that really defends private property should guarantee and secure their rights. You might respond that workers consent to give up their rights, but the rights are inalienable meaning they cannot be transferred even with consent. They're inalienable because they follow from de facto responsibility, which can't be given up even with consent

jlou, 10 months ago

The workers do produce sprockets and are jointly de facto responsible for them. A group is de facto responsible for a result if it is a purposeful result of their joint intentional actions. Responsibility cannot be cut off like this just like it cannot be cut off at the trigger pull and ignore the resulting crime. The sprockets are a purposeful result.

Selling labor is different. I can transfer capital and the person can use it independently of me, but I can't do so with myself @asklemmy

KevinDeRodeTovenaar, 10 months ago

Capitalism is an economic system wherein production is organised in order to produce a massive commodities, which are sold for a profit, which is then reinvested in the production process with the goal of endless growth of the production.

Banana, 10 months ago

The key here being maximization of profit. It’s the very foundation.

Nemo, 10 months ago

Capitalism is an economic system where capital is considered a valid input to the production process, worthy of renumeration. Contrast with some other systems where labor is the only valid input.

Capital is material wealth used productively.

Capitalism empowers ownership of produced good by laborers by funding new ventures where laborers can be more self-directed than if they were forced to labor under the direction of others. Capitalism erodes control from laborers by introducing a non-labor stake in the venture. Both are true.

---

An artisan who sells what they produce is free to be a capitalist or not, the two are unrelated.

Such a person cannot exist in a society without private property, as “selling” is not a valid concept in such a society. Artisans in general would still exist, though, and probably more abundantly.

An artisan who has more work orders than she can fill alone can expand without the methods you describe. She can form a partnership with another artisan, and teach or otherwise share her methods of production, tools, and branding. This could be an equal partnership or something more like taking an apprentice.

The distinction between worker coöps and other businesses is important, but it’s also important to recognize that coöps are a subset of businesses, not an opposing type of entity. Coöps have just as much ability to behave in a predatory manner towards consumers, and almost as much potential to seek self-perpetuation and growth at the expense of their environment. That they will be less predatory towards laborers is nice, but it’s not enough to make them “safe”.

jlou, 10 months ago

What do you mean by valid input?

Both capital and labor are causally efficacious in production. Why would people use them otherwise? Capital is also the fruits of past labor, so denying capital remuneration denies remuneration to the workers that created that capital @asklemmy

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

I’m with J Lou. Even Marx considered capital a valid input to the production process. He just thought it was being misused.

He believed the workers should control capital democratically. He believed our current treatment of capital (what capital entitles a person to do under our current system) was destroying people’s lives and hope and autonomy.

But Marx and Engels actually dedicated several paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto to explaining why capital should not be destroyed during the overthrow of the bourgeoisie – indicating that they did believe capital to be valuable.

lntl, 10 months ago

Capitalism is an economic system founded in private ownership of land, natural resouces, goods, services, etc.

Nemo, 10 months ago

That mostly predates capitalism, though.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

According to us anti-capitalists it predates capitalism. According to a good number of people, the definition of capitalism is basically… anything involving money.

arthur, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Money is not a problem. Money is just a tool to exchange value. Any socialist experience that I know use(d) currency. The difference is that not everything was up for sale.

Nemo, 10 months ago

I’m not an anticapitalist, though.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

Oh. My apologies.

arthur, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

What is capitalism?

Capitalism is the way we currently organize our society, where a group of people (the ruling class) have ownership over the means of production and, using that, they take the labor value created by the working class. They use their power to control the society, despite democracy, and change its rules to their advantage.

How capitalism strips people of their control over what they produce?

Think about… A factory worker making smartphones. How many they do in a day? How much it does each will cost? How much of it the worker gets? The shareholders that owns the factory will get most of the value as profit, despite the fact that they did not work.

1: No. You made something of value. Capitalists don’t create value.

2: Private property is not the same as Ownership of the means of production. Communism don’t abolish private property, it abolish ownership of the means of production.

3: You can expand your production by working with other people, as expected. In a communist society you would not be their “boss”, and would not get any value from their work for yourself, they will have it.

4: Communism is a way to organize society without exploitation. They may be true for a cooperative, and we need more of that. But the implications of that for the whole society are deeper; democracy may reflect the needs of people better when there are no power disparity between member of the society.

jeena, 10 months ago

To be fair, the question was “What is Capitalism” you’re mostly answering the question “What is Communism”.

arthur, 10 months ago

Just on the bonus questions. Lol.

TootSweet, 10 months ago

So, first off, let me say that if it'll help us move toward something better than we have now, even if in my head I call it anarcho-communism, I'll happily call it "capitalism."

For reference, there's an author named Charles Eisenstein who in his book "Sacred Economics" advocates for taking steps that he intends to move us (the world, I guess) eventually to a gift-based economy without money or barter. And he calls it capitalism. With a straight face. Now, I don't know if deep down in his heart he believes it actually qualifies as capitalism or if he's calling it capitalism because he feels like his aims are more likely to be well received by pro-capitalists if he calls it "capitalism."

One can IMO go too far with that. Case in point: ecofascism. But I digress.

On to the definition of capitalism. At least in my head, capitalism is characterized by:

• The profit motive. The incentive to amass. (Typically money, but a barter-based system could well be the same in every way that matters.)
• Quid pro quo. The whole system is based on it.
• Private property. A particular set of rules for who has ownership rights over what.
• The institution of employment.

My answer didn't include the word "capital", so I'll skip that second question.

As to your third question, let me take exception with the question itself. I don't believe "control over what you produce" is necesssarily a good thing per se. I believe in having something roughly like ownership rights over what one uses. But if one produce a surplus, I don't believe they should be able to deprive others in need of said surplus.

I think capitalism coerces people into producing surplus for others to sell for a profit that the producer (employee) doesn't get a fair share in if that goes more to the spirit of your question.

Bonus questions:

1. I... don't know or care? "Capitalist" can mean someone who supports the institution of capitalism. Or it can mean something like an owner of a company that employs people. I think plenty of people participate in capitalism (by selling things they make, by accepting an employment position, etc) out of necessity while disapproving of the system as a whole. Hell, I'm one of them. I'm not sure I understand why you ask.
2. If I'm the person who sells things I make? Again, anticapitalists participate in capitalism because capitalism doesn't give them a choice. Does that answer your question?
3. The word "sell" here has some baggage I don't like. I'm not for a system in which anybody "sells" anything. But to answer how one might expand an operation that produces things, worker cooperatives are probably the most obvious answer.
4. Anyway, worker cooperatives are owned and run by the workers. Corporations are owned by shareholders and run by boards of directors. Worker cooperatives don't have incentives and power to fuck their workers over. They do have incentive and power to take care of their workers.

Maybe I should have read the first thread you referenced before answering these. Maybe it would have given more context. But hopefully this response gives you what you were looking for.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

Okay, I absolutely love this response. All the way down.

And no, you didn’t need to read o_o’s thread. My personal summary of it is that people who defined capitalism as, “anything that allows individuals control over the fruits of their labor” and people who defined capitalism as, “the alienation of workers from the fruits of their labor” were talking right past each other, not really understanding that the points they were making only supported their argument if you assumed their definitions were correct.

For reference, there’s an author named Charles Eisenstein who in his book “Sacred Economics” advocates for taking steps that he intends to move us (the world, I guess) eventually to a gift-based economy without money or barter. And he calls it capitalism. With a straight face. Now, I don’t know if deep down in his heart he believes it actually qualifies as capitalism or if he’s calling it capitalism because he feels like his aims are more likely to be well received by pro-capitalists if he calls it “capitalism.”

That is amusing. And yeah. That sounds very pragmatic. Or ignorant. Hard to tell which. But Eisenstein sounds like an interesting character. And like you said, if one needs to call their ideal system “capitalism” to get it implemented, then there’s no real crime.

• the profit motive
• quid pro quo
• private property
• the institution of employment

Solid. I like these components.

As to your third question, let me take exception with the question itself. I don’t believe “control over what you produce” is necesssarily a good thing per se. I believe in having something roughly like ownership rights over what one uses. But if one produce a surplus, I don’t believe they should be able to deprive others in need of said surplus.

That fascinates me. I have always heard the struggle phrased essentially as, “you control your proceeds” vs “someone else controls your proceeds.” I didn’t realize people were advocating philosophies that bowed to the idea that “needs” should take priority over personal possessions. I’ll have to think about that one for a while.

1. I… don’t know or care? “Capitalist” can mean someone who supports the institution of capitalism. Or it can mean something like an owner of a company that employs people. I think plenty of people participate in capitalism (by selling things they make, by accepting an employment position, etc) out of necessity while disapproving of the system as a whole. Hell, I’m one of them. I’m not sure I understand why you ask.

This answer is wonderful. Again, I like that you acknowledge that the definitions are so varied that they aren’t even useful anymore.

The main reason I asked? It was a leading question: my goal was that people’s answers would highlight the differences between their definitions. Because, if people could understand why their definitions were fundamentally different, maybe they could understand why they were talking past each other?

I’m not sure if the effort will succeed. But I really liked and appreciated this answer.

TootSweet, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I didn't realize people were advocating philosophies that bowed to the idea that "needs" should take priority over personal possessions.

Yeah, I tend to work Maslow's work into my take on political systems. Maybe I should call myself an anarcho-Maslowist or something. Heh.

I do really think that society is best that best fulfills people's needs. And by "needs," I mean something very like the way Maslow used the term. I'm not sure what higher purpose one could give for a society than the fulfillment of needs, really.

(Mind you, I do know that there have been other psychologists who have built on Maslow's work as well as some with different models of needs. I don't necessarily mean to exclude those other definitions of needs. I don't think it would serve us well to be dogmatic about one person's take. But even if Maslow can be improved on, I do think the broad strokes of his take are on to something.)

To be fair, just about any purpose a society might have can be shoehorned into the language of "needs" and that paradigm may be better for some things than others.

Also, of course, more basic needs are more important. If you're trying to improve things and you have one option that will address society's unfulfilled need for basic sustinence and another option that will improve society's access to aesthetic fulfillment, let's fill people's bellies first and put up murals later.

Now, I do largely believe in "usership," but the idea can definitely go too far. If in the revolution, Ted takes possession of a mansion and uses it daily for a private indoor jogging track, that's fine with me so long as others are not deprived of some sufficiently basic need. Under a strict usership system, one could say that Ted uses all of that mansion daily and that there is no "surplus" of space there. And, again if others are not deprived, I have no issue with it. But if homelessness exists in that area, Ted's claim to that mansion for his comparatively frivolous use of the structure is superceded by other people's right to not have to live in a tent under a bridge.

But this is all mostly my own take. I don't think I've seen anyone else take quite the same stance on things. But then, I haven't really read that much anarchist theory either. Just Conquest of Bread and /r/Anarchism, pretty much. (Oh, and some random guy on a first person shooter I used to play a lot that was my introduction to anarchism.)

Edit: Oh! Also, there is the whole "to each according to need" thing. Maybe Marx would've been a fan of Maslow's ideas. Who knows.

CanadaPlus, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Hot take, but it’s mostly a buzzword at this point. It more productive to talk about wealth distribution and the structure of industry directly, and in which ways they can be good or bad.

blazera, 10 months ago

Capitalism is the distribution of resources based on capital. Capital is money.

The problem is money is also a resource. When capital enters a business, that money gets distributed based on who has the most money. Which is an obvious feedback loop we see in practice everyday with megabillionaires earning a house a minute.

In fact basically everything is a resource to be distributed based on money within capitalism. Creative ownership of stories and characters and art, inventions, land and houses, political influence, priority within the legal system, medical treatment. All without creating a single product or service.

featured, 10 months ago

Capitalism is a socioeconomic system in which private individuals (capitalists) own the means of production and employ others to work them. The employer exploits the employed through wage labor, a system in which the surplus value of a laborer is taken as profit for the capitalist. Capitalism is often characterized by market relations and generalized commodity production, but there are always exceptions as in any system.

Xariphon, 10 months ago

I think your first point is the most important: it's a system in which those who own the means of production, those who benefit the most from production, produce nothing.

Black_Gulaman, 10 months ago

But they do have the means to produce, so without them the laborers cannot produce on the same level. It should be a mutual relationship that everyone involved should benefit. I think when others say that capitalism is bad, they’re referencing the corrupted form of capitalism we have today. A sort of pseudo slavery where corporations and those in power merely gives laborers just enough to survive but not enough to thrive.

Xariphon, 10 months ago

That's capitalism's end goal, though, is slavery. Really it's just feudalism with extra steps.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

Wait! @Black_Gulaman isn’t wrong. Also, I think we are miscommunicating with pro-capitalists.

Granted, we both know capitalist propaganda labels basically everything positive about human interactions “capitalism” and then scaremongers about how “the left wants to take THIS away from you!” And that is the main source of our problems communicating with pro-capitalists.

But some responsibility (maybe 20% of the responsibility?) lies with the fact that we choose to label “capital” the problem instead of… you know… the fact that our laws and customs favor a zero-sum employment contract between capital owners and workers where there can be only one winner?

Of course the owner of more capital is always on the better side of this contract, (which is why we identified capital as the problem in the first place.) But labeling the problem “capital” makes it look like we don’t see any value to capital. Which isn’t true. Marx and Engels dedicated several paragraphs of their manifesto to explaining why the means of production should not be damaged, because the existence of capital leads to abundance, and the means of production is valuable. They didn’t want the means destroyed: they simply wanted it democratically owned by workers’ cooperatives and state socialism.

The problem is employment contracts that are part of how our society treats the individual, private ownership of capital. Not the idea that capital is a valuable contribution to the production process and deserves reward.

jlou, 10 months ago

Capital is causally efficacious in workers use of it. However, capital is a dead tool. It cannot be de facto responsible for anything. The person that uses the capital is the one that is de facto responsible for what they do with it positive and negative. Your assumption that critics of capitalism are merely criticizing improper application of fundamentally sound principles is wrong. The sophisticated critiques of capitalism apply even in its "perfect" form found in econ 101 textbooks @asklemmy

lemmybrucelee, 10 months ago

YellowParenti: Michael Parenti, “The Myth of Capitalism”

Episode webpage: …spotify.com/…/Michael-Parenti--The-Myth-of-Capit…

Media file: anchor.fm/…/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfro…

moobythegoldensock, 10 months ago

1. No
2. No
3. Yes
4. Yes

jlou, 10 months ago

Capitalism has 3 main features:

• Private property (even in land)
• Employer-employee relationships
• Markets

Capitalism is misnamed. Early theorists mistakenly identified capital ownership as the root feature that gave the employer the right to the whole product that workers produce. The employment contract gives the employer the right to the whole product of the firm. Coops correct this. Power leads to employers typically being capital owners, which is why the misnomer stuck. @asklemmy

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

It took me all day to understand this one, but that is an excellent point. We do mislabel the problem. Those employment contracts are indeed far more damaging than capital itself. Thank you for this perspective.

jlou, 9 months ago

I would recommend reading David Ellerman to get more of this perspective. Here is a link to a text where he argues that the employment contract is illiberal, which means that it violates liberalism's fundamental principles, and the only kind of economy that is compatible with liberalism is an economic democracy where all firms are democratic: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf

jmp242, 10 months ago

Capitalism seems to be a system where people try to obtain ever larger amounts of some store of value, and use that store of value to enable that.

I may have managed to avoid using capital above, but I think capital is a store of value that a person controls via ownership concepts.

I think capitalism inherently enables people to earn what they produce, it seems like it’s almost a fundamental of it. The problem is just that people with more capital can coerce and rig the system against people with less capital. Therefore someone who already has capital gets more capital increase from a task than someone with less capital would get for the same task in many situations.

Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist? Yes If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished? Presumably no. If there’s no ownership or private property, how do you sell something? Can you sell something you don’t own or have permission from the owner to sell? Say you create and sell some product regularly (as above), but have more orders than you can fulfill alone. Is there any way to expand your operation and meet demand without using capitalist methods Probably not if you use a strict definition. The state, or other group could form to do so, but I’d argue it’s not you making that decision. Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Define “important”. and Important to who?

I’d say it’s meaningful because it is like democracy vs authoritarianism, but in terms of the actual real world pressures driving potentially similar behavior, I’m not sure how “important” it is. A worker cooperative might tend to treat employees better, might not choose some ways to compete that a traditional business would, and probably values other things than strictly make the most amount of profit for the investors. But does this rise to importance if the collective has to act in certain ways to remain competitive in the market? I would bet it depends on whether we’re talking from the perspective of the employees or customers or society or the market.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

The problem is just that people with more capital can coerce and rig the system against people with less capital. Therefore someone who already has capital gets more capital increase from a task than someone with less capital would get for the same task in many situations.

First of all, I love this description of the problem. I agree that this is the problem with a lot of societies. Foster Farms can wield their enormous capital and connections to underpay chicken farmers (and frankly, underpay them to a point where it might as well be considered theft). And that wielding of wealth is a huge problem.

But would you be open to the idea that – to anti-capitalists, such as myself – the moment your store of wealth is used to coerce people with less wealth and earn more from that coerced person’s production of goods than the coerced person earns for themselves, that is the moment a system becomes capitalism? Whereas, before that point, it is simply a “market economy.”

Would you be willing to entertain such a definition?

jmp242, 10 months ago

I generally think a “market economy” == capitalism. Mostly because as far as I can tell, all capitalism requires is private ownership and abstracted stores of value. A market economy is already capitalism because human nature - as soon as someone can do bulk purchases, they’re going to try and get better prices, and I think many sellers would willingly give them a bulk discount. It doesn’t even start as coercive - but it sets you on the road to that, and so it’s a difference in scale and not kind IMHO.

I also don’t think coercion is a requirement of capitalism. It’s something that I think will happen naturally, but you could still have capitalism with regulation reducing it / maybe preventing it. I’d argue that a lot of the problems in current capitalist societies are equally failures of the political system, or maybe a misunderstanding of humans such that large pluralities do not actually want to use their government to make life better for anyone or themselves, but instead to hurt an out-group.

jlou, 10 months ago

I am curious if you would consider my position to be capitalism.

The market economy I advocate legally protects an inalienable right to workplace democracy just like what some countries have today with political democracy. The employer-employee contract is legally recognized as invalid, so all firms are worker coops. While there is a fruits-of-labor-based claim to products of labor, products of nature there is no such claim, so there is common ownership of natural resources
@asklemmy

jmp242, 10 months ago

Yes, it seems like capitalism to me. You just have different legal structures for companies. I don’t know enough about worker coops, but do they work like a LLC then? Or are all the workers in the coop partners and hence liable for judgements? How broad is your exclusion of employer-employee contracts? How do consultants work? Service businesses? Someone wanting to hire a handyman?

The only part that might be weird is if you can’t own things. I can’t tell - can you own land? Are you allowed to buy and own and resell something you didn’t make yourself?

jlou, 10 months ago

Here, worker coop means a worker-controlled firm. A specific legal entity in the current legal system is not meant. Forming a democratic firm without jeopardizing personal assets is possible.

Labor is inalienable. De facto transfers of labor that make de facto and legal responsibility align in the employment contract do not exist. Thus, this does not rule out any de facto transfers in any situation just changes legal overlay.

Can

• Own land with 100% land value tax
• Resell
  @asklemmy

jmp242, 10 months ago

I don’t think I understand exactly what you’re describing here - so you would allow anything the current US allows, just with a different legal framework? If you swap out a corporate construct for a collective but based on cult of personality for say Twitter, does that actually change much? I.e. our political system in the US isn’t capitalist, but we still end up with people who have more power due to seniority, “barter”, and popularity. It seems like you could change who ends up the oligarch, but not the existence of them.

How do you have common ownership of natural resources and private ownership of land? Also, I get that you find current labor practices exploitative, but at least some of them are actually illegal, we just have difficulty enforcing them because of cost of legal actions and burden of proof issues. I don’t trust that worker collectives would actually prevent wage theft - given politics and the ability to apparently convince people to vote against their own interests. More directly, union drives also show this isn’t obviously going to go in a worker improvement way.

And slavery is currently illegal - you do have to be paid for your labor. The problem is how you value that labor? If it’s a market economy, various labor is just going to be valued higher than other labor, and you basically have the problem I think you’re pointing to with capitalism (because to me market economies are capitalism).

I also think you and I may disagree about what’s actually happening theoretically in the current system with employees. At least to me, it’s entirely consistent with practice and with the theories I’m familiar with in capitalism. An employee agrees to sell their output to an employer for a given rate. Both parties can put whatever contracts around that they like, and absent contracts, either can stop that arrangement at any time, either via renegotiation or ending the relationship. If you strip all contracts then do you envision a day laborer sort of arrangement? Everyone is an independent contractor so it’s like a “virtual company” now? Like, practically - how do you envision this works?

I think there’s all sorts of interesting stuff to discuss outside of whether a system is capitalism or not in your limited proposal here. However, I don’t actually know what you want to get rid of from the current US capitalist system, so I can’t really say more. I don’t see a lot of value in just changing labels and nothing else however.

jlou, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Referencing property not value. The workers in the firm are selling their labor itself to the employer not the outputs because the employees never jointly legally own the produced outputs and do not jointly legally hold the liabilities for the used-up inputs. If they did, it would just be a coop selling products to a buyer.

This position is similar to a minimum "wage" where the "wage" is control rights.

That's all that fits in a toot. Will respond to other points later in the conversation

JoeClu, 10 months ago

Sounds like Poly Sci homework. How about you answer the questions and post them here.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Sure. To me, capitalism is any system that supports ownership of any property – oil rigs, land, factories, assembly lines, burger machines, copyrights and patents, mines, farms, etc – that is used to collect the products of another person’s labor. (For example, when the oil rig worker is payed a wage, but the oil rig owner owns the oil that was pumped, that’s capitalism.)

EDIT: Wolfhound pointed out that my definition ought to specify who is allowed to to control this property. And that’s true.

Capitalism is any system that permits all people (or non-person entities) with sufficient wealth to own property – oil rigs, land, factories, assembly lines, burger machines, copyrights and patents, mines, farms, etc – that is used to collect the products of another person’s labor. (For example, when the oil rig worker is payed a wage, but the oil rig owner or oil rig corporation owns the oil that was pumped, that’s capitalism.)

The property used in the above manner is called capital, or private property. The person using it is called a capitalist.

As for whether it is conducive to workers controlling what they produce, my answer is that – by definition – capitalism allows someone else to control what workers produce. It does not guarantee a worker any power over what they produce, and in the majority of cases (where a worker must pay rent, health insurance, food, etc and cannot afford to start their own business or buy their own equipment) it actually pressures workers into situations where they do not control what they produce.

w2qw, 10 months ago

that is used to collect the products of another person’s labor.

This is only really true if they have a monopoly where it’s more difficult or impossible for others to compete. Otherwise if the labourer isn’t getting the full value of their labour they can go somewhere else.

jlou, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

When it is a buyer that has excessive market power it can be called monopsony or oligopsony.

This is framing things in terms of the pie metaphor that economists use. While that metaphor is accurate as a metaphor, it obfuscates the issues in discussions of anti-capitalism. The discussion should be about property not value. The workers in the firm don't jointly get ownership of what they produce. Instead, the employer has sole ownership violating the moral basis of property rights

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

At what price – to drill and construct an oil rig for example – would you consider it so prohibitively expensive that “somewhere else” has a hard time existing?

A million dollars? Five million dollars?

Consider that the median bank balance in America is $5,300. That is to say, half of all Americans have less than $5,300 in the bank.

What startup cost makes it difficult for others to compete?

w2qw, 10 months ago

I made sure to say more difficult not just difficult. Building an oil rig is inherently difficult because you need many different types of labor with many different skill sets. As a practical matter it’s often easy for one organization to pay for this labor upfront but theoretically they could cooperate to build an oil rig and share in the returns.

If you were going to mention the rights to extract oil then that’s a whole other probldm.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Let’s say:

• my bank account reads, "100 thousand"
• it costs me $5 million to build an oil rig
• your bank account reads, "$12 million"
• it costs you to $10 million to build an oil rig
  • and there’s a reason: through corruption, backroom deals, and frivolous regulations, I have managed to raise your cost, but not mine

You can still build one. I still can’t – in any reasonable way – poach whichever oil rig workers you choose to underpay. And this is true despite the fact that it’s technically easier for me to build an oil rig. The only advantage you need to be above consequences for inefficient practices… is for your opponents to be too poor to afford startup costs either way.

No uneven playing field is necessary.

theoretically they could cooperate to build an oil rig and share in the returns.

United States tax dollars, in the form of DARPA grants, paid for the development of the internet. So there is precedent for extremely expensive operations to be successfully carried out under democratic control.

Also, since oil deposits are a natural resource, one could argue government ought to be involved in their collection.

w2qw, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

You can still build one. I still can’t – in any reasonable way – poach whichever oil rig workers you choose to underpay.

Lets breakdown what those costs are though.

1. Some portion is paid to workers to construct the oil rig.
2. Some may be paid to the government as part of a lease agreement generally to compensate the public for your exclusive use of the well.
3. Some is paid to previous suppliers.

3 is really a combination of 1 & 2 so lets exclude that. For 2 we could have a government that takes this money later. Often this is the case for a lot of these deals. A lease you can pay later and royalties are paid when you actually produce product. That really just leaves 3. If you were able to compel these workers to work for you without compensation then this "How does capitalism empower people to own what they produce?"wouldn’t be true so you’d have to offer some compensation but that compensation could be equity in the form of a workers cooperative.

Is it more difficult for you to compete, sure but that’s like saying it’s more difficult for me to be an artist. I think we should be talking about where we are stepping on the scales for one or another.

United States tax dollars, in the form of DARPA grants, paid for the development of the internet. So there is precedent for extremely expensive operations to be successfully carried out under democratic control

You could government fund everything if you want. It’s usually quite beneficial in things you suggest which are early stage how it would be commercial viable is pretty uncertain. But there are trade offs.

• In market economies you may need to raise the money with debt. If you are an oil producing economy and suddenly the oil price drops you may no longer be able to pay those debts. If you instead lease it to a private company which you then collect royalties or taxes from you don’t have to take that risk. You could fund it with taxes however that limits your growth if you are a smaller economy.
• With the right incentives companies will compete if you have just a single nationalised producer where bureaucrats don’t the same level of incentive as owners they likely will run it less efficient. There is obviously the case though that often private companies push for regulations that limit competition and try to reduce their costs for externalities they impose on others.

Also, since oil deposits are a natural resource, one could argue government ought to be involved in their collection.

I think it’s correct to say government should be collecting revenue from the natural resource but I don’t think they need to specifically be the ones running it.

I should clarify I think capitalism is great but doesn’t mean our implementation is perfect (and an example is privately owned land).

1rre, 10 months ago

Copyrights and patents
Used to collect the products of another person’s labor

If you ask me it’s the exact opposite… Copying someone else’s work with no benefit to them removes a big driver for innovation.

This also only really applies with corporations - you could in theory have everyone be self-employed in a capitalist society

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

Ideally, copyrights and patents would protect the small inventor and small musician. Unfortunately, wielding copyrights and patents in any useful way requires other forms of capital. (You have to have wealth in order to sue someone for infringement.)

1rre, 10 months ago

However that’s an issue with the legal system rather than anything else and could also exist without capitalism - it’s possible for the legal system to be dominated by any powerful entity from corporations to the state to unions depending on the political system, and if you don’t have enough sway within one of those powerful entities then tough luck

ImaginaryFox, 10 months ago

Too short Owen. Assignment is 1250 words minimum with proper MLA citation. Resubmit before the deadline.

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

🤣 🤣

Look, I promise: I was just annoyed at people talking past each other on the question @o_o asked. And I just wanted to ask the question in a way that might address the problems that o_o’s question ran into.

WolfhoundRO, 10 months ago

I really feel like this definition is fairly incomplete. All the traits you mentioned can also describe feudalism, but replacing “capitalist” with “noble”, which is sanctioned and invested by other nobles or the suzerain. You could say that capitalism is “any system that supports private ownership of private property that is used to collect the products of another person’s labor”. With the mention that the private ownership can be asserted by either a person or an organized group of persons, but both private entities

OwenEverbinde, 10 months ago

Ah… good point. My description did nothing to distinguish capitalism from feudalism. There is necessity for some mention of who is allowed ownership of this form of property. (Or what is allowed ownership as is often the case.)

As for the word private though: I wanted to avoid more terms I would need to define that might obscure my definition. Also I’m not even sure what distinguishes private ownership from other kinds of ownership. Or what makes a private entity.

But thanks for the input. At some point I’ll edit my definition.

TheWelfareStore, 10 months ago

That kind of defeats the purpose of the discourse, no? If OP defines capitalism, either straight from the dictionary or per their own definition, this thread is still going to argue about the semantics of it. Might as well start where it gets interesting imo