@o_o@programming.dev asked “why are folks so anti-capitalist?” not long ago. It got quite a few comments. But I noticed a trend: a lot of people there didn’t agree on the definition of “capitalism”.
And the lack of common definition was hobbling the entire discussion. So I wanted to ask a precursor question. One that needs to be asked before anybody can even start talking about whether capitalism is helpful or good or necessary.
Main Question
- What is capitalism?
- Since your answer above likely included the word “capital”, what is capital?
- And either,
- A) How does capitalism empower people to own what they produce? or, (if you believe the opposite,)
- B) How does capitalism strip people of their control over what they produce?
Bonus Questions (mix and match or take them all or ignore them altogether)
- Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist?
- If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished?
- 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)?
- Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Why is the distinction important?
Sounds like Poly Sci homework. How about you answer the questions and post them here.
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.
Too short Owen. Assignment is 1250 words minimum with proper MLA citation. Resubmit before the deadline.
🤣 🤣
Look, I promise: I was just annoyed at people talking past each other on the question @o_o@programming.dev asked. And I just wanted to ask the question in a way that might address the problems that o_o’s question ran into.
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
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.
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
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.)
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.
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
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?
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”.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s capitalism’s end goal, though, is slavery. Really it’s just feudalism with extra steps.
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
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.
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.
