What a poorly written article. Why make the reader go over the author’s grandstanding on his Marx knowledge in paragraph 1 only to have paragraph 2 point out his article is actually just a book review.
I like books. I actually like Nancy Fraser, I’ve taken 2 classes from her in the past on Marx and Habermas. But I don’t understand why this is in the politics sub, and why the “article” doesn’t accurately position itself as a book review:
Rule 2: Must be articles relevant to US political news. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed.
Your argument is valid. But consider that many readers of this community don’t have the foundation and knowledge of critical theory that you do. This might be the only exposure they get. It is difficult to find timely political articles critical of capitalism, so I work with what I find. Sometimes what I find is less than ideal. Feel free to downvote or report it if you believe it’s needed. Edit: Do you know of a good critical theory or philosophy community on Lemmy?
We know.
I’m so sick of this nonsense.
Capitalism is the greatest generator of wealth ever created. The problem isn’t the system generating the wealth. The problem is how we DISTRIBUTE the wealth that has been generated.
Any solution that doesn’t recognize that is just ignoring the very clear history of economic systems.
Capitalism sucks, but it’s better than every other economic system ever attempted.
Let’s fix it with Democratic socialism, not burn it down and become the next USSR.
The best capitalist society still imposes a class division between owners and workers. Owners want to maximize profit by paying as little as possible for labor. Workers want to get paid as much as possible for doing the least work.
I am looking for a system where workers gets to keep the value of their labor. Owners lack a place in such a system.
That’s just simply not true. You can go buy some shares of Disney right now, and you’ll see that you get the benefits of being an owner.
It’s a spectrum of how much you own vs how much you contact to do labor.
Owning stock in Disney would give me a share in the profits. I could also possibly vote when Disney lets shareholders do so. As a worker for Disney, I could receive money for selling my time and a portion of the profits via shares. I would thereby be a worker/owner. I would reduce that to worker, but lets entertain worker/owner as a class.
However as a worker/owner, I would not be able to make decisions that change cost. I would not own anything other than the share which is placing faith in the company. I would still try to do as little work as possible for as much compensation as possible since I am still primarily a worker.
Maybe my passive income stream will someday overcome the cost associated with meeting my material needs. I could then graduate from worker/owner to owner.
I am looking for a system where workers gets to keep the value of their labor. Owners lack a place in such a system.
Why? You can have both owners and profit sharing
Owners, workers and profit sharing exist under capitalism. Profit sharing is not the same as being an owner due to decision making power and ownership of capital i.e. private property. Workers can benefit from profit sharing, but are excluded from the owners black box for determining profits. The worker keeps their job by producing more value than their labor cost.
I am looking for a system where workers get to make decisions regarding their labor and own the tools by which their labor produces value.
Capitalism is the greatest generator of wealth ever created
I feel like when making that “calculation”, you’ve forgotten to figure in the complete and utter destruction of the biosphere, the impending losses due to climate change, the cost in human lives and well-being and dignity of enslavement, exploitation, and so on.
Capitalism sucks, but it’s better than every other economic system ever attempted.
this is my favorite argument against thinking about alternatives because it’s so common and is complete nonsense. there’s plenty of room for improvement, and it isn’t as though “the ussr” is the only alternative.
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The people decide. Through there elective representatives.
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This whole post is about an awareness that the “person” generating the wealth is actually hundreds of thousands of people generating the wealth.
Bill Gates didn’t generate 80 billion dollars. He just positioned himself in manner to that allowed him to hoard 80 billion dollars in wealth generated by countless software engineers and other workers.
- I don’t understand being squeamish about ANYONE trying to redistribute wealth. Right now there’s like 3 people who have as much wealth as the bottom HALF of Americans (~150,000,000 people). The situation is beyond ridiculous.
Yep. Social democracy for the win.
Capitalism should be allowed to exist within the narrow confines of a sandbox. Its products should be equally distributed and it should be heavily regulated to prevent the creation of the Uber wealthy and extreme income inequity.
That’s just my opinion for whatever the fuck that’s worth.
You do realize Democratic Socialism would eliminate capitalism? Or do you mean market socialism? Or Social Democracy?
Social democracies actually do have capitalism. Sweden for instance has many corporations that exist and are highly successful, while the rest of the economic system has some socialist attributes.
Downvotes and yet no comments with criticisms of the link’s arguments.
It’s a book review not an article with an argument to make. The concluding paragraph makes no claims:
“This book isn’t a book of answers; it is a book of questions and discussion resulting from those questions. The only certainty one might derive when they have finished reading it is that the only chance we have in defeating the ongoing march towards greater catastrophe wrought by human subjugation to capital is to be found in the struggle against capitalism and in organizing that struggle.”
This relationship between employers and workers (the bourgeoisie and the working class when writ large) is one of the essential elements of capitalism. – article
Capitalism requires the bourgeosie to exist, since it requires private ownership. But the relationship between them and workers is absolutely fundamentally irrelevant to capitalism, which I suspect the author knows.
