That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
Moreover, capitalist production, by its very nature, cannot be restricted to such means of production as are produced by capitalist methods. Cheap elements of constant capital are essential to the individual capitalist who strives to increase his rate of profit. In addition, the very condition of continuous improvements in labour productivity as the most important method of increasing the rate of surplus value, is unrestricted utilisation of all substances and facilities afforded by nature and soil. To tolerate any restriction in this respect would be contrary to the very essence of capital, its whole mode of existence. After many centuries of development, the capitalist mode of production still constitutes only a fragment of total world production. Even in the small Continent of Europe, where it now chiefly prevails, it has not yet succeeded in dominating entire branches of production, such as peasant agriculture and the independent handicrafts; the same holds true, further, for large parts of North America and for a number of regions in the other continents. In general, capitalist production has hitherto been confined mainly to the countries in the temperate zone, whilst it made comparatively little progress in the East, for instance, and the South. Thus, if it were dependent exclusively, on elements of production obtainable within such narrow limits, its present level and indeed, its development in general would have been impossible. From the very beginning, the forms and laws of capitalist production aim to comprise the entire globe as a store of productive forces. Capital, impelled to appropriate productive forces for purposes of exploitation, ransacks the whole world, it procures its means of production from all corners of the earth, seizing them, if necessary by force, from all levels of civilisation and from all forms of society. The problem of the material elements of capitalist accumulation, far from being solved by the material form of the surplus value that has been produced, takes on quite a different aspect. It becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to find productive employment for the surplus value it has realised.
From Rosa Luxemburg: The Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 26 - The Reproduction of Capital and Its Social Setting
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.
Personally when I say I want to ditch capitalism, the first thing I think of, among many, is simply about democratizing the workplace. Cooperatives have proven themselves to be superior than the current private model in a variety of metrics. If we reduce the defining characteristic of capitalism as needing capital to produce more capital, the current issue is that cooperative enterprises struggle to obtain the initial capital necessary to get started. Even though they have much greater success rates, banks have historically refused to give loans to these endeavers. There exists non profits to try and fill this void but its not enough.
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
governor explicitly yields control, or the state’s legislature forces the governor to yield control
states vote with a super majority to declare war
legislative branch votes to declare war with a super majority
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
the people can hold their politicians more easily accountable if the politicians live closer to the people.
it’s some kind of “pitchforks and torches” thing: In historical times it was usual that people simply walked up to the castle of the feudal lord and demanded improvements if their life was too shitty or if they were treated too unfairly. That was possible because the feudal lord mostly lived within walking distance of where the peasants lived, like, maybe in the next village or sth, but not farther than that in most cases. As a consequence, feudal lords had a very significant interest in being on good terms with their neighbours and keeping the people happy enough so they won’t start a revolt over high taxes or sth.
Today, that’s not possible because all those politicians that decide the law (and therefore our fate) live far-away (thousands of miles!) in places that neither you or me can ever personally visit. Hence, there is no accountability. We need to shift power back to the local levels; only that way we can personally ensure our wellbeing.
At a certain point, profit can turn to status, like with the super wealthy. Elon Musk seems to be pushing for $1T, not because the extra money matters, but because he wants the status of being the first to get there.
But if you look at the quiet majority, many people will take more stressful roles because of the higher earning potential. So they’re increasing their output specifically to get a better standard of living. Those types tend to be contractors, small business owners, and early stage startup employees.
If you look at the alternative, such as China or the USSR, those who rise to the top aren’t those with the highest productivity, but those most able to play the political game. If you look at a small engineering company, it’s generally those with the most technical capability who rise through the ranks, but once you get to larger companies, higher roles generally get taken over by business types, i.e. those best able to play the business side of the political game. It’s the same process, just with different mechanisms for gaining power.
Any proper solution here needs to fix the problem of the wrong people getting to positions of power. The economic system isn’t particularly relevant, other than setting the rules of the game. The best solution, IMO, is to make the rules of the game such that you get punished hard if you don’t know what you’re doing (i.e. you’re a business type running an engineering firm firing top talent to cut quarterly costs), and you get rewarded if you do. If we actually put execs in jail for problems their businesses create, I think we’d quickly see companies like Boeing change their leadership to one that will prevent problems, such as someone w/ an engineering or safety background.
That’s why I think government and the economy should be as separate as possible, and in fact in an adversarial relationship. Bureaucrats should be rewarded for catching crime in the private sector, and private companies should have real incentives to keep everything above board. That can’t happen when politicians are literally funded by the companies they’re supposed to be regulating.
Come on. Even animals are motivated by profit: getting more out of something than you put into it. Profit doesn’t have to mean “shareholder dividends.”
It’s so naive to claim that it’s only society’s setup and status pressures that make us care about getting better things for less effort. As if that hasn’t been the aim of every individual AND every society since the dawn of time.
The easiest way used to be to just plunder people. Take their shit. Now it’s your shit. Easier and faster than making the shit. Woohoo.
Then trade entered the chat, and it was the first time that people started to think there might actually be a better way: that both parties could walk away from an exchange better off, and that it might be in each of their interests to keep the other alive.
I’d like to explain what you’re missing in detail, but truthfully it would take a course in it of itself. I’ll try to be concise.
Simply put all evidence that we have points to humans living relatively egalitarian and peacefully for the majority of our history. We additionally have early evidence of trade.
Now there is, with all things, nuance. For the past 10,000 or so years evidence points to humans being very violent to one another and we have seen an increase in social stratification. However, in the modern era violence is on a downward trend relative to the total human population. Social stratification is obviously not.
Skeletal evidence is our best, but we also have evidence in the form of more traditional artifacts.
To be clear I’m not saying we can tell you every human in a hunter gatherer group carried the same social status or that people never killed each other. Obviously not, but what I can tell you is that every member of the group had access to the same nutrition and that evidence of violent skeletal trauma is significantly less prevalent than after the advent of agriculture. There is also significant evidence of trade prior to evidence of mass warfare.
people are greedy because it worked well for them in the past. i.e., people have built empires and expanded them throughout history and because sometimes that worked out well for those people, they think back fondly of it and that’s why you have people trying to become “great empires” today.
it’s not that complicated, people have a cultural memory that reaches far back for hundreds of years at least. it’s however also noteworthy that empires are the historical exception, not the rule, like, if you look at medieval europe (which spanned a long time), you had very few “big” empires and mostly small local feudal lords. Because in those times empires simply didn’t work out so well. So, people hold the balance between what works and what doesn’t, and then that gets done.
Well considering for the majority of humanity’s existence we existed in largely egalitarian societies I think it’s up to you to prove this is working.
I’m not going to downplay modern medicine and our technological advancements. Capitalism had a role to play in that is just a shame kids in the 3rd world had to starve or die in mines for it to happen. I think we could’ve come up with a better system than that.
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.
I agree. The US have oligarchic crony capitalism supported by an utterly corrupt political system. Trying to abolish capitalism without restoring democracy and the rule of law is a fools errand. Not like it’s never been tried. And every time it just replaced one ruling clique of assholes with another one.
Capitalism is not reformable because it fundamentally relies on ever increasing rates of profit and exploitation. The first is impossible in a finite world, and the second is untenable to anyone who believes in justice.
Corporations that are incentivized to make number go up and grow indefinitely at the expense of all else are a big part of the problem. Proper anti-trust regulation that is actually enforced to limit their size, as well as an aggressive wealth tax to limit individual wealth would go a long way.
Fundamentally, though, capitalism rewards those who seek power over those who contribute to society and also doesn’t incentivize long-term societal well-being. Regulation would only limit how much power any one psychopath can gain. If we could start from scratch and create a new society with any system we wanted, it would not be Capitalism.
Capitalism while replacing taxes on productive activities with taxes on unjustified monopoly power such as land value taxes to fund a UBI would be better than many past status quos.
I have no idea what would truly work in the long-term. Is there really a system that is immune from psychopaths eventually seizing control while everyone else passively allows it, then when it gets bad enough, the guillotines finally come out, rinse and repeat?
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.
Personally when I say I want to ditch capitalism, the first thing I think of, among many, is simply about democratizing the workplace. Cooperatives have proven themselves to be superior than the current private model in a variety of metrics. If we reduce the defining characteristic of capitalism as needing capital to produce more capital, the current issue is that cooperative enterprises struggle to obtain the initial capital necessary to get started. Even though they have much greater success rates, banks have historically refused to give loans to these endeavers. There exists non profits to try and fill this void but its not enough.
But… It is the root of a lot of problems and it helps the oligarchs… And it just sucks and makes no sense in general?
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
the people can hold their politicians more easily accountable if the politicians live closer to the people.
it’s some kind of “pitchforks and torches” thing: In historical times it was usual that people simply walked up to the castle of the feudal lord and demanded improvements if their life was too shitty or if they were treated too unfairly. That was possible because the feudal lord mostly lived within walking distance of where the peasants lived, like, maybe in the next village or sth, but not farther than that in most cases. As a consequence, feudal lords had a very significant interest in being on good terms with their neighbours and keeping the people happy enough so they won’t start a revolt over high taxes or sth.
Today, that’s not possible because all those politicians that decide the law (and therefore our fate) live far-away (thousands of miles!) in places that neither you or me can ever personally visit. Hence, there is no accountability. We need to shift power back to the local levels; only that way we can personally ensure our wellbeing.
Only in a society that commodifies your existence and success based on the wealth you generate/hold
Unless we’re changing the definition of profit to status
At a certain point, profit can turn to status, like with the super wealthy. Elon Musk seems to be pushing for $1T, not because the extra money matters, but because he wants the status of being the first to get there.
But if you look at the quiet majority, many people will take more stressful roles because of the higher earning potential. So they’re increasing their output specifically to get a better standard of living. Those types tend to be contractors, small business owners, and early stage startup employees.
If you look at the alternative, such as China or the USSR, those who rise to the top aren’t those with the highest productivity, but those most able to play the political game. If you look at a small engineering company, it’s generally those with the most technical capability who rise through the ranks, but once you get to larger companies, higher roles generally get taken over by business types, i.e. those best able to play the business side of the political game. It’s the same process, just with different mechanisms for gaining power.
Any proper solution here needs to fix the problem of the wrong people getting to positions of power. The economic system isn’t particularly relevant, other than setting the rules of the game. The best solution, IMO, is to make the rules of the game such that you get punished hard if you don’t know what you’re doing (i.e. you’re a business type running an engineering firm firing top talent to cut quarterly costs), and you get rewarded if you do. If we actually put execs in jail for problems their businesses create, I think we’d quickly see companies like Boeing change their leadership to one that will prevent problems, such as someone w/ an engineering or safety background.
That’s why I think government and the economy should be as separate as possible, and in fact in an adversarial relationship. Bureaucrats should be rewarded for catching crime in the private sector, and private companies should have real incentives to keep everything above board. That can’t happen when politicians are literally funded by the companies they’re supposed to be regulating.
Come on. Even animals are motivated by profit: getting more out of something than you put into it. Profit doesn’t have to mean “shareholder dividends.”
It’s so naive to claim that it’s only society’s setup and status pressures that make us care about getting better things for less effort. As if that hasn’t been the aim of every individual AND every society since the dawn of time.
The easiest way used to be to just plunder people. Take their shit. Now it’s your shit. Easier and faster than making the shit. Woohoo.
Then trade entered the chat, and it was the first time that people started to think there might actually be a better way: that both parties could walk away from an exchange better off, and that it might be in each of their interests to keep the other alive.
Your understanding of human history is lacking depth and inaccurate
Your criticism is insubstantial and dismissible.
Yeah I’m only an archaeologist.
I’d like to explain what you’re missing in detail, but truthfully it would take a course in it of itself. I’ll try to be concise.
Simply put all evidence that we have points to humans living relatively egalitarian and peacefully for the majority of our history. We additionally have early evidence of trade.
Now there is, with all things, nuance. For the past 10,000 or so years evidence points to humans being very violent to one another and we have seen an increase in social stratification. However, in the modern era violence is on a downward trend relative to the total human population. Social stratification is obviously not.
Skeletal evidence is our best, but we also have evidence in the form of more traditional artifacts.
To be clear I’m not saying we can tell you every human in a hunter gatherer group carried the same social status or that people never killed each other. Obviously not, but what I can tell you is that every member of the group had access to the same nutrition and that evidence of violent skeletal trauma is significantly less prevalent than after the advent of agriculture. There is also significant evidence of trade prior to evidence of mass warfare.
like, i get your point but i think you’re wrong.
people are greedy because it worked well for them in the past. i.e., people have built empires and expanded them throughout history and because sometimes that worked out well for those people, they think back fondly of it and that’s why you have people trying to become “great empires” today.
it’s not that complicated, people have a cultural memory that reaches far back for hundreds of years at least. it’s however also noteworthy that empires are the historical exception, not the rule, like, if you look at medieval europe (which spanned a long time), you had very few “big” empires and mostly small local feudal lords. Because in those times empires simply didn’t work out so well. So, people hold the balance between what works and what doesn’t, and then that gets done.
Could you provide a realistic alternative that we could transition into?
Well considering for the majority of humanity’s existence we existed in largely egalitarian societies I think it’s up to you to prove this is working.
I’m not going to downplay modern medicine and our technological advancements. Capitalism had a role to play in that is just a shame kids in the 3rd world had to starve or die in mines for it to happen. I think we could’ve come up with a better system than that.
Capitalism may be workable with strict regulation and proper social safety nets. The problem is that we have crony capitalism, which allows billionaires to essentially control the laws, which concentrates power into too few hands, similar to other oppressive forms of government. A key piece we are missing to make capitalism more workable is right in the word itself: “cap”. There should be a cap on how much wealth any one individual can accumulate.
I agree. The US have oligarchic crony capitalism supported by an utterly corrupt political system. Trying to abolish capitalism without restoring democracy and the rule of law is a fools errand. Not like it’s never been tried. And every time it just replaced one ruling clique of assholes with another one.
Capitalism is not reformable because it fundamentally relies on ever increasing rates of profit and exploitation. The first is impossible in a finite world, and the second is untenable to anyone who believes in justice.
Corporations that are incentivized to make number go up and grow indefinitely at the expense of all else are a big part of the problem. Proper anti-trust regulation that is actually enforced to limit their size, as well as an aggressive wealth tax to limit individual wealth would go a long way.
Fundamentally, though, capitalism rewards those who seek power over those who contribute to society and also doesn’t incentivize long-term societal well-being. Regulation would only limit how much power any one psychopath can gain. If we could start from scratch and create a new society with any system we wanted, it would not be Capitalism.
Which system should it be in your scenario?
Capitalism while replacing taxes on productive activities with taxes on unjustified monopoly power such as land value taxes to fund a UBI would be better than many past status quos.
I have no idea what would truly work in the long-term. Is there really a system that is immune from psychopaths eventually seizing control while everyone else passively allows it, then when it gets bad enough, the guillotines finally come out, rinse and repeat?