The problem isn't capitalism. It's human nature. There is no perfect system. Is the U.K. Government so awesome that you want it controlling all conmerce?
Did you read the article? Capitalism reduces human nature to a footnote. It turns everyone and their actions into a commodity.
That said, capitalism itself isn't the problem; unregulated/freemarket capitalism is. When it gets huge, that's when corruption and grass roots social issues begin to arise.
I think regulated capitalism is totally fine and the way to go.
In these conversations I find things tend to break down based on how people answer the following question, which I will pose right now:
How far off do you think meaningful post scarcity, defined as the absence of transactions on nearly everything that could be valued, is?
Because through all the reading I've done and conversations I've had the conclusion I tend to arrive at is: socialism without a strong state either requires a post transactional world with the abolition of nearly all power relations derived from scarcity of value, or highly highly local economies.
Well, not exactly, in absence of state enforcement of private property rights the cultural inertia means that people will defend property with violence. People still have to consent to living in a world in which they cannot claim property
People would defend their personal property but absent state protection they would have no guarantee that they would be capable of doing so, which is necessary for a "right" to private property. An owner can "protect" their company but if someone stronger or a group decide they want the company, the owner has no realistic means of defending their property absent state violence.
If the state deems that property is protected as either personal or public and then enforce those rights, then private property would cease as a meaningful concept while personal and public property would continue.
Edit: wait are you not distinguishing between personal and private property?
Regulated Capitalism tempered by Social Democracy is literally the best overall system that has been discovered thus far. For its best implementation, look to the likes of the scandanavian countries, Germany, France, and Canada.
In these conversations I find things tend to break down based on how people answer the following question, which I will pose right now:
How far off do you think meaningful post scarcity, defined as the absence of transactions on nearly everything that could be valued, is?
Because through all the reading I've done and conversations I've had the conclusion I tend to arrive at is: socialism without a strong state either requires a post transactional world with the abolition of nearly all power relations derived from scarcity of value, or highly highly local economies.
Well, that's the thing - socialism and communism, in their purest forms, literally cannot exist without a post-scarcity economy. And I will argue up and down 'til I'm blue in the face that we have never actually had a true communist state due to the fascism present in previous "communist" states.
I would also say that we're not that far removed from achieving a kind of post-scarcity. This won't become obvious until we hit some outrageous level of unemployment due to automation and everyone is seeing the downturns, sadly, and I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of stupid bullshit happening before we right the ship and move towards a steady-state economy that values something closer to human dignity rather than arbitrary measures like GDP.
Not really. It just requires a post-scarcity economy (yes, obviously, not an easy task) and a rejiggering of peoples' value system to not include the idea of "private property".
There have been societies in the past that didn't even have a concept of private property - everything was shared between the people, though of course we're usually talking about small and tight-nit tribes here. It is entirely possible that we can see a shift towards different values once scarcity, imposed or otherwise, becomes less of an issue.
Did you read the article? Capitalism reduces human nature to a footnote. It turns everyone and their actions into a commodity.
That said, capitalism itself isn't the problem; unregulated/freemarket capitalism is. When it gets huge, that's when corruption and grass roots social issues begin to arise.
I think regulated capitalism is totally fine and the way to go.
Regulated capitalism can work, but it needs a LOT of regulations.
Especially everything to do with the environment. Capitalism, on its own, will inevitably strip the entire Earth barren of its resources for the sake of profit if left unchecked. It is only thanks to state intervention that most large cities aren't polluted, uninhabitable shitholes with smog that can choke an elephant to death.
This is not even mentioning the fact that capitalism itself requires an infinite growth paradigm which is inherently incompatible with a planet on which there is only a finite amount of resources. How do you regulate that out of the system?
Well, not exactly, in absence of state enforcement of private property rights the cultural inertia means that people will defend property with violence. People still have to consent to living in a world in which they cannot claim property
Did you read the article? Capitalism reduces human nature to a footnote. It turns everyone and their actions into a commodity.
That said, capitalism itself isn't the problem; unregulated/freemarket capitalism is. When it gets huge, that's when corruption and grass roots social issues begin to arise.
I think regulated capitalism is totally fine and the way to go.
I'm unsure where things like sexism and racism fits into captialism. Seems to me if you're following captialism to a T, you're selling whatever sells regardless of how much you hate women or black people. I'm sure plenty of business opportunities have been lost due to prejudice. Human nature certainly doesn't get a pass.
But yeah, captialism seems a flawed concept to build a society around. Reducing humans to capital seems to lead to a resentful and unkind society.
In a socialist society, people would still have personal property, i.e. toothbrushes, televisions, cars etc. However, private property would be abolished, i.e. any object that someone uses to create capital with, be it a factory or an apartment building you own that you lease to rentiers.
People would defend their personal property but absent state protection they would have no guarantee that they would be capable of doing so, which is necessary for a "right" to private property. An owner can "protect" their company but if someone stronger or a group decide they want the company, the owner has no realistic means of defending their property absent state violence.
If the state deems that property is protected as either personal or public and then enforce those rights, then private property would cease as a meaningful concept while personal and public property would continue.
Edit: wait are you not distinguishing between personal and private property?
I've never found the classic Marxist delineation to be...super comfortable? Its one of those things that breaks down very cleanly when you're discussing labor that involves going into a factory and then going home and gets very messy beyond that. Is a food truck personal property, as a vehicle and set of tools I own, or private property, as an economic platform?
Yeah, exactly. Too many people are either completely ignorant of this issue or are willing to just sweep the detritus under the rug because "hey, it's not MY problem" (the selfish twits).
In fact, far too often I run into people who outright deny that such a thing is even possible, completely ignoring the swathes of evidence all over the news lately. I can only wonder if we'll ever manage to create a humane solution with this kind of shitty excuse of a government we have in the USA.
I've never found the classic Marxist delineation to be...super comfortable? Its one of those things that breaks down very cleanly when you're discussing labor that involves going into a factory and then going home and gets very messy beyond that. Is a food truck personal property, as a vehicle and set of tools I own, or private property, as an economic platform?
I'm unsure where things like sexism and racism fits into captialism. Seems to me if you're following captialism to a T, you're selling whatever sells regardless of how much you hate women or black people. I'm sure plenty of business opportunities have been lost due to prejudice. Human nature certainly doesn't get a pass.
But yeah, captialism seems a flawed concept to build a society around. Reducing humans to capital seems to lead to a resentful and unkind society.
In a socialist society, people would still have personal property, i.e. toothbrushes, televisions, cars etc. However, private property would be abolished, i.e. any object that someone uses to create capital with, be it a factory or an apartment building you own that you lease to rentiers.
In a socialist society, people would still have personal property, i.e. toothbrushes, televisions, cars etc. However, private property would be abolished, i.e. any object that someone uses to create capital with, be it a factory or an apartment building you own that you lease to rentiers.
Good, because I'm not sharing any of my stuff. It's mine.
That's the crux, at least personally: any alternative to capitalism has to leave me better off than I am under it. If I have to give away or share anything of mine I will be against it.
Regulated capitalism can work, but it needs a LOT of regulations.
Especially everything to do with the environment. Capitalism, on its own, will inevitably strip the entire Earth barren of its resources for the sake of profit if left unchecked. It is only thanks to state intervention that most large cities aren't polluted, uninhabitable shitholes with smog that can choke an elephant to death.
This is not even mentioning the fact that capitalism itself requires an infinite growth paradigm which is inherently incompatible with a planet on which there is only a finite amount of resources. How do you regulate that out of the system?
Under insurance-based models or single-payer benefit systems, when people don't have a job, they are unable to contribute.
With Universal Basic Income, when someone doesn't have a job, they can still sustain a good quality of life, save some money, and contribute via volunteering and work experience. It removes barriers.
And it saves money for the tax payer. It's such a win:win:win.
The broader point I'm driving at is that "public control of private property" and "worker ownership of their labor" are actually pretty different things with different sets of problems
Good, because I'm not sharing any of my stuff. It's mine.
That's the crux, at least personally: any alternative to capitalism has to leave me better off than I am under it. If I have to give away or share anything of mine I will be against it.
In a socialist society, people would still have personal property, i.e. toothbrushes, televisions, cars etc. However, private property would be abolished, i.e. any object that someone uses to create capital with, be it a factory or an apartment building you own that you lease to rentiers.
That's the crux, at least personally: any alternative to capitalism has to leave me better off than I am under it. If I have to give away or share anything of mine I will be against it.
Of course it's the problem. And it's not shocking that the happiest, most well off countries are capitalist countries when they were built on the legacy of the wealth of imperialism and death and continue to function because of the exploitation of third world laborers and resources.
It does however mean that certain personal items may not be produced or will certainly cost more when they are made by a system that does not exploit labor. This is why you cannot completely extricate personal property from private property.
In a socialist society, people would still have personal property, i.e. toothbrushes, televisions, cars etc. However, private property would be abolished, i.e. any object that someone uses to create capital with, be it a factory or an apartment building you own that you lease to rentiers.
The broader point I'm driving at is that "public control of private property" and "worker ownership of their labor" are actually pretty different things with different sets of problems
I think you're being a little pedantic. The disabled, for instance, potentially can't be workers as a result of their disability but are accommodated in a socialist society and because of communal ownership they have their own ownership of capital.
Good, because I'm not sharing any of my stuff. It's mine.
That's the crux, at least personally: any alternative to capitalism has to leave me better off than I am under it. If I have to give away or share anything of mine I will be against it.
"Fuck you, got mine". Even the richest of the rich won't agree to anything that reduces the amount of possessions, money, and/or capital they have. It's going to have to be taken by force.
I think you're being a little pedantic. The disabled, for instance, potentially can't be workers as a result of their disability but are accommodated in a socialist society and because of communal ownership they have their own ownership of capital.
The Neoliberal brand of Capitalism can't because (and stop me if I'm wrong here) it's based on continuous growth in a world of finite resources, but why "can't" Socialism, in theory, take the environment into account?
Not being facetious here, but those things may have a more causal relationship than it appears.
Is it possible that, in these instances, corruption and incompetence are perhaps a by-product of Capitalism? For instance, it's probably fair to say that most corruption cases are about one party being paid off so the other can make more money, right? I'm not suggesting corruption is exclusive to Capitalism, but maybe the brand of corruption found in Capitalist society is (if that makes sense?).
Yep. I think the first hurdle is our own self-interest. If you'll excuse the pun, we're all invested in Capitalism, not just the Investor class. It's ingrained in us from such an early age that the idea of anything other than Capitalism seems either absurd or impossible to imagine. People get pretty angry about it too.
The drive to accumulate may very well be hardwired into us as animals (it actually makes sense it would be based on how evolution works). It being part of us does not mean, however, that it should be elevated as some ideal.
I don't know if it is. At least, I'm suspicious of that kind of reading.
Science (or at the very least the interpretation of the evidence it provides) seems to be as much subject to trends and ideology as anything else.
Shut me up if I'm way off here, but the idea of the "drive to accumulate" being 'natural' could well be a Capitalist Realist/Neoliberal interpretation of the facts rather than an actual hard fact in-and-of itself*:
"What more proof do we need that Capitalism is the only sensible answer? It's natural! It's hard wired into us! See? Science says so! If you squint a little!"
*
I've gone off on one there, but I can't say I've read much about it. I'm happy to be proven wrong/ignorant. If you have any reading material, I'm totally game!
Yep. When I say "regulated capitalism" I don't mean a few airy-fairy legislations.
I mean placing capitalism within an entire new framework where it's highly limited on all sides except, perhaps, luxury goods and services.
Universal Basic Income is the answer to that.
Under insurance-based models or single-payer benefit systems, when people don't have a job, they are unable to contribute.
With Universal Basic Income, when someone doesn't have a job, they can still sustain a good quality of life, save some money, and contribute via volunteering and work experience. It removes barriers.
And it saves money for the tax payer. It's such a win:win:win.
[Attlee's] political views had been more conservative. However, after his shock at the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with the slum children, he came to the view that private charity would never be sufficient to alleviate poverty and that only direct action and income redistribution by the state would have any serious effect. This sparked a process of political evolution that saw him develop into a full-fledged supporter of socialism.
I think you're being a little pedantic. The disabled, for instance, potentially can't be workers as a result of their disability but are accommodated in a socialist society and because of communal ownership they have their own ownership of capital.
I disagree actually! I think the distinction between "abolition of private property via public ownership" and "abolition of private property via worker ownership" is an incredibly important one, and the role of disabled individuals and other individuals who are unable to work is precisely why.
If we abolish private property just by establishing the control of workers over the tools and resources of their labor then the owner of the food truck has nothing to worry about, as he is the sole laborer and clearly controls his own means of production. However the place of disabled individuals within this framework is concerning to me, in such a system the existence of public goods and services runs into problems* and we risk a situation in which those who cannot work are relying on the goodwill of others, i.e charity, for their wellbeing
On the other hand, if we proceed with a larger public seizure of private property in which things such as the residence of land and use of tools is subject to a degree of institutional public control then we can solve the problems facing those unable to work, basically redistribution of resources "to each according to their need" etc, but then the question of what public ownership of the food truck looks like becomes very relevant.
*The distribution of power becomes unequal. A worker at a factory is accountable to his fellow workers. A worker in a public service is accountable both to their fellow workers and to the public as a whole. One group is considerably more free to operate in their own interests, and this worries me. I suspect people begin to migrate towards non-public labor. Not universally of course, there will always be those committed to public good, but I wouldn't underestimate the current number of public servants who fill their rolls largely indifferent to the distinction and who gladly hop ship if their degree of control over their conditions and compensation for work was greater
I don't know if it is. At least, I'm suspicious of that kind of reading.
Science (or at the very least the interpretation of the evidence it provides) seems to be as much subject to trends and ideology as anything else.
Shut me up if I'm way off here, but the idea of the "drive to accumulate" being 'natural' could well be a Capitalist Realist/Neoliberal interpretation of the facts rather than an actual hard fact in-and-of itself*:
"What more proof do we need that Capitalism is the only sensible answer? It's natural! It's hard wired into us! See? Science says so! If you squint a little!"
*
I've gone off on one there, but I can't say I've read much about it. I'm happy to be proven wrong/ignorant. If you have any reading material, I'm totally game!
This problem can easily be remanded by making use of the old adage: "correlation is not causation".
People can point at Black crime rates all they want to but they'd be ignoring the mountains of evidence that societal oppression - in particular poverty and state oppression through police actions - contribute considerably to those crime rates. If we're actually considering all the evidence we should eventually come to the conclusion that we can't throw our hands into the air and say "they're at fault" until we address those systemic issues and see how things shake out afterwards, and even then it's not like we can wave a magic wand and make all those racist thoughts disappear.
Likewise, we can't say things like "everyone is out for themselves and capitalism just lets people make the most of it" when there are, in fact, a lot of altruistic people even in capitalist societies and capitalism itself is chock-full of reinforcing propaganda that sells the myth of every human being a selfish twit by nature. That's not even mentioning the fact that capitalism itself encourages those behaviors by making the most unscrupulous (and in some cases, psychopathic) individuals the most successful.
"It's just human nature", indeed. Gettin' real bloody tired of reading tripe like that.
This problem can easily be remanded by making use of the old adage: "correlation is not causation".
People can point at Black crime rates all they want to but they'd be ignoring the mountains of evidence that societal oppression - in particular poverty and state oppression through police actions - contribute considerably to those crime rates. If we're actually considering all the evidence we should eventually come to the conclusion that we can't throw our hands into the air and say "they're at fault" until we address those systemic issues and see how things shake out afterwards, and even then it's not like we can wave a magic wand and make all those racist thoughts disappear.
Likewise, we can't say things like "everyone is out for themselves and capitalism just lets people make the most of it" when there are, in fact, a lot of altruistic people even in capitalist societies and capitalism itself is chock-full of reinforcing propaganda that sells the myth of every human being a selfish twit by nature. That's not even mentioning the fact that capitalism itself encourages those behaviors by making the most unscrupulous (and in some cases, psychopathic) individuals the most successful.
"It's just human nature", indeed. Gettin' real bloody tired of reading tripe like that.
Human history is pretty long at this point. Most of it wasn't under a capitalistic system.
"people are jerks" isn't just an observation of the last 100 years.
People do change their behaviour in different systems. But to assume that a society will suddenly be free of behaviour we've seen for literally 1000ds of years is a bit much.
You need to take into account that some people are selfish assholes. and that people test boundaries. You don't have to cater to them, but there needs to be a way to deal with them.
What do many people do w/ it once they have it? They reinvest it.
Still, nearly all the recipients described the money as transformative. Fredrick Omondi Auma a Burning Spear devotee wearing a Rasta-style hat and bell bottoms when we visited had been impoverished, drinking too much, abandoned by his wife and living in a mud hut when GiveDirectly knocked on his door. He used his money to buy a motorbike to give taxi rides. He also started a small business, selling soap, salt and paraffin in a local town center; he bought two cows, one of which had given birth; and he opened a barbershop in the coastal city Mombasa. His income had gone from 600 shillings a week to 2,500 shillings roughly $25, a princely sum for the area. His wife had returned. He had even stopped drinking as much. I used to go out drinking with 1,000 shillings, and Id wake up in the bar with 100 shillings, he said. Now I go out drinking with 1,000 shillings, and I wake up at home with 900.
But here, many villagers were concerned primarily with procuring the sustenance and basic comforts that their penury had denied them. Odhiambo, the woman who had not been offered aid by the school group, planned to buy corrugated iron sheets for her roof; she considered possibly paying off her dowry. Another villager, Pamela Aooko Odero, ran a household that had been suffering from hunger, with all eight of them living on just 500 to 1,000 shillings a week. She took her money as soon as she got it and went to buy food.
Many more made plans that were entrepreneurial. Two widowed sister-wives, Margaret Aloma Abagi and Mary Abonyo Abagi, told me they planned to pool their funds together to start a small bank with some friends. Charles Omari Ager, a houseboy for the sister-wives, had his phone turned off and wrapped in a plastic bag in his pocket when the first text came in. He was driving the widows goats and cattle from one dried-out, bramble-filled meadow to another when he happened upon an aid worker, who prompted him to pull out his phone, turn it on and wait. The text was there. The money was there. Im happy! Im happy! Im happy! he said. He bought himself a goat that day.
When he got his money, Erick Odhiambo Madoho walked to the cow-dotted local highway nearest the village and took a matatu, a shared minibus, overloaded with 20 passengers, down to Lake Victoria. There he found an M-Pesa stand and converted his mobile money into shillings. He used the cash to buy the first of three rounds of filament-thin fishing line that he would need to hand-knot into nets to catch tilapia in the lake.
When the nets were done, he told me, he would rent a boat and hire a day laborer to work with him. He anticipated that his income, after costs, might reach as much as 2,000 shillings on a good day. I asked him why he hadnt saved money for nets beforehand.
I would argue that capitalism, as it currently functions, is a symptom of human problems, and not necessarily a problem unto itself, unless one ascribes to the postmodernist notion that humans are primarily constituted by ideologies implicit in the cultures in which they are raised.
Human history is pretty long at this point. Most of it wasn't under a capitalistic system.
"people are jerks" isn't just an observation of the last 100 years.
People do change their behaviour in different systems. But to assume that a society will suddenly be free of behaviour we've seen for literally 1000ds of years is a bit much.
You need to take into account that some people are selfish assholes. and that people test boundaries.
Not to labour a point, but isn't history also subject to fashions and ideological trends? Is it possible that the interpretations of historical sources are coloured by our current society's preoccupations and prejudices?
I'm not suggesting there aren't selfish people, of course, I question it as an innate, all encompassing biological and social trait.
Not to labour a point, but isn't history also subject to fashions and ideological trends? Is it possible that the interpretations of historical sources are coloured by our current society's preoccupations and prejudices?
I'm not suggesting there aren't selfish people, of course, I question it as an innate, all encompassing biological and social trait.
What "bad" behaviour is is obviously relative to the era you currently live and, and standarts change all the time.
What is constant, is that there have always been people their peers considered "bad" because they didn't conform to the moral standard of the time. People who rebelled against what was established. For good reasons, but often also for personal gain.
This is not about the inherent evilness of mankind. It's just what happens.
I would argue that capitalism, as it currently functions, is a symptom of human problems, and not necessarily a problem unto itself, unless one ascribes to the postmodernist notion that humans are primarily constituted by ideologies implicit in the cultures in which they are raised.
Capitalism specifically is certainly a construct, with a well documented history that makes the trajectory of what problems we see pretty clear. The problem is that historically we lack evidence for societies that manage to function without exploitation while also not being drastically dissimilar to our current one (i.e not primarily nomadic or agrarian). Which doesn't really say anything about what's possible in the future, IMO, just that capitalism does not seem, to me, to be some sort of historical perversion
When I say that greed is human nature I'm not talking about some hobbesian world view. Man isn't inherently anything, good or bad. The fact that there are altruistic people doesn't exclude the fact that there have always been selfish people accross human history.
We enslaved - and in some places still do! - our own kind for the sake of maximizing our own comfort for thousands of years, for fuck's sake.
I don't know if it is. At least, I'm suspicious of that kind of reading.
Science (or at the very least the interpretation of the evidence it provides) seems to be as much subject to trends and ideology as anything else.
Shut me up if I'm way off here, but the idea of the "drive to accumulate" being 'natural' could well be a Capitalist Realist/Neoliberal interpretation of the facts rather than an actual hard fact in-and-of itself*:
"What more proof do we need that Capitalism is the only sensible answer? It's natural! It's hard wired into us! See? Science says so! If you squint a little!"
*
I've gone off on one there, but I can't say I've read much about it. I'm happy to be proven wrong/ignorant. If you have any reading material, I'm totally game!
Drive to accumulate could definitely be a description of what's going on after it's run through the filter of current society and culture. My general belief is that it makes intuitive sense and seems to be the case that animals favor themselves and their own offspring. That's what evolution is, kind of. The things best at making more of themselves flourish, the things that are bad die off. So the leap I take is that for our species to make more of ourselves, individuals accumulate money or power.
I haven't stayed very current and was never much deeper than a few pop science writers stuff on evolution, but I think the debate remains focused mostly on gene versus individual (and perhaps stuff in between those) and tribe or species as an evolutionary unit is not generally considered a thing by most scientists. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. The point I am beating around is that if evolution does not work on a large scale level, altruism and whatnot seem less likely to be our primary driver.
All of that said, I don't think that evolution has to dictate much. A lot of our society and behavior seem to go against what we would call natural and that's fine and often for the best. Trying to align science with how things out to be feels destined to fail for whatever your political position is. It seems more prudent to decide your position based on ideals but be aware of the possible implications of our nature.
