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You take it as a given that capitalism was the savior. What if The Enlightenment, mathematics and science, egalitarian laws and democracy were actually greater

You take it as a given that capitalism was the savior. What if The Enlightenment, mathematics and science, egalitarian laws and democracy were actually greater contributors to lifting humans out of poverty? All the greatest advancements in law, mathematics and science don't appear to be profit driven, while exploitation of people has always been driven by profit. And even if capitalism did deserve much of the credit, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be criticized or that we should stop looking for better. Feudalism may have lifted more humans out of poverty than any other system that came before it by leaps and bounds. It's a good thing we didn't decide to stop there. Communism, oligarchy and dictatorships (the first really being a special case of the latter two) are supremely harmful and stupid. I wish people would stop using them as straw men to prove that capitalism is great.

simonh 11y ago
I don't think of Capitalism as being a political agenda or agency in that way. I think of it more as a law of nature. You can't say that Capitalism deserves credit for anything, or saves anyone any more than you can say that gravity or Newtons laws of motion deserve credit for anything. In this account, political ideologies or principles that attempt to replace or supersede citalism end up just reorganising it. So communism doesn't get rid of capitalism at all, it just harnesses it to the party in the form of state capitalism. Looking at it this way, you're quite right that The Enlightenment, science, egalitarianism and democracy deserve the credit because they are choices we make. They are motivating and organisational forces we have control over and so can be credited with achievements. When an Engineer builds a bridge we celebrate the skill of the engineer and the educational and organizational forces that made the project possible, not the laws of physics. In this way of thinking, there is no such thing as an end to capitalism. Anyone talking about the future in that way is simply asking the wrong questions. They can't see the wood for the trees.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  If you use the word "capitalism" to refer to some set of actual or proposed "laws of nature" (presumably, about the operation of economies) you aren't using the word to mean either what the critics that coined the term of the modern proponents of "capitalism", or basically anybody else talking about it mean by the term, which has always referred to an economic system, that is, a set of high-level policy covers about how the economy should be organized and governed. So, on this regard, you are literally not speaking the same language as any body else when it comes to that issue.
  - simonh 11y ago
    That's probably true, but many of the people I read criticizing capitalism don't actually seem to be proposing abolishing all personal property and all privately owned businesses. In fact I've been downvoted in the past for challenging critics of capitalism and characterizing them in that way as using a straw man argument. But if capitalism isn't private property and business ownership, what is it? That's certainly what Marxists* mean by it. If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate? A political or economic agenda characterised purely in terms of being anti-something with no proposed alternative is just nihilism. What are anti-capitalists for? What do they propose? What is their actual agenda? I've yet to see that coherently laid out. I can understand anti-corporatism for example because that still allows for alternatives. But other than actual honest to goodness communism, what is the alternative to capitalism that it's critics want to replace it with? Some pointers on that would be greatly appreciated. *Of course it would help if Marx had actually given an account of how he thought a communist economy would function. Other than vague pronouncements that production would be regulated by 'society' and that individuals would have complete freedom as to what pursuits they engaged in from day to day, he never to my knowledge actually gave an account of how it would function either. But at least he gave a very clear and specific account of what he was against.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > But if capitalism isn't private property and business ownership, what is it? That's certainly what Marxists* mean by it. Marxists (and more specifically, Marx) certainly meant more than the mere existence of private property and business ownership, he meant the system organized around a particular model of private property rights. (Both private property and privately owned business existed in the pre-capitalist feudal economy from which capitalism emerged, but under a very different model of property rights and very different economic relations between participants in the economy.) [0] > If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate? Mostly, altering the conception of property rights and economic arrangements to de-emphasize the role of profit to be captured by capital in some significant (but not always all, or even most) economic interactions, increase social control of some of the rights associated with ownership in the capitalist system (though not necessarily to the exclusion of private ownership rights) of productive capital. Anti-capitalists are a fairly diverse lots, so the differences will be fairly stark without a lot of commonality. Opposition to capitalism doesn't mean supporting the same alternatives to it. (Strictly speaking, supporters of the modern mixed economy are a kind of "anti-capitalists" who support a particular -- and currently dominant -- replacement of capitalism.) [0] This provides a basic rundown, though its perhaps less clear which of these elements are consequences and which defining features, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_(Marxist_theory)#Defining_structural_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_...

simonh 11y ago

I don't think of Capitalism as being a political agenda or agency in that way. I think of it more as a law of nature. You can't say that Capitalism deserves credit for anything, or saves anyone any more than you can say that gravity or Newtons laws of motion deserve credit for anything. In this account, political ideologies or principles that attempt to replace or supersede citalism end up just reorganising it. So communism doesn't get rid of capitalism at all, it just harnesses it to the party in the form of state capitalism. Looking at it this way, you're quite right that The Enlightenment, science, egalitarianism and democracy deserve the credit because they are choices we make. They are motivating and organisational forces we have control over and so can be credited with achievements. When an Engineer builds a bridge we celebrate the skill of the engineer and the educational and organizational forces that made the project possible, not the laws of physics. In this way of thinking, there is no such thing as an end to capitalism. Anyone talking about the future in that way is simply asking the wrong questions. They can't see the wood for the trees.

dragonwriter 11y ago
If you use the word "capitalism" to refer to some set of actual or proposed "laws of nature" (presumably, about the operation of economies) you aren't using the word to mean either what the critics that coined the term of the modern proponents of "capitalism", or basically anybody else talking about it mean by the term, which has always referred to an economic system, that is, a set of high-level policy covers about how the economy should be organized and governed. So, on this regard, you are literally not speaking the same language as any body else when it comes to that issue.
- simonh 11y ago
  That's probably true, but many of the people I read criticizing capitalism don't actually seem to be proposing abolishing all personal property and all privately owned businesses. In fact I've been downvoted in the past for challenging critics of capitalism and characterizing them in that way as using a straw man argument. But if capitalism isn't private property and business ownership, what is it? That's certainly what Marxists* mean by it. If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate? A political or economic agenda characterised purely in terms of being anti-something with no proposed alternative is just nihilism. What are anti-capitalists for? What do they propose? What is their actual agenda? I've yet to see that coherently laid out. I can understand anti-corporatism for example because that still allows for alternatives. But other than actual honest to goodness communism, what is the alternative to capitalism that it's critics want to replace it with? Some pointers on that would be greatly appreciated. *Of course it would help if Marx had actually given an account of how he thought a communist economy would function. Other than vague pronouncements that production would be regulated by 'society' and that individuals would have complete freedom as to what pursuits they engaged in from day to day, he never to my knowledge actually gave an account of how it would function either. But at least he gave a very clear and specific account of what he was against.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > But if capitalism isn't private property and business ownership, what is it? That's certainly what Marxists* mean by it. Marxists (and more specifically, Marx) certainly meant more than the mere existence of private property and business ownership, he meant the system organized around a particular model of private property rights. (Both private property and privately owned business existed in the pre-capitalist feudal economy from which capitalism emerged, but under a very different model of property rights and very different economic relations between participants in the economy.) [0] > If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate? Mostly, altering the conception of property rights and economic arrangements to de-emphasize the role of profit to be captured by capital in some significant (but not always all, or even most) economic interactions, increase social control of some of the rights associated with ownership in the capitalist system (though not necessarily to the exclusion of private ownership rights) of productive capital. Anti-capitalists are a fairly diverse lots, so the differences will be fairly stark without a lot of commonality. Opposition to capitalism doesn't mean supporting the same alternatives to it. (Strictly speaking, supporters of the modern mixed economy are a kind of "anti-capitalists" who support a particular -- and currently dominant -- replacement of capitalism.) [0] This provides a basic rundown, though its perhaps less clear which of these elements are consequences and which defining features, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_(Marxist_theory)#Defining_structural_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_...