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but if at some point where scarcity is eliminated (a la star trek) and most production is not centered around capital accumulation, or working for the owner of

but if at some point where scarcity is eliminated (a la star trek) and most production is not centered around capital accumulation, or working for the owner of capital, how could we still call that capitalism? or is the argument that it is more of a colloquial term and people have used it to mean whatever they want/need it to mean?

nostrademons 7y ago
Capital becomes "whatever gives you an advantage". I think it's a pretty good bet that people will continue to seek out advantages even if all material scarcity is eliminated. (Arguably, we're there already: there's been enough material goods to feed and shelter the whole world since the 1950s, and it's only the continued game-playing of elites that creates scarcity.) If you've ever observed, say, fandom, or PTA meetings, or programming language debates, or HN comment threads, or any other situation where the stakes are incredibly low but passions are incredibly high, you'll see evidence of humanity's ability to create status games where none existed before. "Capital" in the sense we usually mean it - factory machinery and the financing to buy it - wasn't really a thing in agrarian capitalism or mercantile capitalism. And we're witnessing this redefinition in real-time as "data" becomes a form of capital despite not really being worth anything before the age of computers.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >"Capital" in the sense we usually mean it - factory machinery and the financing to buy it - wasn't really a thing in agrarian capitalism or mercantile capitalism. This issue of capitalism changing its form, and capital not being same in one period as another, is only caused by your own interpretation and definition of "capitalism" which doesn't seem to be accepted by anyone else. In political economy and political philosophy circles, capital is defined as a social relation, not a thing. The things it does refer to concretize the relation, but they are not the relation itself. The idea that capital is "whatever gives one an advantage" seems so general that it cannot be sensibly used to talk about the concrete historical birth of capitalism and its expansion. A more accurate view, keeping with history, is that capital tends to subsume things, so now we talk about "human capital" or "information capital".
swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
What if the forces that propel capitalism find ever more creative ways to spend resources. I can think of a few historically: war, rent-seeking, bureaucracy. But now with technology.
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
I would argue that scarcity has been eliminated for the past 20 years at least - the world overproduces all basic goods: food, steel, plastics, you name it. We could hand out free meals to every starving child in the world and it would cost like 2% GDP at most.

nostrademons 7y ago

Capital becomes "whatever gives you an advantage". I think it's a pretty good bet that people will continue to seek out advantages even if all material scarcity is eliminated. (Arguably, we're there already: there's been enough material goods to feed and shelter the whole world since the 1950s, and it's only the continued game-playing of elites that creates scarcity.) If you've ever observed, say, fandom, or PTA meetings, or programming language debates, or HN comment threads, or any other situation where the stakes are incredibly low but passions are incredibly high, you'll see evidence of humanity's ability to create status games where none existed before. "Capital" in the sense we usually mean it - factory machinery and the financing to buy it - wasn't really a thing in agrarian capitalism or mercantile capitalism. And we're witnessing this redefinition in real-time as "data" becomes a form of capital despite not really being worth anything before the age of computers.

claudiawerner 7y ago
>"Capital" in the sense we usually mean it - factory machinery and the financing to buy it - wasn't really a thing in agrarian capitalism or mercantile capitalism. This issue of capitalism changing its form, and capital not being same in one period as another, is only caused by your own interpretation and definition of "capitalism" which doesn't seem to be accepted by anyone else. In political economy and political philosophy circles, capital is defined as a social relation, not a thing. The things it does refer to concretize the relation, but they are not the relation itself. The idea that capital is "whatever gives one an advantage" seems so general that it cannot be sensibly used to talk about the concrete historical birth of capitalism and its expansion. A more accurate view, keeping with history, is that capital tends to subsume things, so now we talk about "human capital" or "information capital".

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago

What if the forces that propel capitalism find ever more creative ways to spend resources. I can think of a few historically: war, rent-seeking, bureaucracy. But now with technology.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago

I would argue that scarcity has been eliminated for the past 20 years at least - the world overproduces all basic goods: food, steel, plastics, you name it. We could hand out free meals to every starving child in the world and it would cost like 2% GDP at most.