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Most of the people here only seem to have the vaguest of intuitions of what Capitalism is. Capitalism is when the person who put up the capital gets ROI plus t

Most of the people here only seem to have the vaguest of intuitions of what Capitalism is. Capitalism is when the person who put up the capital gets ROI plus the surplus wealth created by the workers, and the workers themselves get a small fraction of said surplus called a wage minus any say over reinvestment of surplus. The world is full of many large worker co-ops and credit unions that exist in democratic countries (AKA: not Capitalism). Furthermore, it has been pointed out by many throughout history that state communism is no more than a lame reimplementation of the capitalist model where the state itself acts as the corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

ClumsyPilot 7y ago
How are worker co-ops and credit unions not a form of capitalism? It is a profitable application of capital, so what excludes it?
- cairo_x 7y ago
  Making a profit is not capitalism. I don't know how I can more simply state it. Capitalism=private ownership of a company/economy (that's te literal one liner google definition even more condensed). Think of it like democracy vs dictatorship. Democracy->workers control surplus (investors still get their investment back+interest--there are different models), dictatorship->an investor or a proxy investor controls the company, or an upper class within the company control the surplus and workers get a set wage and have no power. Ultimately it's the relationship the workers have with what they produce. In the google definition it gives state ownership as a 'rather than capitalism' example, but that assumes a non dictatorship where the workers collectives are actually autonomous and self governed. In the case of Soviets and China, however, the system of collectives was always centralized state-capitalism (and later full blown state sanctioned hyper-capitalism). But there are commie examples like in Spain, where are a huge system of worker run co-ops that have existed since the late 50s with roots going further back to anarchist run co-ops of the civil war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_Laboral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_Laboral
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    I don't see why you are talking about the state. I am trying to understand precisely why you would exclude worker-owned cooperatives such as John Lewis, building societies, lawyer partnerships, etc. It appears your definition definition of capitalism is artificially narrow and instead of addressing role of capital, you are addressing ownership structure.

ClumsyPilot 7y ago

How are worker co-ops and credit unions not a form of capitalism? It is a profitable application of capital, so what excludes it?

cairo_x 7y ago
Making a profit is not capitalism. I don't know how I can more simply state it. Capitalism=private ownership of a company/economy (that's te literal one liner google definition even more condensed). Think of it like democracy vs dictatorship. Democracy->workers control surplus (investors still get their investment back+interest--there are different models), dictatorship->an investor or a proxy investor controls the company, or an upper class within the company control the surplus and workers get a set wage and have no power. Ultimately it's the relationship the workers have with what they produce. In the google definition it gives state ownership as a 'rather than capitalism' example, but that assumes a non dictatorship where the workers collectives are actually autonomous and self governed. In the case of Soviets and China, however, the system of collectives was always centralized state-capitalism (and later full blown state sanctioned hyper-capitalism). But there are commie examples like in Spain, where are a huge system of worker run co-ops that have existed since the late 50s with roots going further back to anarchist run co-ops of the civil war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_Laboral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_Laboral
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  I don't see why you are talking about the state. I am trying to understand precisely why you would exclude worker-owned cooperatives such as John Lewis, building societies, lawyer partnerships, etc. It appears your definition definition of capitalism is artificially narrow and instead of addressing role of capital, you are addressing ownership structure.