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Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. The means of production is usually defined as tools, machinery or technology, not people.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. No, capitalism is a particular real-world economic system that existed in a particular time and place; it is true that private ownership of the means of production is a central element of that system, but it's not it's only feature. Slavery was, in fact, an element of that system identified by the people who identified the system and coined the term capitalism for it, critics like Marx, whom wrote in Capital: “Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage-earners in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the New World.” Capitalism, and it's evolution from feudalism, includes the development of commercial, rather than patriarchal, slavery, wherein slaves are chattels rather than, while subordinate, bound up in a system that, at least in tradition and theory, involves mutual-though-asymmetric obligations and responsibilities.
- rayiner 6y ago
  People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing, and yet here I am having people quote Marx at me to define capitalism.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    No one is gaslighting [1] you. People are arguing that your interpretation of current events is in error. By calling that "gaslighting", you implicitly claim that disagreement with you is in itself an abusive act. Calling anyone who disagrees with you abusive seems like a pretty wild flex. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Well I guess it depends on what you mean that my stated concern is a “problem that doesn’t exist?” Do you mean that Marxist ideas aren’t finding renewed currency? Nobody seems to deny that efforts to equate slavery with capitalism are critiques pioneered by Marx. Instead they seem to be arguing that Marx was correct. So the ideas do seem to be having renewed currency, in which case denying that fact is gaslighting. If you’re arguing that it’s not a problem that Marxist ideas are being incorporated into schoolbooks, then in that case we just disagree.
      - throwanem 6y ago
        What I mean is, where you seem to see Marxist ideas re-entering the sphere of public debate in the United States circa 2020 as evidence of some sort of vast generational conspiracy to subvert the US and replace its current government with some kind of Stalinist totalitarianism, I see Marxist ideas re-entering the sphere of public debate in the United States circa 2020 as a totally unsurprising and if anything long delayed response to the mounting evidence that four straight decades of untrammeled capitalism on the Reaganite model has had catastrophic results for almost everyone in the United States, to say nothing of the rest of the world. What I don't see is any need to assume that, because Marx's critique of capital is serving as a source for those developing a modern critique of capital, Stalinism must necessarily follow. I think that's really where we disagree, and I'll admit, I feel no nearer understanding the wellspring of your fear now than I did when I started this conversation. Your experience is of course what it is, and I can see how it would influence anyone's perspective. What I don't see is what makes events in Bangladesh 25 years ago a reliable predictor of events in the United States today. Or, for that matter, what makes Newsmax's claims of BLM being some kind of secret Gramscian Stalinist underground a reliable predictor of anything. Conservatives in this country have been slandering their opponents with that kind of stuff for going on a century at this point, and - pace Tailgunner Joe, of whose claims I disposed in an earlier comment - it has never yet proven true. That stuff's pretty toothless at this point, even with somebody like me who's old enough to remember when the Soviet Union, and state communism in general, was still a going concern on a meaningful scale. The kids just aren't listening any more, and I see no reason why they should be.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing Resurgent Marxism in the developed world is a real thing, largely due to the geberal collapse of state-backed Leninism.
throwanem 6y ago
Chattel slavery adds certain people, namely those owned as slaves, to the "means of production" column. It's not incompatible in any way with capitalism.
- bickeringyokel 6y ago
  It's literally incompatible with the standard definition of the word capitalism. The fact that slaves are not free means that exchanges couldn't possibly be voluntary.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Why would that be an impediment? As far as I understand it, the principle of voluntary exchange relates to buyers and sellers in a market, not to the commodity in which the market is made. The moral enormity inherent in chattel slavery, namely that it reduces human beings to a commodity in which a market is then made, has nothing that I can see to do with whether such a market can operate in an economy run on capitalistic principles.
    - bickeringyokel 6y ago
      After reconsidering my statement, I think you may be correct. Slavery can be capitalistic if you only include the buyers and sellers as members of the market. "Slavery is capitalism" is most certainly wrong though. "Capitalism encourages slavery in plantation economies" would be a better argument, but might also be refuted given the gradual abolishing of slavery despite the continuance of capitalism.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. No, capitalism is a particular real-world economic system that existed in a particular time and place; it is true that private ownership of the means of production is a central element of that system, but it's not it's only feature. Slavery was, in fact, an element of that system identified by the people who identified the system and coined the term capitalism for it, critics like Marx, whom wrote in Capital: “Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage-earners in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the New World.” Capitalism, and it's evolution from feudalism, includes the development of commercial, rather than patriarchal, slavery, wherein slaves are chattels rather than, while subordinate, bound up in a system that, at least in tradition and theory, involves mutual-though-asymmetric obligations and responsibilities.

rayiner 6y ago
People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing, and yet here I am having people quote Marx at me to define capitalism.
- throwanem 6y ago
  No one is gaslighting [1] you. People are arguing that your interpretation of current events is in error. By calling that "gaslighting", you implicitly claim that disagreement with you is in itself an abusive act. Calling anyone who disagrees with you abusive seems like a pretty wild flex. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Well I guess it depends on what you mean that my stated concern is a “problem that doesn’t exist?” Do you mean that Marxist ideas aren’t finding renewed currency? Nobody seems to deny that efforts to equate slavery with capitalism are critiques pioneered by Marx. Instead they seem to be arguing that Marx was correct. So the ideas do seem to be having renewed currency, in which case denying that fact is gaslighting. If you’re arguing that it’s not a problem that Marxist ideas are being incorporated into schoolbooks, then in that case we just disagree.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      What I mean is, where you seem to see Marxist ideas re-entering the sphere of public debate in the United States circa 2020 as evidence of some sort of vast generational conspiracy to subvert the US and replace its current government with some kind of Stalinist totalitarianism, I see Marxist ideas re-entering the sphere of public debate in the United States circa 2020 as a totally unsurprising and if anything long delayed response to the mounting evidence that four straight decades of untrammeled capitalism on the Reaganite model has had catastrophic results for almost everyone in the United States, to say nothing of the rest of the world. What I don't see is any need to assume that, because Marx's critique of capital is serving as a source for those developing a modern critique of capital, Stalinism must necessarily follow. I think that's really where we disagree, and I'll admit, I feel no nearer understanding the wellspring of your fear now than I did when I started this conversation. Your experience is of course what it is, and I can see how it would influence anyone's perspective. What I don't see is what makes events in Bangladesh 25 years ago a reliable predictor of events in the United States today. Or, for that matter, what makes Newsmax's claims of BLM being some kind of secret Gramscian Stalinist underground a reliable predictor of anything. Conservatives in this country have been slandering their opponents with that kind of stuff for going on a century at this point, and - pace Tailgunner Joe, of whose claims I disposed in an earlier comment - it has never yet proven true. That stuff's pretty toothless at this point, even with somebody like me who's old enough to remember when the Soviet Union, and state communism in general, was still a going concern on a meaningful scale. The kids just aren't listening any more, and I see no reason why they should be.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > People are gaslighting me by telling me resurgent Marxism isn’t a real thing Resurgent Marxism in the developed world is a real thing, largely due to the geberal collapse of state-backed Leninism.

throwanem 6y ago

Chattel slavery adds certain people, namely those owned as slaves, to the "means of production" column. It's not incompatible in any way with capitalism.

bickeringyokel 6y ago
It's literally incompatible with the standard definition of the word capitalism. The fact that slaves are not free means that exchanges couldn't possibly be voluntary.
- throwanem 6y ago
  Why would that be an impediment? As far as I understand it, the principle of voluntary exchange relates to buyers and sellers in a market, not to the commodity in which the market is made. The moral enormity inherent in chattel slavery, namely that it reduces human beings to a commodity in which a market is then made, has nothing that I can see to do with whether such a market can operate in an economy run on capitalistic principles.
  - bickeringyokel 6y ago
    After reconsidering my statement, I think you may be correct. Slavery can be capitalistic if you only include the buyers and sellers as members of the market. "Slavery is capitalism" is most certainly wrong though. "Capitalism encourages slavery in plantation economies" would be a better argument, but might also be refuted given the gradual abolishing of slavery despite the continuance of capitalism.