3 ms·

Capitalism is not a clear cut binary of "public/private." This is not an essential element of this system, as you have capitalist apparatuses acting in totalit

Capitalism is not a clear cut binary of "public/private." This is not an essential element of this system, as you have capitalist apparatuses acting in totalitarian/communist states, such as state owned beer companies in China that still act as capitalist entities, i.e. they are invested in in expectations to grow the profits from this company. It is actually speculated by theorists like Althusser that the private/public dynamic doesn't even exist. Maybe you are talking about the definition accepted by market exchange semantics, where anyone can gamble on a company vs. only a specific number of people/one person gambles on it.

ericmay 4y ago
I agree that it is not necessarily clear cut, and your example is a good one but we have to start somewhere and I'm not sure that this is material to the conversation at hand anyway except that if the corporations are state-owned then it's just even more the government's fault that they're polluting. Of course new configurations of so-called private and public entities can and will occur and it's more of a shades of gray kind of thing. But to the extent that they become closer to the government (like US defense contractors for example which are publicly traded entities which are privately owned) it just, as in the case with China, becomes more of the government's fault that they're allowed to pollute. In my mind there's no way to escape that the fault of climate change rests squarely on the shoulders of the government and the people. People just don't want to look in the mirror or accept responsibility so it's easy to blame everything on ephemeral billionaires and corporations and then nothing gets done because we can just complain instead of no longer flying, or having to use paper straws or whatever pisses people off these days.
- greenhearth 4y ago
  Well, I agree that it's people's fault. But "the government" is also an ephemeral entity, as you put it. It is not a monolith, but a sometimes loosely connected collection of organs of power and ideology. Is the president "government?" Are teachers or cops who are government employees "government?" Are the contractors, or air force pilots "government?" If so, how could all these individuals collectively be held responsible for pollution? The discussion on what government actually is is completely outside the scope here, but the lines between whatever government is and capitalist urges, goals and methodologies are usually blurred. Louis Althusser mentioned above explained that state power cannot be had, it can only be used. And it is used in liberal democracies by capitalist agents, just as in totalitarian states by totalitarian agents. But always there is a coalescence of ideologies and apparatuses.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here where you are tossing up government and government employees as ephemeral but not giving the same consideration to corporate entities. Is a janitor at Exxon Mobile responsible for climate change? How long do they have to work there before they're at fault? A day? A year? If they're not at fault and it's just the executives, why would we also not place the same blame at the feet of government leadership? My main issue here is that I don't believe blaming "billionaires" or "corporations" actually helps address climate change. Regulation and reduction of personal consumption does, but since we have been unable to regulate and we refuse to reduce personal consumption, we instead lay blame at the feet of corporations who get confused. Do you want to fly or not? You say no but you keep buying tickets. Funny enough I think out of all three of these entities, corporations are doing the most to address climate change, typically in spite of what people demand.
    - greenhearth 4y ago
      I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce state laws with threat of violence. What you're saying is capitalist entities are blameless because there is no moral obligation for them to stop polluting, and as long as someone pays them and consumes their products/services this is ok. This falls completely within theory - as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.
      - ericmay 4y ago
        > I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) But as you know I’m not speaking about you specifically so your preferences are irrelevant at the individual level here. Most people want to fly and so they demand corporations serve their need. > janitors Eh they just disseminate corporate ideology so no difference there. Does the janitor that works for the government not disseminate ideology? > as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates. If you deprive capital of agency such that it has no moral or social obligations the idea that it subjugates anything doesn’t make sense either. It’s a force so you have to treat it like one. Do rocks, and air, and grass subjugate society too? If not, well. If so, then I’m not going to be outraged by that because it’s just physics. This hospitality toward capitalism results in no progress toward climate change because even if you sat down one day and made the case that climate change is 100% attributable to corporate actions you’d still have to regulate them and keep a capitalist system and so the failure of regulation would continue to rest with the government.

ericmay 4y ago

I agree that it is not necessarily clear cut, and your example is a good one but we have to start somewhere and I'm not sure that this is material to the conversation at hand anyway except that if the corporations are state-owned then it's just even more the government's fault that they're polluting. Of course new configurations of so-called private and public entities can and will occur and it's more of a shades of gray kind of thing. But to the extent that they become closer to the government (like US defense contractors for example which are publicly traded entities which are privately owned) it just, as in the case with China, becomes more of the government's fault that they're allowed to pollute. In my mind there's no way to escape that the fault of climate change rests squarely on the shoulders of the government and the people. People just don't want to look in the mirror or accept responsibility so it's easy to blame everything on ephemeral billionaires and corporations and then nothing gets done because we can just complain instead of no longer flying, or having to use paper straws or whatever pisses people off these days.

greenhearth 4y ago
Well, I agree that it's people's fault. But "the government" is also an ephemeral entity, as you put it. It is not a monolith, but a sometimes loosely connected collection of organs of power and ideology. Is the president "government?" Are teachers or cops who are government employees "government?" Are the contractors, or air force pilots "government?" If so, how could all these individuals collectively be held responsible for pollution? The discussion on what government actually is is completely outside the scope here, but the lines between whatever government is and capitalist urges, goals and methodologies are usually blurred. Louis Althusser mentioned above explained that state power cannot be had, it can only be used. And it is used in liberal democracies by capitalist agents, just as in totalitarian states by totalitarian agents. But always there is a coalescence of ideologies and apparatuses.
- ericmay 4y ago
  I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here where you are tossing up government and government employees as ephemeral but not giving the same consideration to corporate entities. Is a janitor at Exxon Mobile responsible for climate change? How long do they have to work there before they're at fault? A day? A year? If they're not at fault and it's just the executives, why would we also not place the same blame at the feet of government leadership? My main issue here is that I don't believe blaming "billionaires" or "corporations" actually helps address climate change. Regulation and reduction of personal consumption does, but since we have been unable to regulate and we refuse to reduce personal consumption, we instead lay blame at the feet of corporations who get confused. Do you want to fly or not? You say no but you keep buying tickets. Funny enough I think out of all three of these entities, corporations are doing the most to address climate change, typically in spite of what people demand.
  - greenhearth 4y ago
    I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce state laws with threat of violence. What you're saying is capitalist entities are blameless because there is no moral obligation for them to stop polluting, and as long as someone pays them and consumes their products/services this is ok. This falls completely within theory - as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      > I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) But as you know I’m not speaking about you specifically so your preferences are irrelevant at the individual level here. Most people want to fly and so they demand corporations serve their need. > janitors Eh they just disseminate corporate ideology so no difference there. Does the janitor that works for the government not disseminate ideology? > as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates. If you deprive capital of agency such that it has no moral or social obligations the idea that it subjugates anything doesn’t make sense either. It’s a force so you have to treat it like one. Do rocks, and air, and grass subjugate society too? If not, well. If so, then I’m not going to be outraged by that because it’s just physics. This hospitality toward capitalism results in no progress toward climate change because even if you sat down one day and made the case that climate change is 100% attributable to corporate actions you’d still have to regulate them and keep a capitalist system and so the failure of regulation would continue to rest with the government.