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No, no, you can't get away with saying "calling what we have now "capitalism" is quite a stretch, the meaning of that word is now so vague as to render it meani

No, no, you can't get away with saying "calling what we have now "capitalism" is quite a stretch, the meaning of that word is now so vague as to render it meaningless" This is just simply not true. There are too many young people that want to be lawyers or ivory tower word architects, but the time for "winning arguments" because you're narrative is to make people believe untrue things, just does not work anymore.

PaulHoule 10mo ago
"Capitalism" was a word coined by its critics just a few years before Marx wrote Das Kapital. People who actually like Capitalism tend to resist drawing some boundary around it and would rather have it be that thing that Maggie Thatcher and Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton say "there is no alternative" to. In particularly they are loathe to even say it might be something that has some good aspects and some bad aspects and refusing to define it is necessary to keep that game going. In particular it's hard to draw a line between many "communist" countries and capitalism. I mean, Stalin's great legacy was very rapid industrialization and technology development from 1920-1970 or so which was initially funded by starving farmers to buy machines from western industrialists to build factories. Post-Mao China has been out-capitalizing everybody else, which is the biggest problem people seem to have with them. I'll argue that "capitalism" is about transforming society across time by deploying large amounts of capital so when somebody says "Facebook developed in a harmful direction because of capitalism" I'm going to argue that a system that wasn't fundamentally capitalist would never have made the investment to develop advanced microprocessors, the internet, social media, and all of that. You could have a different kind of capitalism which is kinder and gentler but if you didn't have capitalism you would not have 8 billion people on Earth because nobody would have made the investment to build all the fertilizer plants, etc.
- bigbadfeline 10mo ago
  First off, a great comment, I enjoyed reading it. Bringing some clearity to the meaning of "capitalism" is indeed a pressing necessity. > I'll argue that "capitalism" is about transforming society across time by deploying large amounts of capital. That definition of capitalism doesn't seem to clearly separate it from socialism though. If we combine it with this quote: > Stalin's great legacy was very rapid industrialization and technology development ... Post-Mao China has been out-capitalizing everybody else we reach the conclusion that capitalism can be practiced in socialists settings, indeed "deploying large amounts of capital" is quite normal for socialism. The only variables are the amount of capital available for deployment and the goals and professionalism of its managers. So, the definition has to be augmented with something about the functioning of the market and the effects of that on distribution. I can't tell you what exactly because I don't burden myself with defining capitalism, or socialism for that matter, I view them more as points on a continuum, multiple points for each.

PaulHoule 10mo ago

"Capitalism" was a word coined by its critics just a few years before Marx wrote Das Kapital. People who actually like Capitalism tend to resist drawing some boundary around it and would rather have it be that thing that Maggie Thatcher and Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton say "there is no alternative" to. In particularly they are loathe to even say it might be something that has some good aspects and some bad aspects and refusing to define it is necessary to keep that game going. In particular it's hard to draw a line between many "communist" countries and capitalism. I mean, Stalin's great legacy was very rapid industrialization and technology development from 1920-1970 or so which was initially funded by starving farmers to buy machines from western industrialists to build factories. Post-Mao China has been out-capitalizing everybody else, which is the biggest problem people seem to have with them. I'll argue that "capitalism" is about transforming society across time by deploying large amounts of capital so when somebody says "Facebook developed in a harmful direction because of capitalism" I'm going to argue that a system that wasn't fundamentally capitalist would never have made the investment to develop advanced microprocessors, the internet, social media, and all of that. You could have a different kind of capitalism which is kinder and gentler but if you didn't have capitalism you would not have 8 billion people on Earth because nobody would have made the investment to build all the fertilizer plants, etc.

bigbadfeline 10mo ago
First off, a great comment, I enjoyed reading it. Bringing some clearity to the meaning of "capitalism" is indeed a pressing necessity. > I'll argue that "capitalism" is about transforming society across time by deploying large amounts of capital. That definition of capitalism doesn't seem to clearly separate it from socialism though. If we combine it with this quote: > Stalin's great legacy was very rapid industrialization and technology development ... Post-Mao China has been out-capitalizing everybody else we reach the conclusion that capitalism can be practiced in socialists settings, indeed "deploying large amounts of capital" is quite normal for socialism. The only variables are the amount of capital available for deployment and the goals and professionalism of its managers. So, the definition has to be augmented with something about the functioning of the market and the effects of that on distribution. I can't tell you what exactly because I don't burden myself with defining capitalism, or socialism for that matter, I view them more as points on a continuum, multiple points for each.