Sally Strange
Very amusing to see capitalism apologists on the Fediverse
I mean, it's more understandable on Xitter or Macebook
But here? The place that's sustained by twine, chewing gum, patreon, and the hopes and dreams of two dozen catgirls? The place that's been going strong without a profit motive for half a decade now?
#Capitalism fucked your mind.
HeavenlyPossum
@pixelpusher220 @RD4Anarchy @mmclark @SallyStrange @ech
Under wage labor, you pay your employer. You engage in economic activity that generates revenue, all of which you turn over to your employer. Your employer then returns some of that revenue as “wages,” which everyone pretends come from the employer. In reality, they were yours all along.
You do this because any alternative to wage labor was long ago eliminated, through violence—enclosure and colonial expropriation.
If you were to decline to pay your employer for permission to work, then property owners would starve you to death.
Erik Haugen
@RD4Anarchy @SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @HeavenlyPossum It's definitely good faith? I mean, I have a job where I get wages/salary – it doesn't feel coerced or unpaid, so I'm trying to understand that point of view. I guess yeah – theoretically/ideally some percentage of the value I add isn't paid to me in compensation, so if that's what is meant then I can see the point there.
I don't feel too bad about it, though, because I'm not taking on any of the risk, and my work is taking advantage of the infra/etc that was at the firm before I got there, and so on. (heh – I'm still weirded out by how much my CEO makes, though!)
In your virus scenario, I guess the standard retort would be that workers wouldn't work as hard and it would be unclear how means of production are allocated?
Is that what you mean by coercion – that we're coerced by need for money that makes us work? (I'm just guessing here.)
> Should I be telling you to fuck off?
Up to you, I guess; or just don't respond – I won't pester you.
RD
@ech @SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @HeavenlyPossum
Oh shit, never mind, I thought you were asking in good faith.
Should I be telling you to fuck off?
RD
@ech @SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220
Different people will look at this from different directions and explain it different ways, ranging from very basic, simple mathematical formulas about surplus value like your example (Richard Wolff gives a good example of this), to more philosophical understandings of the concepts we use to justify these social structures at all.
There is validity to the economic perspective, but I prefer not to validate economic theory much because I think it's mostly a religious phenomenon.
If you ask @HeavenlyPossum, they might tell you that what's really happening is that people are renting the right to labor for someone else. Why would anyone do that? That's a good question to explore.
I like to think of a fantasy scenario (extraterrestrial virus? lol) where everyone just keeps doing what they do but somehow capital is removed from the picture and money suddenly becomes meaningless. Functionally, everything still works. We can take care of each other.
Is coercion really the only way we can function?
Or have we just been scammed?
Erik Haugen
@RD4Anarchy @SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220 @HeavenlyPossum heh to me it seems funny to talk about any of that being coercion.
RD
@SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220
The private ownership thing gets emphasized a lot, especially in dictionary examples, but I've come to think it is not really essential at all; not a defining feature of capitalism.
Consider the following description of capitalism from the book "State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management" by Adam Buick and John Crump:
"We shall suggest that, apart from being a class society, capitalism has the following six essential characteristics:
1. Generalised commodity production, nearly all wealth being produced for sale on a market.
2. The investment of capital in production with a view to obtaining a monetary profit.
3. The exploitation of wage labour, the source of profit being the unpaid labour of the producers.
4. The regulation of production by the market via a competitive struggle for profits.
5. The accumulation of capital out of profits, leading to the expansion and development of the forces of production.
6. A single world economy."
The focus of this short book is to argue (very successfully IMO) that individual private ownership is not a defining feature of capitalism and that countries such as China, The Soviet Union (this was published in 1986), Cuba, Vietnam, etc, though they may identify as "socialist" and are called "communist" by many are in fact simply another form of capitalism called "state capitalism".
In the process of making this argument, this book also became an excellent general reference for understanding what capitalism really is, how capitalist economics work, what socialism really is and isn't, and plenty of fascinating and clarifying historic context.
free PDF:
https://files.libcom.org/files/State%20Capitalism.pdf
Erik Haugen
@RD4Anarchy @SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220
> 3. The exploitation of wage labour, the source of profit being the unpaid labour of the producers.
Would someone please help me understand what is meant by "unpaid labour"? Is it this:
unpaid labor = (net value of labor) - wages
?
Sally Strange
@mmclark @RD4Anarchy @pixelpusher220 Per Oxford dictionary: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit."
Miles Clark
@SallyStrange @RD4Anarchy @pixelpusher220
Hope you don't mind a dumb question... what do you mean by capitalism? All private business? Just companies of a certain size?
Sally Strange
@RD4Anarchy @pixelpusher220 right, like, I was just talking about two specific defining characteristics of capitalism as we currently know it: the concept of LLCs and marginal utility theory
I'm always trying to be more precise and specific in my understanding and explanation, so no, I don't really worry that I'm muddying definitions as a habit. If things seem unclear, that's an opportunity to explore and hopefully learn.
Pusher Of Pixels
@SallyStrange i wonder if we're doing the same thing to 'capitalism' the right wing does to socialism.
Muddy the definition so nobody has the same definition and thus it's turned into a pejorative for everyone.
Trying to differentiate the nuance between a market system and 'capitalism' isn't great in this format 😬
RD
No excuse. The info is right there, you need to sort it out better.
Most of the muddying actually comes from defenders of capitalism who have only superficial understanding, if even that much.
Understand first of all that the word capitalism itself was originally coined by critics of the system. It was always a bad thing, but the word has been rehabilitated by some.
You know there are people here who can help you see the true defining characteristics of capitalism if you are willing to examine things.
HeavenlyPossum
@mmclark @pixelpusher220 @SallyStrange @MontgomeryGator @RD4Anarchy
When you talk about your car, your home, and other things that you personally use and occupy, that’s not really what people mean when they talk about private ownership in the context of capitalism.
Private ownership refers to the owner’s ability to exert power over the rest of society via their ownership. Do you own land, such that people need to work for you for permission to feed themselves? Do you own a monopoly over a piece of music or the recording of a film? Do you own a business, such that people engaged in economic activity have to give you a portion of their income to keep working? Do you own someone *else’s* home, such that a third of their labor goes to supporting you?
That’s what we mean by “private.”
Montgomery Gator
@RD4Anarchy @SallyStrange @mmclark @pixelpusher220 Capitalism today seems to be opposed to private ownership anyway.
Would you like to lease a car? Stream your music? Rent your home? Own nothing?
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