Definitions of Capitalism.

[Oswy]

At another forum I attend (dominated it seems by libertarians - of the nasty kind) I've been encouraged to offer a succinct definition of 'capitalism' that it might be argued over). Here's my attempt:


Capitalism is any process or arrangement in which the accumulation and manipulation of capital is the central force. I've deliberately tried to keep it as simple as possible and avoid accusations of providing a biased or value-laden definition. I was going to include a reference to private gain but was worried this might exclude the concept of 'state capitalism'. Any comments/criticisms? Even better, anyone else have a relatively simple way to define capitalism?

[ad novum orbem]

anyone else have a relatively simple way to define capitalism?

Market Feudalism. :)

[Blake's Baby]

A form of economy characterised by wage labour and commodity production.

[Die Neue Zeit]

A form of economy characterised by wage labour and commodity production.

This definition is incomplete. "Capitalism" combines generalized commodity production with markets. There is, of course, the question of private property relations to consider.

[ComradeNarwhal]

Greed :laugh:

[Klaatu]

At another forum I attend (dominated it seems by libertarians - of the nasty kind) I've been encouraged to offer a succinct definition of 'capitalism' that it might be argued over). Here's my attempt:

I've deliberately tried to keep it as simple as possible and avoid accusations of providing a biased or value-laden definition. I was going to include a reference to private gain but was worried this might exclude the concept of 'state capitalism'. Any comments/criticisms? Even better, anyone else have a relatively simple way to define capitalism?

Why not make them do the work. Make them define it for you.

It's a classic trick: someone makes a claim then tells you to prove them wrong, etc. That's utter bull shit. If they're so sure that they are right, make them prove they are. Make them prove that capitalism is "better." Make them prove that the worker is better off under capitalism. Why should you have to prove anything? Put the burden of proof on the accuser, I say. Especially since the capitalist supporter has little or nothing to back up his case. The truth is that Capitalism fails the worker. Tell them that. Because it is true.

[Revolutionair]

A society where production takes place for market-exchange. To make it less abstract: it is our contemporary global society, it is the dominant mode of production of today, in its totality, including welfare state and war. Do you think we have a lot of social mobility? If yes: that proves that we live in a class-society. If there were no classes, social mobility would be impossible. Class-society is not the same as caste system, though a caste system is definitely a form of class-society. How did our contemporary social order come into being? It is a product of class warfare, a war between upper class aristocrats and the middle class bourgeoisie, it is a war that the bourgeoisie won.

Hope that helps you.

[MotherCossack]

capitalism.....the assimilation of many people into a single body for the purpose of providing labour [of one kind or another] for the benefit of the few who own a share of the infrastructure. in fact because the nature of capitalism has changed.... the top end has become more complicated.... it is sufficient, in defining the word capitalism, to simply say for the benefit of the share-holders {in a broad sense}


i was itching to be far more descriptive and incisive and meaningful..... to be honest....
seeing as we are right in the belly of the beast....
but tried to keep it fit for a queen or a text book

[Thirsty Crow]

I've deliberately tried to keep it as simple as possible and avoid accusations of providing a biased or value-laden definition. I was going to include a reference to private gain but was worried this might exclude the concept of 'state capitalism'. Any comments/criticisms? Even better, anyone else have a relatively simple way to define capitalism?
The definition you provided is circular in that you didn't explain what capital is.

I'd supplant your definition with a brief note on capital, defining it as value (thus avoiding the problem of circulation, commodities and money capital and so on). Maybe you should also add that capital cannot exist without wage labour.

[Oswy]

The definition you provided is circular in that you didn't explain what capital is.

I'd supplant your definition with a brief note on capital, defining it as value (thus avoiding the problem of circulation, commodities and money capital and so on). Maybe you should also add that capital cannot exist without wage labour.

How about:


Capitalism is any process or arrangement in which the accumulation and manipulation of value, as abstracted from wage-labour, is the central force.

:rolleyes:

[MotherCossack]

sod it.... what i really think....

CAPITALISM:
is when the majority[overwhelming] is led up a country path, often willingly,it is groomed relentlessly, fed such persuasive lies, showed how best to behave, gently and ruthlessly instructed.... all this eminates from a tiny few... those in whose interests the garden path was created. those who have the only key to the glorious garden at the end and those who live a life away from the rest... because if the masses treading the endless path saw how the lucky few live [having been told how to live by the same lucky few] they would, see how unfair it all was.
and who knows what would happen.

so on the path ... we work, we strive , we are paid, we rest and we have fun.
oh they share it all out alright.... they have a huge slice and we get just enough to survive
they are prospering indeed... reclining in a sea of abundence...and the money just rolls in...

outside the protected magnetic field we exist, vulnerable and exposed, yet comprehensively unaware that the world is anything other than fair or that there are a select few .. having a huge laugh and living like lords and all at our expense.

[Thirsty Crow]

:rolleyes:
Well I'm sorry, but there's no need to get all defensive, since I think it's clear that your definition was in fact circular, and you probably know it yourself what kind of people are libertarians, so trying to be as clear as possible might be a good idea.



:unsure:

[Oswy]

Well I'm sorry, but there's no need to get all defensive, since I think it's clear that your definition was in fact circular, and you probably know it yourself what kind of people are libertarians, so trying to be as clear as possible might be a good idea.



:unsure:

Oops, I obviously have a different sense of humour, or maybe just used the wrong smily; I didn't intend to give the impression I'm hacked-off with your points - I welcome them. I'm interested to see if you think I've incorporated your concerns in my new definition. :thumbup1:

[Thirsty Crow]

Oops, I obviously have a different sense of humour, or maybe just used the wrong smily; I didn't intend to give the impression I'm hacked-off with your points - I welcome them. I'm interested to see if you think I've incorporated your concerns in my new definition. :thumbup1:
Nah, it's probably the fact that I'm pissed of the entire day and can't see humor that way, even if it were standing on my head doing situps :D

[Blake's Baby]

This definition is incomplete. "Capitalism" combines generalized commodity production with markets...


And how do you have 'generalised commodity production' without markets? Commodities are defined as objects which are offered for sale or are "exchanged in a market...". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity

So what you are saying is capitalism combines production for a market, with the existence of markets. Unlike my definition, which merely has production for markets, that don't necessarily exist?

I think you either don't understand what a commodity is, or think capitalists are very stupid, not sure which, but my own definition while not explicitly mentioning markets pre-supposes their existence. Even if there aren't enough buyers in the market, the commodities are still produced with the expectation of sale in the market. Because that's what 'commodity' means.



...
There is, of course, the question of private property relations to consider.

Consider, and reject. The joint stock company is still capitalism. Nationalised industry is still capitalism. State capitalism is still capitalism. You don't need a twirling-moustacheoed top-hatted capitalist for capitalism, you need a working class having its surplus labour exploited by a corporation, whether private or state.

[Die Neue Zeit]

And how do you have 'generalised commodity production' without markets? Commodities are defined as objects which are offered for sale or are "exchanged in a market...". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity

It was first defined in the time the Second International starting with Kautsky's The Social Revolution, and the last major work on "generalized commodity production without markets" was Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (which Bordiga critiqued).

Kautsky:

I speak here of the wages of labor. What, it will be said, will there be wages in the new society? Shall we not have abolished wage labor and money? How then can one speak of the wages of labor? These objections would be sound if the social revolution proposed to immediately abolish money. I maintain that this would be impossible. Money is the simplest means known up to the present time which makes it possible in as complicated a mechanism as that of the modern productive process, with its tremendous far-reaching division of labor, to secure the circulation of products and their distribution to the individual members of society. It is the means which makes it possible for each one to satisfy his necessities according to his individual inclination (to be sure within the bounds of his economic power). As a means to such circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is discovered. To be sure many of its functions, especially that of the measure of value, will disappear, at least in internal commerce.

Stalin:

To this question Engels' formula does not furnish an answer. Incidentally, it was not supposed to furnish an answer, since the formula arose from another question, namely, what should be the fate of commodity production after all the means of production had been socialized.

And so, what is to be done if not all, but only part of the means of production have been socialized, yet the conditions are favourable for the assumption of power by the proletariat - should the proletariat assume power and should commodity production be abolished immediately thereafter?

[...]

It is said that commodity production must lead, is bound to lead, to capitalism all the same, under all conditions. That is not true. Not always and not under all conditions! Commodity production must not be identified with capitalist production. They are two different things. Capitalist production is the highest form of commodity production. Commodity production leads to capitalism only if there is private owner-ship of the means of production, if labour power appears in the market as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited in the process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation of wageworkers by capitalists exists in the country. Capitalist production begins when the means of production are concentrated in private hands, and when the workers are bereft of means of production and are compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity. Without this there is no such thing as capitalist production.

Disclaimer: Their common error was to identify "generalized commodity production without markets" (and private ownership) as the lower phase of the communist mode of production.

Anyway:


So what you are saying is capitalism combines production for a market, with the existence of markets. Unlike my definition, which merely has production for markets, that don't necessarily exist?

Capitalism combines monetary production with the existence of markets.

[Blake's Baby]

Luckily I am under no obligation to follow either Kautsky or Stalin, DNZ.

Commodity production without markets is a nonsense, as 'commodities' are goods produced for a market. Therefore to have commodities without markets is an oxymoron, but to insist on commodities and markets is a tautology, because markets are a precondition of commodities.

Monetary production? Is that the same as 'commoditry production', ie production for the realisation of a profit? If so, you don't need to add 'with markets', because markets are a precondition of commodities. I have a feeling of deja vu now.

[Die Neue Zeit]

And I am under no obligation to follow the less authoritative "State Capitalist!" theorists, either (or at least follow them as I once did). Not all instances of C-M-C', M-M', M-C-M', and M-C...P...C'-M' involve markets.

[Blake's Baby]

So you disagree that 'commodities' must be produced for 'markets'. That has nothing to do with 'state capitalist theorists' unless you think Ossinsky, the SPGB, Wilhelm Leibknecht and/or Tony Cliff wrote wikipedia or the Oxford English Dictionary.

From wiki:
Commodities are defined as objects which are offered for sale or are "exchanged in a market..."

From the OED:
1 a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee
2 a useful or valuable thing

From Longman English Dictionary:
1 a product that is bought and sold
2 (formal) a useful quality or thing

From Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, I
To be a use-value is evidently a necessary prerequisite of the commodity, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity. Use-value as such, since it is independent of the determinate economic form, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy. It belongs in this sphere only when it is itself a determinate form. Use-value is the immediate physical entity in which a definite economic relationship – exchange-value – is expressed.

From Engels' Synopsis of Capital, I.I:
A commodity proves that it is a commodity in exchange.

The primary meaning of commodity is something produced for the market. A secondary meaning is that it can be 'valuable' (ie, in the context of this discussion, it can be traded on a market, so we're back to the primary definition) or, perhaps crucially to your argument, it is 'useful'. Marx cites the 'use' of commodities but regards this as 'outside the sphere of investigation of political economy' because it is only when commodities are exchanged that they express their commodity form.

So, if you think that a 'commodity' is a synonym for 'any social good' then yes, 'commodities need markets' or maybe they don't, but they don't imply them. However, if you (like Marx, Engels and the majority of the English speaking world the majority of the time) believe that commodities are 'goods produced for a market' then to posit 'commodities without markets' is meaningless. 'Commodities' are not equal to 'goods'. Commodities, as Marx and Engels make clear, are goods that can be traded - meaning, goods that exist in a market economy.

[Zederbaum]

At another forum I attend (dominated it seems by libertarians - of the nasty kind) I've been encouraged to offer a succinct definition of 'capitalism' that it might be argued over).

Any comments/criticisms? Even better, anyone else have a relatively simple way to define capitalism?

It often helps to understand something by comparing it to what it is not. What, for example, distinguishes capitalism from feudalism or from slavery? There were also ruling classes in those systems which systematically exploited surplus value but we nevertheless consider capitalism to be different.

As we know, capitalism isn’t just a system where some people can increase their wealth. That happens in a lot of systems, including feudalism and the ancient slave holding systems.

I see three key and interlocking features of capitalism: private ownership of the means of production, production for markets, and wage-labour.

The means of production must be largely in private hands. That is, there must be capitalists who own the capital. That’d be the means of production: factories, airlines, machines, robots, patents etc etc.

The capital is not just stand-alone wealth. It is wealth that is circulated in a reiterated economic process. The wealth gets invested as the means of production and labour which produce commodities which in turn sell for more money than was initially invested. From money to commodities and on to more money (M-C-M’). Whereas in previous economic systems the surplus was often siphoned off for immediate consumption by the ruling elite, under capitalism it tends to be reinvested in production. This leads to a runaway process of economic development. This is a major difference from feudalism. The profits are reinvested in more production, and, importantly, more efficient production. If it isn’t, then the competition will wipe you out.

Secondly, there is production for exchange in the market. Because so much of the production is under the control of private capitalists, co-ordination of the economy needs the organising effect of markets. In capitalism there is no centralised planning process to do this. This leads to competition amongst capitalists which overall leads them to seek efficiencies. But the presence of markets, even large ones, is not by itself sufficient to consider an economic system to be capitalist. There were lots of markets in ancient Rome and you can easily conceive of a mutualist non-capitalist market system. Captialism is called "capitalism" and not "marketism" for a reason; namely because the key aspect is the private control of capital, not markets.

For a distinctively capitalist mode of production the use of wage-labour must be dominant in society. This somewhat follows from the fact that capitalists control the means of production (how else can workers who have no property gain a living if not by selling their ability to work to those capitalists?). But the system of wage-labour under capitalism is different from slavery and feudalism where the extraction of the surplus was pretty direct (tax-collectors taking 25% of the product of a household etc). Under capitalism, the private appropriation of the surplus takes place in a veiled form, through the extraction of surplus value, i.e. the capitalist pays the worker less than the full value of their labour.

It's useful sometimes in debating to throw a few concessions to your opponents. In this case, something along the lines of "yes capitalism is great, compared to slavery and feudalism. It's helped develop the world no end."

Introducing non-capitalist systems into the mix helps to bring the discussion down onto the more concrete realm of history. The pro-capitalists like to argue that capitalism is a natural, eternal feature of human society. But if capitalism only became the dominant system relatively recently, we can easily say that it had a beginning. And what has a beginning has an end. After all, you don't want to be just arguing that capitalism is bad, but that for all its achievements it has serious drawbacks and that taking the road to socialism would be a very progressive step for humanity.

[Blake's Baby]

No, I'm sorry, there were markets in ancient Rome because there was capitalist production in ancient Rome (as well as the trade of opportunistic surpluses), but Rome was not a 'capitalist system' because commodity production and wage labour, while they existed, were not generalised. Capitalism produces capitalists, not the other way around.

On the question of 'private wealth' - wealth was privately held in many preceeding cultures, without them becoming capitalist. And wealth now is increasingly not privately held. The rise of the joint-stock company from the 1880s, as Engels discribes, does away with this notion of the 'private owner'. The 'owner' - the 'capitalist' - may be corporate or public; it doesn't matter to the worker, the consumer of the product, or the commodity or service being produced, if the corporation is owned by an individual, a bank, or a government; whether the workers are hired by an owner-manager, a board appointed by shareholders, or a board appointed by elected representatives of 'the people', is immaterial to the capitalist nature of the enterprise that producs commodities through wage-labour.

[Zederbaum]

I disagree on both counts :)


No, I'm sorry, there were markets in ancient Rome because there was capitalist production in ancient Rome (as well as the trade of opportunistic surpluses), but Rome was not a 'capitalist system' because commodity production and wage labour, while they existed, were not generalised. Capitalism produces capitalists, not the other way around.

Capitalist production accounted for a small amount of the commodities for sale in ancient markets. There was small-craftsman production, commodities produced by slaves and lots of commodities where profit was gained through savvy merchants scouring foreign societies for cheap goods and bringing them home to sell dear. Markets did not depend on capitalist production for their existence.


On the question of 'private wealth' - wealth was privately held in many preceeding cultures, without them becoming capitalist.
Yep, I agree. That's why I said "there were also ruling classes in those systems which systematically exploited surplus value but we nevertheless consider capitalism to be different. As we know, capitalism isn’t just a system where some people can increase their wealth. That happens in a lot of systems, including feudalism and the ancient slave holding systems." I consider private ownership of capital to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for capitalism. And the same goes for wage-labour. It's the combination of the features that differentiate capitalism from other systems.


And wealth now is increasingly not privately held. The rise of the joint-stock company from the 1880s, as Engels discribes, does away with this notion of the 'private owner'. The 'owner' - the 'capitalist' - may be corporate or public; it doesn't matter to the worker, the consumer of the product, or the commodity or service being produced, if the corporation is owned by an individual, a bank, or a government; whether the workers are hired by an owner-manager, a board appointed by shareholders, or a board appointed by elected representatives of 'the people', is immaterial to the capitalist nature of the enterprise that producs commodities through wage-labour.
The joint-stock companies, hedge funds, investment banks are ultimately owned by individuals and ultimate control of the allocation of capital and the resulting benefits belong to them, even if they delegate many of the decisions to others.

The issue of state-ownership is more complex. I agree that in itself state-ownership can be capitalistic, but a lot depends on the specific context in which it occurs. And it is not inevitably so. For instance, there could be a society where state-owned worker co-operatives dominate the economy. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, there could be something akin to Stalinist Russia's economy. I think in neither case is it particularly informative to describe such systems to be "capitalist".

[Die Neue Zeit]

Or, at the other end of the spectrum, there could be something akin to Stalinist Russia's economy. I think in neither case is it particularly informative to describe such systems to be "capitalist".

Let the real debate begin, folks!



I see three key and interlocking features of capitalism: private ownership of the means of production, production for markets, and wage-labour.

The means of production must be largely in private hands.

[...]

Secondly, there is production for exchange in the market.

[...]

For a distinctively capitalist mode of production the use of wage-labour must be dominant in society.

That's exactly what Stalin said as I quoted above.

[znk666]

Greed :laugh:
Thanks for posting that for me,comrade.

[NoMasters]

At another forum I attend (dominated it seems by libertarians - of the nasty kind) I've been encouraged to offer a succinct definition of 'capitalism' that it might be argued over). Here's my attempt:

I've deliberately tried to keep it as simple as possible and avoid accusations of providing a biased or value-laden definition. I was going to include a reference to private gain but was worried this might exclude the concept of 'state capitalism'. Any comments/criticisms? Even better, anyone else have a relatively simple way to define capitalism?

Tough question. From a classical economics views as Marx labeled as being theoretical and therefore should be ignored, is not far away from leftist utopias.

In fact, Smith stated that perfect liberty in both markets and freedoms would lead to perfect equality.

But for a more advanced level of capitalism in today's world in my opinion would be the gluing of the elite class to stay there by twisting perception of liberty and justice that favor markets that the rich are involved in. "Accumulation through dispossession"