Capitalism and its deadlocks

[Cheese Guevara]

"The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that if there is no future for a radical mass movement in our time, there will be no future for humanity, because the extermination of humanity is the ultimate concomitant of capital's destructive course of development." - Ivan Meszaros

"The majority is always on the side of routine and immobility, so much is it unenlightened, encrusted and apathetic. Those who do not want to move forward are the enemies of those who do, and unhappily it is the mass which persists stubbornly in never budging at all." - Gracchus Babeuf
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Some reasons to oppose capitalism:

1. Capitalism causes poverty
2. Capitalism requires growth, exponential energy increases and so is unsustainable
3. Capitalism creates unpayable debts
4. Capitalism exploits the worker
5. Capitalism cannot provide full employment
6. Capitalism is prone to booms, busts, bankrupcy and monopoly
7. Money is zero sum
8. Private property is theft


Some reasons nobody cares about the above:

1. Capitalism creates "value" and "wealth"
2. Capitalism will adapt to environmental limitations or monetize products and endeavours designed to "reverse" climate change or resource depletion
3. Debts will be defaulted on and businesses and individuals will go bankrupt or slip into poverty. This is simply the "normal" risk inherent to participating in the game.
4. Most workers consent to their exploitation and surpluss extraction is not inherently unethical. More extreme forms of exploitation will be phased out as time goes on. As populations increase (or markets expand), older generations exploit new entrants into the game, spreading the exploitation "fairly". Ponzi schemes are fair if they never stop.
5. The state will provide welfare for the unemployed.
6. Booms, busts, bankrupcy and monopoly are "normal", "desired" and part of the game. They indicate a "healthy" system which is merely responding to consumer choices and various other individual, free acts.
7. Money facilitates trade and is zero sum only if time stops moving. Future work will always be able to pay present debts.
8. I like owning private property and I paid for it, I did not steal it.

Please destroy what I have written above. I'm interested in your responses, as my latter 8 points epitomize the kind of "logic" and "rationalizations" held - consciously or unconsciously - by many contemporary human beings.

[motion denied]

1. What creates value and wealth are labour and nature, not capitalism.
2. How? Capital is uncontrollable.
3. Yeah, "normal". No one chooses to participate in the "game". Also, it is also "normal" that some people will want to destroy the... game. (Seriously, is this even an argument?)
4. We do not oppose exploitation because it is unethical, but because it is exploitative. We don't want "less" or "more" exploitation, we aim for no exploitation at all.
5. Bollocks. Look around you.
6. Dude, fuck the game. The individual is not so rational (ie, independent from influences) as this implies.
7. Why do we have do answer this? We oppose money and all commodities.
8. We're still taking "your" land and factories.

All this amounts to "but capitalism is natural because god wills it". 'Healthy', 'rules of the game'. That much of bullshit.

[Dodo]

1. Capitalism does this. The problem is not the capability of capitalism to develop forces of production but that on the long-run it's tendencies make it create poverty, or lets say "scarcity" artificially. For there to be profit, there needs to be scarcity. Thus there are some contradictions which leads to various problems such as economic crises where bourgeouisie turns on to working class or to destruction of industries elsewhere(war or politics/corruption)

2. This is a possibility. But its implementation is another issues. As since economy is not just about prices, it is also a set of social relations. In fact, it is also a set of international relations. A developing country does not have the luxury to slow down its growth with such regulations. Or, we have to keep the developing world poor.
In any case, the main thing here is the capitalism's tendency to develop productive forces to an extend where there needs to scarcity created. Environment is part of this process of proleterianization.
In any case, capitalism will have to gear down in developed world which means it needs to attack the working class. And that is a contradiction, an unnecessary process of over-production.

3. It is, if we took the economy as a timeless and spaceless concepts. Dialecticians look at things on the long run with tendencies. Thus that "normal" process is a destructive process on the long-run. Because wealth has always been more and more concentrated.

4. I only see exploitation as a problem if the surplus extractor uses it for his/her own use. If it is used to develop producitve forces, it leads to the contradiction in the future of overproduction. So essentially, capitalism is not viewed as a problem all the time, but within the given conditions. Capitalism is a process with changing conditions and relations.

5.The surplus that comes for welfare is in direct relations to unequal profit margins in global economy context. Social welfare of developed countries are directly linked to these countries ability to get more surplus due to inequality in the global world. When productive forces keep developing, as it is already happening, bourgeouisie in the developed world will attack welfare. This is a process that has been going on since 80s and with every crisis it gets worse. Again, we see future in the now.

6. Creative destruction cycles rely on introduction of new consumer goods and ability of few countries to produce these goods.
If humanity can keep up in introducing new(by new I mean like revolutionary stuff such as computers) consumer goods to development of productive forces globally, this can indeed be even desirable.
Otherwise, we either get into monopolistic, and destructive capitalist relations where either developing world or the working class is attacked.

7.That also depends on the limits of the markets. Capitalists assume each supply creates its own demand. This does not seem to be the case.
Economy only functions well under certain conditions of created scarcity.
This leads economies to make actors act destructively in larger set of relations(again, referring to international economics and domestic working class exploitation levels).

8. Private property was a necessity. It is theft only under certain circumstances, which is a long-term view i.e, property concentrations. The world is limited in its "properties", when things are developing it might look progressive. But after a while it starts going downwards.


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I do not really stick to what I have said here 100% though. I know I simplified things greatly.

[Loony Le Fist]

Please destroy what I have written above.


I'll give it a shot. :grin:



7. Money is zero sum


Yes. It sure is.



1. Capitalism creates "value" and "wealth"


For whom? That is the question.



2. Capitalism will adapt to environmental limitations or monetize products and endeavours designed to "reverse" climate change or resource depletion


Only if the profit of monetizing endeavors to reverse climate change or stop resource depletion exceeds that of continuing it. This leads to procrastination and therefore reactive solutions that end up costing society more, rather than proactive and preventative solutions to these problems. Of course capitalists don't care, since loses are socialized and profits are privatized.



3. Debts will be defaulted on and businesses and individuals will go bankrupt or slip into poverty. This is simply the "normal" risk inherent to participating in the game.


Money doesn't just disappear. Unpaid debt creates a vacuum and is an overall loss to society. This ignores the externality of inflation caused by defaulted debt.



4. Most workers consent to their exploitation and surpluss extraction is not inherently unethical. More extreme forms of exploitation will be phased out as time goes on. As populations increase (or markets expand), older generations exploit new entrants into the game, spreading the exploitation "fairly". Ponzi schemes are fair if they never stop.


Rubbish. Exploitation is exploitation. It is unethical. Slavery is unethical and exploitative, even if someone consents to it. The falling rate of profit ensures that exploitation will never decrease, but actually increase.



5. The state will provide welfare for the unemployed.


Yea right. Ask the people who are being subjected to austerity measures from the Troika and in the US where SNAP benefits were cut back.



6. Booms, busts, bankrupcy and monopoly are "normal", "desired" and part of the game. They indicate a "healthy" system which is merely responding to consumer choices and various other individual, free acts.


This is quite a loaded one. All of these "desired parts of the game" actually represent externalities to be imposed involuntarily on society.



7. Money facilitates trade and is zero sum only if time stops moving. Future work will always be able to pay present debts.


This pre-assumes infinite resources and labor to exploit.



8. I like owning private property and I paid for it, I did not steal it.


Private property is, in the end, a theft. Paraphrasing The Falling Rate of Profit, as they eloquently put it, the individual is only defined by the society that creates them.

[Cheese Guevara]

"What creates value and wealth are labour and nature, not capitalism."

The capitalist then says that labour creates "wealth", "wages", "employment", "new value" and "lifts people out of poverty". To counter this, one would have to prove that poverty is constant or rising (somewhat hard to prove), unemployment is inherent to the system (easy to prove) and that all "new value" has "costs".

"How? Capital is uncontrollable."

The system's energy requirements, since the 1700s, has gone up exponentially by about 3 percent every year. Some scientists have also worked out the amount of watts needed to support every dollar. This is all unsustainable, but the capitalist then retorts: we will invent "green products" and "new modes of energy". So, for example, capitalism is quite literally causing the acidification of all the planet's oceans. But once can conceive of capitalists creating products and initiatives to clean up the ocean, thereby making profits.


No one chooses to participate in the "game". Also, it is also "normal" that some people will want to destroy the... game.

A capitalist will say that debts, inevitable bankrupcy and poverty are "fair" trade-offs for a system which provides wealth, employment and business. He will also say that many choose their occupations, their fields, the types of education they wish to pursue, which is true, but also nonsense, as this does not apply to the vast majority.

"We do not oppose exploitation because it is unethical, but because it is exploitative. We don't want "less" or "more" exploitation, we aim for no exploitation at all."

Is surpluss extraction, under capitalism, unethical? Why? Because you get back less than that which you put in? Under the most advanced communism imaginable, does the individual get less back (less what? energy?) than is put in?

"Bollocks. Look around you."

In England, there are 185,000 homeless and a 20 percent unemployment rate (the US is 15 percent, Russia is 15 percent). In Britain, 1/63 of the population are totally abandoned by the state. 67 percent of British families are on some form of welfare. Ignoring the fact that the capitalist state is responsible for many of these problems, the state hasn't completely abandoned the populace.

"We oppose money and all commodities."

Yes. Completely. But the capitalist will say that there is nothing "negative" about money. Money is "superneutral", both parties benefit and any third, fourth and fifth party who is affected when a capitalist and consumer interact, can "lift" themselves by exploiting someone else, who in turn can exploit some other new entrant into the system. Exploitation is fair because everyone can exploit. Those unable will be taken care of by the state.

"We're still taking "your" land."

Yes, land inexorably ends up in fewer and fewer hands (usually in the hands of massive banks and conglomerates). The capitalist will argue that private property and "freedom" are somehow linked, that land owners are paid when land is purchased and that taxes to the government drawn from land owners (though most countries don't have a flat land tax) goes back to the "public purse".

"All this amounts to "but capitalism is natural because god wills it".

Yes, there's a little bit of Darwin in the above. Mostly, though, the free-market fundamentalist perceives that all the negatives of capitalism are off-set by certain benefits.


EDIT - LooneyLeftist, thank you for your reply. Can you tell me how you do individual quotes on this forum? When I try quoting, it invariably leads to a single block of quoted text.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The major problem with these sort of arguments - and any kind of argument that tries to convince the bourgeoisie and their wealthiest lieutenants - is that is assumes that it is possible to assume some kind of "neutral", supra-class standpoint and from there find the most "ethical", the "best" solution to social problems.

Socialists start, not from neutrality, but by taking the side of the proletariat. As I said in another thread, it's embarrassingly simple. The bourgeoisie get most of the pie. We get almost nothing - and we want the whole pie. So we'll take the portion the bourgeoisie gets, whether that's ethical, good for society, the environment, whatever, or not.

[Dodo]

The major problem with these sort of arguments - and any kind of argument that tries to convince the bourgeoisie and their wealthiest lieutenants - is that is assumes that it is possible to assume some kind of "neutral", supra-class standpoint and from there find the most "ethical", the "best" solution to social problems.

Socialists start, not from neutrality, but by taking the side of the proletariat. As I said in another thread, it's embarrassingly simple. The bourgeoisie get most of the pie. We get almost nothing - and we want the whole pie. So we'll take the portion the bourgeoisie gets, whether that's ethical, good for society, the environment, whatever, or not.

Agreed. However, for the sake of hegemony , you cannot simply side with the proleterian idea and expect people to agree with you. These arguments of bourgeouisie has to be directly dealt with not only from the side of the proleteriat.
Whether we like it or not, we carry the burden of 20th century "communism"'s failure. If we do not improve our arguments, we are not going to get anywhere.