What is fundamentally wrong with Capitalism?

[mcbane]

Dear friends,
I am fairly new to the political arena and therefore have somewhat undeveloped ideas as to the similarities and differences between different types of government systems. Living in the U.S. I see the effects of a pseudo capitalistic, market economy everyday all around me. Being immersed like this probably keeps me ignorant to the fact that there might be other, more socially benefically forms of government out there. So therefore, I have often wondered what are the basic reasons that you guys think the ideology of capitalism (Laisse Faire economics) is fundamentally flawed, in your opinions. Your comments are appreciated. I have no beef with anyone -- just curiosity about other's beliefs.

--mcbane

[anomaly]

If I had to point to a single thing, I'd say it's the illogical distribution of income, and, therefore, goods. This is the idea of surplus value I'm talking about. Workers create a certain amount of value for the capitalist, but do not receive complete compensation for the produced value, but only a fraction of it. The rest is simply taken by the capitalist and used to buy capital as well as provide for himself. In other words, the capitalist is a thief! Now, I don't support such stealing. Do you?

[Zingu]

Well, depending who you ask, but asking us Marxists, we aren't "against" it. We just see it as an other stage in history, just like Feudalism or Slave Society.

We view history as a continium, and we understand the laws of march for history's progress. I will cut to the chase, just like Feudalism, we believe, useing Marxist theory, that Capitalism will eventually dig its own grave, by making the means of production even faster and faster, more automated, invading and flooding new markets constantly, it only will create more and more antagonism between the working class, who must sell their labor to survive, and the capitalist class, who own the means of production that are the instrument of social evolution.

There will be a point where the material conditions are so unbearable that the working class will stage revolution and seize control of such advanced instruments of production for theirselves.

Think of like this, suppose the revolution never happens, capitalism continues to expand into new markets, its production capability gets bigger, faster, and more automated. When it gets to such a point where it could easily supplement demand, what is the point of keeping property relations?

Ideology changes with society, and ultimately surrounding material conditions, its nothing better than religon.

[Ouroboros]

Two things are "bad" with market economy:

(1) it is less moral than some planned economies, it satisfies human wishes and not human needs; these two is not the same. People wish diamonds, but they do not need them.

(2) it is less efficient than some (good) planned economies - classical example is qwerty keyboard which is the worst possible keyboard in modern time, but it cannot be replaced in market economy because spontanious action is less efficient than organized, i.e. planned one. That's why all armies, all corporations are planned economies.

Market economy has, however, some advantages:

(1) it is much simpler - I said that *some* planned economies might be more moral and more efficient, but if plan is not good, they can fail miserably.

(2) it strongly, very strongly motivates people to work and invent. Plan economy (applied on the level of whole state) cannot motivate people that strongly or at least that easily.

[JKP]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2005, 05:04 AM
Two things are "bad" with market economy:

(1) it is less moral than some planned economies, it satisfies human wishes and not human needs; these two is not the same. People wish diamonds, but they do not need them.

(2) it is less efficient than some (good) planned economies - classical example is qwerty keyboard which is the worst possible keyboard in modern time, but it cannot be replaced in market economy because spontanious action is less efficient than organized, i.e. planned one. That's why all armies, all corporations are planned economies.

Market economy has, however, some advantages:

(1) it is much simpler - I said that *some* planned economies might be more moral and more efficient, but if plan is not good, they can fail miserably.

(2) it strongly, very strongly motivates people to work and invent. Plan economy (applied on the level of whole state) cannot motivate people that strongly or at least that easily.
You may want to read this.

In particular, the economics related entries:

http://www.infoshop.org/faq/

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

Originally posted by ano[email protected] 1 2005, 04:19 AM
If I had to point to a single thing, I'd say it's the illogical distribution of income, and, therefore, goods. This is the idea of surplus value I'm talking about. Workers create a certain amount of value for the capitalist, but do not receive complete compensation for the produced value, but only a fraction of it. The rest is simply taken by the capitalist and used to buy capital as well as provide for himself. In other words, the capitalist is a thief! Now, I don't support such stealing. Do you?
To expand on this, I'd also like to point out that, as the capitalist buys capital, he goes on to use this capital to buy more of the means of production, which will create for him more capital, and so on; monopolization becomes inevitable. The trouble with laissez-faire economics is that it inherently creates a "slave-master" relationship between the capitalist and the producer. Since the capitalist is solely concerned with his acquisition of capital, he will stop at nothing to get it. As an example, capitalism in it's purest form works well for corporations when unemployment is high; if there are more people without jobs, corporations can get away with paying less to their employees because there is a sense of desperation with the unemployed. This is a common trend in Latin America, and this is why free trade "works". People there have no other choice but to take these low-paying jobs, even though the corporations that have their factories there could easily pay these people 5 or 6 times what they are without raising prices a cent. Wal-Mart, for example, has something like a 90%+ profit margin on their items (if they sell something for $20.00, $18.00+ is pure profit).


Just to name a couple.

[Storming Heaven]

I dislike (some might say hate) capitalism primarily because of the wage labour system that it necessarily produces. Workers produce everything, but capitalists take the largest portion of production for themselves, without so much as lifting a finger. This is an injustice. But beyond a simple question of justice, it is also exploitation; with one class of people (the capitalists) taking from, but not contributing to, society. Exploitation diminishes the ability of the producer, in this case the working class, to produce. This being the case, the exploiter must continually increase the share of production that he appropriates to himself, further diminishing the ability of the producer to produce, and leading eventually to the common ruin of all. This is not the legacy that I want to leave for those who may come after me.

[chilcru]

The fundamental flaw of capitalism can best be seen in its basic contradiction: while production is highly socialized, appropriation of the social product is highly private. The private character of the appropriation of the social product is best articulated in the surplus value which the capitalist class extracts from the labor of the working class. This results in what is known in layman's language as the "rich getting richer, while the poor get poorer". In Marxist terminology, this is called "the law of deteriorating conditions of the working class".

[chilcru]

What separates Marxist analysis from all other schools of thought, such as bourgeois political economy (whose spokesmen Marx would later come to call as "vulgar political economist"), is that Marx tried to go deeper than the surface of capitalist society, to go deep beyond the integument of capitalist society and into its "anatomy"; unlike the vulgar economists who saw exchange in capitalist society and proclaimed it to be simply involving some relations between things. In going beyond the integument, he was able to see that the exploitation of the working class by the capitalists is not merely the operation of a few greedy men but the workings of economic laws peculiarly immanent in such a society. Before Marx, capitalist exploitation was explained away as having its well-spring in human frailties, such as human greed, avarice, and what have you, which mankind supposedly inherited from his "original sin" in some paradise lost. The weakness of such explanation is apparent. It leads to the erroneous idea that all that's needed to mitigate capitalism is to reform man, not the system.

Upon Marx's approach, he discovered that capitalists do not steal. In fact, they buy the labor power of the workers. They pay the workers with wages in accordance with the cost of producing the labor power of the workers - meaning, in accordance with the law of value of capitalist society. This exchange spawns a legal relation which enable the capitalist to appropriate the workers' produce far above what he pays as wages. That explains why most capitalists do not see their act as exploitative. For them, it is fair and square in accordance with the law of value. At once, however, it proves to the proletariat that it is the system which is defective, not just some few bad men.

[FidelCastro]

It isn't so much fundamentals but more about morals when it comes to capitalism. It leaves many people in the dirt while others prosper. This is why I am against it

[Morpheus]

I'm against it because it's authoritarian & exploitative. See Tyranny of the Invisible Hand (http://question-everything.mahost.org/Socio-Politics/capitalism.html)