Why not capitalism?

[alnaqi98]

Can someone explain to me why capitalism should be abolished in favor of something else? Many people have gone from rags to riches because of the opportunities our system provides people. Capitalism has brought so much innovation in the world, and has improved living standards. Why would one want to rid the world of such a thing?

[(A)]

Assuming you genuine want to learn why Capitalism is both the opposition to real freedom and why it is not the best system to provide us then this is a decent enough place to learn.

Their are many critiques of Capitalism starting way way back to its very beginnings and from these critiques many different ideology's have been created. Many focused around the central tenants that
Private control over the means of production (physical, non-human inputs used for the production of economic value) is Unjust and unnecessary. The Private ownership of the Means of Production creates a Class struggle between the Owners of the means who are now able to profit off of the labors of those without access to the means of production.

Many people have gone from rags to riches yes; but the vast majority do not. As well as this those who do; do so off of the backs of the people in rags who's labor is exploited and profit derived from.

[Ale Brider]

I think the events that occured in 1968, in Paris show that a capitalist market economy can become unbearable even if it works perfectly. So even if we put major problems aside (such as exploitation and the Social Darwinist "ethics" of capitalism) there is still one thing; capitalism is total, it takes over our lives, every aspect of it, it is everywhere. And this omnipresence of capitalism is not an error, it is the ideal state of how capitalism can potentially work. But even in this seemingly perfect state, the utter dullness and brutalizing effects of capitalism can spark a rebellion. And remember, this the apex, the best of capitalism. If a system that, when works perfectly, becomes so unbearable that people start revolts, what happens if capitalism shows its cruelest face? (Like it does in poorer countries.)

So why not capitalism? Capitalism indeed brought great progress, and in its time, it was revolutionary, just like in its time the bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class. I think no one on the Left who accept basic dialectics denies that. However, in time, capitalism has to be abolished, and it will, because it already faces with major problems, and it only exists since the guild system started to fade away, which is a maximum of five hundred years, but the capitalism we know today is really just around two hundred years old. Feudalism existed for a thousand years, capitalism may reach this age, too, but eventually it will be replaced. The question is not if capitalism has to go, the questions are more like the when, how, and what comes after...? Many left-wing thinkers have their answers to these questions. Keep on reading and learning, so you may find them.

[The Jay]

The reason that rags to riches stories are so popular is because they are outliers and they make people feel better. Reality is different.

[LeftistsAreRadical]

The last statistic I viewed said that 80% of the 1% was once in the middle class. This seems promising and amazing and like a perfect system, until you look at it in the larger aspect and realize that 80% of the 1% is just 0.80% of Americans. Capitalism is also entirely based on the exploitation of workers for the leaders' profit. For example, imagine that i'm the boss of a t-shirt company, and I have 10 employees. Yes, I take considerable risk in opening the company, but the employees do the work. Each employee produces $100 worth of t-shirts each hour, which would make the value of their work $100 per hour, right? But I need to make a profit, so I take each employee's $100 an hour of t-shirts and give them $20 an hour. Now, each hour, the company makes $1,000 each hour off of the labor of my employees, but my employees only get repaid $200 total, and the rest of the money goes to me, meaning I'm not giving my employees the full value of their labor. But, the employees can't go somewhere that will give them the full value of their labor because that company then can't survive in the capitalist economy full of individuals exploiting and using masses of workers. The workers also can't just choose to not work. No one is forcing them to work, but if they don't work they will not have the ability to survive. Therefore, the purpose of the worker's life becomes to be exploited through labor so as not to cease to exist. The moment they stop working, they stop being able to survive.

That's one of the most basic things about it, but if you want to get all deep into it you can find plenty of leftist critiques of capitalism and its inherent self-contradictions and its destiny for self-destruction. I hope you find the answers that you need!

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I've lived in capitalism all my life. It's shit.

[The Idler]

Capitalism is against human nature. We can all do better.

[Kohai]

Capitalism is against human nature. We can all do better.

capitalism IS human nature. its a system based on greed. the point of socialism is to try to have more people change their minds on how to function in society. the only way to have a revolution is by changing the minds of millions.

[(A)]

Greed is not human nature. If you believe that and are a communist you may as well just quit.
I am going to guess you are a Leninist or some other form of Liberal Socialist Kohai.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

capitalism IS human nature. its a system based on greed. the point of socialism is to try to have more people change their minds on how to function in society. the only way to have a revolution is by changing the minds of millions.

That seems like a stretch, given that capitalism only emerged relatively recently in human history. The vast majority of humanity's time on Earth has been characterized by small, stateless, moneyless, and relatively egalitarian societies based on hunting, gathering, and small-scale horticulture. Societies of this sort persist even to the present day.

That said, I don't think we can extrapolate too much about an "essential" human nature. The nature of humans is always relational and social; always dependent on context. I will say, however, that it is telling that, ideological pretensions aside, even within capitalist society, only a tiny minority of people are capitalists. That is to say, regardless of whether or not people consider themselves to be "capitalists" in terms of their "worldview", in material terms, the vast majority of people don't accumulate terrific quantities of capital and use the power that accompanies that accumulation to direct the labour of others toward selfish ends. The vast majority of people, even within capitalist society behave in a way that is essentially social - as workers, cooperating in production and reproduction at the "base" of society. That this level of cooperation persists in the face of incitements that all and everyone ought to aspire to become capitalists is, in itself, a rebuke of the notion of an essentially capitalist "human nature".

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Greed is not human nature. If you believe that and are a communist you may as well just quit.
I am going to guess you are a Leninist or some other form of Liberal Socialist Kohai.

Everything we do is within the scope of "human nature". Greed is, so is altruism. Not being greedy and not being altruistic are also within the realm of human nature. Presumably we don't think greedy people are being "unnatural" or anything strangely mystical like that, do we? I think the more important point is that human nature is free to find a course it whatever social environment it finds itself.

[(A)]

"in the sixth Thesis on Feuerbach (1845), Marx criticizes the traditional conception of "human nature" as "species" which incarnates itself in each individual, instead arguing that the conception of human nature is formed by the totality of "social relations". Thus, the whole of human nature is not understood, as in classical idealist philosophy, as permanent and universal: the species-being (Gattungswesen) is always determined in a specific social and historical formation, with some aspects being biological."

I was going to go on a rant about how the idea of Human nature as something innate and unchanging is bullshit but I just wanted to lay down.
Human nature is not "natural" but a result of the social relations between us and changes as society does.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I was going to go on a rant about how the idea of Human nature as something innate and unchanging is bullshit but I just wanted to lay down.
Human nature is not "natural" but a result of the social relations between us and changes as society does.

I am well aware of the notion of "species being" laid down by Marx in his writing during the 40s, but what I said does not disagree with the substance of his point which is that "human nature" is something variable and manifest within certain social conditions (which by implication include social conditions which encourage and reward greed, and those which do not).

[(A)]

Kohai's argument was that greed is human nature and that capitalism was their for natural.

Not that the set of social relations present society due to Capitalism makes people greedy or that some people are just bad eggs; but that all humans are naturally greedy and theretofore Capitalism is a logical extension of that nature.

Chicken or egg. Does our system make people greedy or is greed innate in every living being.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Kohai's argument was that greed is human nature and that capitalism was their for natural.

I agree with your general disagreement with Kohai. The point we agree on is that greed is not a necessary consequence of "human nature". The point is, human nature is intrinsically social, and cannot be defined in some pre-ordained "essence" which exists outside of the social order.

As much as anything else, the existence of pre-capitalist societies shows the absurdity of the claim that capitalism is human nature.

[Philosophos]

Capitalism is a system that needs to keep people divided in order to be in place. It creates problems that could have easily been avoided and takes advantage of other problems in order to distract us from the real goal which is to overthrow it, for example homophobia, sexism etc.
People in capitalism have become more succesful, richer and so on but that's only true for a a very small percentage. I can't really understand why we should have people dying in the streets from cold and have others having pools, inside their pools, filled with sampagne for their newborn.
At the same time capitalists do not get rich because they are hard working or because the system gives the opportunity to become rich if you work hard enough and the rest of bs they try to sell to us. They become rich because they steal, they blackmail the workers and because they prefer to use bodies as stepping stones to become succesful rather than giving a raise.
In addition I don't see why we should produce things for profit. We should produce (humanity as a whole) in order to satisfy our needs and that's practically communism not capitalism.

There are so many other things to say on the subject and lots of them have already been said by others previously, plus I'm kinda bored to write more on this, but this is the very simplified and general idea

[RedMaterialist]

Can someone explain to me why capitalism should be abolished in favor of something else? Many people have gone from rags to riches because of the opportunities our system provides people. Capitalism has brought so much innovation in the world, and has improved living standards. Why would one want to rid the world of such a thing?

Well, one reason I think is that capitalism is in the process of destroying the planet and we don't have another 100 yrs to evolve out of capitalism.

It's true that capitalism has brought much innovation and improved living standards. As Marx said, "Who in any previous century could have imagined the wealth that lay in the lap of social labor." It was the socialization of labor which brought all this wealth. That wealth now must be socialized so that the entire world can benefit.