I mean, this feels semantic. The word capitalism is obviously of the modern era, but there are governments and economic systems going back to antiquity that I think meet all of the definitional requirements of “capitalistic.”
Really, I just lack a vision of what “free trade but not capitalism” could possibly mean. Could you describe that system for me?
When I try to do so, the result always meets the literal, dictionary definition of capitalism, as listed above.
It’s definitely semantic, but semantics is the reason we use different words for different things.
Anyway, “free trade but not capitalism” would just be anything where you can buy and sell stuff, but without the individual owner class. It can be part of anything. Let’s say workers own their workplace. They still get paid, and they can use that money to buy what they want. That isn’t capitalism, but it still has free trade. Free trade is one component that is required in capitalism, but it isn’t exclusive to it.
Edit: Also, something can be capitalistic without being capitalism. It can have characters related to capitalism, but not meet all the requirements.
So, it isn’t the ownership and trade of capital that makes something capitalism, it’s when someone is allowed to accumulate too much capital?
What constitutes “enough” capital to push it over the edge into capitalism?
Or is it that you cannot have non-owner workers? That you can’t employ additional help without those people buying into the business?
Not trying to be an ass. Just trying to understand the distinction. I genuinely don’t know what “all the requirements” necessary to make it capitalism are, and try as I might I am not finding any beyond the literal definition in the dictionary, which doesn’t have any.
What is the source for this definition of capitalism? Just trying to figure out if this is, like, the “academic definition” or something. Cause, as you say, what words mean does mean something, which is why we have different words for different things.
I do think it’s really easy to redefine words in a “no true Scotsman”-y way, where you redefine a general word to mean “just the versions of that thing I don’t like,” in order to tribalise it. Which doesn’t mean that’s what you’re doing here. I’m just trying to understand, and I think if we can’t agree on what the word capitalism even means, we aren’t exactly going to get anywhere. So I’m just trying to figure out what definition of the term you are using and why.
The definition above, that you’re referring to, is clear enough. Ownership of trade and industry by private owners for profit.
If industry isn’t privately owned it isn’t capitalist. If it isn’t for profit it isn’t capitalist.
If the state, workers, or other non-private groups own the means of production, it isn’t capitalist. If they’re not operating the industry in a manner to make profit, and instead are doing good (for example), it isn’t capitalist.
People can still be paid and they can still spend their money on goods and services. That is not necessarily capitalist behavior. It’s just a method of distributing value.
This is the huge problem with the wider debate; hardcore leftists have a very specific well-defined meaning in mind when they use the word “Capitalism”, whereas the majority of the general public think “Capitalism” just means “you can start a business if you want”.
“Neoliberalism” doesn’t work in most rhetoric either because it’s got the word “liberal” in it. We need a new word that’s unambiguously understood to refer to the specific components of capitalism that are objectionable.
Which “specific components of capitalism” would you say are not objectionable? It’s essence is the private ownership of the productive forces of society and the derivation of profit by selling the product. The core of it is objectionable from the view of democracy or egalitarianism.
You’re exemplifying my point quite well there, in terms of debating from the perspective of your own very precise no-true-Scotsman definition.
But to answer you at face value, let’s have a look in wikipedia’s opening paragraph on Capitalism:
This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth.
It’s going to be a struggle convincing the developed world, or even the majority of left-leaning voters, that owning your own home, earning a company salary, paying people for services rendered, or market competition all need abolishing. Most people just want to see a bit more market regulation, monopoly busting, worker protections, social welfare, money removed from politics, and the rich paying their share of tax.
How is the definition I posted any different from what you quoted? I said the essence, the core required part that defines it as capitalism, there are other historic aspects but I was saying what the most basic elements of it are. And those are what I believe we should have an issue with, and if you remove that essence, it’s not capitalism.
You can own your own stuff with socialism, even a home, that is one of the common misunderstandings of socialism. People want to see a lot of things but dreams cannot always become reality. The fact of the matter is that the state will be co-opted by capitalists and they will remove protections, it’s a natural cause and effect of the capitalist system. It might be possible to manage this tendency but requires so many controls that it gets further from the definition of capitalism and may as well begin to be called market socialism or another term.
I’m not trying to convice the average westerner who has essentially zero history and political education. Not everyone needs to be convinced anyway, most people right now have little agency in politics and don’t care to.
Well you have mercantilism, which was the predecessor of capitalism
Basically, the difference is the role of government. Think of it in feudal terms - a noble owns a mine, owns an expedition, uses their soldiers for both security of their land and their monetary interests. As far as raw resources/resource producing land, you couldn’t buy that without buying a title first
But it’s a line that blurred as time went on. If you’re a leather worker, that leather came from an animal owned by the king or by livestock owned by a noble. So you’re paying taxes on the inputs, but you can probably sell stuff freely - although imports and exports might be taxed. And if you’re a merchant, you might buy spices from one noble and sell it to others
But the means of production were owned by a noble - they owned the land and the serfs that work it, they own the animals and the mines.
As time went on, it kinda faded… Maybe you sell the rights to mine a site, maybe you partner with a merchant to go on an expedition for spices, maybe you just require a permit to hunt on the land, and so on
But then as supply chains gets more complicated, you kind of naturally evolve into capitalism
See, the trick there is in your first paragraph I feel like. Under mercantilism, trade is under the almost exclusive purview of the government. So I would argue this doesn’t really meet the definition of “free trade.”
But, to steel man a bit, when “the government” is fairly unstructured, like in a feudal system, the line between government control of trade and “private citizen” control of trade can be a bit blurry. And over time I’m sure it gets messy whether a person is a “government entity” or not.
I do also feel like there’s a “difference of scale is difference of kind” problem here. Obviously if you own a copper mine and employ hundreds of people to go down and mine it for you, you own the means of production. But also, if you run a small restaurant in a strip mall and hire a half dozen servers to wait tables, you also own the means of production.
And, to your point, there probably were private innkeepers under mercantilism that took coin in exchange for goods and services. They probably employed people to help work the place. Does that make it capitalism? What if the owner used the money from that inn to build another, then another and another, and eventually had the money to buy a title and become part of the “noble class”? Is it capitalism then? Does a system that allows for that count as a capitalism, or does it need to actively encourage it?
Idk. I think my big issue, at the end of the day, is that the word capitalism doesn’t really mean anything. Or, rather, no one can really agree on what it means, and it just turns into a tribalism stand in word for “anyone who disagrees with me on economic policy.” But that’s so unspecific as to be totally useless. What parts of “capitalism” are you decrying? What would you replace it with? But I feel like any questions are met with anger that you’re not bought into the anti-capitalist agenda, even though no two people seem to agree on what that actually means.
To address your first point, you go into the bazaar, and you buy a shirt vs another shirt. The lord owns the cotton fields, they both come from the same place but have different prices and different quality/traits - that’s a free market. The raw materials belong to the lord, but what you do with it is up to the artisan
You’re trying to cut the difference between raw materials and value added - that’s the murky difference between mercantilism and capitalism
Remember, there was an age where shipping iron to a town was how farmers got tools - mercantilism is about raw materials in and out, once things get complicated it doesn’t make sense
Capital has existed far longer than capitalism has.
I mean, this feels semantic. The word capitalism is obviously of the modern era, but there are governments and economic systems going back to antiquity that I think meet all of the definitional requirements of “capitalistic.”
Really, I just lack a vision of what “free trade but not capitalism” could possibly mean. Could you describe that system for me?
When I try to do so, the result always meets the literal, dictionary definition of capitalism, as listed above.
It’s definitely semantic, but semantics is the reason we use different words for different things.
Anyway, “free trade but not capitalism” would just be anything where you can buy and sell stuff, but without the individual owner class. It can be part of anything. Let’s say workers own their workplace. They still get paid, and they can use that money to buy what they want. That isn’t capitalism, but it still has free trade. Free trade is one component that is required in capitalism, but it isn’t exclusive to it.
Edit: Also, something can be capitalistic without being capitalism. It can have characters related to capitalism, but not meet all the requirements.
So, it isn’t the ownership and trade of capital that makes something capitalism, it’s when someone is allowed to accumulate too much capital?
What constitutes “enough” capital to push it over the edge into capitalism?
Or is it that you cannot have non-owner workers? That you can’t employ additional help without those people buying into the business?
Not trying to be an ass. Just trying to understand the distinction. I genuinely don’t know what “all the requirements” necessary to make it capitalism are, and try as I might I am not finding any beyond the literal definition in the dictionary, which doesn’t have any.
What is the source for this definition of capitalism? Just trying to figure out if this is, like, the “academic definition” or something. Cause, as you say, what words mean does mean something, which is why we have different words for different things.
I do think it’s really easy to redefine words in a “no true Scotsman”-y way, where you redefine a general word to mean “just the versions of that thing I don’t like,” in order to tribalise it. Which doesn’t mean that’s what you’re doing here. I’m just trying to understand, and I think if we can’t agree on what the word capitalism even means, we aren’t exactly going to get anywhere. So I’m just trying to figure out what definition of the term you are using and why.
The definition above, that you’re referring to, is clear enough. Ownership of trade and industry by private owners for profit.
If industry isn’t privately owned it isn’t capitalist. If it isn’t for profit it isn’t capitalist.
If the state, workers, or other non-private groups own the means of production, it isn’t capitalist. If they’re not operating the industry in a manner to make profit, and instead are doing good (for example), it isn’t capitalist.
People can still be paid and they can still spend their money on goods and services. That is not necessarily capitalist behavior. It’s just a method of distributing value.
This is the huge problem with the wider debate; hardcore leftists have a very specific well-defined meaning in mind when they use the word “Capitalism”, whereas the majority of the general public think “Capitalism” just means “you can start a business if you want”.
“Neoliberalism” doesn’t work in most rhetoric either because it’s got the word “liberal” in it. We need a new word that’s unambiguously understood to refer to the specific components of capitalism that are objectionable.
Which “specific components of capitalism” would you say are not objectionable? It’s essence is the private ownership of the productive forces of society and the derivation of profit by selling the product. The core of it is objectionable from the view of democracy or egalitarianism.
You’re exemplifying my point quite well there, in terms of debating from the perspective of your own very precise no-true-Scotsman definition.
But to answer you at face value, let’s have a look in wikipedia’s opening paragraph on Capitalism:
It’s going to be a struggle convincing the developed world, or even the majority of left-leaning voters, that owning your own home, earning a company salary, paying people for services rendered, or market competition all need abolishing. Most people just want to see a bit more market regulation, monopoly busting, worker protections, social welfare, money removed from politics, and the rich paying their share of tax.
How is the definition I posted any different from what you quoted? I said the essence, the core required part that defines it as capitalism, there are other historic aspects but I was saying what the most basic elements of it are. And those are what I believe we should have an issue with, and if you remove that essence, it’s not capitalism.
You can own your own stuff with socialism, even a home, that is one of the common misunderstandings of socialism. People want to see a lot of things but dreams cannot always become reality. The fact of the matter is that the state will be co-opted by capitalists and they will remove protections, it’s a natural cause and effect of the capitalist system. It might be possible to manage this tendency but requires so many controls that it gets further from the definition of capitalism and may as well begin to be called market socialism or another term.
I’m not trying to convice the average westerner who has essentially zero history and political education. Not everyone needs to be convinced anyway, most people right now have little agency in politics and don’t care to.
https://lemmy.zip/comment/19846863
Well you have mercantilism, which was the predecessor of capitalism
Basically, the difference is the role of government. Think of it in feudal terms - a noble owns a mine, owns an expedition, uses their soldiers for both security of their land and their monetary interests. As far as raw resources/resource producing land, you couldn’t buy that without buying a title first
But it’s a line that blurred as time went on. If you’re a leather worker, that leather came from an animal owned by the king or by livestock owned by a noble. So you’re paying taxes on the inputs, but you can probably sell stuff freely - although imports and exports might be taxed. And if you’re a merchant, you might buy spices from one noble and sell it to others
But the means of production were owned by a noble - they owned the land and the serfs that work it, they own the animals and the mines.
As time went on, it kinda faded… Maybe you sell the rights to mine a site, maybe you partner with a merchant to go on an expedition for spices, maybe you just require a permit to hunt on the land, and so on
But then as supply chains gets more complicated, you kind of naturally evolve into capitalism
See, the trick there is in your first paragraph I feel like. Under mercantilism, trade is under the almost exclusive purview of the government. So I would argue this doesn’t really meet the definition of “free trade.”
But, to steel man a bit, when “the government” is fairly unstructured, like in a feudal system, the line between government control of trade and “private citizen” control of trade can be a bit blurry. And over time I’m sure it gets messy whether a person is a “government entity” or not.
I do also feel like there’s a “difference of scale is difference of kind” problem here. Obviously if you own a copper mine and employ hundreds of people to go down and mine it for you, you own the means of production. But also, if you run a small restaurant in a strip mall and hire a half dozen servers to wait tables, you also own the means of production.
And, to your point, there probably were private innkeepers under mercantilism that took coin in exchange for goods and services. They probably employed people to help work the place. Does that make it capitalism? What if the owner used the money from that inn to build another, then another and another, and eventually had the money to buy a title and become part of the “noble class”? Is it capitalism then? Does a system that allows for that count as a capitalism, or does it need to actively encourage it?
Idk. I think my big issue, at the end of the day, is that the word capitalism doesn’t really mean anything. Or, rather, no one can really agree on what it means, and it just turns into a tribalism stand in word for “anyone who disagrees with me on economic policy.” But that’s so unspecific as to be totally useless. What parts of “capitalism” are you decrying? What would you replace it with? But I feel like any questions are met with anger that you’re not bought into the anti-capitalist agenda, even though no two people seem to agree on what that actually means.
To address your first point, you go into the bazaar, and you buy a shirt vs another shirt. The lord owns the cotton fields, they both come from the same place but have different prices and different quality/traits - that’s a free market. The raw materials belong to the lord, but what you do with it is up to the artisan
You’re trying to cut the difference between raw materials and value added - that’s the murky difference between mercantilism and capitalism
Remember, there was an age where shipping iron to a town was how farmers got tools - mercantilism is about raw materials in and out, once things get complicated it doesn’t make sense