this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy

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What is the definition of capitalism? Is it compatible with people owning the things they produce? (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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@[email protected] asked "why are folks so anti-capitalist?" not long ago. It got quite a few comments. But I noticed a trend: a lot of people there didn't agree on the definition of "capitalism".

And the lack of common definition was hobbling the entire discussion. So I wanted to ask a precursor question. One that needs to be asked before anybody can even start talking about whether capitalism is helpful or good or necessary.

Main Question

  • What is capitalism?
  • Since your answer above likely included the word "capital", what is capital?
  • And either,
    • A) How does capitalism empower people to own what they produce? or, (if you believe the opposite,)
    • B) How does capitalism strip people of their control over what they produce?

Bonus Questions (mix and match or take them all or ignore them altogether)

  1. Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist?
  2. If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished?
  3. Say you create and sell some product regularly (as above), but have more orders than you can fulfill alone. Is there any way to expand your operation and meet demand without using capitalist methods (such as hiring wage workers or selling your recipes / process to local franchisees for a cut of their proceeds, etc)?
  4. Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Why is the distinction important?
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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Capitalism seems to be a system where people try to obtain ever larger amounts of some store of value, and use that store of value to enable that.

I may have managed to avoid using capital above, but I think capital is a store of value that a person controls via ownership concepts.

I think capitalism inherently enables people to earn what they produce, it seems like it's almost a fundamental of it. The problem is just that people with more capital can coerce and rig the system against people with less capital. Therefore someone who already has capital gets more capital increase from a task than someone with less capital would get for the same task in many situations.

Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist? Yes If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished? Presumably no. If there's no ownership or private property, how do you sell something? Can you sell something you don't own or have permission from the owner to sell? Say you create and sell some product regularly (as above), but have more orders than you can fulfill alone. Is there any way to expand your operation and meet demand without using capitalist methods Probably not if you use a strict definition. The state, or other group could form to do so, but I'd argue it's not you making that decision. Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Define "important". and Important to who?

I'd say it's meaningful because it is like democracy vs authoritarianism, but in terms of the actual real world pressures driving potentially similar behavior, I'm not sure how "important" it is. A worker cooperative might tend to treat employees better, might not choose some ways to compete that a traditional business would, and probably values other things than strictly make the most amount of profit for the investors. But does this rise to importance if the collective has to act in certain ways to remain competitive in the market? I would bet it depends on whether we're talking from the perspective of the employees or customers or society or the market.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is just that people with more capital can coerce and rig the system against people with less capital. Therefore someone who already has capital gets more capital increase from a task than someone with less capital would get for the same task in many situations.

First of all, I love this description of the problem. I agree that this is the problem with a lot of societies. Foster Farms can wield their enormous capital and connections to underpay chicken farmers (and frankly, underpay them to a point where it might as well be considered theft). And that wielding of wealth is a huge problem.

But would you be open to the idea that -- to anti-capitalists, such as myself -- the moment your store of wealth is used to coerce people with less wealth and earn more from that coerced person's production of goods than the coerced person earns for themselves, that is the moment a system becomes capitalism? Whereas, before that point, it is simply a "market economy."

Would you be willing to entertain such a definition?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I generally think a "market economy" == capitalism. Mostly because as far as I can tell, all capitalism requires is private ownership and abstracted stores of value. A market economy is already capitalism because human nature - as soon as someone can do bulk purchases, they're going to try and get better prices, and I think many sellers would willingly give them a bulk discount. It doesn't even start as coercive - but it sets you on the road to that, and so it's a difference in scale and not kind IMHO.

I also don't think coercion is a requirement of capitalism. It's something that I think will happen naturally, but you could still have capitalism with regulation reducing it / maybe preventing it. I'd argue that a lot of the problems in current capitalist societies are equally failures of the political system, or maybe a misunderstanding of humans such that large pluralities do not actually want to use their government to make life better for anyone or themselves, but instead to hurt an out-group.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am curious if you would consider my position to be capitalism.

The market economy I advocate legally protects an inalienable right to workplace democracy just like what some countries have today with political democracy. The employer-employee contract is legally recognized as invalid, so all firms are worker coops. While there is a fruits-of-labor-based claim to products of labor, products of nature there is no such claim, so there is common ownership of natural resources
@asklemmy

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, it seems like capitalism to me. You just have different legal structures for companies. I don't know enough about worker coops, but do they work like a LLC then? Or are all the workers in the coop partners and hence liable for judgements? How broad is your exclusion of employer-employee contracts? How do consultants work? Service businesses? Someone wanting to hire a handyman?

The only part that might be weird is if you can't own things. I can't tell - can you own land? Are you allowed to buy and own and resell something you didn't make yourself?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here, worker coop means a worker-controlled firm. A specific legal entity in the current legal system is not meant. Forming a democratic firm without jeopardizing personal assets is possible.

Labor is inalienable. De facto transfers of labor that make de facto and legal responsibility align in the employment contract do not exist. Thus, this does not rule out any de facto transfers in any situation just changes legal overlay.

Can
- Own land with 100% land value tax
- Resell
@asklemmy

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think I understand exactly what you're describing here - so you would allow anything the current US allows, just with a different legal framework? If you swap out a corporate construct for a collective but based on cult of personality for say Twitter, does that actually change much? I.e. our political system in the US isn't capitalist, but we still end up with people who have more power due to seniority, "barter", and popularity. It seems like you could change who ends up the oligarch, but not the existence of them.

How do you have common ownership of natural resources and private ownership of land? Also, I get that you find current labor practices exploitative, but at least some of them are actually illegal, we just have difficulty enforcing them because of cost of legal actions and burden of proof issues. I don't trust that worker collectives would actually prevent wage theft - given politics and the ability to apparently convince people to vote against their own interests. More directly, union drives also show this isn't obviously going to go in a worker improvement way.

And slavery is currently illegal - you do have to be paid for your labor. The problem is how you value that labor? If it's a market economy, various labor is just going to be valued higher than other labor, and you basically have the problem I think you're pointing to with capitalism (because to me market economies are capitalism).

I also think you and I may disagree about what's actually happening theoretically in the current system with employees. At least to me, it's entirely consistent with practice and with the theories I'm familiar with in capitalism. An employee agrees to sell their output to an employer for a given rate. Both parties can put whatever contracts around that they like, and absent contracts, either can stop that arrangement at any time, either via renegotiation or ending the relationship. If you strip all contracts then do you envision a day laborer sort of arrangement? Everyone is an independent contractor so it's like a "virtual company" now? Like, practically - how do you envision this works?

I think there's all sorts of interesting stuff to discuss outside of whether a system is capitalism or not in your limited proposal here. However, I don't actually know what you want to get rid of from the current US capitalist system, so I can't really say more. I don't see a lot of value in just changing labels and nothing else however.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Referencing property not value. The workers in the firm are selling their labor itself to the employer not the outputs because the employees never jointly legally own the produced outputs and do not jointly legally hold the liabilities for the used-up inputs. If they did, it would just be a coop selling products to a buyer.

This position is similar to a minimum "wage" where the "wage" is control rights.

That's all that fits in a toot. Will respond to other points later in the conversation