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It, unfortunately, is an efficient distribution of labor, at least relative to other systems. Not because wasting food for profit isn't fucking heinous, but because the mobility of investor capital and responsiveness of market prices is less inefficient than reciprocal economies or central planning.
However, we are at a point in human society where raw efficiency is no longer the bottleneck for our quality of life. Capitalism was an ugly solution to a real problem, but we can probably bid it farewell at this point, if only we can dislodge the elites who benefit from perpetuating it.
Postcapitalist systems can use market prices and, in principle, be Pareto optimal on non-institutionally described states of affair
As I said, we can probably bid capitalism farewell at this point.
The owner class will never willingly give up power, their actions are why capitalism is a religion.
Of course. Hence "dislodge" rather than "ask nicely".
I tend to lean more towards 'consume' and 'mulch', myself. Though I understand why others would find that distasteful.
Has to happen every few hundred years it seems, slave uprisings. When the owner class gets too fat and cruel towards the hands that make their wealth, those hands have to pick up some stones sometimes to remind them why noblesse oblige was once not considered optional.
I dislike dividing people into owning and worker classes. If the workers save up their earnings to make their living in the old age, does it make then "owner class"? Should they stay penniless in your world vision? It's the utopian world you propose
I'm not arguing semantics or gradients, eat/compost the rich to save the planet. Period.
I'm not proposing a utopian world, those are words you are shoving in my mouth.
I"m proposing a world where the global temp is slowed down enough that our grandkids have a chance at a life on a planet that isn't an ecological disaster.
It's not semantics as you try to portray. It's the real life case that simply negates your "solution" if any.
The old couple sitting on 2 mil and pacing it out so they can enjoy their retirement are not owner class.
The shitstain owner of the local car lot that is using his friends on the city council to change local zoning laws so he can force his competition out and buy their land is EXACTLY the stripe of shitstain I want to mulch.
And it doesn't negate any solution, history has proven the effectiveness of slave uprisings.
The shitstain owner of the local car lot that is using his friends on the city council to change local zoning laws so he can force his competition out and buy their land is EXACTLY the stripe of shitstain I want to mulch.
So it means you never lived in communist or socialist countries. I did
They can go in the mulcher too, everyone who abuses others to increase their own personal wealth and power. IDGAF what their government or economic label of the decade is, every power structure becomes toxic when abusers are shielded from justice.
It, unfortunately, is an efficient distribution of labor
Uh... No. I feel like half the fucking western world works on finance, which is quite literally just maximizing the revalorization of capital for the few at the top. Besides, how can be the only system in history to have millions of people unemployed, be efficient at distributing labor?
responsiveness of market prices is less inefficient than reciprocal economies or central planning
This is empirically false. You can't provide a scientific source for this because it's wrong. Central planning is the most efficient tool, that's why Amazon and Walmart (extremely centrally planned systems which have power to control their supply chains at will) systematically outcompete all other businesses. Amazon doesn't outcompete other stores being "a competitive market of warehouses", it's a digitalised, centrally-planned behemoth that can so much as smell when a customer is going to conceive making a purchase, and generate all the immediate responses in the supply chain from manufacturing to distribution to optimise the whole thing.
If you wanna talk about countries, please explain how the transition from planned economies to free markets plunged the entirety of Eastern Europe into a deep crisis that killed millions and ruined millions more of lives, to the point of many countries like Belarus, Russia or Ukraine not really having recovered from the impact in 30+ years. So much for the efficiency of capitalism, amirite? A centrally planned economy is what brought the USSR from being a poor, backwards-ass agrarian country in 1917, to defeating the Nazis and being the second power of the world by the 60s.
Read some theory, buddy. Marx in particular. I know he's probably a capitalist pig by your estimations, but it might do you some good.
Dude I'm a Marxist-Leninist. Saying that Amazon is a centrally planned behemoth of efficiency amounts to saying that the capitalist will sell us the very rope with which they'll hang them, you're misunderstanding my comments
Also, where does Marx talk about the efficiency of markets and inefficiency of central planning????
Dude I’m a Marxist-Leninist
Yes, hence why I believe you've read very little Marx.
This is empirically false. You can’t provide a scientific source for this because it’s wrong. Central planning is the most efficient tool, that’s why Amazon and Walmart (extremely centrally planned systems which have power to control their supply chains at will) systematically outcompete all other businesses.
Jesus Christ. That's not what central planning means.
Also, where does Marx talk about the efficiency of markets and inefficiency of central planning???
Holy shit. Thank you for demonstrating "hence why I believe you've read very little Marx."
Under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
...
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
...
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
The revolutionary nature of the capitalist mode of production and its importance in developing capital to the point where it is possible for the proletariat to seize power is fucking core to Marx's writing. This is not advanced stuff.
Fucking MLs, talking about historical dialectics and materialism and then demonstrating an utter lack of basic knowledge on the subject.
Jesus Christ. That's not what central planning means
You not being able to understand central planning beyond USSR technology, doesn't mean it's not what central planning means. That IS central planning, it's just evil one, with the intent of maximizing profit and surplus value extraction, and in the most antidemocratic fashion possible. But the tools to modernize central planning of the economy, and to make it democratic and worker-based are pretty much already there for us to take. If you want to actually get educated in modern conceptions of socialist central planning, you could pick up a book like "People's Republic of Walmart" or listen to experts talk about it (you can listen to a "deprogram podcast" about central planning they made a while ago), because, believe it or not, modern computing has solved the "economic calculation program".
Holy shit. Thank you for demonstrating "hence why I believe you've read very little Marx."
Uh... Where in the wall of text that you've sent me does Marx talk about the inefficiency of central planning? Because I've read through it twice just in case and it's absolutely not talking about that. It's a text about the evolution of feudalism into capitalism, about capitalism absorbing all other pre-capitalist systems, and eventually capitalism's contradictions making it collapse. Please enlighten me as to where in this text you've copied and pasted Marx talks about central planning and what arguments he uses against it.
You not being able to understand central planning beyond USSR technology, doesn’t mean it’s not what central planning means.
"Central planning as an economic system is when a corporation vertically integrates, and the more it vertically integrates, the more centrally planned the economy is."
Lord.
But the tools to modernize central planning of the economy, and to make it democratic and worker-based are pretty much already there for us to take. If you want to actually get educated in modern conceptions of socialist central planning, you could pick up a book like “People’s Republic of Walmart” or listen to experts talk about it (you can listen to a “deprogram podcast” about central planning they made a while ago), because, believe it or not, modern computing has solved the “economic calculation program”.
Cool, so we're just ignoring where I said
However, we are at a point in human society where raw efficiency is no longer the bottleneck for our quality of life. Capitalism was an ugly solution to a real problem, but we can probably bid it farewell at this point, if only we can dislodge the elites who benefit from perpetuating it.
Uh… Where in the wall of text that you’ve sent me does Marx talk about the inefficiency of central planning? Because I’ve read through it twice just in case and it’s absolutely not talking about that. It’s a text about the evolution of feudalism into capitalism, about capitalism absorbing all other pre-capitalist systems, and eventually capitalism’s contradictions making it collapse. Please enlighten me as to where in this text you’ve copied and pasted Marx talks about central planning and what arguments he uses against it.
This you?
Also, where does Marx talk about the efficiency of markets and inefficiency of central planning???
Ask one of your more patient comrades to explain Marx to you, if they can; I don't have the patience to hold your hand through an explanation. We're done here.
Dude, I'm sorry but you're being purposefully obtuse. Your initial comment was a simple and lazy "go read Marx" when I'm responding saying that central planning being better than market-based economy. I ask about where Marx talks about central-planning and market-based economies, and you answer with a tirade that has nothing to do with central planning whatsoever, as if I were defending that the Feudalist mode of production and distribution were more efficient than markets in capitalism. It's just not the topic we were talking about, we were clearly engaged from the start on a conversation about central planning versus market economies, and you suddenly shift to "markets take over pre-capitalist societies". Please just admit Marx never said that markets are better than central planning.
"Central planning as an economic system is when a corporation vertically integrates, and the more it vertically integrates, the more centrally planned the economy is."
And again, purposefully reductionist and obtuse. I explicitly mentioned using the techniques for central planning devised by behemoths the size of countries like Amazon or Walmart, to make better central planning than your outdated 50-year-old USSR idea of it, as many socialists propose (again showing you haven't read about ideas of central planning in socialism from the past 30 years), in a democratic fashion. I bet my ass again that you haven't read a single modern text on possibilities of economic planning, which is cool, but don't try to teach others how bad it is when you haven't even done the most superficial research beyond "USSR bad". The idea isn't "let's copy what Amazon does", it's "the historical critique against planned economies is based on the economic calculation problem (which you're proving you've never even heard of before), and modern digital behemoths prove beyond refutal that the problem is already solved, so let's use this knowledge and these tools to bring about a better, more efficient, more democratically organised economy for everyone". Your reductionist point basically amounts to "companies are bad therefore we shouldn't take their innovations", as if capitalism hadn't been the one to invent the industrial revolution. Big capitalist companies providing us with the tools of economic planning is exactly one of the contradictions of capitalism.
All we need is something that could realistically replace it, and a complete rewriting of all of our laws to allow for it to happen.
Easy enough.
Market socialism, ez. Shame about the whole "entrenched powers that be" bit.
Seems like you could get most of the way there by just keeping the current system but adding a social dividend which would form a basic income for everyone. If the dividend is pegged to economic growth then it should also be fairly resistant to inflation.
Seems like you could get most of the way there by just keeping the current system but adding a social dividend
And that loops back around to the "powers at be" problem.
We don't even need to go that far (although it would be nice). We could just make it illegal for stores to throw out perfectly good food and instead force them to donate it to food banks. They can even get a charity write-off as a treat.
Capitalism was an ugly solution to a real problem
Not really, though. I mean, if you want to stick to looking at the last 2000 years, we still have cities that were fed in a feudal rather than capitalist system. Not that those systems were better or more efficient mobilizing labor, but the problem you're referring to wasn't really there.
That's not to mention at least several examples in the anthropological and archaeological record of large scale societies that did not rely on what we define as capitalism to feed their people.
I think it's a pretty crazy oversimplification to say capitalism just popped up as a solution to a problem.
Not really, though. I mean, if you want to stick to looking at the last 2000 years, we still have cities that were fed in a feudal rather than capitalist system. Not that those systems were better or more efficient mobilizing labor, but the problem you’re referring to wasn’t really there.
Feudal societies are notably horrendous at efficient resource distribution, and don't get me started on the weird fetishization of reciprocity economies.
There's a reason that capitalist economies exploded in growth once the main features of modern capitalism took root, and it sure as shit ain't because capitalists are just that eager to contribute to the national good.
That’s not to mention at least several examples in the anthropological and archaeological record of large scale societies that did not rely on what we define as capitalism to feed their people.
And those societies, much like any pre-modern societies, did not feed their people particularly reliably. Notably, when the Roman Empire united the Mediterranean under a unified proto-capitalist market, famine conditions drastically reduced (though very much were not completely eliminated, mind you). Not because the Roman Empire was particularly concerned about the plight of the poor - it very much was not. But because market economies and capitalist (or proto-capitalist) investment behaviors can redirect excess resources from Region A, to Region B which lacks them, with astounding speed and responsiveness, and with minimal additional labor or material investment (at least compared to alternative methods).
I think it’s a pretty crazy oversimplification to say capitalism just popped up as a solution to a problem.
The problem was inefficient methods of resource distribution. Capitalism was the solution. Modern technology, both material and organizational, allows us other choices now, but capitalism didn't spread because it was just the chic aesthetic of the time. Capitalism spread because it is significantly more efficient than feudal or guild/mercantilist economies.
David Graeber has written two ~700 page anthropology books that pretty much debunk this entire line of thinking, one of them a collaboration with archaeologist David Wengrow. That latter includes an almost immediate refutation of the utopian egalitarian hunter gatherer bands that so many pop scientists love to idealize, the same fetishization that you're talking about. They're pretty rigorous about it.
You should really check them out. 'Debt: the first 5000 years' and 'The Dawn of Everything', if you want I can pop the audiobooks on google drive and DM you the link.
I literally just came off listening to both of them in the span of 2 weeks, which is why I see such a generalized statement as "Capitalism was a solution to inefficient resource distribution" as a bit silly, because no one just thought, "oh you know what we need? Capitalism! It will be the solution!"
It has an insanely long history originating from pre-coinage, debt-based societies, some of which had huge populations. They definitely rail against the "agricultural revolution > cities" line of thinking, noting that archaeological evidence across the globe for agriculture shows the whole process took something around 3000 years, during which, again, there were mega-sites (essentially cities) that relied on a mix of agrarian and hunting and gathering.
The second book is, granted, more about hierarchical structures in ancient civilizations and Debt is more about social inequality when it comes to money, but I really really suggest you check em out. Lmk if you want that google drive link, I just gotta upload em
We may be miscommunicating a bit here, because I don't mean to imply that capitalism sprung into being wholly formed, or that it was something that was consciously pursued; rather, that capitalism, once the main features that we would recognize came into being, put down roots and spread because it was a more efficient solution to an extant problem, or, if 'solution' sounds too final, a more efficient alternate means to tribal/feudal/guild/mercantilist economies of addressing the problem of resource distribution inherent to complex societies.
Like how traditions of banking spread because they're more efficient than allowing money to be hoarded - not because the ruling class up and says "Banking, what a wonderful idea!", but because polities whose institutions tolerate, mesh with, or allow for the innovation, ceteris paribus, end up in a superior position over those which do not, because they are in possession of a solution (to hoarding, in the case of banking) of increased efficiency than non-banking solutions, making polities which have banking or banking-like institutions the norm over time.
That being said, I've put both of those books on my to-read list, because they sound excellent.
We might be, and I'm definitely not an expert or that immediately knowledgeable (hence, why I just listened to two long-ass books in two weeks), but even your banking example doesn't really satisfy me. I get what you're saying -- not that banking or capitalism were a spontaneous solution or decision or conscious at all, but moreso that they solved a certain problem many human societies had, and therefore it was further adopted, and further, and further, an almost natural propensity to spread. In some sense, there must be some underlying force that's pushing capitalism and banking along, because otherwise we wouldn't have their dominance, today.
But that is still the core idea the authors push back against in those two books. I'd probably argue that banking didn't spread because it solved the problem (hoarding money), but that it emerged out of early hierarchical societies whose states, themselves, hoarded primitive "money" (grain) and lent it out to farmers at interest, and that the underlying force we're looking for that caused it's eventual spread is the concept of debt or becoming whole, itself. But then I am also getting into the territory of banking as some natural sociological phenomenon that was destined to be furthered and furthered , which is, again, exactly what those two books seek to dispel, especially Debt.
I'd like to continue, but this would definitely work better as an in-person conversation where we could push back and forth against ideas, but I do have to work :/
Or it's because of nitrogen fertilizers and the scientific method vastly improving productivity.
One of the two.
Nitrogen fertilizers don't date to the early 17th century, when this trend of explosive economic growth becomes apparent in early capitalist states, unless you're counting four-field rotation farming, itself only adopted because of the market-driven demands of early capitalist societies.
I tend to draw a distinction between mercantilism and capitalism, and I think you're brushing over the economic rape of half the world for that explosion of Colonial European wealth, but it's certainly true that the line can get blurry when you're discussing the exact difference between a noble offering an early chemist patronage and a capitalist paying an employee to come up with ideas he can exploit while paying them a fraction of its value.