- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.
He didn’t always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!
Some significant works:
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)
And, of course, Capital Vol I-III
Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!
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Communism is actually human nature. Think about before the human era when everyone was hunter gatherers working together and sharing was what kept everyone alive. There was no currency or concept of ownership.
I recommend this thread, though maybe don’t bother going down the chain that far as it becomes a stalemate.
Essentially, you’re correct in that tribal societies were very communistic, but not Communist. Marxists call this “primitive communism,” as a distinguishing factor from Communism, a highly industrialized and global society emerging from Socialism.
The truth is, all modes of production are “human nature.” Human nature, after all, is malleable, and is largely determined by which mode of production humanity finds itself in. Each mode of production turns into another due to human nature, Capitalism is merely also human nature, just like feudalism, tribal societies, as is Socialism and eventually Communism.
But is human nature not more acutely observed within the view of coercion, control and oppression? Marx says himself that the human history is defined by class wars between the haves and the have nots, with or without capitalism we will have a system that expresses control and oppression.
Marx states that all hitherto existing history is the history of Class Struggles. In analyzing tribal societies, he did so as they did indeed lack class, money, and a state, but were distinctly not “Communist” as production was low, and life relatively harsh and brutal. Communism as a mode of production is the classless society of the future, the end of class struggle. There will be new contradictions and new changes, most likely, but class as a concept is abolished through a global, publicly owned and planned industrial economy, in Marx’s analysis.
This is where i struggle agreeing with Marx, i find him to be selectively pragmatic and idealistic whenever the former or latter is convenient.
He acknowledges human nature is to oppress or be oppressed, as even in prehistoric human groups leaders would have formed and social rules enforced, we can assume this from our experiences in social groups. Yet does not believe that communism would lead to centralised oppression despite his historical studies, to me its either he chooses to ignore this factor or people misinterpret his writing and they cannot be applied in a post industrial capitalism society.
Marx doesn’t acknowledge “human nature is to oppress or be oppressed,” though. Marx builds the economic analysis of class society and charts how it will eventually erase its own foundations. Primitive communistic societies did not usually have classes, as they didn’t have an economic basis for it.
Communism would be centralized, but it would also be democratized.
Maybe not have him be represented as a genocidal facist?
I stole the meme, so 🤷
Just wrote the text.
smh why do libs have to embarrass themselves everytime there is a reference to Marx
I’ll be honest, I picked this meme precisely because I knew it would draw out liberals, and I think it’s been effective in convincing a few people to reconsider their prior understanding.
Peter Kropotkin comes flying down from the sky in a cape:
“Mutual aid is human nature and a factor of evolution”
I’d say it depends more on the Mode of Production. Early humanity found it integral to survive, and many groups even today rely on Mutual Aid to continue. However, it isn’t a hard requirement across all classes in society, yet these class formations are also “human nature,” just as the conditions to eventually abolish class society are “human nature” as well.
Yes I believe that human nature is to be fluid and shaped largely by one’s experiences. I just wanted play with the OP meme. However, mutual aid is 100% absolutely a factor in evolution, especially that of social species like ours. Not the only factor obviously, but a large and defining factor.
Sure, humanity’s cooperation has been a key factor for how we’ve evolved. So has the part played by labor in the transition from ape to man. I wasn’t really denying Mutual Aid as important, more trying to provide a multi-sided understanding of it as its role in human development even today, and how it might play a role in the future.
Yeah I don’t think we disagree at all.
Wrong, capitalism exist since exist money and greedy people which govern countries, since Pharaons and Kings, since the concept of property.
Answered here. Commerce isn’t Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.
I don’t speak about small manufacture and commerce, capitalism is only another name of feudalism, where a small minority is the owner of the most part of the resources of a population and even of the population itself. This is the situation which is the same since thousends of years, it’s irrelevant how we call it, it’s always the same pyramid scam.
capitalism is only another name of feudalism,
There are fundamental differences between different production systems that we Marxists think are important enough to warrant distinction, even if they’re both instances of class societies.
I have a feeling you’d digest something better in video:
Paul Cockshott - Feudal economics
Watch that and them get back to me.
You’re using Capitalism as a catch-all term for Class Society. Different forms of Class Society have existed for thousands of years, but Capitalism itself is relatively new.
As said, only the name, not the system, it’s irrelevant if they are pharaos, kings, clerics, or like today billonairs, big corporations and banks.
It’s extremely relevant, because the manner of production is entirely different. In feudalism, as an example, production was largely agricultural, while serfs tilled their parcel of land and produced most of what they consumed for themselves. They didn’t compete in markets, as an example, and specialization was relatively limited outside of handicraftsmen.
If you fail to accurately analyze the differences between modes of production, you fail to find meaningful conclusions. Oak trees aren’t penguins, even though both are living things.
Weird take, i guess the current definition of capitalism, but go to Ancient Rome or Babylon and tell me you don’t see capitalism
Answered here. Commerce isn’t Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.
Sure. But that was largely due to the constraints on the rate of growth prior to the industrial revolution. Capitalism was still functionally exigent, it was just operating under a rate of growth capped by the surplus human and animal labor could produce.
The advent of transatlantic travel (wind power) and the waterwheel and eventually steam power and modern fertilizers was what caused human productivity to spike. Suddenly, you could see returns on investment at double or even triple digits within decades. Prior eras saw single digit growth in even the wealthiest countries on Earth. Wealth was accumulated at a glacial pace.
Piketty’s “Capitalism in the 21st Century” covers this in depth.
Rome was a power center for over a millennia in large part because of the enormous consolidation of investment capital within the city limits. The Republic-cum-Empire took in revenues, built capital, expanded its economy, and then consumed the expanded economic output as revenue. But that took centuries to accumulate. None of Rome’s neighbors ever had the surplus necessary to invest or the time to expand like the Romans did. London managed a similar scale of development in decades. And then it burned down. And then it was rebuilt a few decades later.
You can argue that the desire to rapidly accumulate wealth is a facet of human nature. You can also argue that the rate of accumulation only became notable in the last 400 years, such that “capitalism” as a productive force wasn’t relevant until recently. But you can’t argue that cumulative gains were somehow unknown to anyone prior to the Dutch East India company.
That wasn’t really my argument though. As you yourself said, a bunch of quantitative changes from proto-capitalist formations resulted in a qualitative shift.
The mechanism of capitalism - deriving revenue from capital to further develop and accumulate capital and thereby expand streams of revenue - were always here. The rates were lower, limiting the accessibility and the appeal to individuals who were already cash flush and very forward looking. But capitalism, as a productive force, has always been with us.
I disagree. Back in earlier forms of agricultural accumulation, technology hadn’t developed the same system of rapid expansionism as Capitalism and the creation of large industry has brought. The M-C-M’ circuit wasn’t always here. Class society has existed, but not the same mechanisms of Capitalism as an encompassing system.
The M-C-M’ circuit wasn’t always here.
Periodically, some community would find an opportunity for capital improvements that afforded a rapid growth cycle. Capital projects like the Roman Aquaducts and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for instance, dramatically increased the surplus yielded by labor. The number of people who could live within a community rose and economic output rose with it. But it was still dwarfed by industrialization and geographic constraints limited the rate of expansion (you can’t build aquaducts and hanging gardens everywhere and expect to yield equivalent surplus). So you hit that classic Marxist diminishing return on profit and the rate of economic expansion fell back down into the low-single digits.
The circuit did exist though. The fundamental economic benefit of cyclical growth had a soft ceiling that primitive societies hit.
Now we’re in an industrial era that doesn’t feel like it has a ceiling. But it does. There really are ecological and resource limits, even to a post-industrial world. One day, we’re also going to hit that ceiling (assuming we haven’t already). I don’t think it would be fair to say - a few centuries after peak production / climate apocalypse sends us into a perpetual global depression - that Real Capitalism Has Never Been Tried.
Neither would I benchmark “When capitalism starts” the day after we construct a Dyson Sphere and master superluminal travel, because we’re kicking off a bigger wave of economic expansion than we enjoyed while earthbound.
What I might argue the ancient world lacked more than the M-C-M’ circuit was the degree of fictitious capital (which requires a big surplus-laden economically literate middle class). But that’s not capitalism et al, just a facet of modern speculative investment.
The technical constraints were also constraints on the Mode of Production. The Roman Aqueducts were largely slave driven like the rest of Roman society, not through commodity production and the M-C-M’ circuit affording it. Rome also extracted vast rents from the colonies.
Elements of the old exist in the new, and elements of the new existed in the old, yes. However, Capitalism as an encompassing system is only a few hundred years old.
Where’s the steam engines and factories?
And the conveniently small children?
You guys would have a very bad time in the 1500s let’s be real
I think the vast majority of people would. What do you mean by “you guys?”
What came before capitalism was even uglier, yet reflects our nature as a species just the same.
What came before capitalism was even uglier
No one is disputing that, in fact the communist manifesto praises capitalism for massively developing the productive forces at one point in time, it’s just time to move on from it as it started to hinder the development of production.
yet reflects our nature as a species just the same
This is straight up a wrong, if our nature was being greedy, selfish, or an asshole everyone would have to conform to law, without exceptions, just like we all have to eat, shit and breathe. Those 3 things are actually part of our nature, everyone has to conform to these laws without exception.
It’s more that what is “human nature” is malleable, and is ultimately determined by the systems humans find themselves in, and ultimately propels change to new modes of production. Feudalism gave birth to Capitalism.
Someone from the 1500s would have a horrible time in the 21st century.
What kind of quality-of-life do you think modern day subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers enjoy? How critical has English standard literacy, modern mathematics, and digital technology sophistication become for survival?
Like, you’re thinking as a settler-colonialist living a middle-class lifestyle in the modern moment. You’re not thinking as a denizen of Hispanula prior to the Columbian exchange, where the primary past times were fishing, frolicking, and fucking. Move that guy up to the modern era in the highest quality of life countries in the world and they just become homeless illegal immigrants.
If I have a choice to live in the 16th century or the 21st century, and I know I’m going to be born in Haiti… fuck the 21st century, that shit sucks.
My friend what do you think Haiti was like in the 16th century?
Crack open a copy of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History” and find out. He quotes the original Columbian explorers in how they found the native population. The conditions were downright utopian according to the Spanish explorers. Their response to this paradise was to rape and plunder it.
And the raping and plundering never stopped, even 500 years later.
Today I honor Cowbee’s Sisyphean task of explaining that production/trade and capitalism are two different things 🫡
It gets easier, actually! So I wouldn’t call it Sisyphean. Different parts of Lemmy have different levels of understanding, if I can get parts mostly aware to be more aware, then that helps trickle into other instances, and it’s easier than doing so in instances where Marxism is seen hostiley.
trickle down economics
lessons. Reagan was right all alongNot really “trickle down.” If I go to a MAGA conference, I am going to be immediately attacked. If I go to a place with progressives, I’ll face less hostility. If I go to a place with Leftists, then I’ll generally be recieved favorably. If this Leftist base solidifies, it can expand and fold in the more radical of the progressives, and then expand outward.
In other words, if it takes immense effort to “wololo” a MAGA into a Leftist, but much less effort to “wololo” a progressive into one, then it’s better to focus on the progressive so that the new Leftist can also aid in the “wololo-ing.” As the proportion of Leftists grows, and more proletarians go from MAGA to liberal, and liberal to progressive, this Leftist movement becomes better able to fold more people into it.
TIL Wololoing
o7
o7
Well that’s a very meme description of shifting the overton window to the left.
As Marx’s favorite maxim goes, “Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me]”
I love memes and gaming, same with Marxist-Leninist theory, same with space, science, and technology. Connecting to others with shared culture is part of what makes us human.
@Cowbee @Cypher Marxist-Leninist theory is fine. Theoretically the concepts of communal ownership and resources sharing is a laudable one. Too bad the only example of this concept actually working is Star Trek. The instances when it’s been tried in the real world, ended in authortarainism and/or collapse.
“Authoritarianism” is when the imperial core’s freedom to exploit the periphery is thwarted.
Western supremacists tend to use “Authoritarian” only to demonize the countries that stood up and fought back against colonialism / imperialism.
And it usually is never directed against the actually non-democratic / oligarchical countries like the US, who’ve bombed and meddled with nearly every government on the planet.
You should question your preconceived notions about China, Vietnam, Cuba, and the USSR, because you likely grew up in a country that has spent the entire historical period of the cold war, trying to strangle those countries and many others out of existence.
All countries are “authoritarian,” what matters most is which class is in control and thus exerting its authority. In Capitalist society, that class is the Bourgeoisie, a tiny minority of society. In Socialism, that class is the Proletariat, the majority of society. Countries like the PRC are labeled “authoritarian” not due to how the people themselves feel, but because Capital is limited by the government. Even if over 90% of Chinese citizens support the CPC, western media slanders the system as “authoritarian” because their corporate masters can’t move as they please in Chinese markets.
So as a leftist that I think identifies with Marxist-Leninist ideology but that didn’t find the communist manifesto an interesting nor easy read (it was small but not really approachable) are there any books that you recommend? I’m no economist but I do like reading logical arguments as to why capitalism doesn’t work, or better said, doesn’t work for the good of the majority but instead for a small minority (for whom it works very very well)
For a more all-round perspective, I recommend Hajoon Chang’s “economics: the user’s guide”.
Welcome, comrade! @[email protected] has a fantastic Crash Course Socialism you can check out, and if you want to get into theory but don’t find the Communist Manifesto to be approachable, I recommend my “Read Theory, Darn It!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. It has audiobooks, and starts off simpler than the Communist Manifesto.
That seems great! I’ll definitely check it out
Any communities here on Lemmy that you’d also recommend?
And thank you once again!
No problem!
As for Communities, I don’t really have any recommendations. I do recommend making an account that can interact with Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, though, as that’s where most of us Marxist-Leninists are. You can make a Lemm.ee account or Lemmy.ml, and you’ll still be able to see them, just not on Lemmy.world as .world has defederated from them.
I personally use Hexbear.net and Lemmy.ml.
And no problem, once again!
Most books by Ha-joon Chang, especially 23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism. Fun fact, Ha-joon Chang isn’t a Marxist, he’s a liberal, but his writing is still critical enough of capitalism that South Korea banned his books.
Anything on prolewiki’s library are good reads as well.
For a broad look at the evolution modes of productions and how capitalism came to be there is this 60s textbook from the soviet academy of science, there even are a series of videos following the textbook by the finish bolshevik that is pretty good.
deleted by creator
I wonder if he would have changed anything in his writing had he known the damage he was about to unleash. Reminds me of the Ricky Gervais bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CINep9Gqhk
Critiquing something is not damaging it. Your brain is broken if you blame anything on Marx. Who takes the blame for 3+ million children that starve to death every year under capitalism? Please explain.
Do comment deletions not get federated on lemmy or what? This is not the first time I commented something, regretted it almost instantly and deleted it, and the received replies several hours later.
Deletions of comments often don’t federate, so your comment will show as deleted on sopuli.xyz but not on Lemmy.ml.
By and large, Marx’s writings have been overwheingly positive for humanity. Even if he didn’t write as he did, though, Dialectical Materialism would have been synthesized by someone eventually, same with Scientific Socialism and the Law of Value. So in the end, I’d say he’d certainly be interested to see how Capitalism turned to Imperialism, as well as other advancements on his work, but I don’t think he’d abandon his work entirely.
As for the Ricky Gervais bit, Nietzsche was by no means “misunderstood,” he was always deeply reactionary. I recommend reading Really Existing Fascism.
Eh, isn’t that argument more about being greedy for ressources rather than capital in particular? I mean, why did empires conquer stuff?
There exists a strong current within Liberal economics that asserts that the formation we have arrived at now is because over time, Humanity has assumed the system most fit for our nature. Some take the path you percieve it as, a focus on greed, rather than Capitalism specifically, but that’s not what the meme addresses.
The advancement Marx made is recognizing Capitalism as merely one stage in the progression of Modes of Production historically. His analysis of Socialism and Communism was rooted in how it naturally emerges from Capitalism, just as Capitalism had emerged from Feudalism. The Capitalist Realists, who see Capitalism as eternal, stand in contrast to that notion and assert Capitalism as the final default stage. “There is no alternative,” of Thatcher.
Capitalism is not about individuals being greedy. Calling capitalists greedy is like calling fish greedy for needing water. The capitalist system requires constant profit maximization to prevent firms from crumbling, the capitalists are tasked with ensuring this, generally by (at first) maximizing exchange value of their product and minimizing costs (usually labor), then later using monopoly position to charge economic rent. In the heart of empire, financialization has meant trying to skip the first step via large financial investment up front, like with tech monopolies. The system itself forces exploitation, dispossession, colonialism, and ultimately crisis and war.
Historical empires conquered for reasons we often don’t really know specifically, as the accounts we have are written by victors with limited access and understanding. But ancient peoples were just as sophisticated as us and subject to material forces as us, so it was certainly not just being greedy. The economic base can force hands, for example. The Roman slave and debt system was unsustainable and required debt jubilees and war and invasions to be maintained, for example. For the ruling class of Rome, was maintaining the empire only greed or was it what they were taught to do as the moral and right thing?
Good meme but terrible martial arts. Never try to catch a punch.
This comment is like telling Superman not to lift with his back.
lol
I didn’t make the meme, so 🤷
Just wrote the description.
It’s from Invincible and the guy’s a superhero, so maybe superheroes can catch punches.
I’d hope so, if they existed, haha.
If they existed it would be The Boys style super"heros". So I don’t know, I’d kinda prefer they didn’t know how to catch a punch.
Good point, yikes.
I think this meme is a little unfair. For the sake of this comment, I am assuming that op is 100% correct about his definitions and I want to stress that I don’t claim that “capitalism” is human nature.
Op basically admits in his comments that the general public doesn’t have a good understanding of communism or capitalism and consequently how do define them. E.g. He keeps having to explain the difference between capitalism and trade with currency, highlighting the lack of understanding of what capitalism is.
This should make you question what a person means when they say that capitalism is human nature. Do they mean capitalism or their understanding of it? The answer is obvious.
So what do they mean? Given that people don’t just walk around saying “capitalism is human nature”, it is probably fair to see it as what it attempts to be, a justification. A justification usually follows a critic. And what is that critic? I think it is fair to roughly assume that it is a justification for the usual critic of capitalism. The degradation of human life by encouraging a competitive environment which leads to exploitation and hierarchy. That exploitation is powered by the violence of controlling limited resources.
So the question becomes, could the person saying “capitalism is human nature” mean that humans are competitive hierarchical animals who will use any means to control, oppress and exploit it’s environment, including economical violence. If yes, then the age of capitalism is irrelevant and ancient Rome is probably what the person would identify as what they believe to be human nature.
In short, I think the response in the meme doesn’t accurately engages with the challenge of the claim and would probably fail to convince anyone and probably makes you seem intellectually dishonest from the perspective of the conversation partner.
I don’t believe cowbee is intellectually dishonest, but that they fail to consider the issue from a different perspective, as we all do daily.
The solution to ignorance is education, not humouring the ignorant. People need to have a basic understanding of the world around them if they are to improve it in any manner. Unfortunately, that involves learning some technical terms. Yes, some people will be confused, but realising that you are confused is the first step in learning something new.
Sorry to be like that but ignorance towards what your conversation partner expresses can only be solved by education. And without proper conversations, no education is possible.
I think you’ll also find that the upvote to downvote ratio is very positive, few people are commenting expressly to agree with me, while those who disagree feel compelled to respond. Further, there is a strain of liberal economics that believes Capitalism is the natural end result, the Thatcherite “there is no alternative.”
I don’t know what you are trying to tell me.
Why is the ratio important? Is a anti-capitalism take on .ml being popular evidence for anything that is relevant to my comment or the discussion at large? If I had to guess, I would say you imply that people who up vote understand the difference between trading with currency and capitalism, which I would generally doubt that assumption. People liking trump posts probably don’t understand traffics. You get my point. Additionally, my confusion about the relevance of ratio is properly best highlighted by the fact that my critic was about the meme in general, how that meme gets perceived in e.g. this community is beside the point. Deportation memes are probably well received in trump communities. That doesn’t make them good arguments or an good thing to express. Could you assist me in understanding the relevance?
The second part, I agree with you and I disagree with the statement. Obviously it isn’t without alternatives.
My point is that the response you pointed at with people pushing back is a minority of those who chose to engage with the post, though a majority of those commenting. Using the presense of the comments in the context of them being the minority of responses I think doesn’t actually point to people not understanding the difference between Capitalism and commerce, IMO.
Well, there we have a disagreement. I don’t think people press on like indicates a careful consideration of the argument and understanding of the argument presented. Look at how popular some of e.g. Elon musk’s dumbest posts are.
I am judging the comments as their display some understanding and you are probably right that there is a bias in the dataset.
In the end of the day, my argument boils down to, Do you believe that the average person saying “capitalism is human nature” uses your definition of capitalism? Or that they are just vaguely reference something that they don’t really want to argue?
Do you believe that the average person saying “capitalism is human nature” uses your definition of capitalism? Or that they are just vaguely reference something that they don’t really want to argue?
If they’re mis-using terms why should they not be corrected? Capitalism isn’t “trade” by any acceptable definition. Ppl should be educated and enlightened, not dumbed down to.
They should be corrected but you should correct them and not just tell them that it is only 500years old as it ignores the misunderstanding and avoids having a proper conversation.
Saying “technically capitalism is only 500 years old and human societies are much much older, what exactly do you mean when you say capitalism?” Is encouraging communication, understanding and knowledge seeking.
Saying “it is only 500 years old” sounds like you tell them that it is 500 years old as a theory and not necessarily as a practice. Which is obviously not the point that the person is interested in, as they would be interested in the age of the practice and not theory. So they perceive you as dodging the claim with a distraction. (Important: I am not saying it is older as a practice but that someone could easily understand it as that)
I don’t see anyone here discouraging communication, and we’ve provided links that should help ppl get past the misdefinitions.
I have no way of knowing the average, but without doubt there is a large school of economic thought that believes we have arrived at the “most optimal” form of society. It’s the whole notion behind “there is no alternative.” These people fully acknowledge Capitalism as it truly exists, not as commerce, but believe it to be all there can be.
Some do confuse Capitalism for Commerce, but that’s a much weaker argument and thus less interesting to debunk, pretty much no academic uses those terms as such. Yet, these very same academics will claim Capitalism is itself Human Nature as it in their eyes epitomizes the ability to trade, which earlier societies did not in the same capacity.
This is a very interesting thread. Thanks.
When I think of the statement “capitalism is human nature”, my interpretation is more along the lines of:
If you create human society and let it evolve in an un-constrained manner, there is a large probability that you will at some point pass through a period of capitalism.
This is not about it being “optimal for society” but is rather a meta-stable state that is easy to arrive at given a simple set of rules and initial conditions. “Human nature” refers to those rules and initial conditions. It doesn’t mean that it is a good thing, it is not unavoidable, and it is not likely to represent a global optimum or the final point in human society’s evolution.
I’m not saying that I think that this is the general interpretation. It is just how I interpret it.
You’re 90% of the way to the Marxist concept of Historical Materialism, actually. Have you studied it prior to writing this?
Edit: also, good work on Mander! I don’t participate in it much, but it’s a very cool concept. I love specialized instances, and think that that’s the true benefit of Lemmy as a platform, not endlessly making large general instances in a race to best replicate Reddit.
I don’t think the Marxist definition of capitalism lines up with the colloquial definition. Colloquially, it’s thought of as systems in which money is exchanged for goods and services. As opposed to communism, where it is not. (These are both oversimplified)
When people say capitalism has been around for thousands of years, what they mean is the colloquial definition. Redefining their terms with the Marxist version doesn’t address their actual point.
The reason why this “colloquial definition” is this way is so that capitalists can convince the masses that capitalism is natural “because it has always existed” by claiming that antique slave society, feudalism and even late hunter gatherer society were actually capitalist. This isn’t a neutral definition that is as valid as the other, it is a lie crafted for propaganda purposes and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Language changes over time, and technical words are often misunderstood. It is definitely unfortunate, but I don’t think it is some sort of conspiracy.
Also just thought of this pertinent quote by William Casey, the CIA director during the 1980s:
We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
Control of language and ideas is a critical part of cultural hegemony:
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society (the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores) so that their imposed, ruling-class world view becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
If you live in the USA, you’ve probably already seen this a dozen times in your lifetime: Anti-unionism becomes “Right to work”, colonized peoples become “terrorists”, social support becomes “Welfare mothers”, immigrants become “illegal aliens”, petit bourgeiosie and the working class gets confused into “middle class”.
You can call these campaigns to miseducate conspiracies if you like, but they enter the public lexicon via mass inundation from capitalist media and educational institutions.
The “colloquial definition” isn’t the colloquial definition, though. Even in liberal academia, it’s the same as the Marxist conception. Using currency for trade isn’t Capitalism, not even in Libertarian theory.
When you survey people on the street, would they use that definition? English isn’t a prescriptive language, the definition is what people use it as.
I don’t survey people on the street, but they likely would be closer to the definition accepted in academia than the mere buying and selling of goods.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what you’re arguing for, here. Capitalism as a term has a very useful and descriptive definition as used by Marx and liberal academics alike. Trying to use Capitalism to refer to concepts like commerce that already have their own words just weakens understanding, rather than strengthening it.
I don’t survey people on the street, but they likely would be closer to the definition accepted in academia than the mere buying and selling of goods.
I think that’s optimistic. The average persons understanding of these concepts is very limited. They’d most likely call ancient Rome “capitalist”, because “they’re not communist”.
That’s the average persons understanding. There’s capitalism and there’s communism, and communism is when you own nothing and everyone is poor and capitalism is everything not-communism. It’s deeply disappointing but that’s what you’re up against.
So when an intellectual person says “capitalism is human nature”, it means something completely different from when an average person says it. To both the 400-years argument won’t make sense.
An intellectual will argue that it naturally came about, so it must be human nature for it to arise so prominently. An average person will laugh in your face “because Rome wasn’t communist”. Neither is correct in their own way, but they’re also not going to be convinced by the 400 years argument. One doesn’t believe you, the other doesn’t care.
Historical examples of proto-socialism or communal living would be a stronger counterpoint imo. Not because it’s more correct in a theoretical sense, but because it more directly challenges the core of the opposing sides argument.
Most people wouldn’t call feudalism “Capitalism” either. It isn’t a stretch to see the slave-driven society in Rome as non-Capitalist as well. I don’t see it as that optimistic, if I’m being honest.
The reason I don’t directly bring up tribal societies as more fitting for “human nature” is that all Modes of Production have been a result of “human nature” as it historically shifts from one Mode of Production to another.
I think you’d be surprised how poor the general state of education is… I think it’s also in part why left-wing politicians lately are failing to get traction with the lower-educated. They speak in a way that doesn’t resonate, and that’s in part because they’re working with different assumptions and definitions.
It’s what people like Trump do understand very well, he speaks like they speak to each other. As a result, even if they don’t fully follow along, it makes more sense to them.
I think education is certainly poor, but the ability for the Working Class to grasp the essense of Capitalism is quite easy, as we all work within the boundaries of it.
When someone says capitalism is human nature, I don’t think they mean that industrial automation allowing unskilled workers is human nature. So they’re using a different meaning of capitalism. To address their concern, you would show counter examples of large groups of people working together for a common good rather than their own enrichment. Rather than just saying they’re using the word wrong.
I answered this in this comment.
Do you think you can have effective communism with only self interested parties? That was my take away from your comment, that you can get communism as a logical extension of greedy motives?
Sure? I don’t really see why not, nor is that an accurate view of humanity anyways.
Somewhere between every man (and woman) for her (him) self and a general safety net for all the truth lies. And it’s probably closer to the safety net. There’s an awful lot of last stupid people, a few hardworking smart and educated people, lots of hardworking smart people and a few handful of rich assholes. Somehow we’re all trapped in this flying ball of dirt.
One day we’ll all be hardworking, smart, educated, and have our needs all met, and we won’t be trapped, either.
a general safety net for all
Why shouldn’t there be a safety net for all?
That’s my oversimplification of socialism/Communism. I believe that there’s definetly plenty of the basic stuff to keep people from going homeless and hungry. The governments should provide at least that. Then above that you can work to buy a computer and a phone or fancy pants. A safety net should exist. And it can be basic so the rich don’t complain. “Why should they get X if they didn’t work Y”. Because by the same token, how is it possible for one man to earn thousands of times more than another?
When the rich bourgies complain about how someone “didn’t work for their money” we can just take away all the porkies money since they didn’t do work at all
