[MememyselfandIJK]

@SolarCross I can answer some of them:

You have listed 5 economic models under the title "socialist economics", however I asked for an elaboration of "communism" as an economic system. Is socialism synonymous with communism? Or is it one kind of socialism? If so which one? If it is something other than socialism then how does it work?

The easiest way to understand communism is as a subset of socialism which not only advocates for nationalization of industry but also organization of society in the style of a commune. It is not very different and communism can exist or be absent in almost any type of socialism. It is not exactly synonymous with socialism, but it is so close that they are often mistakenly used interchangeably. It also tends to be a little more radical or authoritarian (but not always)

Some of the socialist economic models listed might otherwise be called, without being misleading, a variant of capitalism or are socialism which works hand in hand with and depends on capitalism.. For example Sweden's mixed economy or China's state managed market economy. Is revolution needed as a prerequisite for these economies?

A mixed economy is a combination of socialism and capitalism where the state allows for partial redistribution of wealth, while a market economy is one in which the state can compete with private businesses (not 100% sure about this definition. If someone says something else go with what they say). You are right that is a combination of Capitalism and Socialism, where the economy remains chiefly capitalist but socialism fixes the worst abuses. The necessity of a revolution is hotly debated. The moderates (Democratic socialists) state that socialism can be achieved through reform, while the less moderate say that capitalism is so corrupt that it is easier to start from scratch via a revolution.

I will leave the others up to you @ingliz

[ingliz]

Public Enterprise Centrally Planned Economy in which all property is owned by the State and all key economic decisions are made centrally by the State.

Public Enterprise State-Managed Market Economy, one form of market socialism which attempts to use the price mechanism to increase economic efficiency, while all decisive productive assets remain in the ownership of the State.

Public Enterprise Employee Managed Market Economies, another form of market socialism in which publicly owned, employee-managed production units engage in free market exchange of goods and services with one another as well as with final consumers.

Public Enterprise Participatory Planning, an economy featuring social ownership of the means of production with allocation based on an integration of decentralized democratic planning.

A mixed economy, where public and private ownership are mixed, and where industrial planning is ultimately subordinate to market allocation, the model generally adopted by social democrats.


Source: Hahnel and Albert, A Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics


ps. The definitions are fine, as far as they go, but it's probably best you ignore the book. Participatory economics is a bit airy fairy pie in the sky. Not a surprise when Albert is an anarchist and Hahnel, a product of the New Left, a fellow traveller sympathetic to libertarian socialism.

[SolarCross]

History, like everything, moves through a dialectic process. Understanding how change occurs is important.

Feudalism led to capitalism; capitalism will lead to socialism; socialism will lead to communism.

Dialectics is as much metaphysical pseudo-science as the Dianetics of the Scientologists is, and sticking the word "materialism" after it changes that not a jot.

Change happens for innumerable reasons and there are innumerable interacting forces and agents but diamat is spurious as a model of it. There is a reason that diamat exists nowhere in the conceptual toolbox of real scientists and it is the same reason Dianetics is not there.

Feudalism didn't give rise to capitalism that is a "just so" story that has no basis in fact. The commerce of merchants existed the world over (at least everywhere remotely "civilised") since the earliest days of civilisation, it existed before, alongside and after "feudalism" this commerce became "capitalism" when the merchants hooked up their industry to science and mathematics. The steam engine is a nearer cause of "capitalism" than feudalism and feudalism did not cause the steam engine. Even if by chance the steam engine had been invented by a tinkering aristocrat that is not a casual link worthy of mention.

Whatever socialism is it not an inevitable stage in history and a necessary consequence of capitalism and so neither is communism, whatever that is, the successor to socialism. These supposed "Iron Laws" of history are a spurious and unfounded fiction, as much so as certain Christians' prediction of the Rapture or the Shia prediction of the return of the 12th imam.

In the end true believers such as yourself will be as disappointed in future as any Twelver.

[Decky]

it is misleading to say 97 is below average even if it technically true.

Maths is really not your strong point then. "It is misleading to say 2 add 2 is four even if it is technically true."

[MememyselfandIJK]

@SolarCross 97 being below average is not misleading. Besides for the reason that @Decky gave, the sample size is most likely very large (If someone could find the study, that could be helpful for analyzing it), ensuring that the data is very inaccurate. If I only tested 10 people, it would be misleading because it is such a small sample size the fluctuations could be huge. But if you test 10,000 people or more the data becomes much more representative and valid trends will be reinforced.

As for dialectic materialism, it is a valid method of induction when there is no controlled setting to test your hypothesis in (especially in philosophy). It is not accepted scientifically (for very good reasons) but we simply have not been able to "run socialism" in a controlled environment. However, Marxist historiography is widely accepted and discussed.

For a brief overview of Marx's dialectic materialism:

[The Immortal Goon]

In the end true believers such as yourself will be as disappointed in future as any Twelver.

I think that you should take an objective look at how this discussion has gone.

You made a claim that, you now admit, was completely fictitious and based not on facts, but presumably how you felt at the time.

I provided resources to read.

Others provided subjects to look into.

You did not read any of it, and instead threw a temper tantrum about what you feel like we might think, and then provided an emotional case based upon your ignorance with no evidence in any way whatsoever.

Am I, the one that has done the work, that you yourself said has, "An encyclopedic," knowledge of the topic, that has sources and citations, the "true believer?"

Or are you, the person that has provided no sourcing, no citations, has refused to read about the topic, and insisted everybody else change based on your ignorant feelings the, "true believer?"

[MememyselfandIJK]

@SolarCross I agree with @The Immortal Goon that the best course of action is for you to read up on the topic (and learn a little math on the side). If you would like to debate after that then we can set up a fresh thread to do so.

Side note: Why does everyone use the communism section to bash Marxism?

[The Immortal Goon]

Side note: Why does everyone use the communism section to bash Marxism?

1. In the most standard parlance, communists are Marxists. Further, all communists are socialists—though not all socialists are communists. There are some that try to claim a different type of communism (such as yourself) though most would probably place you as Utopian Socialist (as unfair as that term may be). And this has been the political rhetoric for more than a century.

2. This particular thread is a dumping ground to stop derailments. When this section was more active, there would often be an interesting discussion that would get derailed when someone came in and said, "Have you ever thought about how Marx is evil?" Initially that just got dumped in this super-thread so that it wouldn't derail further.

3. In time, this super-thread has become something of a museum of the kind of emotional jihad that capitalists take on when they try to come in and make an intellectual suicide attack on Marxism. I use that rhetoric purposely. As this last bout has shown, mostly it's people who are adamantly misinformed and refuse to learn more. They just want to—I don't know—curry favour with their feelings or their God or whatever and make a flailing attack.

In this vein, you can actually watch the quality of rightwing posters decline.

[MememyselfandIJK]

@The Immortal Goon Thanks. I'm still relatively new around here (about a month) so I am still learning the patterns.

I am aware that I am more of a utopian socialist rather than a communist, but when people ask I usually just say communist because most socialists are too moderate, people tend to understand "Communist" more than "Utopian socialist" (not that they understand either very well), and it best reflects the kinds of groups I hang out with online. I am a big fan Saint-Simon's work during the late 18th century/early 19th centuries, and I do argue with communists on certain points such as the source of authority and other, finer points.

In this vein, you can actually watch the quality of rightwing posters decline.

I already have.

[SolarCross]

I think that you should take an objective look at how this discussion has gone.

Yeah that was so objective.

At this point many questions have gone unanswered. My claim about your diamat metaphysics passed unchallenged by yourself. @MememyselfandIJK attempt at a defence was laughably weak.

It remains that socialisms might be economic systems that are basically just variants of capitalism with red rebranding but communism remains undescribed. Communism can't be an economic system if it has no economy and no system, it's just a vague promised land. One might as well call the Rapture an economic system.

As for the patronising suggestion to read more marx, the answer has to be no because his writing style is unengaging and the content vacuous. I don't have infinite time, there are a lot of good and informative reads out there that I should prioritise far over the likes of Marx, or Scientology or anything else like that.

[ingliz]

I don't have infinite time

So you have deliberately chosen to argue from ignorance and wonder why everyone laughs?

[SolarCross]

So you have deliberately chosen to argue from ignorance and wonder why everyone laughs?

I have acknowledged I haven't read everything, so what? I haven't read everything on Scientology either. I get the commie style of discourse, imitated from Marx himself it seems, say vacuous things then insult everyone who fails to be impressed, I just don't find it persuasive.

[The Immortal Goon]

At this point many questions have gone unanswered. My claim about your diamat metaphysics passed unchallenged by yourself.

I linked several sources, but you refuse to read them. What else is a goon to do?

As for everything else you said, these are apparently very real feelings for you. However, they came from a place of ignorance since you refuse to learn anything even remedial about the topic.

If I went into a forum about engineering, I would read a couple primers about engineering first.

If, for some reason, I decided to go into this engineering forum without any knowledge of engineering and tell everyone what I think about engineering and then insist I was right and the engineers were wrong--And then they gave me links on which to read about engineering, I would read them.

You have decided to not to do the initial reading, not to do the reading you are given, and have doubled down on how your ignorant feelings about the topic are somehow superior to both the very well read and the people that have done the remeadial reading about the topic.

What, exactly, do you expect us to say?

Congratulations, you have proven that you can go into a forum completely ignorant, look completely ignorant, and then brag about your ignorance.

then insult everyone who fails to be impressed,

Oh, here's a surprise--The rightwinger wants us all to acknowledge what a victim he has been.

I'm very sorry that we didn't acknowledge your feelings and refusal to engage with facts. That must have been very triggering when we provided you with sources and citations.

We can make a new thread in a different forum, a safe place, where you won't be expected to know anything and can just argue with your unique feelings instead of having these mean people expect you to know about what you're talking about.

[MememyselfandIJK]

@MememyselfandIJK attempt at a defence was laughably weak.

May I ask how so?

[SolarCross]

linked several sources, but you refuse to read them. What else is a goon to do?

You didn't link anything countering my claim on diamat. That withering of the state thing you linked to was supposedly to expand on communism as an economic system. I did read that, but found it full of just so unfounded suppositions it wasn't worth reading, it explained nothing and wasn't worth comment. In the end communism is nothing just magic as in this:

The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labor has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability.

From the moment all members of society, or at least the vast majority, have learned to administer the state themselves, have taken this work into their own hands, have organized control over the insignificant capitalist minority, over the gentry who wish to preserve their capitalist habits and over the workers who have been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism--from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether. The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the “state” which consists of the armed workers, and which is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word", the more rapidly every form of state begins to wither away.

Moreover it is a little sad you can't explain anything yourself in your own words instead of just linking to something written more than a hundred years ago.

Oh, here's a surprise--The rightwinger wants us all to acknowledge what a victim he has been.

I said the insults you use as a substitute for argument is unpersuasive not offensive. I have a thick skin to go with my thick head, consequently I have never been injured by words. But way to go to prove my point by doubling down on the insults through implying I am some sissyfied college SJW brainwashed by creepy marxist professors who gets triggered over nothing. lol.

I am happy for you to call me an illiterate, a crybaby or whatever else and honestly fair is fair i am not always very polite myself, so there is that, but it amounts to a distraction that persuades me of nothing. I wonder how many converts you can really win that way?
Potemkin has a much better technique in that respect, he is always so polite even utilising a judicious amount of flattery. He has obviously taken to heart the expression "you kill more flies with honey than with vinegar". He is a lot cleverer than you isn't he?

May I ask how so?

You said:

As for dialectic materialism, it is a valid method of induction when there is no controlled setting to test your hypothesis in (especially in philosophy). It is not accepted scientifically (for very good reasons) but we simply have not been able to "run socialism" in a controlled environment. However, Marxist historiography is widely accepted and discussed.

You don't say why it is a valid method of induction, so that is an empty opinion. If I could be bothered to I could just counter that lazily by gainsaying with an equally empty opinion by saying that it isn't a valid method of induction and create an impasse of your word against mine. That's a stalemate that proves nothing either way. Consequently to "win" you will have to resort to insults (as TIG would) and putting on airs and graces effectively claiming to be superior in intellect for the effect of tilting the table to make you word worth more than mine. Basically an underhanded "appeal to authority".

After that you basically capitulate when you acknowledge that it is worthless scientifically with the poor excuse that socialism can't be run in a controlled environment, which is poor because we aren't even talking about socialism at this point we are talking about dialectical materialism and because there are lots of theoretical models and techniques that are accepted into the toolbox of real scientists even though they haven't and can't be tested in a controlled environment, that goes for cosmologists and earth scientists particularly.

As a final attempt to mitigate your capitulation you claim:

"However, Marxist historiography is widely accepted and discussed."

I find it very doubtful that it is "widely" accepted but this also amounts to that variant of "appeal to authority" which is "it's popular so there must be something good about it". Once upon a time the mystical Trinity was "widely accepted and discussed" so what does that say for that?

[MememyselfandIJK]

You don't say why it is a valid method of induction, so that is an empty opinion. If I could be bothered to I could just counter that lazily by gainsaying with an equally empty opinion by saying that it isn't valid method of induction and create an impasse of your word against mine. That's a stalemate that proves nothing either way. Consequently to "win" you will have to resort to insults (as TIG would) and putting on airs an graces effectively claiming to be superior in intellect for the effect of tilting the table to make you word worth more than mine. Basically an underhanded "appeal to authority". After that you basically capitulate when you acknowledge that it is worthless scientifically with the poor excuse that socialism can't be run in a controlled environment, which is poor because we aren't even talking about socialism at this point we are talking about dialectical materialism and because there are lots of theoretical models and techniques that are accepted into the toolbox of real scientists even though they haven't and can't be tested in a controlled environment, that goes for cosmologists and earth scientists particularly.As a final attempt to mitigate your capitulation you claim:"However, Marxist historiography is widely accepted and discussed." I find it very doubtful that it "widely" accepted but this also amounts to a that variant of "appeal to authority" which is "it's popular so there must be something good about it". Once upon a time the mystical Trinity was "widely accepted and discussed" so what does that say for that?

That post was trying to define dialectic materialism (It didn't seem like you knew what it was) and give context. It was not meant to construct an argument. Why do you think I included the diagram?

[SolarCross]

That post was trying to define dialectic materialism (It didn't seem like you knew what it was) and give context. It was not meant to construct an argument. Why do you think I included the diagram?

Poor old TIG must be so happy that he has you on his side. Whatever you paid for your education it wasn't worth it.

[The Immortal Goon]

You didn't link anything countering my claim on diamat.

Your claim was:

Dialectics is as much metaphysical pseudo-science as the Dianetics of the Scientologists is, and sticking the word "materialism" after it changes that not a jot.

Which was essentially a crass insult that doesn't mean anything—There is nothing of substance to refute.

What do you suppose someone on an engineering forum would say if I challenged them to respond to:

"Engineering is as much metaphysical pseudo-science as the Dianetics of the Scientologists is, and sticking the word 'engine' in it changes that not a jot."

It's too stupid to even engage with. So I refrained from doing so.

That withering of the state thing you linked to was supposedly to expand on communism as an economic system. I did read that, but found it full of just so unfounded suppositions it wasn't worth reading, it explained nothing and wasn't worth comment.

That was placed in order to help explain the theoretical transition from socialism to communism.

The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labor has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability.

Do you find it difficult to conceptualize a post-scarcity economy?

What Lenin does here is essentially simply Marx for an audience less familiar with philosophical walls of text:

Real wealth manifests itself, rather – and large industry reveals this – in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends. Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself. (What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth. The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high. ‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society.’ (The Source and Remedy etc. 1821, p. 6.)

Since you seem to have had difficulty with Lenin, I'm presuming the Marx isn't going to help—but there's the context. To boil it down more simply I'll ask this:

Why did the advent and proliferation of computers mean people spent more time at work despite the fact that we are individually thousands of times more efficient?

Why do we throw away good food before market, trash bottles with labels upside-down, and scrap shoes that didn't sell instead of giving them to people that need it?

The answer, obviously, is the profit motive. If we were to further innovate and scrap the profit motive than we wouldn't have to work that much and the society around it would be different than it is now. Would this be easy? No, the rest of what Lenin wrote was about how difficult that transition would be. He always claimed that the USSR wasn't even socialist, let alone communist.

Moreover it is a little sad you can't explain anything yourself in your own words instead of just linking to something written more than a hundred years ago.

Since you seem to refuse to learn anything about the topics you bring up, it seemed that the most simple way to express the idea was to make a short statement and then use a citation so that you could learn more if you wanted to do so.

Obviously this was giving you far too much credit.

I said the insults you use as a substitute for argument is unpersuasive not offensive.

I did not claim that you said it was offensive.

I have a thick skin to go with my thick head, consequently I have never been injured by words. But way to go to prove my point by doubling down on the insults through implying I am some sissyfied college SJW brainwashed by creepy marxist professors who gets triggered over nothing.

I am not implying anything. All liberals relying on their emotions instead of fact are the same to me. Whether you cry about the Democrats or the Republicans makes no difference.

I am happy for you to call me an illiterate, a crybaby or whatever else and honestly fair is fair i am not always very polite myself, so there is that, but it amounts to a distraction that persuades me of nothing. I wonder how many converts you can really win that way?

Your feelings about this are irrelevant to me. However, since you seem to be very emotional, the thought was that if I could shame you into learning about what you are whining about we might be able to have a discussion about it.

You seem to be more interested in talking about your feelings and proudly remaining ignorant than engaging in discussion, however.

Potemkin has a much better technique in that respect, he is always so polite even utilising a judicious amount of flattery. He has obviously taken to heart the expression "you kill more flies with honey than with vinegar". He is a lot cleverer than you isn't he?

While Potemkin is quite clever, I feel justified in asserting that he'd agree that his genius isn't limited to a measurement about how you think he makes you feel about yourself.

If you want to be coddled and for your feelings to be acknowledged, I'm afraid that I can only do what I always do— link you to something that may be of interest to you.

If you want to talk about Marxism, this forum is still here.

[SolarCross]

Your claim was:

Dialectics is as much metaphysical pseudo-science as the Dianetics of the Scientologists is, and sticking the word "materialism" after it changes that not a jot.

That was just the opening line of my argument. I followed that up with this:

Change happens for innumerable reasons and there are innumerable interacting forces and agents but diamat is spurious as a model of it. There is a reason that diamat exists nowhere in the conceptual toolbox of real scientists and it is the same reason Dianetics is not there.

Feudalism didn't give rise to capitalism that is a "just so" story that has no basis in fact. The commerce of merchants existed the world over (at least everywhere remotely "civilised") since the earliest days of civilisation, it existed before, alongside and after "feudalism" this commerce became "capitalism" when the merchants hooked up their industry to science and mathematics. The steam engine is a nearer cause of "capitalism" than feudalism and feudalism did not cause the steam engine. Even if by chance the steam engine had been invented by a tinkering aristocrat that is not a casual link worthy of mention.

Whatever socialism is it not an inevitable stage in history and a necessary consequence of capitalism and so neither is communism, whatever that is, the successor to socialism. These supposed "Iron Laws" of history are a spurious and unfounded fiction, as much so as certain Christians' prediction of the Rapture or the Shia prediction of the return of the 12th imam.

In the end true believers such as yourself will be as disappointed in future as any Twelver.

There are no great minds here, myself included of course, so definitely this is not the best ever refutation possible, but diamat is beneath the notice of great minds and so is this particular corner of the internet, thus you will have to make do with me as I make do with you.

Actually I am not even refuting it so much as observing that it is spurious but I will say more if that is not good enough for you. Dialectics is taken whole cloth from Hegel (whom in turn had taken his ideas from ancient philosophers) but Marx's small innovation is to say Hegel's metaphysics doesn't just apply to ideas it also applies to the material context. Engels takes it upon himself to adapt Hegel's dialectical laws for a material context. There are three:
1. Stuff changes
2. Sometimes changes are dramatic.
3. Things that end something eventually are ended themselves by something else.

So far so good and so trivial, the wheels come off really in how this ragged and crude metaphysics borrowed from ancient times is used to divine a futurology for mankind.

So Marx and gang who want a future social and economic arrangement called communism adapt the pre-scientific observations of ancient people to justify a "just so" narrative in which capitalism is replaced by what they want to happen, wishful thinking as pseudo-science. As faux proof of this narrative they try to create a comparable narrative for the past where capitalism is supposedly replacing feudalism. As I mentioned before this a false narrative because capitalism if it is anything is the practice of commerce which existed since the beginning of civilisation, it existed before feudalism, alongside it and after it.

If "capitalism" is different from the commerce of Rome or Qin dynasty China in any substantial way then it comes from the inclusion scientific, mathematical and technological knowledge to improve production and distribution, with the English Industrial Revolution just being a particularly rapid increase in aggregate productivity.

This is in no causal way related to feudalism which is simply the practice of paying soldiers with land rights instead of coin.

Futurology is that easy only when the initial conditions are exceedingly simple and interacting factors are exceedingly few, this is clearly not the case for the course of global civilisation.

What else need I say?

[The Immortal Goon]

So far so good and so trivial, the wheels come off really in how this ragged and crude metaphysics borrowed from ancient times is used to divine a futurology for mankind.

It is certainly a misconception that Dialectic Materialism is used primarily to become fortune-tellers. In this very thread there are lots of examples of people demanding answers for how things in the future are supposed to be, only to be disappointed that we cannot, nor do we clain, to be able to see the future.

So Marx and gang who want a future social and economic arrangement called communism adapt the prescientific observations of ancient people to justify a "just so" narrative in which capitalism is replaced by what they want to happen

It is of interest to me that you apply an emotional motive onto the subject here. One may suspect that this claim itself comes from an emotional place. Regardless, Marx explains developing the theory while at the same time refuting your narrative and warning against doing exactly what you claim he is doing. I think of particular interest is the end paragraph where he distinguishes the physical parts of historical analysis, and the softer stuff that can cloud it:

Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject subordinated to philosophy and history. In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. The deliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts and the division of landed property; the official polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberprasident of the Rhine Province, against the Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Moselle peasantry, and finally the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions. On the other hand, at that time when good intentions “to push forward” often took the place of factual knowledge, an echo of French socialism and communism, slightly tinged by philosophy, was noticeable in the Rheinische Zeitung. I objected to this dilettantism, but at the same time frankly admitted in a controversy with the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung that my previous studies did not allow me to express any opinion on the content of the French theories. When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung conceived the illusion that by a more compliant policy on the part of the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death sentence passed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw from the public stage to my study.

The first work which I undertook to dispel the doubts assailing me was a critical re-examination of the Hegelian philosophy of law; the introduction to this work being published in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher issued in Paris in 1844. My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term “civil society”; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

If "capitalism" is different from the commerce of Rome or Qin dynasty China in any substantial way then it comes from the inclusion scientific, mathematical and technological knowledge to primavera production and distribution, with the English Industrial Revolution just being a rapid increase in aggregate productivity.

You seem to be defining, "capitalism," as trade. Which nobody from Adam Smith on down does. Adam Smith is important here as he is the first to describe the new system that is developing around him.

Adam Smith explains, in his view, how the economic system began to change:

In consequence of these popular notions, all the different nations of Europe have studied, though to little purpose, every possible means of accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. Spain and Portugal, the proprietors of the principal mines which supply Europe with those metals, have either prohibited their exportation under the severest penalties, or subjected it to a considerable duty.*4 The like prohibition seems anciently to have made a part of the policy of most other European nations. It is even to be found, where we should least of all expect*5 to find it, in some old Scotch acts of Parliament, which forbid under heavy penalties the carrying gold or silver forth of the kingdom.*6 The like policy anciently took place both in France and England.

IV.1.6
When those countries became commercial, the merchants found this prohibition, upon many occasions, extremely inconvenient. They could frequently buy more advantageously with gold and silver than with any other commodity the foreign goods which they wanted, either to import into their own, or to carry to some other foreign country. They remonstrated, therefore, against this prohibition as hurtful to trade.

IV.1.7
They represented, first, that the exportation of gold and silver in order to purchase foreign goods, did not always diminish the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. That, on the contrary, it might frequently increase that quantity;*7 because, if the consumption of foreign goods was not thereby increased in the country, those goods might be re-exported to foreign countries, and, being there sold for a large profit, might bring back much more treasure than was originally sent out to purchase them. Mr. Mun compares this operation of foreign trade to the seed-time and harvest of agriculture.

If we only behold, [says he] the actions of the husbandman in the seed-time, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman. But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase of his action.*8
IV.1.8
They represented, secondly, that this prohibition could not hinder the exportation of gold and silver, which, on account of the smallness of their bulk in proportion to their value, could easily be smuggled abroad.*9 That this exportation could only be prevented by a proper attention to, what they called, the balance of trade.*10 That when the country exported to a greater value than it imported, a balance became due to it from foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to it in gold and silver, and thereby increased the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. But that when it imported to a greater value than it exported, a contrary balance became due to foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to them in the same manner, and thereby diminished that quantity. That in this case to prohibit the exportation of those metals could not prevent it, but only, by making it more dangerous, render it more expensive. That the exchange was thereby turned more against the country which owed the balance than it otherwise might have been; the merchant who purchased a bill upon the foreign country being obliged to pay the banker who sold it, not only for the natural risk, trouble, and expence of sending the money thither, but for the extraordinary risk arising from the prohibition. But that the more the exchange was against any country, the more the balance of trade became necessarily against it; the money of that country becoming necessarily of so much less value in comparison with that of the country to which the balance was due. That if the exchange between England and Holland, for example, was five per cent. against England, it would require a hundred and five ounces of silver in England to purchase a bill for a hundred ounces of silver in Holland: that a hundred and five ounces of silver in England, therefore, would be worth only a hundred ounces of silver in Holland, and would purchase only a proportionable quantity of Dutch goods; but that a hundred ounces of silver in Holland, on the contrary, would be worth a hundred and five ounces in England, and would purchase a proportionable quantity of English goods: that the English goods which were sold to Holland would be sold so much cheaper; and the Dutch goods which were sold to England so much dearer by the difference of the exchange; that the one would draw so much less Dutch money to England, and the other so much more English money to Holland, as this difference amounted to: and that the balance of trade, therefore, would necessarily be so much more against England, and would require a greater balance of gold and silver to be exported to Holland.

IV.1.9
Those arguments were partly solid and partly sophistical. They were solid so far as they asserted that the exportation of gold and silver in trade might frequently be advantageous to the country. They were solid, too, in asserting that no prohibition could prevent their exportation when private people found any advantage in exporting them. But they were sophistical in supposing that either to preserve or to augment the quantity of those metals required more the attention of government than to preserve or to augment the quantity of any other useful commodities, which the freedom of trade, without any such attention, never fails to supply in the proper quantity. They were sophistical too, perhaps, in asserting that the high price of exchange necessarily increased what they called the unfavourable balance of trade, or occasioned the exportation of a greater quantity of gold and silver. That high price, indeed, was extremely disadvantageous to the merchants who had any money to pay in foreign countries. They paid so much dearer for the bills which their bankers granted them upon those countries. But though the risk arising from the prohibition might occasion some extraordinary expence to the bankers, it would not necessarily carry any more money out of the country. This expence would generally be all laid out in the country, in smuggling the money out of it, and could seldom occasion the exportation of a single six-pence beyond the precise sum drawn for. The high price of exchange too would naturally dispose the merchants to endeavour to make their exports nearly balance their imports, in order that they might have this high exchange to pay upon as small a sum as possible. The high price of exchange, besides, must necessarily have operated as a tax, in raising the price of foreign goods, and thereby diminishing their consumption.*11 It would tend, therefore, not to increase but to diminish what they called the unfavourable balance of trade, and consequently the exportation of gold and silver.

IV.1.10
Such as they were, however, those arguments convinced the people to whom they were addressed. They were addressed by merchants to parliaments and to the councils of princes, to nobles and to country gentlemen, by those who were supposed to understand trade to those who were conscious to themselves that they knew nothing about the matter. That foreign trade enriched the country, experience demonstrated to the nobles and country gentlemen as well as to the merchants; but how, or in what manner, none of them well knew. The merchants knew perfectly in what manner it enriched themselves. It was their business to know it. But to know in what manner it enriched the country was no part of their business. This subject never came into their consideration but when they had occasion to apply to their country for some change in the laws relating to foreign trade. It then became necessary to say something about the beneficial effects of foreign trade, and the manner in which those effects were obstructed by the laws as they then stood. To the judges who were to decide the business it appeared a most satisfactory account of the matter, when they were told that foreign trade brought money into the country, but that the laws in question hindered it from bringing so much as it otherwise would do. Those arguments therefore produced the wished-for effect. The prohibition of exporting gold and silver was in France and England confined to the coin of those respective countries. The exportation of foreign coin and of bullion was made free. In Holland, and in some other places, this liberty was extended even to the coin of the country. The attention of government was turned away from guarding against the exportation of gold and silver to watch over the balance of trade as the only cause which could occasion any augmentation or diminution of those metals. From one fruitless care it was turned away to another care much more intricate, much more embarrassing, and just equally fruitless. The title of Mun's book, England's Treasure in*12 Foreign Trade, became a fundamental maxim in the political œconomy, not of England only, but of all other commercial countries. The inland or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade. It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it. The country, therefore, could never become either richer or poorer by means of it, except so far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade.

IV.1.11
A country that has no mines of its own must undoubtedly draw its gold and silver from foreign countries in the same manner as one that has no vineyards of its own must draw its wines. It does not seem necessary, however, that the attention of government should be more turned towards the one than towards the other object. A country that has wherewithal to buy wine will always get the wine which it has occasion for; and a country that has wherewithal to buy gold and silver will never be in want of those metals. They are to be bought for a certain price like all other commodities, and as they are the price of all other commodities, so all other commodities are the price of those metals. We trust with perfect security that the freedom of trade, without any attention of government, will always supply us with the wine which we have occasion for: and we may trust with equal security that it will always supply us with all the gold and silver which we can afford to purchase or to employ, either in circulating our commodities, or in other uses.

The rest of the work is, of course, Adam Smith attempting to explain how this new system creates the wealth of nations. Hoarding gold no longer worked.

However, you may note that Smith is usiing exactly what you are accusing Marx of doing--Smith looks to these ideas that people in parliament and trading houses had and presuming the ideas of what were to happen made them happen.

Socialists do the opposite of this. Marx's criticism of Smith (and it's a careful criticism in which he is careful to say that Smith stumbles into the truth more often than not) is that he treats capitalism without historical context as something that is static and does not change. Marx's contribution to Ricardo and Smith and the other giants of economics is to contextualize the development of capitalism as a necessary component into understanding capitalism itself. Hence, by our logic, Rome and the Qin Dynasty were societies in which slave labour was the most prominent means of production—the base upon which the superstructure rested. This was overthrown by feudalism, which itself was overthrown by capitalism. The same mechanics that led to these changes still exist, despite our collective tendency to assume the present is normal and universal.