- 17 Feb 2024 05:24
#15304646
Reification is a bad mental habit, and you are right to reject it @Rich - but rejecting reification is not the same thing as actually merging all economic systems and stages of economic history into a single mess of pottage. There are distinctions between them, and those distinctions are clear enough to allow us to refer to concepts called “feudalism” or “capitalism” or “socialism”.
We do have the same economic system that we had in Neolithic times, but only in terms of the most basic fundamentals, such as bartering or long-distance trade routes and the like. But even something as fundamental as a medium of exchange - currency - was only invented about three thousand years ago, well into historical times, and there have been huge changes since then - and yes, revolutionary changes. For example, most workers now no longer own their own means of production, which is just another way of saying that cottage industries are no longer a thing, but have to seek employment from a third party which does own the necessary means of production. Why is this, @Rich? Look at history. In particular, look at the history of what happened in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word “revolution” is not too strong to describe what happened.
Rich wrote:I don't believe in capitalism in the same way that i don't believe in Jesus. Its not that I think that Jesus i a bad person / God, it just that I severely doubt he ever existed and certainly don't believe he's around now, sitting in the heavens, interfering in human affairs.
Reification is a bad mental habit, and you are right to reject it @Rich - but rejecting reification is not the same thing as actually merging all economic systems and stages of economic history into a single mess of pottage. There are distinctions between them, and those distinctions are clear enough to allow us to refer to concepts called “feudalism” or “capitalism” or “socialism”.
We fundamentally have the same economic system today that we've had for the least 5000 years and probably considerably longer going right back into the deep Neolithic. When you ask people what distinguishes capitalism from these supposed other earlier systems, all you get is some hand waving. The Romans didn't have joint stock companies in the way we do, but this was just a totally unsurprising lack of development of financial technology, its not because we've had some sort of revolution in the relations of the means of production.
We do have the same economic system that we had in Neolithic times, but only in terms of the most basic fundamentals, such as bartering or long-distance trade routes and the like. But even something as fundamental as a medium of exchange - currency - was only invented about three thousand years ago, well into historical times, and there have been huge changes since then - and yes, revolutionary changes. For example, most workers now no longer own their own means of production, which is just another way of saying that cottage industries are no longer a thing, but have to seek employment from a third party which does own the necessary means of production. Why is this, @Rich? Look at history. In particular, look at the history of what happened in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word “revolution” is not too strong to describe what happened.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Marx (Groucho)