What Capitalism’s Critics Get Wrong - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14839146
Capitalism is an economic system and an ideology based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investment are determined by the owners of the factors of production in financial and capital markets, and prices and the distribution of goods are mainly determined by competition in the market.

Economists, political economists, and historians have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free market capitalism, welfare capitalism, and state capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership,[8] obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. The degree of competition in markets, the role of intervention and regulation, and the scope of state ownership vary across different models of capitalism; the extent to which different markets are free, as well as the rules defining private property, are matters of politics and policy. Most existing capitalist economies are mixed economies, which combine elements of free markets with state intervention, and in some cases economic planning.

Market economies have existed under many forms of government, in many different times, places, and cultures. The development of capitalist societies, however, marked by a universalization of money-based social relations, a consistently large and system-wide class of workers who must work for wages, and a capitalist class which dominates control of wealth and political power, developed in Western Europe in a process that led to the Industrial Revolution. Capitalist systems with varying degrees of direct government intervention have since become dominant in the Western world and continue to spread.

Capitalism has been criticized for establishing power in the hands of a minority capitalist class that exists through the exploitation of a working class majority; for prioritizing profit over social good, natural resources, and the environment; and for being an engine of inequality and economic instabilities. Supporters believe that it provides better products through competition, creates strong economic growth, yields productivity and prosperity that greatly benefits society, as well as being the most efficient system known for allocation of resources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

What Capitalism’s Critics Get Wrong

Attacking capitalism never seems to go out of style. Over the past 100 years, few institutions have been attacked so fiercely, so falsely and so foolishly.

Yet capitalism’s resilience continues. Governments based on the idea that capitalism is evil and that the state can create wealth by controlling an entire economy have risen and fallen during this period, but capitalism continues to thrive.

Today, it is no longer beyond the pale to say that capitalism has done more good for more people than any other economic arrangement ever devised by man. Capitalist economies such as the United States are prosperous, growing and expansive, creating opportunities and wealth for ever-increasing numbers of people.

“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty,” Thomas Jefferson said, and our Constitution was a major step in that direction. Capitalism is based on free markets, on the opportunities for anyone to enter any market at any time to produce and offer products and services that people want, need and will purchase.

Capitalism is really savings-ism. Fixed capital consists of real estate, factories, machinery, equipment and all other factors of production that can be used to produce and distribute products and services to ever more people. Capital is accumulated only when people refrain from spending everything they earn, saving it instead, and reinvesting it to produce even more goods and services in the future.

America is great because it offers the opportunity for almost everyone to work, save, invest and build capital over time. This accumulated capital can be used to start a business or can be combined with the capital of others to help fund the creation of larger corporations.

Stock markets represent a place where people can pool their capital, invest it in enterprises, along with the capital of others, to produce and sell products and services and earn profits and dividends, which are then distributed to the stockholders as the owners of the business.

Capitalism depends on a combination of productivity and self-discipline or self-denial. It requires the ability to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term. It accepts and helps tame human nature.

As Steve Forbes once observed in a lecture to the Heritage Foundation, capitalism “encourages ambitious individuals to engage in peaceful pursuit instead of plundering their neighbors.”

“An entrepreneur offers something — a product or service. You do not have to accept it. It is a voluntary transaction. It encourages cooperation,” he explained.

America is great because it provides a legal and social framework consisting of clearly understood laws, legally sanctioned contracts, and a stable currency that creates sufficient security for people to save, invest and risk their capital in the anticipation of achieving greater wealth in the future.

America is great because its capitalist system enables the average person to start with little and build a substantial estate over the course of a working lifetime. America has more millionaires and billionaires than all the other countries in the world. Fully 80 percent of wealthy Americans started at the bottom and earned their money in one generation as the result of starting in building capitalistic enterprises.

Where some nations have age-old caste systems or entrenched class systems from which escape to a better life is next to impossible, the free-market capitalist system in the United States presents opportunities for every individual to improve his life.

America is great because America is free, and should we ever lose the economic freedom that capitalism secures, our political freedom will also be gravely threatened.

This is why conservatives always champion smaller government. It’s the only way to bring more innovation, more new jobs and more opportunities for more people.

That’s something that capitalism’s critics always seem to overlook, but it helps explain why capitalism has outlasted all of its challengers over the past century.

http://dailysignal.com/2013/12/21/capit ... g-critics/
#14839549
The prosperity is due to mixed economies and heavily regulated markets, unfettered capitalism would destroy society. Capitalism has enormous allocation problems. In addition to being prone to a range of market failures, it produces mountains of waste and useless crap, it leads to massive inequality and poverty, and it ignores many problems that don't offer a strong profit motive(pharma r+d for orphan diseases is a good example).

When you think about it it's not really capitalism that creates prosperity, it's the market mechanism and that can easily be utilized by a socialist society.

Market socialism

Most of the problems in socialist societies may not be due to socialism. They could be attributed to flawed political structures, lack of democracy and transparency, and a lack of cultural commitment to the rule of law.
#14839551
Hindsite wrote:That’s something that capitalism’s critics always seem to overlook, but it helps explain why capitalism has outlasted all of its challengers over the past century.


They may "seem" to overlook the benefits of capitalism, but they don't. Even Marx and Engels go over the benefits in some detail.

In the case of Marxists, however, we dare to suggest that some human institution won't last forever and that there are reasons for it.
#14839562
You're cherry picking.

Ask yourself why the country that claims to be the world's richest has so many working poor. People working full time and yet are on offer for food stamps. Capitalism is fine when it's balance by good governance, but it usually isn't. And all your blah blah blah isn't making Matthew 25 any more of an endorsement of capitalism, full stop.
#14839568
Have you ever wondered why were people so desperate that they were willing to sacrifice their lives by the millions at the end of the nineteenth century, Hindsite? People don't engage in revolution for fun. They much prefer to live out their lives in peace, when given half a chance. It takes a lot - a whole heck of a lot - to push people so hard that they are willing to fight.

And that's the main flaw of capitalism. It never knows when to let up, when to stop pushing people into that corner where they turn and fight like rats. Sure, it's been successful for many centuries, but it's come up against a wall a number of times. Capitalism, as a system, seems addicted to pushing up against people's limits, then edging away. That's worked so far, but it's a very dangerous game. History is full of examples of elites who overplayed their hands, and ended up losing it all.
#14839571
They have become extremely expert at knowing where that line is unfortunately. They have created a science of it. That is why you saw they pushed and backed away. Just experimenting.
#14839628
quetzalcoatl wrote:Have you ever wondered why were people so desperate that they were willing to sacrifice their lives by the millions at the end of the nineteenth century, Hindsite? People don't engage in revolution for fun. They much prefer to live out their lives in peace, when given half a chance. It takes a lot - a whole heck of a lot - to push people so hard that they are willing to fight.

It is not capitalism. It is governments that over regulate and over tax the people into poverty that has caused the problem.
#14839629
Can you specify a regulation that causes undue expenses? My background is in construction, so I am most familiar with building safety regulations. Would you say that the regulations concerning minimum heights of guardrails (42"!) is somehow making guardrails prohibitively expensive?
#14839633
Hindsite wrote:It is not capitalism. It is governments that over regulate and over tax the people into poverty that has caused the problem.


100% agree. Bring in a living minimum wage, close tax holes that allow the rich to pay no tax, bring in tax credits and privatise vital services and Capitalism wouldn't even be an issue for most people. When you are working for no benefit, you look at who has more than they really need and you blame them for their success. Really you should blame the government for allowing the conditions for your poverty to occur in the first place. People of wealth usually have a reason for their wealth.
#14839636
Hindsite wrote:It is not capitalism. It is governments that over regulate and over tax the people into poverty that has caused the problem.

And how does one expect to maintain such a high level of tax in a society where the disproportionate amount of wealth is held by one class that can disproportionately effect the shape and outcome of politics?
Large part of the reason that your average citizen is squeezed to bursting point is because they have little influence over their nation's politics comparatively to those that can lobby governments. Or even threaten them if they're a big enough corporation by saying that if taxes aren't lowered, they'll simply go abroad because the country isn't viable to them being competitive and making a profit.
Basically, if one can even get a more social democratic kind of thing going on, it is in the long run undermined, especially now with transnational corporations making nations states all compete with one another for companies to put their capital and business with them (eg, China's special economic zones really deprived Mexico of a lot of investment they planned for years in trying to make themselves appealing with a lot of tax cut incentives and such, but China won out and Mexico's economy suffered for a lack of capitalist investment.)
Because a capitalist is out to make a profit, and when such standards are raised, it starts making things a lot more costly than setting up shop elsewhere. Though of course one might speak to how it's not like unions raising wages in an indsutry but is state support for what companies lack (as is the case with say Walmart workers in the US relying on state subsidies) but such socialized policies even as they're an insignificant part of the national budget relatively are often attacked with the whole notion of austerity, the intensifying competition for capital.

https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/12641/33292_1.pdf?sequence=1
This is how one of the top 30 Australian directors describes the role of capitaland the freedom of capitalists to invest where they like:

Most governments that I have spoken to have no understanding of private capitalism. Now I have heard people say that you should feel privileged to be committed to invest in Australia. Really! The whole world is our oyster so what is so special about here? New Zealand is the same! Their attitude is we are permitting you to invest. So what! The whole world is on offer to us so what is so good about you? They think that they are the pearls in the oyster of the world. Australians in Canberra are remote from the real world. They don’t understand why you invest. It isn’t something that they have ever been involved in and they say, ‘We have improved the conditions — so now you do your bit’. What do they mean — my turn? We don’t have turns; we put our money out when we think that it’s good for us. That’s all we do. We don’t look for any other reason — it’s not a turn. Not when …Keating or Howard or other politicians say we have made all the conditions right, now it’s up to you to go and do it, unless we can see the market we are not going to invest.14

http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.pdf
Indeed, one can reconstruct Lenin's argument as follows. The more international capital becomes (i.e., the more it does not recognize national boundaries), the more states will compete with each other for capital. The autonomy of states refers to their "freedom" to induce capital to invest within particular national boundaries. The changing status of the state in relation to capital is akin to the transition from serf to wage laborer, from bondage to formally free labor. In short, increasing formal autonomy, far from indicating an increasing strength of the state, reflects a transformation in the character of its subordination to capital. This transformation of world capitalism is reflected in recent theorizing about the autonomy of the state. Such a vision of the world economy sheds light on current interest in "dependent development" and "bringing the state back in" (Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1985). But if my analysis is correct, to recognize the formal autonomy of the state is also to recognize its actual weakness in the present configuration of world capitalism.

What, then, is the significance of imperialism? Imperialism is the vehicle though which capitalism becomes truly international, whereby it plants itself in economically underdeveloped countries and from there repatriates profits to core countries. But once capitalism has established itself at a world level, direct political control of less developed countries is no longer necessary and colonialism loses its raison d'etre. The external constraints of capitalism become internalized within countries in the form of class alliances and class formation (Cardoso and Faletto 1979). As Warren (1980), has put it, imperialism is the pioneer of capitalism, or turning Lenin on his head, capitalism is the highest stage of imperialism.


So to speak of it not being capitalism when poor people are being squeezed to actually imagine capitalism in some narrow way without adequate concern for relations between things so that one can posit one sidedly the good things about capitalism. If you think capitalism is social democracy then you're being historically foolish for treating what was a historical anomaly actually initially instituted by relatively right wingers like Bismarck as a bulwark against the brutality of capitalist economy creating revolution.
When one speaks of prosperity, it also corresponds to deprivation for others.
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To not see the relation is to actively ignore how the conditions that have created such wealth are the same conditions for such severe poverty. It was in fact Hegel that I believe was one of the earlier thinkers to try and understand such conditions he was witnessing around him.
Such a contradiciton is especially glaring in a place like the US, where I can see many homeless people looking through trash as a normal part of the life in LA or that it's not something so odd to see a pregnant woman begging for money.
But of course the blunt notion is that they deserve to be there, by their own individual choices and this serves as the defense for the reality that witness, a reality that isn't "not capitalism".
#14839652
Capitalism hurts people who can't compete for jobs, but it also creates the jobs. As far as the US, it is fairly comfortable for the poor. This reduces the incentive to find a job.
Socialism reduces the desire to work by making it too comfortable for everyone not to work. It also provides no incentive for creating jobs. You basically design the economy and expect everyone to willingly work to support your plan. People see no incentive to do this, so the government ends up forcing them to work to carry out 'the plan '.
Both pure systems suck. Like everything else, the solution is finding the right balance.
To me, this means no foreign ownership and local community ownership of necessities.
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One Degree wrote:Capitalism hurts people who can't compete for jobs, but it also creates the jobs. As far as the US, it is fairly comfortable for the poor. This reduces the incentive to find a job.
Socialism reduces the desire to work by making it too comfortable for everyone not to work. It also provides no incentive for creating jobs. You basically design the economy and expect everyone to willingly work to support your plan. People see no incentive to do this, so the government ends up forcing them to work to carry out 'the plan '.
Both pure systems suck. Like everything else, the solution is finding the right balance.
To me, this means no foreign ownership and local community ownership of necessities.

You can have a job and still suffer, in fact that's what the image of walmart workers are for the industrialized world, people who still need food stamps.
But perhaps you'd gain something into looking at Marx's theory of Alienation.
This situates how work can be so joyless for many, that they don't do the work that they desire out of their own natural creativity, but forced out of the necessity of being deprived of any other means of sustaining themselves.
This is why farmers becomes proletariat, the majority of the worlds population was deprived of property so that it be amassed in the hands of the few and the rest of us must sell our labour power so that it can be sold by the owner of the business or what ever.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

Because people are alienated from the sort of labour that actually naturally flows from them when the product of their work is truly one that belongs to them but which they can share, not for profit of some other prick, they find lifes pleasure outside of work.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
If the result of labor under capitalism is the alienation of the worker in his product, then, Marx reasons, the activity of labor itself must be a process of active alienation, since “the product is after all but the summary of the activity, of production” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, MECW 3:274). He writes that labor under capitalism is active alienation in several respects:

First, the fact that labour is external to the worker, i. e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him--that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity--so is the worker's activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, MECW 3:274)

In this description of the character of labor, Marx turns his attention from the worker's product as accumulated or “dead” labor, to the character of the labor process itself. Labor, Marx thinks, is in reality the essence of free human activity and a process through which human nature can be fully realized. However, under capitalism, labor is so odious that the worker performs labor only because through the sale of his labor-power he can satisfy his private needs. Insofar as the worker's labor-power is not his own, and belongs to a foreign power (the capitalist), labor appears as a denial and a sacrifice of the worker's existence, and as something to be studiously avoided whenever possible.

Because labor takes on such an unattractive character, instead of recognizing the labor process as the essence of human activity, workers feel that they are truly themselves and truly human only when they are at leisure or satisfying those needs which they have in common with animals.

As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal. Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions. (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, MECW 3:275)

Here's a modern piece to relate to the above, about how ragged people are run that anything that makes them feel something good becomes highly addictive to get away from the pain.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233.html

The power of people's labour is instead not seen in people, but in commodities which are then mediated by a particularly abstract thing... money.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/Marx recognized that the science of capitalistic economy, despite its worldly and pleasure-seeking appearance, "is a truly moral science, the most moral of all sciences. Its principal thesis is the renunciation of life and of human needs. The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the public house [ Br., pub], and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt -- your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. Everything which the economist takes from you in the way of life and humanity, he restores to you in the form of money and wealth. And everything which you are unable to do, your money can do for you; it can eat, drink, go to the ball and to the theatre. It can acquire art, learning, historical treasures, political power; and it can travel. It can appropriate all these things for you, can purchase everything; it is the true opulence. But although it can do all this, it only desires to create itself, and to buy itself, for everything else is subservient to it. When one owns the master, one also owns the servant, and one has no need of the master's servant. Thus all passions and activities must be submerged in avarice. The worker must have just what is necessary for him to want to live, and he must want to live only in order to have this." [51]ch04.htm

This is the life denying side of some moralities that compliment capitalism, the poor are told they're entitled and greedy to demand that the collective wealth actually go back to those that produce it. But instead one finds rhetoric of austerity for the good of the economy.
People do not lose the incentive to work outside of a economy dictated by the law of value, rather work is utter drudgery precisely because of the nature of the capitalist economy and it works people hard.

But of course no one expects people to magically work for nothing under conditions that emerge out of capitalism as there is believed to be a time of transition which is of great debate.
Hell, look at the experiment of minimum income in Canadawhere the only people who worked less were clearly those who worked primarily out of necessity which drew them away from other important takes such as raising newborns or studying.
And if such a point had any legs, then we would be right to deprive the wealthy of their wealth because they'd clearly be utterly lazy and useless, too much money being a sin against a hard work ethic.
But of course it's simply ignorance that posits motivation purely from money and doesn't see how money only motivates to the extent that it serves to satisfy other needs.
In fact, theres results that suggest that paying people when it comes to taks that require creativity and real human ingeuinity actually makes people perform worse, economic motviation only works for low skilled tasks.


Maybe you're reducing socialism to the backwardness of countries like the USSR, but then you'd have to discuss the material conditions of the society and it's lack of development. Which if you're curious, you might like to check out points related to ideas about uneven and combined development. Which explained how Russia had a embryonic capitalist and proletarian class, with developing industry, but still made up of mostly peasantry and in the grip of its monarch fettering Russia's development. Russia had to go through mass industrialization in fewer years than the decades countries like England went through and catch up. Basically, even in the words of Lenin, they never achieved socialism but were with the intention of developing it.
And good luck with no foreign ownership with capital at it's highest development so much that as I just discussed above, makes even nation states pitiful and beg for the interest of large corporations to invest within their borders.

I think for your own interest you should look into anarchism because I think it really does fit with the ideas you tend to express, it would explain this sort of ideal locality, I bet you might even see your views reflected in the anti-globalization notions of Anarchists.
https://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=49434
Today there are two types of response to the deepening of the planetary domination of capital. The first response - of the reformist type - aims at regulating the impetuous course of the circulation of value by setting up crazy pseudo guarantees (the Tobin tax, protectionism, more secure frontiers, local democracy etc.) against some of its excesses. The second response - the revolutionary communist one - far from lamenting so-called "globalisation", salutes the potential which it unleashes for the struggle of the world proletariat and, far from the reactionary withdrawal into the nation, the region or Roquefort cheese, works for the international unity of the exploited for the abolition of wage labour and the disappearance of value.
#14839664
Marx is taking human nature and laying economics over it. Of course many humans want to be their own boss. They will enslave themselves willingly to work if they are the boss. This actually argues for capitalism.
The unhappiness does not come from doing a job they don't like. It comes from 'their brilliance ' not being recognized.
I am one of them, and I came to realize I was a big part of my problem. I thought those who mindlessly did their jobs day after day and were happy to do it were fools. But then they were happy and I was not. It is wrong to assume everyone is unhappy being a drone. It only applies to us that have a high opinion of ourselves. Marx made the same mistake most do by assuming everyone has the same view. Many people enjoy doing a job they don't much care for as long as they have enough time to do what they want. You and Marx point this out as a flaw, but it is not in many people. They prefer it. They believe their lives are easier and happier by not committing to a passion for their work. Doing work we love comes with costs to those we care about. Some believe it is better not to devote their lives to their passion. They willingly pay 8 hours a day for 16 hours of freedom. Pure Socialism actually requires the same thing of them anyway. It is pure fantasy to believe Socialism will allow everyone to do work they love.
As far as capitalism having become too large to control, I can only say 'defeatism' never accomplishes anything. All it takes is for one community to set the example and others to follow. There is no such thing as being too large to fail.
#14839669
Ned Lud wrote:One of the worst features is that the crooks who support it have to pretend to be half-witted, because no-one in his right mind could.


I am a poor guy, but I eat well, have internets, electricity, gadgets, a car, a roof over my head... It's not holodomor so what's the problem?

I'll take an occasional Gründerkrise over an occasional Holodomor any day.

The so called "Gründerkrise"...

Most economic historians see this period as negative for the most industrial nations.[citation needed] Many argue that most of the stagnation was caused by a monetary contraction caused by abandonment of the bimetallic standard, for a new fiat gold standard, starting with the Coinage Act of 1873.[citation needed]

Other economic historians have complained about the characterization of this period as a "depression" because of conflicting economic statistics that cast doubt on the interpretation of this period as a depression. They note that this period saw a relatively large expansion of industry, of railroads, of physical output, of net national product and real per-capita income.

As economists Friedman and Schwartz have noted, the decade from 1869 to 1879 saw a growth of 3 percent per year in money national product, an outstanding real national product growth of 6.8 percent per year in this period and a rise of 4.5 percent per year in real product per capita. Even the alleged "monetary contraction" never took place, the money supply increasing by 2.7 percent per year in this period. From 1873 through 1878, before another spurt of monetary expansion, the total supply of bank money rose from $1.964 billion to $2.221 billion, a rise of 13.1 percent or 2.6 percent per year. In short, a modest but definite rise, and scarcely a contraction.[54] Although per-capita nominal income declined very gradually from 1873 to 1879, that decline was more than offset by a gradual increase over the course of the next 17 years.

Furthermore, real per-capita income either stayed approximately constant (1873–1880; 1883–1885) or rose (1881–1882; 1886–1896) so the average consumer appears to have been considerably better off at the end of the "depression" than before. Studies of other countries where prices also tumbled, including the US, Germany, France, and Italy, reported more markedly positive trends in both nominal and real per-capita income figures. Profits generally were also not adversely affected by deflation although they declined (particularly in Britain) in industries that were struggling against superior, foreign competition. Furthermore, some economists argue that a falling general price level is not inherently harmful to an economy and cite the economic growth of the period as evidence.[55] As economist Murray Rothbard has stated:

Unfortunately, most historians and economists are conditioned to believe that steadily and sharply falling prices must result in depression: hence their amazement at the obvious prosperity and economic growth during this era. For they have overlooked the fact that in the natural course of events, when government and the banking system do not increase the money supply very rapidly, freemarket capitalism will result in an increase of production and economic growth so great as to swamp the increase of money supply. Prices will fall, and the consequences will be not depression or stagnation, but prosperity (since costs are falling, too), economic growth, and the spread of the increased living standard to all the consumers.[55]

Accompanying the overall growth in real prosperity was a marked shift in consumption from necessities to luxuries: by 1885, "more houses were being built, twice as much tea was being consumed, and even the working classes were eating imported meat, oranges, and dairy produce in quantities unprecedented". The change in working class incomes and tastes was symbolized by "the spectacular development of the department store and the chain store".

Prices certainly fell, but almost every other index of economic activity - output of coal and pig iron, tonnage of ships built, consumption of raw wool and cotton, import and export figures, shipping entries and clearances, railway freight clearances, joint-stock company formations, trading profits, consumption per head of wheat, meat, tea, beer, and tobacco - all of these showed an upward trend.[56]

A large part at least of the deflation commencing in the 1870s was a reflection of unprecedented advances in factor productivity. Real unit production costs for most final goods dropped steadily throughout the 19th century and especially from 1873 to 1896. At no previous time had there been an equivalent "harvest of technological advances... so general in their application and so radical in their implications". That is why, notwithstanding the dire predictions of many eminent economists, Britain did not end up paralyzed by strikes and lockouts. Falling prices did not mean falling money wages. Instead of inspiring large numbers of workers to go on strike, falling prices were inspiring them to go shopping.[57]
#14839670
One Degree wrote:Marx is taking human nature and laying economics over it. Of course many humans want to be their own boss. They will enslave themselves willingly to work if they are the boss. This actually argues for capitalism.
The unhappiness does not come from doing a job they don't like. It comes from 'their brilliance ' not being recognized.
I am one of them, and I came to realize I was a big part of my problem. I thought those who mindlessly did their jobs day after day and were happy to do it were fools. But then they were happy and I was not. It is wrong to assume everyone is unhappy being a drone. It only applies to us that have a high opinion of ourselves. Marx made the same mistake most do by assuming everyone has the same view. Many people enjoy doing a job they don't much care for as long as they have enough time to do what they want. You and Marx point this out as a flaw, but it is not in many people. They prefer it. They believe their lives are easier and happier by not committing to a passion for their work. Doing work we love comes with costs to those we care about. Some believe it is better not to devote their lives to their passion. They willingly pay 8 hours a day for 16 hours of freedom. Pure Socialism actually requires the same thing of them anyway. It is pure fantasy to believe Socialism will allow everyone to do work they love.
As far as capitalism having become too large to control, I can only say 'defeatism' never accomplishes anything. All it takes is for one community to set the example and others to follow. There is no such thing as being too large to fail.

Well human nature is a vague term, and I am skeptical to most who deploy it particularly now that I think I've got a handle on how Marx reconciles a true universal nature that underpins particular expressions of that nature in a historically contingent way. Which holds great significance to his manner of thought, to see how the universal isn't through association, but through a relation.
A good piece to understand this manner of thought: The Universal - Evald Ilyenkov
The “essence” of human nature in general – and of the human nature of each particular human being – cannot be revealed, except through a science-based, critical analysis of the “entire totality,” the “entire ensemble” of the socio-historic relationships of man to man, through a case-study approach and apprehension of the regularities which have and are actually governing the process of origination and evolution of human society as a whole, and of a particular individual.

And a good summary of the same general topic for same author by someone else.

And the reason they enslave themselves is already explained in that they're deprived of the means to satisfy their needs any other way and thus are compelled to work in order to acquire money to then purchase the things that they actually want and need.
And whilst there can be a subjective element of a lack of acknowledgment, I think this doesn't really engage with the idea of alienation and what is meant by it. But still within that realm, there are many people who couldn't give two shits about being acknowledged and praised, because that can be seen as the soft handed approach of bosses and shit who think a pat on the back compensates for shitty wages and work conditions.
Though the two aren't mutually exclusive.
And indeed, many people are happy but theory of alienation isn't as simplistic as asserting that people are simply unhappy with their jobs. It's related to Marx's understanding of human nature and how labour is a fundamental part of human in a way in which Capitalism has alienated man from the products of his labor. If that was the case, Marx could've just said, working in such and such conditions make worker sad :*(
This seems to miss the point and i imagine this is for a lack of knowing in regards to his sense of the social nature of humans. Because it seems to have to do more with the way in which human relations have taken on an alienated indirect form in which man's being is reduced. Which also relates to Marx's sense of the value of people being able to develop a rich individuality, a sentiment I suspect is captured in the idea that it'd be worthwhile for everyone to have a liberal arts education as some humanist ideal. Though perhaps might wish to posit that not everyone is so severely alienated

https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/law-of-value-5-contradiction/
As the knowledge of work is removed from the worker it is placed into the machine. The worker loses control over the labor process, becoming just a minor cog in the machine, easily replaceable. Another contradiction is revealed: that between the conception and execution of work. Our own knowledge of the labor process is taken away from us and placed in a machine which dominates us, reducing our work to a job- the carrying out of routine tasks with no meaning to us except that they are a means to a wage. This is a contradiction which fascinates popular culture: man vs. machine. But behind the machine lies a social relation between ourselves and our own creative powers that have been taken from us, alienated from us, standing over us, dominating our work.

http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
Spoiler: show
Furthermore, Marx argues that in class society, human production is carried out in an alienated manner, so that, instead of being directed consciously and rationally by human persons, labor—what labor is performed and how it is performed, and who performs it—appears determined by economic laws that operate independently of anyone's control. In class society, and particularly in capitalism, this basic teleology in the conscious life activity of man is disrupted. The person who carries out the work of realizing a product may have no ideal representation of the work at all. The worker produces not in accordance with a standard that she has set consciously for herself, but rather produces as part of an extended process that appears not to be determined by any human rationality or human goal-positing at all, but instead, by abstract economic laws of supply and demand. The work, as a result, begins to lose its human character, a process accelerated by the character of work itself, which becomes increasingly odious to the worker and becomes a denial and a sacrifice of the human being, rather than a realization and expression of the human being in the external world.

This disruption of the basic teleology in the labor process occurs not only for the industrial worker producing in a manner dictated by the laws of the market. Rather, it takes place in all manner of human activity, including intellectual and political activity. Operating within class society, human beings behave less as individual actors and more and more as exemplars of this or that class, in manners dictated to a great extent by the economic and social system of which they are a part.
...
The question arises, then, of how that teleology is disrupted, and how it comes to be the case that economic laws, rather than human beings, govern production. This result comes about as human beings produce and regularities begin to appear within that totality of human activity— regularities that are neither fully understood nor controlled, and which come to develop the appearance of external laws of production. Thus, a world which human beings have produced actually appears to be independent from and hostile to human beings (we can say, human beings become alienated from their own product, the social world). The essence of social being, which is the labor process as conscious life activity, is mediated by social forms so that it no longer appears as the product of conscious life activity and the developing complex of teleological goalpositing and production by concrete human individuals. Instead, it actually comes to defeat the teleological aspect which is a normal part of the labor process and of conscious life activity. (For an example of this, one might consider the demonstrated impotence of humanity at this point in history, dominated as it is by the profit motive, to address the environmental crisis which threatens to wipe out mankind on Earth altogether. Even the most simple, basic aim of human beings to safeguard their continued survival is thwarted by social arrangements that inhibit the ability of humans to act rationally and effectively in accordance with that goal.)

The solution to this disruption, Marx thinks, is to bring the appearance of social being into accordance with its essence. This means that production must be brought under the rational, conscious control of human beings. And for that to occur, without regularities in human production taking on the appearance of social laws, social production must be coordinated socially, and directed not towards profit, but towards the creation of a society in which the free development of each is the precondition of the free development of all. What I am describing here is in Marx's thought the transition from capitalism, to the transitional stages of socialism, and eventually, to fully developed communist society. It is important not to interpret Marx's vision of this future society, in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” as some Marxian “end of history.” I

Might note in the above description that it touches on how humanity's activity gets subordinated to market mechanisms and the logic of the market for profit seeking, rather than social goals. It's what lead to the absurdity in which there are people who need medical care but go without, similarly with food and homes. The ability is there but we exist in a society that adherent to the logic of markets makes it an expected part of society that there should be things created that go unused as there are people who would.
In fact, Marx's work isn't some critique of labor itself which he sees as fundamental to our nature and well being, true to all humans across history. But the social form has been disrupted, which is one of the early criticisms of capitalist economy in areas it was developing, purely moralistic critiques (Utopian Socialism) were born from this.

Communities won't disrupt the law of value and is another sign of what I think is a sort of anarchist individualism in that there are those that emphasize coopertives and such as being the means to develop past capitalism which seems in the realm of utopian socialism.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
t. Even on this argument, Mill leaves intact what Marx identifies as the essence of the capitalist system—commodity exchange. Marx has no shortage of arguments for why it is Utopian to propose that commodity exchange could be the economic basis for what Mill would recognize as more just relations of distribution. “Co-operative enterprises,” producing and exchanging commodities within a market economy, it must be said, are capitalist firms, and if they are to survive at all, they must operate in ways that are determined by the same economic laws of competition and supply and demand that, as Marx devotes so much attention to arguing, have had and continue to have a destructive social effect which must be overcome. This is the point of Marx’s numerous critiques of the capitalist Robert Owen and the production of workers’ co-operative enterprises as a way to be rid of the negative aspects of capitalism. It is not as though Marx were unaware that this was being proposed125; but he is less than sanguine about the prospects because of cases like this one:

Equitable Labour Exchange Bazaars or Offices (the name is given in English in the German original) were founded by the workers' co-operative societies in various towns of England in 1832. This movement was headed by Robert Owen, who founded such a bazaar in London. The products of labour at these bazaars were exchanged for a kind of paper "money" issued as labour "tickets", a working hour being the unit. These bazaars were an attempt by the Utopians to organise exchange without money in the conditions of capitalist commodity production and soon proved to be a failure. (MECW 8:135)

Co-operative enterprises within a system of capitalist commodity production have been attempted, but they have remained small experiments and have not shown themselves to be likely candidates as roads to socialism. What J. S. Mill leaves fixed, even by Cohen’s lights, are features of the capitalist mode of production which Marx argues must be abolished if a rational distribution of goods is to be achieved.

Though I'll give it to some that they don't think it's a enough, just that one creates the conditions of workers in some sense preceding the abolition of capitalism. Which is seems to be within Marx's thoughts to, that the life of socialism will have some form in organizing against capitalism.
http://isj.org.uk/marxism-and-ethics/
Consequently, whereas political economy was able only to understand atomised individualism, Marx showed how a new social rationality emerged within the working class.90 Marx thus suggests not only that workers feel compelled to struggle against the power of capital, but that in so doing they begin to create modes of existence, which also offer a virtuous alternative to the egoism characteristic not only of capitalist society generally, but also of working class life within that society.

When communist workmen gather together, their immediate aim is instruction, propaganda, etc. But at the same time, they acquire a new need—the need for society—and what appears as a means has become an end. This practical development can be most strikingly observed in the gatherings of French socialist workers. Smoking, eating, and drinking, etc, are no longer means of creating links between people. Company, association, conversation, which in turn has society as its goal, is enough for them. The brotherhood of man is not a hollow phrase, it is a reality, and the nobility of man shines forth upon us from their work worn figures.91

By forming and being active within trade unions and working class political parties, workers create institutions through which they change themselves. Working together in such institutions becomes a day to day practice that both presupposes the need for solidarity and engenders a spirit of solidarity within the working class. The virtues or character traits that are thus promoted stand in direct opposition to the competitive individualism of the capitalist marketplace.
#14839673
Don't get me wrong, the principles of Socialism seem just. Perhaps even more so than Capitalism. But do people seriously think Socialism can somehow not turn into a corrupt system when history says the complete opposite is true. If the state owns everything you are relying on having an uncorrupt government. If you are within a democracy perhaps this is achievable. Less so in a dicatatorship. Peoples wealth and social standards rely on two factors. Their countries wealth and policies that share out that wealth. The US poor definitely suffer from their governments policies. Other Western nations poor seem to have relatively good standards of living. As Solar Cross points out, if you are well fed, have a roof over your head and can buy luxuries, you are doing very well in terms of global living standards. And it should be no surprise that the best living standards of civilians comes from the nations that benefit under the Capitalism system.
#14839675
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

USSR, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, DPRK, Democratic Kampuchea, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, People's Democratic Republic of Eithopia....

2017, the 21st century and some people are still selling this old shit.
#14839676
The “essence” of human nature in general – and of the human nature of each particular human being – cannot be revealed, except through a science-based, critical analysis of the “entire totality,” the “entire ensemble” of the socio-historic relationships of man to man, through a case-study approach and apprehension of the regularities which have and are actually governing the process of origination and evolution of human society as a whole, and of a particular individual.


See, this is why I refuse to become enthralled by anyone. I quit reading after this. It is mumbo jumbo. He just reduced humans to a machine that can be taken apart, understood, put back together and then make assumptions they are all identical. You then use this stereotype you have created to base human society. Pure nonsense.
The above paragraph is an example of using important sounding words that actually mean nothing at all. What the hell is a science based study of humans? Would that not require a nonhuman to do the study? How many 'individual humans ' must you study before you decide how they are all alike? He simply assumes this will be proven and then proceeds with his assumptions as facts.
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