@o_o@programming.dev asked “why are folks so anti-capitalist?” not long ago. It got quite a few comments. But I noticed a trend: a lot of people there didn’t agree on the definition of “capitalism”.
And the lack of common definition was hobbling the entire discussion. So I wanted to ask a precursor question. One that needs to be asked before anybody can even start talking about whether capitalism is helpful or good or necessary.
Main Question
- What is capitalism?
- Since your answer above likely included the word “capital”, what is capital?
- And either,
- A) How does capitalism empower people to own what they produce? or, (if you believe the opposite,)
- B) How does capitalism strip people of their control over what they produce?
Bonus Questions (mix and match or take them all or ignore them altogether)
- Say you are an individual who sells something you create. Are you a capitalist?
- If you are the above person, can you exist in both capitalist society and one in which private property has been abolished?
- Say you create and sell some product regularly (as above), but have more orders than you can fulfill alone. Is there any way to expand your operation and meet demand without using capitalist methods (such as hiring wage workers or selling your recipes / process to local franchisees for a cut of their proceeds, etc)?
- Is the distinction between a worker cooperative and a more traditional business important? Why is the distinction important?
I think your misundertand the concept of private property and communism. Which could be skewing your opinion on the matter
In pure communism, there is no private or personal property.
But there has never been any purely communist society of significant size or duration, specifically for this issue. There have been a few short-lived small-scale experiments, like e.g. the “United Order” the Church of Jesus Christ tried to implement in the 1830s among it’s members, but even with this being a voluntary thing among a religiously motivated group it didn’t even last a year.
I have to agree with @arvere@lemmy.ml, you aren’t working with an accurate definition of communism. You said pure communism revolves around the state which is explicitly false. Pure communism is, by definition, moneyless, classless, and stateless. Historically, there have been state-socialists who believe that sort of system can provide a viable alternative to grassroots revolution in transitioning from a capitalist to a communist society. However, pure communism is anarchic, there is no state. Cooperation is spontaneous.
Additionally, it does not preclude personal property: items an individual keeps for personal use, e.g. your house, your car, your TV. What it does preclude is private property: items an individual keeps to charge others for their use, e.g. a rental property, a taxi, a movie theater.
Respectfully, you might want to brush up on your communist theory.
I might have simplified, but the points remain exactly the same.
If the system (Question, who is the system?) precludes (Question, who precludes?) from renting property (Question, who determines what what renting is?), there needs to be a system in place that needs to enforce all that.
Otherwise you aren’t talking about communism, you are talking about anarchism. Anarchism has no inherent link to communism, so if communism is supposed to exist at all, it needs a government. There is no way around it.
If we go by your distinction between personal and private property, what is to stop anyone from renting out their personal property? If I have the coolest movie projector in the community, what is stopping me from charging for access in an anarchist society? If I have more, I can make more and then I’m a capitalist again.
But explaining one impossible construct (pure communism) with another impossible construct (anarchism) doesn’t make the first one more probable.
Anarchism is inherently a non-stable system. You have natural power imbalances and anarchism has no mechanisms to balance them out. An anarchist society where no democratic processes are used leads directly to mafia-like organisations taking control.
Anarchism is based on the idea that a power vacuum is sustainable.
Where did you get that idea? Anarchism is explicitly a left-wing political ideology that emerged from general socialist thought. The two are intimately linked in their development, and heavily influenced one another with the “purest” form of either by their own principles independently culminating in anarcho-communism. You can debate the viability of this system all you like, but the definition of the term is what it is.
It is defined as implicitly free of hierarchies, including the state. If you want to talk about a system with a state, you’re no longer taking about communism. We can talk about pragmatic incarnations of socialist policy, we can talk about the conditions necessary to foster a communist society, we can talk about the consequences of either. But if the subject is the definition of communism, none of that is relevant.
A lack of money for one. The existence of other cool projectors, if you didn’t build the cool projector by yourself, that can be communally held. If you built it yourself, and decide to hoarde it yourself, presumably other members of the community would hesitate to share their cool stuff with you. Patents and IP are private property, so anyone with skill in projector-making can try to copy it.
If you recognize the benefit of sharing your cool stuff in exchange for others sharing their cool stuff with you, everyone gets to use lots of cool stuff. If you hoarde the cool stuff you personally invented, no one will let you use the cool stuff they personally invented, and you’ll only get to use the cool things you personally invented.
Have you never heard of anarchocapitalism?
I’ve also heard of vegan milk.
As others have pointed out, it’s an oxymoronic misnomer used by right-wing “libertarian” neo-feudalists. The hierarchy inherent to capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with anarchism.
Same as anarchism is inherently incompatible with humans.
Over the last few thousand years there hasn’t been a single documented case where an anarchist society stayed anarchist if more than a handful of people participated for more than a handful of weeks.
And yes, extremists on all sides of the spectrum dream of a world where no government tells them what to do. That’s not unique to communists.
But regardless, it’s a fever dream, and discussing it as if it was a real thing is a lot like saying that midi-clorians are fundamentally incompatible with Jedis and lightsabers.
You’re further deviating from the initial point.
If you want to opine about the finer points of the implementation of a system, be my guest. I won’t pretend that human civilization, at present, is compatible with the tenets of communism. One day, maybe.
But if you’re going to talk about a system, talk about the system. Don’t strawman a McCarthyist Frankenstein of right-wing propaganda to make your point. Engage the concepts as they are defined, and speak to the deficiencies in the actual system as they exist.
Are there problems with communism? Maybe, probably, sure. None of them come from authoritarian states, because communism has no authoritarian states. We’re there lots of regimes who claimed to be communist for the PR? Totally, definitely. There were lots of shitty attempts at ornithopters and DaVinci helicopters before the Wright Brothers too, doesn’t invalidate the thence unrealized principles of aerodynamics.
I believe they might have the etymology in common - probably because the word anarchism became sort of a synonym for any type of “chaos”, but anarchism as a political movement is widely known as an extreme left-winged ideology! Which is explicitly against all forms of institution, specially corporations