@[email protected] 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?
Capitalism has 3 main features:
- Private property (even in land)
- Employer-employee relationships
- Markets
Capitalism is misnamed. Early theorists mistakenly identified capital ownership as the root feature that gave the employer the right to the whole product that workers produce. The employment contract gives the employer the right to the whole product of the firm. Coops correct this. Power leads to employers typically being capital owners, which is why the misnomer stuck. @asklemmy
It took me all day to understand this one, but that is an excellent point. We do mislabel the problem. Those employment contracts are indeed far more damaging than capital itself. Thank you for this perspective.
I would recommend reading David Ellerman to get more of this perspective. Here is a link to a text where he argues that the employment contract is illiberal, which means that it violates liberalism’s fundamental principles, and the only kind of economy that is compatible with liberalism is an economic democracy where all firms are democratic: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf