@[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?
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.
No, not really. My point was that communism in reality cannot exist with a strong government. You said that pure communism depends on anarchism.
Anarchism is strictly impossible. And if the dependency is impossible, communism in that style is as well.
The fundamental issue is that any group of people that interact with eachother will at some point have disagreements/conflicts where an agreement cannot be reached. At that point, one group of people will get their wish and the others won’t. And depending on the circumstances, either the most powerfull will decide (=>dictatorship, monarchy, mafia pseudogovernment) or the majority decides (=>some form of democracy).
So with anarchism being impossible on the most basic level, anarchistic communism is also ruled out.
And yes, anarchocapitalism is about equally as realistic as it instantly devolves into a corporate dictatorship.
I repeat, if you want to talk about the viability of various schemas, go ahead. I’m sure you think you’re much smarter than every communist theorist to ever live (unironically, I really do believe you think that). I’m sure you are doubtlessly certain of what is and isn’t possible, and I’m sure you can’t derive any additional nuance from reading those who have dedicated extensive thought and analysis to the topic
Nonetheless, I think even you can understand that strawmanning is the refuge of idiots with no actual merit, and whether or not you think communism is “possible”, it is best to actually talk about the topic instead of some silly oxymoron (like “authoritarian state communism”)
As futile as it sounds, I do think you might benefit from anarcho-communist research. I’ll leave it at that.
Ok, show me a single example of a community of at least 1000 people who managed to keep an anarcho-communist stable for at least a year.
I think, that’s a super low bar. Any remotely viable social system should have been able to clear that bar in hundreds or thousands of instances.
So it should be easy to give just a single one.
Tbh, being a theorist doesn’t mean you produce viable stuff. There are more than enough examples of larger schools of theorists who never produced anything remotely viable across many different fields.
Again, not the topic. My only point is “Don’t misrepresent the topics you’re debating”
I don’t think communism is presently viable. I do think communism might be viable in coming generations, maybe.
My political acumen is negligible. My semantic acumen, however…
Even if communism will never work, characterizing it by a central state is categorically false. Your words are wrong. If you want to talk about authoritarian states masquerading as communism to engender public appeal, say that. That’s not communism though. If you want to argue against such a state, do that. Still not communism.
If you want to argue against the merits of a non-hierarchic, moneyless, classless, stateless, anarchic system, feel free to do so while you call it communism. But don’t call something that isn’t communism “communism” and then say that communism doesn’t work for the reasons your strawman non-communistic “communism” doesn’t work. Use the right words.
I’m not here to fix your politics, I’m here to fix your words.
I’m not so sure your political acumen is negligible, but your semantic acumen is certainly impressive.
This is absolutely worthless. I shall cherish it always.
Ok, now I get where you are coming from.
I still disagree. While there is a single “pure” form of capitalism (which is basically “let the market run wild without any kind of intervention”), “pure” communism is much less easy to put in a bucket, since it derived mainly from the concept of “not capitalism”. But in what way it is “not capitalism” is not so simple.
You are talking about social anarchism or anarcho-communism, which are both forms of anarchism or communism, but neither are “the” anarchism or communism. There is also e.g. individualist anarchism, which is totally anarchism as well, but puts a very non-communist spin on it.
In the communism category, there are multiple other different schools of thought, e.g. various forms of Marxism, which think that a strong state is necessary to balance the capitalistic tendencies of an unregulated economy, other forms of Marxism which think that that would be just state-capitalism, Leninism, which totally thinks that a string state is necessary, Pre-Marxism which had no plan about anything and religious communism which essentially trades a strong state with a strong church.
Argueing “This is the only theoretically pure kind of communism” or even of anarchism is mostly besides the point.
And yes, I am also guilty of that in my first post, where I summarized all of communism into the versions that are even remotely viable to be stable, and they all require a strong state (or whatever you want to call a central power that is strong enough to keep an inherently instable system stable).
What gave you the idea that capitalism is a singular pure concept and communism is not? Either your definition of capitalism is so simplified that there’s an singular communistic counterpart, or your definition of communism is so specific that there are dozens of capitalistic counterparts. Be consistent. You haven’t been talking about communism at all.
Your “communism category” is compromised solely of decidedly not-communistic transitory states, some with the stated goal of eventually facilitating communism. They are by definition not communism by virtue of being states. You call them communism because they have been called such by several non-communists: authoritarians leaders trying to sway their population, terrified capitalists trying to deceive the proletariat, ‘temporarily-embarassed-millionaires’ parroting pundit talking points.
Read the literature: communism, real communism, is by nature anarchic. It is definitely free of hierarchies, coersion, profit extraction. Anarchy, real anarchy, is by nature communistic. There can be no money in anarchy, because money creates class and class creates hierarchy.
Anarcho-capitalism is a fake idea. Private property is inevitably leveraged into power, and the power vacuum doesn’t stay empty long. The only true anarchism is spontaneous cooperation in a purely horizonal democracy. Any deviation from anarcho-communism is no longer anarchy, and no longer communism.
Again, is communism sustainable? Probably not right now, definitely not at any point in the past, probably not for quite some time, if ever. Doesn’t legitimize fake masquerade communism wrapped around the decidedly non-communistic authoritarian government as an example of the ideology.