The Thoughts of a Capitalist

[Guest]

Here's an excerpt from The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution by Mikhail Bakunin. I put it into paragraphs for easy reading.

Quote:"Look, my children, I have some capital which by itself cannot produce anything, because a dead thing cannot produce anything. I have nothing productive without labor.

As it goes, I cannot benefit from consuming it unproductively, since having consumed it, I would be left with nothing. But thanks to the social and political institutions which rule over us and are all in my favor, in the existing economy my capital is supposed to be a producer as well: it earns me interest. From whom this interest must be taken - and it must be from someone, since in reality by itself it produces absolutely nothing - this does not concern you.

It is enough for you to know that it renders interest. Alone this interest is insufficient to cover my expenses. I am not an ordinary man as you. I cannot be, nor do I want to be, content with little. I want to live, to inhabit a beautiful house, to eat and drink well, to ride in a carriage, to maintain a good appearance, in short, to have all the good things in life.

I also want to give a good education to my children, to make them into gentlemen, and send them away to study, and afterwards, having become much more educated than you, they can dominate you one day as I dominate you today. And as education alone is not enough, I want to give them a grand inheritance, so that divided between them they will be left almost as rich as I.

Consequently, besides all the good things in life I want to give myself, I also want to increase my capital. How will I achieve this goal? Armed with this capital I propose to exploit you, and I propose that you permit me to exploit you. You will work and I will collect and appropriate and sell for my own behalf the product of your labor, without giving you more than a portion which is absolutely necessary to keep you from dying of hunger today, so that at the end of tomorrow you will still work for me in the same conditions; and when you have been exhausted, I will throw you out, and replace you with others.

Know it well, I will pay you a salary as small, and impose on you a working day as long, working conditions as severe, as despotic, as harsh as possible; not from wickedness - not from a motive of hatred towards you, nor an intent to do you harm - but from the love of wealth and to get rich quick; because the less I pay you and the more you work, the more I will gain."

This is what is said implicitly by every capitalist, every industrialist, every business owner, every employer who demands the labor power of the workers they hire.

The rest is here: http://www.infoshop.org/library/index.p ... ist_System.

[xcriteria]

Note that this was written by an anti-capitalist. It certainly portrays capitalism as sinister, but it does so in a very biased and manipulative way. In short, it's not at all objective.

Someone who wasn't familiar with legitimate arguments in favor of capitalism, who read that, could easily just swallow, unquestioned, that image of it.

There are people who operate on the principles of greed, narcissism, and not caring about other people, but this is not exclusive to capitalism.

Most people associate capitalism with giant corporations, greedy rich people, and so on. But this conception fails to incorporate a great deal of what capitalism is about.

The wikipedia article on capitalism notes that there are multiple definitions, but sums it up as, "Capitalism is a term used to describe the economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most of the means of production are privately owned and production is guided, and income distributed, largely through the operation of free markets rather than state controlled markets."

Before conceiving of capitalism as sinister, consider what feudalism was like. The workers had no choice of whom to work for -- they were bound to a particular boss and couldn't even shop around for another one. Under capitalism, many jobs may have authoritarian aspects, but people are free to shop around or start their own business or non-profit organization. This could mean working on their own, or collaborating with others who share whatever values they like.

Consider what communism is like. The state controls everything!

Bakunin was an anarchist, and anarchists usually object to capitalism without trying to replace it with state control and similar power structures -- which is a start. But it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. (I'll expand on that point another time.)

Again from the wikipedia article, "During the last century capitalism has been contrasted with centrally planned economies." This is a basic point on which I'm strongly in favor of capitalism. I'm not a fan of mega-corporations, or any organization or culture that crushes the individual or operates in a psychopathic manner. Corporations can be sinister, but they are, in the end, the product of the individuals who make them up and watch over them.

Individuals can be sinister, but to attack individualism and portray individuals as generally horrific monsters is totally unfair.

The whole topic of economic systems and political systems is enormous, and any discussion of it by people with conflicting views, conceptualizations, definitions, and so on can be really heated and time consuming. I find it very interesting, though, and I am still developing my own views. I urge others not to come to hasty conclusions, because the topic is complex.

It's almost 8am here, and I've slept for maybe half an hour, so I'm going to wind this up, but let's keep up the discussion. I read another recent thread about capitalism and I've yet to respond to its points, but I will.

[Guest]

Quote:Consider what communism is like. The state controls everything!

Communism is economic, not political. I think you mean Marxism. Although there are Maoists, who are Marxists, who reject the state.

Quote:Someone who wasn't familiar with legitimate arguments in favor of capitalism, who read that, could easily just swallow, unquestioned, that image of it.

That is a good point. This quote comes from the middle of a book denouncing capitalism, so it lacks that context. I haven't read the book it comes from, only the excerpt on the Infoshop website, so it may be that the book explains the concepts of capitalism, but I do not know.

Quote:In short, it's not at all objective.

Objectivity is usually a guise for fence sitting. But I do agree that not all people act like this.

Quote:Before conceiving of capitalism as sinister, consider what feudalism was like.

It's true that capitalism is better than feudalism. The point the book and excerpt makes is that socialism is better than capitalism.

Quote:This is a basic point on which I'm strongly in favor of capitalism

I agree with that. At it's core socialism is anti-property and prefers joint ownership of things. This does not entail central planning.

Quote:to attack individualism and portray individuals as generally horrific monsters is totally unfair.

It is the system of capitalism that makes people seem like monsters. It is perfectly fine to try to achieve a comfortable life. In capitalism to be rich and comfortable, someone else must be poor and uncomfortable. It is "not from wickedness" that these people seem like monsters, just the system we live under.

[xcriteria]

Kirby Wrote:In capitalism to be rich and comfortable, someone else must be poor and uncomfortable.

How did you arrive at that conclusion?

[Guest]

Economists have said so.

Edmund Phelps won the Nobel Prize this year for economics. One article in The Economist says of Phelps: "in much of his work he contends that unemployment is necessary to cow workers, ensuring their loyalty to the company and their diligence on the job, at a wage the company can afford to pay"

[xcriteria]

In my experience, that viewpoint is not characteristic of most supporters of capitalism.

There are certainly thinkers who believe fully in freedom and people's living in a voluntary and non-coerced manner, who support capitalism with a very different mindset.

For example, http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Global-Cap...1930865473

(Read some of the amazon reviews of that book for a sense of what I'm familiar with.)