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Why People Say Capitalism is Violent
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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The argument presented here is based on complete ignorance of the history of the human race.
Reason #1
The concept of property ownership is not a product of capitalism. This idea is literally as old as the oldest known civilization to keep written records, Mesopotamia.
In Mesopotamian culture, property was owned by the state, by the temple, and by private families. Records show a distinction between movable property (material goods) and immovable property (land), and the selling, trading, repossessing, inheriting and transfer of all types of property.
Here is an example of a cuneiform tablet recording an agreement about the division of property.
There is even an equivalent of eminent domain:
Hammurabi was not a capitalist. Babylon was not a capitalist nation.
Capitalism did not "invent legal privileges around property".
Reason #2
Conquest of territory happened long before capitalism ever existed. Colonialism was hardly a new concept.
Genghis Khan was not a capitalist. Alexander the Great was not a capitalist. Julius Caesar was not a capitalist. Napoleon Bonaparte was not a capitalist.
If you require citations for this part of my argument, I suggest you find a basic text on world history at your local library.
Conclusion
I'm not going to address the other "reasons" as they are faulty conclusions drawn from the previously addressed faulty premises.
I am not arguing that these things are right and good. I am arguing that linking them specifically to capitalism represents a desperately uneducated understanding of human society and history. This is such a bad take, it reeks of teenage anarchist and "money is the root of all evil" oversimplification.
Comparing property law under hammurabi with property law as it presently exists is absolutely laughably ridiculous and you know it is. You should take your capitalist apologia elsewhere.
I have made no apology for capitalism. If this is what you got from what I wrote, then you have trouble with reading comprehension.
I did not make a comparison between Mesopotamian property law and present property law. My point was that private ownership of property is a function of human society literally as old as recorded history, as well as the idea of legal privileges around property ownership.
Because the cartoon is based on the premise that these ideas come from capitalism, the entire argument is faulty.
I'll quote from my original post:
You are falsely equating the concept of owning physical things that you interact with every day (your clothes, your home, your fields, your tools) to private ownership as it exists under capitalism which as I said before is utterly ridiculous in every sense.
Property ownership in ancient Mesopotamia did not involve abstract for profit entities. It did not involve ownership of ideas, or words, or concepts, it involved the land you worked on, specifically with regards to buying and selling agricultural land that you and your family directly worked on for generations.
Ima just bold the following, since you seem to have not read the comic
Capitalism has created the concept of abstract property, and it has created a legal system that enforces and manages this property. It includes ideas, concepts, words, and time. Capitalism claims to own the means by which all things are produced, and the law enforces that all the fruits of human labor are given wholesale to capitalism. The CEO of a company legally possesses hundreds of thousands of people's labor every single day. This did not exist in Mesopotamia or any other culture around the world until the 17th century and the deconstruction of the peasantry as a class that both produced and self-managed their production.
Prior to capitalism and prior to the death of free labor, workers entirely self managed. The concept of hiring and firing didnt exist. Peasantry were paid by the day, not by the hour, for their labor and generally only worked the minimum amount of days they had to afford their homes and their food. Food was provided to workers throughout the day, and a part of their general working day involved napping for an extended period of time. Their time still belonged to them, and they were free to spend it how they chose so long as some amount of work was completed.
Capitalism has constructed the concept that both all things belong either to capitalists themselves or to lords who have legal authority to steal half of workers labor. Capitalism has constructed legal frameworks by which they can control a workers time down to the minute, and are not required to pay them for a days work. Capitalism has gone even further to create legal framework by which not complying with their demands for your time and your labor can result in them literally throwing you out on the streets and refusing to allow you to labor such that you cannot feed and house yourself and your family.
I repeat,
Nothing like this concept of ownership has EVER existed prior to the early 17th century.
It's a bit disingenuous arguing that capitalism is somehow a new concept, and colonialism isn't.
I mean the terms capitalism and colonialism are both coined way after the practice of those systems. I think you could argue that capitalism even entered the human world before even currency was a thing.
Colonialism is the same, as you seem to intuit, considering other people and subduing them didn't need a philosophical framework in order for it to be enacted.
In most civilizations wealth tends to accumulate at the top of the societal pyramid, which is capitalism. The pharaohs and sumerian kings alike are capitalists. They profit of the labour of others.
There's a reason you're unwilling to entertain other arguments, because you're moving the goalposts and are afraid they will fall off the field.
This is such a weird take... how far removed from reality are you to actually believe that authoritarian feudalism is a form of capitalism?
Wealth accumulation is not capitalism. Capitalism enables wealth accumulation, but the opposite isn't true in the slightest.
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
I am not sure how you reached this conclusion. Yes, capitalism is new in comparison to Mesopotamian culture, and therefore the idea of property ownership. No, it's not new in comparison to European colonialism.
I have never heard or read any theories that try to make an argument like this. I would be very interested if you had some that you could point me to, but offhand this seems like it would require major stretching of the definition of capitalism in order to make recorded events fit into it. I think it would mostly be an exercise in confirmation bias.
Accumulation of wealth is not inherently capitalism, nor is simply profiting from another's labor. This definition is so broad that it would make anyone in history who ever acquired anything that they did not previously own into a capitalist.
Which other arguments am I unwilling to entertain, and which goalposts am I moving?
My argument is, as from the beginning, that the concept of private ownership of property and legal rights attached to such is not born of capitalism but is in fact as old as recorded history. Because the conclusions in the cartoon depend on this initial faulty idea, the whole thing is nonsense.
The ownership of the means of production and power aren't inherently new either. As private property is as old as civilization, the appropriation of capital is too.
Be that in the country of the ruler (the state didn't own marble quarries in Egypt, the pharao did) out abroad (gold mines in what we would call Ethiopia), which could be called colonialist.
To name something colonialist before the Greek policy of colonies in the Mediterranean, is as debatable as calling an ancient economy capitalist.
However, capitalism is very pervasive. Levi Strauss showed in Tristes Tropiques that if there are isolated civilizations without a system of ownership and wealth accumulation, any contact will destroy that state.
I jive with most of what you write... but you have weird things sprinkled throughout...
Like, differentiating between the pharaoh and the state... the pharaoh was the state. I mean, there was more of a state than just the pharaoh... but practically the pharaoh was the state.
It's like saying that there is a difference between the Russian state and Putin... technically yes, but practically no. Putin is the Russian state. Obviously there is bureaucracy as well, but is just a weird separation.
The big thing imho is that for the prolitariat it is the same. As long as there is an oppressive regime plucking the fruits of the labour, there is exploitation.
Feudalism was the main capitalist system Marx argued against.
That feudalist system is very old and embedded in our history.
Obviously we have different definitions of capitalism... which makes the rest of the discussion difficult.
Fundamentally, serfs in a feudal society did not own the right to their own labor for the portion of their labor assigned to their lord.
Fundamentally, people in modern capitalist societies do own the rights to their own labor.
Practically, the ability to exercise those rights is severely limited (which is what the meme is trying to point out). There are reasonable arguments that the poor in modern capitalism have less freedom than serfs of feudal societies... but that doesn't make them equivalent.
And, for what it's worth, Marx wasn't arguing about 12th century feudalism... that was some 700 years before the form of capitalism that was present in his time.
I think that the main factor is that I am off opinion that capitalist structures are present before the industrial period. But that the exploitation mechanism is different. I thought too have read something of the kind in Marx, but I stand corrected.
However the hooks of the mechanism were always present. I think that to say that capitalism was absent in history, while capital (in form of possession of wealth, production or time) was present is a bit myopic.
Forced labor is not capitalism... Egyptian pharaohs did not practice capitalism. Feudal lords did not practice capitalism. Black Americans in the south did not participate in a capitalist economic system for themselves (the white slave owners may have practiced capitalism amongst each other, but the slaves did not). To suggest that they are equivalent systems of economic activity is insane.
Elements of capitalism certainly existed prior to the industrial revolution... but that is like saying that socialism is basically capitalism with regulations on ownership of corporations that employ more than a handful of employees. Or that communism is essentially capitalism except there is communal ownership of all property.
There are fundamental differences between them that is a strawman to say they are the same. It is incorrect to say that the Egyptian pyramids were built in a capitalist society because "the pharaoh owned the mines". I can't even express how inane that sounds.
We can certainly compare the difference in the lives of the common people in these societies and, like I said before, there are reasonable arguments that modern commoners have worse situations than some did in historical system... but we can do that without conflating nonsense.
Marx identified feudalism as a system distinct from capitalism, separated historically by a transitory system called mercantilism.
Mercantilism may be considered as a kind of proto-capitalism, because it entails the employer-employee relationship, but lacks the systemic consequences of capital accumulation, which depends on continuous growth enabled by the changes in production following the industrial revolution.
Marx identified feudal and capitalist societies both as characterized by "class struggles", that is, having multiple classes with mutually antagonistic interests, as had "all hitherto existing society".
I'd love to see your citations and reasoning on this, assuming it doesn't fall into "capitalism is when anyone owns anything or sells anything"
Because this
Is ridiculous.
Where was it suggested that property and conquest are unique to capitalism?
capitalism isn't owning land. it's a mode of production I'm which the proletariat are robbed of the product of their labor by the capitalist class using the institution of private property and it's violent enforcement to extract that wealth.
You seem to be arguing words and not ideas.
Debunking someone's point first requires engaging with it and you never even came close. So what about Mesopotamia? Let's take your word on that, does it change the core point? Nope.
Then you go on to say that because a certain type of violence happened before capitalism, it's cool that it exists.
Do you have brain damage my dude?
As I understand it, the comic states :
1. Create penalties for not being a property/capital-owner.
2. Acquire property/capital through violence
3. With violently acquired capital-backing, use step #1 to exert control
4. Population attacks itself to avoid rule #1, clawing to attain property/capital
5. The system promotes population infighting, allowing the power-holders to exist un-noticed.
Who gives a shit about who invented the baton when you're getting hit in the face. Well, I expect that you do.
Capitalism is not violent and greedy. Humans are violent and greedy.
Economic systems and sociocultural organization principles are irrelevant and attributing historical human violence to them is fallacious.
No, I specifically did not make any such argument, and made a statement about this in my conclusion because I anticipated that someone would attempt to dismiss what I said by deliberately misinterpreting it and then putting words in my mouth. Did you even read my entire post?
The person that made this cartoon cares, and clearly so do you, as you both want to pin it on a particular source for purely emotional reasons, which is evidenced by the fact that you have made no rational argument based on fact and instead have attempted to dismiss what I wrote while presenting zero evidence for your own point of view.
"Guns don't kill people, humans kill people." "Capitalism isn't the problem, humans are."
Humans are the problem. You're right. Yet, humans use guns to kill people. Humans use capitalism to be greedy and violent.
If capitalism wasn't a tool to be used, humans wouldn't use it. The tool makes the problems when used, so get rid of it.
This is the most persuasive argument in this thread so far... but I'm not sure it's valid (which is disconcerting because I do think the guns argument is valid but like you said it's the same it very similar argument)...
I think the part that is different is the scale of scope. For violence, modern firearms immediately peg the board in the red. I'm not sure that capitalism does that.
Capitaliam is an abstract concept, an umbrella term used to encapsulate a somewhat loose grouping of economic behaviors and theories. Humans might use capitalist ideas to justify greedy or violent actions, but they don't "use capitalism to be greedy and violent".
The distinction matters because my point is that capitalism is not the source or instrument of violence, but rather a description of and rationalization for human behavior. The violence happens whether or not you conflate the behaviors of the people committing violence with capitalism.
Ultimately I think it would be more accurate to conclude capitalism because violence and greed, not violence and greed because capitalism.
Capitalism is not an abstract concept at all: private ownership of the means of production. Sure, there are many economic theories to go on from there, but how does it change anything to the criticism of this very core idea?
Without additional qualifications on the term capitalism, that is a terrible definition of capitalism.
marx coined the term, and using his definition is the only way it makes sense.
Feel free to come up with a better definition. It's the one you'll find in most dictionaries and textbooks. Of course there are more elements to it depending on the exact philosophy (more or less free market et al), but in the end, it all boils down to exactly that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
capitalism is, in fact, the instrument. the extraction of wealth from the labor of the preparation is violence
I think you have not actually made a case for this claim, and it isn't obviously true. To me it seems obviously untrue. The organizational structure of human society is very often a driving force for harm, because harm is simply what happens when we fail to solve the nontrivial problem of human cooperation. People with good intentions can be a part of a larger dynamic in which they are overwhelmingly incentivized to be a part of that harm, and may even be absolutely prevented from not being a part of it. Hateful people with bad intentions can be themselves a product of these failures. You can't reduce this to the moral choices of individuals because individuals may have no knowledge or agency over the systems that shape their world and force their hands.
I think "violence" might not be the best word for this, but it isn't "fallacious".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moloch
I think changing the wording from "capitalism is violence" (or harm). "To capitalism enables violence" resolves the wiggle room in the argument.
Probably, but personally I think the violence/harm would happen (and does happen) regardless of capitalism/communism/feudalism/Marxism/anarchy/barter economy/etc.
Saying that the violence/harm happens because of capitalism is like saying that rain happens because there are clouds in the sky. There's concurrence, but neither is the cause of the other, they are both the products of underlying meteorological conditions.
You are attacking a strawman.
Some societies are violent more so than others.
A social system is not simplistically the cause of all violence, and neither is any violence due to causes simplistically detached from the social system in which it occurs.
Violence is latent in capitalism.
It produces massive disparities in wealth and privilege that could not for very long be sustained except by the constant threat of force against those who are deprived, marginalized, and otherwise disadvantaged.
Hard agree.