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Why are folks so anti-capitalist?
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Being in favor of private property and private incentive does not even necessarily mean that you are pro-capitalism. Capitalism as the term is used has three defining features:
- Markets
- Private property
- Employer-employee relationship
One could have a non-capitalist economy that replaced the last one with democratic membership in the firm and still kept the other two features such as a market economy consisting of worker coops
Capitalism has pretty much one defining feature. The private ownership of capital goods. Worth also repeating that anti capitalists are opposed to private property (of capital goods) and not personal property (your house your car your toothbrush)
This understanding rejects all criticism of capitalism based on its denial of workers' control as not a critique of capitalism per se. It takes the position that an economy where all firms are worker coops is capitalist, which is strange due to labor's special role in controlling all firms.
Is the capitalist's appropriation of 100% of the product of the workers' labor not a defining aspect of capitalism?
It also makes climate critiques not of capitalism. Those involve private property in land
I don't think it rejects any of those things. When capital goods are privately owned then by definition the workers do not have autonomy or control. If the workers of a coop own the capital goods I would consider that collective ownership of capital goods. Not quite public ownership (you still have to be in the group to access it) but not private either.
Climate critiques are definitely in the realm of capitalism. Your house and your land you use to live on is personal property. But if you are running a factory or a farm for other reasons than for your own use then that then ceases to be personal property and falls into private property which is capitalism.
I've not seen a better difference between capitalism and socialism than capitalism is private ownership of capital goods while socialism is the collective or public ownership of capital goods. Social democrats are not socialist because they are not addressing the ownership of capital goods. They just share the profits via state provided safety nets and benefits.
This understanding is also inclusive of the different forms that socialism can take. State (๐คฎ), Market, or Gift/Library/Communism. I'm open to other opinions on it if someone has critique or a better definition. This is just the one that's made the most sense to me over the last 7 years of me being a leftist
The employment contract not private property gives the employer the legal right to the whole product and control rights to the firm.
Why do you believe that privately owned capital goods imply a lack of workers' control? A worker coop remains a coop even if a third party rents them a factory.
Oh, you include private land ownership.
Modern social democrats are capitalist of course.
Socialists aren't the only anti-capitalists. "Market socialism" is not socialism.
I cannot fit more in a toot
Huh, I use capitalism solely to refer to the first two ๐ค
The reason I include the employer-employee contract is the workers' self-management centering traditions of anti-capitalist thought. In a proper analysis, the employer-employee contract plays a much more crucial role in alienated capitalist appropriation that anti-capitalists like to point to, but cannot usually properly criticize. The employer-employee contract is where the workers give up the right to democracy and the right to the fruits of their labor
So you are defining an ambiguous term in order to better criticise it? That makes sense, but it might not convince people who have different definitions ๐ค
Like I for example would consider a Co-Op where the employees own the company / have voting power over how its run to be a part of a capitalist system, hell, I'd even consider someone who makes a living as an artist where they own all their tools to be a part of a capitalist system... although I suppose that could also be considered socialist to some degree because the artist "owns" the means of production?
These definitions are kind of difficult to use...
Not defining the term. I am using the term how it is used. I hate to appeal to wikipedia, but they include wage labor in capitalism's central characteristics.
Happy to call economic democracy a variant of capitalism depending on the audience. It is odd tho with labor having a special role.
The difference from capitalism is the right to worker coop is inalienable in economic democracy, so working in a firm automatically grants control rights.
I am not a socialist, so cannot comment there
But the changing the last point also changes the second point. You can't have private property if you want democratic membership in the firm. It has to be communal ownership, otherwise you end up with an in group and an out group.
By democratic membership in the firm, I mean just the workers in the firm being members not the entire society because the workers in the firm are governed by management. Worker coops do not prevents individuals from owning private property in the means of production. In a worker coop, the whole product of the firm is joint property of the workers in the firm, but this is ironically necessary for private property's moral basis, which is getting the fruits of your labor
I guess it depends on the definition of private property and communal ownership. For me private property is synonymous with private ownership, meaning someone, not everyone, owns the means of production. With communal ownership I don't mean communal society, but rather ownership by a group. For example everyone within a company owning the means of production of said company would be communal ownership.
In that sense I disagree with coops not preventing individuals owning private property in the means of production, because that creates the same frictions that capitalism creates. If someone owns a part of the means of production that you need to create the product, then it creates a situation where they can use that ownership as leverage because without that part you cannot create the product. If their means of production are irreplaceable then they can demand more fruits of labor, because they own a key part of productions, which is essentially what capitalism is. If it's communal ownership there's no leverage because it's for everyone to use and nobody can demand more simply because they own a key part of the production.
The system I am describing has full private ownership. I am not taking the socialist position of collectivizing the means of production. Capital can be privately owned including by individuals. For example, an individual could own a factory and rent it out to a worker coop.
Key inputs would have more value. That does not amount to more fruits of labor because by fruits of labor, I mean the literal property rights to the production output and the liabilities for the used-up inputs not the value
Then it's not a non-capitalist economy.
Your example is literally capitalism. You use your capital and extract surplus value from the worker coop in the form of "rent".
The anti-capitalist tradition I am speaking from is descended from Proudhon and other classical laborists not Marx. I reject the labor theory of value.
The difference from capitalism is that legal system recognizes the employer-employee contract as invalid, and thus all businesses are required to be worker coops. I am fine with calling it capitalism if necessary, but many defenders of capitalism would not consider it to be so
Why do you reject the labor theory of value?
Marginal productivity theory is a better analysis. I don't approve of the ideological way economists present it though.
There is a need for a labor theory to recognize flaws in capitalism, but the labor theory that is needed is one of property (LTP) not of value after all capitalism is a property system. LTV is insufficiently decisive in its critique. At best, it says that workers are underpaid. LTP, on the other hand, demonstrates that workers legally own 0% of what they produce
Yeha, that's my point. They automatically put you in the far-right if you don't agree with a principle of communism.