Would you describe yourself as anti-capitalist?

God, I didn't realise how long that block of text was until i posted the thread... don't feel under any obligation to read it.

No, I'm pro-capitalism and think capitalism can sit side-by-side with progressive social change. I believe corporations should be tightly regulated to avoid injuring the American people, like a 100 times more stringently than they currently are. It's probably a pollyannaish view.

The problem with a negative definition (anti-capitalist) is that it does not imply a positive one. The problem with the negation of a negative (non-anti-capitalist) is that is does imply a positive (capitalist). I voted 'other'.

I strongly believe in the goals of social justice and social responsibility, but I am not strongly attached to any particular means of achieving them. A laissez-faire capitalist economy is a catastrophic economic framework for achieving social justice or enforcing social responsibility, but a modest amount of capitalism seems better able to harness human motives in the interest of creating wealth. Altruism is noble, but it takes you only so far; greed is more powerful, but allowing it full scope is playing with fire and eventually it will burn down everything in its path.

BTW this thread was meant to close on 12 September rather than 9 December but I put the month and the year the wrong way round.

I am pro capitalist, but I would qualify that by saying that capitalism must take into account a long term view. Anything that doesn't look beyond the end-of-this-quarter/end-of-this-financial-year is bad news. When capitalism includes a long term view, social justice and social responsibility become entirely aligned with capitalism. Example: providing free education for everyone. Investing in education takes longer than a quarter/year to pay off, but it's return-on-investment is so massive in comparison to how little is spent that education may as well be free.

Or the month and the day even.

capitalism is the social organization of death. the rest depends on how one feels about death on any given day.

snoball otm, and her/his point is valid with regard to environmental perspectives as well, as an economic concept of rationality is too short-term oriented to properly take ecological/environmental consequences into account.

NV, could you explain?

it's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven

in brief? not really. but the heart of capitalism is consumption. it's a burning through. that's why it doesn't make a lot of sense to think in terms of controlled consumption, because the motor of capitalism is still consumption.

now there might well be possible forms of social organization that are not centrally controlled but contain the possibility of sustainability. those forms of social organization won't be capitalism.

xp to snoball's post

Organizing free education for everyone requires a socialist framework, not a capitalist one. Setting aside the fact that no one capitalist entity could finance free education for everyone unless it were a pan-economic monopoly, no capitalist entity would attempt it without everyone signing a contract excluding them from using their education to benefit the competition. The idea that social benefits benefit everyone falls outside of capitalism.

aimless otm. i clicked "anti-capitalist" because i think there is a public interest that needs to be defended over and beyond the interests of private, competing factions.

That's good enough. I think I see what you're getting at, recognizing some of it from things I've read other places. It's an interesting view, and makes sense in a lot of ways. I still think (hope)it's possible to create some sort of middle position, however. The Scandinavian model comes to mind.

xxpost

voting "anti-capitalist" not because i'd seek to overturn it but would prefer to delimit and constrain its domains of influence. i'd like discussion of "values" to involve a multiplicity of things other than profit without presuming some other comprehensive standard bearer to take its place.

capitalism is maybe not the worst possible but i don't think we should settle for it

the northern european examples are pretty much a myth to keep revolutionary anti-capitalist feelings at bay at this point, they're all sliding towards neoliberalism

Organizing free education for everyone requires a socialist framework, not a capitalist one.

I wasn't clear in my earlier post. I meant free education in two senses. 1) school/college/university, organised by the government and paid for by taxes, most of which are collected from businesses, and 2) job related training for employees, mostly organised by businesses and paid for directly by them. The first sense has to be controlled by government, because it has to be implemented on a national level to ensure fair coverage across the entire country, and only a government can realistically do that. Education in the second sense is usually subject to an employee agreeing not to immediately quit and work for a rival company, but I think that a real capitalist wouldn't bother to try and enforce something like that, or any general non-compete agreement, because trying to make an employee do something under threat of overwhelming legal action is more like feudalism.

I would say ideally, yes, I am anti-capitalist (and essentially socialist), but realistically speaking, I know we'll never have the socialist uprising that Boots Riley of The Coup has seemed to think is coming for 20 years. and the US would probably fuck it up anyway.

so I'd rather spend my energy focusing on fixing the shitty capitalist system we do have.

hey, u never know

some policies i'm interested in & have been getting some play in left econ blogosphere like minimum basic income, full employment are kind of anti-capitalist ideas that could bloom within a capitalist system & potentially have some revolutionary implications, aside from immediate effects of helpin ppl out

oh yeah, I'm completely down with stuff like that, I mean....

This country just needs to get out of its collective mindset of "HAY Y SHULD I PAY FOR YOUR KIDS SCHOOLIN".

Businesses need to stop thinking of taxes as something to be avoided, and realise that paying tax gets them a bargain in return. It is a huge advantage to business to have an educated and healthy population, who are not shitting themselves with fear over the possibility of becoming destitute if they're made unemployed. Employers should be happy to pay tax, because what they get back in return, even though it never shows up as a line item on a balance sheet, is orders of magnitude greater.

Much of this assumes that we'll even survive the current era of oligarch-capitalism in any kind of recognizable state.

There are plenty of reactionary rich and almost-rich business owners out there who love the idea of employees shitting themselves in fear of unemployment. They see this as the natural order of things.

It is a huge advantage to business to have an educated and healthy population, who are not shitting themselves with fear over the possibility of becoming destitute if they're made unemployed

I think this is possibly not true at the very top of the business ladder, where their business only depends on other extremely wealthy people/businesses, and these are the ppl who have most/all of the policy pull. In fact it's better for them if the serfs never get too smart or too energetic.

xp

I think capitalism (along with colonialism) is at the heart of most of the injustice and inequality and wretchedness of this world. Any system that's existence depends on acquiring wealth will always prioritize wealth over everything else, when push comes to shove. The end result of capitalism, by definition, is profits over people.

That said, I participate in capitalism every day. My job is pretty much all about furthering capitalist enterprise at the expense of individual people's health and well being. So I'm also a terrible fucking hypocrite. Then again, thanks to the inherent nature of capitalism, I have more student loan debt that I will probably be able to pay off in my life so it's further the interest of capitalism to pay my loans or default and lose access to economic stability through punitive responses to loan non-payment. Capitalism! It's self-replicating!

Capitalism is basically the Borg.

The big problem with capitalism is that it only really works in a non-exploitative way if the participants aren't grabby & short sighted oh wait HELLO HUMAN RACE!

i don't think it has to do with the human race. corporations -- as depersonalized institutions committed to maximizing short term profits -- behave with less regard for others than most individuals would. those "externalities" as economists like to say -- environmental destruction, erosion of living standards for the mass of the population -- of corporations' behavior both in terms of their own activities and in terms of their political involvement hurt each individual person who works for the corporation, including the CEO and the chairman of the board, because they are all citizens who have an interest in living in a stable society. capitalism distorts their behavior by having them act on the behalf of institutional interests that may be no one's actual, individual interest.

I'm ultimately a people loving optimist, but I don't think the problem is human nature. The problem is a system that tells people that the pinnacle of success is GETTING WHAT IS YOURS and as much of it as possible, damn the consequences. If we lived under a system that valued altruism purely for its own sake, where seeing to other's needs, rather than hoarding wealth for yourself, was the fundamental driving principal, there wouldn't be so much grabby short-sightedness.

xp Corporations may be legal entities that can exist even after their founders have gone elsewhere (see Apple), but corporations are still run by people, and as such their behaviour is still explainable by the psychology of groups.
Arguably a short sighted CEO can use their position to accumulate wealth that they can then use to try and insulate themselves from the effects of living in a less-than-stable society. Whilst flipping off anyone who isn't in a similarly powerful position. But that's getting into areas of sociopathy/psychopathy/narcissism. It's hard to tell where capitalism ends and sociopathic behaviour begins, and the distinction is blurred even more because of the sheer number of sociopaths who use capitalism as an excuse for their behaviour.

ftr, having the government tax society-at-large to provide a benefit to all members of a society is socialism, plain and simple, not capitalism.

Here in the USA we get easily confused about such basic distinctions, because we approve of public education, social security and similar social programs and we are taught that socialism is ineffective and morally indefensible. In a word, it is bad. This creates a cognitive dissonance that blinds us to such simple facts and results in tea party types holding signs that say "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

I'm not sure the system needs to tell anyone anything other than 'if your commitment to decent wages and less exploitative sourcing means your product / service is 20% more expensive than comparable products and services you will probably go out of business'. It's difficult to see how a moral shift could reform capitalism, it can only be regulated from the top down. It's equally difficult to see how that regulation could happen though. The system has its own logic, some of the cogs are more handsomely rewarded than others but they're still subservient.

the distinction is blurred even more because of the sheer number of sociopaths who use capitalism as an excuse for their behaviour.

OR capitalism fundamentally rewards sociopathic behavior.

Sorry - I could pretty much respond to every comment attributing what I see as failings of capitalism to what others see as human failings, which after a point is just an asshole move so I will just register a standing objection and stop being all nitpickty about it.

Capitalism is our invention. It's weaknesses - that it can be bent to serve the less altruistic and even outright selfish among us - are a result of our human failings. Primarily our inability to see things in the long term, and also our tendency to react to the slightest threat to our medium term safety (real or perceived) with a sort of 'hoarding mentality'.

(and I suppose capitalism provides such an effective refuge for sociopaths because it's those same failings they try to exploit, whether or not they're the CEO of a company)

I am 100% against capitalism and 100% percent complicit in it

The (stock) markets are the key to facilitating sociopathy of corporations. The duty to maximise benefit for shareholders, the distancing of the individual from the responsibilities of the actions of a group, the reponsibility to avoid taxes where possible. Is it possible, if you're considering the entire planet, to be anything but anti-capitalism?

I've even thought of how it affected me recently. Like seeing all these friends who need $50 to pay a bill, knowing I have 6 months of monthly bills saved up (and make $2000 more than I need each month) and could just give it to them, but holding onto it for fear of a "rainy day" that will never come. Dealt with that feeling recently by loaning $300 to my family, but I get the feeling of "how much is ever enough"?

I'm thinking that society needs to be both socialist and capitalist. Socialism needs capitalism so that governments can raise enough money through taxes to fund social programmes. Capitalism's worst excesses need to be tempered by socialism. And I know that sounds like some 'third way'/'middle path'/'golden mean' BS, but any society based around a single ideology is going to get trapped in the flaws and weaknesses of that ideology.

(xp)

without capitalism, nobody would pay top dollar for your rare vintage vinyl

where is tickbox for suspicious of capitalism but not doing anything about it or well-read about (aware of?) any alternatives; still gleefully putting money into the machine and expecting to take it out again to buy more shit incessantly, so not meaningfully anti-capitalist either?

oh that would be other, right, or maybe just tick "anti-" and then feel guilty about inaction

(I was going to say something wanky abt capitalism hinging upon an impossible eternal economic growth as a necessary precondition, and how maintaining the illusion of growth will prove ever more deleterious and divisive, but then I thought maybe that is not true of capitalism per se, just any forms vaguely resembling the one which currently allows most Westerners to carry on with our everyday lives. that isn't all that comforting either)

where is tickbox for suspicious of capitalism but not doing anything about it or well-read about (aware of?) any alternatives; still gleefully putting money into the machine and expecting to take it out again to buy more shit incessantly, so not meaningfully anti-capitalist either?

This is pretty much where i'm at and i ticked anti, possibly you have more self respect/healthy sense of shame than i do.

I did some trot newspaper selling at university but I wouldn't like to argue that it did much to hasten the end of capitalism.

our sense of complicity and powerlessness in the face of capitalism is, of course, another of the great things it has going for it

I'm a "capitalist" by birth - my mom's family owned a company. Which leaves me feeling entitled to criticize some people's "capitalism". I feel strongly that some people shouldn't run workers' lives.

I guess I would describe myself as a socialist and an anti-capitalist in as much as I don't believe capitalism can be reformed to make it non-exploitative, but I don't really live my life any differently than I would if I believed the opposite, and also the only possible situation in which i would ever actually "describe myself as a socialist and an anti-capitalist" is talking on a message board to a bunch of people I've never met like I am now, so this seems too pompous a was to phrase it maybe?

i'm not anti-capitalist. capitalism is sort of like a hurricane. i'm not anti-hurricane, but i do think it's important to help the wounded & repair the damage

do u mean if you could prevent every future hurricane from happening you wouldn't?

i hate hurricanes way more than i hate capitalism

you build the hurricane gun, i'll test it out

Bond villain theory of contenderizer identity gains momentum

lol

rly tho, how can u not be anti-hurricane? are you also not anti-cancer? these seem like the easiest things to be anti-

im not antihurricane but is the best start to a sentence this year on ilx id say

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

missed an option for 'no, i would not describe myself as other' for the real contrarians

how did u vote deems

cant recall, one would imagine in the no camp, u would imagine im in ilx's top 57 capitalist supporters, wouldnt u

anyone that had to read joel bakan's 'the corporation' in order to pass a business ethics course would have done the same im sure

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/11/actually-global-income-inequality-seems-to-be-on-the-decline/

This sort of thing makes me slightly resentful of capitalism, yes:

Steep penalties taken in stride by JP Morgan Chase

House Financial Services Chairman to Seek Volcker Rule Change

Mordy's link = eh, basically some people in China got a lot richer over the last few decades

i think it's shocking that you would have a huge issue with that tbh

shocking!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/united-nations-reports-global-hunger-down-since-1990.html

Progress was most pronounced in East Asia, Southeast and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Socialist/communist states?

well

i'm not sure about that

there's a map u can toggle to see by country http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/ doesn't look like it splits socialist at all though

what even are the socialist countries anymore

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKslhF8UYAE0pEt.jpg

sonic otm

i liked capitalism before it got popular obv

earlier funnier capitalism

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Pamphlet_dutch_tulipomania_1637.jpg

A lot of abuses that people (not nec in this thread) blame on capitalism actually pre-date it. Industrial pollution, private property, government nepotism, reckless market speculators, data crime, etc. are all concepts at least a thousand years old in practice. An end to capitalism does not guarantee an end to corporate abuse.

corporations don't predate capitalism let's just ban corporations

Groups of people pooling their power together to take natural resources is an old concept.

yeah that's not what a corporation is

a corporation is a legal entity that absorbs risk and accrues benefits independently of its constituent members; it is inseparable from the legal concepts of profit and stock. The modern understanding of the corporation doesn't really exist prior to the end of the middle ages

capitalism has done a fine job of subsuming lots of things that precede it into its impenetrable whole, only fair that we can criticise capitalism on those grounds too

The holy roman church absorbed risk and accrued benefits independently of its constituent members. A good position in the church yielded annual dividends based on performance of the whole, whether through material income or favorable taxation rates. The church did and still does reduce risk by portraying its profit as charity.

What about mining operations? The first large-scale mining operations were more or less corporations in all but name. People coming together, amassing capitol, developing technology, gathering knowledge, extracting, processing, speculating on supply and demand, etc. The Iron Age didn't just occur naturally in the wild.

along with what merdeyeux says, I've always like Jameson's notion of capitalism as an unrepresentable totality--it's possible (maybe inevitable) to be for it and against it at the same time.

I think its a mistake to cast every collective endeavor as a corporation.

Yeah that would be a mistake. How about a collective endeavor formed with the purpose of not sharing with the wider public.

Not sharing what, is kind of the issue

Resources. Everything from the oil they drill out of the ground to the air they cough it into. Legal benefits including numerous recorded win setting precedence in favor of corporate powers. Tax loopholes -- these existed in the middle ages, tipping the taxman, people were just as crooked as they are today. Access to politics is a tremendous benefit perhaps at the root of all of this. Paying off the regulators.

These are all benefits that if an average individual tried to take advantage of it may end them up in jail. A corporation does not have to go to jail, ever. This is what I mean by not sharing, not sharing the same status in society.

If I make a product and go to a public area and try to sell it, I can get arrested. That right is wholly owned by a corporation in most instances. They are not sharing it with me.

You're kind of leaping around here.

Like all those things u just listed are totally unrelated to the pre-capitalist examples you cited.

(Well most of them)

Yeah I apologize if I am not making any sense. When do you say the start of capitalism was?

End of the middle ages

i consider myself anti-capitalist and i teach HS economics which in my state is a sloppy kiss on capitalism's thin, chapped lips.

I took AP macro in Texas and we spent a full month on a biography of Bill Gates intertwined with materials on the wonders of entrepreneurship. I did not take the AP test.

i havent taught AP yet, but somehow that doesnt shock me. i taught dual credit last year with a local community college professor as the professor of record (im more of a facilitator in those instances). the field is chock full of neoclassical assholes.