Don’t Be Scared About the End of Capitalism, Be Excited to Build What Comes Next
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
Capitalism is not the opposite of Communism, Democracy is (one of the core ideas of Communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat). And there is not a single Western state with purely capitalist economy, what we see around us are mixed economies with smaller or bigger level of redistribution, limits on private property and elements of social security.
I would really like to see which one of the central characteristics of Capitalism - private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, price system, competitive markets - is no longer supported by "51% of young people in the United States no longer support the system of capitalism".
Here's capitalism: a recognition of certain human rights (oriented around property) and a thesis that crowd-sourcing economic choices is better than centrally controlling them. I'd be interested in hearing someone who is against capitalism argue against either of those things.
There could be variations based on job growth...new jobs added over previous years...could raise their take or give them a bonus...
The end goal: Increase jobs + Increase wage lower the gap between highest/lowest wage earners in America.
Also capitalism results in Oligarchy usually which isn't much better than Dictatorship... 1% own everything and control every aspect of society from the shadows... it's one big game of monopoly for them.
Won't they just find more loopholes to circumvent these rules? Maybe they take small salaries and get paid in transferrable, no expiration stock options.
It seems like the way to level the playing field is to figure out ways to help small companies, including startups, to compete with big players.
Trickle down hasn't worked...at all. The middle class is the new 'poor'.. I earn 60k as a jr developer and still money issues are tight.. I shiver to think what'd happen if I lost my job or went to a lower paying job.
One can always propose regulations but it's a steep uphill battle to close every last loophole that people have to extract wealth from a population, usually unethically.
People against capitalism are usually for something else, and they propose to change the fundamental properties of the economic system at hand to one that puts ownership directly in the hands of labor (socialism), is inherently redistributional (communism), or never supposes the need for redistribution in the first place (elimination of private property such as in pure anarchism). Those against capitalism have seen the endless failed attempts to patch the system, but the bugs are built into what makes the kernel work. Political processes are too slow to respond to the crafty and conniving, and are anyhow weak to the siren's call of having a higher economic status and so sacrifice their morals way more often than they are comfortable. Cronyism is built into the distributional properties of capitalism because of this assumption of private property.
I'm not an expert, but I believe this is a misunderstanding of Marxism. According to Marx, the modern State is itself dictatorial ("the existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery" -- Critical Notes on "The King of Prussia"), with the Bourgeoisie being the dominant class.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a transitional revolutionary period in which the State still exists (hence the dictatorship), but the proletariat becomes the dominant class instead. This is followed by the abolishment of classes and of the State itself.
(Note: I'm not actually interested in discussing the merits of Marxism, I just think one should properly represent a position before having an opinion on it)
(I am not sure if I agree with "State is dictatorial" because a state is not a "person", but I certainly agree that democracy is a dictatorship of the majority.)
> I certainly agree that democracy is a dictatorship of the majority
Yes!
Socialism happens when proletariat becomes the ruling class and distributes the wealth upon all the citizens of the country, providing healthcare, education, housing, enough wage to feed everyone. As proletariat are the majority, socialism becomes a proper democracy, where people can control their own livelihood, not some fat senator who received a 100k 'lobbying gift'.
Communism happens when all the signs of the capitalism vanish (no exploitation of people by other people, no money - goods are produced based on needs and distributed to everyone). It happens when people get rid of bourgeoisie thinking via education and personal experience of having society without hungry, homeless, uneducated people. This happened before (we see slave-owning societies of the past with disgust and feudal states with horror), it just took over several hundred years each time.
If I plug the term "communism" into Google I get the following definition:
“a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.“
Nowhere in that definition do I see anything about the political dictatorship of the proles. That's a whole other thing. I think it is far more useful to think of communism opposing the central notion of private property rights in capitalism. (Most?) communists retain the notion of personal property rights but I'm not sure how the distinction is cashed out in practice.
> And there is not a single Western state with purely capitalist economy
Straw man? Nobody sensible is really arguing that Western economies are purely capitalist. Everybody sensible will acknowledge that they are mixed.
> I would really like to see which one of the central characteristics of Capitalism - private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, price system, competitive markets
I imagine that it is the _capital accumulation_ part, aka wealth inequality – article says that “And a solid 55% of Americans of all ages believe that capitalism is fundamentally unfair.” – ergo it's presumably the (unequal) capital accumulation part that people object to. Or to put it in Piketty terms, we're worried about r > g getting so out of hand that it's causing unnecessary social hardship and division.
> Capitalism is not the opposite of Communism, Democracy is
I find this comment very odd as in my experience the opposite is true of most debates: what most get wrong is mixing economic systems with political ideologies by framing Communism as the opposite to Democracy (when it is in fact the opposite of Capitalism). You may be thinking of Authoritarianism
> (one of the core ideas of Communism is the dictatorship of the proletariat)
This particular line highlights your misunderstanding. Firstly, "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a term often used to describe a proposed/potential intermediate state of moving from Capitalism to Communism - it is not a core component of either. Secondly, the word "dictatorship" is used facetiously in this phrase, it is not an actual state of dictatorship.
What was supposed to be the decision making mechanism of ideal Communism if not a dictatorship of top to bottom decisions? How did Soviets (councils) work or supposed to work? A consensus of the majority - aka Democracy? I don't think so.
A soviet is supposed to be an elected legislative assembly, like a senate or parliament. The true soviets died with the Bolshevik coup, when Lenin declared them unnecessary now that his party was in charge. A military coup was what set up a dictatorship, and that is hardly unique to communism.
What will die is growthism (https://hbr.org/2013/10/this-isnt-capitalism-its-growthism-a...): the organization of our economic systems around the assumption of perpetual exponential growth. It's simple math that this will fail, no matter how many virgin markets there are in developing countries. We can already see growth failing; it is likely to completely collapse within the lifetimes of most people in this forum.
But even when growthism fails, some form of private ownership will survive.
There's nothing in capitalism itself about concentrated wealth. Or are you saying the term is being misapplied?
Right now we're seeing a shift in who benefits and an inequality crisis, but absolutely nothing is being done to change the course of our economy away from capitalism.
Uber isn't a collective/shared economy, it's a taxi service without labour rights.
So what we're really seeing isn't the end of capitalism it's the end of democracy and individual rights, and anyone who's read any bit of cyberpunk knows what comes next isn't going to be exciting.
It'll be dystopian as fuck, and we're approaching the point where the powers can render revolution almost impossible through tech.
Sure it could lead to something better, if you're optimistic, but then I wonder if you've been paying attention to the state of individual freedom these past years.
Surveillance is at an all time high, big data can predict our lives and we've started hating our neighbors.
Especially when AI/Automation begin taking more jobs and the proletariat don't even have the ability to get a job or enter the labor force... There will be mass protests and upheavals everywhere if something doesn't happen.
The article reads a bit like "You are suffering from a well know incurable illness, you are going to die very soon. By don't despair, think all the things you will be able to do if a cure is found! Even better, some people are even looking for one!"
But that's not the real problem. Humanity is very bad at transitioning, it mostly still works in the natural fashion: keep the survivors if any. That's the real fear, not where we are going, but how we are going to get there without war, massive death toll, ... Before capitalism is abandoned, we need Capitalism 1.1, 1.2 then 1.3 and we need it before wrecking Earth completely or before the growth engine is completely broken whichever come first.
It's hard to really know, the thing about revolutions is you just end up with a new set of leaders, human nature doesn't change much along the way.
It's worth noting that when the financial system goes through a down cycle, the government bails out the politically and economically powerful, propping up existing economic inequalities. This is not a capitalist policy.
I think capitalism mostly has a branding problem.
So you end up with two sets of capitalists; moral capitalists and immoral capitalists unwittingly collaborating with one another.
It was very convenient for a lot of passive 'moral' shareholders that the government just happened to step in to bail out their favourite stocks.
I don't think regulatory capture is an ideological phenomenon. To put it another way, how would one design a system where central authorities are not susceptible to this kind of lobbying? I don't think I've heard a credible plan along these lines. The usual tactic is to centrally control decisions but make sure "good" leaders hold that power. As recent political outcomes have illustrated (yet again), it's more or less inevitable that someone untrustworthy or even odious will be in charge of these decisions at some point.
Not that - that will ever happen.. Politics lately seems to just be legal Mafia.
But I agree about the cronyism. But I think the solution is to simplify everything and make it more transparent. So regulatory capture, for instance, has fewer places to thrive.
Each person should have EQUAL weight on their 'freedom of speech' abilities... Lobbyism as it works now is flawed.
Corporations are not human entities and should have no protections under the constitution of free speech either... The CEO sure--but they should just be able to send the letter, without any money backing and be barred from giving more than what a normal person could afford to a politician -- i.e. something like $500/year per politician..or something.
This guy's livelihood was put in jeopardy because of his so called "free speech".
People should have free speech, institutions should not. Lobbies are institutions.
In the sense that I understand the word, it is not the shareholder of a startup that will benefit from chaos, but a member of an armed gang.
Not really. We're so far beyond the carrying capacity of our planet already that our natural systems are collapsing at a dizzying pace. More growth = faster collapse. For a mix of personal and professional reasons I'm in touch with many experts in specific ecologies throughout mainly SE Asia, Australia, and W.Europe. Nearly every one is in one of a spectrum of states between panic and depression, because the systems they are studying are collapsing fast enough to be very obviously discernible within their own career span (these are people in their 30s to 50s).
This is pretty well known to us in Australia, which has had astonishingly fast population growth, so that now many retirees can see the collapse for themselves. All the Queensland inshore reefs that they used to visit on school holidays, for example, have now disappeared. Those studying the offshore reefs tell us that they will also be dead in a few decades. This is repeated for all our land ecosystems, from the tropical savannahs to the Southern highlands.
Many people cloistered in the parasitic virtual worlds of business and cities think of this as something that won't affect them. It's something seperate, 'the environment', that they only see on holidays and in documentaries. Yet the world's climate on which agriculture depends is also collapsing fast. Topsoil is being blown and washed away. Fresh water is disappearing. We're three or four bad seasons (which are ever harder to predict) away from disaster.
Ongoing growth is incompatible with the continuing existence of a living planet.
I have been quite excited about the concept of alternative, local based economies, and I'm amazed by communities that try and manage to build one, but I think they are too small to be a viable solution. Still, reading articles like this give me a bit of hope.