Hacker News Reader

Comment by quesera | Hacker News Reader

> Capitalism precludes slavery.

Hmm? Capitalism neither precludes nor predates slavery.

Capitalism precisely precludes slavery. One of the most important and foundational of its principles is private property. The first, most natural, and universal instance of private property is the ownership of one's own body. Heck, we even have the phrase "private parts." Slavery requires the most basic violation of bodily autonomy. In other words, to permit slavery is to permit the violation of the most basic property right. I struggle to see how slavery could be compatible with capitalism.

Go ask kids forced to work for years in cocoa plants or coltan mins in africa what they think of your little explaination

Is this supposed to be ... a gotcha? If slavery is involved, it's not capitalism, by definition. Distance attenuates all signals, so each transaction step may somewhat smear or smudge such a stain. Really not clear at all what you're getting at.

you assume that capitalism implies that everyone gets to participate. but that is not a necessary condition. you can have a capitalist system where not everyone participates. slaves did not participate in capitalism, but their owners did. one might even argue that employees do not participate in capitalism either (i am not familiar enough with the specific definitions to state that with certainty however).

No! The owners were not participating in capitalism either, precisely because their whole business is predicated on violating private property. If you wish, you can express it as a matter of degree. That by having ones bodily autonomy stripped, one is engaged less capitalistically, and the same for those which strip that autonomy. The violation taints both ways.

Your argument sounds like a Smithian adaptation of the Brezhnevian "actually existing socialism".

Neither system has ever existed in its purest theoretical form -- probably cannot, and even more probably should not.

I don't think this is a useful point of argument.

I think you would have more of a point if we were still struggling to achieve a good "capitalist" society, i.e. where property rights are enforced, individual liberty, freedom of contracts.¹ But we've already gotten very far, unlike the many regrettable socialist experiments. If we were still feudal, or still keeping slaves, you might have a point, but in a global sense overall things are better than ever. The Brezhnevian notion fails because all the striving towards socialism tends to lead to suffering, and on the way you don't see incremental improvement. But I'm not a historian so please correct any ignorance of mine if you can.

1:I really want to emphasize these as the definition of capitalism, because capitalism as is often defined is not designed top-down with the attributes identified in it. It mostly organically emerges from basic rights. Take for example the Marxist phrase "private ownership of the means of production." (POMP) One does not set ought to ensure this directly, it arises naturally from property rights and liberalism. One would need to prevent POMP by chipping away at property rights and personal liberties: by seizing things, by getting in the way of consensual agreements.

things are better, but they are getting worse again. wages are not rising long with inflation. why? because capitalism defines that the wages are set by market value.

as i see it only socialist tendencies are fighting against that. (i don't mean achieving a full socialist system)

is minimum wage capitalistic or socialistic?

No, the private ownership of the means of production needs to be created and maintained by a state. There is nothing natural about it; if you see it as natural, it is because you naturalize the society you live in. First of all, like any type of property, it is a social construct that must be upheld by laws and instruments of coercion. And speaking of the means of production, to ensure wage labor, a process or arrangement is needed that guarantees one group of people holds ownership while others do not. In the case of land, for example, this requires enclosure, the destruction of the concept of land as something communal.

What part of capitalism precludes violating other peoples rights or property? By your definition much of US business isn't capitalist because of the prevalence of wage theft and rights violations, which is absurd.

You should do a little basic research before commenting. Property rights are part of the very definition of capitalism. Wage theft is illegal, because theft is illegal. If you believe that corporations are stealing wages from their employees and the government is tolerating this, then you should probably conclude that those businesses aren't capitalist; that's straightforward, not absurd. And you could probably break a great news story while you're at it.

You realize wage theft is documented as greater than all other forms of theft combined in the US right? It isn't some fringe theory, it is established fact.

If so, then we can safely call that behavior uncapitalistic. That's how the definition works. FWIW, I knew very little about wage theft, until researching it at your prompting, which I appreciate. Seems like wage theft is rarely actual theft, and most often a violation of contract, but in either case it's a violation of capitalism's seed principles. Sometimes wage theft is neither theft nor contract violation. That's my impression from Wikipedia, at least.

if then by that definition we are not in a capitalist system, then in which system are we? robber barons and anarchism?

keep reading on wage labor and in particular on wage slavery, and how it relates to actual slavery. in my opinion neither precludes capitalism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com