- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.
He didn’t always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!
Some significant works:
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)
And, of course, Capital Vol I-III
Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!
You must log in or register to comment.
So as a leftist that I think identifies with Marxist-Leninist ideology but that didn’t find the communist manifesto an interesting nor easy read (it was small but not really approachable) are there any books that you recommend? I’m no economist but I do like reading logical arguments as to why capitalism doesn’t work, or better said, doesn’t work for the good of the majority but instead for a small minority (for whom it works very very well)
Welcome, comrade! @[email protected] has a fantastic Crash Course Socialism you can check out, and if you want to get into theory but don’t find the Communist Manifesto to be approachable, I recommend my “Read Theory, Darn It!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list. It has audiobooks, and starts off simpler than the Communist Manifesto.
That seems great! I’ll definitely check it out
Any communities here on Lemmy that you’d also recommend?
And thank you once again!
No problem!
As for Communities, I don’t really have any recommendations. I do recommend making an account that can interact with Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, though, as that’s where most of us Marxist-Leninists are. You can make a Lemm.ee account or Lemmy.ml, and you’ll still be able to see them, just not on Lemmy.world as .world has defederated from them.
I personally use Hexbear.net and Lemmy.ml.
And no problem, once again!
For a more all-round perspective, I recommend Hajoon Chang’s “economics: the user’s guide”.
Most books by Ha-joon Chang, especially 23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism. Fun fact, Ha-joon Chang isn’t a Marxist, he’s a liberal, but his writing is still critical enough of capitalism that South Korea banned his books.
Anything on prolewiki’s library are good reads as well.
For a broad look at the evolution modes of productions and how capitalism came to be there is this 60s textbook from the soviet academy of science, there even are a series of videos following the textbook by the finish bolshevik that is pretty good.
I don’t think the Marxist definition of capitalism lines up with the colloquial definition. Colloquially, it’s thought of as systems in which money is exchanged for goods and services. As opposed to communism, where it is not. (These are both oversimplified)
When people say capitalism has been around for thousands of years, what they mean is the colloquial definition. Redefining their terms with the Marxist version doesn’t address their actual point.
The “colloquial definition” isn’t the colloquial definition, though. Even in liberal academia, it’s the same as the Marxist conception. Using currency for trade isn’t Capitalism, not even in Libertarian theory.
When you survey people on the street, would they use that definition? English isn’t a prescriptive language, the definition is what people use it as.
I don’t survey people on the street, but they likely would be closer to the definition accepted in academia than the mere buying and selling of goods.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what you’re arguing for, here. Capitalism as a term has a very useful and descriptive definition as used by Marx and liberal academics alike. Trying to use Capitalism to refer to concepts like commerce that already have their own words just weakens understanding, rather than strengthening it.
I don’t survey people on the street, but they likely would be closer to the definition accepted in academia than the mere buying and selling of goods.
I think that’s optimistic. The average persons understanding of these concepts is very limited. They’d most likely call ancient Rome “capitalist”, because “they’re not communist”.
That’s the average persons understanding. There’s capitalism and there’s communism, and communism is when you own nothing and everyone is poor and capitalism is everything not-communism. It’s deeply disappointing but that’s what you’re up against.
So when an intellectual person says “capitalism is human nature”, it means something completely different from when an average person says it. To both the 400-years argument won’t make sense.
An intellectual will argue that it naturally came about, so it must be human nature for it to arise so prominently. An average person will laugh in your face “because Rome wasn’t communist”. Neither is correct in their own way, but they’re also not going to be convinced by the 400 years argument. One doesn’t believe you, the other doesn’t care.
Historical examples of proto-socialism or communal living would be a stronger counterpoint imo. Not because it’s more correct in a theoretical sense, but because it more directly challenges the core of the opposing sides argument.
Most people wouldn’t call feudalism “Capitalism” either. It isn’t a stretch to see the slave-driven society in Rome as non-Capitalist as well. I don’t see it as that optimistic, if I’m being honest.
The reason I don’t directly bring up tribal societies as more fitting for “human nature” is that all Modes of Production have been a result of “human nature” as it historically shifts from one Mode of Production to another.
I think you’d be surprised how poor the general state of education is… I think it’s also in part why left-wing politicians lately are failing to get traction with the lower-educated. They speak in a way that doesn’t resonate, and that’s in part because they’re working with different assumptions and definitions.
It’s what people like Trump do understand very well, he speaks like they speak to each other. As a result, even if they don’t fully follow along, it makes more sense to them.
I think education is certainly poor, but the ability for the Working Class to grasp the essense off Capitalism is quite easy, as we all work within the boundaries of it.
This rings true.
When someone says capitalism is human nature, I don’t think they mean that industrial automation allowing unskilled workers is human nature. So they’re using a different meaning of capitalism. To address their concern, you would show counter examples of large groups of people working together for a common good rather than their own enrichment. Rather than just saying they’re using the word wrong.
I answered this in this comment.
Do you think you can have effective communism with only self interested parties? That was my take away from your comment, that you can get communism as a logical extension of greedy motives?
Sure? I don’t really see why not, nor is that an accurate view of humanity anyways.
The reason why this “colloquial definition” is this way is so that capitalists can convince the masses that capitalism is natural “because it has always existed” by claiming that antique slave society, feudalism and even late hunter gatherer society were actually capitalist. This isn’t a neutral definition that is as valid as the other, it is a lie crafted for propaganda purposes and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Language changes over time, and technical words are often misunderstood. It is definitely unfortunate, but I don’t think it is some sort of conspiracy.
Control of language and ideas is a critical part of cultural hegemony:
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society (the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores) so that their imposed, ruling-class world view becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
If you live in the USA, you’ve probably already seen this a dozen times in your lifetime: Anti-unionism becomes “Right to work”, colonized peoples become “terrorists”, social support becomes “Welfare mothers”, immigrants become “illegal aliens”, petit bourgeiosie and the working class gets confused into “middle class”.
You can call these campaigns to miseducate conspiracies if you like, but they enter the public lexicon via mass inundation from capitalist media and educational institutions.
Also just thought of this pertinent quote by William Casey, the CIA director during the 1980s:
We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
Today I honor Cowbee’s Sisyphean task of explaining that production/trade and capitalism are two different things 🫡
It gets easier, actually! So I wouldn’t call it Sisyphean. Different parts of Lemmy have different levels of understanding, if I can get parts mostly aware to be more aware, then that helps trickle into other instances, and it’s easier than doing so in instances where Marxism is seen hostiley.
trickle down economics
lessons. Reagan was right all alongNot really “trickle down.” If I go to a MAGA conference, I am going to be immediately attacked. If I go to a place with progressives, I’ll face less hostility. If I go to a place with Leftists, then I’ll generally be recieved favorably. If this Leftist base solidifies, it can expand and fold in the more radical of the progressives, and then expand outward.
In other words, if it takes immense effort to “wololo” a MAGA into a Leftist, but much less effort to “wololo” a progressive into one, then it’s better to focus on the progressive so that the new Leftist can also aid in the “wololo-ing.” As the proportion of Leftists grows, and more proletarians go from MAGA to liberal, and liberal to progressive, this Leftist movement becomes better able to fold more people into it.
Well that’s a very meme description of shifting the overton window to the left.
As Marx’s favorite maxim goes, “Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me]”
I love memes and gaming, same with Marxist-Leninist theory, same with space, science, and technology. Connecting to others with shared culture is part of what makes us human.
@Cowbee @Cypher Marxist-Leninist theory is fine. Theoretically the concepts of communal ownership and resources sharing is a laudable one. Too bad the only example of this concept actually working is Star Trek. The instances when it’s been tried in the real world, ended in authortarainism and/or collapse.
“Authoritarianism” is when the imperial core’s freedom to exploit the periphery is thwarted.
All countries are “authoritarian,” what matters most is which class is in control and thus exerting its authority. In Capitalist society, that class is the Bourgeoisie, a tiny minority of society. In Socialism, that class is the Proletariat, the majority of society. Countries like the PRC are labeled “authoritarian” not due to how the people themselves feel, but because Capital is limited by the government. Even if over 90% of Chinese citizens support the CPC, western media slanders the system as “authoritarian” because their corporate masters can’t move as they please in Chinese markets.
Western supremacists tend to use “Authoritarian” only to demonize the countries that stood up and fought back against colonialism / imperialism.
And it usually is never directed against the actually non-democratic / oligarchical countries like the US, who’ve bombed and meddled with nearly every government on the planet.
You should question your preconceived notions about China, Vietnam, Cuba, and the USSR, because you likely grew up in a country that has spent the entire historical period of the cold war, trying to strangle those countries and many others out of existence.
TIL Wololoing
Communism is actually human nature. Think about before the human era when everyone was hunter gatherers working together and sharing was what kept everyone alive. There was no currency or concept of ownership.
I recommend this thread, though maybe don’t bother going down the chain that far as it becomes a stalemate.
Essentially, you’re correct in that tribal societies were very communistic, but not Communist. Marxists call this “primitive communism,” as a distinguishing factor from Communism, a highly industrialized and global society emerging from Socialism.
The truth is, all modes of production are “human nature.” Human nature, after all, is malleable, and is largely determined by which mode of production humanity finds itself in. Each mode of production turns into another due to human nature, Capitalism is merely also human nature, just like feudalism, tribal societies, as is Socialism and eventually Communism.
But is human nature not more acutely observed within the view of coercion, control and oppression? Marx says himself that the human history is defined by class wars between the haves and the have nots, with or without capitalism we will have a system that expresses control and oppression.
Marx states that all hitherto existing history is the history of Class Struggles. In analyzing tribal societies, he did so as they did indeed lack class, money, and a state, but were distinctly not “Communist” as production was low, and life relatively harsh and brutal. Communism as a mode of production is the classless society of the future, the end of class struggle. There will be new contradictions and new changes, most likely, but class as a concept is abolished through a global, publicly owned and planned industrial economy, in Marx’s analysis.
This is where i struggle agreeing with Marx, i find him to be selectively pragmatic and idealistic whenever the former or latter is convenient.
He acknowledges human nature is to oppress or be oppressed, as even in prehistoric human groups leaders would have formed and social rules enforced, we can assume this from our experiences in social groups. Yet does not believe that communism would lead to centralised oppression despite his historical studies, to me its either he chooses to ignore this factor or people misinterpret his writing and they cannot be applied in a post industrial capitalism society.
Marx doesn’t acknowledge “human nature is to oppress or be oppressed,” though. Marx builds the economic analysis of class society and charts how it will eventually erase its own foundations. Primitive communistic societies did not usually have classes, as they didn’t have an economic basis for it.
Communism would be centralized, but it would also be democratized.
If you define economics as have and have-not, they obviously had economics. Who are he to tell us that bartering didn’t happen on any scale within a tribe of cro magnom.
I think the point being is that economics is a large scale class system with fairly complex structures. There’s always been have and have-nots. Just look at a pride of lions on how they distribute the feeding based upon ranks within the pride. It’s not economics, but it’s s class based system with distributed means (i.e access to food).
So maybe all of nature is oppress or being oppressed in a way. We just industrialised it.
Nobody defines economics as “have or have nots” or denies that trade existed a long, long time ago. I think you’re missing the point of class society and how that plays in economics, but isn’t all-encompassing of it.
It isn’t about oppression or being oppressed.
Interesting take, thank you for your opinion.
Communism is human nature. Communism existed in the Americas and Australia for thousands of years. It probably existed in the rest of the world too before agriculture, but our historical records from other regions were destroyed. By contrast, Australia has the most intact ancient histories in the world.
It’s important to draw a line between Primitive Communism and Communism as a post-Socialist society. Primitive Communism is founded upon small, isolated communities, while Marx’s Communism is one of large industry run along a common plan, democratically, to suit the needs of all.
What’s more accurate is to say that what’s considered “Human Nature” changes alongside Mode of Production. It was indeed “Human Nature” to have cooperative, communal units, but it is also “Human Nature” to produce under Capitalism, and still further “Human Nature” to move beyond the discordant production of Capitalism to a cohesive Socialist, and eventually Communist, society.
It’s important to draw a line between Primitive Communism and Communism as a post-Socialist society. Primitive Communism is founded upon small, isolated communities, while Marx’s Communism is one of large industry run along a common plan, democratically, to suit the needs of all.
That feels like some noble savage stuff. Societies aren’t different because they have different technology with the same economic system. It feels like you’re saying indigenous societies wouldn’t have been able to industrialise without changing their political system radically.
But indigenous societies made conscious political choices about how to structure society, and drag believes they had the political structure required to adapt to industrialisation without losing their political system.
Drag doesn’t buy the distinction you’re making between indigenous communism and industrialised communism. Drag doesn’t think the difference is relevant to whether something is communism, and the only way drag could see it being relevant is through the noble savage trope.
Indigenous societies have largely industrialized in nearly all the world. Take nearly any country (except the USA, Canada, and Australia, western colonial projects), and you’ll find ethnic peoples from those areas with an industrial mode of production.
If you exclude Turtle Island and Australia from the dataset, the continents with the best record of recent communism, then there’s no point in this conversation, because drag is talking about continents with recent communism and a strong historical record.
The economic system isn’t the same, though. Tribal societies don’t have incredibly massive logistical chains and production methods suitable for satisfying the greatest amount of needs with the least amount of work possible.
Indigenous societies were and are incredibly complex and sophisticated in their own ways, but they aren’t the same economic system I am speaking of, and they can’t accomplish what post-Socialist Communism can.
Further, as comrade @[email protected] pointed out, primitive is not a derogatory term. This isn’t the “noble savage” racist archetype, but a descriptor of early hunter gatherer societies as a unique mode of production.
The only difference you’re talking about is quantity, not quality. Drag feels you’re othering them on a weak basis. Industrialised communists have ten times as much in common with tribal communists as with industrialised capitalists, and what differences do exist, are our lack of knowledge of the land and respect for the traditional ways. We have more to learn from them than we have to teach them. You’re dismissing them unfairly.
I’m not dismissing tribal societies, I just don’t think tribal organizations are suitable to modern conditions in most of the world, nor do I want to live as tribal societies do. The quality is fundamentally different, tribal production is based on hunting and gathering, Marx’s conception of Communism is based on massive industry and global cooperation. The quantity and quality are different.
Tribes are perfectly capable of running industrial manufacturing supply lines in terms of administrative ability. In Australia, tribes are refuelling helicopters. They’re doing it under capitalism, because white people suck, but they could just as easily do it under communism if the white people had left well enough alone and not stolen the land and enslaved generations.
I’m not making an argument based on ethnicity, but mode of production. You yourself admit that those tribal societies no longer fit what we were talking about as Hunter/Gatherer societies, but are now being swallowed by the very same Capitalist machine, in fact to greater degrees thanks to the evils of settler-colonialism.
A hunter/gatherer society cannot make a helicopter, that’s just a fundamental fact. If you move onto large industry capable of creating helicopters, you are no longer in the stage of “primitive communism.”
Societies aren’t different because they have different technology with the same economic system. It feels like you’re saying indigenous societies wouldn’t have been able to industrialise without changing their political system radically
Societies with different technologies would tend to have very different social and economic systems. Indigenous societies that industrialise do end up changing their political systems because of this.
Drag doesn’t buy the distinction you’re making between indigenous communism and industrialised communism.
Industrialised communism does not exist, at least yet, but any industrial society will necessarily need to organise itself in a very different way from a primitive society (whether communist or not).
deleted by creator
By and large, Marx’s writings have been overwheingly positive for humanity. Even if he didn’t write as he did, though, Dialectical Materialism would have been synthesized by someone eventually, same with Scientific Socialism and the Law of Value. So in the end, I’d say he’d certainly be interested to see how Capitalism turned to Imperialism, as well as other advancements on his work, but I don’t think he’d abandon his work entirely.
As for the Ricky Gervais bit, Nietzsche was by no means “misunderstood,” he was always deeply reactionary. I recommend reading Really Existing Fascism.
Critiquing something is not damaging it. Your brain is broken if you blame anything on Marx. Who takes the blame for 3+ million children that starve to death every year under capitalism? Please explain.
Do comment deletions not get federated on lemmy or what? This is not the first time I commented something, regretted it almost instantly and deleted it, and the received replies several hours later.
Deletions of comments often don’t federate, so your comment will show as deleted on sopuli.xyz but not on Lemmy.ml.
Where does 500 years come from? Capitalism goes back at least 3000 years, right?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir
I answered more in-depth in this comment, but trade is not Capitalism itself. Rather, Capitalism as a system is merely one of the many Modes of Production based on trade. Capitalism emerged specifically alongside the Industrial Revolution, the system of workers selling their labor-power to large Capital Owners competing in commodity production could only arise with advancements in productive technology such as the Steam Engine.
Prior to the rise of Capitalism, various pre-Capitalist forms of production existed, such as small manufacturing workers who used their tools to make a complete good to sell, or the guild system, but these were never capable of giving rise to the vast system of accumulation the Capitalist system created through the
M-C-M’ circuit
Where M is an initial sum of money, C a number of commoditied sold at value, and M’ the larger sum of money gained from selling the commodities.
Thanks, well said
No problem!
Isn’t capitalism itself not only like 100-150 years old?
Capitalism existed when Karl Marx wrote about it.
It really arose during the Industrial Revolution, around 1760. Imperialism, the final stage of Capitalism, began towards the end of the 19th century.
So how is 19th century imperialism different from Roman imperial expansion or Greek colonialism in antiquity for example? Or the various attempts to resurrect the Roman Empire by basically everyone? Why don’t we call Roman emperors or Alexander the Great or even Sigismund imperialists? Honest question here, I’m not a historian or anything.
Imperialism can occur in any class society. In its most general definition, it means the theft of land, labor, and resources of a weaker country to feed a stronger one. So we do call it “Roman imperialism”:
The surplus here is an agricultural one.
Imperialism takes a different shape under capitalism, where instead of a landed aristocracy / slave-owning class doing the colonizing, its finance capitalists in the imperial core exporting production to low-wage / underdeveloped countries to produce commodities cheaply.
First, it really doesn’t matter what we call each system, you can call the older Roman expansionism “Imperialism” and you aren’t wrong. What matters specifically is Capitalism as it turns towards Imperialism. We can call it “Capitalist Imperialism” for the sake of clarity, and what’s important about it specifically is how it relates to Capitalism.
Capitalist Imperialism largely occurs when a Capitalist nation develops enough to where the economy is dominated by large trusts, rather than small competing factories, when bank Capital and Industrial Capital merge into “Financial Capital,” and the only way to continue to compete is to expand outward into foreign markets, essentially where outsourcing labor to the Global South from the Global North occured. This results in a “division of the world among the largest powers,” and was the ultimate cause of World War I and World War II.
Colonialism is similar, but wasn’t impelled by this system of Capitalism. The necessary distinction is the rise of industrial production and export of Capital to the Global South.
If you want to read more, I recommend Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism picked up where Marx left off, as Marx had died before he could truly observe Imperialism. Imperialism is actually the reason why Communist revolution never came to the Global North, like Marx predicted, as Imperialism creates a system of bribery for the domestic proletariat and large armies for maintaining this system.
Instead, it came to nations in the Global South, which brought a whole host of questions on how to achieve a post-Capitalist system in countries that were by and large underdeveloped, with large proportions of workers belonging to the peasantry and other non-proletarian classes.
Somewhere between every man (and woman) for her (him) self and a general safety net for all the truth lies. And it’s probably closer to the safety net. There’s an awful lot of last stupid people, a few hardworking smart and educated people, lots of hardworking smart people and a few handful of rich assholes. Somehow we’re all trapped in this flying ball of dirt.
One day we’ll all be hardworking, smart, educated, and have our needs all met, and we won’t be trapped, either.
Is it? I’m pretty sure private property and ownership was a thing in the middle ages. People selling stuff to make a living, merchants… Isn’t the oldest known text some babylonian dude complaining about the faulty products of a merchant?
Trade has existed for as long as humanity has existed, correct, but trade isn’t Capitalism. Capitalism specifically emerged from Feudalism. The historic ability for a class of property owners to employ wage laborers was only made possible through advancements in production.
To give an example, the feudal peasant largely produced most things they used, from clothes to housing. They would produce excess for their feudal lord, and some small handicraftsmen and guilds formed specialized labor. These were not Capitalist formations, but pre-Capitalist.
Eventually, technological advancements like the steam engine appeared. This revolutionized production, and gave huge rise to a class of owners that could purchase this new machinery, and employ workers in wages to create commodities. The barrier to entry is progressively lowered skill-wise, while the barrier to entry in the market as a Capital Owner raised, as firms began to solidify into factories. This coalesced into a marketplace of wage laborers selling their labor power to various Capitalists, eventually becoming the Capitalism of the time of Marx.
Does this all make sense? Engels, in Principles of Communism, summarizes it as such:
The proletariat originated in the industrial revolution which took place in England in the second half of the last [eighteenth] century and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world. This industrial revolution was brought about by the invention of the steam-engine, various spinning machines, the power loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole previous mode of production and ousted the former workers because machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than could the workers with their inefficient spinning-wheels and hand-looms. These machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered the workers’ meagre property (tools, hand-looms, etc.) entirely worthless, so that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.
Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the metalware industry. Labour was more and more divided among the individual workers, so that the worker who formerly had done a complete piece of work, now did only part of that piece. This division of labour made it possible to supply products faster and therefore more cheaply. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to a very simple, constantly repeated mechanical motion which could be performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell one after another under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done. But at the same time they also fell into the hands of the big capitalists, and there too the workers were deprived of the last shred of independence. Gradually, not only did manufacture proper come increasingly under the dominance of the factory system, but the handicrafts, too, did so as big capitalists ousted the small masters more and more by setting up large workshops which saved many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labour. This is how it has come about that in the civilized countries almost all kinds of labour are performed in factories, and that in almost all branches handicraft and manufacture have been superseded by large-scale industry. This process has to an ever greater degree ruined the old middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the workers; and two new classes have come into being which are gradually swallowing up all others, namely:
I. The class of big capitalists, who in all civilized countries are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the raw materials and instruments (machines, factories) necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
II. The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie in order to get in exchange the means of subsistence necessary for their support. This class is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.
What would you call employing people for wages around 0AD? I don’t think it’s feudalism.
Can you give an example? It could be small manufacturing, the small handicraftsman, guild work, etc. Being paid money for labor isn’t exclusive to Capitalism.
Ceramics (roof tiles and pots) were manufactured on an industrial scale in Rome for example. They employed workers and produced massive numbers of products.
What is your distinction between employing people for money and capitalism?
Very interesting example! I’d say it’s definitely a proto-Capitalist example, undoubdtedly. I wouldn’t call it Capitalist out right, however, for a few reasons:
-
Ceramics manufacture was relatively unique among the entire Roman economy. The Roman economy was largely slave-driven.
-
Ceramics manufacture itself was technologically limited. The vast majority of what went into creating a pot, for example, was human hands, the Kiln was really the largest technical instrument. As a consequence, there wasn’t continuous iterative improvement at voracious scales as is characteristic of Capitalism.
I would classify it closer to a large version of manufacturing workers, but certainly could have expanded into Capitalism had the Roman society at large developed similar structures, giving rise to a dominant bourgeois class and the abolition of slave labor in favor of wage labor proletarians. The context of the entire economy is critical.
I think I answered the differences between paying people in general and Capitalism specifically, but I also recommend Engels’ Principles of Communism, the first few pages go over what makes Capitalism distinct from pre-Capitalist economic formations.
I was asking to clarify, because it sounded like your definition of capitalism was something like ‘uses industrial machinery to allow for unskilled work.’ By that definition, I agree that by definition capitalism didn’t exist till after the industrial revolution, since industrial machinery didn’t exist yet. But I disagree that capitalism requires industrial machinery.
Feudalism also employed some industrial machinery (water wheels for milling grain is one example). But the primary energy source was still muscle power, the primary product was agricultural produce, and the workers were peasants tied to the land, not mobile wage workers producing consumer goods.
Marxists consider these important distinctions that define entire historical periods, even if they’re still both examples of class society.
That’s not quite my definition. In order for Private Property to become the dominant aspect of society, technological advancements needed to be made to allow a small class of people to dominate society through ownership of the Means of Production. Marx explains it quite simply here:
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
-
Also, the surplus in nearly all the periods of ancient Rome, was still largely an agrarian surplus, extracted either from slaves, or from feudal workers / colonates in the territories outside the city.
The city / empire survived not by its own products and a commodity-producing economy, but by feeding an agrarian surplus off its many colonies.
Free market trade has existed and changed shape throughout most of human history. Advice with how to deal with it is in the Old Testament. how often or consistent it revolved around a common currency is/was constantly changing, though
I’m just saying that, one of the oldest known written texts, waaay before than when the old testament was written, is a customer complaint where they mention copper coins as currency. We don’t know how common copper coins were, but saying that capital based societies are “young” is not correct either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir
Currency isn’t Capitalism, though. Capitalism has currency, but not all systems with currency are Capitalist.
Capital and money are not exactly the same thing. Capital is money used to make more money through (1) ownership of the means of production, (2) wage labor, and (3) economic rent & fincancialization.
For most of human history (tribal / pre-agricultural societies), markets were rare and mostly unecessary. Small groups of people survived by foraging / hunting for food and sharing it among themselves. Usually elders, or some type of communal decision-making process was how food was distributed. Sharing, not trade, was the distribution system.
You can have some trade in tribal / feudal societies, but it isn’t the most common way that goods are distributed.
You guys would have a very bad time in the 1500s let’s be real
Someone from the 1500s would have a horrible time in the 21st century.
What kind of quality-of-life do you think modern day subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers enjoy? How critical has English standard literacy, modern mathematics, and digital technology sophistication become for survival?
Like, you’re thinking as a settler-colonialist living a middle-class lifestyle in the modern moment. You’re not thinking as a denizen of Hispanula prior to the Columbian exchange, where the primary past times were fishing, frolicking, and fucking. Move that guy up to the modern era in the highest quality of life countries in the world and they just become homeless illegal immigrants.
If I have a choice to live in the 16th century or the 21st century, and I know I’m going to be born in Haiti… fuck the 21st century, that shit sucks.
My friend what do you think Haiti was like in the 16th century?
Crack open a copy of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History” and find out. He quotes the original Columbian explorers in how they found the native population. The conditions were downright utopian according to the Spanish. Their response to this paradise was to rape and plunder it.
And the raping and plundering never stopped, even 500 years later.
I think the vast majority of people would. What do you mean by “you guys?”
What came before capitalism was even uglier, yet reflects our nature as a species just the same.
It’s more that what is “human nature” is malleable, and is ultimately determined by the systems humans find themselves in, and ultimately propels change to new modes of production. Feudalism gave birth to Capitalism.
Wrong, capitalism exist since exist money and greedy people which govern countries, since Pharaons and Kings, since the concept of property.
Answered here. Commerce isn’t Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.
I don’t speak about small manufacture and commerce, capitalism is only another name of feudalism, where a small minority is the owner of the most part of the resources of a population and even of the population itself. This is the situation which is the same since thousends of years, it’s irrelevant how we call it, it’s always the same pyramid scam.
capitalism is only another name of feudalism,
There are fundamental differences between different production systems that we Marxists think are important enough to warrant distinction, even if they’re both instances of class societies.
I have a feeling you’d digest something better in video:
Paul Cockshott - Feudal economics
Watch that and them get back to me.
You’re using Capitalism as a catch-all term for Class Society. Different forms of Class Society have existed for thousands of years, but Capitalism itself is relatively new.
As said, only the name, not the system, it’s irrelevant if they are pharaos, kings, clerics, or like today billonairs, big corporations and banks.
It’s extremely relevant, because the manner of production is entirely different. In feudalism, as an example, production was largely agricultural, while serfs tilled their parcel of land and produced most of what they consumed for themselves. They didn’t compete in markets, as an example, and specialization was relatively limited outside of handicraftsmen.
If you fail to accurately analyze the differences between modes of production, you fail to find meaningful conclusions. Oak trees aren’t penguins, even though both are living things.
Weird take, i guess the current definition of capitalism, but go to Ancient Rome or Babylon and tell me you don’t see capitalism
I would argue that you’d need Publically Traded Companies, and thus Stocks, and thus a Stock Market, and also Stock Exchanges to be able to form a Capitalism.
Of course, “private ownership of the means of production” is an important aspect as well.
Answered here. Commerce isn’t Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.
Sure. But that was largely due to the constraints on the rate of growth prior to the industrial revolution. Capitalism was still functionally exigent, it was just operating under a rate of growth capped by the surplus human and animal labor could produce.
The advent of transatlantic travel (wind power) and the waterwheel and eventually steam power and modern fertilizers was what caused human productivity to spike. Suddenly, you could see returns on investment at double or even triple digits within decades. Prior eras saw single digit growth in even the wealthiest countries on Earth. Wealth was accumulated at a glacial pace.
Piketty’s “Capitalism in the 21st Century” covers this in depth.
Rome was a power center for over a millennia in large part because of the enormous consolidation of investment capital within the city limits. The Republic-cum-Empire took in revenues, built capital, expanded its economy, and then consumed the expanded economic output as revenue. But that took centuries to accumulate. None of Rome’s neighbors ever had the surplus necessary to invest or the time to expand like the Romans did. London managed a similar scale of development in decades. And then it burned down. And then it was rebuilt a few decades later.
You can argue that the desire to rapidly accumulate wealth is a facet of human nature. You can also argue that the rate of accumulation only became notable in the last 400 years, such that “capitalism” as a productive force wasn’t relevant until recently. But you can’t argue that cumulative gains were somehow unknown to anyone prior to the Dutch East India company.
That wasn’t really my argument though. As you yourself said, a bunch of quantitative changes from proto-capitalist formations resulted in a qualitative shift.
The mechanism of capitalism - deriving revenue from capital to further develop and accumulate capital and thereby expand streams of revenue - were always here. The rates were lower, limiting the accessibility and the appeal to individuals who were already cash flush and very forward looking. But capitalism, as a productive force, has always been with us.
I disagree. Back in earlier forms of agricultural accumulation, technology hadn’t developed the same system of rapid expansionism as Capitalism and the creation of large industry has brought. The M-C-M’ circuit wasn’t always here. Class society has existed, but not the same mechanisms of Capitalism as an encompassing system.
The M-C-M’ circuit wasn’t always here.
Periodically, some community would find an opportunity for capital improvements that afforded a rapid growth cycle. Capital projects like the Roman Aquaducts and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for instance, dramatically increased the surplus yielded by labor. The number of people who could live within a community rose and economic output rose with it. But it was still dwarfed by industrialization and geographic constraints limited the rate of expansion (you can’t build aquaducts and hanging gardens everywhere and expect to yield equivalent surplus). So you hit that classic Marxist diminishing return on profit and the rate of economic expansion fell back down into the low-single digits.
The circuit did exist though. The fundamental economic benefit of cyclical growth had a soft ceiling that primitive societies hit.
Now we’re in an industrial era that doesn’t feel like it has a ceiling. But it does. There really are ecological and resource limits, even to a post-industrial world. One day, we’re also going to hit that ceiling (assuming we haven’t already). I don’t think it would be fair to say - a few centuries after peak production / climate apocalypse sends us into a perpetual global depression - that Real Capitalism Has Never Been Tried.
Neither would I benchmark “When capitalism starts” the day after we construct a Dyson Sphere and master superluminal travel, because we’re kicking off a bigger wave of economic expansion than we enjoyed while earthbound.
What I might argue the ancient world lacked more than the M-C-M’ circuit was the degree of fictitious capital (which requires a big surplus-laden economically literate middle class). But that’s not capitalism et al, just a facet of modern speculative investment.
The technical constraints were also constraints on the Mode of Production. The Roman Aqueducts were largely slave driven like the rest of Roman society, not through commodity production and the M-C-M’ circuit affording it. Rome also extracted vast rents from the colonies.
Elements of the old exist in the new, and elements of the new existed in the old, yes. However, Capitalism as an encompassing system is only a few hundred years old.
classic Lemmy.ml post
Classic vapid comment.
Sure?
And they say that marxism is outdated lol
