Capitalism is just a way to organize work. Yeah, it’s a plenty unfair one. But we are just using money as a means to trade work for food/products/shelter/services. It ends up driving the society - getting people to make society work, and to enjoy the benefits of it.
Unless you’re one of the billions capitalism has decided it’s more profitable to slaughter, starve or plunge into a lifetime of poverty making t shirts and truck tires. Then you don’t get to enjoy shit.
Trade isn’t capitalism, though. Capitalism is a mode of production characterized by private ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Capitalists essentially cast money out into the system, siphon the fruits of labor, and then repeat this process endlessly. Everyone does not enjoy the benefits of it, especially not those in the global south that are crushed by imperialism and unequal exchange.
Capitalism is a form of trading. It is providing a service / lending resources, for a fee. It’s part of the notion that we use money to buy and sell anything and the economy works because everyone tries to make a buck and implicitly drive efficiency for society. It certainly has got out of whack now and needs some serious regulatory fixes. But for most people, they work to get money to buy what they need and as a result, they provide services, products, etc for others to buy what they need. It goes in a circle, and we end up helping each other. Yes, the rich siphon money off the top, but they don’t really affect the use or need of resources significantly. Their billions are just a number on a computer in a bank somewhere.
No, you’re confusing trade itself for capitalism, and severely downplaying the immense siphoning of material wealth that goes on, especially at an international scale. Capitalists steal the value created by workers, workers are not on an even playing field with capitalists. They sell the only commodity they can, their labor power, while capitalists leverage their ownership of capital to fix labor prices around subsistence wages.
Regulation can’t fix capitalism or save it from the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. We need to move onto socialism, where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and production and distribution are oriented towards satisfying needs rather than profits.
The siphoning of material wealth occurs everywhere, including China, former Soviet union, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, etc. It’s not a capitalism thing, it’s a human thing.
Not necessarily. Capitalism functions by the following circuit:
M-C…P…C’-M’
Money is used to buy commodities, such as machinery, raw materials, and labor power, then production happens, then higher value commodities are the result of said production and sold for greater sums of money. M’ is fed back into this system, and M’’ is output at the end, over and over. The increase in value comes from unpaid labor, ie wages that don’t actually cover all of the value created, because capitalists cannot profit otherwise.
Socialist systems don’t have equal pay for everyone (that isn’t the goal to begin with), but also don’t have this system of capital ownership as the principle aspect of their economies and as such private ownership is phased out over time in these countries.
I think you will see plenty of private ownership in any country. Unless you accept the paper only “public property” with a ruling class of “I am the state” philosophy.
Every country has billionaires, in capitalist countries they buy politicians and in authoritarian countries they are the politicians, but inequality is there nonetheless.
Publicly run industry doesn’t normally function with the same circuit of turning money into a larger sum of money that I described, nor are administrators a “ruling class.” Inequality in distribution exists, but isn’t necessarily the problem, equalitarians that seek equal distribution for everyone are exceedingly rare. There’s a qualitative difference in outcomes for the working classes in socialist countries where public ownership is the principle aspect that manifests in dramatic uplifting of their material conditions, whereas the point of the capitalist system is said inequality. The sheer scale of inequality in capitalist systems far surpasses socialist countries.
In the USSR, for example, the gap between the wealthiest, ie professors and scientists at the top and the average factory worker towards the bottom, was about ten times. In capitalist countries, that number skyrockets to billions. In the PRC, which has a socialist market economy, the number of billionaires is going down while the GDP and GDP per capita of the PRC is growing dramatically year over year, alongside real wages.
Yes but that model ignores that there are a given amount of tangible value (food, shelter, products) items created and pretty much the same amount of such items are consumed. So the pool of workers (almost the entire population) is effectively working to support itself. On paper, there’s money and ownership being siphoned off more and more to a small group. But that group doesn’t use up much more proportionally of the tangible products when looked at as a percentage of the system. So the rich get richer, but that’s just a number. The reason that people don’t have enough to eat and the sir quality of life is dropping as because the system is failing to be productive enough. And that’s because the goal of making money by the billionaires is being gamed as opposed to actually promoting tangible growth. And that’s why we need further regulation - to plug the holes in the system that encourage practices that are bad for workers. Capitalism can only work if the government is still generally for the people - and that’s where we’ve run off the rails.
No, this is entirely wrong. We produce well above what’s necessary for everyone to live decent lives, the distribution of what we produce is extremely uneven. Domestically, capitalists have incredible sums of wealth that they use for luxury goods, entire companies, etc. The money capitalists have comes from sale of commodities. Capital appreciation still comes from that original sale and circulation of commodities. There are some genuinely non-productive industries, such as landlording, but by and large we overproduce, which is what leads to economic crisis every decade or so.
Internationally, we have imperialism. Capitalists from the imperialist countries like the US export capital to the global south, and set up comprador regimes so as to keep wages low and prevent these countries from advancing industry. This lets the global north keep a monopoly on high tech production and allows the global north to consistently charge monopoly prices when trading with the global south, leading to unequal exchange and a continuous siphoning of wealth. It’s why the Congo keeps staying poor despite being rich in resources.
Capitalism cannot be fixed, period. It’s an unsustainable system, and cannot be regulated to fix its issues. The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall is consistent, and the production of goods for the sake of profit rather than use leads to constant overproduction and even destruction of goods to keep prices higher. The state in capitalist systems is subservient to the capitalist class, not the people.
We overproduce, but because of how lopsided distribution is, a tiny handful gets the overwhelming share of what we produce to the point that the majority go without. This is even more extreme at a global level. Productivity has steadily gone up year over year, but as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall persists, so too has capitalism’s decline accelerated.
But those billionaires only can eat so much food. They may pay $300 a plate for caviar, but it’s just a bit of food. They have super fancy cars and houses, but there aren’t enough of them to ‘use up’ significant resources for those things. The money/capital they own isn’t very relevant to the zero sum system of production and consumption. Sure it’s super unfair and more so when international politics allows even more abuse. The problem with somewhere like Congo is that the government is dysfunctional and corrupt - they should be taxing the fuck out of all
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth.
Capitalism is just a way to organize work. Yeah, it’s a plenty unfair one. But we are just using money as a means to trade work for food/products/shelter/services. It ends up driving the society - getting people to make society work, and to enjoy the benefits of it.
Unless you’re one of the billions capitalism has decided it’s more profitable to slaughter, starve or plunge into a lifetime of poverty making t shirts and truck tires. Then you don’t get to enjoy shit.
Trade isn’t capitalism, though. Capitalism is a mode of production characterized by private ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Capitalists essentially cast money out into the system, siphon the fruits of labor, and then repeat this process endlessly. Everyone does not enjoy the benefits of it, especially not those in the global south that are crushed by imperialism and unequal exchange.
Capitalism is a form of trading. It is providing a service / lending resources, for a fee. It’s part of the notion that we use money to buy and sell anything and the economy works because everyone tries to make a buck and implicitly drive efficiency for society. It certainly has got out of whack now and needs some serious regulatory fixes. But for most people, they work to get money to buy what they need and as a result, they provide services, products, etc for others to buy what they need. It goes in a circle, and we end up helping each other. Yes, the rich siphon money off the top, but they don’t really affect the use or need of resources significantly. Their billions are just a number on a computer in a bank somewhere.
No, you’re confusing trade itself for capitalism, and severely downplaying the immense siphoning of material wealth that goes on, especially at an international scale. Capitalists steal the value created by workers, workers are not on an even playing field with capitalists. They sell the only commodity they can, their labor power, while capitalists leverage their ownership of capital to fix labor prices around subsistence wages.
Regulation can’t fix capitalism or save it from the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. We need to move onto socialism, where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and production and distribution are oriented towards satisfying needs rather than profits.
The siphoning of material wealth occurs everywhere, including China, former Soviet union, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, etc. It’s not a capitalism thing, it’s a human thing.
Not necessarily. Capitalism functions by the following circuit:
M-C…P…C’-M’
Money is used to buy commodities, such as machinery, raw materials, and labor power, then production happens, then higher value commodities are the result of said production and sold for greater sums of money. M’ is fed back into this system, and M’’ is output at the end, over and over. The increase in value comes from unpaid labor, ie wages that don’t actually cover all of the value created, because capitalists cannot profit otherwise.
Socialist systems don’t have equal pay for everyone (that isn’t the goal to begin with), but also don’t have this system of capital ownership as the principle aspect of their economies and as such private ownership is phased out over time in these countries.
I think you will see plenty of private ownership in any country. Unless you accept the paper only “public property” with a ruling class of “I am the state” philosophy.
Every country has billionaires, in capitalist countries they buy politicians and in authoritarian countries they are the politicians, but inequality is there nonetheless.
Publicly run industry doesn’t normally function with the same circuit of turning money into a larger sum of money that I described, nor are administrators a “ruling class.” Inequality in distribution exists, but isn’t necessarily the problem, equalitarians that seek equal distribution for everyone are exceedingly rare. There’s a qualitative difference in outcomes for the working classes in socialist countries where public ownership is the principle aspect that manifests in dramatic uplifting of their material conditions, whereas the point of the capitalist system is said inequality. The sheer scale of inequality in capitalist systems far surpasses socialist countries.
In the USSR, for example, the gap between the wealthiest, ie professors and scientists at the top and the average factory worker towards the bottom, was about ten times. In capitalist countries, that number skyrockets to billions. In the PRC, which has a socialist market economy, the number of billionaires is going down while the GDP and GDP per capita of the PRC is growing dramatically year over year, alongside real wages.
Yes, Stalin was not ruling class. Not at all. Benevolent caretaker. Same as Maduro, the Kims and Xi.
PS: lol at professors being the wealthiest in the USSR. Big lol.
Yes but that model ignores that there are a given amount of tangible value (food, shelter, products) items created and pretty much the same amount of such items are consumed. So the pool of workers (almost the entire population) is effectively working to support itself. On paper, there’s money and ownership being siphoned off more and more to a small group. But that group doesn’t use up much more proportionally of the tangible products when looked at as a percentage of the system. So the rich get richer, but that’s just a number. The reason that people don’t have enough to eat and the sir quality of life is dropping as because the system is failing to be productive enough. And that’s because the goal of making money by the billionaires is being gamed as opposed to actually promoting tangible growth. And that’s why we need further regulation - to plug the holes in the system that encourage practices that are bad for workers. Capitalism can only work if the government is still generally for the people - and that’s where we’ve run off the rails.
No, this is entirely wrong. We produce well above what’s necessary for everyone to live decent lives, the distribution of what we produce is extremely uneven. Domestically, capitalists have incredible sums of wealth that they use for luxury goods, entire companies, etc. The money capitalists have comes from sale of commodities. Capital appreciation still comes from that original sale and circulation of commodities. There are some genuinely non-productive industries, such as landlording, but by and large we overproduce, which is what leads to economic crisis every decade or so.
Internationally, we have imperialism. Capitalists from the imperialist countries like the US export capital to the global south, and set up comprador regimes so as to keep wages low and prevent these countries from advancing industry. This lets the global north keep a monopoly on high tech production and allows the global north to consistently charge monopoly prices when trading with the global south, leading to unequal exchange and a continuous siphoning of wealth. It’s why the Congo keeps staying poor despite being rich in resources.
Capitalism cannot be fixed, period. It’s an unsustainable system, and cannot be regulated to fix its issues. The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall is consistent, and the production of goods for the sake of profit rather than use leads to constant overproduction and even destruction of goods to keep prices higher. The state in capitalist systems is subservient to the capitalist class, not the people.
We overproduce, but because of how lopsided distribution is, a tiny handful gets the overwhelming share of what we produce to the point that the majority go without. This is even more extreme at a global level. Productivity has steadily gone up year over year, but as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall persists, so too has capitalism’s decline accelerated.
But those billionaires only can eat so much food. They may pay $300 a plate for caviar, but it’s just a bit of food. They have super fancy cars and houses, but there aren’t enough of them to ‘use up’ significant resources for those things. The money/capital they own isn’t very relevant to the zero sum system of production and consumption. Sure it’s super unfair and more so when international politics allows even more abuse. The problem with somewhere like Congo is that the government is dysfunctional and corrupt - they should be taxing the fuck out of all
You‘re not even trying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
Says ‘you’re not even trying’ then just copies from Wikipedia.
Maybe try thinking for yourself?