I didn't have time to listen to this, but I read the whole thing.
Thanks a ton for the transcript, I know it's a lot of work.
"in fact, capitalism is synonymous with the free market."
Sorry, but this statement bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to historical reality. It is not an accident that in the areas where capitalism took hold, it was always a project of the STATE. That is because the transformation that it wreaked could not be achieved without the interventionist power of the state behind it. The market is never "free," it is rather a reorganization of rules and sources of coercion from prior forms. For instance, in England, the rise of capitalist enterprise and joint stock companies was accompanied by the enclosure acts, poor laws, and indentured servitude – not to mention a broader mercantilist policy that was designed to place colonial subjects in an economic straitjacket.
Of course, if you can provide an example of capitalism taking hold in a society without massive state intervention, I'm willing to listen and consider. But until I see a viable example of that (and to this day I never have), I'll hold to the view that the free market is a central myth of capitalism, meant to legitimize an ideology rather than provide a realistic working explanation of the world in which we live.
Ever been to Morroco?
if you type the word "capitalism" into google, "free market" comes up as a synonym.
to say that capitalism is synonymous with free market is a simple statement of fact.
no, the state is a hindrance to true capitalism and the free market.
the only thing required for capitalism is for someone to choose to employ their capital in a productive enterprise.
i employ capital in a productive enterprise. i reject the state and avoid it like the plague.
you seem to be talking about "historical reality" or grand notions of society-wide philosophies. that's all well and good, but that has nothing to do with the free market. the free market is much more simple and direct.
examples of capitalism taking hold in society without state intervention are everywhere, you would have to avoid looking to not see it.
when the carpenter invests his capital in a new saw, when the baker invests his capital in a new oven, when the farmer invests his capital in a new tractor, that is capitalism. none of these require state intervention.
This statement is oxymoronic. Capitalism and free markets by definition are devoid of State interference. That's why it's called a free market. If it is "a project of the State", it is by definition something other than a capitalist or free market condition. The capitalistic nature of an economy diminishes by the degree of State intervention. For instance, in England, "capitalist" enterprise cannot be accurately called capitalist when accompanied by enclosure acts, poor laws, indentured servitude, and mercantilist policies if imposed by government mandate (read coercion).
It's reasonably argued that a pure capitalist economic system has never existed. But if that's the case, it is then unreasonable to then argue that it is somehow discredited.
Capitalism is private ownership of means of production with rights of trade being market based. Free Market is market in which there are no regulations except the market itself. Capitalism can exist in a free market or not. Over the history of humans there has never been a true free market with capitalism because psychos always rise to the top to distort.
P.S. Capitalism developed in England as response the Mercantilism (defined as companies using government to protect their markets which result in heavy regulation).
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I think it's important to define terms before discussion so everyone is on the same page. Thanks for defining them. I think your definition of capitalism is simple but accurate. The free market is a bit tougher to define. One could say that a free market operates without any regulatory interference. But there is more to it. There has to be perfect competition so that no single participant is big enough to impact the market towards monopoly. That requires regulation which is where the paradox comes in because that violates the definition of a free market being devoid of regulation. That's why I've always said that free markets don't and can't exist in the real world.
Furthermore, I sound like a broken record because I am constantly asking for "production" and "productive" activities to be defined but they never are. Since the concept of "production" is at the heart of all of these economic concepts, I don't think any meaningful discussion can be undertaken any further. Which is why the debates spiral on ad infinitum because people aren't relating the concepts down to real world processes, they are all built around assumptions about what everyone thinks production is.
Generally government activity is considered unproductive. But I have seen them pave roads and build curbs, sidewalks, enact laws to protect the environment and people. Surely these are "productive" activities, no? Similarly I can act as a private individual and go dump all of my garbage at the side of the road at the downtown square. I have "produce" a bunch if garbage. Is it now a productive activity?
i can walk through the forest and pick blueberries and eat them. I am consuming them. But the instant I sell some of those berries in a market, suddenly I switch from a consumer to become a producer. And this us the basis if our entire economic system, the supply and demand chart? Makes no sense.
The whole concept seems really silly to me. And what the distinction is between other activities that are not productive, who knows, it's never explained. All based around gut feeling touchy feely personal interpretations.
the free market is a market in which all participants engage in voluntarily.
anything other than that, and it's not a free market.
for a slightly longer discussion on what the free market is, here is an article by murray rothbard:
you say that you have seen "them" pave roads, but who is them? think back to that moment when you saw the road being paved, whom did you see paving it? do you believe you saw a government doing it? did it have 2 arms, 2 legs, a hardhat, a pair of boots, and an orange reflective vest? well, i would hazard a guess that what you saw was actually a human being, or group of human beings, not a government.
people produce things.
governments do not.
if you type the word "capitalism" into google, "free market" comes up as a synonym.Referring to Google supporting "capitalism" and "free market" as synonyms to prove your point is not relying on a "fact," at least not an objective one. You're referring to a subjective interpretation here, albeit one that is accepted by a great many people throughout the industrialized world. By the logic presented here, phrenology was a fact in the 19th century because it was widely accepted by many people -- but has since been shown to be pure fiction. Since "facts" are generally immutable, then we see that our definitions of terms and beliefs often cloud our perceptions.to say that capitalism is synonymous with free market is a simple statement of fact.
no, the state is a hindrance to true capitalism and the free market.There are many other "invisible" structures that are required for capitalism -- such as a legal code, financial currency, police forces, etc. Ever since the advent of civilization over 5000 years ago, all of the above have been the domain of the state. When capitalism was taking off in England during the period of 1450-1750, one of the principle complaints by burgeoning capitalists was that the people could not be compelled to work for wages because all they cared about was meeting their basic needs off the land (when it was still held in commonwealth) and then relaxing. The cure for this problem wasn't anything like offering higher wages to better entice laborers (partly because they just weren't all that interested in money), but rather to make their lives more miserable and impoverished in order to compel them to labor for wages. This is where the Enclosure Acts, Poor Laws and Indentured Servitude come into the picture.the only thing required for capitalism is for someone to choose to employ their capital in a productive enterprise.
Things were not much different in the states prior to the Civil War. The yeoman ideal of early America was someone having access to land to meet their basic needs. This ideal held on much more in the antebellum South than the North – southern independent farmers were often described as "shiftless," and they often banded together to resist "improvements" such as mills built on creeks or rivers because they recognized them as the beachhead of an industrial model (which was wrapped up in the capitalism of its day) which was a direct threat to their way of life. In fact, this is what was meant by many of the poor whites who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War when they said they were "fighting for their rights." They saw their rights as being wrapped up in the old common rights that were still acknowledged throughout most of that region. This, of course, was summarily crushed by the North's victory in the Civil War and subsequent reconstruction that turned cash-poor but independent white yeoman farmers into "poor white trash".
i employ capital in a productive enterprise. i reject the state and avoid it like the plague.When I mention "historical reality," I'm referring to how things actually went down in the past. It's not about philosophy or grand notion of society. The historical facts that have been well-established (I cited a few examples above) are that, on the whole, people have not enthusiastically embraced capitalism -- rather it has required the threat or use of violence on behalf of the state to coerce people to engage in it, at least to a certain inflection point after which it becomes inevitable. The tradeoff for the vast majority of people has been a certain degree of comfort in exchange for a good bit of freedom of their time. For all the disparagement that is hurled at the Middle Ages, for instance, it took a woodcutter only a fraction of the year to earn enough to support his family for the remainder of the year. Contrast this with workers in the "Satanic mills" of 18th century England toiling for 16-18 hours a day for near-starvation wages. Of course, there were mill owners who became fantastically wealthy by extracting the profit from their workers' labor in this arrangement, but that could not have occurred without massive state intervention and coercion on behalf of the owners.you seem to be talking about "historical reality" or grand notions of society-wide philosophies. that's all well and good, but that has nothing to do with the free market. the free market is much more simple and direct.
examples of capitalism taking hold in society without state intervention are everywhere, you would have to avoid looking to not see it.The examples you provided here are of extremely early-stage petit-bourgeois capitalism. I acknowledge that they are certainly viable examples, but the current reality is that they are dwarfed by (and often snuffed out by) the later-stage oligopoly/crony capitalism that has come to dominate much of our system. Additionally, the early-stage petit-bourgeois capitalism is what eventually, inevitably leads to oligopoly/crony capitalism that we have today. Lastly, while the individual acts that you cited do not require state intervention, the establishment of the conditions that make such actions possible (or inevitable) most certainly do. In the simplest sense, if you're talking about capital=money, then the actor is reliant upon money backed by the state and the legal code that enables the procurement (and accumulation) of resources and capital required to bring those things into being.when the carpenter invests his capital in a new saw, when the baker invests his capital in a new oven, when the farmer invests his capital in a new tractor, that is capitalism. none of these require state intervention.
KugsCheese wrote:
P.S. Capitalism developed in England as response the Mercantilism (defined as companies using government to protect their markets which result in heavy regulation).Are you speaking here of the early capitalism that developed in concert with mercantilist colonial policy? Or are you speaking of the advocates of economic liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries? Because if it's the former, then capitalism developed very much in concert with mercantilism (which secured below-cost raw materials and captive markets for finished products). If it's the latter, then it's important to note (as Michael Hudson has pointed out repeatedly) that much of the economic thought of that period was concerned with getting rid of rentiers who extracted wealth simply for having legally-sanctioned control over the means of production.
earthwise wrote:
It's reasonably argued that a pure capitalist economic system has never existed. But if that's the case, it is then unreasonable to then argue that it is somehow discredited.Substitute "communist" for "capitalist" in the above sentence. This is my main issue with wholesale support of "free markets" and "capitalism." It's a mirror-image of the true believers of communism. And the historical reality, again, is that both are simply different sides of the same industrialist coin, ultimately doomed to fail due to their own ideology.
As for my statement being "oxymoronic," all I was doing was describing the manner in which capitalism developed in England. These are the facts-on-the-ground as verified by the historical record, not opinions or ideological structures. The reaction by some to that statement tells me what I need to know about whether we're trying to look at these things objectively in order to determine what actually works and what doesn't on its own merits, and instead leaning on ideology.
[quote]you say that you have seen "them" pave roads, but who is them? think back to that moment when you saw the road being paved, whom did you see paving it? do you believe you saw a government doing it? did it have 2 arms, 2 legs, a hardhat, a pair of boots, and an orange reflective vest? well, i would hazard a guess that what you saw was actually a human being, or group of human beings, not a government.
people produce things.
governments do not.
[/quote]
Good points, now were starting to get to the real issues. When you say that people produce things and governments do not, by the same logic, private corporations do not produce things either. If people produce things, and people work in both private corporations and governments, then logically one cannot call the private sector productive and the public sector unproductive.
But getting back down to the underlying real world processes if "productionn", let's analyze the production if blueberries.
Stàge 1 would be a natural forest with blueberry bushes. I walk through it and pick the berries and eat them. I don't see how anyone could reason that I produced those berries. I consumed them!
stage 2 would be me taking an ice cream pale with me and instead of eating the berries I sell them in a market. Economically, I am now seen as a producer, even though I have done absolutely nothing different in the forest than when I ate the berries as a consumer. What this suggests is that economic theory does not pay any specific attention to the actual biophysical processes involved in production. Because I in no way produced the berries. Blueberry bushes produced the berries using water soil and sunlight. I still consumed them as far as the berry bushes are concerned. This warrants a separation of terms. Economic production has absolutely nothing to do with real work biophysical production. I think this is the heart of where almost all economists have gotten it wrong and send so many on incorrect theories about how economies work.
Stage 3 would be me taking my chainsaw into the forest to cut down all the trees to allow more light to reach the bushes, increasing blueberry production. Have I now produced blueberries? Well I have taken actions to increase the production of berries by the bushes but I still did not produce them, as I'm sure the trees that got cut down would agree. What I have done is shifted production of plant material from trees into blueberries. The net primary Production of that land has if anything gone down since I cut the trees down.
Stage 4 would be me buying the land and replacing with high yield GMO blueberry bushes and throwing feryilizers an pesticides on them to stimulate even more production. Have I now "produced" blueberries, or merely facilitated the ecosystem to produce more, at the expense of the natural forest that used to grow there? Further, I have applied fertilizers which come from natural gas, which is ancient ecological production stored underground for millions of years.
I think that clearly, I have not actually produced a single blueberry. All I have done is modify the environment to redirect matter and energy flows so that and ecosystem produces more berryes, at the expense if producing anything else.
One cold argue that blueberries aren't like roads and pipes, but actually they are. roads are made of asphalt which is bitumen which is the ancient precursor to oil. the energy used to make steel and pipes comes from fossil fuels which are ancient ecosystems.
So from what I've seen of the historical record, the most logical employment of capital is for a successful capitalist to deploy his capital to control the current government to regulate his smaller competitors out of business, to acquire said competitors, or to otherwise entice his competitors into a cartel pricing strategy.
Why do I say this? Because that is just what keeps happening.
Competition - the essential requirement for the structure of capitalism - appears to be the enemy of the capitalist. Why on earth would you subject your precious capital to the awesomely destructive forces of competition when instead you could - by other means - subvert those very forces to obtain cartel-control over your marketplace providing yourself with pricing power in perpetuity, giving your precious capital a guaranteed ROI?
The single best business plan to have is where you have an unassailable "moat" that surrounds your business. Or so I'm led to believe anyway.
About blueberries Mark_BC, the most potent for health benefits, are those that come from the State of Maine ( in the US ). These are the low bus variety not the high bush type. Dr. Greber told me this in his unequalled, I believe, scientifically verified new book " How Not to Die". He's also got the free website NutritionFacts.org. He's a medic and nutritionist who's got the public wellbeing at heart
I recall that interview! OMG, what a blinkered and ideologically myopic man, Greenspan was. Is he dead yet? Probably greeted, in Heaven, by an angry Ayn Rand, forced to sing with a choir of unionized angels. That's what happens to bitter libertarian icons, who accept Medicare in their declining years. Was she on food stamps too?
A couple of the big four banks, in Canada, petitioned the government, to allow them to merge. They argued that merging would afford them the opportunity to 'compete', more effectively. Funny. Competing is the last thing oligarchs, monopolists and wannabe monopolists really want to do.
The fate of a petro-state, during oil's price decline, while the leader is dying, and losing control. That is the salient point – whether Venezuela suffered because of Chavez's control or because he lost control.
You paint a very malevolent picture of the man. I find this curious.
And what if governments interfere to keep a system more 'capitalistic'? By enforcing laws that prevented mergers and acquisitions that undercut competition, american govt used to do this. How did this make govt, by definition, antagonistic to 'capitalism?'
Describes, Clinton era onward, perfectly – in the U.S. When the neo-cons married the neo-libs, they produced one ugly authoritarian baby. You would recognize it more if you were a visible minority doing time in prison unsafe spaces, or coddled boomer larva, doing time at a university, with controversy free, 'safe spaces.' One day, if you miss a mortgage payment or two, they might come for YOU!