My smart-ass response is, tell me what you think capitalism is, and I'll tell you why I stick with it. The Chapo community isn't too bad and seems to settle on a definition that's something close to "a mode of production in which capital is owned by a powerful 'capitalist' class, and not by the workers who created it." But in many places on the internet, and sometimes in the Chapo community, I see the word "capitalism" used to criticize anyone speaking positively about work, or commerce, or competition, or currency, or markets, or any economic reasoning that involves numbers -- which makes discussion of "capitalism" confusing.
A few quick thoughts about capitalism:
(1) It's better than feudalism.
(2) I think markets are neat, and I think there is some nonzero amount of value in what the finance industry and capitalists do, especially in terms of distributing risk and deciding which technologies to invest in. Which is not to say that this can't be done in non-capitalist economies, but it is to say that I think there's a "baby in the bathwater" and that there are things we can learn from how capitalist economies do these things. I am very skeptical that the idea of using markets to determine prices can be completely done away with, which seems to be what some anti-capitalists want. But I'm open to being proven wrong.
(3) Sort of a meta-argument -- many of the anti-capitalists I've encountered seem unwilling or unable to answer basic questions about the nuts-and-bolts of how a post-capitalist economy would work. This doesn't necessarily mean their criticisms of capitalism are wrong, but it makes me not want to put them charge. (I'd make an exception for people like Richard D. Wolff or Yanis Varoufakis -- but my understanding is that they're usually described as "social democrats", and they still talk about reforming capitalism rather than getting rid of it entirely.)
When I say "basic questions", I don't mean "bUT hoW wiLL yOU paY fOR UNiveRsaL HeAlThcARe" -- that's a case where there are demonstrable real-world examples of universal healthcare being more efficient and effective than private systems, and there's no logical reason the US shouldn't be able to afford it. I'm talking more along the lines of me asking "Okay, but without markets or currency, how would the post-capitalist economy decide how to distribute scarce resources? What would replace the risk-distributing function that insurance has? What would contract work look like in a world where people 'own' the capital they create?" and getting an answer like "Uhhh, I guess there'd be a committee that figures that out, or something."
When I hear an answer like that, that makes me think that the person I'm talking to has not thought about the problem hard enough or realized how complex an economy is. And in a state of ignorance, I think it is a perfectly reasonable strategy to start by making cautious changes to the status quo rather than just destroying everything and replacing it all at once.
"So, you've just admitted that your entire worldview is based on your own ignorance?" Unironically, yeah, kind of. I am doing the best I can to understand the world using my current brain, as opposed to using something else, and part of that is bearing in mind that I am ignorant about a lot of things, as are most people. It may be that as I learn more, I become more confident that capitalism can be entirely replaced. But I'm not going to pretend I'm totally convinced of it right now, so for the time being, "social democrat" is the phrase that comes closest to describing my views.
Wolff is a socialist, he wants to abolish capitalism. I'm not really that familiar with his stuff because I'm past the point of needing to be convinced that capitalism is bad, but I'm sure he has some answers.
(1) I mean yes, I don't think anyone disputes that. But it also shares a lot of the characteristics of Feudalism that make Feudalism so shitty.
(2) The markets debate is interesting, but capitalism vs. socialism isn't about markets. Socialism (as an ideology in itself rather than a transition to communism) takes no explicit position on markets, so bringing up markets isn't really that relevant. Now, it's the case that many/most socialists aren't "market socialists," but trying to resolve the markets debate in the same breath as the socialism debate is just biting off more than you can chew. It's unreasonable to expect one side of a debate to redesign all of society in exquisite detail where the other just has to argue for reform.
(3) This can be divided into two categories, unreasonable questions and reasonable questions:
Unreasonable - This is basically the same as (2). You're expecting the socialist to know way too much about the precise function of a completely hypothetical society, whereas the capitalist can just say "How will capitalism handle x? Like this" and point to whatever it's currently doing in the real world. Like yeah, society would figure it out. Like we've figured out everything we do now. I'm not going to just speak into existence an entire functional society that I've designed to the tiniest detail to be a perfectly functioning machine.
Reasonable - Things like "If you don't have money or markets what do you have instead" fall into this category, they do in fact demand an answer. But also like in (2), these are not part of the socialism/capitalism dichotomy because socialism on its own doesn't imply abolishing money or markets. Trying to have the socialism debate AND the money debate AND the market debate at the same time is going to be even more impossible (and besides, I think most people who believe in abolishing money believe it would just sort of become useless after a long period of time rather than a specific concerted abolition effort being made).
edit: It's much easier and makes more sense to talk about abolishing money and markets if you're already a socialist.
It’s unreasonable to expect one side of a debate to redesign all of society in exquisite detail where the other just has to argue for reform.
Yes, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to redesign all of society in exquisite detail, which is exactly why I prefer to argue for reform.
Slight tangent, but the other thing I see a lot is people describing "abolishing capitalism" as though it's a discrete action that can be taken. As if there's a big "CAPITALISM" switch in the middle of the continent and the first step we need to take is to turn it from "ON" to "OFF". When in fact, capitalism (whatever that is -- are going with the "mode of production in which blah blah blah" definition or something else?) seems to permeate the system at every level. Which means that "Abolish capitalism now, figure out the rest later" doesn't really make sense. It would be a bit like saying "We'll plant the forest now, and we'll worry about the trees later."
One thing I've been impressed with is workplace organizing and the idea of building dual power. I attended an IWW workshop on organizing, and one of the things they emphasized was that, in order to have power in their workplace, the workers need to understand how the business works at least as well as their bosses do. The catchphrase that came up was "Organizing is Reorganizing". This kind of local organizing seems to me like a potentially promising way to find practical answers to questions in the category of "How would a non-capitalist system handle X?" in specific situations before capitalism has been entirely abolished, rather than just postponing the question until after the revolution.
But there is a big switch. It's getting rid of the owner class, and transferring ownership of the business to employees. For businesses that are natural monopolies like oil, governments can take over those.
Why do you stick with capitalism?
(The space below this comment is an acceptable zone for arguing in favor of capitalism)
My smart-ass response is, tell me what you think capitalism is, and I'll tell you why I stick with it. The Chapo community isn't too bad and seems to settle on a definition that's something close to "a mode of production in which capital is owned by a powerful 'capitalist' class, and not by the workers who created it." But in many places on the internet, and sometimes in the Chapo community, I see the word "capitalism" used to criticize anyone speaking positively about work, or commerce, or competition, or currency, or markets, or any economic reasoning that involves numbers -- which makes discussion of "capitalism" confusing.
A few quick thoughts about capitalism:
(1) It's better than feudalism.
(2) I think markets are neat, and I think there is some nonzero amount of value in what the finance industry and capitalists do, especially in terms of distributing risk and deciding which technologies to invest in. Which is not to say that this can't be done in non-capitalist economies, but it is to say that I think there's a "baby in the bathwater" and that there are things we can learn from how capitalist economies do these things. I am very skeptical that the idea of using markets to determine prices can be completely done away with, which seems to be what some anti-capitalists want. But I'm open to being proven wrong.
(3) Sort of a meta-argument -- many of the anti-capitalists I've encountered seem unwilling or unable to answer basic questions about the nuts-and-bolts of how a post-capitalist economy would work. This doesn't necessarily mean their criticisms of capitalism are wrong, but it makes me not want to put them charge. (I'd make an exception for people like Richard D. Wolff or Yanis Varoufakis -- but my understanding is that they're usually described as "social democrats", and they still talk about reforming capitalism rather than getting rid of it entirely.)
When I say "basic questions", I don't mean "bUT hoW wiLL yOU paY fOR UNiveRsaL HeAlThcARe" -- that's a case where there are demonstrable real-world examples of universal healthcare being more efficient and effective than private systems, and there's no logical reason the US shouldn't be able to afford it. I'm talking more along the lines of me asking "Okay, but without markets or currency, how would the post-capitalist economy decide how to distribute scarce resources? What would replace the risk-distributing function that insurance has? What would contract work look like in a world where people 'own' the capital they create?" and getting an answer like "Uhhh, I guess there'd be a committee that figures that out, or something."
When I hear an answer like that, that makes me think that the person I'm talking to has not thought about the problem hard enough or realized how complex an economy is. And in a state of ignorance, I think it is a perfectly reasonable strategy to start by making cautious changes to the status quo rather than just destroying everything and replacing it all at once.
"So, you've just admitted that your entire worldview is based on your own ignorance?" Unironically, yeah, kind of. I am doing the best I can to understand the world using my current brain, as opposed to using something else, and part of that is bearing in mind that I am ignorant about a lot of things, as are most people. It may be that as I learn more, I become more confident that capitalism can be entirely replaced. But I'm not going to pretend I'm totally convinced of it right now, so for the time being, "social democrat" is the phrase that comes closest to describing my views.
Wolff is a socialist, he wants to abolish capitalism. I'm not really that familiar with his stuff because I'm past the point of needing to be convinced that capitalism is bad, but I'm sure he has some answers.
(1) I mean yes, I don't think anyone disputes that. But it also shares a lot of the characteristics of Feudalism that make Feudalism so shitty.
(2) The markets debate is interesting, but capitalism vs. socialism isn't about markets. Socialism (as an ideology in itself rather than a transition to communism) takes no explicit position on markets, so bringing up markets isn't really that relevant. Now, it's the case that many/most socialists aren't "market socialists," but trying to resolve the markets debate in the same breath as the socialism debate is just biting off more than you can chew. It's unreasonable to expect one side of a debate to redesign all of society in exquisite detail where the other just has to argue for reform.
(3) This can be divided into two categories, unreasonable questions and reasonable questions:
Unreasonable - This is basically the same as (2). You're expecting the socialist to know way too much about the precise function of a completely hypothetical society, whereas the capitalist can just say "How will capitalism handle x? Like this" and point to whatever it's currently doing in the real world. Like yeah, society would figure it out. Like we've figured out everything we do now. I'm not going to just speak into existence an entire functional society that I've designed to the tiniest detail to be a perfectly functioning machine.
Reasonable - Things like "If you don't have money or markets what do you have instead" fall into this category, they do in fact demand an answer. But also like in (2), these are not part of the socialism/capitalism dichotomy because socialism on its own doesn't imply abolishing money or markets. Trying to have the socialism debate AND the money debate AND the market debate at the same time is going to be even more impossible (and besides, I think most people who believe in abolishing money believe it would just sort of become useless after a long period of time rather than a specific concerted abolition effort being made).
edit: It's much easier and makes more sense to talk about abolishing money and markets if you're already a socialist.
Yes, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to redesign all of society in exquisite detail, which is exactly why I prefer to argue for reform.
Slight tangent, but the other thing I see a lot is people describing "abolishing capitalism" as though it's a discrete action that can be taken. As if there's a big "CAPITALISM" switch in the middle of the continent and the first step we need to take is to turn it from "ON" to "OFF". When in fact, capitalism (whatever that is -- are going with the "mode of production in which blah blah blah" definition or something else?) seems to permeate the system at every level. Which means that "Abolish capitalism now, figure out the rest later" doesn't really make sense. It would be a bit like saying "We'll plant the forest now, and we'll worry about the trees later."
One thing I've been impressed with is workplace organizing and the idea of building dual power. I attended an IWW workshop on organizing, and one of the things they emphasized was that, in order to have power in their workplace, the workers need to understand how the business works at least as well as their bosses do. The catchphrase that came up was "Organizing is Reorganizing". This kind of local organizing seems to me like a potentially promising way to find practical answers to questions in the category of "How would a non-capitalist system handle X?" in specific situations before capitalism has been entirely abolished, rather than just postponing the question until after the revolution.
I need to clarify my points but I also need to go to sleep so I'm gonna get back to you tomorrow
But there is a big switch. It's getting rid of the owner class, and transferring ownership of the business to employees. For businesses that are natural monopolies like oil, governments can take over those.
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