this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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No, Capitalism is just one Mode of Production, a relatively new one, in a long chain of them. It isn't the first, and will not be the last unless we nuke ourselves to death or Climate Change kills us all.
We’re literally going to capitalize ourselves to death because of human nature.
Basically, humans trade, humans establish hierarchy, hierarchy establishes currency based on real things or favors to deal with the presence of other hierarchy and to compete, real things end up being used as it is more reliable and favor based economies get conquered, capitalism.
All roads lead to present thing
Person experiencing present thing
More like, capitalism is the road. There’s a lot ways to build a road, and some roads are better than others, but you need the road. When there is no road, you create one. Whether the currency is money, favors, ideas, or bartering.
I get that these reductive analogies are enticing ways of digesting the world around you, but you really have to take the time to learn about political economies and their characteristics from actual experts if you want to talk about it in a way that makes any sort of sense.
This and your previous comment kind of read like a bunch of platitudinous concepts haphazardly thrown together from a lot of fiction and short-form content.
Capitalism is not when money.
Capitalism is when you make companies the government.
That’s a type of capitalism.
Trade =/= capitalism. Capitalism is maximum enrichment for a few at the cost of the many. "Capitalizing on an opportunity" doesn't usually seem to get interpreted as "get what I need and hopefully what I want in an exchange that is equitable, just, fair, and negotiable to all parties"; instead, the common meaning seems to be "get all that I can as quick as I can in exchange for the least possible expense on my part", which is not even a full step away from 'The Tragedy of the Commons, ' or, "if there's not enough for everyone to have as much as they want or need, then everyone who takes as much as they need is evil, and if someone is going to be evil AND ALSO have enough than that person is damn well going to be me." THAT'S capitalism.
“Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.“
Google.
While capitalism can be used for evil, it can also be used for good.
The endgame is companies buying politicians and eventually writing laws to favor themselves.
Corruption is an all time classic but capitalism takes it to the extreme.
When it’s not well regulated yes. When it is, it lets people own things and the wealth distribution isn’t fucked.
The credo of capitalism is free market and deregulation.
Ironic
No it can't
That's the definition of capitalism
Capitalism has only been around for a tiny portion of human history
Human nature is malleable, it is determined by material conditions, ie the surroundings and experiences, including the economic formation of society. As society shifts in Mode of Prodiction, "Human Nature" shifts with it.
Further, Capitalism is not simply using currency to trade. It arose only a few hundred years ago. Currency existed back in feudal eras, despite predating Capitalism. Capitalism specifically arose primarily with technologies like the Steam Engine. More generally, Capitalism is more about turning a sum of money into a larger sum of money through paying wage laborers to create commodities using Capital you own, competing within a market where this is the principle aspect of the economy.
This system is relatively new, and is already being phased out in Socialist countries like the PRC.
Yes and no. We conquer and dominate and build. All human cities look roughly similar. Productivity wins because it conquers those who aren’t.
Even China uses their own form of capitalism. Chinese history is more capitalist than most countries too imo. China hasn’t risen above capitalism, they mastered their own style of it, but as waves rise and fall, the state of a country’s economy is ever changing. Today they are wolves, but without the century of humiliation they might not be, just as America would not have had anywhere to fall if did not climb so high.
You're conflating production with Capitalism, and ignoring that the principle ownership of China's economy is public, not private. I don't think you've genuinely engaged with Socialism as a concept, you are over-generalizing Capitalism to periods and forms of production it doesn't apply to.
The statement of the main comment seems to be that capitalism is equal to exploitation and hierarchy, communism(or another placeholder) then is equal to end of suffering, exploitation and hierarchy, that's why he/she sees capitalism as inevitable and communism and other ideologies seems utopic in comparison.
I think even deeper than that, they just conflate Capitalism with economics. There's a good bit to what you're saying too, though. They see anything outside traditional notions of economics as utopian.
This is the classical argument that capitalism is the best motivator of development since it is considered natural(selected as dominant till now) and by extension better fit for human nature.
Yet it is destroying itself, meaning he believes human nature will destroy itself, he then go on to say China is Capitalist, more specifically the government, that would assume the role of exploiter, then internally capitalism seem somewhat to be the exploiting structure reinforcing the idea of hierarchy and exploitation that generates more economic value and justify the inequality.
Probably because if it's working it must mean it is capitalist in someway, they don't conflate Cuba or another places with Capitalism because they don't see the countries as economic powers.
The main differences would be that China invest in their workers, and Capitalistic countries don't, the solution would be invest in the workers, but then he fails to notice that the failure of investing in workers isn't a miscommunication or mismanagement, but a feature of capitalism itself that deny any handouts or any advantage to the masses to keep it up with the elite.
Yep, seems like they are writing themselves into pretzels with contradictory stances.
That’s actually a good point but I would argue when power is in the hands of the public as you say, the gov officials become the capitalists.
It's a fundamentally different economic system at the principle aspect. For starters, public ownership does not mean production goes straight into the pockets of gov officials, they are paid salaries. Secondly, publicly owned services are usually not for profit, or even at cost, through taxpayer money or otherwise. Finally, Capitalists are a specific type of Capital owner, small handicraftsman, feudal lords, etc aren't Capitalists but do own Capital. Even further, gov officials aren't the owners of publicly owned industry, but indirect administrators. Managers and accountants in businesses aren't the owners.
The gov officials set their own salaries and control the means of production. In that way it seems capitalist but in a way where everyone decides to become a single capitalist collectively rather than having individual capitalists wielding disproportionate power.
That's like saying HR sets their own salaries, or Payroll. That's not really accurate in reality.
The reason you're running into problems is that you lack a consistent definition of Capitalism, you're basically using it as a catch-all term for "economics."
No it’s like saying CEOs set their own salaries.
Not at all, government officials don't work that way.
What do you think Capitalism is? Roughly when did it first appear? What's Socialism?
Not all officials but some.
Right now, I’m not because I don’t want to and you can research it too.
You're getting farther and farther away from your original point.
I'm well aware of the answers to these questions, I want to know your perspective because I want to identify where your view is getting mixed up, specifically.
Every time it’s gotten to this point in the past, I’ve regretted having the convo and felt dumber for getting bogged down in it.
I could use a refresh as while I went to college for politics, I started smoking weed because of how viciously Bernie was shit on and how that directly led to a Trump win. Everything political since then has been a brown haze of shit.
If you want a recommendation, Nia Frome's An Extremely Condensed Summary of Capital can put you on the right path in about 20 minutes.
I like theory of the leisure class myself.
Such has been the present interpretation of the course of recorded history. Recorded most often by conquerors, looking favorably upon the the ends of their conquest to justify their means, and if you boil just about every single conquering ideology down for long enough, you will see two things, in this order: greed for what the conquered populace had, and fear of not having enough.
That's not "human nature," that's a response to human nature. Most of us would probably generally prefer to go on living. For many people, that looks like "i just need my necessities covered and I'll figure out the rest." Historically this happened by banding together and looking out for one another, not by hoarding resources and making people do extra work just to fucking exist with a modicum of comfort in a society forever dangling a golden carrot to keep you distracted from the meat grinder. (Edit for formatting)
Bigger text doesn’t make your point look better it makes it look obnoxious, but there is a lot of truth in that.
Our problem is we’ve grown so big because we’ve had more nature to conquer and now we’ve conquered the land, we only have each other left to conquer unless we figure out a way to conquer more nature.
OK I'm actually a noob at formatting and i have no idea how i even did that giant text
Fair