The argument against slavery that Lincoln typified was not essentially moral but based in capitalism. — ASmallTalentForWar

Do you have an example of Lincoln expressing this perspective? Specifically the free labor angle.

Merely pointing out, as Frank does, the preponderance of finance is meaningless if it not recognized that the financial house of cards is built upon the ever more thinning foundation of an economy that still needs people to eat and not be dead. — Streetlight

I didn't say capitalism should be understood as being all about finance. Neoliberalism put finance at the center of the global economy.

This is probably wrong, but it's the best I can do right now:

1. Embedded liberalism exists post WW2.
2. This, along with active labor unions results in high wages.
3. This leads to a problem with capital accumulation. For some reason, the point is reached where banks can't make a profit and credit starts to disappear.
4. Stagflation arrives due to an oil supply shock, and this opens the door for the "manufacture of consent" for an economic overhaul that ultimately destroys the power of unions.
5. Eventually America has reduced industrialization, a much more timid workforce, a new elite, and a new middle class that fully embraces neoliberal principles.

6. 2008 arrives, and we've been in limbo ever since. Real wages, which were already low, are even lower post 2008, and this is supposed to have caused Trump's election.

7. High inflation is now setting in and real wages are dropping even further.

I think neoliberalism was supposed to create social stratification for the sake of capital accumulation. The stratification didn't end up being linear over time. It's accelerating?

Therefore, to add efficiency to the progress of economic prosperity, create a system where anyone with a good idea can obtain the capital (in practical terms funding, but in conceptual terms, the legitimate ability to take action) to manifest that idea and then let the freedom of his fellow individuals (in the market in practical terms) either take advantage of the idea to their benefit - thus, success and profit - or determine that it is not in their benefit - thus failure, but without bloodshed. — ASmallTalentForWar

In the depths of feudalism, the lord is a warrior. He feeds his army on the spoils of war. The clergy is holed up in monastic fortresses. Everyone else is a serf: bound to the land and restricted by custom and religion to a life of slavery.

The crusades injected change. The influx of goods from the middle east woke Europeans up to their low level of civilization. The feet that beat down those trade routes belonged to the ancestors of the European merchant class.

They found freedom from servitude in profit-making. Their markets became cities. They tore down Christianity and built back a version that accepted them as being just as human as the nobility.

It wasn't about efficiency. It was about becoming human.

Essentially, capitalism is the attempt to separate economic power from aristocratic power. — ASmallTalentForWar

True again. But this is Eurocentric, isn't it? Or should we think of capitalism as an entirely European invention?

Can we add more? — Streetlight

Yes. You can add "why things are made."

Again, this is another thing that is straightforwardly wrong and ahistorical. Money is yet another thing that has been around long before capitalism.

So that's three things we can now say capitalism is not: markets, interest, and money. — Streetlight

What's with the preoccupation with hitting capitalism with one dart?

It's about profit. There are all sorts of activities that can result in profit.

To understand finance, you need to focus on the fairy dust, as the guy put it.

Dollars, at heart, are just a measurement system like inches. However, I can design a building with limitations inherent to the actual construction materials. I can design a million mile high skyscraper for example, but no one could ever build it. — ASmallTalentForWar

Bingo. Money is an abstraction, divorced from anything real. Banks create virtual money.

A capitalist economic boom is a gambling casino. None of it is tied to anything real.

but the OP's focus was to distinguish markets from capitalism above all — Streetlight

That's true. They aren't the same thing.

The current problem, which some see as a crisis, for capitalism seems to be that the upward spiraling generation of mega-debt, which is acceptable only based on the premise that the future can be relied upon to be more prosperous than the past, seems to be sailing dangerously close to the wind, given overpopulation, resource depletion, habitat destruction, global warming and so on. — Janus

Historically, mega-debts just disappear during large scale economic contractions. Capitalism magnifies natural cycles of growth and decline. During booms, capitalists seem undefeatable. During busts we wonder why we ever thought living this way was intelligent.

I think a new religion will eventually emerge and absorb concerns like environmental exploitation and global warming.

Programmatic or revolutionary thinking is doomed to failure in my view, and the only hope can come from full acknowledgement that the future cannot be predicted and controlled. — Janus

Why do you see this as paramount?

And I should have added: usury has been around for a very long time. — Janus

:up:

Interest, or the realization of profit, or increase in capital. without having to produce anything, seems to be the essence of capitalism. Of course this notion of interest or, what is essentially the same thing, rent, is intimately connected with the concept of ownership. If you are deemed to own something, then you can legitimately lend it, rent it or simply hang onto it and hope to sell it for profit. — Janus

Yes! :up:

You keep cracking me up, Frank. — Tom Storm

Ok. What presuppositions do you think I have?

You presuppositions are showing... — Tom Storm

Which is what? Just curious.

I'd hold the view that any discussion of capitalism, all the terms used and their relationships to each other and how they are understood systemically involve presuppositions. There is no free world of 'terminology' without perspectival relationships. — Tom Storm

I agree. As you may have noticed, a discussion of capitalism becomes a discussion of history.

History is a dangerous topic because we take it to be an unbiased look at the facts. A little philosophy says that as much as we may long to have that unbiased view, it's probably not really available. For us English speakers, that usually means Eurocentrism, as if nothing important ever happened beyond European dominion.

On the one hand, there's never been a culture more pervasively influencial than Europe. But the problem with being Eurocentric is that we miss out on valuable perspectives.

So yes, there will be some bias in any discussion of history. We can still put politics aside and agree on something as basic as the definition of capitalism, though. The only thing standing in our way is ego: the one thing that has always screwed leftists.

Ugh. I gave you a soft pitch and that's all you came up with? You must be back on your bipolar meds. :joke:

Sure, once you say anything whatsoever of substance — Xtrix

Stay tuned. I might just say something AMAZING!

Did you want to discuss something?

can't see how one can construct observations on economics without the perspectives and values from political discourse — Tom Storm

While discussing the definition of capitalism, it's preferable in my opinion to put political debates to the side. First start with common terminology unless all you wanted was useless verbal spew.

But I'll leave this to people who care more about political debate than me. — Tom Storm

There's no political debate here. I'm not sure why you think there is.

:up:

It's debating Bible verse time, Frank — Tom Storm

So, you don't really have any thoughts about the prevailing economic structure of your times?

It's Bible verses to you? That's seems a little alien to me, but Ok.

When you think of capitalism, think of activities that people engage in specifically to make a profit.

So

1. George buys a car for his own use. There's no capitalism there.

2. George buys a car to sell. This is capitalism.

Notice how the car is seen differently in each case.

In the first case, George sees the car as a tool, as a thing that will enhance his ability to survive, or will up his profile among friends, or maybe he wants to tinker with it.

In the second case, the car is an object to be resold. This is the merchant perspective. The merchant doesn't see bread as food, but as a way to make a profit.

In a capitalist economy, this perspective is pervasive. It can go so far that people are looked at as mechanisms for making profit. It can have a devastating effect on culture.

But as for what the profit-making object is: it can be anything. There doesn't need to be any production of goods involved. That's just one scenario.

But in the 19th Century one could be forgiven for thinking industry and capitalism have to go hand in hand. Industrialists were huge and all-powerful back then.

Things are more complicated. Now stocks and bonds are more central.

I'm sure Street will clarify anything you throw at him. — Tom Storm

I doubt it.

I think our reactions to content like this will be indicative of where a person comes from politically, no? — Tom Storm

We're just discussing the way "capitalism" is used, not whether it's good or bad.

Streetlight's views seem outdated to me, like he's in the 19th Century or something.

Many of us forget that our values and sense of self are a product of this ideology. — Tom Storm

What Streetlight said there isn't really true, though.

Capitalism on the other hand, cannot be understood apart from issues of production: of who and what is it that stuff is produced for — Streetlight

His focus seems to be on industrialized societies, forgetting that markets can be deal with things like bundles of mortgages, which are not produced by anyone per se, and certainly don't involve labor.

The birth of 'the individual' follows quite nicely from the birth of generalized market-society. It is no surprise that liberalism - whose unit of analysis is precisely the individual, upon whom rights and obligation accrue (and property rights above all!) - is born exactly at the end of feudalism at the point at which markets become ascendant. — Streetlight

The 'birth of the individual' is usually identified as the Renaissance. It's true that it's an idea in conflict with feudal life. So he's sort of right about this. A guy can't be wrong all the time.

Anywhere where exchange is not impersonal: families, friends, strangers asking for directions in the street, co-workers passing pens to each other across the room. Market exchanges make up a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of our lives. It just so happens their influence is unimaginably deep. Their extensity does not match their intensity in society. Markets are parasitic on non-market exchange that happen everywhere, all the time, among everyone, at all levels. I'm not even charging you for this — Streetlight

This is utter nonsense.

Your think this based on what? — Benkei

Mostly just familiarity with the way people maneuver. If Europe doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, they might refer to the rules as a reason to deny Ukraine's application.

But if Europe wants to accept the application, they'll find a way.

The cartoon intellect hath spoken — Streetlight

But they said they don't want to sedate you to lance it, so they're going to just leave it. :groan:

To be fair this assumes NATO has principals which it abides by, which of course, it does not. — Streetlight

Correct. Bad Motherfuckers do what they want.

I think they make up the rules as they go, though.

No I think your line made a hard stop a few generations ago, evolutionary speaking. — Streetlight

They said it was an infected boil.

Mm, from one set of murdererous freaks to another. — Streetlight

Yep. Welcome to your own species.

That's not going to happen. First of all, a country has to be functional democracy, which Ukraine isn't and won't be for a very long time. — Benkei

We'll see.

independent of Russia, yes. They'll be in NATO.

So basically, if all goes right from this moment, resistance and the will to fight for freedom paid off, securing the future for all Ukrainians who want to live free and independent as their own nation. — Christoffer

:up:

"Around 2,000 people are returning each day to Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, said the head of the city’s regional military administration, Oleh Synehubov. Russian forces bombarded the city for weeks but have recently withdrawn, in what military analysts describe as a victory for Ukraine."
NYT :clap:

Aka trolling — Olivier5

Yep

By the way, why do you lie so much? — Olivier5

Micro-aggression.

IOW, you don't know.

So the Bronze Age economy was not capitalist. It was clearly socialist
— frank

This is an anarchonism so terrible it does not deserve attention. — Streetlight

Really? Why doesn't the palace economy count as socialism?

First, I don't know why you keep referring to 'free' markets, rather than markets. — Streetlight

A free market has no price controls. The oldest version of controlled markets is where priests set prices (in quantities of cacao nuts in South America). There were harsh penalties for trading without permission.

In a free market prices are set by the operation of the market itself.

I'm not sure why you think 'money and banking' is a target here — Streetlight

What we think of as capitalism developed hand in glove with money and banking. Separating them would be a leap in the dark.

But part of the reason I've emphasized that capitalism takes root at level of production rather than exchange, — Streetlight

So the Bronze Age economy was not capitalist. It was clearly socialist. It's interesting to contemplate why it failed after centuries of robust contribution to culture.

More importantly: why, having failed, it never came back.