Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
I think people often mix up capitalism with market-based economies. The former describes social relations while the former describes how commodities are distributed.
I’m personally not a fan of either. A planned economy geared toward people’s need, with the withering away of socio-ecomic classes (no more worker and capitalist distriction) just makes better sense to me.
I’m a huge anti-capitalist/socialist, and often times I find it useful to use this mix-up of markets and capitalism in my favor.
When people say “but we need capitalism because the alternative to markets is so bad” I say plainly that I’m not advocating against markets, I’m advocating against classes. The vast majority of self-described capitalists aren’t trying to defend massive corporations or employer exploitation, they’re defending markets.
If all those pro market capitalists became market socialists, dismantling capitalism would be far easier, then we could have much more interesting discussions about the merits of markets and when to use them versus centralized planning, without a leech class exploiting wage slaves or scalping houses.
I am an anti-capitalist as well, but I do not consider what in some circles is called “market socialism” to be socialism for the following reasons
It sounds like the market socialists you’ve been talking to haven’t been socialists if they’re in favor of private property, that’s strictly a capitalist position. They’re probably just welfare capitalists.
An actual market socialist is against private entities owning the means of production, they’re owned communally by some mechanism (be it some democratically run cooperative, the state, etc .) It wouldn’t be a group of stakeholders that are a separate, private entity disconnected from the workers (though the state arguably is an entity like that, and that’s where the line between state socialism and state capitalism gets blurry).
They are not welfare capitalists. They advocate an economy where all firms are democratically-run worker coops. The idea that such worker coops are based on social ownership of the means of production and that an economy consisting of worker coops does not have private ownership of the means of production is based on a misunderstanding of worker coops and capitalism. For example, it is possible for a democratically-run worker coop to rent a factory from a private third party
“from a private third party” where? A (non-foolish) socialist would advocate for rules against renting people, just like we’re not allowed to buy people right now.
That would mean there would be no private third parties that are renting out factories of rented workers.
If what you’re saying is “from a private third party outside the socialist space”, then that’s a problem for all kinds of socialist spaces. We can’t control productive forces outside of the space we have domain over.
How would a planned economy decide between 2 new projects to develop new untested technologies competing for the same resource?
Proposals for a planned economy seem to compromise on workers’ control, one of the main motivators of anti-capitalism, and end up just making society take on the role of the capitalist. From a democratic perspective, the party governed in the firm is the people that work in that firm. By democratic principle, only they should have control
I am extremely suspect of the second, although I wonder whether technology might allow some actually productive markets to exist for the benefit of communities and regional networks - ideally without an explicit intermediary such as currency.