A world beyond Capitalism

Every day, capitalism proves that it is absolutely indifferent to human flourishing, or life, and therefore it really shouldn’t be a surprise that so many of the grotesque and monstrous phenomena of our society — inequality, racism, misogyny, imperialism, ecological catastrophe, mass extinction, mass unnecessary death — are inextricable from capitalism.

The demand for a system that prioritizes human need over profit is a demand for the end of capitalism. We can debate what that might look like, but if we take seriously the idea that the only way to get to a world fit to live in is to get beyond capitalism, we have to move beyond the “common sense” — which is to say, the deadening propaganda — that it is “obviously” impossible to have anything other than capitalism.

Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto’s unremitting insistence on the dynamics of class history that got us here, and its ruthless denaturalizing and questioning of supposedly eternal truths, all in the service of liberation, is profoundly important.

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Graylight · 51-55, F

What kind of capitalism are we discussing here? Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition and state-sanctioned social policies. Are you referring to anarcho-capitalism? Free-market? Welfare?

Capitalist systems with varying degrees of direct government intervention have since become dominant in the Western world and continue to spread. Economic growth is a characteristic tendency of capitalist economies.

And it was hardly Marx and Engels' work that developed with Western world. John Locke's 1691 work [i]Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money[/i] includes an early and clear description[non-primary source needed] of supply and demand and their relationship. In this description, demand is rent: "The price of any commodity rises or falls by the proportion of the number of buyer and sellers" and "that which regulates the price... [of goods] is nothing else but their quantity in proportion to their rent".

David Ricardo titled one chapter of his 1817 work Principles of Political Economy and Taxation [i]"On the Influence of Demand and Supply on Price"[/i]. In Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ricardo more rigorously laid down the idea of the assumptions that were used to build his ideas of supply and demand.

In his 1870 essay "On the Graphical Representation of Supply and Demand", Fleeming Jenkin in the course of "introducing the diagrammatic method into the English economic literature" published the first drawing of supply and demand curves therein, including comparative statics from a shift of supply or demand and application to the labor market. The model was further developed and popularized by Alfred Marshall in the 1890 textbook Principles of Economics.

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@Graylight There is only one capitalism. And it always ends up in the same place.

The welfare state has nothing to do with socialism. That is largely a right wing cold war era fairy tale.

The welfare state was invented by 1840s German conservatives. The entire point is to just reduce suffering to the point people don't revolt.

The entire point was to try and sabotage socialist revolution. It was never about meaningful change.

And your post makes the mistake of assuming economic growth benefits everyone and improves society. That is also a myth. It benefits almost exclusively a tiny minority of oligarchs.

Also the spread of the capitalist system has been by force in alot of places. The IMF and World Bank are responsible for plenty of atrocities.

And nobody claimed the works of Marx and Engels created the modern capitalist hellscape. That is the entire point.

Graylight · 51-55, F

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow
1. Oligarchic Capitalism
2. State-Guided Capitalism
3. Corporate Capitalism
4. Entrepreneurial Capitalism
5. Laissez-Faire Capitalism
6. Welfare State Capitalism

Yes, there's an entire system of capitalism based on the welfare state. A Honda Civic isn't "just a car," and specific economic models aren't simply "capitalism." I offered no opinion, point of view, assumption or conclusion; I presented widely accepted evidence that the concepts being ignorantly discussed here did not start with Marx and Engels.

Gloomy · F

@Graylight While out of these Welfare State Capitalism is probably the best they still all are variants of Capitalism with private ownership and all the flaws that come with it at their core. After all a welfare state is only needed to counter the problems a capitalist system created in the first place.
Who claimed the concepts started with Marx or Engels?

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@Graylight Capitalism is an economic system. These are all made up distinctions. Implementation is not a separate economic system.

This is exactly why the problems Marx and Engels spoke about during the Industrial Revolution still apply.

Mostly these distinctions are by people who want to make excuses that it is not working because of some made up corruption of capitalism. It is the same thing you see on every AnCap group on the internet.

The welfare state again has nothing to do with capitalism at all. It was a series of government programs invented for purely cynical political reasons by conservatives.

And you completely ignored the context of the mention of Marx and Engels.

Socialism is the only economic system that puts people first. Period.

Even the "friendliest" version of capitalism only provides for the people where it is profitable.

Profits are all that matters. Quality of life of actual humans is completely secondary.

Graylight · 51-55, F

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow [i]Again[/i], I wasn’t discussing the merits of capitalism. I was correcting you and pointed out the different forms of it. Keep up, for God’s sake.

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@Graylight I know what you were trying to do. The problem is the "different" capitalism you presented are creations of the internet almost entirely. They are not a real thing. So the argument falls flat.

Graylight · 51-55, F

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Really.

https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38626/chapter-abstract/335248510?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Capitalist Forms and the Essence of Capitalism, Ernesto Screpanti; Review of International Political Economy; Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 1-26 (26 pages)

How emerging forms of capitalism are changing the global economic order
api107.pdf (471.17 KB); Date 2013-02; McNally, Christopher A.; Publisher: Honolulu, HI : East-West Center

The urban process under racial capitalism: Race, anti-Blackness, and capital accumulation, Prentiss A. Dantzler;
Pages 113-134 | Published online: 25 Jun 2021

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/06/basics.htm

https://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/about/director/pubs/Oxfordreview_winter99.pdf

http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10563.pdf

Gloomy · F

@Graylight Sure there are different sub-types but that doesn't change the fundamental problems of Capitalism.