I think the simplest way to put it is “an economic system where individuals are allowed to have exclusionary ownership of capital”
Comment on We live in a post scarcity information society and we still haven't moved on from capitalism.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I’d be willing to bet 3 out of 4 people in this thread couldn’t even define capitalism. I count myself among them.
betheydocrime@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Technically, Monarchism falls under that definition as well, which is why it gets a bit more complex than that.
Iceblade02@lemmy.world 5 months ago
A monarchy can be capitalist as long as peoples property rights are respected. The moment the monarch decides to lop somebodys head off and take their stuff you’ll be back to the old-school feudalistic “might makes right” societies.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Sort of. Monarchism is more about respecting a family’s right to rule, than a claim on economics, though usually Feudalism goes hand in hand historically. The British parliamentary system with a vestigial Monarchy is an exception, not the rule.
betheydocrime@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I would call monarchism a form of religious capitalism where the ruling class claims divine right as the methods to accumulate capital, rather than using financial means to accumulate capital
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Certainly more hierarchical than Socialism, but also more than Capitalism. Fundamentally, the lack of a market for Capital separates Capitalism from Monarchism, the class dynamics of today are different from before. This is helpful to understand IMO when trying to see how to solve it.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 5 months ago
What’s “exclusionary ownership” mean here?
betheydocrime@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s the idea that because you own something, you’re the only one who is allowed to use it, whether you’re actually actively using it right now or not. You can contrast it with usufructuary rights, which are based on the idea that you only have rights to something while you’re actively using it
intensely_human@lemm.ee 5 months ago
So that would be like one of those rental scooters, or a set of scuba gear if you lived and worked on a ship? It’s yours while you’re wearing it, or maybe while you have it checked out?
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Don’t see the problem in that
Maven@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The problem comes in what you define as “capital”. Food and housing are the biggest issues for the modern world but there still exists the problem of PEOPLE being considered capital that can be owned by other people.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Food isn’t capital. Capital is wealth used to produce other wealth. A house definitely is. Foods just consumable.
Classic “capital” is a hammer owned by a laborer (that situation is one person playing both roles). The classic capitalist separation of layers is a guy who owns a truck full of tools, and he hires other guys to work on things using the tools, but he retains ownership of the tools.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 months ago
You should be able to own a house. Everyone should be able to own a house
Menteros@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Capitalism: The best system for harnessing the greed inherent in humans for the benefit of others. Capitalism produces the most wealth, and it’s spread more evenly, than any other system.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Not sure how anyone can sanely argue that Capitalist wealth is spread more evenly than any other system when disparity is rising everywhere it’s practiced, even if at slower rates in Social Democracies.
Menteros@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Nobody brought up the USSR, and your linked comment has several issues, even as someone who is a critic of the USSR and does not wish to rebuild the USSR:
- None of that fundamentally addresses the fact that Russia had higher rates of disparity both under the Tsarist Regime and under the Russian Federation than under the USSR: cepr.org/…/soviets-oligarchs-inequality-and-prope…
- The article you linked goes largely without citations, and both articles cited at the bottom of the article state that the USSR improved food production from an initial state of instability through investment in industrialization: "The paper summarises the East European experience with socialist agriculture and notes that while production often failed to meet plan targets (thereby giving the impression of a sector in crisis), there was steady growth based on substantial investments in buildings, machinery, fertilisers and irrigation systems which provided food for the population at affordable prices."
- The Marxist-Leninist USSR is absolutely NOT the only form of non-Capitalist economy. Market Socialism, Anarchism, Syndicalism, Democratic Socialism, and more all exist and can similarly solve the issues of inequality.
What is the point of your comment?
lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Not to disagree, but what examples are there of a different system being practiced which have a more even distribution of wealth?
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Numerous different systems. If you want to look at modern, developed economies, Worker Co-operatives are smaller, Socialist entities that have far more equitable distribution, happier workers, and more stability. If you want a more Libertarian approach, EZLN doesn’t seem to have very high disparity, a bulk of the wealth is owned by the Workers, though they reject terms like Socialism. At the risk of being called a tankie (I’m not, I am incredibly critical of more centralized Socialist projects), even the USSR had far lower disparity during it’s time than Tsarist Russia or the current Capitalist Russian Federation.
The answer is for Workers to share the Means of Production in a democratic fashion, as opposed to having petite dictators focused on accumulating Capital.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Because the comparison is between systems. In other systems some people often end up with nothing, as in not even enough food to survive. That happens less under capitalism, hence there’s a more even distribution of resources.
Kinda like two pieces of paper are both thin, but one of those pieces can be thicker than the other one, despite still being considered thin.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
People end up with nothing under Capitalism as well, and there is less disparity in some non-Capitalist systems.
lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
third person checking in here
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Capitalism is a Mode of Production by which the Means of Production are bought, sold, and traded among individuals. This results in Capitalists, ie owners of Capital, and Workers, those who Capitalists employ to create Value using said Means of Production.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
And what’s the problem with owning, buying and selling things? We’ve been doing that for millennia. Obviously, unregulated American style capitalism is very broken, but there are better ways to do business. It’s just that those ways are not that appealing to the greedy.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Markets aren’t Capitalism, Capitalism has only been around for a few hundred years.