I've never considered the idea of capitalism being a stage of development we needed to have to grow into something better, it's interesting to look at it in this way. I feel like the competing philosophies behind free market economics contributed to making the current system what it is are just as much to blame as the system itself?
I really view those concepts of free markets to be flawed, as they mostly came after the establishment of capitalism. I see them as written to defend capitalism against critique, which is why they hand-wave over issues such as how capitalism always encroaches on political democracy. IE, they say "That's not capitalism, it's crony capitalism." I find that to be a lacking justification.
Yes I agree with that and I suppose it's more of a thought experiment really because regardless of the philosophy espoused we've ended up in this period of huge multinational corporations with monopolization increasing and the prioritization of shareholder returns over rewarding workers to an obscene degree. It doesn't really matter what it was supposed to be like, clearly it's mostly exploitation of the many by the few.
Well said. Monopolies are always the end goal of capitalism, no matter how much pro-capitalists claim they're not.
State capitalism is an interesting topic that deserves its own essay. Personally, I see it as a beneficial stage that, while imperfect, can advance humanity. I recognize China as state capitalist, as that's how the CPC describes itself. It's a limbo stage, in my opinion. Will they do the right thing and evolve to socialism? I hope so. We'll have to wait and see.
I love what you've shared here, Joe. Thank you. However, communism? Can you elaborate on how that will work and not be backsliding in to what Russia is? What flavor of communism are you talking about?
Thanks, Eli! And that's a great question. I'll preface by saying this is an intricate topic that deserves its own article, so my comment will be insufficient.
The Soviet Union was plagued from its inception. Unlike the rest of Europe, it had yet to go through capitalist development and was still feudal at the time of the Revolution. That meant the Soviets had to find a way to build their industrial base (which is typically done via capitalism) and then shift to collective governance of it. In my opinion, this is what led to the worst crimes of Stalinism and the over reliance on bureaucracy. While people call the SU communist, by its own admission, they never achieved communism, only a primitive (and in my opinion, sub par) form of socialism. Basically, they tried to "skip" the capitalist phase, which as I outlined here, does not really work.
This lesson was learned by the CCP, which, if we take it at its word, reintroduced capitalist elements to China with the goal of achieving socialism by 2050. As for that, we'll have to wait and see if they're true to their word.
So many people ask this question in such bad faith (that's not the case here i'm just noting). People often look at things black and white, so they think one answer/one solution will be the end all be all but that is not the case. That's why its important to foster and speak amongst each other as a community, no one man has all the answers! I love this, such a great read. People have some weird allegiance to iPhones. If we could just get people to stop blindly buying into it every single year we might be able to get somewhere...
Lots of therapy group practice owners in FB groups are mad about my article simply asking if they're exploiting their workers. I liked your small business article but it could probably get redone.
Thanks! Yeah, I'm a better writer now, so I'm not surprised the old stuff is clunky. I'm going to go back and re-write a few of them, just cause I think the concepts are really important.
They are. I’m a Marxist more or less like Richard Wolff is, which is how I think Marx and Engels would be if they were alive today. Neither one of them was authoritarian, yet today most Americans think Marxism is synonymous with authoritarian control.
Nothing is more authoritarian than a capitalist business, but nobody ever questions that.
I guess I’ve lived in socialist countries so much they aren’t special to me anymore, but they are a great way to save money, because there are no nasty consumer products to buy. I’ve spent many hours waiting in line for bread, petrol, cement, in fact most things, which allowed me time to really consider whether I wanted something badly enough to wait another two hours hoping that the stuff I wanted wasn’t sold out. If I decided I really wanted something badly enough, I took up the habit of always carrying a thick Russian novel to read, which helped pass the time.
Another good thing about socialism is that the products that are available are so shoddily made that the craftsman in me can’t bear to buy them, so I saved money that way, too.
Also, my life in those countries wasn’t cluttered up with all kinds of diversions to make me loose focus of the beauty of from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.
I suppose the only request I have for those who want to abandon free markets is that you find an isolated, uninhabited place to try good socialism among fellow true believers, because all the killing necessary to rid a place of hoarders, wreckers, reactionaries, running dogs, kulaks, and other enemies of the people gets so tiresome and messy.
They weren’t sanctioned at all. Modern Socialist Zimbabwe, a couple of ex-Soviet republics I can’t name here because of colleagues who still live there, Mozambique, Tanzania, Yugoslavia (as it was called then), and Ethiopia. I also spent a lot of months in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Well, when Chavez appropriated vast oil production infrastructure from foreign investors, and threw the technicians who knew how to keep the oil machinery running out of the country, he sold as much oil as he could produce and used the money to give free stuff to the people. He was a nice man.
Unfortunately, the oil production equipment starting breaking down because of no one wanted to risk selling parts and fixing stuff, unfortunately at about the same time world oil prices dropped.
Bad luck.
Then as prices for imported commodities rose because the Venezuelan currency depreciated, consumer prices also rose. Hugo decided to teach those profiteers a lesson by imposing price controls on most household necessities, like Kamala promised to do to lower prices in America.
Unfortunately, producers weren’t able to produce goods and stay in business at the price Hugo allowed, so they simply stopped producing and suddenly, more bad luck. Nothing was available.
Hugo figured out a way around the shortage problem: he took over the producers and the retailers, but unexpectedly, more bad luck and the average Venezuelan lost more than 20#.
Hugo decided what was needed was the spirit of the Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, so he had Simon’s corpse dug up and displayed for good luck. Hugo even appropriated Simon’s sword from the National museum for more good luck.
Unfortunately, Hugo had the bad luck of coming down with cancer, but fortunately, the world’s best health care system, Cuba’s, was just a short boat ride north. In another bout of bad luck, Hugo died, but his dying wish was to be preserved like Lenin, so they brought the world’s best embalmers from Moscow. Sadly, they got there too late and Hugo had already gone off. He was forced to take a dirt nap like the rest of us.
The good luck is that his daughter is the richest woman in Venezuela. Funny how that happens.
No, I did not. I recognize some doctors are greedy, but I also know many are unselfish. And as far as socialism, I’ve actually experienced it first hand. It’s just another word for slavery by a power hungry cabal.
Why didn’t you answer a single assertion I made about Venezuela? Truth hurts the narrative?
But if you spent a half million dollars and ten years of your life learning a high demand skill, would you work at McDonald wages? I have a young friend who lived in a hospital parking lot with his nurse wife. The showered in the hospital, worked as many shifts as possible to repay his medical school loans, and now is preparing to serve in an underserved country in Africa. Don’t judge people’s motives. You have no idea of the situations. Also, there are excellent alternatives, such as coops where people help pay each other’s medical expenses.
What you condemn is not a failure of free markets; it’s a failure of imagination.
And what right do we have to condemn the health care system when so many of our health problems are caused by poor lifestyle choices?
You went from "doctors need boat payments" to "doctors are struggling" in one comment. You're all over the place. Feel free to continue commenting, but you don't seem to have an understanding of your own politics or what constitutes "socialism," so this is my last response. Cheers.
I share Marx’s analysis. The transition from feudalism to capitalism, which propelled invention and development was good and necessary. Since evolving it homo sapiens, humanity has progressed through various stages: hunter-gathering, feudalism, and capitalism, just to name a few. Trying to “skip” the capitalist stage would be a failure, just as if we went back in time and tried to convince a band of Paleolithics to “skip” feudalism and become wage laborers in a capitalist system. They would rightfully be baffled and ignore us, as there are no factories to work in and no markets to exchange their wages for food. The same is true of capitalism.
There is nothing necessary or essential about technology. As I wrote in my crappy Substack blog:
As I contemplate human history since the American centennial in 1876, I am amazed. For all recorded history there has never been such an acceleration of technological advancement. The human population at that time was approximately 1,400,000,000. Today, it is over 8,000,000,000. In 150 years, the world’s population grew by 6,600,000,000 (somebody is fucking a lot!). In those 150 years we’ve gone from lighting our homes with gas, to electric incandescent bulbs, to LED bulbs. We’ve gone from hand-cranked mathematical calculator to handheld computers. Telegraphs gave way to telephones, radio and television. Physical media like motion picture and photograph film, recorded music, and books has given way to digital files. The entire recorded knowledge of humanity can be accessed from any device connected to the internet, a world-wide communications and information network. Transportation has advanced beyond horse and buggy, wind-powered ships, and steam engine trains to supersonic aircraft, gasoline powered automobiles, and nuclear-powered ships. In that span of time, we’ve experienced nuclear fallout, acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, microplastics in our brains and blood. We’ve created things solely for profit and convenience without a thought to the effect it has on our environment (by that, I mean our entire system of existence). O brave new world, indeed!
I'm more in line with Native Americans, Luddites, Henry Miller, and DEVO. I don't think capitalism was a natural progression. It's along the lines of all other forms of oppression and exploitation. Socialism is the aberration.
To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?
In particular, there are people like DIddy, Clive Davis, the Epsteins and others who exist to spy and schvantz on others. But there are also wonderful businesses that offer discounts to those who need them, and go about capitalism as the Pilgrims did, with great loyalty and pride in their endeavors, which is why everyone wanted to do business with them! But you're right, the "cannibal economy" has definitely grown.
It's a good explanation of a standard point of Marxist theory but you're entirely mistaken to think that we are anywhere near the end of Capitalism. In many ways, it made a good start but is now being deliberately devolved back into Feudalism. The abortive Capitalist class was perfectly capable of reading Marx and realizing they've be better off just not continuing with the whole project and instead reintegrating themselves with the exploitative governing classes. They're also capable of self organization in a way that makes it possible for them to pull off.
As Michael Hudson put it:
“History has not worked out the way Marx expected. He expected every class to act in its own class interest. That is the only way to reasonably project the future. The historical task and destiny of industrial capitalism, Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, was to free society from the “excrescences” of interest and rent… that industrial capitalism had inherited from medieval and even ancient society…If capitalism had achieved this destiny, it would have been left primarily with the crisis between industrial employers and workers discussed in Volume I of Capital: exploiting wage labor to a point where labor could not buy its products… [However,] instead of banking being industrialized as Marx expected, industry is being financialized. Instead of democracy freeing economies from land rent, natural resource rent and monopoly rent, the rentiers have fought back and taken control of Western governments, legal systems and tax policy.”
Whether or not China will be able to avoid this trap isn't known, but given the issues they are having with their property industry, it's at least an open question.
I'm hesitant to call our current state a "devolution to feudalism" because I think this is the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. If capital is privately owned, it will eventually begin encroaching on democracy and enclosing competitors because it is in its interest to do so. I wouldn't call it a return to feudalism but rather a dystopian conclusion.
Furthermore, I'd like to clarify I don't think we've reached "the end of capitalism," but rather at a the point of being able to evolve past it. That process will be slow and will run in tandem with capitalism for a while. But I think we're ready for it as a species.
There is supposed to be a falling rate of profit, which doesn't seem to be happening. All in all, I think Henry George predicted what was going to happen better than Marx, including our present tilt towards Ceasarism.
Interesting to think of capitalism as a stage we need to pass through. Thanks for sharing!
Of course!
I've never considered the idea of capitalism being a stage of development we needed to have to grow into something better, it's interesting to look at it in this way. I feel like the competing philosophies behind free market economics contributed to making the current system what it is are just as much to blame as the system itself?
I really view those concepts of free markets to be flawed, as they mostly came after the establishment of capitalism. I see them as written to defend capitalism against critique, which is why they hand-wave over issues such as how capitalism always encroaches on political democracy. IE, they say "That's not capitalism, it's crony capitalism." I find that to be a lacking justification.
Yes I agree with that and I suppose it's more of a thought experiment really because regardless of the philosophy espoused we've ended up in this period of huge multinational corporations with monopolization increasing and the prioritization of shareholder returns over rewarding workers to an obscene degree. It doesn't really matter what it was supposed to be like, clearly it's mostly exploitation of the many by the few.
What about state capitalism?
Well said. Monopolies are always the end goal of capitalism, no matter how much pro-capitalists claim they're not.
State capitalism is an interesting topic that deserves its own essay. Personally, I see it as a beneficial stage that, while imperfect, can advance humanity. I recognize China as state capitalist, as that's how the CPC describes itself. It's a limbo stage, in my opinion. Will they do the right thing and evolve to socialism? I hope so. We'll have to wait and see.
I love what you've shared here, Joe. Thank you. However, communism? Can you elaborate on how that will work and not be backsliding in to what Russia is? What flavor of communism are you talking about?
Thanks, Eli! And that's a great question. I'll preface by saying this is an intricate topic that deserves its own article, so my comment will be insufficient.
The Soviet Union was plagued from its inception. Unlike the rest of Europe, it had yet to go through capitalist development and was still feudal at the time of the Revolution. That meant the Soviets had to find a way to build their industrial base (which is typically done via capitalism) and then shift to collective governance of it. In my opinion, this is what led to the worst crimes of Stalinism and the over reliance on bureaucracy. While people call the SU communist, by its own admission, they never achieved communism, only a primitive (and in my opinion, sub par) form of socialism. Basically, they tried to "skip" the capitalist phase, which as I outlined here, does not really work.
This lesson was learned by the CCP, which, if we take it at its word, reintroduced capitalist elements to China with the goal of achieving socialism by 2050. As for that, we'll have to wait and see if they're true to their word.
The Uyghurs might not want to wait that long, but I guess if we want to make an omelette, we must break a few eggs.
So many people ask this question in such bad faith (that's not the case here i'm just noting). People often look at things black and white, so they think one answer/one solution will be the end all be all but that is not the case. That's why its important to foster and speak amongst each other as a community, no one man has all the answers! I love this, such a great read. People have some weird allegiance to iPhones. If we could just get people to stop blindly buying into it every single year we might be able to get somewhere...
Thanks for throwing a little more light on this subject.
Lots of therapy group practice owners in FB groups are mad about my article simply asking if they're exploiting their workers. I liked your small business article but it could probably get redone.
Thanks! Yeah, I'm a better writer now, so I'm not surprised the old stuff is clunky. I'm going to go back and re-write a few of them, just cause I think the concepts are really important.
After Capitalism by David Schweickart (sp?) comes to mind as a great resource for this.
Excellent Marxist materialist analysis of capitalists in a nutshell.
Hey, thanks! I'm trying to show how his (and, to a lesser degree, Lenin's) ideas are still applicable in the 21st century.
They are. I’m a Marxist more or less like Richard Wolff is, which is how I think Marx and Engels would be if they were alive today. Neither one of them was authoritarian, yet today most Americans think Marxism is synonymous with authoritarian control.
Nothing is more authoritarian than a capitalist business, but nobody ever questions that.
Sorry but capitalism must die. It cannot exist without abject poverty, exploitation, and wars.
The capitalism and imperialism are very much linked. Think I should write something explaining it!
That they are. You absolutely should.
I guess I’ve lived in socialist countries so much they aren’t special to me anymore, but they are a great way to save money, because there are no nasty consumer products to buy. I’ve spent many hours waiting in line for bread, petrol, cement, in fact most things, which allowed me time to really consider whether I wanted something badly enough to wait another two hours hoping that the stuff I wanted wasn’t sold out. If I decided I really wanted something badly enough, I took up the habit of always carrying a thick Russian novel to read, which helped pass the time.
Another good thing about socialism is that the products that are available are so shoddily made that the craftsman in me can’t bear to buy them, so I saved money that way, too.
Also, my life in those countries wasn’t cluttered up with all kinds of diversions to make me loose focus of the beauty of from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.
I suppose the only request I have for those who want to abandon free markets is that you find an isolated, uninhabited place to try good socialism among fellow true believers, because all the killing necessary to rid a place of hoarders, wreckers, reactionaries, running dogs, kulaks, and other enemies of the people gets so tiresome and messy.
It sounds like you were living in a heavily sanctioned country. Which countries did you live in?
They weren’t sanctioned at all. Modern Socialist Zimbabwe, a couple of ex-Soviet republics I can’t name here because of colleagues who still live there, Mozambique, Tanzania, Yugoslavia (as it was called then), and Ethiopia. I also spent a lot of months in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Venezuela is under crippling sanctions.
Well, when Chavez appropriated vast oil production infrastructure from foreign investors, and threw the technicians who knew how to keep the oil machinery running out of the country, he sold as much oil as he could produce and used the money to give free stuff to the people. He was a nice man.
Unfortunately, the oil production equipment starting breaking down because of no one wanted to risk selling parts and fixing stuff, unfortunately at about the same time world oil prices dropped.
Bad luck.
Then as prices for imported commodities rose because the Venezuelan currency depreciated, consumer prices also rose. Hugo decided to teach those profiteers a lesson by imposing price controls on most household necessities, like Kamala promised to do to lower prices in America.
Unfortunately, producers weren’t able to produce goods and stay in business at the price Hugo allowed, so they simply stopped producing and suddenly, more bad luck. Nothing was available.
Hugo figured out a way around the shortage problem: he took over the producers and the retailers, but unexpectedly, more bad luck and the average Venezuelan lost more than 20#.
Hugo decided what was needed was the spirit of the Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, so he had Simon’s corpse dug up and displayed for good luck. Hugo even appropriated Simon’s sword from the National museum for more good luck.
Unfortunately, Hugo had the bad luck of coming down with cancer, but fortunately, the world’s best health care system, Cuba’s, was just a short boat ride north. In another bout of bad luck, Hugo died, but his dying wish was to be preserved like Lenin, so they brought the world’s best embalmers from Moscow. Sadly, they got there too late and Hugo had already gone off. He was forced to take a dirt nap like the rest of us.
The good luck is that his daughter is the richest woman in Venezuela. Funny how that happens.
The doctor could nitpick the patient's health all he wants. The patient will stay sick until the doctor stops strangling them.
All doctors or your doctor. My doctor does everything he can to help me save money. Many are that way. Some, however, have boat payments coming due.
No, I did not. I recognize some doctors are greedy, but I also know many are unselfish. And as far as socialism, I’ve actually experienced it first hand. It’s just another word for slavery by a power hungry cabal.
Why didn’t you answer a single assertion I made about Venezuela? Truth hurts the narrative?
But if you spent a half million dollars and ten years of your life learning a high demand skill, would you work at McDonald wages? I have a young friend who lived in a hospital parking lot with his nurse wife. The showered in the hospital, worked as many shifts as possible to repay his medical school loans, and now is preparing to serve in an underserved country in Africa. Don’t judge people’s motives. You have no idea of the situations. Also, there are excellent alternatives, such as coops where people help pay each other’s medical expenses.
What you condemn is not a failure of free markets; it’s a failure of imagination.
And what right do we have to condemn the health care system when so many of our health problems are caused by poor lifestyle choices?
You went from "doctors need boat payments" to "doctors are struggling" in one comment. You're all over the place. Feel free to continue commenting, but you don't seem to have an understanding of your own politics or what constitutes "socialism," so this is my last response. Cheers.
I have to disagree with you this time, Joe.
You wrote:
I share Marx’s analysis. The transition from feudalism to capitalism, which propelled invention and development was good and necessary. Since evolving it homo sapiens, humanity has progressed through various stages: hunter-gathering, feudalism, and capitalism, just to name a few. Trying to “skip” the capitalist stage would be a failure, just as if we went back in time and tried to convince a band of Paleolithics to “skip” feudalism and become wage laborers in a capitalist system. They would rightfully be baffled and ignore us, as there are no factories to work in and no markets to exchange their wages for food. The same is true of capitalism.
There is nothing necessary or essential about technology. As I wrote in my crappy Substack blog:
As I contemplate human history since the American centennial in 1876, I am amazed. For all recorded history there has never been such an acceleration of technological advancement. The human population at that time was approximately 1,400,000,000. Today, it is over 8,000,000,000. In 150 years, the world’s population grew by 6,600,000,000 (somebody is fucking a lot!). In those 150 years we’ve gone from lighting our homes with gas, to electric incandescent bulbs, to LED bulbs. We’ve gone from hand-cranked mathematical calculator to handheld computers. Telegraphs gave way to telephones, radio and television. Physical media like motion picture and photograph film, recorded music, and books has given way to digital files. The entire recorded knowledge of humanity can be accessed from any device connected to the internet, a world-wide communications and information network. Transportation has advanced beyond horse and buggy, wind-powered ships, and steam engine trains to supersonic aircraft, gasoline powered automobiles, and nuclear-powered ships. In that span of time, we’ve experienced nuclear fallout, acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, microplastics in our brains and blood. We’ve created things solely for profit and convenience without a thought to the effect it has on our environment (by that, I mean our entire system of existence). O brave new world, indeed!
https://davidwfriedman.substack.com/p/why-im-a-misanthrope-part-ii
I'm more in line with Native Americans, Luddites, Henry Miller, and DEVO. I don't think capitalism was a natural progression. It's along the lines of all other forms of oppression and exploitation. Socialism is the aberration.
Tropic of Capricorn (1939) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_of_Capricorn)
To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?
London: Harper Perennial (2005), p. 108
They know it too, which is why the fight like demons to crush workers and democracy.
In particular, there are people like DIddy, Clive Davis, the Epsteins and others who exist to spy and schvantz on others. But there are also wonderful businesses that offer discounts to those who need them, and go about capitalism as the Pilgrims did, with great loyalty and pride in their endeavors, which is why everyone wanted to do business with them! But you're right, the "cannibal economy" has definitely grown.
It's a good explanation of a standard point of Marxist theory but you're entirely mistaken to think that we are anywhere near the end of Capitalism. In many ways, it made a good start but is now being deliberately devolved back into Feudalism. The abortive Capitalist class was perfectly capable of reading Marx and realizing they've be better off just not continuing with the whole project and instead reintegrating themselves with the exploitative governing classes. They're also capable of self organization in a way that makes it possible for them to pull off.
As Michael Hudson put it:
“History has not worked out the way Marx expected. He expected every class to act in its own class interest. That is the only way to reasonably project the future. The historical task and destiny of industrial capitalism, Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, was to free society from the “excrescences” of interest and rent… that industrial capitalism had inherited from medieval and even ancient society…If capitalism had achieved this destiny, it would have been left primarily with the crisis between industrial employers and workers discussed in Volume I of Capital: exploiting wage labor to a point where labor could not buy its products… [However,] instead of banking being industrialized as Marx expected, industry is being financialized. Instead of democracy freeing economies from land rent, natural resource rent and monopoly rent, the rentiers have fought back and taken control of Western governments, legal systems and tax policy.”
https://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/the-paradox-of-financialized-industrialization/
Whether or not China will be able to avoid this trap isn't known, but given the issues they are having with their property industry, it's at least an open question.
I'm hesitant to call our current state a "devolution to feudalism" because I think this is the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. If capital is privately owned, it will eventually begin encroaching on democracy and enclosing competitors because it is in its interest to do so. I wouldn't call it a return to feudalism but rather a dystopian conclusion.
Furthermore, I'd like to clarify I don't think we've reached "the end of capitalism," but rather at a the point of being able to evolve past it. That process will be slow and will run in tandem with capitalism for a while. But I think we're ready for it as a species.
There is supposed to be a falling rate of profit, which doesn't seem to be happening. All in all, I think Henry George predicted what was going to happen better than Marx, including our present tilt towards Ceasarism.