- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- theguardian_us@rss.ponder.cat
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- theguardian_us@rss.ponder.cat
Since Donald Trump launched his chaotic trade war earlier this year, it has become a truism to say he has plunged the world economy into crisis. At last month’s spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, where policymakers and finance ministers from all over congregated, the attenders were “shellshocked”, the economist Eswar Prasad, a former senior IMF official who now teaches at Cornell, told me. “The sense is that the world has changed fundamentally in ways that cannot easily be put back together. Every country has to figure out its own place in this new world order and how to protect its own interests.”
Trump’s assault on the old global order is real. But in taking its measure, it’s necessary to look beyond the daily headlines and acknowledge that being in a state of crisis is nothing new to capitalism. It’s also important to note that, as Karl Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.” Even would-be authoritarians who occupy the Oval Office have to operate in the social, economic and political environment that is bequeathed to them. In Trump’s case, the inheritance was one in which global capitalism was already suffering from a crisis of legitimacy.
Consider the decade before he was re-elected. In 2014, the global financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement were fresh in the memory. The French economist Thomas Piketty appeared on bestseller lists around the world with his tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which highlighted income and wealth inequality. Bankers, billionaires and defenders of free market capitalism appeared to be on the defensive. “Nobody believes any more in a moral revival of capitalism,” wrote the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in the New Left Review. The “attempt to prevent it from being confounded with greed has finally failed, as it has more than ever become synonymous with corruption.”
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I think we need to be clear about what capitalism actually is:
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit.
So, a person with access to sufficient capital buys a factory and hires people to work in the factory, and pays them a wage. The workers make a product that gets sold on the open market. Those proceeds are the source of the company’s revenue. Once expenses, including the wages paid to the workers, are subtracted from the revenue, if there is a surplus, that is profit that goes back to the owner. That’s capitalism in a nutshell. The point, the objective is to generate a profit for the owner, as a return on their initial capital investment.
Ok, so, what’s the alternative? Well, socialism:
Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.
So, a government, a group of workers, or a community acquires a factory. If it’s a government or a community that acquires the factory, they hire people to work in the factory and pay those workers a wage. If it’s acquired by workers then it’s worker owned. In either case, the workers make a product. That product can either be sold on an open market or distributed by other means. If it is sold, those proceeds are the source of revenue. Once expenses are subtracted from the revenue, if there is a surplus, that surplus either gets reinvested into the factory (to buy new machines or hire more workers), or, in the case of the worker owned company, that surplus might be distributed among the workers as profit, since they are also the owners.
People act like socialism is just some hypothetical that only exists in theory, but that’s not true. The fact is, socialism exists and works right now, today. All over the world, products and services are produced and made available to people by organizations that are government, community, or worker owned, either for a profit or non profit.
Based Richard Wolff listener/reader/watcher
For example: The Mondragon Corporation is a federated, worker-owned company with 12 billion euros annual revenue and 24 billion in assets.
There’s a lot of countries, like Canada, that run on a social democracy as well. It’s supposed to be a well-regulated type of government but unfortunately capitalism has a heavy hand on the steering wheel right now.
Social democracy isn’t really an alternative to capitalism, it’s more of a progressive modification of capitalism. Under social democracy, the factory would still be owned by a capitalist and operated for their profit, but the government would use its authority to regulate the factory, tax the owner’s profits (to help fund public services), protect workers, etc.
No.
Betteridge’s law in action!
No
Because of this broken system, the real power is now in the hands of those who will do anything to keep it. People dying because of greed isn’t abhorrent to them. Nobody gets that rich without a disregard for anything other than gathering more.
The tipping point was passed a long, long time ago
It’s going to take a global catastrophe or something, one where money is proven to actually hold no value, where the rich starve just the same as the poor before anything will change
And even then, I’m not convinced.
It comforts me a little bit that these rich fucks thinking they’ll be kings of ashes also maintain the idea that money will still have any value in a dead world; That they’ll be able to retain staff to clean up for them and more importantly personal security. You know, a team of people armed to the teeth who outnumber them. They won’t last very long in their bunkers.
In most instances I’d agree, but I’m sure that in America they’ll find people willing to stick by them in the promise of future riches when they (the rich cunts) have risen again
I have seen them in action. They’re not successful because they can do stuff. Most of them are practically useless, but their skill is in getting the best out of people
That’s actually not a bad thing. A leader (I’m going to use military as an example) doesn’t have to be the best marksman, the best at hand-to-hand, the best at getting a track back on a tank when it chucks one.
The reason they lead is because they are the best at getting their team to do what they need to do
I’m a natural sergeant.
I’m better at some things, not as good at others, but I get shit done and can understand the bigger picture, and also advise those above me with field experience when appropriate about what will actually work in the field
I recognise that those who are really high up the chain have talents
But psychopaths are different. They only rise in business because it doesn’t matter if their men don’t trust them
Prioritizing-profits-over-people style unfettered capitalism is a system that is highly favourable to psychopaths, narcissists, and those of that ilk.
Well, either that or a French-style revolution.
Short answer: no
Long answer: Capitalism is fundamentally a coercive power structure, it cannot be reformed and thefore must be destroyed
People keep telling me 🇺🇲 aren’t wanting a maoist take over, and John Cassidy got approved to make this salacious plea on the freaking Guardian📰.
🖕THESE ELITISTS SCUM.
Theoretically, I’d say “sorta”.
Practically, I’d say “no”.
Capitalism can’t be “saved”, but it can be made less awful. Since capitalism is inherently amoral, “saving” it would mean MUCH more regulation. We’d have to force it into something marginally palatable, like ultraprocessed food. Then we’d need to keep a close eye on it, because companies/individuals will constantly be trying to manipulate the system. There isn’t the political will to do either of those things, though, and I don’t think there ever will be.
I often wonder if capitalism is a phase, and if it will be abandoned eventually.
Nope. Everyone’s too busy online complaining to get into the streets. Do no. It won’t be saved until people are to busy actually saving the country to write these articles we know the answer too
“Anything that isn’t my way is a waste of time.”
Not what I said at all.
