The Death of Capitalism

Anonus

If it ever comes

How will it transpire?

Imipolex G

the proles

Anonus

well

what about the proles? Will there be a revolution? Will capitalism just break?

Klinotaxis

to me, most likely seems like it'll be a slow fadeout as we mechanize more jobs and realize that everything we're paying each other for is just "service" stuff, like selling insurance on negative returns on investments in political maneuvers about waiters. but nobody will say "capitalism is done", and the trumps of the world in a thousand years or whatever will say "zek macha room parananaskeifaalala mei'iren", which roughly translates as "as our forefathers didn't die fighting the soviets so you could make a point system for who receives healthcare"

Sredni Vashtar

I wonder if neoliberal capitalism will go the way of mercantilism, in that it slowly fades out and becomes a bit of an economic punchline within a few centuries.

Klinotaxis

ey, what did the "president" say to the "senator"?

"I'm washing tonyo* ur consensus!!"

*language change renders this pun difficult

Obā-san

0vvvv0 said:

I wonder if neoliberal capitalism will go the way of mercantilism, in that it slowly fades out and becomes a bit of an economic punchline within a few centuries.

funny, i was just about to say like exactly this

because i have been thinking about mercantilism a lot lately

Salix Babylonika

mercantilism is great if you're playing a game of EU4.

Klinotaxis

is it? it's hard to imagine colonial ventures being, like.... profitable

Obā-san

profit is not the goal of mercantilism, the goal is hegemony

Salix Babylonika

EU4 ends in the early 1800s.

Mercantilism is also basically like a stat, on a sliding scale with "Free trade" or whatever the other one is called.

Obā-san

capitalism, the whole notion of profit being the point of business, is specifically a reaction against mercantilism

Klinotaxis

i'm going off of the hilarious Austria Over All, If She Only Will

1. To inspect the country's soil with the greatest care, and not to
   leave the agricultural possibilities of a single corner or clod of earth
   unconsidered...
2. All commodities found in a country, which cannot be used in their natural state, should be worked up within the country...
3. Attention should be given to the population, that it may be as large as the country can support...
4. gold and silver once in the country are under no circumstances to be taken out for any purpose...
5. The inhabitants should make every effort to get along with their domestic products...
6. [Foreign commodities] should be obtained not for gold or silver, but in exchange for other domestic wares...
7. ...and should be imported in unfinished form, and worked up within the country...
8. Opportunities should be sought night and day for selling the country's
   superfluous goods to these foreigners in manufactured form...
9. No importation should be allowed under any circumstances of which there is a sufficient supply of suitable quality at home.

Klinotaxis

i mean it's not "profit" so much as super dumb", but

Sredni Vashtar

It is interesting to consider how Keynes defended mercantilism's focus on production where Smith may have been overly enamoured with consumption. To whit, the German historical school of economics had its roots in mercantilist ideas about data analysis and from that springs the model of the welfare state and all that good stuff. So even bad ideas can have some positive impact in the long run.

MadassAlex

Automation seems like the dealbreaker to me. Capitalism could try to hang on by concentrating control of assets, but if that does not keep relative peace and social cohesion, the the wealth basis of the rich means little anyway. Unfortunately, trade pacts like the TPP and TTIP look to slow down motion towards publicly owned automation assets combined with basic income systems; that is a sort of socialism playing capitalism's game. 

On top of that is the climate change issue. The world can only produce so many resources and support so much life. Greater environmental stability equates to more regenerative resources that can support automation and basic income. The 2.0C UN target is increasingly looking like a pipedream, but something within 2.5C isn't out of the question -- with sufficient regulation over the industries in question. Again, the trade protectionism represented by wide-ranging trade pacts weakens the capacity for governments to regulate those industries.

The ideal realistic outcome might be to keep climate change within +2.5C of pre-industrial times and to cultivate industries that will allow for better resource regeneration. Combined with basic income, this could allow for both the socialists and the capitalists-lite to win; the majority of the world's population could have access to the goods and services they need for physical and psychological subsistence, but direct incentives would remain for the accumulation of wealth by attracting consumption. For all the ills of capitalism, it does do a remarkable job of encouraging innovation. On that basis, some aspects are worth retaining. Absolute equality is not required for widespread accessibility to high quality of life. 

While unfettered capitalism is the clearest and most definitive villain of the early 21st century, socialism and communism both failed in their purest forms. Marxism clearly and correct identified the technical and ethical failings of capitalism, but its solution was built on conflict between assets and labour -- a conflict that automation makes increasingly irrelevant. 

Unfortunately, the quickest way to fix this appears to be the "Pikkety scenario" -- World War III. Large scale warfare almost always reduces the value of assets, and not just within warzones themselves. The existence of nuclear weapons, however, makes it unlikely that the most powerful states would be willing to commit directly to the kind of warfare we think of when we think "World War". If a WWIII was ever to exist that could avert the extermination (or near extermination) of human life, it would probably come through a series of proxy wars not unlike the ones we're seeing in Ukraine and Syria. 

There will be revolutions. Some have already begun. But these aren't necessarily class-oriented revolutions. They involve technology, environmental sustainability, and the evolution of warfare on a planet that could extinguish itself in a matter of hours if conventional warfare were adhered to. There is and will continue to be a deplorable amount of suffering in this world as transitions are made towards a stronger future, but everyone and everything that fails to change when necessary seals its own fate. But there is a better future waiting for us if we're willing to understand the mechanisms that might support it. Forget about "capitalism" and "socialism" -- they may as well be as reliquary as feudalism. 

The time, mechanisms, and resources required to make the future bright do exist. Our generation might continue to be the unlucky one in that respect, however. We might have to be more like our grandparents than like our parents. But it was our grandparents that laid the groundwork for the Keynesian golden age from about 1945-1975, wherein global equality peaked. I suspect that's why governments continue to do things like keeping interest rates incredibly low over long periods of time; sufficient disruption from any number of sources could bring the facade crumbling down in short order. Whether that would result in chaos or an economic renaissance is anyone's guess, but I have a more favourable view of human nature than many.  

Sredni Vashtar

Hey, Alex.

This is making me think of that one really pretentious right-libertarian ethical historian and theorist who asserted that agitation for the redistribution of wealth is predicated on people with less simply envying the fact that more productive people have more and that the free market is the great moral equaliser that will give everyone what they deserve and make scarcity disappear.

The funniest part about this is that a true post-scarcity society would make the accumulation of wealth utterly pointless unless you explicitly made it so some people had access and others did not, which would defeat the point and amount the kind of neo-fascist oligarchy that such people accuse we more socialistically-minded folk of wanting to institute.

Klinotaxis

Maybe what I mean is that mercantilism doesn't seem great from a game perspective. You spend a whole lot of (quantifiable) money and out of it you get (sorta quantifiable) political power and then later horribly expensive and pointless wars.

Sredni Vashtar

That is true. Realism makes things harder and potentially less fun. But...

Corvina

Capitalism will fall by way of world proletarian revolution.

Odradek

Capitalism will fall via my dick.

Klinotaxis

I will fuck capitalism

Obā-san

what is the proletariat anyways

Klinotaxis

workers, except for workers you don't like which are lumpen. workers are too dumb and busy to take the lead so it's up to middle class nerds to pave the way

Klinotaxis

i mean i know you probably know this but god damn every time i read marx's descriptions of the lumpenproletariat i'm just like damn, what a classist douche

Sredni Vashtar

Yeeeeep.

Odradek

rayman said:

i mean i know you probably know this but god damn every time i read marx's descriptions of the lumpenproletariat i'm just like damn, what a classist douche

I saw a nerd fascist call Stormfront types "lumpenfascists"

Not debating your point, I just felt like saying that.

Obā-san

rayman said:

i mean i know you probably know this but god damn every time i read marx's descriptions of the lumpenproletariat i'm just like damn, what a classist douche

yes

Corvina

it's worth noting that since then, the notion of the lumpen has been largely discarded among Marxists.

Obā-san

i see it brought up all the time tbh

Obā-san

usually it's tweaked a bit so it covers whichever out group du jour needs excluding but still

Salix Babylonika

I don't think I've ever heard that word before.

But I am not educated in the literature and most people would probably not consider me a real socialist anyway.

Corvina

:3 said:

i see it brought up all the time tbh

Really? Maybe we're looking at different texts, then...

Klinotaxis

Witchy Jane said:

But I am not educated in the literature and most people would probably not consider me a real socialist anyway.

luckily you can be socialist without being marxist

Salix Babylonika

Witchy Jane said:

But I am not educated in the literature and most people would probably not consider me a real socialist anyway.

luckily you can be socialist without being marxist

tbh I'm not sure I even know what socialist and marxist are at this point.

bc when I hear people talking about "twitter marxists" it's just people saying ridiculous shit that no one with a brain believes. Many of them seem to have K-On avatars.

Klinotaxis

twitter marxists are stupid, throw rocks at them

marxism i'd say is basically socialism where you take marx (Kapital, whatever) as a serious starting point

most socialists i know, including you, are not marxist, because honestly marx is pretty different from bernie sanders and what not

like, lenin wrote "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder and i can't imagine anybody i know being all, yeah, we need to be more conservative!

or in Fanshen the Maoists have this like two page explanation of how "both Left and Right" are wrong, and that most of the problems with the revolution have been giving peasants too much stuff

which might work out as most people i know being more naïve, because they haven't analyzed praxis bla bla whatever stupid jargon, which amounts to "do not know economics in a socialist context", but that might be better than going with marx's analysis which is honestly kind of crap

Klinotaxis

as far as i can tell marxism isn't based around helping people as such, it's about destroying society and replacing it with a new one, which may incidentally help people but more importantly is closer to the inevitable society prophesied by marxian science

Klinotaxis

i'm kind of mad i admit

Fossilmaiden

Princess Alice

lol I like how Branco just assumes people will think that's a bad thing

Klinotaxis

i wish all executions involved having to wear a nameplate

Odradek

rayman said:

as far as i can tell marxism isn't based around helping people as such, it's about destroying society and replacing it with a new one, which may incidentally help people but more importantly is closer to the inevitable society prophesied by marxian science

I look at people like Sam Kriss and Tom Wyman, and I'm kind of confused as to what they're hoping for from Marxism, because their endgoal for society seems to be a kind of crushing despair that isn't contaminated by physical pain or moral evil.

Which, I guess would be better, but still.

Klinotaxis

i'm thinking of, like, marxists who have actually done things, run revolutions and stuff

philosophers like

i don't know what the fuck their deal is. they're freaky

Corvina

rayman said:

twitter marxists are stupid, throw rocks at them

marxism i'd say is basically socialism where you take marx (Kapital, whatever) as a serious starting point

most socialists i know, including you, are not marxist, because honestly marx is pretty different from bernie sanders and what not

like, lenin wrote "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder and i can't imagine anybody i know being all, yeah, we need to be more conservative!

or in Fanshen the Maoists have this like two page explanation of how "both Left and Right" are wrong, and that most of the problems with the revolution have been giving peasants too much stuff

which might work out as most people i know being more naïve, because they haven't analyzed praxis bla bla whatever stupid jargon, which amounts to "do not know economics in a socialist context", but that might be better than going with marx's analysis which is honestly kind of crap

Have you actually read "Left-Wing Communism": An Infantile Disorder? It's a criticism of the various critics of the Bolsheviks c. 1920 (specifically the KAPD in Germany) who called themselves "left-wing communists", by which was meant that they refused to compromise, opposed parliamentarianism, and refused to work with labour unions. Some members of the KAPD were also "national bolsheviks", which too was seen as part of "left-wing communism" and thus criticised in that book.

Klinotaxis

i'm not reading anything calling someone's politics an "infantile disorder" dog, if i want that i can just check stormfront

soviet democracy was worthless and labor unions were illegal, so i guess that all went pretty well