this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism
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Surely Rome wasn't a warmongering, genocidal, capitalist-colonialist society with the rich elite hoarding untold wealth and trading in slaves 1500 years earlier, right?
The Roman mode of production wasn't capitalist exploitation of wage earners who sold their labor, but through their exploration of slaves in an agregarian system. There's some arguments to be made that capitalist systems start as early as 12th century Italy, but it becomes dominant in 1600s England and is able to radically transform that society.
I, eh, would think that Phoenician societies and a lot of Ancient Greece could be called that too.
In any case, if everything involving markets and mutually voluntary deals and trade is called capitalism, then everything is capitalism. But that doesn't make any sense.
Capitalism is specifically what Marx was talking about - where the economic system is kinda free and equal, but to be a subject in it you have to own some capital, allowing you to create enterprises. You can't do it with just your head and two hands, because it's very expensive. So you need to ally with some generational wealth. Quite often that of aristocrats.
So-o things like VC and more recently crowdfunding and what not, which everybody blames for enshittification and such, are what ended the original capitalism in some sense. People who have some kind of a business plan and skills, and small capital (something realistic to assemble), can try. Also the startup incubators and all that.
A lot of it is BS, but in general you don't have to make an appointment with some Victorian dude with a monocle, wait for him a few hours, then explain your whole idea to him a few more hours, and then - that dude will be very polite and knowledgeable and interested, by the way, - likely get a commendation letter to some acquaintances of the dude, his written commentary with advice on your ideas, and a polite refusal.
I'm really not sure what your point is or how it is a response to my comment. I'll respond to what I understand.
First, I agree, Phoenecian and ancient Greek societies would be classified as slave modes of production according to Marx. I wasn't suggesting otherwise, just responding to OP's comment that Roman society was capitalist.
I'm not quite sure what argument you're building in the second paragraph, but there is a curious absence of proletariats in regards to subjects.
From here on our, I'm rather confused and I don't think you have a clear grasp of what Marx means by capitalism. You seem to be most concerned with initial funding sources and not how one social group is able to exploit another through various economic means and subsequent social means as the capitalist class becomes the ruling class.
Again, how does any of this relate to my comment?
Do you?
I'm not most concerned with them, just look at them closely. The word "capital" is from there. If an ideology is functional, you may come from every its part to every other via logic.
And, of course, I have described how there's less exploitation with more competition for labor between easily born small enterprises, which result from more agility in investment and capital, and that "middle class".
Proletariat by Marx does not exist today in any notable capacity in Western countries. It, however, exists in poorer countries. It's funny how right-wing types were fearmongering about globalization and left-wing types were optimistic, while in the end result globalization combined with Western labor protections resulted in both benefiting from oppression of Chinese, Bengali, Indian, Vietnamese etc proletariat.
He kinda ignored that European colonial empires relied on slavery a lot and the transition from that to his capitalism wasn't very noticeable. He wrote something that on the surface seemed applicable to Germany of his time.
Marx is atrociously reductionist with taking real world's complexity and making some very rough approximations, which would be acceptable in some situations, but he doesn't see how his approximations work one way only and builds a system based on them working both ways. Marx would be a bad mathematician or software architect or cryptographer or construction engineer, because everything he'd make would last less than clay huts in Somalia.
Asking the important questions, I see. Yep, I initially intended to answer another comment. Missed, then in process made some changes looking at yours (my head wasn't too good then).
I don't think you've read Capital. You haven't displayed an understanding of what the proletariat is, what class and class relations are, how it functions in capitalism, or the role of slavery when it exists in a capitalist society. All of this is discussed in Capital.
You're responses are filled with insinuations, ad hominens, tangents and non sequiturs. We won't have a productive or interesting discussion.
Disagreement with its contents doesn't mean I haven't read Capital.
In any case nobody owes you a summary of its contents or some other way to persuade you, a statement is enough. You are taking too much upon yourself.
Also having a list of Latin buzzwords doesn't help you one bit when you are unwilling to dispute honestly.
~~Tangent is Greek.~~ <-- this is wrong, it is Latin.
You display no working understanding of even the basic concepts. You haven't read it. And you won't.
I have re-checked and no, it's not Greek.
EDIT: wow, edited your own comment to appear something completely different ; your typical marxist right here.
EDIT2: as to what you made it look - see, I don't fucking care what a marxist of all kinds of people thinks about my working understanding of anything. If you'd have that, you'd not be a marxist. And of course the argument is absolutely fruitless when you are repeating that I haven't read some book, because I disagree with your wrong opinion on it.
I wrote that, posted it, and check it. I discovered it was wrong in under 30 seconds and didn't think you would have read it. I was wrong. I had finished editing it before you posted your reply. I've edited the link to reflect my edit.
As for your second edit, if you see no fruits in understanding the basic concepts then you and I operate in different ethical worlds. Reading your writings is difficult. It's meandering and unclear without a clear idea that you're building an argument around. Layered on top of it a sense of certainty that you haven't earned and allergic defensiveness when others notice and point it out. It's not worth discussing anything with you until you have some ability to demonstrate even the most basic understanding of the core concepts.
You are using words you don't understand to create some respectably-appearing text, except one can have a good intelligent discussion constantly swearing and making spelling mistakes in half the words and using "that thing which ..." and analogies instead of terms, but just not losing logic and deontology, and one can have a pretentious text like yours after trying insults and arrogant statements about things you can't possibly know anything about.
I don't remember what my argument was and about what, and I don't care, because you yourself chose to address things irrelevant to it with ridiculing tone and all that and are only now playing a virgin, pretending you can have a civilized discussion.
And what's more,
you're still lying while pretending, trying to put words into your opponent's mouth, and all that.
People doing something useful don't try to prove that such cheating is wrong, they simply discard those who are trying to cheat.