this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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In case you want the good faith counterargument (I know, I know, socialist wall of text):
I'd be willing to bet you have a different definition of "capitalism" compared to socialists. For most people, capitalism is just trade, markets, commerce, etc. None of that is incompatible with socialism (broadly speaking). When socialists talk about capitalism, they're referring, specifically, to private ownership of capital. It's not the buying and selling, it's that ownership of companies is separate from labor.
We don't owe technological development to capitalists, we owe it to engineers, scientists, and researchers. We owe art to artists, performance to performers. Socialists want those people to be the primary beneficiaries of their own work, not someone who may or may not even work at a company, but whose wealth means they can profit off of other people's labor by virtue of owning the property those people need to do their jobs.
And you've probably been bothered by enshittification in one form or another. Some product or service you like has probably gotten worse over time. That's not a decision made by the people who take pride in their creation, or the laborers who want long-term security. It comes from the capitalist class that doesn't really give a shit about any of that, they just want quarterly profits, long-term survival be damned. That's capitalism, as the meme was getting at.
Thank you for taking the education angle. I'd like to add another perspective for folks' benefit. I'm not 100% sure it's correct, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Your labor has some value. Ideally, you should be paid a corresponding amount of wealth to the amount of value you generate through your labor. So you do $20 worth of work and get $20 worth of money. This is the ideal.
But how much labor is worth $20? Capitalism takes advantage of this ambiguity. The capitalist, e.g. a business owner or investor or similarly positioned person, pays you $19 for that $20 labor and pockets the remaining amount as profit. Sure, the capitalist likely provides some amount of leadership and direction, which is labor with value, but their compensation vastly exceeds the value they generate. This is why you see CEOs getting >300x the pay of their employees. The labor of these CEOs is not worth that much. One person's labor literally cannot be worth that of 300 people. (Engineers may pipe in on that point, but please realize you're in the same boat.)
If you see capitalism from this perspective, it makes sense why you would be angry. You're literally getting short-changed for your effort. Not cool
So what's the alternative? Well, there's a bunch. Personally, I like the idea of employee-owned companies. This way, you get the advantage of pooling people's resources, and any profit can be invested back into the company to generate more wealth for its employees or be held onto in case of a downturn. Both are better than a CEO's pocket.
One issue is capital investment. Starting a company is expensive, and many companies take a long time to become profitable. If every company had to bootstrap, we'd see much fewer successes and much slower progress. I'm not exactly sure how to solve this, yet. Would love to hear folks' ideas
This point is even stronger if you look at property rights instead of value. The workers in a capitalist firm jointly receive 0% of the property rights to the produced outputs and 0% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs while the employer receives 100% and legally owns the produced outputs and legally owes the liabilities for the used-up inputs. This is a violation of the moral principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match
The thing is, that separation of capital owner and worker that you’re referring to is the arrangement people come to when given the freedom to choose their arrangements.
To me capitalism is defined by free markets. A free market is one in which the economic relationships are consensual.
Turns out, many people would rather have a steady job than be in business for themselves. I’ve done both, and I see the merits of both. Right now, I choose to work for a huge corporation. As long as I show up I get paid. That’s working well for me.
What you’re referring to as the laborers getting the benefit of their labor is something that’s already permissible in a free market, and it happens a lot. I was a freelance software developer for many years. I also had a business building and selling easels. And cookies. And smoothies, on a subscription model. You read that right: smoothie subscriptions.
So while it may seem that my definition based on free markets, and your definition based on the separation of ownership and labor, are different definitions, I see them as the same thing.
Or maybe, to be precise, free markets lead to capital accumulation and when capital accumulates beyond an individual’s ability to work it themselves and they hire someone else to work it, capitalism begins. So maybe free markets lead to capitalism by your definition, as a state of wealth distribution and a set of working relationships.
The real key point is that this set of relationships you call capitalism, is the natural result of people being free to do as they see fit.
This touches on the concept of an inalienable right, which is a right that the holder cannot give up even with consent because to give up that right would, in effect, put the holder in the legal position of a non-person contradicting their factual personhood. Some rights that are recognized as inalienable in many countries are political voting rights and the right to a lifetime of labor. A free market does not require that all human rights be alienable
If you think a system where the means of production are owned by a class of people and another class of people must sell their labor power in order to survive (the definition of capitalism according to Marx) is full of consensual economic relationships I worry about your definition of consent.
The means of production are not entirely owned by a seperate class nor is the barrier to entry for many industries so high that it is entirely impossible for the average joe to enter.
Sure some industries are nigh impossible to get into, like pharmaceuticals for example, there are much bigger industries that have lower barriers like machine shops (which are really medium entry but you can scale them), and manufacturing via 3d print hubs.
Not to mention aoftware development which is a fucking wonder when it comes to potential money vs barrier to entry.
Certain construction contractors and engineering consulting firms can be opened up with fairly low barrier to entry.
I'm sleepy so my replies may not seem very coherent so tell me if you don't understand what im saying
Look up how much debt the average US citizen is in and tell me what low barrier to entry industries they can break into