/lit/ - Literature

Prioritization of profit
A universe of bugmen
^

Marx's communism is impossible in humanities current selfish form, so there's no other option

Just read Nick Land if you wanna know where capitalism is headed

>>11673212
Capitalism has been made into a massive meme. The idea of paying someone to do something is as old as the fucking hills. The idea that you own a tool, and you give the guy the tool to do some shit, then you give him something in return and he returns the tool, literally before we were even human i bet our ancestors were doing that.

Capitalism since the early modern period, and intensely after the agricultural and industrial revolutions, has assumed a dominance in human affairs, because it is extremely efficient at wealth production now that we have certain technological and social structures accommodating it.

The central thing about Capitalism is that is is not planned in any real way, it just emerges as a stable way of producing shit. 'Capitalists' are a real group who agitate for power, but so are the other groups, the state, the proles, etc.

Marxist Socialism fails because it starts with an idea and then proceeds to a desired state of society(or an imagined evolution that never occurs). Capitalism succeeds because it just succeeds that is what it does, and the then poltiical theorists come along and praise it, which has no actual effect on anything, except for the state tampering with shit, for good and bad purposes.

There is ultimately no difference between capitalism and other forms of human agency that all together create the world we live in. The proper dichotomy is not capitalism or socialism, but rather a multiplicity of forms of human endeavor, impulse, idea, etc. that explain the various elements of both capitalism, socialism, and their intermediary forms.

It isn't even the most important element of civilization. Things like birth rates are massively more important in a centuries-long view, and that is just one example.

The most egregious byproduct of capitalism is that it focus purely on measurable outcomes. Goals become numbers, concepts like 'happiness', 'contentment', 'satisfaction', 'pleasure', 'renown', 'quality' become nothing but quantitative affairs. People become more object-like both in their interpersonal behaviour and cultural habits (just see how any American person goes by his/her life).

>>11673259
that is much more due to technological factors than capitalism, which again is an immensely simple and old form of human interaction

>>11673262
I'm assuming you are
>>11673232
And by this phrase
> literally before we were even human i bet our ancestors were doing that.
I know you are a peak brainlet.

>>11673223
>implying humanity's behavior is not overwhelmingly produced by the economic system in which they live
Easy on the idealism, champ.

>>11673272
I mean that our tool using ancestors, who have been around for millions of years, understood the concept of the tool being theirs, and they would loan it to someone to do it, and then have it returned, and in exchange give them something.

you find this proposition incredible? or you quibble about when 'humans' first emerged given that it is a spectrum? What are your reasons for disagreeing

>>11673286
your position is the idealism, you think humans are infinitely plastic, whereas the rational view would see as us animals with given dispositions arrayed in spectrum in populations

>>11673290
>what is evolution

>>11673212
the problem isn't capitalism. the problem is usury.

>>11673294
So eugenics?

>>11673294
the economic forms of a society contribute to natural selection pressures but are not even remotely the same thing as them, im not sure what you mean anon

>>11673232
Capitalism in Marx terms is not what you are proposing here.
It is defined as a historical term.
Similar as to what we call "middle age". There is obviously no "middle" of history.

>>11673288
This would be almost funny if we were in the seventeenth century and your last name were Locke.

>>11673310
I know Marx saw it as a period that would evolve into something else, but he still fixated on private property, which I am saying is not a new thing at all
>>11673312
See that is not an actual response, you can say which part you disagree with, and why, that would be useful, otherwise you are just noise

>>11673308
I'm stating the very simple fact that, as per biology, there is no such thing as an intrinsic, ahistorical human nature.

>>11673212
It's a fairly benign form of economic theory with the caveat that it is true to nature, that is to say, inequalities are preserved since such is the natural result of the unequal inheritances of each individual man, a reality that impresses the envious like a burn. This state of inequality in a wiser age was more or less accepted by everyone but since the fatuous ideas of the revolutionary period it has tended to sour what were once very friendly relations between the different classes and organizations of men.

Key abuses to my mind are: tying the theory to secular government with the consequence that the profit motive dominates over all walks and fields of life, failure to provide a living wage for the benefit of the nuclear family such that a single provider can care for his own, and the menace of rentiers and all unproductive parasites.

>what is it?
teleoplexy
>where is it going?
wherever it can
>positives
commodification of imagination by computer algorithm, leading to tailor-made advertisements that reverse-engineer and tactically deploy against you your own psychological fallibilities to sell you car insurance
>negatives
devoured brain

>>11673223
>so there's no other option
cucked by ideology
read this
https://libcom.org/files/Capitalist%20Realism_%20Is%20There%20No%20Alternat%20-%20Mark%20Fisher.pdf

>>11673322
Imagine, for a moment, truly believing this Victorian fairy-tale in the 21st century.

The market needs the government and the government needs the market. Abolishing one or the other does not create a perfect society.

>>11673331
You can't hide from Nature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

>>11673330
>Referring to the existence of money as ideology

>>11673321
well of course not, i don't believe i implied that, but there are strong tendencies, which you can see distributed among populations, and then mediated by environmental factors

>>11673212
Capitalism is the name we've given to how humans conceptualize the exchange of resources.

>>11673339
Kek, I guess I fell asleep in biology classes when they taught Mr. Michels completely scientific theory.

>>11673339
>absoluteideology.mdmapeg

>>11673344
No, not really. The name we give to what you're describing is 'economics'.

>>11673331
>truly believing this Victorian fairy-tale
please tell me you are not a socialist

>>11673340
i'm referring to the reflexive notion that capitalism is the best or only system of economics as ideology, especially when the failures of marxism are invoked as somehow proving this

read the book i linked, it's like 80 pages.

>>11673358
It too much work who cares, we should just let the robots kill us all

>>11673356
No, I'm just not a knuckle-dragging idiot who thinks social Darwinism and the paradisaical, peaceful coexistence between different social classes throughout history are actually true.

>>11673365
well i am not that either, and not the anon you responded to

so apologies for assuming you were a socialist

>>11673286
>my opinions aren't even ideas or thoughts, that's how scarily accurate they are
realistically we should just put you in charge of the central committee

>>11673374
I'm a socialist.

>>11673365
It's not thinking that it's true, or that it was peaceful.
Inequality is a natural state of being, and I can't see how you can solve that.

Even if you can enforce economic equality, there are still more difficult scarce resources that will always be unequally distributed.
How do you enforce an equal distribution of friendship?
Or an equal distribution of happiness?

This isn't to say that inequality is good, or that it's something we should seek to increase, just that inequality is the natural state of things. You can't have any kind of individual identity and eliminate inequality at the same time.

>>11673380
well dude that was my point about 'victorian fairy tales' do you not get who Marx was? Or do you think because he lived in germany it is somehow better that you just adhere to some guy's imperfect and unverified ideas about shit, because that period doesn't have the modern stigma that Victorian england has?

I am not 'pro-capitalism' for the record, i see the damage it's done. I see good too but whatever. Im not even right wing, i dont think human praxis is really a thing where the evolution of civilizations is concerened

I dont mean to be a dick either, but you were kind of being a dick, so i think it is fair to return the whatever

>>11673379
Imagine being so dumb as to confuse representation and the thing represented. Historical materialism is an idea - truly shocking!. An idea according to which ideas are not the main force behind historical development.

there isn't really any such things as capitalism.
amazing the real terrors and absurdities an empty concept can loose upon the world.
that is the Ultimate Redpill.

>>11673392
Different anon here lol... I'm a socialist was my only comment

>>11673407
>the ultimate redpill is the schizoid denial of reality
You might be onto something here.

>>11673363
more impartial defeatism
you can't make this shit up

>>11673410
I'm a socialist too, but I often say I'm not just to show that there is no intrinsic connection between ideas commonly associated by the uneducated.

>>11673414
Why is life so valuable it's worth preserving, especially when there is a better species than us?

>>11673393
>marxist states would have happened without marx's ideas
that was a significant episode in history wasn't it?
next you'll tell me how marx upside downed hegel to remove the taint of ideas and "btfo le spookman"

>>11673417
Why do you care if you are lumped in with them, Socrates was lumped with the unjust?

>>11673410
>>11673417
look guys i don't hate socialists, but i can't not respond to somebody implying socialist views who also uses the term 'victorian fairy tales'. That is just too much

capitalism is like whenever people exchange goods and stuff dude

>>11673365
I'm not a social Darwinist either. The backdrop for my view is the Catholic religion which enjoins all to accept his lot in life, through good and through ill, as the gift from God it so truly is. Even the most unhappy in riches may be the most joyous in spirit since as even Nietzsche once noted, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

I did state in my original post that capitalism does not work under secular (metaphysical materialist) conceptions of culture and government.

>>11673419
Yes, probably. Although they wouldn't have been called "Marxist" states, obviously. It's not as if Marx actually invented socialism. The idea is much older. What he did do was formulate it in a thorough way and agitate and try to organize the working classes internationally. If you want to understand why "real socialism" happened, you don't need to look at Marx, you need to take a look at the state of the world after WWI.

>>11673440
Yes I'm familiar with your ideological heritage from Plato through Marquis de Sade and I'm aware labor organization and struggles were occurring regardless of any autist's thoughts. But the character of Marxist states was very much Marxist, and no I don't care if you have an alternative Lukacsian-Bordigist fringe reading compared to the actual revolutionary intellectuals who did something to enact communization (praxis) not just sat around shitposting empty theoretical constructions against a clique of Berkeleyan strawmen that haven't existed since Jena 2 centuries ago

>>11673474
>But the character of Marxist states was very much Marxist
I'd love to hear about this Marxist character of Marxist states and how something similar could not have in any way existed if it weren't for actual Marxist theory.

>>11673491
>I'd love to hear about this Marxist character of Marxist states
You again show the vicious convolutions and crude unsubtlety of your dichotomous monochrome mode of thinking here - which is all too common in Marxists and perhaps why you find dialectical analysis such a revelation.
Except in your cotravellers minds, it's not between Burning Man yuppie spiritualists who think life is a dream and worldly, hardened practical realists at the forefront of proletarian consciousness who are forced to accept historical materialism's thesis that economics is the overwhelming determinant of human behavior and economical class antagonism is the prime historical agent.

>>11673519
OK sweety, but now try to answer my question because I'm genuinely interested.

>>11673519
life is a dream, pleb

Just like Marxism apparently can't be implemented without the wholesale slaughter and genocide of untold millions, Capitalism apparently can't be implemented without the influence of the wealthy intruding upon the affairs of the governing body, and so we have the makings of 1984 and the monolithic NWO in the USA.

Capitalism transforms into feudalism

>>11673223
Pure ideology

>>11673286
"idealism" as opposed to materialism is an entirely different matter and it has to do with thinking that ideas are the determining factor in history; however if humans happened to be biologically selfish there would be nothing "idealistic" in acknowledging that, since biology is entirely material, just another material factor no less material than productive forces

>>11673223
if people were truly selfish they wouldn't support capitalism because for most people it wouldn't be in their interests to do so

>>11673605
when people born and educated under socialist institutions restore privilege and exploitation and put their personal advantage above the cause of humanity and class you explain that however you wish (your explanations won't create a reason not to betray humanity anyway)

>>11673628
sociopathic manipulators are selfish and that's all you need to sabotage communism and restore privilege and exploitation; the herd can be manipulated to put other things above personal advantage, and that's precisely why it's so easy to resort to religion and fascism

>>11673634
Lmao what is this random hypothetical?

>>11673643
it is neither random nor hypothetical since those who sabotaged attempts at universal human emancipation in order to enjoy personal profit were educated in a society liberated from the alienation of property, which is why those who were angered by their treason screamed about "revisionism" and "opportunism"

Reminder that "Capitalism" in contemporary (in the wider sense) discourse is a marxist invention and ideological strawman, or, more charitable, an ideological superstructure for historically contingent economical power relations and their effects. While Das Kapital offers a critique of the economic system it calls capitalism, the word basically a meaningless slander, and since slanders lose their effect with usage, has been updated throughout the 20th century to not lose it's spookyness, i.e. Adornos "Late Stage Capitalism" and the ever-meaningless "Neoliberalism" in the 60s and 70s, appropriating a term from 30s reformers of classical liberalism.

If you ask to be redpilled on capitalism, you ask for a marxist critique of economy. If you actually want to be redpilled on economy instead, you'll have to engage with economic literature. Read the first 300 pages of Das Kapital Vol 1. and ask yourself if historical materialism actually is a valuable episteme to understand "capitalism" in this day and age.

>>11673651
Not really. The West and its materially richer way of life still existed. The hypothetical would have been much stronger if the whole world was communist and some fuckers still wanted to reverse things for personal profit.

>>11673651
That is vastly different from your previous absurd hypothetical. Opportunists always exist in every movement but IIRC most leaders, socialist or not, do at least believe in their ideology or something.

>>11673677
and since imbecilic believers are regularly outsmarted by manipulative sociopaths those who trusted in "the historical process" led by "objective factors" have to deal with the outcome of wholesale treason

>>11673661
based

>>11673232
Bro, mere trade isn't capitalism. I agree it has turned into a massive meme, though. Many 'concepts' tend to, such as fascism. We should drop the word capitalism at this point or ensure its strictly defined within a body of work and study, because random shit gets roughly ascribed to it, it takes on an organic life of its own. Also, the capitalistic notion of property is definitely not baser or natural.

>>11673671
of course fuckers might want to reverse things for personal advantage since even an idiot is aware that the herd can be manipulated into putting other things above personal advantage (to the profit of those who are aware of the pointlessness of selflessness), since as you admit "if people were truly selfish they wouldn't support capitalism because for most people it wouldn't be in their interests to do so"

>>11673685
Lmao what? There are always disagreement and dissidents within every movement. Not everyone is a blind follower as you claim. Most people do believe and crituque each other whether they be a follower or leader.

>>11673721
first you say "it was because there was the richer west that there were unsatisfied people", now you admit "there are always disagreements and dissidents" - and guess what, you might discover that manipulative sociopaths in such conflicts are apt to outsmart those who actually believe in putting other things above personal interest

>>11673330
based Fisher poster

>>11673526
Well I'm not sure if counterfactually something "substantially similar" would not have arisen but that depends on the benchmarks for similarity. You have not offered more than your hunch either, one runs against Marxian sentiment that the "pre-scientific and utopian" socialisms may as well have promised oceans of lemonade for all they were worth.
Marxists states were so intensely preoccupied with full spectrum saturation of the culture with Marxist thought, iconography, etc., to the autistic exclusion of anything "bourgeois", though an admittedly narrowed and inflexible version of it. Was this dominance of the superstructure or the base?

>>11673286
>humanity's behavior is not overwhelmingly produced by the economic system in which they live
No, it's not, or else nobody could relate to hunter gatherers or people living in ancient and medieval times.
Yet if you actually were to open a book, you'd find that you can relate to those people even if your theory predicts that their behavior would be alien to you given that they lived in such a different economic system.
Not only that, but there's literally no evidence that the behavior of people is overwhelmingly produced by the economic system in which they live while there is plenty of evidence that a great deal of variance in human behavior and behavioral traits is due to genetic variation between individuals.

>>11673800
So Marxist states were saturated with Marxist thought. This is the grand Marxist character of Marxist states? Who woulda thunk. Meanwhile, in an alternate reality, Saint-Simonianite states are saturated with giant statues of Saint-Simon, and counterfactual imbeciles argue that this is indeed a very Saint-Simonianite thing and couldn't have possibly happen without Saint-Simon's thought.

>>11673804
Kek. I truly wonder how well a hunter-gatherer could relate to your tfw no gf threads on 4chan.

>>11673880
I've never opened any of those threads but that's probably the dumbest criteria you could choose given how normal people living today can't relate to r9k losers either.

>>11673853
that's nice shug, but try answer the question
which was dominant here, superstructure or base?

>>11673898
The base (economical backwardness of Imperial Russia + foreign military menaces), which explains the necessity of the political superstructure in order to rapidly develop the economy and survive :^)

>>11673894
Oh, boy. You aren't very brilliant, are you? There was a point to my post. You obviously didn't get it, but I'm gonna let you think about it for a while; maybe you will eventually get it.

the modern 'pax americana' technocratic perpetually-reterritorializing globally hegemonic neoliberal imperial-corporatist techno-feudalist new world order is NOT real capitalism. as an actual free market capitalist, i believe we can do better than this.

>>11673912
>epic trole face
if the base was really in charge why didn't it just revert to imperialism, straight developmentalism internally, and hold it together with a pure ideology like the orthodox church? why would the base force a civil war and create migraines repeatedly crippling itself when it could have been easily streamlined and rationalized without all the pageantry?

>>11673928
You're nuts if you think I'm gonna take the time of answering all that shit. The short answer is: Russian history. You've moved the original goalposts so far away that by now you're not even in the field anymore.

>>11673212
It is the natural order of man, because it is instinctual for people to own and to trade either goods or labor for other goods and labor. The problem of consumerism and materialism is a perversion of capitalism that exists in a society with no framework of morals provided by religion. Without a binding social glue, degeneracy and decadence becomes profitable. The problem with capitalism is that it is amoral, not immoral.

>>11673949
>I can't answer and won't
It's precisely because you know I'm right, your base-superstructure construction is a content free epicycle the size of the theory itself, and you derive nothing from it but instead offer your arbitrary opinions which are not scientific in the least.

>>11673959
Sure. Be kind enough to enlighten us all when you discover a more fruitful heuristic principle for understanding history than historical materialism.

>>11673212
See for yourself
https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04

Full on exploitation of your own selfish desires and linking mass produced goods with your happiness. A creation of an environment where your artificial desires (ideology) supercedes your actual needs.

Freud saw the horrors of WW1 as what we should have expected, and governments unleashing the primitive forces in human beings. Freud's Nephew, Edward Bernays, was successful in promoting democracy in Europe for America in WW1. Seeing his success with his propaganda and delivery of Woodrow Wilson as a liberator of the people, the creator of freedom for the new world. He then wondered if he could use this new mass persuasion during peace time. Propaganda now became "public relations" and with the help of Sigmund Freud's findings, used to alter the way people thought and felt, manipulatng the irrational emotions in the unconscious.

To experiment, he tried to find a way to persuade women to smoke (women smoking was a taboo). He found out that cigarettes were seen as a form of male sexual power. Bernays decided to stage an event at the annual New York Easter day parade. He got a group of women to light up some cigarettes and told the press that a group of women from the sufferage movement were going to protest with what he called "torches of freedom." It got put in papers nationaly and across the world and the rest is history...

>>11673991
very neat, anon, thank

>>11673212
Capitalism is a wealth generating algorithm. It is superior to all other methods of generating wealth known to man, but it comes with the downside that the wealth is not distributed equally. A small number of actors are responsible for generating most of the wealth and accordingly most of the generated wealth accumulates in and around them.

If the wealth distribution across the population becomes too unequal, then this will cause social discontent and eventually revolution in which the masses attempt to redistribute the accumulated pockets of wealth to themselves. While this might create a short term equalizing of wealth, it obviously disrupts the algorithm by removing its most efficient actors. Which in turn leads to restriction or even collapse of the wealth production.

Some obvious solutions were invented to prevent this from happening, such as social programs paid for with high taxation for companies and rich individuals. They attempt to equalize the inequality and keep the masses content while preferably only restricting the wealth production as minimally as possible.

>>11673928
The base is never "in charge" of anything. The Marxist claim amounts to little more than: material conditions are the main element behind historical development. To deny the influence of politics, religion, etc., is idiotic. There is actually a famous quote on the subject by Engels himself:

>And if this man (i.e., Paul Barth) has not yet discovered that while the material mode of existence is the primum agens this does not preclude the ideological spheres from reacting upon it in their turn, though with a secondary effect, he cannot possibly have understood the subject he is writing about. (...) The materialist conception of history has a lot of [dangerous friends] nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late 70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist." (...) In general, the word "materialistic" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge – for economic history is still in its swaddling clothes! – constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous. And after that a Barth can come along and attack the thing itself, which in his circle has indeed been degraded to a mere phrase.

>>11673218
fpbp
>>11673223
spwp

>>11674002
Economics is not a zero sum game, and equality is not inherently desirable or virtuous.

>>11674011
There is no moral judgement in anything I wrote. I did not say it was a zero sum game. Wealth generation implies the opposite.

>>11674002
>most efficient actors
topjej. Not an ideological statement at all, I presume.

>>11673916
Whoa I get it.
Other anon btfo.

>>11674017
Google "Pareto distribution". A minority of actors generate most of the wealth. A minority of that minority generate most of that. And so on.

>>11673916
In other words, you don't have an argument.

>>11673223
Ahh yes, the famous Leibniz expression of the "best of all possible worlds."

>>11673920
It really is. Just because these young and hip Silicon Valley entrepreneurs think they're geniuses for making money off the private lives of people who desire social standing when they're really just joining the game that's been running for a century. It's real capitalism and it's becoming more obvious but it'll be too late when every single unconscious desire will be catered to while in the background people will continue to make off like mad.

Politicians are powerless because they have to be subversive to desires of people which are satisfied by companies, desires they have to persuade people that they are paying attention to. The rational electorate doesn't exist, but the consumerist one does.

>>11673953
This.

>>11673223
*screeching marxist noises*

>>11673286
Humans and males in particular always strive for excellence and recognition. Hierarchies always develop in social groups. In humans just like in all social animal species. This never changes, regardless of the economic system you are trying to implement. And if your economic system is based on there being no hierarchies then it will fail.

>>11674007
>engels quote from 150 years ago that just restates the problem with no answers
are marxists inherently shitposting?

>>11673920
>>11674057
what's the nature of "true capitalism" then, how does it work and how can ""we"" implement it

>>11674128
Remove goberment

>>11673661
based af, well done anon

>>11674153
As a commie I support this

>>11674205
I like you, you can be my slave

>>11673232
>The idea of paying someone to do something is as old as the fucking hills.
Capitalism is not just wage labour, its a system of production only for profit; Capitalism emerged just before the Industrial Revolution but the industrial revolution kicked it off.

>The central thing about Capitalism is that is is not planned in any real way
Capitalism is not effectively planned for; large monopolies effectively control all aspects of industry, they plan and coordinate with each other to maximise profit, they also plan and coordinate with the state for even larger profits. Adorno put this well when he talked about Administration-Culture Dialectic; industry is so large that it plans everything for profit, effectively destroying real spontaneity and large displays of authentic culture, this can be applied to business in general now; Capitalism is managed down to every detail.

>>11674074
Socialism isnt based on no hierarchy, its against unjust hierarchy; there will be hierarchy in socialism but it will be actually mertiocratic, unlike in Capitalism where your status at birth will give you advantages/disadvantages that you did not earn. However, Socialism/Communism does not promise equality, Marx and Engels commonly said that, as for something to be purely equal it must be the absolute same as the thing it is being compared too.

>>11674268
>Socialism isnt based on no hierarchy, its against unjust hierarchy
Socialism is an intermediary state on the way to communism according to Marxist theory. Are you advocating for socialism as the end goal?

>>11674252
>large monopolies effectively control all aspects of industry,
Which monopolies that existed at the times when Adorno wrote that still exist today? And if some do, which ones of those could have done so without governments stepping in and keeping them alive?

>>11674128
first the slate must be wiped clean
accelerate the process, left or right

we'll figure out the rest once it's done

>>11674268
>unjust hierarchy
people who create wealth
>just hierarchy
those who've internalized every socialistic shibboleth. high verbal IQ priest class in charge of propaganda, administration and media. it's just religion dude

>>11674411
indeed, all hail the one true God, GDP, the Gracious, the Merciful, all praise belongs to GDP, the Greatest, and its Holy Prophets of Wealth Creation, Peace be upon Them, Amen

capitalism is the only economic system that respects private property

if you don't respect private property, then you're proposing something unethical

>>11673218
Most perfect post I've ever seen on /lit/.

Can someone tell me how vital intellectual property is to contemporary capitalism? Like, if the idea was done away with, how much would things change?

"""capitalism""" is a pathetic attempt to rationalise naturally evolving human trade based interactions and has literally NEVER been been adequately defined beyond abstract ideals that dont match our current economic realities. is bailing out banks capitalist?? if so, how are you defining capitalism?

>>11674491
>unethical
lel who cares

>>11674530
Industry financed research would be disincentivized greatly. What is the point in investing millions of dollars into research when your competitors will just use your knowledge and create products with it?

Music, literature and movie franchise creation/distribution would also take hits of course. But with the innovations of the internet age, there are already other business models that also work when intellectual property is not well respected. So they would take less of a hit.

>>11674543
>is bailing out banks capitalist??

not it is not
that is socialism

>>11674530
just have a look at chinese SEZ (where they don't give a shit about IP)

technology never evolved so fast and they are literally living in 2030 right now

the concept of property only applies to scarce resources (ideas are not). IP is just a legal construct to give someone a monopoly over an idea

>>11674574
>where they don't give a shit about IP
>technology never evolved so fast
Yeah because they steal IP created by other nations that do care about it.

>>11674543
>defining capitalism
generalized commodity production.

>>11674581
they "steal" from everyone bro

ok lets follow your logic: do you think our math today would more or less advanced if we had it under intellectual property centuries ago?

>>11674599
>they "steal" from everyone bro
That is not disqualifying what I said. They benefit from the research done under intellectual property protections. That is the point. Them doing to everyone does not make it better.

>do you think our math today would more or less advanced if we had it under intellectual property centuries ago?
Basically all of mathematics today is done in universities in a context of public domain publications. So assuming this would be the same centuries ago, then nothing at all would change. Usually only specific applications of freely available mathematical principles are under copyright in the form of algorithms and models. And copyrights are not eternal. In most countries they go over into the public domain after a certain period of time which is supposed to allow companies to make a profit from their IP before it becomes available to everyone. Lobbyists like to fuck with those protection periods, but that is a different issue.

>>11673212
capitalism is about free market, about liberty, about making your own live, about making your own choices and taking your own responsibility. by extension, universality would be the standard to which virtue and morality would be seen. One cannot be simultaneously be for freedom, and be for the subjugation of others.

there's a meme that communism has never been tried, the same meme can be applied to capitalism. our history is of a constant battle between those that value freedom and those that value power. of people who wish to control, who thinks that there is a need for hierarchy, of a need for the 'philosopher kings' and those who think that we can shape our own destiny.

i will never understand why /lit/ or most people decide to see capitalism not through it's supporters' views, but rather to see it through people like marx. really a bunch of hypocrites in this regard.

capitalism is also not a set system, but as i have written before, it's the idea of liberty. many supporters of capitalism/free market are fond of the USA not of its current status, but its founding principles. principles that have been eroded over the centuries.

liberty, and freedom are not what we have now, corporations are not capitalistic, the government we have now are not capitalistic. the MONEY we use are created by the printing machine owned by the government. and people dare say that capitalism is the present.
i would recommend you to look at the documents of the founders of USA, books by austrian economists, libertarians, ancaps, objectivists etc. while they do not agree with each other, the central ideas are the same.

I say that capitalism is not only a 'system' that has good consequences in terms of economics, but it is also the most moral.

>>11674581
>>11674599
intellectual property are not capitalistic. the whole issue is a concept that revolves on the consequences, 'oh without ip, there would be no progress as people wouldn't want to create/invent new things'. that argument as with all consequential arguments are fking shit. How can you say that an idea, an abstraction has physical attributes and thus can be a property. It is a government creation, constantly influenced by corporations to be changed to suit their needs.

>>11674661
They are not capitalistic, but they make sense and they work. Take your ideological purity and shove it up your ass.

>>11674678
then don't they are capitalistic, and don't group them with capitalism. Just call it what it is, state intervention, state creation.

>>11674687
I never called them capitalistic. But they are grouped with capitalism because they are regulations on capitalism.

>>11673212
/lit/ doesn't realize that the problem is in the central banking monopoly, combined with the marriage of the corporation-state for the maximalization of profit.

Capitalism is the process by which everything is transformed into a commodity, where transgenderism is promoted to create the perfect worker drones.

>>11674543
Forms of commercial trade has probably existed for like 10,000 years. Forms of "exchange" even exist in animals. Such a vague term doesn't exactly get to the novelty of what's been going on for the past couple hundred years.

If you study "commercial" "enterprises" in antiquity (the grand majority of which would have been state run) you may learn they didn't exactly operate just like modern firms in a market place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_mode_of_production

The term "capitalism" (which Marx didn't seem to use much, Proudhon I think invented the term) if anything simply means rule by capital. The thing is what is "capital"? No scholar, despite what investopedia may tell you, can even give a straight forward answer to that question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_capital_controversy

Publicly traded corporations weren't always the prime owners of land, tools, etc and that becomes obvious if you actually study history. Populations weren't even totally dependent upon access to markets to just make a living. And you better believe the entire notion of something as brilliant as say monetizing claims on potential future profits and trading that wasn't always going on. All this emerged historically.

Modern nation states (which came into existence first with the rise of the bourgeoisie) and their symbiotic relations with international banking institutions very much is characteristic of the rule by capital.

>>11674716
and that is how we get threads such as this, the idea of capitalism has been corrupted and associated with socialist ideas and then used to talk shit about it.
and i couldn't tell who said what with them all being annoymous.

>>11674827
Was anyone here arguing against capitalism on the basis of IP though? Might have read over it.

>>11673212
idk what it is, but it has a major problem
I've been working in manufacturing on different positions for years, and ever since the crisis, the unsold inventories have been piling up more often and the clearence has been much slower, which means there isn't enough demand, while the production itself is getting more efficient by the day

>>11674732
>le Rothbardian babby face
For a capitalists economy to exist sellers need to extend credit to buyers. This means a liquidity crises while the debt is maturing is always possible... you absoultly need a market for credit instruments, a discount/rediscount market. If credit can't be immediately discounted for money/actually usable credit the distribution of the aggregate profit will be disrupted. The dirty secret is the state is the only institution that can actually maintain this generalized debt market since it can always capitalize upon the state debt. Talking about capitalism without an institution that can actually preform this role is just plain silly.

You get mental retards like Rothbard who love markets but hate and don't understand how any actual business actually works. The lemonade stand analogies only go so far.

Read:
https://www.docdroid.net/wHGPxeQ/the-incompatibility-of-prolonged-technical-change-and-competition-concurrence-and-the-socialisation-of-entrepreneurial-losses-through-inflation.pdf
>The incompatibility of prolonged technical change and competition concurrence and the socialisation of entrepreneurial losses through inflation

>liberals (in the worldy sense, no the retarded American one) believe in legal fictions known as 'corporations'

lmao

In a "true" capitalist society, without the aid of government, we'd be living in huts because the concept of company and its lowered responsibility could not exist

>>11673212
>What is it?
Based
>Where is it going?
Mars
>What is its positives
Btfo commie countries
>and negatives?
Allows commie kids to whinge on internet

>>11674898
>The association for heterodox economics, international symposium of marxian theory
You don't have any right calling lolbertarians ignorant of economics. They are, but you're as bad as them.

>>11674268
>Socialism isnt based on no hierarchy, its against unjust hierarchy
Everyone is against unjust hierarchy you moron, the disagreement is over what's just and what's unjust and what is possible to be removed and what isn't.

>>11674732
>it wasn't real capitalism
Already fucking Adam Smith knew that a market free of interference is completely ahistorical and humanly impossible.

>>11673384
Thank god marxism isn't worried about equal distribution of happiness, only the capital and the means of production. Neither does capitalism, which is why the entire western world has developped into a depressed, paranoic mess that can only manage to keep on going on SSRI and anxiety medicine.

>>11675129
>which is why the entire western world has developped into a depressed, paranoic mess that can only manage to keep on going on SSRI and anxiety medicine.
Meme

>>11674898
>state is the only institution that can actually maintain this generalized debt market since it can always capitalize upon the state debt.
?

>>11673384
>>11675129
For the last time communism isn't about "equal distribution" of anything. And what regards happiness read early Marx or any western Marxist such as the guy in OP's picture. They all emphasise the destructive role of capitalism on social bonding, culture, the psyche of the individual, etc. Communism being "the flipside of the capitalist coin" or "only about money" is a reactionary meme.

>>11673330
No more miserable monday mornings

>>11673212
>Where is it going
To a degeneracy wasteland fueled by pure consumerism and pollution

>>11675177
Shhhh he takes Marx's economic theories seriously

>>11675198
>For the last time communism isn't about "equal distribution" of anything
For the last time, if you look at the ideology through a pessimistic and pragmatic lense it is absolutely focused on the economic redistribution of capital through a command exonomy scenario

>>11673212
The Virgin Anti-Capitalist vs. the Chad Anti-Humanist
http://mandalietmandaliet.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-museum-and-stroll-and.html

>>11673418
p much why non-religious anti-capitalism is so farcical

>>11673212
a law of the universe
nemesis, entropy, will win the day
+ proof that there is still possibility; - we can't know

Capitalism in itself does not force you to prioritize profit. I could get more profit but so far I'm comfortable with my salary and measly dividends, and can still afford parties, nice foods, comfortable clothes etc.

If you need a Lambo to be happy that's on you not on the system itself.

>>11675532
>cash me owside

>>11674031
This is in the very real, physical level absolute bullshit though. The truth is that wealth is physically generated by workers. I wonder how that magic minority would generate wealth if the proles stopped working.

>>11675177
In a world of just capitalists investing in means of production and paying wages to workers to purchase means of consumption how can a net profit for capitals emerge? Non-capitalist producers [peasants, petty agricultural producers, etc] can pay not just with money they receive from capitalists, when they sell their agricultural products, but they have independent sources of wealth i.e. they possess means of production, their land and today even [formerly "actually existing socialist" states] state-owned enterprises with factories. When this source of wealth is exhausted, capital can loan money to these peasants and their governments -- with the collateral being their land and the mineral wealth beneath it. Of course capitalists can lend to workers but such loans are limited because workers own and can use as collateral only that which they've bought with capitalist wages houses, cars and so on. Nothing can be produced with them, they can just be resold. With non-capitalist layers, however, the land itself is the collateral, and as peasant families, or entire nations default on such loans, capital forecloses, seizing in the process vast real wealth, vast means of producing new wealth.
Credit is capitalized under the capitalist organization of the forces of production, and capitalized credit makes its own demands for realized value. The accumulation of debt is the accumulation of value that cannot be realized within the capitalist mode of production itself and requires access to values "outside" the system of capitalist production strictly speaking.
Think about how in the late 19th century European banks would lend to regimes in the Middle East. The value that secured these loans was extracted from pre-capitalist modes of production through the cooperation of the governments to which the loans were made e.g. in Egypt large scale production of single crops for the world market was financed by these loans based on the forced labour of the Egyptian peasants and in Turkey the building of railroads for the introduction of capitalist commodities was financed by loans to the Turkish state which repaid these loans by its power to tax the Turkish peasants.
Today we must of course consider the role of international sex/drug trafficking as playing a big role:
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims
>Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
https://ratical.org/co-globalize/narcoDollars.html
This article claims that the US economy is entirely dependant on illicit drug money and the withdrawal of it would collapse the global economy to collapse.

>>11675415
From a different angel without the Marxian language you can take an accountants perspective see: Anderson and Schmidt; Practical Controllership; Irwin (1961); pages 181, 351-352, 488-489, 494, and 499:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35128000213221;view=1up;seq=197

>>11673230
Intelligence optimization sounds really painful desu.

>>11673230
>nihilism
No thanks

>>11675462
anti-humanism is literally the most pussy as self-flagellating bs i can think of

>>11673320
you are aware there are humans still effectively in the Stone age? There have been studies into their "economic" and it's nothing like what you described. The joke you didn't get was that Locke made the same baseless assumptions you do but he was from the 1700's and no one was doing those studies at the time. You have the internet your excuse for ignorance is non-existent that's why you're peak brainlet

>>11675622
Fitting.

>>11674549
How crypto-normative of you.

>>11676138
I suppose. But how's that going for you?

>>11675462
oh my god my fucking sides

>>11676148
>has better skin than me
how do amerifats do it

>>11675970
Only if you think that the guy who comes up with the product and the guy who organizes the production are not by huge margins more important than the guys sticking some parts together. The jobs of the guys sticking parts together would not even exist without the former guys, who often happen to be the same guy. Bill Gates created more wealth and more jobs than millions of people, both directly and indirectly. And if you do not take this into account then you have warped view of reality.

>>11676205
>Bill Gates created more wealth and more jobs than millions of people
But he literally, unironically, didn't, though. His workers did.

>>11676226
Only a marxist could have such a retarded mindset. That's like saying the pen created the novel. You can't do it without the pen, but the pen is not the irreplaceable source of creation. You can fill a warehouse with pens, but there won't pop a novel out of it in the end.

And as it turns out you actually can do it without the pen, as automation demonstrated. But you can't do it without the novelist.

>>11676256
Ebin analogy. I wonder who constructed those robots... Here is a thought experiment: would Gates have his magic wealth-generating powers if all his workers stopped working?

>>11676302
>Here is a thought experiment: would Gates have his magic wealth-generating powers if all his workers stopped working?
No. But that does not mean each one of the workers is as important and worth as much as Gates is. Do you have problems with understanding the concept that not all things have an equal value and importance?

>>11676321
>No.
Then where do his magic wealth-generating powers come from, according to you? Nice try moving the goalpost.

>>11676355
It's like I am talking to child here. Explain how I moved the goalpost.

>>11676370
How about you try to answer the question. We were talking about how wealth is generated. You claimed that Bill Gates created more wealth than millions of people, but now it seems like you believe Bill Gates himself didn't, after all, create all of that wealth himself. So, which is it?

>>11676383
Okay here a simplified version that even a retard can understand: Gates created the product and the production. Jobs were created that did not exist before. A market was created that did not exist before. Over time a growing number of people helped him in creating and distributing the product. The product itself created further demand for other products and services. The product was used in the creation and production of other products and improved existing production cycles. The actions of one man lead to the creation of a vast amount of wealth probably in the trillions of dollars plus unmeasurable personal benefits for billions. The guy who screwed in a light bulb once in the microsoft office created maybe a few cents worth of contriubtion to this.

Now answer my question. Demonstrate you have at least the basic ability to comprehend arguments or I won't bother talking to you.

>>11676412
>Gates created the product
Kek, not even right on this one, pal. Look it up.

>>11676412
>A market was created that did not exist before
False. You do know those things called Apple, IBM, etc, right?

>>11676474
>Simplified
Still not simple enough for you apparently. Last (you) you will get

>>11676488
Oh, the problem is that it is too simple, and thus, false. For example, the statement "Bill Gates created more wealth than millions of people" is a gross simplification, by no means innocent, that hides the truth that Gates, a single person, didn't magically create more wealth than millions of people. But you already conceded me this point, if grudgingly, so I guess our exchange is over.

>>11674644
>there are people who believe this without an ounce of irony

>>11676148
Tfw no krispy kreme shoot in my house

>>11676697
Fortunately 95% of them are under 16 years old (the remaining 5% are pedophiles.)

>>11676697
>>11676753
Based and redpilled.

>>11673330
>libcom

who cares for such a vague question? If you want to talk about Proudhonist/Marxist/Sorelianist theory be more speific,