You must log in or register to comment.
16th century England wasn’t even capitalist. It was mercantilist-- strong central control over a zero-sum economic system focusing primarily on lopsided international trade as the means of building wealth.
It was mercantilist-- strong central control over a zero-sum economic system
It became mercantilist when the English, French, and Spanish colonial empires began to abut one another, and state actors identified stateless trade as a threat to state sovereignty. But the original process of chartering ships for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade came out of the private financing system pioneered by the Dutch and rapidly adopted across Western Europe.
Capitalist expansion was what allowed the English piracy fleets to leapfrog the originally better-financed and better-equipped Spanish state navy. While the Aztec gold that Spain brought home devalued their currency and destroyed their economy, the Dutch/English/French system of reinvestment and economic expansion swelled their capital stock by continuously circulating the specie, commodities, and chattel slaves that would make Trans-Atlantic trade so lucrative.
Mercantilism was a step backwards, inhibiting economic growth in the colonies, that colonial powers at home deliberately imposed on those territories as a means of preventing colonial governments from getting rich enough to revolt. And the economic theories of Adam Smith were transgressive in large part because they embraced domestic industrialization and economic expansion as a form of political rebellion.
Reducing widespread human rights abuses in the Soviet Union to “one famine” shows a heady mixture of deliberate ignorance with hubris that only a western university educated leftist can posess.
The sad thing is, famines weren’t that widespread after a while, unless your standard of “famine” is “not eating beef steaks in a country where beef aren’t that common”.
Not exactly, but whatever.
Mao and Stalin are both often cited as killing more of their own citizens than Hitler managed to do.
For Stalin is was a result of the 1930-1933 changes in policy to heavily prioritize heavy industry over food. Honestly hard to blame him, going from a war to a bloody revolution then overthrown for militaristic autocracy probably complicated a lot of things with no time between to normalize.
For Mao is was the result of making all private agriculture a offense worthy of capital punishment and instead made a grain quota for peasants to fill and send to the central government for distribution, then heavily investing in steel production and urbanization. Peasants didn’t fill the quotas because the surpluses just didn’t exist, if the central government just took what they wanted then in those cases the farmers just starved reducing next year’s yield. Mao’s came much later so he had no excuse.
So, yeah, they didn’t get to eat meat every day. Or bread. Or even cereals.
The ussr was infinitely better for human rights than what came before or after in Russia and the baltics, and was better than all “free nations” at the time until the late 1970s, when a few European nations decided to ignore France, the UK, and the US and write their own laws.
Removed by mod
Life expectancy doubled under Stalin.
So he could see them suffer longer.
Anti-communists continue to be deeply unserious people, my God.
Except you know, no homelessness, by Stalin’s time no starvation, free healthcare, guaranteed days off, guaranteed vacation time, wages significantly higher than the majority of the population has ever seen, oh and free education.
Yeah, you couldn’t be a Nazi or other enemy of the state, how oppressive.
There was mass starvation under Stalin. His rule started in 1929, directly before the 1930-1933 famine resulting in somewhere between 5 to 9 million deaths which occured as a direct result of policy changes.
Removed by mod
They can’t
Look at the other comment i posted in response
They haven’t yet, and there’s no profit motive for it so it really can’t happen.
While I can’t speak to the veracity of your claims about the quality of life of the Soviet Union under Stalin, there are in fact many capitalist countries that have been able to achieve these feats that you mentioned.
The housing first policy in Finland has practically eradicated homelessness where only 3,429 were homeless in 2023.
Similarly in the Nordics, the majority of the population Sweden (72.2%), Norway (71.8%), and Denmark (71.8%) is food secure. The US to an extent has also been able to mitigate against food insecurity with the existence of food stamps and free/reduced school meals essentially meaning starvation is rare in some parts of he country.
Also, the NHS provides all individuals residing in the UK with free healthcare, so… yeah.
Furthermore, all employees in France are guaranteed up to 5 weeks of annual paid leave.
In Switzerland, for a full-time job, the median monthly pre-tax salary was a tidy CHF6,788 which is approximately 7500USD. I guess you can tell that this isn’t a small amount of money compared to the low wages received by workers in the Soviet Union under Stalin (which if i might remind you, the piece-rate system was later revised under Khrushchev).
And finally free education. While most nations in Europe (Germany and the Nordics) offer free to low-cost education, you need not really look further than the US to see that while not entirely free, public schooling and community colleges provide accessible enough education to many that need it.
You can see it’s not really about the capitalism, but the governments that run it
No, homelessness existed until Khruschev. Could been solved earlier, but WW2 reduced amount of homes.
The WHAT?
Please explain to me how sending most of the Baltic intelligensia to die in Siberia and replacing them with Russian settlers who held most positions of power was better for my rights than what I have right now.
Please tell me how great my grandmother in law had it living in the outskirts of Archangelsk in a wooden barrack because she was sent there against her will, how much more rights and opportunities she had back then.
Please explain to me how great the industrial management in the USSR was, where they built a bunch of heavy industries in countries that had few mineral resources to support them locally, leading to plant closures in the 90s.
Before WWII, Estonia was a bit richer than Finland. Not it is lagging behind by decades.
Removed by mod
So if both are evil, are there any good alternatives to them?
Depends, do you think they define systems of production and distribution or do you agree with OP about it being descriptors of western and eastern world powers?
If it’s the first one, then no, aside from anarchy.
If it’s this second one, a more fair, equal, and direct democracy would be cool.
Thus is a good distinction to make.
But it didn’t seem obvious to me that OP is making the second choice?Never mind, I see the comments now
There aren’t really any good alternatives in my opinion that aren’t somewhat sensationalist in praxis. My hopes are high for socialism (even though it is quite sensationalist to some extent). However, I’ve started caring less about the economic ramifications when it comes these things and more about the system of government that is actually put in place.
A direct democracy is paramount to any sort of social equality or democracy that we may desire.
Whichever one doesn’t include people
The Bible warns of greed, talks about how people with wealth will never go to heaven. Look at how much colonization/spread Abrahamic religions have and they still couldn’t solve this
The Bible warns of greed, talks about how people with wealth will never go to heaven. Look at how much colonization/spread Abrahamic religions have and they still couldn’t solve this
Wait, so… you’re telling me… that… the violent bigots forcing their dogma on everyone couldn’t achieve world peace?
The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien [beliefs and cultures]. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam, and it might not be unreasonable to suggest that it would have been better for Western civilization if Greece had moulded it on this question rather than Palestine.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_monotheism#Violence_in_monotheism
Your comment isn’t relevant to the point
“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
Additionally, check out Willam Blum’s “Killing Hope” (pdf link), and/or “America’s Deadliest Export”, by same (pdf link).
That quote basically describes every politician from every ideology that has ever lived. You can literally swap out communism for other words and it still reads the same.
Its got no substance or citations of factual events. Basically word salad.
Yeah, the citations of factual events are in the links below the quote. Check out Willam Blum’s “Killing Hope” (pdf link) for more citations than you can shake a stick at.
I’m not going to waste any more hours of my life reading substanceless tankie bullshit than I have, thanks.
Scared it might not confirm your biases?
Do you sit down and read political theory books written by hedge fund managers?
It’s okay to write off low value sources, it doesn’t make you biased.
Yes, in fact, I do. I specifically seek out and read literature from people with whom I have knee-jerk disagreements.
How else will I be sure I’m not trapped in a thought bubble? It’s important to read critically from a variety of sources, while reserving judgement. That’s literally how you learn. It’s too easy to fall for propaganda, otherwise.
Whats your favorite?
Not to undermine the argument, but capitalism did not start in 16th century England.
I suppose you can try and pin this on the Dutch. But the economic practices of aggregating ownership around a legal business entity and organizing production towards the maximization of profit were quickly adopted by English shipping magnets from their Dutch peers.
If you think of the first corporation as the start of capitalism the Dutch East India company started in 1602, so that would be 17th century Netherlands, not 16th century England. In any case, I think the obvious choice for a date is 18th century England (together with the Industrial Revolution). Of course, you can trace the origins back much earlier even to antiquity, but capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent.
capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent
That’s a very literalist definition.
More broadly, capitalism is a system of private for-profit renting of capital for the purpose of using excess revenue to reinvest in new capital stock.
The main distinction between modern capitalism and traditional feudalism being that reinvestment aspect (feudal lords historically did a poor job of generating surplus or reinvesting in capital stocks). And the distinction between capitalism and socialism being private ownership versus public ownership of capital.
But all three were functionally “organized around capital”. Feudalist capital was just overwhelmingly real estate based, while the Dutch/English/French capitalists were more interested in industrial machinery (ships, mills, etc).
Google says it’s origins can be traced back that far. OP probably just counted that. What we call capitalism really started kinda alongside the industrial revolution late 17-1800s.
People usually treat as starting simultaneously with the industrial era. A better date range puts it earlier:
That’s an important and. Situating coal’s epoch-making capacities within class and colonial relations predating steampower’s dominance yields an alternative periodization. British-led industrialization unfolded through the linked processes of agricultural revolu- tion at home and abroad – providing the labor-power for industry by expelling labor from domestic agriculture and, in the case of the West Indian sugar colonies, channeling capital surpluses into industrial development (Brenner 1976; Blackburn 1998). The possi- bilities for the ‘prodigious development of the productive forces’ flowed through the relations of power, capital and nature forged in early capitalism.
[…]
The erasure of capitalism’s early-modern origins, and its extraordinary reshaping of global natures long before the steam engine, is therefore significant in our work to develop an effective radical politics around global warming … and far more than global warming alone! Ask any historian and she will tell you: how one periodizes history powerfully shapes the interpretation of events, and one’s choice of strategic relations. Start the clock in 1784, with James Watt’s rotary steam engine (Crutzen 2002a), and we have a very differ- ent view of history – and a very different view of modernity – than we do if we begin with the English and Dutch agricultural revolutions, with Columbus and the conquest of the Americas, with the first signs of an epochal transition in landscape transformation after 1450.
PDF Jason W. Moore (2017): The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis, The Journal of Peasant Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1235036
(middle of the 15th century)
Capitalism didn’t invent slaves lol
Somebody let Spain know they’re off the hook for all the colonizing, slavery and genocide since they hadn’t invented capitalism yet!
Don’t forget Lysenkoism, capitalist love using that too
Lysenko was powerhungry and created a famine because of political reasons, so I mean what is it not to dislike about him?
As in they use him to “debunk Socialism/communism”
Removed by mod
A famine that wasn’t caused by the ideology directly, but by picking the wrong guy to run agriculture. It wasn’t communism that caused the famine, it was Trofim Lysenko’s unscientific ideology; Lysenkoism.
…plus Authoritarian Communism shouldn’t count, amd the death tolls of Capitalism, Colonialism, and The Catholic Church have all been higher in total.
Although you can say that the fervent devotion to communism was what got Lysenko’s ideas of what was essentially a Marxist botany theory got implemented.
That’s not a condemnation of communism, but it is a condemnation of how you can let any ideology get out of control.
Both authoritarian and capitalist systems lead to massive disparities and overall low quality of life for majority of people. It is where the seemingly opposite ideologies converge on the one thing they do best: concentrate power in the hands of few.
… also:
- the first round of starvation around 1920 iirc killed 6 million people because of social turmoil / civil-war like circumstances. it had nothing to do with the specific political ideology
- ten years later, in 1930, another round of starvation killed another 6 million people, this time due to political ideology: basically they made “free market” illegal, and people couldn’t sell excess goods anymore, so they made no money, and nobody cared about actually farming more than for themselves anymore.
- ten years later, from 1930 - 1945, another 20 million were killed due to stalinistic terrorism, which had nothing to do with “communism”. it was just a guy who clinged to power recklessly and caused a lot of harm that way.
so in total, only 6 million out of 32 million people died due to “communism” / non-free-market-ideology. the others died due to civil turmoil or dictatorship. for reference: the total population in the soviet union at that time was around 150 million people. IIRC
Also, it should be noted that one shouldn’t look at these numbers in isolation. There’s also a lot of gruesome stuff that happened elsewhere in the world at approximately the same time (or some time earlier). For example, black-african slaves in the US, mass surveillance and executions in germany, Irish potato famine close to England, …
I have no idea why i just typed this i just wanted to. idk
Lol, yes, the famine in 1945 was all just because of Stalin’s ambient evilness. There was nothing else going on at the time that might have affected the USSRs ability to produce food.
So like the east indian company alone killed twice as many people as Authoritarian communism… As has The Congo Freestate (King Leopalds rubber corporation in the Congo)…
…so basically Capitalism has killed WAY more people that Communism, and that’s just two corporate endeavors.
i don’t know enough history stuff to agree or disagree with the stuff (India, Kongo).
Genocides, slavery, war - that’s literally instructed in the Judaic religious texts. Correlation does not mean causation.
Removed by mod
What are you trying to say?
Sounds like they’re trying to say “blame the Jews.”
Not the guy you responded too, but his point is obvious.
The assertion that capitalism is the root cause of the atrocities listed based purely on their existing at the same time is evidence of nothing.
People have always been like this, increases in technology have helped increase mans mistreatment of his fellow man. Economic system be damned, that’s not the point.
Or do you think mercantilism or feudalism where actually any better?
“X was worse than Y” does not mean “Y is the optimum” or that “Y is the ethical way a society should be run.”
Chattel slavery is worse than indentured servitude. Neither was a good thing.
Neither is correlation with atrocities proof of the economic system NOT being ethical or the way we should run society.
The point is correlation is not causation, and in fact we KNOW that capitalism is better then previous systems.
We also know if no other system that works to replace capitalism yet, other then the previous and worse systems.
I know that being kicked in the nuts is better than being shot in the chest. That doesn’t mean I want to go through either event.
Well I’ve got bad news for ya, there’s nothing any better that’s yet been devised.
Human nature is not great, and barring a massive population collapse this is how it’s gonna be.
And frankly, it’s better then it’s ever been in all of human history for those of us in the developed world.
Well I’ve got bad news for ya, there’s nothing any better that’s yet been devised.
Sure there is. It’s called socialism. It’s where everyone’s basic needs are provided for, but people can still earn money above that and buy nicer things.
Removed by mod
Capitalism being better than feudalism is not a high bar. A system that ties a human life’s worth to the capital they generate will always create disparity
That these things exist independently of capitalism, probably
So… I guess we’re just forgetting about King Mansa Musa, then?
Or medieval trade entirely?
He doesn’t know Capitalism describes a method of production and distribution, he thinks it means western world power currently opposed to eastern world power.
Seems like there’s a lot of that going around here.
Feudalism isn’t capitalism.
*looks at bigtech*
Same.
King mansa musa does not compare even an iota to the transatlantic slave trade. It’s not about the fact slavery was happening. It’s that capitalism industrialized slave trade to a degree that was unfathomable to humanity before.
It’s not specific to slavery, but the entire claim of “capitalism started in the UK” and that that’s somehow the cause of all the world’s problems.
However, the Kingdom of Mali profited greatly from slavery, with the trans-Atlantic slave trade simply being a later chapter in its long history of trading slaves.
As for capitalism; King Mansa Musa went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and deliberately crashed the value of gold in Cairo, the then trade capitol of the world during the middle ages. He did this as a move to bring, and steal, trade interests for Mali.
UK conquered effectively the entire world. They are literally the source for global capitalism as it exists. If your hangup is “well, UK didn’t really start capitalism” then your on a semantic that makes any further argument with you disingenuous, either due to you willfully manipulating the conversation or ignorantly being unable to comprehend what is being said. Either way really.
This isn’t semantics, it’s facts. Strong words coming from you, calling me disingenuous, when what you’re doing is defending a grossly oversimplified, inaccurate, and mostly dumb meme.
Open up a history book. Might do you some good.
Get a history degree. Beat you to it. Teaching your children too.
Then retake your history degree. Clearly you forgot a few things along the way.
Kings sending Conquistadors was not capitalism. Or if it was then the entire middle ages was also Capitalism. Capitalism did plenty of bad shit without covering for the authoritarian sanctioned missions of the 1500s.
Guess you never heard of the east India company.
They were a crown chartered company in the 17th century. Not the 16th. And they were founded to make it easier for the crown to colonize and control those colonies.
It was not chartered for the crown to more easily colonize and control those colonies. It received a chartered from the crown on 12/31/1600 (with non-chartered operations beginning the year before) to serve as a monopoly trading company operating east of the cape of good hope. Initially, they made profits as pirates despite some initial successes.
They open up lines of trade with Mughal empire which starts trade colonialism. After the death of Aurangzeb, the east India company grabs land,extracts wealth through taxes and labor and they enter into being an exploitation colonializer. and then when the state is leaned on more and more, the state takes over operations and nstionalizes the company in 1858.
The British and Spanish were at war. That’s how wars were fought back then.
And they asked for permission to form the company because they couldn’t keep going to India without the Crown’s help. That became clear when they lost an entire expedition. The EIC goes on from there to become the defacto government of modern day Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh in the Crown’s name. With an Army twice the size of the normal British Army. They also operate an absolute monopoly over the area. The modern day equivalent would be if Amazon was your local store, employer, police, army, navy, justice system, and highest level of government available unless you were insanely wealthy. And whenever they get in trouble, Moldova sends them help.
That’s Mercantilism, not Capitalism. There’s capital involved, but it is not the economic system of Capitalism.
I don’t disagree with anything you said in this comment, but in the previous comment that the EIC was created to control the colonies for the crown. This really only begins to happen after the fall of Aurangzeb.
There’s much more details to discuss about how the EIC plays a role in developing capitalism and capitalist control considered it existed for two and a half centuries. But I think we’re bracketing our discussion to their activities in the 17th century.
They absolutely were creating colonies. They did the same thing in India that colonial powers did all over the world. They kept testing the boundaries. Which is why they fought and lost a war to Aurangzeb. They had always been there to conquer and their first instinct was war, not trade.
I don’t know how you support the statement that “their first instinct was war, not trade”. Even the war you referenced was because trade negotiations broke down. For about 80 years they had been granted trading rights by the Mughal Empire. Skirmishes during that time were with other European powers and not with the Mughal Empire. What events transpired that support their role as colonists and not trade partners?
My second issues is claiming that these activities were for the crown. They were not “founded to make it easier for the crown to colonize and control those colonies.” You are regularly ascribing intention to the founding by flattening activities across 100-150 years.
No, everything bad that happens is capatalism.
capitalism = evil therefore evil = capitalism
It’s just basic maths.
*ITT: people who are comfortable with conflating ideas and labels and ignoring historical context so that they can advertise their ideological conformity with the prevailing community narrative.
Also, all the whoosh. Just all of it.
That’s not basic math, that’s just wrong and is the inverse fallacy
It’s also sarcasm (probably), and that’s the reason why when in doubt I always add “\s” to my sarcastic comments.
Woosh
How loud was the sound when it went over your head?
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?
I’m rather confused and I don’t think you have a clear grasp of what Marx means by capitalism.
Do you?
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.
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.
First, I agree, Phoenecian and ancient Greek societies would be classified as slave modes of production according to Marx.
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.
Again, how does any of this relate to my comment?
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 guarantee you have never read a page by Marx. Your understanding of capitalism and socialism is shocking.
I guarantee you have never read a page by Marx.
I have read Capital in full. Is there anything else?
What is your guarantee worth?
Not a soul here believes that. Your post history is visible. You spell ‘bloc’ as “block” and your understanding of capitalism is that of a very young person’s. Not to mention, nobody would reply that they read Capital in full — they would say they’ve read Marx’s volume of Capital. You’re transparent.
Once again, I guarantee you’ve never read a page by Marx. You really should try it.
You spell ‘bloc’ as “block” and your understanding of capitalism is that of a very young person’s
How do we call a person ignorant of there being plenty of languages other than English, sometimes without such distinction between these words?
Anyway, spelling errors are indicative only of spelling errors.
My “understanding of capitalism” - ignorance and arrogance go together, and Marxists are a premier example of both.
Not to mention, nobody would reply that they read Capital in full — they would say they’ve read Marx’s volume of Capital.
Personal insults are forbidden here, but some time from now you might learn that people reply to all kinds of things differently.
Once again, I guarantee you’ve never read a page by Marx. You really should try it.
I have already told you that you’ve shat yourself and asked what is your guarantee supported with. You are wrong. What will you do?
Wrecked. Better luck next time, liberal.
There’s actually a lot of interesting recent work that points to wage labor being very prevalent in the Roman economy! The idea of slavery as the main driver of the production of the Roman economy is not nearly as popular now even amongst academics who take a ‘primitivist’ view of the Roman economy (ie that it resembled the customary economies around it more than later, early modern economies). Though, obviously, either way it had significant social influence and implications, and was far from economically inconsequential.
Rome wasn’t capitalist.
Rome was like that already when it was just a town, some argue that is one of the reasons why it became a
bullysuperpower.I enjoyed this insight into that mentality: youtube/P3IIRiSTc3g.
That really does not apply to Rome. There was some private industry and profit, but at the end of the day, it was all about enriching the empire and giving the people bread and circuses to keep them quiet. Every Roman citizen got fed. Which is pretty anti-capitalistic.
There was some private industry and profit, but at the end of the day, it was all about enriching the empire and giving the people bread and circuses to keep them quiet.
Less than you might think! The Imperial state apparatus was actually very skeletal compared to what we think of it, at least during the height of the Empire. We’re talking entire provinces with only a few dozen actual imperial officials to manage it, most of whom brought their own private staffs. Senators were formally barred from large-scale commerce, but they got around this by investing their money with non-office-holding individuals to engage in business on an obscene scale. Most of the resources moving around were moved by private trade, and at immense profit. Only a few resources were subject to imperial monopolies or had widespread imperial control; everyone else was playing a more-or-less recognizable hustle of commerce - buy or lease cheap, produce at low cost, sell at high profit.
Every Roman citizen got fed. Which is pretty anti-capitalistic.
Not even close, I’m afraid! Even in the city of Rome itself, and it was only in the city itself where the grain dole was in effect, it was limited to a certain number of citizens, and most of it was sold subsidized by the state rather than free. Those citizens who received the grain dole, furthermore, were not selected out of the poorest of the poor - it was largely the established working families - semiskilled workers, artisans. small merchants and the like, who might be expected to have times of hardship but not be in constant danger of starvation - it was a political subsidy to these people, who still had some social pull and connections in the city but were not integrated enough into the power structures to have a firm interest in sustaining it, to keep them from calling for anything dangerous, like more democracy!
The ultra-impoverished largely were left to the issue of charity and political patronage (which was big in Rome), and starved about as much as any impoverished pre-modern group. Maybe a little less, considering votes were almost literally bought long after voting ceased to be meaningful. One supposes that’s a bit more money than most would have.
and giving the people bread and circuses to keep them quiet. Every Roman citizen got fed.
Fed and entertained.
Since @[email protected] seems to be the expert in all things Roman, I’d be interested in seeing their take. Seems to me from what I’ve read that Rome was capitalist as hell and that was a major reason for expansion.
The notion that they gave out “bread and circuses” somehow made them other than that seems pretty facile. The bread and circuses was usually a quid-pro-quo to the colleges for their votes. There were very, very rich civilians and dirt poor nobles, and that doesn’t seem to happen in an inheritance feudalism very often. Funding an army as a general and taking the wealth it conquered seems about as capitalist as you can imagine. Yah, you had to wait for an appointment as a governor for the areas you conquered, but that was usually just a matter of form.
The cura annonae went way beyond the “bread and circuses” claim and was a pretty important thing in the lives of the plebs. It was also expected. Juvenal mocked it as “bread and circuses,” but there would have been both riots and probably mass starvation without it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_annonae
As it says in that link:
In 22 AD, Augustus’ successor Tiberius publicly acknowledged the Cura Annonae as a personal and imperial duty, which if neglected would cause “the utter ruin of the state”.
Now it is true that the cura annonae would be increased in order to gain favor or quell the populace for one reason or other, but that’s not the same thing.
As far as the “circuses,” free entertainment for the masses is not exactly capitalistic either. And it’s not like it was a one-time thing. That was true for centuries. And remember the free entertainment wasn’t just gladiatorial combat. It was also things like chariot racing and theater.
On top of that, there was massive investment in public artworks. Artworks that were designed specifically to glorify the empire and its leaders. That sounds positively Soviet to me.
As far as the “circuses,” free entertainment for the masses is not exactly capitalistic either. And it’s not like it was a one-time thing. That was true for centuries. And remember the free entertainment wasn’t just gladiatorial combat. It was also things like chariot racing and theater.
Only some seats were subsidized or free; many seat tickets would have been paid, as in the modern day. A lot of the time, free games and entertainment were done by private politicians as a form of political advertisement - “I, Gaius Julius Caesar, have spent my own money to provide entertainment to the good people of Rome! Please take note I’m running for office in a few months’ times!” Even after all meaningful political power had been centered in the position of the Emperor, such popular support remained important in political jockeying for the Emperor’s favor.
On top of that, there was massive investment in public artworks. Artworks that were designed specifically to glorify the empire and its leaders. That sounds positively Soviet to me.
Ah, that’s a curious thing there - there are certainly examples of imperial-funded art and architecture for the purpose of glorifying the state (and also for some Roman legal oddities), but much of it was in the tradition of Greek euergetism - ie the ultra-rich funded such things both to show the poor why they shouldn’t kill them, and to suck up to the powers-that-be. Much of the time, there are inscriptions or plaques on major works like that that will say things like “Tiberius Flavius Aurelius and his two daughters paid for and dedicate this statue of the Emperor to the Res Publica, the people of the town, and to our fair and noble Emperor himself!” And the money acquired in order to make such ‘magnanimous’ donations? Usually quite commercial in origin.
That’s a very funny question, and you can get a lot of answers, but generally the thinking, since Peter Temin’s work on the Roman economy, has shifted predominantly to a “Proto-capitalist” view, at least during the height of the Empire. Nonetheless, the answer remains incredibly contentious. I’ll try to give a rundown as best I can - as a supporter of the proto-capitalist view myself:
spoiler
First, much of the expansion of Rome happened during the mid-Republic, in which the customary/traditional economy predominated, so don’t put too much stock in capitalism or protocapitalism as a reason for Rome’s expansion. Rome, ultimately, was an incredibly aggressive, proud, and strangely assimilationist (for the time) polity, so it had the relentless warring with its neighbors to maintain an experienced and well-tested military system, the arrogance to take over everyone and anyone who seemed ripe for it (I would like to note that the arrogance of a Classical republic is a funny and dangerous thing, because civic pride is much more sustainable than the ambitions of autocrats), and the ability to both use their new human resources not simply as slaves, but also as members of the polity (and thus, both assistants in further expansion and, in the long-term, stable and loyal populations in their own right - to varying degrees),
Second, the Roman Empire’s financial customs were, by modern standards, primitive, but by Classical standards incredibly advanced. They effectively united the Mediterranean into a single market, or at least a series of closely connected markets, complete with mobility of labor and capital. Crude forms of joint-stock companies and corporations had legal standing, contract enforcement was rigorous, and while credit was tracked on an informal basis, moneylending (from both individuals ad hoc and dedicated professionals/businesses) and debt were essential parts of the overall functioning of the economy. Roman aristocrats largely held a very rationalist financial-oriented mindset, unlike, say, Medieval nobility or Chinese bureaucrat-scholars. They were quite literally investing capital and managing businesses for (sometimes grotesque) profit. So while you can certainly make arguments about the relative balance of the traditional economy to these very advanced parts, on the whole, I think it’s very fair to regard the Roman Empire as capitalist or at least some form of protocapitalist, like the Netherlands in the 15th-16th century, just making the transition.
Third, the Roman Empire’s capitalism or protocapitalism definitely pushed forward economic development, if not necessarily expansion. Some recent work suggests an average GDP growth rate of 0.1%-0.2% per year through the first 200 years of the Empire - incredibly sluggish by modern standards, but an unheard-of sustained rate of growth for pre-modern polities that would not be matched until the Netherlands and England in the 17th century AD. It would be hard to argue that this was technological as, for all the losses experienced after the fall of the Empire, technology in Europe did continue to improve after its fall. It seems pretty intuitive to attribute this not to technological advancement, but economic organization - ie the development of a capitalist or protocapitalist mode of production.
Fourth, independent funding of armies was a very temporary thing. That was only really major in the Late Republic, and it caused a lot of civil wars. Furthermore, individuals could not raise an army nor make war without consent of the Senate (at least not in their capacity as Roman citizens), and command was only granted by appointment of political office - typically by the Senate (or by the popular assemblies). So there wasn’t quite that level of independence in plundering and looting the surrounding states - Rome liked to have a pretext for its wars, and generally frowned on large private forces. Caesar himself, for example, only was in command of forces to begin with because he had been granted command of a province (which he lobbied hard for, mind), and then had to get special permission from the Senate to raise additional Legions (which he himself had to fund) when he started his conquest of Gaul (under the pretext that a Roman ally had been attacked and he HAD to intervene - to save the allied Gauls, of course!). His level of independence in starting such a massive conquest was only rendered possible because he was one of the most politically influential men in the Republic at the time (in an alliance with two other incredibly powerful politicians) - and even then, despite having one of the most glorious and republic-expanding/enriching conquests in Roman history, almost got him arrested and executed for illegal warfare at the end of it all (the suspicion of which kicked off the civil war which Caesar eventually won). So even that lower level of independent conquest was far from the norm.
Fifth, Bread and Circuses is a bit of a funny thing. The initial grain dole was part of an overall reformer effort in the Late Republic to restore prosperity to the (at the time) hard-pressed working classes… by returning them the power of a traditional economy in which the majority of citizens would engage in subsistence farming. By the time of the Empire, the importance of bread and circuses was political - less about the economy, more about the fact that, for the 1st century AD, into the 2nd, and arguably into the 3rd, the population of the city of Rome was still aware of its informal political power (however reduced), and could make and break imperial officials, up to the Emperor himself in particularly dire cases. So there was a definite urge to keep the city of Rome as placated as possible.
tl;dr; yes, it would be fair to call the Roman Empire capitalist or protocapitalist.
Well, thanks for that! It fleshed out some layman’s impressions I had and disabused me of some others.
Love me some Roman history, keep that up.
Always happy to
infodumphelp! 🙏
So capitalism isn’t the problem, then.
There is no the problem. But there are certainly a whole lot of problems that can be traced to capitalism.
Not every citizen in a capitalist system gets fed. People starve to death because to do otherwise would be to give them a government handout.
And not every citizen in communism gets fed when they want to prioritize the party or remove some undesirable minorities, so why do they get a free pass for genocide?
What are you even talking about now?
Are you suggesting that capitalist countries have not also been responsible for genocides? Would you like me to list a few, starting with the current one going on in Israel? Although we can go as far back as the colonization and exploitation of the Americas for corporate profits. You do know the Jamestown colony was set up as a private corporate venture, right? How about the East India Company, that was started just a few years earlier?
I can believe there are those who tell that Communism is evil because of famines (and mass murders), and that, of course, doesn’t quite work knowing how nice European empires were. I think it works in the context that only European lives are human enough. I think that’s also the reason that simple logic works well with people in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus included).
But the correct version would be that Communism is inefficient, incompetent, lacks feedbacks. It’s weak. The British Empire killed all those people in conscious policies, as part of a calculated risk, and ultimately it reformed itself into the Commonwealth and quite a few allies. USSR’s famines and mass repressions were driven not by some policy, but by lack of functional feedback, and ultimately it broke. Countries formerly part of the British Empire are strong and many of them even rich. Countries formerly part of the Eastern Block are weak and poor.
Yeah, no poor countries that were previously part of the British Empire…
What the fuck are you talking about?
Removed by mod
guys, i think human society is just innately evil.
Like i hate to break it to you, but conquest and war has existed for a long ass fucking time.
