Great video, except the analysis of capitalism.
He says we need to face the reality that capitalism outproduced the rest of the world for 150 years. Then he says it magically stopped in 1970. Instead of figuring out WHY, he just wants to pretend capitalism is flawed. "The Great Society" and the cultural revolution of the 1960's is the silver bullet here.
IOW, it stopped being capitalism and became another creature. I bet this guy thinks 2014 USA is a representative example of what capitalism is. It's mercantilism or crony capitalism, AKA crapitalism.
deathtokoalas
he didn't say it magically stopped. he pointed to the factors of mechanization/computerization, gender equality and immigration as shifting the condition from a society with a deficit of labour to a surplus of one. you'd expect a marxist to talk like this, but it's really a simple supply and demand argument. if you have more jobs than workers (more demand than supply), you can expect prices (wages) to go up; if you have more workers than jobs (more supply than demand), you can expect prices (wages) to go down. that's what happened...
that being said, i don't think you're entirely wrong about the reforms of the 60s having something to do with it, but i don't think you're getting the point right. there was a lot of elite literature (coming out of places like the trilateral commission) that forcefully argued that the movements of the 60s were reflective of a society with too much freedom, and that the way to take away their freedom was to reduce their wealth. this has been widely commented upon; chomsky is one example of somebody that has focused a lot on this point, drawing attention to the fact that the changes that happened seemed to follow the recommendations of the elite governing bodies. the changes in the 30s and 40s are widely understood today as a capitalist class making changes to ensure it's own survival. the changes in the 70s should be understood similarly, but in reverse. the elite of the 70s looked at the movements in the 60s and said "these people are too free", and took steps to reverse it.
pjamesbda
Couldn't we reduce EVERYTHING to a supply and demand problem? Of course that part is simple, what gets messy is why. Why do we continue to see more and more marginalization?
Recently on the business channel I saw adds for investing in other economies...right out there, like "COME OVER HERE--SPEND YOUR MONEY IN A COUNTRY THAT IS ON IT'S WAY UP, NOT DOWN."
The manager of the largest Hedge Fund in the world said, in a similar way as you have. "Ours is a contracting economy because we are debt saturated." And to that I say, big revelation! Thanks a lot, but we are debt saturated for very precise reasons...because downward pressure on labor has forced borrowing as the only option they have (save violence).
And this downward pressure by the "elites" as you've appropriately called them, is what Chris Hedges calls STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE. And it's accurate. Business moving to assending economies confirms this pattern to victimize those people who have not yet been forced into financial slavery.
deathtokoalas
marx himself used a supply and demand argument to describe the reserve army of labour, and how it acts to repress wages. i'm not being colloquial. you really would expect a marxist to talk like this. it's literally directly out of his writings. my point was that you don't have to grasp or accept the totality of marxist thought to get the point. it's an important part of marxist economic thought, but it's really market-based thinking.
i tend to avoid hedges, but you're referring to something called a class war. the reality is that as liberals were lost in this idea of social evolution bringing us to greater equality, the bankers of the world were quietly succeeding in turning the clocks back and constructing a modern form of banking-based feudalism.
plasmagoo
"That's not real capitalism."
deathtokoalas
but, capitalism is a marxist term.
plasmagoo
English novelist Thackeray first used the term in 1854.
deathtokoalas
marx had defined the idea previously; it's in the manifesto. but it actually doesn't matter. it's widely understood as a marxist term. if one wishes to define some other system with some other name that is fine, but they can no more take the definition of capitalism as stolen surplus value from marx than they can take his definitions of socialism or communism from him.
plasmagoo
You,are just factually incorrect. I don't know what more I can say. adam
pjamesbda
Why do we get "down in the weeds" on terminology and who claims what theory, while as you point out, the "bankers are quietly devising new methods" to undo any attempt at financial egalitarianism we devise?
We should be focusing on tearing that all shit down piece by piece, every last nut and bolt, toss it in the smelter and make useful stuff like mortgage free shelters, zero carbon energy and efficient mass transport.
deathtokoalas
it's just a question of what the word "capitalism" means. it's a marxist economic term that refers to the theft of labour from workers in the form of surplus value. it's not a subjective thing up for debate, it's just a dry academic point. you can't just go off and change that because you don't like it.
the word "capitalism" never appeared in the writings of any economist that preceded marx, and had no economic meaning before he invented it. to try to apply it to ideas that existed before him, or to ideas that hayek and buddies articulated 100 years later, and call that "real capitalism" is consequently beyond disingenuous. marx was describing what existed. he called it capitalism. therefore, that's what capitalism is. it couldn't be anything else, by definition. if you've got something else in mind, make up your own word for it - don't take the word marx used for a very specific purpose.
it's like a lamarckian arguing that darwinism isn't "real natural selection". the argument is incoherent.
pjamesbda
Is a chair the word chair?
deathtokoalas
you're making a category error.
plasmagoo
You're trying to apply a scientific theory to an economic one. Marxism goes far beyond exploitation. You're not willing to accept that many other people have used the term capitalism before marx ever did. You deny it and just repeat yourself.
deathtokoalas
i think the entire idea of any economic system may ultimately be attributable to marx.
nonetheless, go ahead. give me an example of somebody else describing an economic system called capitalism before marx (your previous widely cited example did not actually do this).
pjamesbda
"Category error.."
I see. We're going to fatten the head before you cut it off? Okay, the question I'm proposing is what, beyond the technicality of when and by whom the term came into existence, actually establish?
We could just as easily become befuddled over the term Labor or Market. In your defense PLASMA did question use of the term and said it wasn't "real capitalism".
But all the same the definition literally is;
; an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
We could call it "Selfsurvinism" if you think that is coherent. If you'd sign off on it, I'll try to clear that with PLASMA, although it probably won't pass the 'real' test.
deathtokoalas
you've spectacularly missed the point - you're using a definition that came decades after the term was defined to gloss over a marxist economic term because people didn't like the term - which is what i'm telling you can't be done without a loss of intellectual integrity. something like that will appear in most dictionaries, but it neither reflects reality (all capitalist societies are dominated by the state sector) nor does it reflect the etymology of the word. it's a type of newspeak, really, to hide the origins of the term and enforce an imaginary system that's rooted in a lot of founder myths.
whatever label you want to attach to that definition, it neither represents reality nor does it reflect capitalism the way that marx first described it. it's useless in any serious discussion of capitalism.
the reason you're confused is that you're approaching capitalism as something concrete, rather than something abstract.
a chair is an object. it exists independently of our descriptions of it. we might not know it perfectly, but we know it's at least there. we can label it what we want.
but an abstract description of an economic system only exists in our minds. it doesn't have that objective existence. that's the reason the discussion is absurd. if you deny marx' definition, this thing called capitalism does not exist at all - because it is a word he created to describe what he saw.
consider marx' definition of communism, for example. if we're honest, we don't look at the failed soviet or maoist models and say "communism is a system of extreme control over workers, who are treated as slaves of the state.". rather, we stick to the idea of communism as a stateless and egalitarian society, and point out that what actually existed and called itself communism did not reflect that.
and, similarly with capitalism. there doesn't actually have to be a system that is similar to marx' description for his description to hold. it turns out there is. but, it's the abstract definition that is important, not the question of whether it pertains to reality.
and, capitalism consequently remains the appropriation of labour, whether the dictionaries want to be revisionist on the point or not.
Internet Omatic
Crony capitalism is just capitalism. Capitalism has always and will always interact with external power structures. You're just parroting what you've heard Austrian hacks say. Please don't spread your libertarian bullshit here. Austrian economics is delusional.
deathtokoalas
the thing is that they have every right to define a system the way they want to define it. i may argue that property rights are impossible without a state to uphold them, and that markets create collusion rather than competition. so, i'd claim there's consequently a glaring contradiction at the root of their proposals. but, that doesn't negate the abstract possibility of a society ordered by markets and defined by voluntary associations.
the problem is when you try and associate that system with capitalism, as it's rooted in historical revisionism to do such a thing. smith, ricardo, etc would have called themselves liberals and their system liberalism. they would not have understood the word capitalism. marx would have also called himself a liberal, but he would have pointed out that liberalism needs to be modified to account for the social realities of production in the industrial era.
whatever you want to call it - liberalism, neo-liberalism, etc - trying to fashion this idea of capitalism around liberalism without integrating the marxist definition is just not honest. you have to at least address it. you can't just redefine the terms in a way that ignores it.
