'What Caused Capitalism?'

[guno]

Communism fails 100% of the time irrespective of the scale or scope of the economy. The OP is delusional to believe that government coersion is equivalent to asking my brother to help me fix a leak.

Delusional.

So little frankie do you "think" the invisible hand controls markets

 

[bripat9643]

Interesting article. By Jeremy Adelman | Foreign Affairs | 13th May 2015

Hopefully you can read this, I check them out through thebrowser.com.

What Caused Capitalism

Quotes only haphazardly related. lol But hopefully they will whet your appetite and help you see the complexity of economics in the modern world and lose the ideologies that often excuse the status quo.

"Most interactions with people that you trust, people that you love, or people that just need to cooperate with on an immediate basis, take the form of “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” It doesn’t matter if you’re working for the government, working for a corporation, or working in your family; if you need to fix the toilet because it’s leaking and you say “Hand me the wrench,” the other guy doesn’t say “What do I get for that?” It’s not an exchange; people act according to their abilities to chip in. Ironically communism is applied because it’s the only thing that works; it’s the most efficient way to allocate resources. Thus I like to say that you could argue that capitalism is just a bad way of organizing communism." David Graeber

Free Market Seductions: "The free market story is appealing. It references values like freedom, creativity, and beauty and counterposes itself against images of drudgery, dictatorship, and starvation. But the history of markets (and the firms that operate within them) is not a nature story.... Today, the dominant discourse governing discussion of markets, states, and companies is neoliberalism, and Mackey's [Whole Foods] free market business model and historical narrative fit neatly within this framework. In this vision, the economic sphere is "an autonomous, self-adjusting, and self-regulated system that [can] achieve a natural equilibrium spontaneously and produce increased wealth. "But the free market historical narrative lacks empirical weight. As economic historian Karl Polanyi argued decades ago, capitalist markets are a product of state engineering, not nature." p58 Nicole Aschoff, 'The New Prophets of Capital'

"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bas_tards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

"....If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society." Robert Locke Marxism of the Right The American Conservative

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln (Marxist ?)

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes / E. Austin G. Robinson, As quoted in Michael Albert, Moving Forward: Programme for a Parlicipatory Economy (Edinburgh: AK, 2000)

"That was the future predicted by Karl Marx, who wrote that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction. And it is the danger America faces today, as the 1 percent pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social agenda that will increase that gap even further — ultimately destroying the open system that made America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the first place.

You can see America’s creeping Serrata [or the closure, see link below] in the growing social and, especially, educational chasm between those at the top and everyone else. At the bottom and in the middle, American society is fraying, and the children of these struggling families are lagging the rest of the world at school." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-1-percent.html

Marxist propaganda.

Another uneducated dolt who yells propaganda and who is incapable of debating

What would you like to debate? I'm not going to respond to every claim made in a 1000 word essay.

 

[bripat9643]

Communism fails 100% of the time irrespective of the scale or scope of the economy. The OP is delusional to believe that government coersion is equivalent to asking my brother to help me fix a leak.

Delusional.

So little frankie do you thing the invisible hand controls markets

The "invisible hand" is another way of saying "consumer choice controls the market." And the answer is obviously they do.

 

[there4eyeM]

from a history book:

It is important to recognize that "a new form of the representative publicness, whose source was the culture of the nobility of early capitalist northern Italy, emerged first in Florence and then in Paris and London. It demonstrated its vigor in its assimilation of bourgeois culture, whose early manifestation was humanism" (Habermas, 1992: 9). The first vestiges of the private/public split are seen here as being revealed in the actions of the early capitalists. Capitalism, here in its early form, can be seen as intrinsically linked to the issues of the public and private sociological spheres. Interestingly, it was only after the Renaissance that the common man fully realized the potential of seizing upon this democratic notion and brought it to full political awareness. As Wallerstein says, this realization fully "crystallized" in the French Revolution.Meanwhile, in the time between the establishment of the early Italian capitalists and the French Revolution,

 

[bripat9643]

from a history book:

It is important to recognize that "a new form of the representative publicness, whose source was the culture of the nobility of early capitalist northern Italy, emerged first in Florence and then in Paris and London. It demonstrated its vigor in its assimilation of bourgeois culture, whose early manifestation was humanism" (Habermas, 1992: 9). The first vestiges of the private/public split are seen here as being revealed in the actions of the early capitalists. Capitalism, here in its early form, can be seen as intrinsically linked to the issues of the public and private sociological spheres. Interestingly, it was only after the Renaissance that the common man fully realized the potential of seizing upon this democratic notion and brought it to full political awareness. As Wallerstein says, this realization fully "crystallized" in the French Revolution.Meanwhile, in the time between the establishment of the early Italian capitalists and the French Revolution,

That's Marxist mumbo jumbo. Where is the evidence that Italian bankers created capitalism? Your author hasn't even demonstrated that capitalism existed in Italy. He also quotes Habermas, a notorious Marxist. He's also not an economist.

Your cite treats capitalism as if it's an ideology rather than an economic system.

If you want to at least sound credible you might want to give the author and the publication where you found your reference.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Communism fails 100% of the time irrespective of the scale or scope of the economy. The OP is delusional to believe that government coersion is equivalent to asking my brother to help me fix a leak.

Delusional.

So little frankie do you "think" the invisible hand controls markets

I never liked or agreed with the invisible hand analogy. It's the aggregate of all the free, individual choices that make the market

 

[eagle1462010]

Ugh............Ugh............me Cave Man.................me have fish.................want Deer and potatoes................

Ugh...........Ugh...........me Cave Man too...........want fish..................have Deer...............will trade...........

Ugh.........Ugh........me Cave Man too...........have potatoes..........want some one to build me a rock house.....

Ugh......me know how to build rock house.........me hungry.........want food..............will build rock house for food
but No Like potatoes..............

So the trading begins............everyone trying to get a product or service they need and so on..............then somewhere along the line they agreed to find some way of paying for it through a TOKEN or CURRENCY to make it easier to trade goods and services......................

The Capitalist is any of the above......................

Yet somewhere down the line said WE NEED GOV'T TO CONTROL TRADE....................

And Gov't says we demand a portion of it all to do you this service..............was fine until the Gov't said I want MORE MORE MORE FOR MY SERVICES..............

Then the Gov't decided to take from one Cave Man to give to another one because they said these Cave Men are needy and require the Gov't to SAVE THEM.............then More More More More......................

This Op is a JOKE....................If I have something of value and want or require some payment of either a token or Trade it is my right to do so...................and in doing so.............I'm practicing Capitalism...................

UGH UGH..............

Now to the communist.................if you try to take my stuff to give out I might hit you over head with Club.

Ugh Ugh.

 

[there4eyeM]

That is only one, quickly found reference. However, there is no use in trying to talk to someone who automatically ascribes everything remotely heterodoxical to his/her thinking as evil incarnate.

 

[there4eyeM]

Trading is not capitalism.

 

[bripat9643]

That is only one, quickly found reference. However, there is no use in trying to talk to someone who automatically ascribes everything remotely heterodoxical to his/her thinking as evil incarnate.

I found your reference. It's a blog by a sociology professor. It's not from a history book.

The reason you refuse to support your claims is the fact that you have no facts or logic to support it with. You are an economic and historical ignoramus. You read some propaganda and assumed it was a fact because it conformed to your prejudices and brainwashing.

 

[bripat9643]

Trading is not capitalism.

It's the essence of capitalism.

 

[eagle1462010]

Trading is not capitalism.

BS..............

You want my assets then you are going to Trade for it..................or PAY FOR IT....................if not Tough Shit Mr. Lenin...............................

That is Capitalism in it's traditional form..............

If I have all the fish..............and you want some.........I'm an evil capitalist..............so if you want fish then learn how to catch your own.........or GO HUNGRY BOW BOW BOW...........

 

[eagle1462010]

Trading is not capitalism.

It's the essence of capitalism.

BINGO......................You Da Man..........

 

[there4eyeM]

from many sources:

"With the rapid development of European trade and prosperity in the 13th century, cities in Italy and the Netherlands witness a creation of wealth which is capitalist in kind - because any merchant is in essence a capitalist, risking his pot of money each time he buys in one place to sell in another.
Florence in the 14th century demonstrates more familiar indications of capitalism. It has its great banking families, engaging in transactions across the breadth of Europe. It even has a successful strike, by underpaid day workers in the cloth industry who want a share in the benefits enjoyed by their employers".

"Trade may be instinctive, but the institutions of capitalism are a product of social evolution. The rise of the West seems to have had little to do with local smarts or work ethic. Indeed, some of the earliest capitalist innovations in Italy—like rules on issuing credit—were imported from the Abbasid caliphate, which ruled much of the Middle East from the eighth century to the tenth, reckons Sevket Pamuk of the London School of Economics."

"In The Cambridge History of Capitalism, it was the Italian city-states that first departed from the old order. Although they were vulnerable to rivals and tended to favor oligopolies, these polities laid the groundwork of institutions and norms that in the fifteenth century would pass to mercantile states of the Atlantic—Spain and Portugal—and then the Netherlands, France, and England."

"Banking developed in Florence because of the ingenious development of bills of exchange, first as a way of paying debts without having to transport cash, then as a means of evading the church's usury laws, and finally as a means of extending credit. “When the merchant extended his traffic in the exchange market to enter the credit market, he became a banker”—and a capitalist."

 

[eagle1462010]

from many sources:

"With the rapid development of European trade and prosperity in the 13th century, cities in Italy and the Netherlands witness a creation of wealth which is capitalist in kind - because any merchant is in essence a capitalist, risking his pot of money each time he buys in one place to sell in another.
Florence in the 14th century demonstrates more familiar indications of capitalism. It has its great banking families, engaging in transactions across the breadth of Europe. It even has a successful strike, by underpaid day workers in the cloth industry who want a share in the benefits enjoyed by their employers".

"Trade may be instinctive, but the institutions of capitalism are a product of social evolution. The rise of the West seems to have had little to do with local smarts or work ethic. Indeed, some of the earliest capitalist innovations in Italy—like rules on issuing credit—were imported from the Abbasid caliphate, which ruled much of the Middle East from the eighth century to the tenth, reckons Sevket Pamuk of the London School of Economics."

"In The Cambridge History of Capitalism, it was the Italian city-states that first departed from the old order. Although they were vulnerable to rivals and tended to favor oligopolies, these polities laid the groundwork of institutions and norms that in the fifteenth century would pass to mercantile states of the Atlantic—Spain and Portugal—and then the Netherlands, France, and England."

"Banking developed in Florence because of the ingenious development of bills of exchange, first as a way of paying debts without having to transport cash, then as a means of evading the church's usury laws, and finally as a means of extending credit. “When the merchant extended his traffic in the exchange market to enter the credit market, he became a banker”—and a capitalist."

Ugh Ugh................We Cave men need to find something to use as a means of trade...................

Ugh Ugh...........must be rare..........to be considered of value...................

Ugh Ugh...........Shiny Rock...........Ugh.....................We collect and trade shiny rock................determine how
much shiny rock for deer.............potatoes.................rocks for building...................

Ugh Ugh..............shiny rocks......................................

Ugh Ugh...............

 

[bripat9643]

from many sources:

"With the rapid development of European trade and prosperity in the 13th century, cities in Italy and the Netherlands witness a creation of wealth which is capitalist in kind - because any merchant is in essence a capitalist, risking his pot of money each time he buys in one place to sell in another.
Florence in the 14th century demonstrates more familiar indications of capitalism. It has its great banking families, engaging in transactions across the breadth of Europe. It even has a successful strike, by underpaid day workers in the cloth industry who want a share in the benefits enjoyed by their employers".

"Trade may be instinctive, but the institutions of capitalism are a product of social evolution. The rise of the West seems to have had little to do with local smarts or work ethic. Indeed, some of the earliest capitalist innovations in Italy—like rules on issuing credit—were imported from the Abbasid caliphate, which ruled much of the Middle East from the eighth century to the tenth, reckons Sevket Pamuk of the London School of Economics."

"In The Cambridge History of Capitalism, it was the Italian city-states that first departed from the old order. Although they were vulnerable to rivals and tended to favor oligopolies, these polities laid the groundwork of institutions and norms that in the fifteenth century would pass to mercantile states of the Atlantic—Spain and Portugal—and then the Netherlands, France, and England."

"Banking developed in Florence because of the ingenious development of bills of exchange, first as a way of paying debts without having to transport cash, then as a means of evading the church's usury laws, and finally as a means of extending credit. “When the merchant extended his traffic in the exchange market to enter the credit market, he became a banker”—and a capitalist."

Once again, you provide no author names or publication titles for your cites. Your quotes discuss some of the developments that led to capitalism, but none of them describe the actual first instance of capitalism.

Claiming that "a merchant is a capitalist" is the ultimate naivete. Merchants have been around since civilization began. They engage in some of the activities that occur under capitalism, but their existence alone isn't sufficient to establish capitalism.

 

[regent]

The primary problem with capitalism is keeping it capitalistic.
The goal of greed seems to want to destroy the one major component of capitalism, competition. To keep capitalism alive and functioning as capitalism, requires some laws and controls.

 

[bripat9643]

The primary problem with capitalism is keeping it capitalistic.
The goal of greed seems to want to destroy the one major component of capitalism, competition. To keep capitalism alive and functioning as capitalism, requires some laws and controls.

The laws and controls are how capitalism becomes non-capitalistic. Those "greedy capitalists" bribe greedy power hungry politicians to change the laws to make it difficult for newer companies to compete.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

The goal of greed seems to want to destroy the one major component of capitalism, competition.

Of course that's 100% stupid, liberal, and Marxist.

1) without competition there is no capitalism
2) under capitalism greed is impossible thanks to competition
3) the number who gain monopoly status each month is very near 0% while the numbers who go bankrupt is about 10,000/ per month meaning that if anything capitalism suffers from too much rather than too little competition
4) both sides agree on anti trust anyway, and have for a century, so parroting Marx on monopoly only shows pure ignorance.

 

[MaryL]

Communism works in small settings. When you are talking about a community, a village, a tribe it works. But there are 7 billion people on the planet now with no ties to other groups, and the money, promissory notes, whatever that can be used to feed a family, that transcends trust in a small tribal setting. Communism basically can't be stretched across all borders and tribal/familial or other boundaries because it's human nature not to trust or need those outside your sphere .