Edit: This question attracted way more interest than I hoped for! I will need some time to go through the comments in the next days, thanks for your efforts everyone. One thing I could grasp from the answers already - it seems to be complicated. There is no one fits all answer.
Under capitalism, it seems companies always need to grow bigger. Why can’t they just say, okay, we have 100 employees and produce a nice product for a specific market and that’s fine?
Or is this only a US megacorp thing where they need to grow to satisfy their shareholders?
Let’s ignore that most of the times the small companies get bought by the large ones.
A farmer selling their produce is not necessarily a capitalist. A farmer toiling on their own field sells the fruit of their own labor, so to speak. One step up are what Marx calls “Little Masters”: They own and work their means of production, but sometimes have employees such as farmhands or apprentices (Think companies where the owner still works in the workshop). Actual capitalists are detached from the production process: They no longer work, but simply own the so-called means of production and exploit others by buying their labor force for less than their produced result is worth.
If we are going by the original definition of the word, it is. The farmer here is growing produce to sell it in exchange for money; they are not sharing it with their community, bartering with it, growing it to eat themselves, or giving it to their liege lord.
I’m not sure why people always insist if money is involved that it’s capitalism. Money is an abstract form of trade. No one is suggesting that trade will cease to exists in a world without capitalism.
It’s not about money, it’s about private ownership of capital. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism
Well, if you assume the farmer excludes others from using the means of production i.e. the fields, then yes you can argue that they are acting as capitalist. But you have to make the distinction between private and personal ownership: Private ownership of the land and personal ownership of the produce. The former is what communists reject. The latter is fine in their books.
Well, I’d say that the definition of capitalism changes depending on if you’re talking about capitalism as opposed to feudalism (original/historical definition) vs capitalism as opposed to communism (modern definition).
What resources would you recommend to someone wanting to learn about this?
I.e. the TV channel Arte, which is a cooperation of French and German state media has a multipart documentary called Work, Salary, Profit that touches on a lot of fundamentals.
Of course there is always the option just to straight up read the original works by Marx, Smith and so on, but they are not for the feint of heart.
People frequently conflate capitalism with enterprise, not seeing the distinctions.
An economic model that includes capitalism explains a lot of the world including having some close process analogs in nature.
A capitalist sounds like a label you’re trying to apply in an attempt to label someone as being maximally for profits. A lot of companies admittedly work that way and it’s important to include that concept.
By my reading you’re taking the use of the first term and then saying they are using the second term. I think this is called equivocation.
All companies work that way, or they risk to fail. The maximization of profit stems from the need to stay competitive. If your competitor can produce the same amount of goods for a lower price, you won’t be able to sell yours for a cost-covering price and therefore go bankrupt. Instead, you then have to find a way to be more efficient by investing in your business. To be able to invest, you have to have created profit. Once you have done that, your competitor has to do the same and the cycle starts anew. That’s the idea of modern capitalism.
I am not sure what you mean by that. I tried to show that just because someone sells something, they are not necessarily a capitalist.
The question says capitalism (not so loaded term) your answer said capitalist (more loaded term and you’ve taken time to use the loaded part of the term).
That said, I accidentally replied to a question in lemmy.ml so the person asking the question is probably more aligned with your way of thinking and explaining than I am. Sorry about that
Well, to me that sounds a little like you prefer the term swimming over being called a swimmer.
Oh, I didn’t say I had a preference. And I see your point that one is just a conjugation of the other. I’ve just seen capitalism as a term used more for explanation and when I’ve seen capitalist said it tends to have a negative connotation at best but more often it is half spat out
If you want to nitpick, I never said farmer. Also, farmers have inputs, so your comparison is wholly removed from reality.
Edit: also, Marx? JFC, Thoreau is a better example of 19th century philosophy about labor, as he actually did real work in life which is why he manged to influence Tolstoy, who the eurdite Soviets tried to retcon into being a socialist because they were arrogant tools who didn’t understand his work well enough to realize that his critiques were often of people just like them. And just like Marx who also had very little contact with real life.
Marx can suck a fuck at the tomato stand, my friend.
What does a farmer having inputs have to do with my argument being removed from reality?
Because you’re leaning on Marx for definitions, who was famously out of touch with reality as well,
because ALL small business owners need inputs, and labor is only one of them, so inventing the vendor as now a farmer to attempt a workaround is disingenuous,
you also had made the tomato vendor into a farmer in hopes of having a point that fits into a poorly crafted 19th century framework, and don’t know enough about how farms anywhere on earth to realize how blatantly wrong you are,
your definition of capitalist is factually incorrect,
read my edited comment above, which I edited while you wrote this,
a farmer is no different, functionally in a minimalist sense, from a person making jam as a cottage industry, who buys fruit and processes it at home, making a farmer’s field not magic but simply a location where work is done,
I said tomato seller, which is someone that spends their labor time buying tomatoes from farms as a risk and selling them in the market. They own means of logistics, which for anyone not stuck in 1862, would consider essentially a means of production as well, as it takes an input and renders is viable to trade for a medium of exchange. Does a fisherman owning a boat mean she owns the means of production when it’s fish spawning grounds that make fish? It’s a stupid argument to cling to one you’ve already written your first PoliSci paper about it and get it.
Look, everything is connected, and there is no terminal point of anything from which anarcho-socialist magic can magically arise and flow down to make some post-consumption utopia. It’s a circle with no beginning and no end. You can’t force economic change to change human behavior, and Marx’s ideas have famously failed hard. Over and over. Spectacularly.
You’re taking about a 30 generation cultural change that you won’t ever see.
It would certainly help a lot if you could tone down your condescending attitude a little.
I fail to see where anything you write is an actual argument against my distinction between different forms of working with the means to produce something. Yes, I’ve misread your vendor as a farmer, but that’s not a reason to go ad hominem.
Marx’s definition of “the means of production” is both not in tune with how anything has ever worked, and ignores that Marx basically used real estate as the definition because he was closer to European feudalism than us. Marx grew up and spent his uni years as a subject of the Prussian Kingdom, and industrialization and land ownership were entirely different in his time.
Context matters. And apologies for being condescending, but it pisses me off to no end when people wax poetic about some pastrolaist socialist agrarian sunshine butterfly state when if you’ve never experienced it, actually sucked and everyone hated it who was in it, even in the modern era.
Bro what?
Are we just supposed to believe what you’re saying? Because I have easy counter-argument. You’re out of touch with what Marx wrote and if say-so if enough proof then this statement is proven and you’re wrong. Now, unless you can actually prove this statement we can argue this point.
This literally does not change the original argument. Do you think farmers do not need an input? What disqualifies a farmer from being a small business owner?
Do you think they didn’t have food vendors in the 19th century? Do you think a tomato vendor is a 20th or 21st century concept that invalidates this supposed 19th century argument?
I guess this is another “we just have to believe you” points. Just because you don’t understand Marx’s definition of capitalism doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Why is this even a point?
I’m not 100% sure what you’re even trying to say here but if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, Marx would agree with you here.
I guess you also don’t believe logistics existed before 1863. Also your logistics argument doesn’t contradict Marx. And a fisherman owning a fishing boat would mean they own the means of production because the boat is A TOOL to catch fish. The fish don’t magically jump into the fishermans hands. They need to be caught, which requires labor and to ease that labor tools are used. Fish existing doesn’t make a fisherman a fisherman, otherwise I’d be a lumberjack simply because there’s a forest near my home.
I suggest you actually try to understand Marx before you start mindlessly criticizing something.
I understand Marx fine. He was an academic who grew up the privileged son of a lawyer, and never spent a day of his life worrying about how he was going to feed his family by working on a farm or in a factory.
His ideas about land alone being enough to be considered “means of production” are informed by 19th century feudalist-cum-post-feudaliast Europe, and the transition point between the Prussian Kingdom and a unified and nascent German state as it industrialized.
His view of industrialization is like that of Upston Sinclair: “Holy shit, WTF? This is terrible.” Trauma and secondary trauma informed by other people. But as an academic his understanding of how the economy works at the level of what was a rapidly changing factory scene. 21st century economics don’t fit 19th century ideals.
And you as a lumberjack is the perfect example. You might own a saw and live near a forest. Cut all the trees you want. Who will buy them without access? So now you need a road. But your 19th century horse cart can’t drag a 400kg log anywhere to sell it, so you now need to buy a truck and loading system. Only now too you have an actual logging setup that gets your product of raw timber to a mill for sale. Marx calls all these things the means of production, which is cute, but he assumes that the social whole is different.
The road needs to be graded and maintained, your saw oiled and sharpened, your truck maintained. Which all also needs labor to happen. As was the cries of trucking unions when the Teamsters formed, you are just part of the machine. Which means that when you get down to it and nitpick, everything and everyone is a part of the means of production of something else. There are no gaps and no bourgeoisie locking up every critical aspect of the social whole, and small businesses as the largest employer in the US mean that Marx’s theory doesn’t stand up to reality anymore. The end user and end consumer provides demand, which is as necessary as the road and truck and mill for you as a faux lumberjack. Demand is a human non-labor aspect of the social whole we all have, which is more important than the means of production. Just ask the bourgeois board of Blockbuster Video, or a small local newspaper.
Right. There’s so much wrong here that I won’t even bother correcting you on everything. You start off not by addressing his points but by trying to character assassinate so you wouldn’t have to address his points. Absolutely disingenuous.
Then between your ramblings you make statements that Marx would disagree with (like land alone being enough to be the means of production) or you try to disprove Marx by stating something Marx himself used as a foundation for the criticism of capitalism (like everything and everyone being a part of the means of production of something else). And finally you make apparently clear you have not read even a summary of his biggest works, Das Kapital, because you say stupid shit like this:
Das Kapital goes into great lengths specifically to prove those “non-existent” gaps exist. They existed 2 centuries ago and they still exist. And the fact that you think his criticism does not apply to small businesses is just another example of how little you actually understand what Marx wrote.
Well, I doubt we were ever going to agree, even to disagree.
I will say that Marx’s ideas have been tried and tested and have never held up to real world application. Bemoan capitalism all you like, then explain how the Holodomor happened.
Anyways, have a pleasant day.
Of course we not going to agree. The only way we could ever come to an agreement is if you acknowledge that you’re talking out of your ass and considering you haven’t gotten that memo yet I doubt you’ll ever get it.
Oh really, what ideas exactly?
I’ll bemoan capitalism all I like and I don’t need to explain how Holodomor happened because I’ll happily bemoan Holodomor as well. Just because the soviets were pieces of shit doesn’t mean I have to be team capitalism.
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