Post AvEhCxowgQID83r4TY by dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
(DIR) More posts by dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
(DIR) Post #AvEgxEjw0hxMyB0nnk by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-17T22:59:41Z
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Karl Marx coined the term "capitalism" by analogy with feudalism. To describe societies where monopoly power, and resulting wealth concentration, allows monopolists to become aristocrats. That's what radical lefties like me are pointing to when we use the word.But common usage of the word has drifted so far from its origins that it usually refers to any economy with money and markets. Resulting in a lot of conversations where people are talking right past each other.(1/2)#capitalism
(DIR) Post #AvEhCxowgQID83r4TY by dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-06-17T23:02:26Z
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@strypey I literally had this discussion on Andrew Gelman's blog a couple weeks ago, and literally PhD Economists admitted they didn't know the origin of this word.
(DIR) Post #AvEhFs9kCTsmQgyDsu by GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai
2025-06-17T23:03:02Z
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@strypey :100a: indeed, and the funniest part of all of this is the flea market fundamentalist just happened to turn out the most ardent anti-capitalist ever (to use the meaning it has come to have).Economists like Milton Friedman constantly confounded the two together. That capitalism was freedom liberty that capitalism was a market based economy.I am perfectly willing to take the word capitalism in find it irretrievably to the likes of US healthcare, to Boeing, to Elon Musk.
(DIR) Post #AvEhbnnR5g7tHKzbvc by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-17T23:07:00Z
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Over the last few decades we've seen a plethora of novel terms - corporatism, oligarchy, enshittification, and technofeudalism - cooked up to describe pretty much the same dynamics that Marx created "capitalism" to describe. I can see why.I've found there's so little consensus now on what "capitalism" means that unless it's explicitly defined beforehand, it derails more conversations than it facilitates. So even though I still consider myself an anti-capitalist, I seldom use the word.(2/2)
(DIR) Post #AvEiWieEu8djokpb2e by AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social
2025-06-17T23:17:10Z
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@strypey For better or worse, the meanings of words change over time. To use an arcane definition (or, worse, an entirely contrived "definition" that has NEVER been generally accepted, as far too many people do) is to avoid having an honest discussion regarding the ideas and principles at hand.
(DIR) Post #AvEiZuNPkopV3uTxJ2 by GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai
2025-06-17T23:04:56Z
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@strypey Capitalism is US healthcare taking all your money and then denying you care.Capitalism is what happened to Boeing.Capitalism is the pay pal mafia and their ruthless psychopathy. But most especially demonstrate the capitalism is anti-market and anti-democracy.What Milton Friedman built with false equivalence can be pulled apart by accurate observation.
(DIR) Post #AvEiZvGiRD47pQM7VI by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-17T23:17:52Z
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell > capitalism is anti-market and anti-democracyThis is the key point I try to get across to pro-market libertarians. To be deeply pro-market is to be anticapitalist, by the original definition that the libertarian left use. We're all on the same side. Fighting for free economic association, and against any concentration of wealth and power used to impose economic rents.
(DIR) Post #AvEj0YRnOXvKrtEmUS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-17T23:22:43Z
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@dlakelan > PhD Economists admitted they didn't know the origin of this wordPart of the Powell Memo strategy was to purge academic economics departments of people who wouldn't sing from the neoclassical songbook, including the people who used to teach heterodox economic history. Replacing it with Just So stories like the myth of barter, and distortions of classical economists like Adam Smith (eg implying "free markets" mean free of regulation, rather than free of economic rents).
(DIR) Post #AvEjTzXZk3vjIIyfNA by GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai
2025-06-17T23:27:59Z
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@strypey It’s hard to tell with current usage of libertarian because that is yet another left-wing word that has been expropriated.The consistent feature of a right wing version of libertarianism is the desire to shed all forms of control on the individual without companion requirement that one’s own behavior cannot coerce another.It’s freedom for me and nothing for thee. They never get called on that second half and they need to be pressured with it.How do you deal with the psychopaths?
(DIR) Post #AvElbLTEnxTzFDaCHY by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-17T23:51:39Z
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To insist that a words has one fixed meaning, when it's observable that they have multiple widely used meanings, is also to ...@AlexanderKingsbury > avoid having an honest discussion regarding the ideas and principles at hand
(DIR) Post #AvEm8aWhqdrpUo3ZKK by AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social
2025-06-17T23:57:44Z
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@strypey Definitely a claim you can make. Is there anyone you can point to who insists that "capitalism" has "one fixed meaning"?
(DIR) Post #AvEmlxRoYtLzsVXd68 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T00:04:49Z
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(1/2)@GhostOnTheHalfShell > libertarian because that is yet another left-wing word that has been expropriated100%. Just as the word "anarchist", which in the 19th century meant much the same thing as "democrat", was turned into a boogieman in the 20th. It's meaning seems to have been rehabilitated somewhat in the digital age, where there are many examples of systems with no central authority working at scale (eg net, web, fediverse).
(DIR) Post #AvEmwNcS6xhlwZUFMm by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T00:06:46Z
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(2/2)The word "libertarian", like" freedom", is too important to give up without a fight, and I reckon they can be similarly rehabilitated.
(DIR) Post #AvEn5JofcUegktSpKC by n_dimension@infosec.exchange
2025-06-18T00:08:21Z
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@strypey @GhostOnTheHalfShell Statists are working hard to de-legitimise #anarchy as some sort of societal collapse.All that means is that there is no oppressive regime to dictate what people do.There are still laws, there is still order. Only it comes from the people, not from an arbitrary Moloch that is largely unrepresentative of the people.
(DIR) Post #AvEn9TME5VCZVO8koC by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T00:09:07Z
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(2/2)The word "libertarian", like" freedom", is too important to give up without a fight, and I reckon they can be similarly rehabilitated.> How do you deal with the psychopaths?Don't build political-economies hierarchies that reward them with promotion at the expense of empaths (eg corporations, most political parties), and don't let them accumulate unlimited wealth?
(DIR) Post #AvEnWuW3HNPOOcucLo by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T00:13:19Z
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@strypey Hand in hand with defining what we mean by "capitalism", I find the vaguely defined term of "property" problematic. I some of my in standards for land administration domain, we have come to replacing the term property with the "3 R's", Rights, Restrictions, and Responsibilities. The libertarian notion of property ios rather unrealistically totalitarian as per Locke (likely more so). Nothing we own - including our own selfs - are free of restrictions and responsibilities alongside rights
(DIR) Post #AvEqHQKvVGCsJb10ls by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-18T00:44:09Z
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@strypey Marx not only did not coin the term, he didn’t (or rarely) use it and the sense that you use is usually attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850. That aside your main point, that people use the term in conflicting ways causing confusion is spot on.
(DIR) Post #AvEzuopjG2B3AiHawi by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T02:32:05Z
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@MartyFouts > Marx not only did not coin the termThere's a difference between creation and coinage of a popular term. Pedants have similarly noted that people had written "enshittification" before Cory Doctorow, but it was his usage popularised it.AFAIK it was English translations of Marx that got "capitalism" into common use, and his definition was the dominant one until about 50 years ago. Happy to read references that indicate otherwise.
(DIR) Post #AvF19poQ05LmVPOTL6 by kai@ajin.la
2025-06-18T02:45:59Z
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@strypey hear, hear
(DIR) Post #AvFEW32imwT7Ja0SA4 by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-18T05:15:37Z
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@strypey Wikipedia entry on capitalism says Marx never used the word. It’s hard to coin a term if you don’t use it yourself. Perhaps you could give me a reference in Das Kapital that contradicts Wikipedia?https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CapitalismAnyway, nearly every word in English has multiple definitions and definitely “capitalism” was used to mean different things at least 100 years ago.
(DIR) Post #AvFWRxhQVmmYl7FNbM by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T08:36:42Z
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@MartyFouts > Wikipedia entry on capitalism says Marx never used the wordThat's because he wrote in German.
(DIR) Post #AvFfXvfzqTp7oFUxs0 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T10:18:35Z
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Me:> Karl Marx coined the term "capitalism" by analogy with feudalismA couple of comments have challenged this claim, which I thought I'd got from a few sources, including David Graeber, Dmitry Kleiner and c4ss org. Fact-checking myself produced inconclusive results so far.Can anyone clarify?#history #HistoryOfPhilosophy
(DIR) Post #AvFgFfl4OFIxBKjJIW by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-18T10:26:31Z
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However none of my critics have yet produced references that show "capitalism" being used interchangeably with "free enterprise system" before the Powell Memo. Which AFAIK was when that usage began, as a strategic move. Implicitly redefining anticapitalists - opponents of monopoliaed industries giving rise to neo-feudalism - as enemies of "free enterprise" and "free markets" (free now of regulation, not of economic rents, as defined by Adam Smith).(2/2)
(DIR) Post #AvFv3bftFHHAM20mae by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-18T13:12:14Z
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@strypey So you are now saying that he couldn’t have coined “capitalism ” because he wrote in German but it’s an English word. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather admit he didn’t use the word?The German word is Kapitalismus and he didn’t use it either.
(DIR) Post #AvGsGsvKJtqmuYpdaa by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-19T00:15:53Z
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@MartyFouts See; https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/114702019807399453I'll be more circumspect in making specific claims about the etymology until I've been able to confirm it.But the core point of the thread remains. For most of the 20th century "capitalism" was a pejorative used only by its opponents. Including libertarians who championed free enterprise (the phrase used by Adam Smith for a system free of economic rents). Even the Powell Memo uses "free enterprise" and "American economic system", not "capitalism".
(DIR) Post #AvGwVifV89zPGWl6NE by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-19T01:03:19Z
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@strypey Nearly half of the 20th century. The US government started pro capitalism/ pro consumerism propaganda campaigns in late 1945 as a means of “jump starting” the post war economy and as part of its anti communist rhetoric.
(DIR) Post #AvHM4tCGTYSAuNx07s by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-19T05:49:50Z
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@MartyFouts > The US government started pro capitalism/ pro consumerism propaganda campaigns in late 1945Got some references for those campaigns using "capitalism" in a positive sense? As opposed to, say, "democracy" or "free enterprise" or "free market". The Powell Memo of 1971 was a manifesto for such a campaign, and as I say, it didn't use "capitalism". Which I expect it would if the positive usage has been established a generation beforehand.
(DIR) Post #AvI167nRmAtObC3AYK by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-19T13:29:24Z
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@strypey Here is an example from 1948. It is part of a series of “educational” films. https://archive.org/details/Capitali1948
(DIR) Post #AvLKIIddm0LmIorVBY by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T03:48:28Z
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(1/2)@MartyFouts > Here is an example from 1948Touché. I could argue the point, by saying that this propaganda was being made from mid-late 20th century, precisely *because* the dominant view of capitalism was negative. After all, in the 1950s the experience of the Great Depression was still fresh, especially for working people.But then the onus is me to give you a reference to back that up. Rather than dig for one, I'll just admit that I'm speculating now, and will investigate further.
(DIR) Post #AvLLDMGaxK8M3tI3Si by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T03:59:03Z
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(2/2)My questionable history narratives aside, I hope we can agree on the core point of the OP, as one of those fresh-faced USAmerican youth put it;"Capitalism means different things to different people."In the 1990s, anticapitalists often advocated for explicitly naming "capitalism" as the problem in all activist messaging. To me that's preaching to the choir. About as strategically useful as naming your rubbish bin "Grandma", and telling your kids off for not taking Grandma to the curb.
(DIR) Post #AvLMBIj7FKviSRDIpM by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T04:09:53Z
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Me:> none of my critics have yet produced references that show "capitalism" being used interchangeably with "free enterprise system" before the Powell MemoOk, now someone has;https://mastodon.online/@MartyFouts/114710266803391658I stand corrected. But my questionable historical summaries aside, these comment threads demonstrates the point I was making in the OP; "capitalism" has neither a fixed nor commonly agreed meaning. It serves no useful purpose in discussion, unless it's defined before it's deployed.#MeaCulpa
(DIR) Post #AvLMrzMd70kCrE3Dm4 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T04:17:34Z
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@dlakelan> PhD Economists admitted they didn't know the origin of this wordTurns out I don't either. Do you?Seems I may have been wrong that it was Marx, as there are examples of usage preceding him;https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalismOr maybe I was half right, that it was translators of Marx using "capitalism" in place of the German terms he used in Das Kapital that popularised it. The etymology of "capitalist" suggests that term certainly wasn't coined as a compliment;https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalist
(DIR) Post #AvLN7UCajsiwqNkH32 by stman@mastodon.social
2025-06-21T04:20:19Z
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@strypey The same applies with most of the topics we debate as crypto-anarchist situationists. All named concepts made out of digital technologies, and most words we commonly use are actually arbitrary concepts, not theories, needing precise definition before interesting discussions and debates can take place.Some of us would push as far as saying that this situation is no accident, knowing people almost never make this effort & some cleverly know how to take advantage of it.
(DIR) Post #AvLNs5Oslk9HX6iNnc by dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-06-21T04:28:46Z
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@strypeyIts definitely the case that it was used to refer to the accumulation of power over others through extraction of rents by owners of property in the original context though right? Like as opposed to the post cold war propaganda version something like "a system of markets and free trade mediated by money transactions" or similar.Ricardo described the concept of a landowner capturing the "Ricardian rent" around 1809
(DIR) Post #AvLS3FqQg3VYvZBGXA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T05:15:35Z
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@MartyFouts > So you are now saying that he couldn’t have coined “capitalism ” because he wrote in German but it’s an English wordJust for clarity, my specific argument was that although Marx wrote mostly (entirely?) in German;> it was English translations of Marx that got "capitalism" into common useBut I'm climbing down from that claim too, at least for now. It may be that people translating Marx chose "capitalism" and "capitalist" for uses already established;https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalist
(DIR) Post #AvM2IgSBcn6G9CUvcu by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T12:01:50Z
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(1/2)@dlakelan > it was used to refer to the accumulation of power over othersThat's my understanding, but I'm trying to find solid sources, so I can back it up when challenged. I may be making a classic mistake in seeking a single point of origin though. We see parallel evolution in species, why not in human concepts?Etymonline did help me out with the origin of "capitalist", which it says originated as a pejorative in the French Revolution;https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalistSo ...
(DIR) Post #AvM2qE1roRwjpuBHNY by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-21T12:07:55Z
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(2/2)> Ricardo described the concept of a landowner capturing the "Ricardian rent"I haven't read Ricardo myself, but if he disliked economic rents as much as Adam Smith, I'm guessing he used "capitalism" in the negative, riffing off that French Revolution usage.I've read that Marx was aware of, and influenced by Ricardo's work. So his usage may have borrowed by the English speakers translating Marx, or they may have adapted it from "capitalist" too. Would be good to know.
(DIR) Post #AvMRXDnivzcmTrbIoK by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-21T16:44:27Z
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@strypey You could argue the point but there is documentation of the motivation for the propaganda and it points to setting up capitalism in opposition to communism rather than any urge to overturn a negative view of capitalism. This is not surprising in the US of the day because anti socialism propaganda, mainly intended to quash union formation had already been very effective, even during the Depression. The US view of socialism had already diverged from Europe by WWII
(DIR) Post #AvMS9comN0DX4dPGWO by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-21T16:51:28Z
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@strypey Yes, I agree. It’s why I always try to get people to define capitalism before discussing it with them.I do find the tendency to blame “capitalism” and be satisfied that one has explained the problem to be useless. Capitalism, in the disparaging sense is a symptom and not the underlying problem. Accumulating excess power has been a problem in practice in every economic system including all of those currently offered as replacement for capitalism.
(DIR) Post #AvPDS1am5EOZHe3F32 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-23T00:50:55Z
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@MartyFouts > I do find the tendency to blame “capitalism” and be satisfied that one has explained the problem to be uselessPreach!
(DIR) Post #AvPDfLLPxKuEJDDdmy by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2025-06-23T00:53:21Z
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@MartyFouts > it points to setting up capitalism in opposition to communism rather than any urge to overturn a negative view of capitalismAt the risk of splitting hairs, this seems like the same thing to me. But I'd be happy to read any historical references you can be bothered chucking my way. I would like to understand to understand all this better.
(DIR) Post #AvQGyLCSGFZQlMj37g by MartyFouts@mastodon.online
2025-06-23T13:04:56Z
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@strypey The links I had have bit rotted. I will see if I can find anything else.