>There's nothing inherently capitalist about corruption. It's a property of power, not capitalism.
That's the same argument that says "USSR/DDR/Cambodia/NK/etc was no real communism".
We might excuse a few diversions from a political/economic system, but after some point, like with anything else, capitalism is what capitalism does time and again.
Not sure this makes sense to me? There's corruption in every system, regardless of the ideology behind it. Are you saying there's no corruption in communism? Because I have news for you, if you do.
It seems like corruption is simply endemic to the human condition. It has nothing to do with capitalism/communism/etc. Whatever the system happens to be, we will find a way to corrupt it.
It doesn't appear to be what this person is saying. Rather, that we can't deflect from flaws in ideology having to do with the system in place, and the issues that stem from that.
Having said that, I find it to be rather unproductive and pessimistic to assert corruption is endemic to humanity and has nothing to do with ideology. Instead I would argue that the nature of the corruption has everything to do with the ideological foundations of said system.
> Having said that, I find it to be rather unproductive and pessimistic to assert corruption is endemic to humanity and has nothing to do with ideology. Instead I would argue that the nature of the corruption has everything to do with the ideological foundations of said system.
This kind of blank-slate, "New Soviet Man" idea has been tested and found lacking.
> Instead I would argue that the nature of the corruption has everything to do with the ideological foundations of said system.
How so? Is corruption different somehow depending on the ideological foundations of the system? Corruption is corruption. Every system has rules. When you subvert those rules for personal gain, that's corruption.
>How so? Is corruption different somehow depending on the ideological foundations of the system?
Of course.
Different systems enable, empower, and encourage, different types of corruption.
(Corruption being an abstract word, in programming terms there's no corruption "class", just corruption instances. So the nature of those corruption instances depend on the classes defined in the program -e.g. capitalism.c- you're running...).
(And of course share some basic corruption types, present in all societies/systems, e.g. theft -- the POSIX of corruption).
We've started the thread with concrete examples...
Check the @pjc50, @Traster etc comments at the top.
And @humanrebar already put this in abstract form: "It's worth noting that luminary capitalists like Adam Smith were very much concerned with privately enabled rent seekers in addition to government enabled ones"
> Check the @pjc50, @Traster etc comments at the top.
Those are specific examples of corruption here in the US. Are you asserting that you wouldn't be able to find the same corruption, for example, in China?
Please provide a single example of corruption that can occur under capitalism, but wouldn't occur under another economic system. Because I'm asserting they do not exist.
> And @humanrebar already put this in abstract form: "It's worth noting that luminary capitalists like Adam Smith were very much concerned with privately enabled rent seekers in addition to government enabled ones"
Yes, he was perfectly right to. There are always private parties. Even under communism.
>Not sure this makes sense to me? There's corruption in every system, regardless of the ideology behind it
I'm saying that some types of corruption are endemic to certain systems. And if we see these types of corruption time and again on a system, then the system enables that type of corruption.
>It seems like corruption is simply endemic to the human condition. It has nothing to do with capitalism/communism/etc. Whatever the system happens to be, we will find a way to corrupt it.
My argument wasn't about corruption in general (which we will always have under every system), but about a certain type of enterprise-related corruption, that can't be brushed away by "no true Scotsman/capitalism", as if 'truly adhering' to the ways of capitalism would eliminate it.
> a certain type of enterprise-related corruption, that can't be brushed away
If a system of government promotes X then there will appear X-related corruption. Capitalist governments promote enterprises, thus appears enterprise-related correction. Governments which promote the church will foster church-related corruption, etc. etc..
I don't see how this observation about capitalism is a particularly interesting one. Perhaps you could make some ground with "and capitalism uniquely allows this corruption to flourish on a scale never seen before" but that's not what I've seen in these kind of kneejerk criticisms.
Capitalist governments promote enterprises, thus appears enterprise-related correction. Governments which promote the church will foster church-related corruption, etc. etc..
Governments which are the party will promote party corruption. [looks at China] Yup. Checks out.
I wasn't making a no true capitalism argument. I was responding to the implicit straw man that ties capitalism to apathy or complicity about corruption. Capitalists care about private corruption. They always have. That's why there are laws and norms around fraud, nepotism, embezzling, and white collar crime in general.
Just because people are creative and invent new ways to be corrupt doesn't mean captilist societies are indifferent.
I would expect people skeptical towards corporations to see some common ground here.
It is. That's the whole point of having systems to regulate it. When those systems are overridden by, in effect, collective freeloaders, any system breaks down.
> We might excuse a few diversions from a political/economic system, but after some point, like with anything else, capitalism is what capitalism does time and again.
And by that standard, I'll take capitalism every day of the week:
It's worth noting that almost no traditional anti-capitalist or Communist argument relies on doubting the extensive evidence that widespread lifting from poverty is the result of capitalism and even fewer would disagree with the fact that such development has occured under capitalism. Marx famously declared that workers must be "doubly free": firstly free to sell their labour how they like, and secondly freed from the means of production and the products they make.
A good deal of research justifiably focuses on what life is actually like and the nature of exploitation in capitalist societies, and especially under neoliberalism. I'd point you to the work of D.K. Foley, Dumenil and Levy, Roberto Veneziani, Naoki Yoshihara, G.A. Cohen and John Roemer on those points.
Yes, perhaps Marxism was done a disservice by trying to impose it on agrarian, aristocratic civilizations like Russia and China instead of industrialized, capitalist civilizations like Germany and the United States. The history of Soviet industrialization under Stalin almost reads more like a Marxist caricature of industrial capitalism. And it was probably also done a disservice by the fact that when it was imposed on industrialized countries, it was done so at force and after significant devastation and confiscation of any remaining valuable industrial equipment (e.g. East Germany). However, it's also clear that 19th century industrial capitalism never really led to Marxist revolution.
The USSR never had communism. The official party line always was that it is a socialist state, on the way to communism. And once they reach full communism things will be really good.
Coldtea was referencing the very protestation you cited uncritically, so your comment added little to the conversation and appeared to be missing the point.
It was offical party line and tought in schools though. It was in school curriculum that USSR was a socialist system which should eventually lead to a communist society but it was not yet communism but more of a staging area which should lead there in the end.
Right, but the argument from the other side is that "real communism" can't be reached. It's a myth. What you get with the Soviets is the real communism.
That sort of ignores the actual theory of communism, but so far it's a pretty accurate assessment.
The point is that exploitation (of the people, the system, etc) for personal gain has nothing to do with capitalism, or socialism, or any other system.
Some people will do that in any system, it's human nature.
Now, in a system that has the rule of law you cannot be prevented to do something that isn't illegal. This is actually the best (or least bad) system we've come up with.
> Now, in a system that has the rule of law you cannot be prevented to do something that isn't illegal.
In a systme that has the rule of law, the lawmakers can choose to make certain behaviours legal if or when they harm the society. For example, private and corporate tax loopholes can be closed, and corrupt behavior can be outlawed or a liability instituted that the harmed party can claim.
It's childish not to blame capitalist governments for allowing certain kinds of corruption that are left to fester.
Capitalism cannot function without people exploiting the system for personal gain. If some CEO decided to stop trying to make as much money as possible but rather commit their resources to providing some sort of public good, they would be succinctly ousted by the board. Or their firm would tank, because companies that don't put profit first can't survive on the market.
Jeff Bezos can amass $100 billion in wealth and donate it to philanthropic causes, but if he decided to open source AWS or pay his workers a living wage, or pay publishers a reasonable price for books, etc, he wouldn't have $100 billion in the first place.
> Or their firm would tank, because companies that don't put profit first can't survive on the market.
I would argue that this is not strictly speaking true. There are successful companies which don't (seemingly) put profit first. Examples include Morning Star (tomatoes, not the newspaper)[1], Mondragon[2] and perhaps most co-operatives in general.
One aspect that is often overlooked is that it is necessary to balance the books. This is an universal requirement when resources aren't unlimited and it applies to physics, biology, and economics.
Capitalism very clearly and unapologetically forces this, while some people imagine that, somehow, that constraint does not apply in other systems.
> “Capitalism cannot function without people exploiting the system for personal gain.”
no, that’s too strong a claim. capitalism’s innovation is that it redirects greed into productive uses and allows personal gain in the process. so it explicitly accounts for our greed but doesn’t depend on it. it allows more pro-social forms of trade and competition as well.
the reason it seems so heartless/exploitative is that highly competitive markets push the competitors to extremes and money is used to keep score. and people cheat easily; some not to lose, some to win at all costs. (even in non-highly competitive markets this happens if status is highly sought by owners/execs)
I often wonder about this, and here’s my (u/dys)topian vision:
The top 5% of children in some measure of ideal traits for just ruling are whisked away to a bubble where they are educated for the purpose of governing, with no opportunity to ever rejoin the general populace. They have absolute power but no opportunity to benefit themselves or their families.
I'm saying a small number of people amassing a large amount of wealth through exploitation of the labor of others for personal gain is not what drives a socialist economy. Corruption and exploitation exists in all societies, but in capitalism it is a necessary element for the function to survive. There is no non-exploitative, fair capitalism.
Capitalism is the only system that limits the corruption. Unless the people are being forced to work/buy/sell with amazon, they are by definition not being exploited. Bezos is the richest person in the world because he provided a better service with a focus on long term profit. The world is different now because of it and people think its better because they are choosing to do it.
Bezos didn't build Amazon or AWS, his workers did. He contributed as CEO, but the work was done by thousands of smart, hard-working and talented people around the world, but they don't own the company. Bezos's salary is just $80,000 a year -- his wealth doesn't come from the work he does for Amazon but the fact that he is the one who owns the capital and reaps the profit.
That's correct, but why does he have the resources to do it? Because he came from a rich family with capital to invest. Why isn't capital distributed evenly across all workers, not just of Amazon, but in an entire society, so that everyone shares in the profits instead of one man? What is exceptional about the fact that he had the capital to make an initial investment, why does that mean he should be a billionaire? We invested collectively in the technology that created the internet in the first place through publicly funded research, and yet we do not see the material benefits, only a small few do.
What would it mean for capital to be distributed evenly? Under such a system, what would be the advantage for someone to save and invest rather than consume? (After all, on "turn 2", the capital is going to all be redistributed so it's even again. Then again on turn 3...)
Could you sketch out your idea a bit more? At the moment, I'm not getting it.
>Unless the people are being forced to work/buy/sell with amazon, they are by definition not being exploited.
"forced" can happen in more ways than one. Workers in third world sweatshops aren't forced by law to work there, but they are forced by capitalism to work there to feed their families.
Employees who freely take the best option available to them are not made better off if that option is removed.
I don't believe that Bezos or other employers are acting selfishly when them employ people, even when they make a margin on that labor. (In fact, if they don't make a margin on that labor, they would be better off to stop employing that person, meaning the situation where the employee and employer both make money on the deal is the most stable state.)
They are made better off if their wages are improved, ie if they organize and struggle for a minimum wage or a union. Employers will work their employees as much as possible for as little pay as possible, only the law and organized struggle prevents them from paying less. Capitalism encourages businesses to reduce their costs as much as possible, including labor costs, so obviously they will do anything they can to pay people less unless they fight back
That's the same argument that says "USSR/DDR/Cambodia/NK/etc was no real communism".
We might excuse a few diversions from a political/economic system, but after some point, like with anything else, capitalism is what capitalism does time and again.