Has capitalism been a positive force in history?

[rousseau]

Sounds like a deep question, but I believe that when you frame economic models in the context of long-range history, asking whether capitalism has been a positive force is like asking "has the wind had a good effect on the weather vane it pushes around". In other words, a global system has just kind of .. evolved into being, and is happening, is what it is, and it will continue to change over time, there was no real conscious mechanism that led to the way things are. So whether it's been a positive force is irrelevant, because there could have been no other way.

That said, one can look at how the world has worked, analyse it, and make conscious decisions about how it should work in the future, so we can still make a value judgement on how the past has gone.

With that in mind, what do you think? Has our predominant capitalistic model led us down a positive path? Could there have been any other way?

 

[Bronzeage]

It's very unlikely the computer I used to write this post would have ever come about in absolute monarchy, where one person controls all property and means of production.

 

[arkirk]

It's very unlikely the computer I used to write this post would have ever come about in absolute monarchy, where one person controls all property and means of production.

Are you forgetting that Capitalism and Democracy are two different things? One of the problems with extreme concentration of ownership or political power in the hands of a few is that it leaves only a few with license or power to do any thinking. It is democracy not capitalism that led to these things.

 

[NobleSavage]

Capitalism sucks, but it beats all the other systems. The best combo seems to be a welfare state on top of capitalism.

 

[DBT]

I voted 'other' on the basis that capitalism has both positive and negative attributes.

 

[fromderinside]

I voted 'other' on the basis that capitalism has both positive and negative attributes.

So we should interpret your response to the question has capitalism been a positive force in history is actually yes even though you try to introduce negative as something worth considering as well. Perhaps you ducked because you didn't want to justify 'positive in history'?

As I understand history of human capitalism it is a narrative on the consequences of the evolution of humans with respect to social material commerce.

Given all evolutionary threads ultimately wind up failing I find it hard for any commerce theory to be positive vis a vis human evolution since it is a force for increasing the conversion of resources for human comfort and sustenance which must ultimately degrade that resource supply with degenerative consequences predicted by the second law of thermodynamics.

Yeah I over reach. Sure kiddies capitalism will make the human world better forever yeah, yeah, yeah. Amen.

 

[Jokodo]

I voted yes. It has been a positive force*. It's past it's use-by date, though.

*I'll let Karl Marx explain in what way:

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

<snip>

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

 

[Perspicuo]

I voted 'other' on the basis that capitalism has both positive and negative attributes.

Ditto.

 

[untermensche]

....Has our predominant capitalistic model led us down a positive path? Could there have been any other way?

It flows directly from Feudalism and Slavery. It is a departure from those systems however.

But being so close it adopts many of the accepted dogmas. Like economic institutions should be run as top down dictatorships.

This dogma is still with us. And it is destructive and of course it could be different.

 

[Bronzeage]

It's very unlikely the computer I used to write this post would have ever come about in absolute monarchy, where one person controls all property and means of production.

Are you forgetting that Capitalism and Democracy are two different things? One of the problems with extreme concentration of ownership or political power in the hands of a few is that it leaves only a few with license or power to do any thinking. It is democracy not capitalism that led to these things.

It must have slipped my mind. Capitalism is predicated upon the concept of private ownership of land and resources. I don't see capitalism as being in conflict with each other.

 

[Duke Leto]

It's an "ism" question, so it's basically a waste of time.

Almost everyone has differing definitions of "Capitalism" that don't match up with each other well and emphasize differing properties that may or may not be fundamental to other people's understanding of the concept. So arguing about the "ism" as if it exists outside of their heads is pointless.

Arkirk's definition clearly is something along the line of "Emphasis on the bottom line individual profit so that all externalities are heaped onto the community in general, to the loss of the whole."

Bronzeage appears to be going with something like "Private ownership of land and capital."

Since as far as Bronzeage is concerned, the "Capitalism" as he understands it is a net positive, while for Arkirk it's an obvious negative, the argument will just go around and around without going anywhere because they are actually talking about different things.

 

[tupac chopra]

Sure it has, but it may be nearing it's end in some ways.
The Waning of the Modern Ages

The “arc” of capitalism, according to this school, is about 600 years long, from 1500 to 2100. It is our particular (mis)fortune to be living through the beginning of the end, the disintegration of capitalism as a world system. It was mostly commercial capital in the sixteenth century, evolving into industrial capital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and then moving on to financial capital—money created by money itself, and by speculation in currency—in the twentieth and twenty-first. In dialectical fashion, it will be the very success of the system that eventually does it in.

The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, during which time the medieval world began to come apart and be replaced by the modern one. In his classic study of the period, The Waning of the Middle Ages, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga depicted the time as one of depression and cultural exhaustion—like our own age, not much fun to live through. One reason for this is that the world is literally perched over an abyss. What lies ahead is largely unknown, and to have to hover over an abyss for a long time is, to put it colloquially, a bit of a drag. The same thing was true at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire as well, on the ruins of which the feudal system slowly arose.

 

[Duke Leto]

So we're basing our arguments from authority in the "science of history" on an untenured expatriate Sociology professor in a political magazine that published opinion pieces by Castro?

Sure, why the fuck not?

And another freaking cyclicalist to boot, claiming the aegis of Marc Bloch no less?

I've read Marc Bloch, I've admired Marc Bloch's attention to evidence and spade work over pompous "Theory". The Bloch who founded the Annales School would look at this schmuck trying to shoehorn modernity into a cyclical pattern as a pompous bullshit artist.

...the mania for making judgments (is a) satanic enemy of true history.

 

[ralfy]

The global capitalist economy will eventually weaken and fall apart because of combinations of crises, including increasing debt, peak oil, and global warming coupled with environmental damage.

 

[boneyard bill]

We had dictatorships and despotic governments throughout history, but the common people were mostly dirt poor even on the rare occasions when they were self-governing. So I'll take the prosperity that capitalism has brought even if it does lead to crony capitalism and a new despotism and eventual decline. At least we've got stuff for now. The Roman Empire without the bread and circuses would have been a whole lot more difficult to endure.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Capitalism in theory is about relatively unhindered access to capital. Which is great, but open to great abuse. Social Capitalism is probably the best system to keep it in line.

 

[Underseer]

That depends entirely on what you mean by capitalism.

I would argue that the unregulated capitalism espoused by protofascists (both conservative and libertarian) is ultimately anti-capitalist and should probably be given a different name. Unregulated capitalism results in wealth concentration that increases over time. If this process is allowed to continue unabated, eventually money is not being exchanged through enough hands to maintain a healthy capitalist economy, and you get exactly the kind of collapse we experienced in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The economic troubles we face now are most likely the result of a prolonged slow crash of the same kind we had in the early to mid 1900s: not enough wealth has trickled down, and now the population has less disposable income to buy all the stuff that corporations want to sell.

This is one of the reasons I refer to protofascists as neufeudalists. If they get their way, we will inevitably end up with an society that is made up of a very small number of very rich people ruling over a very large number of poor people. Whatever sort of economy exists then will not resemble anything we would call a healthy capitalist economy. A healthy capitalist economy needs a large middle class with lots of disposable income, but apparently we can't have that because the neofeudalists would be sad that Paris Hilton might have to buy less fabulous jewelry for her pet chihuahua.

So if by "capitalism," you mean the kind of unregulated capitalism that rightists want, then I would say that it is very harmful overall, because it will result in exactly the kind of socioeconomic system most of our ancestors fled.

If you mean a well-regulated capitalist economy, then that is clearly the least bad of all possible economic systems. Everything else we tried (including the over-regulated managed economies of Cold War-era communist countries) results in a tiny number of privileged people ruling over a large number of poor people.

 

[Valjean]

Capitalism does produce bubbles of prosperity for a few, but it does so by commandeering labor and resources from vulnerable populations to benefit a small elite. It tends toward rapaciousness and, historically, has shown little concern with sustainability or the general welfare.
It's a hot fire rapidly burning through its fuel, destined to leave a devastated landscape behind it if not reigned in.

 

[rousseau]

Capitalism does produce bubbles of prosperity for a few, but it does so by commandeering labor and resources from vulnerable populations to benefit a small elite. It tends toward rapaciousness and, historically, has shown little concern with sustainability or the general welfare.
It's a hot fire rapidly burning through its fuel, destined to leave a devastated landscape behind it if not reigned in.

I tend to agree, but I hate to conflate capitalism with human beings themselves and their nature. It's hard to blame 'capitalism' for social outcomes, when capitalism is an emergent property of human society. And then going deeper down the rabbit hole it's hard to even blame people themselves.

The more I think about it, the more I think this thread is mostly nonsense.

ETA: and then I notice a disclaimer in my original post which sort of makes sense..

 

[Valjean]

Good points, Rousseau.
It can't be denied, we have a Pleistocene psychology. Individuals without strong social constraints will act in the best interest of themselves and their tribe. Abstractions like the general welfare and altruism beyond ones own band of hunter-gatherers is foreign to our species.