They are also all parts of things that are not capitalism.
Edit: It’s hard to get more capitalist than the International Money Fund, amiright? So here are their pillars of capitalism. I’ve only edited it by replacing bullets with numbers, to make these pillars easier to discuss.
According to this definition–authored by “a senior economist in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department”–ancient Rome absolutely wasn’t capitalist (look at principles 3, 5, and 6 at least). A person selling fish may or may not be operating in a capitalist environment; their activity is consistent with capitalism and with other systems.
Can everyone agree with these six pillars? If not, can you explain which ones you disagree with, or what you think is missing?
No, they are all necessary, but not sufficient, to define capitalism. For instance, they leave out the “high percentage of wage labour” aspect. Capitalism inherently involves a worker/boss relationship somewhere in the mix, and a many workers/ few bosses one, at that.
Without that, it’s just Ye Olde Mercantilism.
The other thing that doesn’t seem to be called out in those pillars is that in capitalism, the profit motive greatly supersedes any other motive like social good or the like. Pillar 2 comes close to it but doesn’t call it out directly.
Rome had competition, freedom to choose and a limited role of government. Of course it depended on which emperor. However late Republican Rome had all that.
Note, just like with Democracy, capitalism takes different forms. Even tho Sweden for example has quite of bit of socialism at the government level, the people are still free to practice capitalism.
My understanding is that these are both inevitable results of capitalism. Capitalism as a system tends to concentrate ownership of production tools in ever-fewer hands, and wage work results from that: if ever-fewer people own production tools, then more and more people end up working for wages for the owners of production. And because capitalism explicitly rewards self-interest and doesn’t explicitly reward motives like aspiring toward the social good, that’s the behavior that expands.
So I wouldn’t characterize those to bits as definitional, but as inevitable. If you want to get away from those two, you can’t do so without getting rid of some of the pillars mentioned before.
Given the mod note against discussing slavery in ancient Rome, I’m gonna have to decline to respond.
The wage labour aspect is a cause, not a result. Specifically the change from manorial serfdom to tenant farmer / wage-earning farm labourer setups after the Crisis of the 14th C. in Europe enabled the tenant farmer side of the equation to morph into the non-aristocratic landed gentry that fueled the growth of capital investment in the subsequent rise of industrialization. Robert Brenner has done many decades of publication on the topic. Now, there are gaps in his overall thesis, I think, but that aspect of it is sound, I think.
I can’t see how you can say the strong profit motive isn’t foundational, either. Yes, capitalism rewards profit-seeking. But you don’t embark on it in the first place without it, either.
This is interesting, and I’ll freely admit I don’t know much about that specific history–I’m operating on memory of economic theory I read back in the mid-nineties here. Do you know of a place online where I can read more about that?
Here, I’m not entirely clear on the difference between “monetary rewards as a pillar” and “desire for profit as a pillar”, so I’m not even sure the degree to which we disagree.
Ourselves: our convictions and freedoms of thought and speech, are our essential, sole property. If the self is its own property, and property is still theft down to that level, the people who are inclined and systems that are emplaced to prevent and punish that theft are wrong.
As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m iffy on linking capitalism with the free market. I feel they are two separate things and a free market does not exist spontaneously with capitalism. As I’ve written, capitalists at the top of a business would prefer to reduce or even eliminate free market competition in their business and operate as a monopoly.
Yes, the government, which represents the community. And it’s probably a little branch of the government that’s funded by the fishermen, too. I live near a major fishery, and it’s managed. And by and large, the fishermen buy into the limits and the seasons. Because they want to be able to keep selling fish next year and the year after.
Are there sometimes fights about what the limits should be? Sure. No one has both a crystal ball and 100% credibility with everyone else. But the idea of limits to maintain the health of the fishery is widely accepted, and there’s a political process to work out the details.
It’s not just quasi-mythical noble savages who husband shared resources. Hard-nosed modern fishermen with modern boats and gear and modern gps and sometimes helicopters to help them find schools of fish also husband shared resources.
You can start with Wikipedia on the Brenner Debates, but you can also read Brenner making the arguments himself in this debate with Chris Harman:
This debate is interesting because Harman was most decidedly not a pro-capitalist, so what you’re seeing there is a debate between two Marxists who differ on this issue. To me, Brenner comes out ahead there.
Profit-seeking is more than just monetary rewards, it involves capital accumulation - the re-investing of the profits into further engines of profit. To me, that’s one of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism.
My fisherman - he sells his fish at a profit. That is seeking monetary gain. BUT he uses his profits to buy consumer things, maybe repair his nets or buy a new one. Maybe saves a little for retirement. Fishermen like him have been doing that in that bay for literally 300 years.
He doesn’t save and invest the money, use his savings to hire someone to help him pull a bigger net with a bigger quota, then use those profits to buy a boat so the nets can be hauled out to where the bigger shoals are, and eventually after years be running a fleet of trawlers. That fisherman is a capitalist (and he’s already a capitalist from the time he starts investing and hires that second guy, not when he’s a trawler magnate)
I think the profit motive is covered by #2 self interest. But maybe profitability should be called out as a core tenet of capitalism as we capitalists take it for granted and non-capitalists seem to lack understanding of the concept. Lots of ideas are “good for society” but they are not “profitable” therefore they are not sustainable in that they actually create more value than they consume.
The “high percentage of wage labor” aspect is not something that is specific to capitalism. In pretty much any form of government or economics, you will have more people doing actual work than directing the work.
People are conflating the definition of capitalism with some of the (often unintended) results. For example what role should government play in preventing monopolies so firms can’t control the other pillars? Or that firms can seek labor in regions with fewer worker protections and less environmental regulation.
What about the kid who hires himself out on a fishing boat and saves enough money to buy his own small fishing boat, and then uses it, without expanding further. Is he a capitalist?
It’s one of the defining features. In other systems, people are not wage labourers. They work for themselves, or for collectives, or feudal lords etc…
Which economic form are you thinking of, where the majority are wage labourers but isn’t capitalistic?
Note that I’m distinguishing between the politics espoused by whatever entity, and the economic reality e.g. China now is a capitalist economy, even if politically it claims different.
No. Clearly capital accumulation isn’t his main priority.
I assumed that unless people were slaves they worked for wages in basically every system. It’s just their bosses or how the wages were determined that changed.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t even a feudal serf get paid for their labor? The main difference from what we think of as a capitalist system is that the serf can’t choose their employer or their job or negotiate their rate. Presumably they are paid just enough to survive and make whatever purchases are necessary to perform their job.
Our current form of capitalism is actually pretty highly regulated already. The enforcement and compliance with those regulations have become their own ecosystem of industries and corporations, which comes with its own problems and conflicts of interest.
A serf is more like a sharecropper than a wage worker. The serf doesn’t own the land, the lord does. The serf must give some portion of the crops they grow to the lord, and must spend a certain amount of time working on the lord’s profit-driven land. The serf doesn’t get paid more money for each hour worked; but at least sometimes, serfs were able to sell any excess crops for their own personal gain (I believe).
Wage work is usually referring to a fixed payment in exchange for work for a fixed period. It can refer to piecework, according to definitions I’m looking up, but I’m not sure how common that definition is. In any case, I don’t think serfs are correctly seen as wage workers, since they generally didn’t get whatever cash they earned from the lord for whom they worked.
