The Probelm With Capitalism

[PETRUS]

55. Thanks for continuing the conversation.

If you hadn't guessed, I'm a bit of a nerd for economic history and theory (which is why I've done so much reading in that area) and I have a hard time finding anybody who wants to talk about it.

I had the same thought about qualification of terms, and I thought about dealing with that in my last post (but didn't, obviously). "Natural" and "unnatural" are terms that carry moral undertones. The distinction I'd make does involve moral reasoning, but I think it's a little more clear cut: consent vs. coercion. In my opinion, outcomes reached through agreement/compromise have more legitimacy than outcomes reached through force/violence. Perhaps you agree or perhaps you don't, but at least you know where I stand.

Property is an intellectual construct. What can and can't be owned, what it means to own something, and who owns what can only be determined by consent or coercion or some combination of the two. It's hard to know exactly what humans thought or how they behaved 50,000 years ago, but the consensus is that property was determined by use/possession/occupancy. That's where you live? Ok, in some sense it's "yours." That's the field you till? Ditto. Those are the tools you use? Same. Etc. Since humans are social creatures and groups working together can accomplish more than people working alone, a great deal of property was considered communal, i.e., the forest where you and your fellow tribesmen and women hunt and gather "belongs" to the whole community. We can see echoes of this in the indigenous populations colonists conquered, and the few remaining "stateless" people holed up in places like the Amazon. So that's what kind of ideas about property appear to come about "organically."

At some point (5,000 years ago?) people began to form governments, which was a process involving armed men expropriating people less capable of violence. (For a really fascinating look at that, I highly recommend "Against the Grain," by James C. Scott - yes, it's a university press title, but it reads like popular nonfiction.) That's when we first start to see evidence that some people no longer "owned" the land they lived on or the resources they used to provide for themselves. In addition to the fact that the historical record makes it clear that capitalism was imposed, top down, by people with armies at their disposal, this thought exercise indicates that it had to happen that way as a matter of logical necessity. Almost nobody is going to agree to a situation where someone else owns the land they live on and the things they use to provide for themselves (and therefore owe this other owner rent/taxes/tribute/profit/whatever) unless they are threatened. Obviously, capitalism followed feudalism, so it began from a situation where property was distributed in large part because of the activities of armed men. At the time, there were still significant tracts of land that were, by custom and tradition, considered "the commons." I've read letters from the time period in question written by men complaining that nobody will work for them because people could live better by availing themselves of the commons and that something needed to be done about it. Hence, privatization and enclosure - there's some hard evidence of "engineering" for you.

Regarding your final thoughts, I simply have to correct you. I've discovered that a lot of people don't realize how specific capitalism is. You'll find another post from me elsewhere on this thread outlining one anthropologist's idea that there are a very limited number (three) of economic modalities. So yes, there was exchange (and markets) long before capitalism but there really wasn't a market system anywhere. As one historian put it, markets existed as opportunities but not as a necessity. There were spot markets, but not integrated markets (which are required to produce the kind of competition and price signaling that capitalism requires to function). It wasn't until the market system was imposed that people had to participate, or be outlaws, or die.

Thanks again!