Re:After Capitalism?
by dragonwriter on Monday December 14, 2015 @02:50PM
(#10733309)
> But if capitalism isn't private property and business ownership, what is it? That's certainly what Marxists* mean by it.
Marxists (and more specifically, Marx) certainly meant more than the mere existence of private property and business ownership, he meant the system organized around a particular model of private property rights. (Both private property and privately owned business existed in the pre-capitalist feudal economy from which capitalism emerged, but under a very different model of property rights and very different economic relations between participants in the economy.) [0]
> If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate?
Mostly, altering the conception of property rights and economic arrangements to de-emphasize the role of profit to be captured by capital in some significant (but not always all, or even most) economic interactions, increase social control of some of the rights associated with ownership in the capitalist system (though not necessarily to the exclusion of private ownership rights) of productive
capital.
Anti-capitalists are a fairly diverse lots, so the differences will be fairly stark without a lot of commonality. Opposition to capitalism doesn't mean supporting the same alternatives to it. (Strictly speaking, supporters of the modern mixed economy are a kind of "anti-capitalists" who support a particular -- and currently dominant -- replacement of capitalism.)
Marxists (and more specifically, Marx) certainly meant more than the mere existence of private property and business ownership, he meant the system organized around a particular model of private property rights. (Both private property and privately owned business existed in the pre-capitalist feudal economy from which capitalism emerged, but under a very different model of property rights and very different economic relations between participants in the economy.) [0]
> If anti-capitalism isn't about abolishing those things, what do it's proponents advocate?
Mostly, altering the conception of property rights and economic arrangements to de-emphasize the role of profit to be captured by capital in some significant (but not always all, or even most) economic interactions, increase social control of some of the rights associated with ownership in the capitalist system (though not necessarily to the exclusion of private ownership rights) of productive capital.
Anti-capitalists are a fairly diverse lots, so the differences will be fairly stark without a lot of commonality. Opposition to capitalism doesn't mean supporting the same alternatives to it. (Strictly speaking, supporters of the modern mixed economy are a kind of "anti-capitalists" who support a particular -- and currently dominant -- replacement of capitalism.)
[0] This provides a basic rundown, though its perhaps less clear which of these elements are consequences and which defining features, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_...