This is extremely “wasn’t real capitalism,” and I could use this argument to say that the United States still isn’t capitalist, as slave labor remains a cornerstone of multiple state economies and present in most of them, to say nothing of international trade.

Yep, the US isn’t purely capitalist, its a mixed economy, from the logic of Milton Friedman its fair to say its nearing 50% capitalist. There have been times where its been nearing 70% but never much more than that. But the same is true the other way, to my understanding there have essentially never been purely socialist economies. Furthermore, the US has individual fields within its economy where how capitalist it is differs- like I would say the internet is generally a bit more capitalist.

maximalist libertarian fantasy land (check the company towns of the Gilded Age for something closer to that)

Far from it. Company towns were often Neo-fuedal state-like entities where they held an illegitimate claim to the land oftentimes and would legal use violence to enforce their rules.

for a slew of reasons not the least of which being that capitalism is not a philosophical framework, it’s an objective mode of production,

Capitalism is an economic system requires private control of the means of production, for real private control that requires a free and fair market. I could go into that more if you want, but I think I’ll address it somewhat later.

capitalism is what invented and executed the establishment of chattel slavery to begin with!

That’s not true. Capitalism is not “earning a profit and people being greedy”. Capitalism is private control of the means of production, as said in another comment private != state, and when you have authority to regulate people(as in legislate and dictate to them) you are a state-like entity. If I decide to point a gun at you and force you to work for me so I can then barter with others from the profits of your labor, that is not capitalism.

Again, you’re appealing to a maximalist libertarian fantasy, not looking at it from the standpoint of private ownership and commodity production.

Capitalism does not require commodity production. And it is not solely private ownership, it is private ownership and control. De facto and de jure. “You own the factory but the government tells you what to produce” is not capitalism, you don’t truly own it from my perspective, and you definitely don’t control it.

“They killed people, which isn’t part of capitalism” and “They destroyed other people’s stuff, which isn’t part of capitalism” are just silly statements.

Silly yet true.

The KKK weren’t trying to go back to feudalism, to classical slavery, to ancient agrarianism, or to hunter-gatherer society, and they weren’t trying to invent some new mode of production like, say, utopian socialists liked to write about. They were quite happy with the existing mode of production and (as you narrated) smashed labor organization against the capitalists. The fact that that they didn’t follow John Locke’s writings like the Holy Bible and indeed the fact that they insisted on the domination of white capitalists do not contradict that.

Yep, they may be the least anti-capitalist of these three groups, but they still did not care about attacking capitalism if(and it does) contradict the goal of white supremacy.

Then capitalism has never existed.

Yep, not as a sole economic system of economy, as talked about previously.

From a Marxist perspective (if you’ll allow me), a capitalist society is a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, that is to say the capitalist class collectively steers the state, which means outliers even among the capitalist class can be punished if the majority want that to pass. That doesn’t change the essential nature of society as operating practically along the lines of private ownership – even if capitalists are not individually gods of their domain – and commodity production.

That’s more of political system of corporatocracy, and y’know, isn’t actually the definition of capitalism. But yes, if that is how you define capitalism, I oppose that.

what actually transpires in a union is collective bargaining.

But this I disagree with, there was organized individual bargaining- because I don’t believe collectives exist.

You might be surprised to find that the Marxist position is one of supporting what some people refer to as “enlightened self-interest,”

Eh, Marx was not the most collectivist.

rather than psychically subsuming yourself to the collective at your own expense and with no benefit.

I’m glad we agree, but this is what some real people actually advocate.

That’s part of why I think the “individualist/collectivist” framework is silly

To me it is less about beliefs on individual matters, and instead about priorities. The most extreme individualist believes that only individual people exist and they’re the only thing that matters, the most extreme collectivist believes that there is no such thing as an individual person outside a collective- and only collectives or a specific collective matters. I agree there are very few people of that extreme a collectivist stance, but they do exist, a lot of chronically online “race realists” are like that.

You know that capitalism is named after capital, right? Yeoman subsistence is not capitalism, there is no commodity production, no vector for capital.

Capital can be anything that is used for labor of a good, even if the good and the capital are both produced by an individual themselves. Though I do disagree with the classical definition where “means of production” and “capital” are the same thing, because I would say the modern definition of capitalism requires private control of the means of production- and would include labor in the means of production.

what capitalism has actually done all over the world is create those classes and make production increasingly centralized and socialized

Already discussed our different definition of capitalism so I won’t repeat it here.

We might imagine it otherwise, but we have no reason to believe that it is particularly capable of behaving differently, much less ever will.

This is where I will disagree, the internet being the closest to a capitalist economy out of to my knowledge anything that’s ever existed- though still far from being entirely capitalist- is one of the most fractured and easily “disrupt-able”(I hate techbro words) markets- and that’s despite the excessive state intervention fighting to build monopolies through intellectual property law and massive contract awards.

is some bizarre joke invented by economists and their ilk.

I support your animosity towards economists(at least most of them).

I personally think that has about as much of a claim to the title of “ideological capitalist” too, as compared to someone who just wants the world to run on private ownership, because we call those “libertarians” already (or, if you insist, “ancaps”).

Fair, actually my favorite terms are privatist, or voluntarist- they’re the most explicit.

When I look at Hitler running on a platform of eradicating the Jews and the Bolsheviks and capitalists give him money, and then he does what he said he would, how should I interpret that? Should I say those companies were anything less than deliberate benefactors to what he perpetrated?

No my point isn’t that they didn’t work to support it, its that they weren’t the core motivators behind it. Hitler wasn’t fighting to help the companies, the companies just saw that if they were cozy to him he probably would.

If I tell you to get the fuck out of my way I also regulate population but I’m not the state.

Regulate would mean a legal basis to dictate/legislate to.

Note that even your definition says ‘a’, not ‘the’.

You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that, there are a lot of "a"s

Also, and more importantly, enslaved people are seen as property (and thus also as means of production) instead of population.

Yes, that is how they were seen by some people. And those people were wrong. If I become a tyrant and declare I’m the only real person and everyone else is my property, then seize all their property- is that capitalism? Because 1 person just owns all the property? No, its because the definition of person is wrong. Enslaved people were still people, so they could not be property, even though the law claimed they could be.

The KKK aren’t anti-capitalist. The Nazis aren’t anti-capitalist. The Confederates weren’t anti-capitalist.

Except all of these groups were, although the Nazis were much more explicit about it- that is indisputable so I’ll focus on the others. The Confederacy was simply a plantocracy near oligarchy, not to mention slavery which is incompatible with capitalism(already explained in another comment, but a brief breeze over it- slave masters act as entities of the state by the very nature of them having a monopoly on regulation of other humans). As for the KKK, much of what it and other racist organizations of its era did was try to “protect white jobs”, and lobbied heavily for state intervention to that effect- such as targeting immigrant and black “scabs” and pushing for minimum wages aimed at driving them out- though the KKK also explicitly opposed a lot of unions and other organized labor activities(often because they weren’t white enough or included Catholics). Fundamentally though, the KKK viewed their goals of white-protestant supremacy as greater than an economic system, and were more than happy to destroy private property and private individuals- or use private property when it benefited them. Similar to what the Nazi’s believed- its private profits are okay as long as they are working in the interest of the greater goal, but the second its not they’re more than happy to steal it and kill you. Capitalism doesn’t require private profit from the means of production, it requires private control of it- and if it can be seized if not following exactly what the state wants, that’s not private control.

it is a coherent idea to create collectives within a system that is philosophically oriented around the individual power of property-owners, that’s what labor unions are.

That’s what unions are to some people. To other people unions are a convenient organization of people with similar and/or parallel goals on a specific matter(and not necessarily others) so that by collaborating they can achieve their individual goals.

The unavoidable fact of capitalism is that it relies on pushing most of society into the same general social class (workers, as contrasted with owners; employees vs employers)

No, that’s not true. Capitalism doesn’t ascribe the distribution or organization of labor, just that it is privately controlled. A society of independent agrarian farmers could still be capitalist, or a commune of people who voluntarily donate their labor to each other.

but it’s no less coherent to draw lines of common interest between them, most often something like race or religion that is convenient to capitalists, because the capitalists can say “look, I’m white (or whatever) too, I’m on your side!” even if they truly aren’t because they are only seeking their own profits.

Yeah no doubt, though I think it is a little perverse to use “capitalist” to refer to owners/employers when they themselves are often not ideological capitalists, although it is still a correct use of the word I think it leads to intentional confusion(though not by you, just in general).

The reason, the real motivation, for the racial terrorism I described above despite merely deflecting worker ire, is that by “clear cutting” more space open for your market share by slaughtering competitors, people sitting on land you want, etc., you can gain more room to grow, although this too only lets you grow temporarily until you bump into your new limits, so you need to keep killing inconvenient people to keep growing, and that’s more or less how the Nazis worked, both internally by picking out minority after minority, and externally with their continuous invasions and “lebensraum” and so on.

I don’t think business owners are that generally competent to have orchestrated the total destruction of black and jewish owned businesses, I think the Nazis and KKK were both more than motivated enough to do that themselves, but I agree there definitely were some to supported it when they saw it happening and benefited from it.

Great response

https://lemmy.world/comment/12834412

already addressed

It is not sarcastic

Probably forgot an ‘anti’ in there

Yep

but your typo is very right.

xd

Dumb joke because I was just responding to an insult

Political ideologies being clearly defined and understood on a wide scale is not a negative thing.

I think the concept of a political ideology needs to die. People not identifying with them and instead listening to peoples actual ideas is a good thing. Essentially everyone has a unique set of values shaped by their experience, they should listen to and interpret the ideas of others based on those values- instead of trying to categorize them and build an identity off them. Its a similar problem to the DSM, and leads to tribalism.

You really think the last 20 years were a shining example of public intelligence?

I think way more people are questioning authority figures, though that might be recency bias.

the outright lies that have been signal boosted

When before the lies were the narrative.

How can you justify saying “these terms are esoteric” when they are literally modern?

They exist to categorize ideas and people into neat little boxes, rather than actually evaluate individual ideas. They are also totally ineffective for communication, when each boxer disagrees where and what the boxes are.

How can you justify this position you’re taking where low/no information being the norm needs to be enforced for things to be “normal” for you?

Where did I say that?

You’re flippantly dismissing the idea that people could have opinions or motivations you aren’t instantly aware of

When did I do that? Instead I’m stating my own opinions, and I’m happy to hear yours.

What the hell is the problem with letting people who are informed talk about it in a public space?

When did I try to stop that, I’m one of the nerds I was talking about.

Controlling yourself means you have monopoly on force on yourself, meaning you are a state consisting of just yourself? Sounds like a pretty chill state.

It was Marx, Marx stole it.

You added that as what you imagined the original poster’s point was, yet I see no call for action in their post.

That’s true and a fair criticism. I think its a pretty probable guess though.

but their proposed solutions were better education

Education is a complicated matter in itself, that I’d rather not get involved in here, but Prussian schooling has a long history of politically motivated meddling.

From DuckDuckGo:

1. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

2. An economic system based on predominantly private (individual or corporate) investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and wealth; contrasted with socialism or especially communism, in which the state has the predominant role in the economy.

3. A socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.

4. A socio-economic system based on the abstraction of resources into the form of privately-owned capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.

5. A specific variation or implementation of either such socio-economic system.

6. An economic system based on private ownership of capital.

This isn’t necessary for all of them, but from Wikipedia:

A state is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory.

Slave masters are regulators of population, so they are an actor of the state.

Something that many Americans are dearly missing

Yeah this is what I’m talking about.

It’s very effective if you want to make up stuff, and then argue that.

Thanks for the insight.

But, in that case, don’t you have better things to do?

Procrastinating is fun.

I am not defining capitalism as just everything bad, and capitalism is not as recent as you think.

No that’s pretty recent, racism is millennia old. Furthermore, yes mixed economies exist, actually now they’re basically the only thing that exists.

American society developed the notion of race early in its formation to justify its new economic system of capitalism, which depended on the institution of forced labor, especially the enslavement of African peoples.

I disagree that it was capitalism that needed racism to be justified, since slavery is anti-capitalistic. But yes, fake “racial science” was used to justify slavery, that however was not the origin of racism. Roman and Greek and many other empires used ethnic/racial division to justify their oppression. Even the Mongols whose empire was “cool and accepting” by ancient empire standards still had strong sentiments of a Mongol race being different from others.

Where do you believe it differs?

Capitalism is private control over the factors of production

If someone is legally exercising force over someone else, they are a de facto entity of the state.

I’m restating what was said.

then suggest it’s not necessarily their opinion,

I believe it is their opinion, I suggested that pointing that out isn’t a criticism. Its a very common opinion.

The guy just said American political literacy is embarrassingly lacking

Because they don’t know esoteric terms nerds like us argue about on the internet. They do know what they believe is right and wrong, and what they value in their lives. They vote for people who talk about what they value. You can criticize what they value, but that’s just pitting your values against theirs. You can also criticize them for trusting, but if the last 20 years has shown anything, voters are actually not that much worse than technocratic governments at figuring out lies. And most lies that trick voters aren’t* lies to the people that tell them, or believe them.