If not capitalism then what exactly?

"If the MNC (or whoever) agrees to pay more on every item to cover the rise in labour cost to the sector or firms in question, because the marginal cost of producing said items will have gone up, then its own costs will have risen dramatically without any increase in profit. Do you think it will just continue to buy the same amount of goods from the same producer, even though they now cost a lot more? Of course not, as with the local factory owner, the MNC doesn't have unlimited amounts of cash lying around and maximising profit is its raison d'etre. The company will have to incorporate the price rise. It will say item x now costs whatever it did plus the rise in labour costs. Our returns on every item sold are now much less (economy of scale), so we are less interested in selling them. ."

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Well that's the thing isn't it. The diffrence between the price it buys them at and the price it sells them at is its profit. It could buy the things at a higher price, sell them the same and face a slight decrease in its profit with none of the other consequences occurring.
But if profit is the only thing, more important than people's lives it can't do that. That's what I meant earlier when I was saying that companies do things that none of the individuals would choose to do because they have to maximise profits to their share-holders.

I'm not going to go over board (again!) on this...

IdleRich said:

Well that's the thing isn't it. The diffrence between the price it buys them at and the price it sells them at is its profit.

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No, I think there's more to it than just that. And you have to recognise that there isn't fixed amount of profit that either goes into the pockets of the labourers or the MNCs, and that what's good for the MNC and what's good for the developing world labour aren't mutually exclusive categories.

It could buy the things at a higher price, sell them the same and face a slight decrease in its profit with none of the other consequences occurring.

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What about all the other arguments against fair trade/protectionism?

But if profit is the only thing, more important than people's lives it can't do that. That's what I meant earlier when I was saying that companies do things that none of the individuals would choose to do because they have to maximise profits to their share-holders.

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We're all profit-maximising, aren't we?

h-crimm said:

My counter example for this claim would be southern europe in the 70s. Migrant workers from new EC countries were subject to exiting EC labour laws and recieved much improved wages, their working conditions were far from dreamy but they were economically elevated compared to the past. The implementation of EC legislation in the new members enforced an artificial, subsidised and protected way of working for the workers returning home.

The result of this big-state nannying approach from France and Germany was to turn Spain and Italy into massive economies (Greece and Portugal have done pretty well). The only country contributing migrants which didnt develop was Turkey which being outside the EC failed to get the imposition of our own labour standards.

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Correlation is not causation. I'm not quite sure what you're saying here (sorry, again), but if you're trying to prove that protectionism in new EC countries in the '70s created stronger economies there, then you have to demonstrate that these new EC countries grew their economies because they protected industries, rather than these things just happening at the same time.

Last post

I just think that it boils down to the fact that if H&M are making profits and paying the people making their clothes less than they need to live on then something is wrong.
You may say that it is the (third) world that is wrong and H&M just try and live in it but I think there is more to it than that.

Definitely my last post

"Rich i think you're missing the point here. Clearly H&M or their subcontractors (locally owned 'indigenous' factories in the 'developing' world) are not 'paying people less than they need to live on'. Why would they do this? Dead, or slowly dying people do not make productive employees"

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If you'd read through the thread you would know I mean "living wage" (ie that necessary to reach a minimum recognised standard of living) here, not an amount to actually stay alive. I mean live in a sense other than just exist. You are probably right in saying it doesn't make sense to pay people less than that of course because it would make for unhappy and presumably unproductive workers - and yet they do do it (less than half as it happens according to the news story) so where does your argument fall down?

hundredmillionlifetimes said:

I appreciate what you're aiming at here, it's just that such an approach can be easily contained within capitalism itself.. By taking capitalism at its Word does not necessarily entail exemplifying it by becoming one of its gurus, but by attacking it for refusing to abandon/confront its actual enemies (the psychic ones, among others, in the libidinal economy), which paradoxically are, of course, its very conditions of perpetuation. If I understand you correctly, becoming a Nick Leeson rogue trader, or even masterminding an army of Nick Leeson clones, won't undermine capitalism (capitalists, liberal and conservative, loved Nick Leeson; Hollywood made a film about him, he became one of the standard fixtures on the finance lecturing circuit; a ritual scapegoating followed by a pat on the back), it at most would shorten the bi-polar boom-bust trade cycle, which is itself structural, essential to capitalism itself. The Great Depression led to the establishment of liberal welfare states not simply because of the gruelling mass poverty, but because of the Communist threat and the failure of Fascism. The outcome of a massive depression today remains unclear.

In contrast, an overidentification strategy would attempt to target capitalist institutions, public and private, as being anti-capitalist for continually seeking to legitimise their practices by reference to reactionary extra-ideological institutions - religion, nation, race, family and children, community, charity, 'homeland', insular nostalgic identification with land, history, place etc. These imaginary identifications are what make capitalism bearable, are indeed - from its perspective - its 'obscene underside.' Confront capitalists for their anti-capitalist retreat into such fetishes (from Christian fundamentalism to the reification of children etc) and capitalism itself becomes intolerable ...

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Yes- these are each as detestable and a blockage as Capital itself- and the interesting thing is that you could have it the other way, the inverse to your schema- use the power of Capitalism to remove such crutches, the family, charity, the reified god-child cult, the state etc etc, and Capitalism itself will be utterly unbearable. So the very method of attacking it is to attack the things it disavows, and yet perversely endlessly re-affirms in new forms (re-territorialization yes?) and which as you accurately argue it draws strength from.

So to answer Vimothy's question a naked capitalism would be one divested of such extra-ideological institutions.

I would point out tho, HMLT, that many Capitalists will refuse, as Vim does, to view it as an ideology it's just "what works" (remember...? :slanted... and as such to purely advance a theoretical strategy of over-identification on the level of ideology as with your previous example of the Catholic Church will equally be absorbed by the system (because its not a system, remember, its "what works")

Any manipulation of Capitalism is exceptionally difficult, given that it is only in part ideology and mainly a vast network of decentred processes. You are correct that an intervention based upon creating a cataclysmic market crash alone is easily theoretically absorbable by the system. But using the finance system to advance the absurdity of the system itself, whilst luring the market to take apart all the stabilizing institutions mentioned above would appear to be key. But the central force could still be to create instability at all levels through the forcing to the surface of unsustainable paradoxes.

That last post looks oddly familiar. :slanted:

noel emits said:

That last post looks oddly familiar. :slanted:

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Well to point out part of the possible effectiveness of the financial system as terrorist apparatus: the level of panic currently observable in global markets is entirely out of -proportion to the total losses incurred at the beginning of the process in terms of the actual bad debt (or even in terms of the trades which institutions have made with each other since on the basis of such debts). The absurdity and abstractions of the system having created a sense of fear due to the fact that institutions are uncertain of the total losses and are desperately attempting to quantify them (whilst the head of the ECB basically asks them to "fess up").

Gek, you posted the exact same thing two days ago, more or less word for word.

Or are you using the forum system against itself as terrorist apparatus?

gek-opel said:

Yes- these are each as detestable and a blockage as Capital itself- and the interesting thing is that you could have it the other way, the inverse to your schema- use the power of Capitalism to remove such crutches, the family, charity, the reified god-child cult, the state etc etc, and Capitalism itself will be utterly unbearable. So the very method of attacking it is to attack the things it disavows, and yet perversely endlessly re-affirms in new forms (re-territorialization yes?) and which as you accurately argue it draws strength from.

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but a blockage to what?

if we remove family and community and the like, what do we have left?

ultimately what goals do you have? purely to move beyond what we accept as reality? 'truth'?

sorry if i've misunderstood

It's not capitalism that's in the way of some presently unimaginable society, it's human beings.

indeed. its an interesting one

just to clarify, the tone of my post was meant to be purely inquisitorial rather than accusatory or adversarial

its hard to get that across via text

usenet is your friend. why don't you take the free market evangelism over there? maybe to alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, you'd love it in there.

adruu said:

usenet is your friend. why don't you take the free market evangelism over there? maybe to alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, you'd love it in there.

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Is that supposed to be directed at me?

Here's an idea, if you don't like to hear other people's views, perhaps you should start a discussion board where you are the sole member. It's also intersting to read this alongside the various comments stating that I am ideologically commited to capitalism, such that it is impossible for me to think clearly about it or criticise it rationally. "Free market evangelism" and all the rest seem euphemistic dismissals of arguments so that we don't have to think about the hard questions that might challenge our dearly held beliefs (and IMO fair trade serves the same purpose - as a sop). If you have something relevant to say, then you should say it. All you're trying to do here is shut down any meaningful discussion, which would be unfortunate because left-right debates are of prime importance, especially given their scarcity in the "media sphere" generally.

elgato said:

if we remove family and community and the like, what do we have left?

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Pure capitalism - and also the ability to see it for what it is (- a system of exploitation and domination!)

elgato said:

ultimately what goals do you have? purely to move beyond what we accept as reality? 'truth'?

sorry if i've misunderstood

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To open up a space to think about dismantling it, or at least imagine other ways of being?

Unfortunately this whole debate is bi-polarised between Gek and HMLT talking to each other in Lacan/Zizek/Badiou-speak, and Vimothy defending free market economics against charges of "unfairness" (why can't MNCs pay developing world workers higher wages?)!

Not that each debate hasn't been interesting, but can either side speak to each other?

Can anti-capitalists come up with any form of post-capitalism (communism/syndicalism/what) that includes an economic model that sounds viable? Or are they only talking about political and psychological forms of cultural production and subjectivity? I'm all for allowing that future forms of society are as yet uncreated and so unknown, but surely we can come up with some possibilities?

On the other hand can Vimothy allow the possibility that the very efficiency and economic wealth that capitalism undoubtedly generates requires the slavery of most of us to a dreary existence as cogs in the machine, producing pointlessly competing products and services to allow the shareholders, bosses, investors etc to get rich while our productive time and labour gives us barely enough money to live on? OK, maybe we're better off than our feudal-peasant forebears and the developing world in many ways, but maybe in others we're not? In any event we have little or no say or choice in the matter of how our society is organised, beyond the opportunity to up-skill, speculate savings or inheritance, start a business and try to use the system - as it is - to generate more money for ourselves (or win the lotto). Vimothy may call this Marxist claptrap (as he's done before even if I don't refer to Marx's "flawed" theory of exploitation at all) - but it doesn't depend on Marx; it's even more simple and basic. Why assume that capitalism is the best possible system, beyond the fact that it works - sort of? It's the select few ahead of the rest in the starting blocks (due to inheritance, social status etc) who have most to gain by your acceptance of the beneficience of capitalism, and the rest of us have most to gain by coming up with a better concept.

Here's an old post from k-punk:

The neo-cons in the US and the Thatcherites and Blairites in the UK have managed to colonize (the language and concept of) the future. The role of branding, hype and the other strategies Kapital employs to libidinize itself cannot of course be underestimated here. The SF Kapital/ gleamprog project finds it easy to make kapital's most banal products sexy.

Challenging this requires a position that is as ruthlessly erotic as that of its enemy. Socialism the concept and 'socialism' the word are irretrievably tainted by association with the dreariest, most compromised and delibidinizing Statist bureaucracy.

It seems to me, however, that communism - precisely because it is so off the map, so unthinkable - does not have these jaded and jading connotations to anything like the same degree. Communism, after all, is associated with a constructivist aesthetic: as inhumanly glamorous as anything Kapital has come up with.

For example, the Chinese pro-market anti-capitalist communism needs to be seen as more than a cynical gambit. It is clear, or ought to be, that Kapitalism is not working at any level - social, libidinal, psychic - except that of the symbolic structure itself, the big Other. Only it thinks that Kapital is efficient, only it thinks that Kapitalist parliamentarianism delivers freedom. The Chinese model is not simply a way of 'converting' the post-Maoist state into yet another haven for the Kapital-Thing to spread its idiot-mechanical virus through. It is, in principle at least, a genuinely new vision --- not the Third Way, the arrival of which, as Zizek rightly observes, was a sign that THERE WAS NO second way --- but precisely a reassertion of the second way, a challenge to the fake universality of Kapital.

Of course, it is only when communism is decoupled from the State, only when there is a genuine global proletariat, a radical autonomous bottom-up or bottom-bottom collectivity, that communism can be realised. And globalization provides exactly the conditions necessary for the production of such a proletariat

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It makes great reading, but again, it doesn't even touch on "Kapitalism" as an economic model, or how communist economics might work - how would we live practically, to support the new free constructivist libidinal-cultural production of the future?

So maybe the question should be - if not capitalist then how exactly?

Interesting post, dHarry. Unfortunately I'm a bit too busy at the moment to give it my full attention. Just want to note, on the subject of your preemptive defence against charges of "Marxist claptrap", the theory of exploitation in Marx's work is the intellectual origin of the notions of exploitation discussed upthread. Not only that, but the reasoning is nearly identical. Both these points can be true regardless of whether you've read Capital or not.

Also think you're being a bit unfair to me, viz-a-viz your questions. The radicals get, "Can anti-capitalists come up with any form of post-capitalism... that includes an economic model that sounds viable?" Whereas I get, "can Vimothy allow the possibility that the very efficiency and economic wealth that capitalism undoubtedly generates requires the slavery of most of us to a dreary existence as cogs in the machine, producing pointlessly competing products and services to allow the shareholders, bosses, investors etc to get rich while our productive time and labour gives us barely enough money to live on?"

Er... what about, "can anti-capitalists recognise the fact that revolution is not always a good idea, and that the 20th Century is littered with the bodies (100 million of them) of those who perished under the regimes of anti-capitalists (of whatever stripe), ostensibly concerned with the same problems as today's would-be revolutionaries?"

Anyway, obviously I don't agree with your reading - which would require me to concede that Marx was right (no chance!) - or there would be little point in my political views. (People do recognise that, right)? I can certainly agree that this is possible, in the way I can agree it's possible that God exists and is upset that I don't pray to Him, or that we might all be robots inhabiting a Matrix-style slave world, unbeknownst to ourselves. It's not very likely, though.

"Can anti-capitalists come up with any form of post-capitalism (communism/syndicalism/what) that includes an economic model that sounds viable? Or are they only talking about political and psychological forms of cultural production and subjectivity? I'm all for allowing that future forms of society are as yet uncreated and so unknown, but surely we can come up with some possibilities?"

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You would think so wouldn't you?

"Why assume that capitalism is the best possible system, beyond the fact that it works - sort of?"

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Good question, although of course you could just as easily ask "why assume it's the worst?".

"It makes great reading, but again, it doesn't even touch on "Kapitalism" as an economic model, or how communist economics might work - how would we live practically, to support the new free constructivist libidinal-cultural production of the future?"

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Agree with that as well (except maybe the great reading bit). Without any flesh on the bones it's just irrelevant musings. Maybe I'm being too optimistic in hoping for a genuine attempt to answer the question but I'm left with the feeling that this thread has been quite an embarrassment for the "anti-capitalists" as it seems to have shone a light at them and just exposed a big empty hole.

Just read the K-Punk post: I found it to be revolting and incoherent, but at least we know where we stand a bit better, eh?

For e.g., "...it is only when communism is decoupled from the State..." - pure fantasy. Why not try to ressurect a non-statist Nazism (ignore for the moment the impossibility of either)?

Another one: "the Chinese pro-market anti-capitalist communism..."

What?! How can you be pro-market and anti-capitalist? It's one or the other, mate. And how can a country be "communist" absent common (which is, of course, merely another word for state) ownership of the means of production?