If not capitalism then what exactly?

[Mr. Tea]

It's been tried, Mr Tea. It wasn't particularly successful.

Yes, well done Vimothy: anyone who thinks it might be desirable to reduce poverty by reducing inequality is obviously a communist. Come on, you can do better than that!

Edit: also, who's this 'us'?

It's obvious if you think about it: How can everyone live like us? Only if we are more productive, if our division of labour is better, if we are at optimum efficiency, if our supply lines are good, etc...

I sure as hell don't live like a CEO of, or major investor in, a company like H&M.

 

[IdleRich]

Vimothy, you ignored my last thing completely.
Gotta go but I'm not advocating boycotts and I still say it doesn't matter who actually puts the money in the workers hands. If they are paying a small wage because of the demans of western companies I still see that as the western company being ultimately responsible for that wage. Perhaps not fully but at least partly, you would have to concede that no?

 

[swears]

Why can't everyone just be friends?

 

[vimothy]

Vimothy, you ignored my last thing completely.

No, I just didn't see it. I'm about to go home and am trying to pack up whilst having an argument with Mr Tea. There's not enough time. But don't worry, there'll be plenty for all tomorrow!

If they are paying a small wage because of the demans of western companies I still see that as the western company being ultimately responsible for that wage.

Sorry to jump all over the place - I just want to ask you something: are the Bangladeshi or Indian or Chinese firms paying a small wage because of the demands of western companies in the global market place?

 

[vimothy]

Why can't everyone just be friends?

fuck you, commie

 

[Mr. Tea]

Why can't everyone just be friends?

Thinking like that paved the way for the NAZIS!

 

[vimothy]

Yes, well done Vimothy: anyone who thinks it might be desirable to reduce poverty by reducing inequality is obviously a communist. Come on, you can do better than that!

Well perhaps you could explain a little more about your mechanism for global poverty reduction and wealth redistribution rather than just saying its a case of simply "reducing income inequality" or whatever. Redistribute the wealth so that no one is rich and no one is poor - that's what the communists tried to do. Forgve me for jumping to the wrong conclusion, but you didn't go into any detail.

Edit: also, who's this 'us'?

You know exactly who this us is, Mr Tea, and so does the rest of the developing world. It's those of us fortunate enough in the geographic lottery to have been born into liberal market democracies.

I sure as hell don't live like a CEO of, or major investor in, a company like H&M.

Yes you bloody well do mate, at least relative to the poor in the developing world and the poor throughout history.

 

[Mr. Tea]

My point about me not being a bigshot entrepreneur or millionaire investor was not to say "I'm poor, just like the people who make clothes in Bangladesh!" (which would obviously be untrue to the point of being a sick joke), it was to say that it's the very wealthy people who actually finance and run these companies in the developed world - a group which clearly does not include me - who hold the majority of the power over the workforces in the developing world. I'm not completely powerless, of course, because I can choose to buy goods from one company and not another, but that's far less power than that weilded by the people who own large shares in these companies or sit on their boards, because they make the decisions over which local companies to work with, how much to pay the workers and so on. Such people can make a conscious choice to make smaller profits by paying higher wages and encouraging sustaible development, and of course they can also pass on these higher costs to the consumer who is willing to pay for them.

Of course, all this is entirely voluntary to both the company and its customers, so as long as MNCs want to maximise profits and consumers want the cheapest possible goods, the situation isn't likely to change in any big way.

 

[vimothy]

Wait a minute,

I'm suspicious of the idea that total naked capitalism is the answer to all the world's problems - you think that ideologically and are thus committed to arguing for it even in the face of the facts of when it goes wrong, I'm not.

One final other thing: I'm here to have debates with people who care and who want to take the time to consider the arguments. I don't mind being misunderstood (patently, but God it is frustrating). However, I'm not interested in being patronised or insulted. I don't mind being called a fascist by Gavin or whoever, but I'm not down with that - I think you're full of shit, for two reasons:

1. What is "total naked capitalism"?

2. Whether or not capitalism is the best economic system is an economic question to be decided by quantative analysis, not by normative analysis.

It's not ideology, it's a question of what works best. FWIW, I wasn't always "hard right" (ha) - but I started to read about history and development and business and markets and a decided that in view of the evidence capitalism was a much better system than socialism or fuedalism or any of the post-coherent '68 style romatic nonsenses on offer. Do you have any better suggestions? I'm not talking about total naked capitalism because that doesn't mean anything, I'm talking about better suggestions than capitalism full stop, because that's what I'm committed to. Not because it's an ideology that I like - it isn't an ideology at all as far as I'm concerned - but because it's the most efficient economic system available to humanity. Ultimately, I don't give a fuck about conservatives - but I do find it very amusing that the absolute last people I would have had any respect for in my youth (the US right), are so much more sensible than the people who I thought were my natural political allies, and not only sensible, but knowledgeable as well. It's a shame, but I'm getting used to it.

 

[vimothy]

Mr Tea, same question I asked IdleRich:

Are the Bangladeshi or Indian or Chinese firms paying a small wage because of the demands of western companies in the global market place?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Mr Tea, same question I asked IdleRich:

Are the Bangladeshi or Indian or Chinese firms paying a small wage because of the demands of western companies in the global market place?

In part, yes, I think so.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

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.

Unclear, but there are no shortage of indications as to how such an eventuality of economic devastation might be dealt with:

After Hurricane Katrina, almost $30 billion was 'allocated' to housing regeneration, enough to provide two homes each to the more than 65,000 displaced citizens. The money has disappeared, while most of the displaced residents remain confined to security-patrolled 'trailer parks' scattered throughout the US: New Orleans After 24 Months.

'They wanted them poor niggers out of there.'

By Greg Palast

September 1, 2007.


-- -- “They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.”

It wasn’t a pretty statement. But I wasn’t looking for pretty. I’d taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn’t Malik’s concern.

We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”

These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.

Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.

Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?

“They just messing all over us. Putting me out our own house. We come to go back to our own home and when we get there they got the police there putting us out. Oh, no, this is not right. I’m coming here from Texas seeing if I can get my house back. But they said they ain’t letting nobody in. But where we gonna go at?”

Idiot me, I asked, “Where are you going to go tonight?”

“That’s what I want to know, Mister. Where I’m going to go - me and my kids?”

With the help of Patricia Thomas, a Lafitte resident, we broke into an apartment. The place was gorgeous. The cereal boxes still dry. This was Patricia’s home. But we decided to get out before we got busted.

I wasn’t naïve. I had a good idea what this scam was all about: 89,000 poor and working class families stuck in Homeland Security’s trailer park gulag while their good homes were guarded against their return by mercenaries. Two decades ago, I worked for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Even then, the plan was to evict poor folk out of this very valuable real estate. But it took the cover of a hurricane to do it.

MORE ...

 

[gek-opel]

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 ...

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.

 

[Gavin]

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 ...

I don't see how you could confront a Christian fundamentalist capitalist with the contradiction between his beliefs... In fact, (maybe a U.S. phenomenon) but I don't think most people really identify themselves as "capitalists" per se, and have no conscious ideological investment in the current economic system (as gek says, it's just "what works" or maybe more to the point, "just the way it is"). It would be impossible to point out the contradiction between their religious/cultural beliefs and their adherence to capitalism because it would sound incoherent to them. Of COURSE their children and their god comes before money -- this absurd cognitive dissonance has been drummed into them for so long. And since capitalism is "the way it is" and doesn't seem to demand conscious identification, they have no problem with the notion of retreating into comfortable fetishes (just as liberals who claim to understand the ideological power of capitalism often still advocate for these salves AS salves).

 

[noel emits]

I think this is all a bit arse about face

How can you (one) even say whether capitalism or market economies work or not when the economies and currencies are so rigged?

 

[IdleRich]

"Sorry to jump all over the place - I just want to ask you something: are the Bangladeshi or Indian or Chinese firms paying a small wage because of the demands of western companies in the global market place?"

They are paying a small wage to manufacture those goods because of the demands of western companies in the global market place.

What is "total naked capitalism"?

I mean capitalism that surrenders everything to the market, that argues it's ok - actually not ok, required - for western companies to pay too little for people to live on because that's the rate that the market determines.

"2. Whether or not capitalism is the best economic system is an economic question to be decided by quantative analysis, not by normative analysis."

I don't know what this means, normative in what sense?

The reason I characterise you as ideological is because you believe that capitalism must provide the answers. I don't necessarily disagree with you that at times it may have worked in the past and may work in the future but I don't see any reason to argue that it will always work especially when there seem to be clear examples of it not working.
Equally Gek, Gavin and HMLT are ideological in the way that they take as read that capitalism is the source of all evils. It is weird though that after about a week and fifteen pages no-one at all has even made the slightest attempt to answer the original question. Got a feeling that no-one is going to either, they would rather talk about Zizek's review of 300 than rise to the challeng of making a point.

 

[Gavin]

The reason I characterise you as ideological is because you believe that capitalism must provide the answers. I don't necessarily disagree with you that at times it may have worked in the past and may work in the future but I don't see any reason to argue that it will always work especially when there seem to be clear examples of it not working.
Equally Gek, Gavin and HMLT are ideological in the way that they take as read that capitalism is the source of all evils. It is weird though that after about a week and fifteen pages no-one at all has even made the slightest attempt to answer the original question. Got a feeling that no-one is going to either, they would rather talk about Zizek's review of 300 than rise to the challeng of making a point.

Oh get off it, there's no answer to this question for reasons already discussed. What would you prefer, someone posit a Jedi council and solar power as a solution to capitalism? Would that really be a better discussion? There actually is some positive discussion going on, but if you want to run through the same point-by-point globalization good or evil debate with Vimothy, no one is/has stopped you.

What exactly have you proposed, by the way, when you weren't comparing dick size with Vim and mischaracterizing/oversimplifying the viewpoints of others? I haven't bothered to read your posts.

 

[rockypoppy2]

In fact, (maybe a U.S. phenomenon) but I don't think most people really identify themselves as "capitalists" per se, and have no conscious ideological investment in the current economic system

they arent the people in control of the big capitalist cogs though.



to vimothy - have you never heard of sub-contracting? all this about the wages being paid in bangladesh clothing factories are derisory and you're saying that the "foreign" companies pay better than "local" companies - well its a well known fact (or at least was - been a few years since i read it) that mnc's subcontract manufacturing of such clothing items to "local" companies. They give them a quota of items that they want made - then they say we're going to pay x amount (which often enough doesnt leave much profit should the "local" company pay a decent wage). then there's a scrap amongst the "local" companies for who gets the contract - and when whoever gets the contract gets it - they try their hardest to maximise profits for themselves (the owners of these local companies) whilst still fulfilling the quota's to spec (under threat of the contract going to someone else unless they deliver) - this is how exploitation generally occurs in the textile industry. Two levels of greed - those of the mnc's not wanting to pay much for the batch of goods because they want to make a decent cut on it, and then the local subcontractor with his staff working 20 hours a day for 10p or so, so that he can pocket a fat wad of cash (despicable).

the thing is that when theres an outcry - as there invariably is, the mnc's can just go "oh we didnt know that subcontractor was also subhuman - we're going to stop using them etc... and just wash their hands of the affair - although this claim to ignorance simply doesnt wash in today's media savvy world.

all the above is currently being played out with british farmers by supermarkets. Ask any farmer (milk especially) whether the price of their product (farm gate prices) is going up? obviously not. and what about the price in the supermarket - it hasnt gone down as fast as the farm gate prices have, why? because the supermarkets want to squeeze as much profit out of the farmer and consumer as possible whilst still looking as though they are making massive price reductions.

but who suffers, not just the farmers - but the whole of britain since we lose our farming industry slowly slowly bit by bit - to get outsourced in africa or wherever. (all this takes time btw)

vimothy, you may then say, well - all the people involved in the farming industry or whatever will have to adapt to survive - and britain will abandon manufacturing (or at least farming - save speciality crops etc...) ok, fine, but then who looks after the countryside, what happens to villages supported by farmers and farmers families who have moved to the city, the bus routes that supply them, post office closures etc.. etc...
theres something disconcerting about the ruthless progress at which we seem to be heading.

for instance what about dutch tulips grown in kenyan villages where they dont have any water because they use it all on the flowers - which are then flown to holland, to be flown around the world? great eh, but there comes a limit.

i think that this mentality of ruthless expansion and production veiled by the arguments "oh its the only system that'll sustain this number or people on the planet", its the only thing that works - is destructive to our planet and not at all sustainable

as for capitalism not being an ideology - i believe it to be so - even if it is known as liberal democracy, free market, free trade or whatever, it influences political decisions on a global scale, and peoples choices in day to day situations

 

[noel emits]

Two things:

1. We must remove the incentives to hoard money, in fact it should be very much discouraged.

2. Our currencies must be based on commodities, not on debt or nothingness.

Then we can see if capitalism and free market economies work.

Until then these mechanisms will only work to make some people very rich and screw more or less everyone else to greater or lesser extents, in the end destroying everything, as we already see.

 

[john eden]

It is weird though that after about a week and fifteen pages no-one at all has even made the slightest attempt to answer the original question

Well I had a fair stab with my amalgam of left-communism and button moon, I think. One of my links had mad communist equations in and one had astronauts using baked bean tins.

Like it or not, that is the future.

Capitalism is not the last form of organisation we will see in this solar system.