Ah, yes, the old 'none of you has ever seen a dead donkey' pragmatism.
Wouldn't want to upset your masters by taking their words away.
wombatron:The point that BP and Niccolo are trying to make is that capitalism doesn't mean free-market anti-statism to most people.
Most people thnk socialism is a good idea. Most Americans circa 2002 thought invading Iraq was a good idea. In the 1930, most Germans thought Hitler was a good leader.
Why are Nicky and BP taking the bend over approach to this? I don't care what other people do with words. I know what they mean, and I will continue to use them correctly. If we surrender the meanings of words, what will we have left to communicate with?
Even worse, Nicky is intentionally trying to destroy the word within a like-minded group. Why? For what purpose? Because we don't have the courage to defend it? (I read that you do Womba, as do I).
Are the leftists such closet socialists that they are ashamed of being even remotely linked to capitalism and entrepreneurship?
This approach bothers me. We're supposed to be apolitical. There seems to be a trend away from collaborative action to individual self-improvement, and now we're backing off on owning language. Are people still subscribing to the myth that the state will fall because liberty is inevitable?
I've got some ocean front property to sell in Omaha Nebraska if that is the case..
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
Nice Mises Blog post today from BK Marcus
From Human Action: The Scholars Edition, chapter 15: "The Market":
The creative genius is at variance with his fellow citizens. As the pioneer of things new and unheard of he is in conflict with their uncritical acceptance of traditional standards and values. In his eyes the routine of the regular citizen, the average or common man, is simply stupidity. For him "bourgeois" is a synonym of imbecility. The frustrated artists who take delight in aping the genius's mannerism in order to forget and to conceal their own impotence adopt this terminology. These Bohemians call everything they dislike "bourgeois." Since Marx has made the term "capitalist" equivalent to "bourgeois," they use both words synonymously. In the vocabularies of all languages the words "capitalistic" and "bourgeois" signify today all that is shameful, degrading, and infamous.* * The used "Jewish" as a synonym of both "capitalist" and "bourgeois."
The creative genius is at variance with his fellow citizens. As the pioneer of things new and unheard of he is in conflict with their uncritical acceptance of traditional standards and values. In his eyes the routine of the regular citizen, the average or common man, is simply stupidity. For him "bourgeois" is a synonym of imbecility. The frustrated artists who take delight in aping the genius's mannerism in order to forget and to conceal their own impotence adopt this terminology. These Bohemians call everything they dislike "bourgeois." Since Marx has made the term "capitalist" equivalent to "bourgeois," they use both words synonymously. In the vocabularies of all languages the words "capitalistic" and "bourgeois" signify today all that is shameful, degrading, and infamous.*
* The used "Jewish" as a synonym of both "capitalist" and "bourgeois."
Anonymous Coward: Ah, yes, the old 'none of you has ever seen a dead donkey' pragmatism. Wouldn't want to upset your masters by taking their words away.
Quite the contrary, the point is that the continued usage of such terms only feeds your masters. They rely on your usage of such terms to the extent that they may stifle efficient communication and obfuscate meaning.
CopperHead: Niccolò:What defines capitalism as free market though? Well capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, you marxist tool. That pretty well makes it free market in my book. Niccolò:If I called monarchism a free market variance would it make it so? Well if your definition of the word Monarchism is the private ownership of the means of production, than yes it does. Niccolò:Since when did capitalism become associated with free markets? When the term capitalism was first coined, was it applied to a free market or an unfree market? Wow you and BrainPolice are just so damned contrarian aren't you? It really is cute, you know completely changing the common definitions of words so you can further cozy up to your socialist comerades. Way to go giuseppe.
Niccolò:What defines capitalism as free market though?
Well capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, you marxist tool. That pretty well makes it free market in my book.
Niccolò:If I called monarchism a free market variance would it make it so?
Well if your definition of the word Monarchism is the private ownership of the means of production, than yes it does.
Niccolò:Since when did capitalism become associated with free markets? When the term capitalism was first coined, was it applied to a free market or an unfree market?
Wow you and BrainPolice are just so damned contrarian aren't you? It really is cute, you know completely changing the common definitions of words so you can further cozy up to your socialist comerades. Way to go giuseppe.
I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about and you didn't answer my last question - which I feel is the most important. Yes, certain words are defined as private ownership now by the majority of people. Similarly, that FDR "got us out of the great depression" is also commonly accepted by the majority of people.This is why revision is needed, however, as neither seem to be the case.
The Origins of Capitalism
And for more periodic bloggings by moi,
Leftlibertarian.org
Those are ideas, not definitions. In either case, I'm not saying that the majority consensus is correct. What I'm saying is that meaningful communication using these words is virtually impossible because of the majority consensus, and spending all one's time trying to save words is a futile if not counterproductive endeavor.
You're not understanding. You're NOT using the original meaning of the words yourself. You're not "surrendering" the meanings of words by taking a more conceptual approach. And that's all I'm really saying: talk about the concepts to people, don't waste your time getting into semantics over words. That's not going to get you anywhere. What you should be communicating with are the concepts, not merely and exclusively opining on "capitalism" as a word.
My god, stop with the red-baiting already. It really is silly and functions as a distraction from the content of the argument.
I do NOT want to be linked with what most people associate with capitalism - corporatism, fascism, the current system, government favoritism to buisiness and so on. There is nothing "socialist" per se about not identifying with those things.
liberty student: Brainpolice:It's not a word game. You are the ones insisting on using a definition of capitalism which is neither historical or commonly employed in contemporary public discourse. So from the perspective of the common person, it is you playing a word game. Oh really? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozill.....ossary_definition&ct=title Top 4 results. An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods. ...regentsprep.org/regents/global/vocab/topic.cfm an economic and social system in which individuals can maximize profits because they own the means of production.www.powerhomebiz.com/Glossary/glossary-C.htm Capitalism is an economic theory which stresses that control of the means of producing economic goods in a society should reside in the hands of those who invest the capital for production. ...www.ilstu.edu/class/hist127/terms.html An economic system in which capital is mostly owned by private individuals and corporations. Contrasts with communism.www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/c.html Do you agree or disagree with these 4 definitions? I'm assuming that the common person also believes these common definitions. Are they historically or commonly employed enough for you?
Brainpolice:It's not a word game. You are the ones insisting on using a definition of capitalism which is neither historical or commonly employed in contemporary public discourse. So from the perspective of the common person, it is you playing a word game.
Oh really?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozill.....ossary_definition&ct=title
Top 4 results.
An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods. ...regentsprep.org/regents/global/vocab/topic.cfm
an economic and social system in which individuals can maximize profits because they own the means of production.www.powerhomebiz.com/Glossary/glossary-C.htm Capitalism is an economic theory which stresses that control of the means of producing economic goods in a society should reside in the hands of those who invest the capital for production. ...www.ilstu.edu/class/hist127/terms.html An economic system in which capital is mostly owned by private individuals and corporations. Contrasts with communism.www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/c.html
Do you agree or disagree with these 4 definitions? I'm assuming that the common person also believes these common definitions. Are they historically or commonly employed enough for you?
Sigh...
The dictionaries are not the best tools to define an explosive word such as capitalism. What do people, typically, think of when they think of capitalism? Well, they think of this system we have here, but this system is flawed. Then they think that system is syonymous with free markets, because capitalist apologetics say it's so with little opposition.
When the word capitalism was first coined, what type of economy was it applied to, Libby?
liberty student: wombatron:The point that BP and Niccolo are trying to make is that capitalism doesn't mean free-market anti-statism to most people. Most people thnk socialism is a good idea. Most Americans circa 2002 thought invading Iraq was a good idea. In the 1930, most Germans thought Hitler was a good leader. Why are Nicky and BP taking the bend over approach to this? I don't care what other people do with words. I know what they mean, and I will continue to use them correctly. If we surrender the meanings of words, what will we have left to communicate with? Even worse, Nicky is intentionally trying to destroy the word within a like-minded group. Why? For what purpose? Because we don't have the courage to defend it? (I read that you do Womba, as do I). Are the leftists such closet socialists that they are ashamed of being even remotely linked to capitalism and entrepreneurship? This approach bothers me. We're supposed to be apolitical. There seems to be a trend away from collaborative action to individual self-improvement, and now we're backing off on owning language. Are people still subscribing to the myth that the state will fall because liberty is inevitable? I've got some ocean front property to sell in Omaha Nebraska if that is the case..
Do you want a great quote to "use" against me, Libby? Yes, I'm a socialist. I'm a socialist in the context that I want to eliminate economic exploitation. What is economic exploitation? Involuntary or otherwise illegitimate employment or servitude to a group or system held under duress (sp?). How does this occur? Through free markets. So there you go. Now the red-baiting can stop and you can move on to the arguments.
Your problem is that you take what is given to you and then run with it without question. That will lead you down dangerous paths though. What if you did not know what you know about Abraham Lincoln. You would say, of course Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president in teh world! HE FREED TEH BLACKS! TEH BLACKS!!!!!!! Would this make it so? Would the common perception be proven because it is the common perception?
To my knowledge, the technical definition I offered is one of the original meanings of the term. I'm not attached to the term, and if you have a better one I'm all ears.
Amazing how much this thread has grown in one night.
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
Brainpolice:Quite the contrary, the point is that the continued usage of such terms only feeds your masters. They rely on your usage of such terms to the extent that they may stifle efficient communication and obfuscate meaning.
Well, here's where we differ.
I find it quite productive to challenge people's preconceived notions through defending terms like 'capitalist' and 'free market'.
I guess it all comes from my victimization at the hands of the California public education system. Back in my early days, before the Dept. of Education, the California school system was just another political arm of the Teacher's Union intent on turning out good little Progressives to further the cause. In elementary school I learned such fine gems as 'government spending leads to economic growth' and the 'true' causes of the Depression among other things.
Being an impressionable young lad and not even knowing there was a contrary view on these issues I just accepted these views as Fact.
Many years later as I got involved in this new-fangled intarweb thing I started to participate in online discussions with a critical view of the arguments presented and some things just didn't quite add up.
How could someone challenge Fact? What are they a crazy person or something?
Being who I am I embarked on a journey to discover the basis of these Facts in order to defend them against these obviously wrong but quite skilled opponents and and what do you think I found during my research?
Turns out most of these Facts were actually self serving opinions propagated to further the ends of the people teaching them.
Of course government spending is good if your very livelyhood depends on it. Of course the cartelization of the banking industry under the State and government interference didn't cause and further the Great Depression if you are an advocate of big government.
Hundreds of Facts have been discovered to be nothing but statist propaganda.
In actual practice of applying this method I have managed to get even the most die-hard supporters of European socialism to 'learn economics' because their counter-argument of simply dismissing me as a 'troll' isn't very effective at shutting me down. They need some real ammo to defend what they know is incontrovertible Fact because that's what they were taught.
So these people are starting to discover the basis of these Facts and what do you think they will find?
Or as the great minds of the Hollywood Industrial Complex would put it, "The Truth is a Virus".
Jon Irenicus: To my knowledge, the technical definition I offered is one of the original meanings of the term. I'm not attached to the term, and if you have a better one I'm all ears. Amazing how much this thread has grown in one night. -Jon
Well, fair enough, but look at the broader application of the term in its origins. The word capitalism itself was coined by Marx (though the term capitaliste was coined much earlier this doesn't mean much, as it was applied as a finance term and not one of political economics) and he used this term to paint a picture of the rising economic systems of the 19th century. Now, I will ask you, what free market existed during the 19th century?
Niccolò:Do you want a great quote to "use" against me, Libby? Yes, I'm a socialist. I'm a socialist in the context that I want to eliminate economic exploitation. What is economic exploitation? Involuntary or otherwise illegitimate employment or servitude to a group or system held under duress (sp?). How does this occur? Through free markets. So there you go. Now the red-baiting can stop and you can move on to the arguments.
Does your free market include private ownership of the means of production?
Niccolò:Your problem is that you take what is given to you and then run with it without question. That will lead you down dangerous paths though. What if you did not know what you know about Abraham Lincoln. You would say, of course Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president in teh world! HE FREED TEH BLACKS! TEH BLACKS!!!!!!! Would this make it so? Would the common perception be proven because it is the common perception?
No, the common perception is not fact or reality. It is odd that a libertarian would argue against using words by their proper meaning, because the mass of statists do not understand the word or misuse it.
liberty student: Does your free market include private ownership of the means of production?
I don't know. That seems to depend upon the natural outcome of the market.
liberty student: No, the common perception is not fact or reality. It is odd that a libertarian would argue against using words by their proper meaning, because the mass of statists do not understand the word or misuse it.
I did not say it was and I am using the word by its proper meaning.
Niccoló: Now, I will ask you, what free market existed during the 19th century?
Capitalism is a system by which people do business which is overseen, regulated, protected, encouraged, favored, and generally interlaced with the state and the accepted use of force in a given body politic.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Juan: Niccoló: Now, I will ask you, what free market existed during the 19th century? Well, the economic system in the 19th century was indeed more close to laissez-faire than the current one. And the social system was freer than the current one in many ways as well. Right... Sans the African slaves, Napoleon, the Bourbons, the Jacobians, the vast amount of empires trotting around the globe in a grand match of multi-player chess, the horrors of reconstruction, Otto von Bismarck, etc. the 19th century was a great place for freedom! edit : Capitalism is a system by which people do business which is overseen, regulated, protected, encouraged, favored, and generally interlaced with the state and the accepted use of force in a given body politic. I think that is mercantilism, not capitalism.
Right... Sans the African slaves, Napoleon, the Bourbons, the Jacobians, the vast amount of empires trotting around the globe in a grand match of multi-player chess, the horrors of reconstruction, Otto von Bismarck, etc. the 19th century was a great place for freedom!
edit :
Mercantilism is a recently invented term. Now, ask yourself, who invented the term? Well, I'd say capitalist apologists who want to save their precious capitalism by blaming the same animal for the world's problems.Again, to what was Marx referencing when he coined the term "capitalism"?
Niccolò:Mercantilism is a recently invented term. Now, ask yourself, who invented the term? Well, I'd say capitalist apologists who want to save their precious capitalism by blaming the same animal for the world's problems. Again, to what was Marx referencing when he coined the term "capitalism"?
Again, to what was Marx referencing when he coined the term "capitalism"?
Who cares what Marx was talking about? He also had a lot of stupid ideas about class warfare, and had serious issues with any members of the productive class who wanted to work independently and for their own personal gain.
We're back to leftist jargon juggling.
Capitalism - private ownership of the means of production and/or activities that result in profit (the accumulation of capital)
Socialism - public ownership of the means of production and a system that Mises disproved.
"There is sense in which every country in the world is capitalist. Soviet Union is capitalist. Every country in the world that has large capital under control. The real question is whereby the capital is controlled. In the soviet union it is controlled by the state and officials of the state. Capitalism is not a sufficient condition for freedom. It's a necessary condition for freedom. I never said wherever you have capitalism you have freedom. I made the opposite statement: wherever you have freedom you have capitalism. It is necessary but not a sufficient condition. You need access to capital and a free market. You need competition. I call it competitive capitalism to differentiate it between the other capitalism that has all of the bad qualities [of the Soviet Union, et al]."
- Milton Friedman
Niccolo: Again, to what was Marx referencing when he coined the term "capitalism"?
Niccolò:Mercantilism is a recently invented term.
Mercantilism is a term older than Capitalism. I believe it was invented by Adam Smith and maybe firstly used in his Wealth of the Nations. Either way, the original liberals fought mercantilism and they used that term as a pjorative thing to refer to monopolies and stuff (monopolies meaning exclusive explorative grants).
With regard to capitalism, I looked up its etymology a while back, and it seems it was created as a pjorative term, probably by socialists in the 19th centure. Of course the word "capital" is much older and means "means of production" basically. The socialists saw capitalism has a system in which those with capital exploited the other classes. The same way liberals advocated liberalism against mercantilism; socialists advocated socialism against capitalism.
Of course, language changes, we can just see what happened to the term liberal, and so it doesn't make much sense to determine what it means now by what it used to mean before. As I see it, capitalism is basically private property, and I tend to see free markets as a subset of capitalism that opposes restrictions on trade, a distorced field and etc. However, I see the point that free people may "choose" voluntarly communes, democratic organizations, co-operatives, or whatever to run production, and possibly to run everything in their lifes as well.
Equality before the law and material equality are not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. -- F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty
liberty student: Who cares what Marx was talking about? He also had a lot of stupid ideas about class warfare, and had serious issues with any members of the productive class who wanted to work independently and for their own personal gain. We're back to leftist jargon juggling. Capitalism - private ownership of the means of production and/or activities that result in profit (the accumulation of capital) Socialism - public ownership of the means of production and a system that Mises disproved.
How does that change the definition of capitalism? Just because you and I detest Marx does not mean that his definition is not the correct one. IT IS! If anything, this is why you should also consider yourself an anti-capitalist.
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