[ue_]

I don't mean to say that everyone acts entirely for themselves, with no action motivated by kindness. I mean to say that in a sytem with multiple people trying to do the same thing you are doing (selling for a profit), you'll have to compete with people with various moral standards and ways of getting their profit. This kind of system, I believe, eventually forces out those who are not "aggressive" enough with their methods, and if not eventually, it will happen over time due to the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns.

While admirable in itself to act kindly in a capitalist system, it is ultimately detrimental to the success (and thus survival) of the company. There are of course examples of ethical practices (free range eggs for example), but they only continue once they become sufficiently practical.

[vidarh]

Capitalism does not require ever higher returns. It requires ever higher efficiency in extracting surplus. Barring monopolies etc., this should be expected to continue dropping as competition gets more fierce.

Other than that, your argument above is basically Marx thesis for the cause of the eventual collapse of capitalism: He praised capitalism for providing that efficiency necessary to provide sufficient wealth to eventually be able to erase poverty, but at the same point argued that this efficiency ultimately means that to stay competitive, salary costs will eventually need to be systmatically pushed down (whether by actually lowering salaries or through e.g. automation) until capitalism keeps hitting crises where the production capacity outstrip demand as the competitive forces throw more and more people into unemployment, eventually pushing people to revolution.

This is also the basis for why Marx unlike many others of the time was cautious in his criticism of capitalists for being capitalists: He points out that the same mechanism will keep throwing capitalists into the working class through failure, and hence capitalists are according to Marx just as much unable to change the system from within as workers.

[ue_]

Thank you for the insight. I'm reading Marx at the moment.

[greggyb]

> ...the fact that capitalism requires ever higher and higher returns.

Capitalism requires private ownership of the means of production.

Ever higher and higher returns are a result, so far, of capitalism.

[danharaj]

I guess all those colonial wars and government interventions to build and prop up industries never resulted in higher returns. Capitalism is most certainly not just private ownership of the means of production. That is too reductionist. That is like saying biology is chemistry. Technically true, but misses the point.

Because the means of production are held privately there is a class distinction between owners and workers. Owners derive their profit from the labor of their workers. Workers want to work less for higher wages, owners want the opposite. This becomes the locus of class struggle. Because all society now responds to the needs of capital, the superstructure and the state come to serve primarily bourgeois(owners) class interests.

Considering how many wars and coups have been fought to forcibly introduce capitalism into other countries and forcibly extract their resources and labor, to say that private ownership results in higher returns is almost offensive in how it elides the emergent dynamics of capitalism.

[logfromblammo]

Capitalism and nationalist mercantilism are historically related, but one does not necessarily follow from the other.

Anarcho-capitalists usually define "capitalism" as "societal convention allows an individual to own property for that person's sole benefit". In that school of thought, your ability to own things is limited by your ability to defend what you have claimed. You can't just take your money, use it to buy state power, and then use that to get more money.

The an-cap factory owner does not fear that the workers will seize ownership of the factory. They fear that and that one of the employees will quit and become a leaner, faster competitor. A state-capitalist owner can generally prevent that with zoning and regulation, but the an-cap owner has to create an entirely different worker dynamic.

[danharaj]

I am talking about capitalism in material terms as it happens because that's what the post I replied to was doing, not an ideal, hypothetical form of capitalism. likewise if we were having a discussion about the real life consequences about Marxism-Leninsim (like a productive discussion on that topic can actually happen on HN) I would be criticizing the USSR as it actually developed and not, say, as it was described by Stalin's theoretical ramblings.

An-capitalism has never happened and probably never will because it presumes there is an ideal form of capitalism that can outcompete the actual capitalism that exists which is inextricably tied with state power. In every development of capitalism in every country starting with the very first ones in Europe, the state's power was used to disrupt the old order and establish a new one. It was not the only necessary ingredient, but it was essential.

[logfromblammo]

This is exactly why no one who wishes to have a serious discussion should ever say the word "capitalism"--never, not ever--because you will either waste time up front in defining terms, or later on, when different people are using different meanings for the same words.

"Anarcho-capitalism" will never be realized, because it combines two such words into one brand that virtually guarantees that no two people will be able to describe it in the same way.

[danharaj]

The word capitalism has a fairly well established meaning in most academically rigorous settings.