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From: josh@topaz.ARPA (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is "capitalism"?
Message-ID: <1831@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 29-Apr-85 21:05:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.1831
Posted: Mon Apr 29 21:05:59 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Apr-85 07:51:06 EDT
References: <441@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 44

In article <441@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
>
>Yes, we should use such terms carefully.  Here are two alternative
>definitions for "capitalism" that are implicit in what I write.  ...
>
>...  it is the society whose immediate
>producers own their labor power and no other productive force.  ...
>
>... the society whose production serves the
>accumulation of capital.  The point of production under capitalism is
>to use exchange-value [i.e., purchasing power] to produce more
>exchange-value, ...
>
>...Is the Free Economy possibly/necessarily capitalistic?  
>...
>Richard Carnes

The following is by no means definitive; it is merely intended to convey what
I mean when I use the term:  Capitalism refers to the use of capital instead
of labor to produce wealth.  A capitalist is thus someone who makes money
from what he owns rather than what he does.  (It does not matter for this
discussion whether the thing owned is physical production machinery or
money.)  A society is capitalistic to the extent that the people in it are
capitalists.  A socialist or communist society cannot be capitalistic 
since people cannot own capital.  (It is possible for the society as a 
whole to be a single, collective capitalist.)  A free economy may be 
capitalistic to an arbitrary extent.  

Capital, especially if we include "intellectual capital" or knowlege,
is necessary to material progress.  Capital does not merely represent
stored or frozen labor (the Marxian view) as if one had put it into a
bag; capital is a labor *amplifier*, such that the the labor required
to build the capital, plus the labor to use it, sum to less labor than
that necessary to build the same ultimate product "from scratch".

The ultimate capitalistic society would be one in which there were no
laborers; everyone makes his or her living by the income of their holdings.
This may be physically possible in a few decades.  If such holdings were
privately owned, the people would then be free in almost any reasonable 
definition of the word--being even without the necessity of engaging in
a trade or profession.  People in a collectivist society which crossed this 
watershed in physical capability would, of course, still be slaves.

--JoSH