Okay… I’m a bit confused… but I think you are saying the worker in the private company provides – as his main product – labor, even though he’s still directly responsible for the creation of the sprocket that he poured. And that he is rewarded for his labor, which is his primary contribution, even though he receives no direct reward for the creation of the sprocket.

Am I understanding you? Please ignore everything below this if I’m not understanding you.

On the other hand, if I am understanding you correctly, please read on: the worker in the co-op performed the same task. And unlike the private worker, the co-op worker is given a reward for more than just his labor. He’s given a vote in who the sprocket is sold to, a vote in the price set when the sprocket is sold, a vote in the exact mixture of ores going into the sprocket, and (without needing to ask for a raise, without needing to change jobs) the worker in the worker co-op gets a voice in how much he gets paid, what hours he gets scheduled, and how much vacation and sick leave he is allowed.

The worker in the worker co-op gets a voice in general. Agency.

I don’t see how those two things just seem like different flavors of “company” to you. One strips the worker of everything but his labor. The other gives him a voice.

To me, that makes them opposites.

What I was trying to explain is the “direct consequences of their labor” is the compensation they’re paid for providing said labor. You, as a worker, sell your labor for a price, same as any other transaction. If you will, your “sprocket” in this situation is the labor you provide.

I get that the worker is not the only reason the sprocket exists. I understand that he uses someone’s else alloy-pouring lava-pitcher to pour molten steel into a sprocket cast someone else owns. Whoever owns those things and consented / instructed for them to be used in the above manner shares responsibility (might even be more responsible) for the creation of that sprocket. But the sprocket still doesn’t exist until the worker poured the alloy.

The fact that the worker then didn’t create a sprocket, or produce a sprocket, or cause a sprocket to exist – is an alienating step only found in certain kinds of businesses. (And those are the only kinds of businesses anti-capitalists dislike).

For example, a worker can walk into a worker co-op, pour the same kind of alloy heated in the same kind of furnace into a cast that is shaped the exact same, but the worker at this co-op (unlike the worker for the private company) has now created a sprocket.

I’m pretty sure you would agree, right? Because he co-owns the company and he had a democratic voice in the acquisition of the company’s tools? He is responsible for all of the things that caused that sprocket to be created. No other factors were more involved than the worker-owner’s contributions and decisions.

So even though the co-op worker did the exact same thing using the exact same kinds of machinery as the private company worker, would you agree that the sprocket (which only existed after he poured the alloy) was a direct consequence of the co-op worker’s actions? (Whereas it was not a direct consequence of the private employee’s actions)

Let’s say:

• my bank account reads, “100 thousand”
• it costs me $5 million to build an oil rig
• your bank account reads, “$12 million”
• it costs you to $10 million to build an oil rig
  • and there’s a reason: through corruption, backroom deals, and frivolous regulations, I have managed to raise your cost, but not mine

You can still build one. I still can’t – in any reasonable way – poach whichever oil rig workers you choose to underpay. And this is true despite the fact that it’s technically easier for me to build an oil rig. The only advantage you need to be above consequences for inefficient practices… is for your opponents to be too poor to afford startup costs either way.

No uneven playing field is necessary.

theoretically they could cooperate to build an oil rig and share in the returns.

United States tax dollars, in the form of DARPA grants, paid for the development of the internet. So there is precedent for extremely expensive operations to be successfully carried out under democratic control.

Also, since oil deposits are a natural resource, one could argue government ought to be involved in their collection.

I’m with J Lou. Even Marx considered capital a valid input to the production process. He just thought it was being misused.

He believed the workers should control capital democratically. He believed our current treatment of capital (what capital entitles a person to do under our current system) was destroying people’s lives and hope and autonomy.

But Marx and Engels actually dedicated several paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto to explaining why capital should not be destroyed during the overthrow of the bourgeoisie – indicating that they did believe capital to be valuable.

I see a lot of comments saying workers are not allowed to own what they produce. That their employer takes it from them. I feel this is flawed and possibly comes from a place of frustration.

That’s not frustration. The viewpoint you are describing (that workers are not allowed to own what they produce) actually comes from a different definition of “capital” and “capitalism” than the one you are using. And that difference in definitions is why I created this post. And I appreciate your answer. It lets me highlight the differences in definitions and the consequences of those differences. Because in the case of capitalism, the difference in definitions are actually more important than any difference in values or priorities.

You noted that people are saying “workers aren’t allowed to own what they produce in capitalism.” But those people are not referring to capitalism as you have defined it.

Capital

Capital is a combination of property and money. Property being the things you own, with money being a measure of potential property you don’t yet own.

I’m sorry, but no one who disagrees with you thinks that the ability to accrue property and money deprive workers of control over what they produce. Not even Marx and Engels. Not even Mao or Stalin. Certainly, property and money can we wielded in such a way that they become capital. But until then, property and money are merely wealth.

The definition used by people like Marx and Engels – or by the entire field of economics – is: capital is property that allows or speeds up the production of goods. A mine. An oil rig. A McDonalds burger conveyor-belt-oven-thingy. A 3D printer. In other words, the word “capital” is about the function of the property. Not its value. A painting can cost $1,000,000 and still not become capital. Because no one will ever operate that painting to cook burgers. Or to mine ores.

Capitalism

Now “the ability to own commodity-producing property” is still not quite sufficient for a system to become “capitalism.” In fact, Marx and Engels didn’t want any capital to be destroyed at all in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Because even under the definition of “capital” that communists still to this day believe in, the existence of capital and ownership of it are still not inherently a source of coercion.

There’s another crucial piece to the puzzle that leads to people complaining about the whole system:

In capitalism as a system, some form of employment contract always allows the owner of capital to own everything produced using that capital.

For example, the oil rig owner – according to employment contracts – owns all of the oil produced using the oil rig. But not only did the owner not need to work the rig to extract the oil: the owner also did not need to weld the seams or turn the screws to build the oil rig. All the owner needs is official ownership of the oil rig and a system that acknowledges their right to everything the oil rig produces, (regardless of who needed to input their labor to turn the oil rig into anything other than a metal sculpture in the ocean.) and with those two things, they are entitled to all of the proceeds of the rig.

Now, hopefully, you can see that, provided a worker has entered into such a contract, “workers are not allowed to own what they produce” is not a statement born from frustration: it’s just true by definition. It’s not saying “the worker is NEVER allowed to own anything they ever create in this society.” It’s saying: “within the relationship laid out by the employment contract, the worker who operates capital is not entitled to the direct consequences of their labor.”

Now, whether the worker benefits from this arrangement is another picture, but in accepting an employment contract, the worker is entering into a dynamic where they do not own the outcome of their own labor.

Bonus Question #4

Which is why bonus question #4 (the difference between a workers’ cooperative and a company that uses these employment contracts) is extremely important to understanding the consequences of the difference between these definitions. You even touched on its importance in your earlier replies, saying yourself:

If that worker is employed by a sprocket making company; they still make sprockets, but that’s not what they produce. They produce labor. Which they’ve chosen to sell to the sprocket company for money and/or other benefits

(Aside: what you’re describing here is literally Marx’s theory of alienation.) But more importantly,

I’m assuming the sprocket company “produces” sprockets by your definition of “produce.” Well, in a workers’ co-op, the workers vote in the decisions of the company. They elect the CEO (if there is one) and the managers. They take shares of the profits. They are the company. And if the workers are the company, and the company produces sprockets, then the workers are once again – just like if they were self-employed, but with the benefits of efficiency and networking that come from being part of an organization – producing sprockets. They are no longer (as Marx would say) alienated from the results of their labor.

In other words, the co-op is a form of self-employment according to the definitions you appear to be using. Which makes the distinction between cooperatives and other kinds of companies… massive.

The people saying, “capitalism strips workers of the results of their labor” love workers’ co-ops. Love them. Despite you probably defining the workers’ cooperative as “another example of capitalism”, not even avowed Marxists would in any circumstance suggest that the worker co-op “disallows workers from owning what they produce.” In fact, they strongly believe the opposite. To them (and to Marx himself) the worker cooperative operates under an entire opposing paradigm to the worker contract. And to them, it is therefore a rival philosophy to capitalism.

You don’t have to accept their definitions. You don’t need to believe Marxist definitions are correct. You can believe co-ops are capitalist all you want.

But please: try to understand that when people criticize “capitalism,” they are (I 100% guarantee) referring to something far more narrow and far more specific than what you call capitalism.

Ah… good point. My description did nothing to distinguish capitalism from feudalism. There is necessity for some mention of who is allowed ownership of this form of property. (Or what is allowed ownership as is often the case.)

As for the word private though: I wanted to avoid more terms I would need to define that might obscure my definition. Also I’m not even sure what distinguishes private ownership from other kinds of ownership. Or what makes a private entity.

But thanks for the input. At some point I’ll edit my definition.

It took me all day to understand this one, but that is an excellent point. We do mislabel the problem. Those employment contracts are indeed far more damaging than capital itself. Thank you for this perspective.

Oh. My apologies.

Wait! @Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com isn’t wrong. Also, I think we are miscommunicating with pro-capitalists.

Granted, we both know capitalist propaganda labels basically everything positive about human interactions “capitalism” and then scaremongers about how “the left wants to take THIS away from you!” And that is the main source of our problems communicating with pro-capitalists.

But some responsibility (maybe 20% of the responsibility?) lies with the fact that we choose to label “capital” the problem instead of… you know… the fact that our laws and customs favor a zero-sum employment contract between capital owners and workers where there can be only one winner?

Of course the owner of more capital is always on the better side of this contract, (which is why we identified capital as the problem in the first place.) But labeling the problem “capital” makes it look like we don’t see any value to capital. Which isn’t true. Marx and Engels dedicated several paragraphs of their manifesto to explaining why the means of production should not be damaged, because the existence of capital leads to abundance, and the means of production is valuable. They didn’t want the means destroyed: they simply wanted it democratically owned by workers’ cooperatives and state socialism.

The problem is employment contracts that are part of how our society treats the individual, private ownership of capital. Not the idea that capital is a valuable contribution to the production process and deserves reward.

According to us anti-capitalists it predates capitalism. According to a good number of people, the definition of capitalism is basically… anything involving money.

Ideally, copyrights and patents would protect the small inventor and small musician. Unfortunately, wielding copyrights and patents in any useful way requires other forms of capital. (You have to have wealth in order to sue someone for infringement.)

Okay, I absolutely love this response. All the way down.

And no, you didn’t need to read o_o’s thread. My personal summary of it is that people who defined capitalism as, “anything that allows individuals control over the fruits of their labor” and people who defined capitalism as, “the alienation of workers from the fruits of their labor” were talking right past each other, not really understanding that the points they were making only supported their argument if you assumed their definitions were correct.

For reference, there’s an author named Charles Eisenstein who in his book “Sacred Economics” advocates for taking steps that he intends to move us (the world, I guess) eventually to a gift-based economy without money or barter. And he calls it capitalism. With a straight face. Now, I don’t know if deep down in his heart he believes it actually qualifies as capitalism or if he’s calling it capitalism because he feels like his aims are more likely to be well received by pro-capitalists if he calls it “capitalism.”

That is amusing. And yeah. That sounds very pragmatic. Or ignorant. Hard to tell which. But Eisenstein sounds like an interesting character. And like you said, if one needs to call their ideal system “capitalism” to get it implemented, then there’s no real crime.

• the profit motive
• quid pro quo
• private property
• the institution of employment

Solid. I like these components.

As to your third question, let me take exception with the question itself. I don’t believe “control over what you produce” is necesssarily a good thing per se. I believe in having something roughly like ownership rights over what one uses. But if one produce a surplus, I don’t believe they should be able to deprive others in need of said surplus.

That fascinates me. I have always heard the struggle phrased essentially as, “you control your proceeds” vs “someone else controls your proceeds.” I didn’t realize people were advocating philosophies that bowed to the idea that “needs” should take priority over personal possessions. I’ll have to think about that one for a while.

1. I… don’t know or care? “Capitalist” can mean someone who supports the institution of capitalism. Or it can mean something like an owner of a company that employs people. I think plenty of people participate in capitalism (by selling things they make, by accepting an employment position, etc) out of necessity while disapproving of the system as a whole. Hell, I’m one of them. I’m not sure I understand why you ask.

This answer is wonderful. Again, I like that you acknowledge that the definitions are so varied that they aren’t even useful anymore.

The main reason I asked? It was a leading question: my goal was that people’s answers would highlight the differences between their definitions. Because, if people could understand why their definitions were fundamentally different, maybe they could understand why they were talking past each other?

I’m not sure if the effort will succeed. But I really liked and appreciated this answer.

🤣 🤣

Look, I promise: I was just annoyed at people talking past each other on the question @o_o@programming.dev asked. And I just wanted to ask the question in a way that might address the problems that o_o’s question ran into.

At what price – to drill and construct an oil rig for example – would you consider it so prohibitively expensive that “somewhere else” has a hard time existing?

A million dollars? Five million dollars?

Consider that the median bank balance in America is $5,300. That is to say, half of all Americans have less than $5,300 in the bank.

What startup cost makes it difficult for others to compete?

The problem is just that people with more capital can coerce and rig the system against people with less capital. Therefore someone who already has capital gets more capital increase from a task than someone with less capital would get for the same task in many situations.

First of all, I love this description of the problem. I agree that this is the problem with a lot of societies. Foster Farms can wield their enormous capital and connections to underpay chicken farmers (and frankly, underpay them to a point where it might as well be considered theft). And that wielding of wealth is a huge problem.

But would you be open to the idea that – to anti-capitalists, such as myself – the moment your store of wealth is used to coerce people with less wealth and earn more from that coerced person’s production of goods than the coerced person earns for themselves, that is the moment a system becomes capitalism? Whereas, before that point, it is simply a “market economy.”

Would you be willing to entertain such a definition?

Sure. To me, capitalism is any system that supports ownership of any property – oil rigs, land, factories, assembly lines, burger machines, copyrights and patents, mines, farms, etc – that is used to collect the products of another person’s labor. (For example, when the oil rig worker is payed a wage, but the oil rig owner owns the oil that was pumped, that’s capitalism.)

EDIT: Wolfhound pointed out that my definition ought to specify who is allowed to to control this property. And that’s true.

Capitalism is any system that permits all people (or non-person entities) with sufficient wealth to own property – oil rigs, land, factories, assembly lines, burger machines, copyrights and patents, mines, farms, etc – that is used to collect the products of another person’s labor. (For example, when the oil rig worker is payed a wage, but the oil rig owner or oil rig corporation owns the oil that was pumped, that’s capitalism.)

The property used in the above manner is called capital, or private property. The person using it is called a capitalist.

As for whether it is conducive to workers controlling what they produce, my answer is that – by definition – capitalism allows someone else to control what workers produce. It does not guarantee a worker any power over what they produce, and in the majority of cases (where a worker must pay rent, health insurance, food, etc and cannot afford to start their own business or buy their own equipment) it actually pressures workers into situations where they do not control what they produce.

You probably won’t see this, but I hope you will amend your definition of capitalism:

Capitalism is defined as a set of rules/regulations that allows people to own the capital that they produce.

You know this, right? We all know a trust fund baby is perfectly capable of using the wealth they were born into to buy a factory, mine, apartment complex, or shares in all of the above. (Hence profiting off of value they did NOT produce.) We all know capitalism does not distinguish in any way whatsoever between this form of capital ownership and the self-made variety.

“Capital they produce” and “capital they acquire / inherit / use stolen money to purchase” can both be wielded the exact same way. That’s the point of capitalism.

And this is only half of why, “that they produce” doesn’t work in this definition. The other half is that it contradicts the definition of “capital.”

Capital is literally “any form of property that can be used to collect the value of other people’s labor.” That is the opposite of “ownership over the things you produce.”

The exact opposite.

To “own the capital you produce” one must personally build the means of production. Otherwise, the owner is owning the capital someone else produced.

And you’ll find the vast, vast, vast majority of almost every form of capital (patents, copyrights, factories, burger machines, server computers, office buildings, mines, mine equipment, oil rigs, oil tankers, power plants, land, the list goes on) does not belong to the people who turned the screws, drew up the plans, welded the seams, mined the materials, performed the research, wrote the movie script, poured the cement, or otherwise PRODUCED the capital.

It belongs instead to the people who funded it. The people who, under capitalism, own it.

Anti-capitalists are not against people owning what they produce. In fact, in America, there is a distinctly anti-capitalist business model that thrives in numerous cities called a “cooperative” (co-op for short) that is owned by either (a) customers, or (b) workers. And a worker co-op is literally workers “owning what they produce”, but is considered market socialism by anyone who cares about using words correctly.

I would love if co-ops replaced corporations. Any anti-capitalist would. Even Maoists would tell you, “a society full of co-ops would be wonderful. The only reason I don’t find that sufficient is because capitalists would use violence to crush co-ops just as they have used violence to crush governments that didn’t favor US corporations.”

All anti-capitalists want people to be able to own what they produce. The system that robs people of their control over what they produce is exactly what anti-capitalists have been struggling to overthrow.

(Aside: many anti-capitalists support a “corporate death sentence” where any company that commits a crime causing more damage than it can afford to repair can have its assets seized and turned into a cooperative and given to its workers. This allows a company deemed “too big to fail, because too many workers would lose their jobs” to be kept running and keep its workers employed while also punishing the people whose decisions caused the damage. The investors would lose their shares, and the CEO elected by the investors would lose their job and their shares. Everyone else would be fine.)

Main point: I think before asking,

why do so many people dislike capitalism?

You need to first ask,

how do people define capitalism, and is it possible for the thing I like (people owning what they produce) to be protected in an anti-capitalist organization or system?

Well, anyone right of Richard Spencer these days is typically called, “Communist”, “liberal”, “globalist”, “leftist”, “BLM terrorist”, “Antifa”, and “far left extremist” interchangeably by the side that’s been working very hard to make sure words don’t mean anything anymore.

But to leftists, the distinction is still important: leftists believe in Marx’s idea of a class struggle. Most other Democrats, on the other hand, don’t even know what that is.

The class struggle goes like this: what’s good for the miner will never be good for the mine owner. What’s good for the line cook will never be good for the restaurant owner. What’s good for the actor will never be good for the studio executive. And so on and so forth.

The reason these two sides are inherently at odds is because every penny paid to workers is a penny NOT made in profit. And likewise every penny made in profit is a penny NOT paid to workers. If workers score by stealing points from bosses, and bosses score by stealing points from workers, then workers and bosses are on different teams.

Bernie makes allusions to this notion constantly by heavily using the phrase “working class”. Plus his proposals are pretty anti-capitalist (cancelling student loan debt, Medicare for all). So leftists flocked to his banner, elated.

Carmex lip balm as well.

That’s a lot of the reason why Neosporin or any other antibiotic ointments help you heal faster. There’s petrolatum in all those products.