I would disagree with you here. Capitalism is not an abstract ideal. Neither is racism. They are both specific historical processes. Historians generally seat the origins of capitalism in the invention of common stock in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. Historians also seat the origins of the racism to the mid-1400s in Portugal when Prince Henry sponsored mass slave catching in Africa and commissioned the author Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a positive account of his exploits. This writing, “The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea”, established a moral basis for violent human trafficking, subjugation, and mass theft.
By the time the Dutch East India Company invented common stock, what investors were investing in for the initial IPO was the massive expansion of a private militarized merchant company that had racialized human trafficking and slavery as a core pillar of the company’s operations and profit.
There was literally never a time in human history that capitalism existed separately from racism. Capitalism was built on the foundations of racism and integrated all aspects of racism into its mechanics.
In an academic setting of pure abstract theory you could potentially invent a theoretical form of capitalism that isn’t racist, which could be useful for thought experiments or maybe some creative fiction. But Capitalism as you and I know it has always been fundamentally enmeshed with racism as we know it.
Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it. Kind of like how the fact that communist countries have failed historically does not mean that communism itself is always doomed to fail.
Only one communist country “failed” and that was the USSR. Every other communist revolution is still in existence. And even when we say the USSR “failed” we mean that it succeeded in so many ways, including successfully overthrowing an empire, poverty alleviation, famine alleviation, military victory over the Third Reich, educational advancement, medical advancement, space exploration advancement, and on and on.
Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it.
What you said was “In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes.” What I said was that the foundation of capitalism rested on violent human trafficking, violent slavery, and violent extraction. While we could potentially develop a concept of capitalism that isn’t racist, I don’t know that we’ve proven that. It’s obviously possible to talk about capitalism and ignore racism, just like it’s possible to talk about the US and ignore indigenous genocide, but I don’t think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn’t inherently have indigenous genocide in it.
Capitalism required substantial accumulation of extreme wealth, which seems like it may have only been possible through extreme exploitation and it’s unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world’s people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.
I don’t think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn’t inherently have indigenous genocide in it.
The US is a physical place. Capitalism is not a physical thing.
it’s unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world’s people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.
Capitalism is a historical process that emerged from specific physical conditions on the planet we call earth and is the physical and logical relationship between real physical things in real physical human society.
Again, academically we can try to abstract it into a concept and then mentally divorce it from its history, but physically speaking it’s a physical phenomenon, just as history is a physical phenomenon.
That’s why I said it’s more like being able to talk about the USA while ignoring genocide but can’t truly conceptualize a USA without genocide. We can talk about capitalism as though it’s abstract but what we’re really doing is ignoring history when we do that. I don’t think it’s possible to conceive of capitalism without racism, I think it’s only possible to talk about capitalism without racism.
I don’t think it’s possible to conceive of capitalism without racism, I think it’s only possible to talk about capitalism without racism.
The reason I’m pushing back so much on this is that people do the exact same thing with communism. It has a history that includes violence and suffering, so they assume it inherently must lead to violence and suffering. That is not the case. Nor is it the case that capitalism must lead to racism, or that it must utilize racism, even though I agree that’s how it has happened in our world. We can acknowledge our shitty history while also leaving room to imagine a better future.
Capital is a physical thing. The people who engage in capitalism, the products bought and sold, typically are physical things. Capitalism itself is not.
That’s a good challenge. I think there’s a difference. You’re challenge will force me to wrestle with it. I am grateful for the dialog.
Let’s start with capitalism as a totalizing system versus communism as a non-totalizing system.
Attempt 1
The Chinese movement for communism is historically posterior to Russian communism. That is true. However, Russian communism and Chinese communism did not become a single Communism, they maintained a boundary and eventually had a formal break. Capitalism, on the other hand, is international. It started in Holland, but the superstructural components (usually laws) were easily to replicate and harmonize, and the concentrative nature of capitalism meant that a single dominant capitalist regime induced harmonization in every other polity attempting to participate in the wealth distribution.
There is one capitalism in the world today, but there are 5 communisms (China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Cuba). These 5 communisms do not compose a single system, they are 5 distinct historical processes. There is only one historical process of capitalism in the world today. And even the communisms are deeply integrated into that global process of capitalism, because it is a totalizing global process that controls incentives across all global commodities.
Attempt 2
Capitalism emerged in physics (or in practice) first and later was described by theory. In contrast, communism starts from theory and later emerges in physics (in practice). That is to say the theory of capitalism is descriptive, and the theory of communism is prescriptive.
This explains why it’s possible for multiple communisms to exist but not multiple capitalisms. Capitalism happened. It took over the world. And then people described it in the abstract.
Communism was described in the abstract. It was described by people analyzing capitalism and prescribing an alternative. Then people tried to put it into practice.
In this way, communisms can independently emerge whereas capitalisms cannot. In the future when communism has taken over the world, we can agree that the specific communism that exists at that time will be inextricable from the historical processes that produced it. But Cuban communism was not produced by nor produced Vietnamese communism. They are distinct historical processes that share a common ideological history but do not share a material history. By contrast, the capitalism in China is 100% the same capitalism as the rest of the world, which is why it needs to be subservient to the party. If the party didn’t dominate the capitalism in China. Then the incentives in total would be set by the West. With the party dominant, incentives set by the West can be counteracted.
I believe this demonstrates how there is materially only one capitalism but materially multiple communisms.
Attempt 3
Even if we grant that capitalism can be fully abstracted into a theoretical construct, I think that capitalism theoretically can only happen with a massive concentration of wealth held by an ultraminority that the supermajority relies on but does not control. Capitalism requires capital in the form of hoarded liquidity. Without hoarded liquidity, capitalism can never materialize. If that’s the case, the question becomes “how can such a hoard be amassed?”. I would contend that the empirical record shows that the only way to amass that much wealth concentration is the exploitation of a huge portion of the world’s population - specifically a larger portion of the world’s population than any single nation contains. That means that capitalism requires transnational exploitation, which is exactly what we see with the East India Company.
If that’s the case, a given that humans are imbued with empathy by virtue of their neurology, it would seem that, to produce capitalism it becomes necessary to create some system that overrides innate empathy for other human beings.
In this formulation, I can concede that abstract capitalism doesn’t rely on concrete EuroRacism, but from a functional perspective, it will always require something functionally equivalent to EuroRacism as long as we’re talking about Planet Earth, with all of its various starting conditions. Maybe there’s another physics where capitalism doesn’t require it, but I am unaware of any theory along these lines.
Done
So that’s all I got. Thanks again for the challenge. I’m not entirely satisfied with my response, but it’s an initial set of approaches that I think point in the direction I’m facing.
I would disagree with you here. Capitalism is not an abstract ideal. Neither is racism. They are both specific historical processes. Historians generally seat the origins of capitalism in the invention of common stock in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company. Historians also seat the origins of the racism to the mid-1400s in Portugal when Prince Henry sponsored mass slave catching in Africa and commissioned the author Gomes Eanes de Zurara to write a positive account of his exploits. This writing, “The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea”, established a moral basis for violent human trafficking, subjugation, and mass theft.
By the time the Dutch East India Company invented common stock, what investors were investing in for the initial IPO was the massive expansion of a private militarized merchant company that had racialized human trafficking and slavery as a core pillar of the company’s operations and profit.
There was literally never a time in human history that capitalism existed separately from racism. Capitalism was built on the foundations of racism and integrated all aspects of racism into its mechanics.
In an academic setting of pure abstract theory you could potentially invent a theoretical form of capitalism that isn’t racist, which could be useful for thought experiments or maybe some creative fiction. But Capitalism as you and I know it has always been fundamentally enmeshed with racism as we know it.
Right, which is why I said “in our timeline.” The concept of capitalism is not inherently racist, but historically racism has always been part of it. Kind of like how the fact that communist countries have failed historically does not mean that communism itself is always doomed to fail.
Only one communist country “failed” and that was the USSR. Every other communist revolution is still in existence. And even when we say the USSR “failed” we mean that it succeeded in so many ways, including successfully overthrowing an empire, poverty alleviation, famine alleviation, military victory over the Third Reich, educational advancement, medical advancement, space exploration advancement, and on and on.
What you said was “In our timeline, it’s mostly white dudes.” What I said was that the foundation of capitalism rested on violent human trafficking, violent slavery, and violent extraction. While we could potentially develop a concept of capitalism that isn’t racist, I don’t know that we’ve proven that. It’s obviously possible to talk about capitalism and ignore racism, just like it’s possible to talk about the US and ignore indigenous genocide, but I don’t think we can develop a concept of the US that doesn’t inherently have indigenous genocide in it.
Capitalism required substantial accumulation of extreme wealth, which seems like it may have only been possible through extreme exploitation and it’s unclear whether such extreme exploitation is possible without something like racism to divide the world’s people into those that can be exploited without limit and those that reap the benefits.
The US is a physical place. Capitalism is not a physical thing.
…in our timeline.
Either way, thank you for the history lessons.
On this we disagree.
It literally is not a physical thing.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism
The fuck is wrong with you?Define “capitalism,”, please.(ETA strikethrough to unwarranted rudeness. Sorry for losing my patience.)
Capitalism is a historical process that emerged from specific physical conditions on the planet we call earth and is the physical and logical relationship between real physical things in real physical human society.
Again, academically we can try to abstract it into a concept and then mentally divorce it from its history, but physically speaking it’s a physical phenomenon, just as history is a physical phenomenon.
That’s why I said it’s more like being able to talk about the USA while ignoring genocide but can’t truly conceptualize a USA without genocide. We can talk about capitalism as though it’s abstract but what we’re really doing is ignoring history when we do that. I don’t think it’s possible to conceive of capitalism without racism, I think it’s only possible to talk about capitalism without racism.
The reason I’m pushing back so much on this is that people do the exact same thing with communism. It has a history that includes violence and suffering, so they assume it inherently must lead to violence and suffering. That is not the case. Nor is it the case that capitalism must lead to racism, or that it must utilize racism, even though I agree that’s how it has happened in our world. We can acknowledge our shitty history while also leaving room to imagine a better future.
Capital is a physical thing. The people who engage in capitalism, the products bought and sold, typically are physical things. Capitalism itself is not.
That’s a good challenge. I think there’s a difference. You’re challenge will force me to wrestle with it. I am grateful for the dialog.
Let’s start with capitalism as a totalizing system versus communism as a non-totalizing system.
Attempt 1
The Chinese movement for communism is historically posterior to Russian communism. That is true. However, Russian communism and Chinese communism did not become a single Communism, they maintained a boundary and eventually had a formal break. Capitalism, on the other hand, is international. It started in Holland, but the superstructural components (usually laws) were easily to replicate and harmonize, and the concentrative nature of capitalism meant that a single dominant capitalist regime induced harmonization in every other polity attempting to participate in the wealth distribution.
There is one capitalism in the world today, but there are 5 communisms (China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, Cuba). These 5 communisms do not compose a single system, they are 5 distinct historical processes. There is only one historical process of capitalism in the world today. And even the communisms are deeply integrated into that global process of capitalism, because it is a totalizing global process that controls incentives across all global commodities.
Attempt 2
Capitalism emerged in physics (or in practice) first and later was described by theory. In contrast, communism starts from theory and later emerges in physics (in practice). That is to say the theory of capitalism is descriptive, and the theory of communism is prescriptive.
This explains why it’s possible for multiple communisms to exist but not multiple capitalisms. Capitalism happened. It took over the world. And then people described it in the abstract.
Communism was described in the abstract. It was described by people analyzing capitalism and prescribing an alternative. Then people tried to put it into practice.
In this way, communisms can independently emerge whereas capitalisms cannot. In the future when communism has taken over the world, we can agree that the specific communism that exists at that time will be inextricable from the historical processes that produced it. But Cuban communism was not produced by nor produced Vietnamese communism. They are distinct historical processes that share a common ideological history but do not share a material history. By contrast, the capitalism in China is 100% the same capitalism as the rest of the world, which is why it needs to be subservient to the party. If the party didn’t dominate the capitalism in China. Then the incentives in total would be set by the West. With the party dominant, incentives set by the West can be counteracted.
I believe this demonstrates how there is materially only one capitalism but materially multiple communisms.
Attempt 3
Even if we grant that capitalism can be fully abstracted into a theoretical construct, I think that capitalism theoretically can only happen with a massive concentration of wealth held by an ultraminority that the supermajority relies on but does not control. Capitalism requires capital in the form of hoarded liquidity. Without hoarded liquidity, capitalism can never materialize. If that’s the case, the question becomes “how can such a hoard be amassed?”. I would contend that the empirical record shows that the only way to amass that much wealth concentration is the exploitation of a huge portion of the world’s population - specifically a larger portion of the world’s population than any single nation contains. That means that capitalism requires transnational exploitation, which is exactly what we see with the East India Company.
If that’s the case, a given that humans are imbued with empathy by virtue of their neurology, it would seem that, to produce capitalism it becomes necessary to create some system that overrides innate empathy for other human beings.
In this formulation, I can concede that abstract capitalism doesn’t rely on concrete EuroRacism, but from a functional perspective, it will always require something functionally equivalent to EuroRacism as long as we’re talking about Planet Earth, with all of its various starting conditions. Maybe there’s another physics where capitalism doesn’t require it, but I am unaware of any theory along these lines.
Done
So that’s all I got. Thanks again for the challenge. I’m not entirely satisfied with my response, but it’s an initial set of approaches that I think point in the direction I’m facing.