Thursday, April 12, 2012

Chomsky on capitalism...


Noam Chomsky on Capitalism:

What is called capitalism is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with  powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.


Hard to argue with that.

28 comments:

Letsgetitdone said...

Wish I'd said it myself!

Major_Freedom said...

Those private tyrannies are accountable...to their customers.

If their customers stop giving the private tyrannies their money, those private tyrannies would either disappear, or they would be bought out and controlled by the state, in which case Chomsky would then, according to his own understanding of accountability, have to say it is now "accountable."

The reason Chomsky doesn't see how private tyrannies are accountable, is because of his belief that accountability can only be had if it rests on "the people" which is of course in the political sense.

Private tyrannies that are accountable to the individual customers, collectively, are deemed as "unaccountable" because they're not accountable to "the people" i.e. the state directly.

Would Chomsky say that because the choices we make on who will be our friends, or what food we will eat, or who we will marry, because it's not directly controlled by the state, that these choices are "unaccountable"?

Tom Hickey said...

"Capitalism" says it all. One factor is considered superior to other factors of production. Labor is considered a commodity and treated as such.

This is the basis of Marx's critique of capitalism. It "alienates" workers from their "species nature," i.e., it dehumanizes them. While the economic, political and social context has changed a great since the time of Marx, making some of his critique obsolete now, this remains as true as ever.

This implies that the fundamental problem is a spiritual one rather than only economic. Capitalism, especially dominated by monopoly capital, is an attack on the human spirit.

While this problem has economic causes, the chief cause is the institutional arrangements that underlie it and the cultural forces that perpetuate it. A great deal of contemporary culture is about distracting workers from their plight and convincing them to act against their interest.

Chomsky is really good at analyzing these in contemporary terms.

Major_Freedom said...

Tom Hickey:

"Capitalism" says it all. One factor is considered superior to other factors of production. Labor is considered a commodity and treated as such.

Commodities are alienable such that the ownership can be transferred from person to person.

Labor on the other hand is not alienable, and cannot be transferred from person to person.

Since commodity ownership can be transferred, but labor cannot, it is impossible to treat labor as a commodity. It is owned by the individual themselves at all times and is in their control.

This is the basis of Marx's critique of capitalism. It "alienates" workers from their "species nature," i.e., it dehumanizes them. While the economic, political and social context has changed a great since the time of Marx, making some of his critique obsolete now, this remains as true as ever.

There is no "species nature" of man apart from the individual's nature. Humans cannot be dehumanized except through death.
Marx's notion of "alienation" is not the typical tripe his followers talk about, such as being separated from the product they help produce. To Marx, alienation was mystical and cosmic. It derives from Plotinus' intolerable feeling of being alive and not being everything, of realizing the schism between subject and object, and wanting to transcend it. Marx just took that age old doctrine and window dressed it.

This implies that the fundamental problem is a spiritual one rather than only economic. Capitalism, especially dominated by monopoly capital, is an attack on the human spirit.

All individual based economic systems are an attack on general concepts like "human spirit." But when it comes to MY spirit, when it comes to me, Major_Freedom, capitalism is the only system that does not attack me. All other economic systems are based on some form of collectivism, of general abstract concepts taking shape in physical dominance over me from which there is no escape. Communism, fascism, democracy, socialism, despotism, every single other economic system attacks ME, and attacks all other individuals, and pretends that oppressing them with general concepts of "human spirit" are somehow liberating and freedom inducing.

Marxism is nothing but a religion communicated in secular terms. Instead of God, there is "humanity". Instead of states there are "worker's councils".

While this problem has economic causes, the chief cause is the institutional arrangements that underlie it and the cultural forces that perpetuate it. A great deal of contemporary culture is about distracting workers from their plight and convincing them to act against their interest.

What an insult to workers. You basically just called workers too stupid for their own good. How utterly unsurprising.

The chief cause is not institutional arrangements, or cultural forces. These are mere byproducts of a much more fundamental cause, namely, individual ideas and values. These are primary. They are the datum upon which all of society is formed, transformed, and where all institutions and technology rest.

Nobody can isolate and identify a causal relation for how exactly new ideas and discoveries will be made. New ideas and discoveries can only ever be understood and reconstructed after they are already made in the past. For this reason, ideas, not institutions, are primary.

All institutions can be planned, and all institutions can have ideas being put into action.

Chomsky is really good at analyzing these in contemporary terms.

Wait, are you talking about your analysis or Chomsky's? I see your analysis, but I don't see any analysis of Chomsky's analysis.

Matt Franko said...

Tom,

Mercantilism or perhaps today's neo-Mercantilism, is another "ism" that you perhaps should add to your list of "ism"s. Very dark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

It facilitates a 'race to the bottom'. A continuous feedback loop of arbitraging the real terms of labor back in forth across the borders of nations. Ratcheting down on the real quality of life of each nations people in iteration so humans globally can never realize any productivity gains in real terms.... very dark.

Resp,

Matt Franko said...

Major,

Chomsky is talking about "Mercantilism" not 'a merchant'....

Resp,

Major_Freedom said...

Matt Franko:

Chomsky is talking about "Mercantilism" not 'a merchant'...

Very good! You get a cookie.

I got one: Chomsky was talking about the economy, not your mommy.

Tom Hickey said...

Matt: "It facilitates a 'race to the bottom'. A continuous feedback loop of arbitraging the real terms of labor back in forth across the borders of nations. Ratcheting down on the real quality of life of each nations people in iteration so humans globally can never realize any productivity gains in real terms.... very dark."

That's the neoliberal agenda. It is an attack on wages and worker bargaining power, since wages are the principal cost to business and worker bargaining power allowing workers to negotiate reduces margins.

Trixie said...

"Chomsky was talking about the economy, not your mommy."

Perfect timing as I login for the evening. This is some sort of internet bat signal for me. Enjoy:

And we were talking about Chomsky, not your pastrami.

Jonf said...

Here is how I read it. Powerful oligarchs control the economy and have oversize influence on government. Witness the neoliberal meme. This ultimately results in undue control over working people and our lives. Chomsky says it better.

How about that Citizens United ruling?

Tom Hickey said...

In this context, read Yasha Levine's “Everyone But an Idiot Knows That The Lower Classes Must Be Kept Poor, or They Will Never Be Industrious” (Arthur Young, 1771), if you missed when it was posted.

Tom Hickey said...

And for how it works not, see Michael Hudson Michael Hudson on the FRS (interview transcript).

Tom Hickey said...

Should be "works now"

Ryan Harris said...

"corporate mercantilism" = Corporations try to maintain a positive balance of trade? Sounds good. Total Rubbish, corporations make profits and don't care about domestic balance of trade.

"huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy" = Right, private ownership results in economic activity that mostly serves private customer demands rather than public purpose. Thought that WAS the POINT of private....


"private tyrannies...operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively..." = Yes, Governments are more powerful than corporations and regulate them and change the "domestic economy and international society"


Linguistically interesting. Politically, Economically, Philosophically he points out irony and hypocrisy. He sees conspiracy and hidden agendas behind every human system and policy choice. There is a reason Hugo Chavez loves Chomsky.

Anonymous said...

Major Freedom:

As someone would apparently loves individual freedom so much, why is it that you have so little respect for the opinions of others?

You are like a little tyrant - only your ideas are correct and worthy of consideration.

Democracy must be abolished, in your view, because democracy means that other people's ideas get to shape society - whereas in your ideal world only your ideas would shape society.

You want to take away people's freedom to form political societies, to determine their future through democratic debate and election. You want to take away people's right to vote and replace it with an eternal, unchangeable system of YOUR choosing.

Your arguments and logic are flawed and on the whole, weak. But you ignore other's criticisms, as your only desire is to IMPOSE your ideas on the rest of humanity. You don't care that others may have different ideas and beliefs to you.

Thankfully America still aspires to be a free society so your tyrannical ideas will never get the chance to dominate.

Ramanan said...

Keynes and Moore on Mercantilism here

http://www.concertedaction.com/2012/02/28/national-saving/

Ramanan said...

Joe Stiglitz talked about it at INET today

http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/Stiglitz%20Presentation.pdf

Anonymous said...

Tom:

So what would you call a system which combines trade, private property etc with government intervention and decent living and working standards for all? If not 'capitalism' then what?

JK said...

Responding to "So what would you call a system which combines trade, private property etc with government intervention and decent living and working standards for all? If not 'capitalism' then what?"

Socialism?

Anonymous said...

Wikipedia on socialism:

Socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/ is an economic system characterised by social ownership and control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy,[1] and a political philosophy advocating such a system.

.. A socialist economic system would consist of an organisation of production to directly satisfy economic demands and human needs, so that goods and services would be produced directly for use instead of for private profit driven by the accumulation of capital, and accounting would be based on physical quantities, a common physical magnitude, or a direct measure of labour-time.[5][6] Distribution of output would be based on the principle of individual contribution."

So a system which "combines trade, private property etc with government intervention and decent living and working standards for all" wouldn't be 'socialism' given the definition above.

Tom Hickey said...

"So what would you call a system which combines trade, private property etc with government intervention and decent living and working standards for all? If not 'capitalism' then what?"

It's called a mixed economy. No modern nation operates under pure capitalism and none ever will, I am pretty confident in saying.

Once we admit that, then a lot of the hype goes away and we can get to fashioning policy that works to create distributed prosperity, which is the way to creating a bigger pie so it is a win-win except for the scammers who game the system in the name of "free markets, free trade and free capital flows' aka neoliberalism.

Tom Hickey said...

Anonymous, the defenders of "capitalism" (neoliberalism) argue that the alternative is socialism. Socialism as you point out is public ownership of the means of production and I would add, in a modern economy of the credit system as well. That's nonsense. First there are many approaches to capitalism including various degrees of public/private in a mixed economy. It's a scare tactic that has no basis is reality.

Major_Freedom said...

Tom Hickey:

It's called a mixed economy. No modern nation operates under pure capitalism and none ever will, I am pretty confident in saying.

Terribly flawed a priori pronouncement that contradicts the reality of human choice.

Once we admit that, then a lot of the hype goes away and we can get to fashioning policy that works to create distributed prosperity, which is the way to creating a bigger pie so it is a win-win except for the scammers who game the system in the name of "free markets, free trade and free capital flows' aka neoliberalism.

Distributed prosperity is just another religion.

Anonymous, the defenders of "capitalism" (neoliberalism) argue that the alternative is socialism. Socialism as you point out is public ownership of the means of production and I would add, in a modern economy of the credit system as well. That's nonsense.

That's not nonsense. A good can only have one absolute master owner. If it's not the individual producer or trader, then the inevitable result of denying individual producers and traders being the absolute master owners, is all means of production coming into absolute ownership of a single person or group of people who task themselves with denying individual ownership from everyone else.

There really is only two choices: individualism or collectivism.

If collectivism is introduced, it will eventually win, as it is right now as we speak, and has been for many years.

First there are many approaches to capitalism including various degrees of public/private in a mixed economy. It's a scare tactic that has no basis is reality.

These "degrees" of intervention have unintended and unforeseen consequences, that the "mixed economy" advocate always believes the state can "fix". That intervention of course creates new unintended and unforeseen consequences.

As long as mixed economy advocates dominate, the inevitable result is full fledged socialism.

This is not scare tactics, it's economic and political science. If it does frighten you, then it's your own fault.

Major_Freedom said...

Tom Hickey:

It's called a mixed economy. No modern nation operates under pure capitalism and none ever will, I am pretty confident in saying.

Terribly flawed a priori pronouncement that contradicts the reality of human choice.

Once we admit that, then a lot of the hype goes away and we can get to fashioning policy that works to create distributed prosperity, which is the way to creating a bigger pie so it is a win-win except for the scammers who game the system in the name of "free markets, free trade and free capital flows' aka neoliberalism.

Distributed prosperity is just another religion.

Anonymous, the defenders of "capitalism" (neoliberalism) argue that the alternative is socialism. Socialism as you point out is public ownership of the means of production and I would add, in a modern economy of the credit system as well. That's nonsense.

That's not nonsense. A good can only have one absolute master owner. If it's not the individual producer or trader, then the inevitable result of denying individual producers and traders being the absolute master owners, is all means of production coming into absolute ownership of a single person or group of people who task themselves with denying individual ownership from everyone else.

There really is only two choices: individualism or collectivism.

If collectivism is introduced, it will eventually win, as it is right now as we speak, and has been for many years.

First there are many approaches to capitalism including various degrees of public/private in a mixed economy. It's a scare tactic that has no basis is reality.

These "degrees" of intervention have unintended and unforeseen consequences, that the "mixed economy" advocate always believes the state can "fix". That intervention of course creates new unintended and unforeseen consequences.

As long as mixed economy advocates dominate, the inevitable result is full fledged socialism.

This is not scare tactics, it's economic and political science. If it does frighten you, then it's your own fault.

Matt Franko said...

Beo champions Warren Buffet's 'import certificate' market as way to prevent these imbalances...

Perhaps you could make all international trade settle in real terms vice monetary, make importers and exporters identify real product offsets. If you didnt use Ex/Im certificates...

Once you let the banking system get involved in the settlement of trade transactions, it sets off this process.

JK said...

So…

Capitalism = private ownership

Socialism = public ownership

Communism = no ownership?

I think socialism always meant "mixed economy" to me. What is the fundamental difference then between Socialism and Communism? Is there a difference between public ownership and no ownership?

Tom Hickey said...

Communism is form of socialism, but not the only form. Moreover, no Communist state has gotten past the stage of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Of course, that dictatorship was hijacked by an elite, just as Bakunin has objected when Marx's proposed it.

The only truly socialistic communities have been primitive societies and isolated communities such as the early followers of Jesus and various monastic orders in the East and West, but it's never been scaled up. Marx was familiar with anthropology and may have modeled his thought on primitive societies, e.g. Native American tribes described by Lewis Morgan. This is also the basic model of many contemporary libertarians of the left that attempt to adapt the tribal model to contemporary conditions.

Anonymous said...

There are societies that people call "socialist", like, I dunno, Norway for example. Others are governed by "socialist" parties, like Spain until recently.
But these are really mixed economies. Just as the USA is not "really" a "capitalist" country (according to capitalist fundamentalists) because of government intervention, the state money system, tax etc, so these countries are not really "socialist". In fact they are far more capitalist than they are socialist. They have some socialist-type policies and ideals but that's about it. The UK used to be quite "socialist" until the 1980s, but only quite. It was also governed by "socialists" (Labour) under Tony Blair, who greatly reformed the party. The Labour party is now described as "a centre-left democratic socialist and social democratic political party".

I guess another name for a mixed economy could be "social democracy with a market economy", to a greater or lesser degree.

As for the difference between socialism and communism, here's wikipedia again:

"Communism (Lat. communis - common, universal) is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order. This movement, in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which saw intense rivalry between the "socialist world" (socialist states ruled by Communist parties) and the "western world" (countries with market economies), culminating in the Cold War between the Eastern bloc and the "Free World".[citation needed]

In Marxist theory, pure communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.[1][2] The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Leninism adds to Marxism the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution and to secure all political power after the revolution for the working class, for the development of universal class consciousness and worker participation, in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism"