The Probelm With Capitalism

[PETRUS]

40. I agree wholeheartedly with your final paragraph.

It's not at odds with the point I'm trying to make. I'm less clear on what you're saying in your penultimate paragraph, although part of what I think you're suggesting I also agree with - specifically, that when capitalism (or the market system, or whatever one chooses to call it) was getting started people probably didn't know where things were heading, they were just doing what they wanted to do.

What I'm disputing is your opinion that capitalism is "a natural outcome of common conditions." All the evidence points to the contrary. To help explain my point, let me back up and talk about the historical record on a completely different topic. Humans everywhere use spoken language. Written language isn't entirely universal, but it did appear independently at multiple times and locations. However, the archaeological record (so far) indicates that alphabetical writing was invented in one place, one time, and spread from there. Now alphabetical writing is used by many people all over the world. The market system is similar. Cultures everywhere have concepts about property. Property relations that are essentially feudal or communal (often those two concepts coexist and overlap) developed in many different places at many different times, so one could argue that those kinds of arrangements do fit the bill of "a natural outcome of common conditions." Private property (as we understand it) and markets as a central organizing principle developed in one place just a few hundred years ago. The "common conditions" that you think inevitably lead to capitalism existed for thousands of years all over the world. But capitalism didn't pop up multiple times independently, and there would have to be some evidence that it did to give serious consideration to your idea. In some sense, all of history is inevitable - what happened, happened, and nobody can change the past - and we did get capitalism eventually. But it is a system imposed by the exercise of state power, and is unusual if one considers the full measure of human history.

Anyway, interesting discussion. I don't know if you want to carry on, but there are all kinds of segues and subtopics we could explore if you care to.