sj_zero on Nostr: One of the most interesting things in contemporary discourse is there a discussion of ...

One of the most interesting things in contemporary discourse is there a discussion of capitalism.

When the concept of capitalism came about, it was in the throes of the industrial revolution. Employers really did have disproportionate power over the people working for them, and at the time the state was extremely weak. These ideas first began being discussed in an era where the French revolution had started and ended, and it looked as if the concept of an aristocracy was going away forever to be replaced by business owners.

The problem is, time moves on and it isn't like that today.

Among the things that have happened since the French revolution: the holy Roman empire collapsed and was replaced by a nation state called Germany. The concept of nationalism Rose. It was a century of relative peace in Europe. Those are Russia was murdered and the Communists took over that country. Nationalists from the Balkans murdered a German aristocrat causing a series of alliances to collapse upon themselves, resulting in a World war. That World war ended. Soldiers who were promised things during that World war ended up having major effects on the world including the bonus army who marched on Washington and German soldiers who ultimately took over the German government to form the third Reich.

There was a world war triggered over that. A coalition of Germany, Italy, and Japan lost that war. The world economy and world political system was fundamentally rewritten. There was a cold war between the two remaining superpowers, and the communists ultimately lost. China became communist then became more like authoritarians with some markets. The entire labor movement happened fundamentally changing the role of labor.

Meanwhile, people keep talking like the same capitalism that existed immediately following the industrial revolution was still in effect. It's absurd when you realize the entire world is different than back then.

In Marx's time, the state was almost non-existent, and capital controlled our lives (and by the way capital was not a very nice benefactor of the working class), but more importantly the state was tiny -- 3-5% of GDP, providing essentially no services besides basic police and military.

As well, the economy of that era largely no longer exists in the west. Factories are generally a relic relegated to developing nations. Company towns no longer exist. Cities like Sheffield which used to be titans of industry simply don't have those factories anymore. I have cutlery from the factories of the 1970s, which no longer exist. England is in fact a poorer country outside of London, the seat of government.

Some people point to corruption like the relationship between politicians and businessesmen as evidence capital still dominates. This is ahistorical and gets it backwards: in eras that were definitely not capitalism, the power you needed to convince was the government, not capital. You try to corrupt where the power lies. Today, that is the state.

It's always important to remember that virtually every one of the richest people on earth today isn't rich because they sold a great product everyone loved, but because they got in bed with government and did what government asked. Elon Musk may have 250 billion in net worth, but virtually nobody owns his cars. He got rich doing what the state told him to do. Bezos and Zuckerberg are both products of a massive public works project, the internet. Oil magnates sell to governments (the US government is the largest purchaser of fossil fuels on Earth, and the military industrial complex works to secure their military supplies). When half the economy is the state, it's a gravity well that pulls everything in.

The people still talking about capitalism as if such a beast still exists today are tilting at windmills. They will ultimately be just as successful as Don Quixote, since just like that character, it is no longer an era of dragons and knights, of damsels in distress and quests. The world has moved on, and those models no longer apply.

I can't get too deep into it because I'm still working it out for my next book, but today's system to me is either a modernist liberalism where previous iterations were more pre-modern, or postmodernist liberalism. No matter what, it went from a part of a more pluralistic world to a totalizing system that tears down anything else. This new form of liberalism doesn't try to protect existing rights but give new rights to people by taking from others, and in so doing the leviathan of the state grows more powerful.