Guardian | The Occupy London movement is marking its first month this week. It is routinely described as anti-capitalist, but this label is highly misleading. As I found out when I gave a lecture at its Tent City University last weekend, many of its participants are not against capitalism. They just want it better regulated so that it benefits the greatest possible majority.But even accepting that the label accurately describes some participants in the movement, what does being anti-capitalist actually mean?
Many Americans, for example, consider countries like France and Sweden to be socialist or anti-capitalist – yet, were their 19th-century ancestors able to time-travel to today, they would almost certainly have called today's US socialist. They would have been shocked to find that their beloved country had decided to punish industry and enterprise with a progressive income tax. To their horror, they would also see that children had been deprived of the freedom to work and adults "the liberty of working as long as [they] wished", as the US supreme court put it in 1905 when ruling unconstitutional a New York state act limiting the working hours of bakers to 10 hours a day. What is capitalist, and thus anti-capitalist, it seems, depends on who you are.
Many institutions that most of us regard as the foundation stones of capitalism were not introduced until the mid-19th century, because they had been seen as undermining capitalism. Adam Smith opposed limited liability companies and Herbert Spencer objected to the central bank, both on the grounds that these institutions dulled market incentives by putting upper limits to investment risk. The same argument was made against the bankruptcy law.
Since the mid-19th century, many measures that were widely regarded as anti-capitalist when first introduced – such as the progressive income tax, the welfare state, child labour regulation and the eight-hour day – have become integral parts of capitalism today.
Capitalism has also evolved in very different ways across countries. They may all be capitalist in that they are predominantly run on the basis of private property and profit motives, but beyond that they are organised very differently.
15 comments:
The Reagan/Neo-Conservative Huckster's Delusion
"Many Americans, for example, consider countries like France and Sweden to be socialist or anti-capitalist – yet, were their 19th-century ancestors able to time-travel to today, they would almost certainly have called today's US socialist"
CNu, Thinking of the short discussion we had in the comments on CDV's Letter-to-OWS post. I was wondering, do you really reject what you called the "schtick" altogether, or think it gets abused, or is out of place in that letter, or what's your take on that?
T
Tom, the heavy lifting of the civil rights movement is over and has been over for quite a few years now.
My specific critique of what I term "2nd and 3rd line inheritors of the CRM" is that they overwhelmingly and catastrophically failed to capitalize on the opportunities that presented themselves in the wake of full citizenship. Those opportunities consisted of social aggregation, capital aggregation, and economic development. What we have instead witnessed over the past 40 years is trifling and fractious emphasis on issues/events/personalities - instead of collective project execution and institution building.
Can you name a single consequential black profit-making institution that formed in the wake of the CRM? One that participates directly in the mainstream of food, energy, or durable goods manufacture?
How many entertainers, athletes, preachers, pundits, and activists can you name?
For tenured afrodemic scholars to fail to engage and enlighten on this subject, for them to instead 40 years later to be fully absorbed in the careerist effort to self-promote as safe and popular public intellectuals is a final nail in the coffin of black leadership post-CRM. For an afrodemic "scholar" to opportunistically attempt to guilt OWS folk in the street is the height of ludicrous and parasitic self-absorption. Take that gas to the tea-baggers and figure out what you can do to help further enlarge and evolve OWS.
Shooooooot magne..., hands-down, OWS is the blackest popular cultural phenomenon to emerge in America over the entirety of my adult lifetime. If folks don't recognize that these bodies in these streets are carrying on the post CRM MLK protest agenda against materialism, militarism, and, for people , and, doing it in a way that ONLY they can "get away with" at this juncture, and, if folks don't flock into the breach opened up by OWS - then I'm afraid that the worst case alternative Weimar America scenario is a slam-dunk.
I do my level best to keep all options on the table, but in all honesty, I'm too invested in America to pull up stakes and leave.
Well put at dreamhustle, we even have to re-define the word hustle, bring it back to how we used it, Carpe Diem or get-up and go, not the speed, the ability to accomplish. Then sit back and lite one up, in the evening.
Thanks, CNu. So maybe one thing you're saying is that if the Japanese had responded to Commodore Perry's mission with a massive move onto the moral high ground rather than industrializing and building warships, Japan would be a different and less happy place today?
You have completely lost me here Tom. Please try again.
Ugh, obviously the "warships" part of my metaphor isn't intended to mean anything literally warlike. One of the best things we have in the States, to my mind, is we're not shooting at each other.
Give it time, I suspect that's part of what's around that signpost up ahead...,
All right, no, on the militarism & materialism, no. If they're doing it, it's not getting reported.
Yes on teh overshoot. Seems like we're all in a race to drive materialism to a crisis as rapidly as possible. Would be nice to bank the flames a little, and see a coherent program on energy future that doesn't hinge on fairytales like renewables. One that doesn't assume we're all innumerate idiots.
And so, yeah, we really have to support OWS. Because we don't want to keep just doing this ....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z88U915uq8
On the other hand, though, every time I come into contact with Kos or Atrios or those places, I want to start screaming in terms not totally unlike those used in the letter's endless preamble. :) / :(
Hmp. Pre-Obama, I had these dreams that leaders with the oppressed background or whatever might care more about the rest of us, but let's move on.
Perhaps we would be well-served to articulate a rubric for the Kos/Atrios punditocracy, as well? Frankly, I don't give a rat's puckered sphinctorial parts about CDV's contrived beef with Kos, they're all just squawking and clamoring after the same progressive leaning mindshare after all.
OTOH, the attempt to contrive beef with OWS is an priori ridiculous afront IMO - and deserves to be beaten down quick, fast, and in a hurry.
Let me see Kos and CDV an'em going up against a police truncheon or doing anything more than jaw jacking from an ivy tower and perhaps the distinction can be softened a bit.
Dood, that's the magic that is the rorschachian one, http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2008/02/obamamandius.html
remember where you saw it first...,
Perhaps we would be well-served to articulate a rubric for the Kos/Atrios punditocracy, as well?
LOL ... you actually brightened my day with that line ...
Yeah, I remember! That's crazy, though, I think the bug in my thinking was I've been thinking Black leaders must somehow not be as bad as white leaders. Which if I drag that out into the light is just foolish.
First Kurman claims Chomsky isn't Jesus, and now this!
"Can you name a single consequential black profit-making institution that formed in the wake of the CRM? One that participates directly in the mainstream of food... "
How about Famous Amos Coolies...??
Post a Comment