The story of the demise of slavery I take to have great significance for our evaluation of capitalism. The system is not to be judged purely by its material consequences. Relative or temporary happiness brought about by productive efficiency or growth cannot be the last word. Absent liberty and self-government, the situation would be inexcusable. We now can see that capitalism has as its essence individual freedom-rights. Without respect for these rights the system is in danger of turning into a monstrosity, as it would have in an unchecked antebellum South. It did so in Wilhelmine Germany and could do so still in crypto-communist China. Again, as in the case of the developing regions of today, liberty-rights are of the essence of capitalism as an improving force for humanity. If we do not see this we run the danger of suffering from the same tunnel vision of colonel Nicholson at the River Kwai.
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Samizdata quote of the dayDecember 7th, 2016 |
 28 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Capitalism = use of accumulated wealth to generate more by bringing product to market.
Free market = voluntary exchange.
Both the above can exist in the absence of the other: USSR was State Capitalism with no free market; our early ancestors bartering surplus with each other was free market without Capitalism.
The process… it is NOT a system… that launched the Industrial Revolution = Capitalism + Free Market.
It is the combination of these two which results in an increasingly wealthy society.
Unfortunately since the start of the 20th Century the ‘free market’ aspect has been increasingly replaced by central control and planning by politicians.
The hybrid ‘mixed economy’ muddle we now have is indeed a system… a system of ideological oppression of individual sovereignty and economic liberty.
So let us not accuse it of being Capitalism, but say clearly what it is in fact: pernicious Socialism lurking in the shadows stalking society.
State capitalism is an absurd phrase on every level. It was state direction with no meaningful price signals. To call USSR any form of capitalism reduces the word to meaninglessness
Which it is and always has been to a great extent, like the rest of the nonsense Marx came up with. The only real meaning it does have is the one articulated by John B. here.
That is absolutely untrue: there was a price for everything (although normally not the one on the sticker), and the signals were quite meaningful too.
Then you misunderstood but the hint is in the bold face type: the reason it is not ‘state’ capitalism is because the state is the one printing the sticker that everyone will ignore.
The price for everything that people actually paid was the real price for the diddly shit of life outside what the state decided it should be. The price you actually had to pay for a doctor or a sausage was not what some planning bureau decided, because how the hell would they know what something really was worth? That is why kitchenware was occasionally made out of titanium in the Soviet Union, yet jet fighters were not, even though the factories for the kitchenware and fighters in question were within sight of each other. The value of ‘capital’ that could be applied to production was what one part of the state could browbeat another part of the state into agreeing it was, which really ain’t how ‘capitalism’ works. Some of the accounts of how Soviet design bureaus worked suggest amazing ingenuity in that they managed to ever build anything under such surreal notions about reality.
Indeed, Perry – and yet, none of that negates what John B. wrote: that last point about prices was made by you, not by me – and even though I felt compelled to reply, it is absolutely irrelevant to John’s point. IOW, prices are not determined by capitalism, but by markets (free, or otherwise). Capitalism is the accumulation and investment of capital – either by means of a free market, or by force. In the SU the latter was the case – which was what made it ‘state capitalism’.
By that raw definition, the vast majority of governments that ever existed since Sumeria are some hyphenated form of ‘capitalist’. But if a system cannot meaningfully quantify the value of its ‘capital’ then it really ain’t ‘capitalist’. Or the word means nothing.
Capitalism eradicated slavery and slaves, so where did all those wage-slaves come from?
No, what it means is that everyone is a capitalist. Which is precisely what makes the term meaningless in the political or ideological sense, rendering it no more than technical. A very important technicality, but still no more than that.
The real ideological and political point of contention are markets – free vs unfree, and the degrees thereof.
It is rare for someone to remember that Imperial Germany (“Wilhelmine” Germany) denied basic freedom rights – but it did.
Bismark’s confiscation of property (even of some Princes and Kings), the campaign of persecution against the Roman Catholics, and then the campaign of persecution against the Socialists (the very movement that Bismark had once secretly subsidised) – the confiscation of the land of Polish landowners, in order to “Germanise” areas. And the statism all got even WORSE after Bismark was dismissed in 1890.
Those people who looked at the economic growth of Germany (and it had relatively low taxes, government spending and regulations by modern standards) ignored its lack of basic belief in the principles of liberty – those “freedom rights”.
When Germany turned a Balkan War into a World War in 1914 it was more-of-the-same.
Some Germans, even in the elite, believed universal principles of objective morality – but many of the elite did not. They had no moral problem with producing a Declaration of War upon France in 1914 that was a PACK OF LIES (it has the French bombing Bavaria and so on).
Why is Paul going on about all this?
China, China, China.
China has relatively low taxes, relatively low government spending, relatively low regulations.
In terms of manufacturing industry China is already much more powerful than Germany was in 1914 or 1939.
But the People’s Republic of China does not have those “basic freedom rights”.
It has privately owned industry and all the above – but no “basic freedom rights” because the Regime does not accept this PHILOSOPHY.
What does lots of private industry without “basic freedom rights” produce?
It produces Germany in 1914 and in 1939 – and it produces the People’s Republic of China in …….
I’ve always preferred Free Enterprise as a term- lots of people continuously reinvest their money in their projects, or buy land, and so don’t have much in the way of capital on hand. And as for Anarcho-capitalist, why not just call yourselves Free Anarchists, as opposed to the communal-minded anarchists of days gone bye?
The antebellum South wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a “monstrosity” either and, at the very least, it never decided it was necessary to kill 600,000 people to impose its conception of “individual freedom-rights” on somewhere else.
China is not perfect either, but no-one there will try to destroy your livelihood because you won’t bake them a cake or because you state an empirically demonstrable fact about phenotypic differences between different human groups, nor will the Chinese government simply invite hundreds of thousands of unassimilable foreigners to victimise their population.
Maybe the “relative or temporary happiness” that this author thinks is so trivial has something going for it after all.
Right, except for that little thing called ‘slavery’ (look it up in the dictionary).
Although it will arrest you and imprison you if you say the wrong thing or practice the wrong religion, and it will harvest your internal organs for sale while you are still breathing.
But hey, we are all entitled to our own opinions.
I suggest you go into a bakery in Lhasa or Urumqi and ask them to bake you a cake with a Chinese flag on it. What do you think will happen to them if they refuse, and you then report them, I wonder? Take a guess.
Very true, you are correct about the Chinese government’s determination to ensure everyone within their borders are assimilated, because the Han Empire has very little tolerance for dissent & they are not exactly squeamish. After all, it was not unassimilable foreigners who killed 45 million people during the Great Leap Forward. So whilst 600,000 is hardly a rounding error, China is really much more committed to using force to impose its notions of how things need to be than, say, the USA. You hold up China as somewhere to be emulated, but I get the impression you really don’t know very much about the place or its within-living-memory history.
Hysterical people are funny. Or is that supposed to be an argument?
This post is about the merits of capitalist countries that don’t respect “individual freedom-rights” and capitalist countries that don’t. I don’t know what you imagine Maoist China has to do with anything. Obviously, the fact that the Chinese Communist party have to maintain the historical fiction that Mao wasn’t so bad is regrettable, but what’s the alternative, have a catastrophic decline in living standards and life expectancy like Yelstin gave Russia? Who would that help?
Let’s look at the question another way. If a gang of assimilated foreigners is sexually trafficking in children, awful capitalist dictatorships will arrest the people responsible and make then suffer, good “individual freedom rights” countries will arrest people trying to rescue family members, arrest and imprison people trying to publicise the issue and then, belatedly, arrest those responsible and let them out after four years.
Again, maybe, just maybe, “Relative or temporary happiness” has its merits.
Was the above supposed to be an argument? Because I thought we were just exchanging personal opinions. If you think that slavery has no relevance in the context of capitalist countries that don’t respect “individual freedom-rights”, I’d like to hear that argument.
The quote is wrong and Paul is right.
The only freedom rights that capitalism requires are property rights. Free speech not required, ownership of arms not required, rule of law is required as it relates to property only.
This,
Should say,
If China is irrelevant then why did you bring it up? Your argument is all over the place. And so you think glossing over Stalin would have improved Russia’s standard of living? How exactly?
Actually I realise your comment is even more gonzo than I appreciated. Russian living standards dropped because the Soviet command economy was collapsing. Nothing Yeltsin could have done would have changed that. Russia was not fucked because it abandoned communism, it was fucked because it adopted it and persisted with it for so long. And Poland is a nicer place to live now than Russia because unlike Russia, Poland has the civil liberties that enabled a more modern economy and culture to develop post-communism. Stop reading RT, it rots your brain.
The semantics of capitalism aside, I absolutely agree that strong and uniform property rights are the most essential condition for the existence of a free society. I also agree that under such conditions the right to free speech will largely take care of itself. I do somewhat disagree about the right to bear arms – but, if that last one is clearly included in the property rights (as it ideally should), then it will similarly take care of itself as well.
About 40 per cent of those living in the pre-Civil War South were slaves, and some of the Confederates wanted to expand the practice to the newer, western states such as Kansas (hence the “bleeding Kansas” conflicts of the 1850s leading to the explosion of 1860). Anyone who takes liberty seriously, rather than treat it as a slogan, must regard the enslavement, torture and maltreatment of persons that went on for decades in the Old South as a “monstrosity”, and do otherwise is morally otiose. “gunit” or whoever you are sounds like an apologist for tyranny, or a troll.
Yeah, I’m thinking he’s just someone who thinks getting rid of slavery was terrible because it lowered the living standards of some white people the Old South. As pointed out, this is someone who thinks Yeltsin rather than the already ongoing collapse of Communism was what called a fall in Russian living standards.
Jerfferson owned slaves until his dying day in 1826. Madison until 1836. These people literally wrote muh constitution and muh bill of rights. What changed in the next thirty years to suddenly turn this into a monstrosity worth killing 600,000 people over? I’m willing to bet the total amount of reading you have done on the ante-bellum south is zero. You probably don’t even know that hundreds of thousands of slaves were *freed* to die of starvation and dyssentry.
The post itself bring China up. The claim is that liberal-democratic capitalist countries are better than non-liberal-democratic capitalist countries. Contemporary China is one of the cited examples. I’m disputing this. Your attempt to bring Mao into it is entirely impertinent.
On a macro level this claim is entirely unconvincing. We have two examples of large Communist countries transitioning to Capitalism, one did everything the neoliberal consensus told them to, the other kept its authoritarian political structures, ignored those oh so important social and political liberties and underwent a structured transition to capitalism. One went well, one didn’t. The implication is clear and the onus is on you to demonstrate otherwise. Once we examine the details, it’s even less convincing. For example, the single largest contributory factor to the collapse in life expectancy was the flooding of the market with low quality alcohol after the abolition of the alcohol monopoly. Evidently, Libertarians cherish muh freedom to die of ethanol poisoning, but other people prefer their “relative or temporary happiness”.
By 1861 some Southern States did not even accept the concept that black people could be free. That was going to be the philosophy of the Confederacy – and the Confederacy (please remember) was committed to EXPANSION. It would not have just sat there.
Slavery based upon skin colour – even Ancient Rome would have considered that monstrous (and demented). If someone thinks this is just a little problem which one should over look – all one can say is “you are wrong” and move on.
As or the People’s Republic of China – now in alliance with Putin’s Russia (which goes to the Baltic) and the Shia – who via Islamic Republic of Iran and the “Party of God” in Lebanon. It is to be “regrettable” that it is a vicious dictatorship that is expanding into the Pacific and has allied with the enemies of the West.
Well yes it is regrettable – but the word “regrettable” means “to be regretted” not “we can ignore this”.
And it is also to be regretted (not ignored) that the regime bases its claim of legitimacy on Mao (he is even on the currency – as is the basis of the claim of “The Party” to its rule) – the largest-mass-murderer-in-human-history. Read such works as “Mao: The Untold Story” and the historical works of Frank Dikotter – yes it is indeed regrettable.
China may change – this regime may fall (I profoundly hope it does), but till this regime falls (till the PHILOSOPHY that rules China changes) the world is in peril.
No-one in the Confederacy believed in slavery based on “skin colour”. This is just a Leftist strawman. Anyone who repeats it is effectively an SJW.
And, by the way, I agree that laws passed against manumission in the South were wrong. The great tragedy is that moderates on both sides, who were the majority, were not able to work out a compromise using the federal system. There is no doubt, though, that the driving force in the rush to a pointless war came from Northern puritan/leftists.
Persuasive argument, really, solid stuff. I wonder why Jefferson and Madison didn’t think it persuasive.
In the run up to the war, both sides were accusing each of of wanting to impose their social system on the other, whilst – fanatics like John Brown aside – denying any such intention on their own part. So we have a simple test of who was lying: the Southern States left, any fears that they were going to expand slavery were now over and the Union responded by … launching a brutal military invasion and occupation with upwards of a million victims in total. Case closed.
.
There are more believing Marxists in the US government than the Chinese one. Not even close. China is a threat to, for example, Taiwan, no doubt about it. On the other hand, the chance that China would simply destroy a country like Libya for no discernible reason is pretty close to nil. China’s imperialism in Africa, whilst hardly edifying, is certainly preferable to US and Soviet imperialism over the past 70 years.
No-one? It just so happened that the vast overwhelming majority of slaves were black, right? Your argument is beyond preposterous.
How can you have a moderate pro-slavery side? A kinder gentler way to literally own other people against their will?
Well yes, a bit like WW2 was in no small part about imposing a different social system on Nazi Germany. There can be no compromise or middle ground with a system that permits literal slavery. The Old South burned. Good.
And Japan, Vietnam, India etc. etc. or do you think the ongoing arms race is just another CIA plot to defame the nice Han Empire?
Some positions leave no room for argument, gunit – things like fundamental values and first principles. One either thinks that murder, rape or slavery are wrong, or they are not – it is as simple as that.
Of course one may wonder whether a person who thinks of slavery as a non-monstrosity would still think that when on the receiving end – or one may not care enough.
What “gunit” has written is not true – although he (or she) may think it is true, I do not know whether this person is actually lying or just badly informed.
The Confederate leaders in 1861 most certainly DID (not did not) believe in slavery based upon skin colour. This may not have been true of Southern leaders back in the 1700s – but it was true by 1860-1861.
The Confederacy was (not was not) committed to expansion – for example into the West, but also into Latin America.
As for the People’s Republic of China – the Leader just ordered all universities to redouble their education of students in Marxist ideology. He did this only a couple of days ago.
As for calling me a “SJW” = well I could call you a Nazi, but that would be rude.