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Any person who uses money to buy commodities is, in fact, a capitalist. Money used to invest in other people’s business output is very much what capitalism is all about. And why is the word “Capitalist” so dirty and scary to people? Trust me, I’ve seen parts of the world so impoverished people live in boxes with trenches for sewers. I say we have it pretty damn good to be part of a capitalist society and have enough wealth to buy the newest iphone or game system the minute it hits the stores.
Capitalism is so good. Would you rather be insert nation exploited by capitalists?
“They’re not underdeveloped, they’re overexploited.”
They are a supporter of capitalism but in the terminology of socialist critique they are not a capitalist, as in a member of the capitalist class who owns the capital and therefore does not need to use their labor to earn money. This is in contrast to the proletariat or worker class who must use their labor to earn a living.
Many people in the world are impoverished, but what causes that? Was that caused by the lack of capitalism there? I assure you most people in poverty in the world are living under a capitalist system.
One factor in the impoverishment of the global South is due to people manipulating markets because of their ownership of the means of production. They are able to shift manufacturing to where they can get the most profit, while governments benefit from their business at the detriment of their citizens who are pushed into poverty by the corporations and governments who reduce regulations to benefit the capitalist class.
Those are good points, and in fact my college thesis was on the capitalist class vs the proletariat as it related to the global economy. In fact I researched it for months, so I’m familiar with the pro and con arguments about labor and market manipulation. It’s true that many economies in the world are impoverished, but not because of lack of capitalism, because of the “animal farm” model of social economy - some groups will always believe they are entitled to a bigger slice of the pie, and will horde it or hide it before they ever let it trickle down.
Those economies generally ARE as capitalistic as ours in the U.S. As for the South - that’s a regional problem of impoverishment and can be legitimately traced in part to enslavement of the already downtrodden. But once established that pattern is held in place by corporate greed and lobbyists for deregulation that favors the rich. I don’t disagree with that - it’s the way of the world that we live in.
Ah, yes, the good old sumerian capitalists buying bronze ore then complaining by clay tablets to their suppliers that quality has gone to shit because of how capitalist they are.
I can confirm this. I’m the last living sumerian king and this is all true.
spoiler
Look up the word for king in sumerian. I don’t expect many people to understand the joke without help, otherwise I wouldn’t explain the joke.
Traditionally, the term “capitalist” means “person with capital” in contrast to workers who only have their workforce to sell. The term “capitalism” is a later development linguistically.
If you have been to other countries, you saw what the capitalist world systems does. It’s not that some countries are capitalist and others are not, it’s that some are exploiting others in the capitalist world system. That you can buy the newest iphone means that someone made it.
Using money to buy commodities is a currency system.
Capitalism is where there is an ownership class and a labor class, and the ownership class operates businesses for profit. The profit which flows to these owners comes from value which labor adds and is not compensated for; that compensation is diverted to the owners, who receive a (much) greater amount of compensation than the value they add.
Otherwise related, when the currency is not back by a commodity (most commonly a rare metal like gold), that’s fiat money. It’s value is affected by the faith in the government which supplies it, as well as the total supply of said currency. When the price of products and services is determined by consumer demand, that’s a free market economy.
Worker and citizen maybe… consumer is more appropriate for the billionaire class as well.
Eh, I would describe the average student of today as consumers as well… I am one of em, and I do lit my consumption, but some of my friends are all day gamers, energy drinkers and Netflix hogs…
Whats stopping you from forming your own kibbutz type community in your country? Real question
Land?
No water or other infrastructure where the land is available, which is possible to overcome but takes a lot of resources. Where it has been tried in my country (US) it gets violently evicted by the police if they aren’t paying taxes or don’t officially own the land.
Steinbeck said it best when he said all Americans thought of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Good old American dream.
The word you’re looking for is citizen. Consumer has replaced it to take away political agency and replace it with capitalism.
I like consumer in this context because commodification and consumption are how people achieve this false solidarity with billionaires, as well as being a ground for exploitation. Even notions of personal identity are achieved through consumption of the associated products (and displaying you consume them).
Citizen is just a subject of a state, the entire class structure is composed of citizens of different positions in the political economy with competing interests. The worker and employer are both citizens but the relationship between them isn’t captured by that term.
I see your perspective and that you’ve thought through it. Makes sense to me!
Citizen definitely works for distinctions between state and it’s subjects
(before I begin my ramble, I understand this is pedantic as hell and nitpicky af. Please know that I’m not calling this meme bad, I’m only looking for someone who is willing to be pedantic about definitions with me for a few rounds or so.)
What exactly does “false solidarity” mean? What exactly is this particular understanding of solidarity either? To my knowledge (aka, I googled it to ensure my vibe check of what solidarity meant was about right), solidarity is something you feel and are essentially motivated to solidarity actions by. To feel it is to experience it, which means, by my understanding of what solidarity is, the term “false solidarity” seems nonsensical.
Like I know what you’re saying, I agree, the effect is that the worker works against his own interest for the betterment of the upper classes, but this phrasing seems… I don’t know exactly how to put it, but like inexact in a way that can probably be and should probably be fixed.
I would just call it poisonous solidarity (intentionally avoiding virus/illness words though) or something that simultaneously implies that it’s externally put there by an external actor, it’s bad for you, it can hurt things and people around you, but it still is legitimate solidarity. Those actions those workers are taking, those votes that they’re casting, those are all real actions caused by real feelings. Implying the feelings themselves are false seems to me to be lazy and irrational at this point… If this were the late 1800s, that probably would be the best phrasing we had for this at the time, but language evolves and I don’t think this language is illustrative/metaphorical enough to accurately portray the mechanics that our current culture allows us to portray about subjects like this.
But again, I’m not the arbiter of what’s true, correct, or what actually should happen, so what do you people think?
