this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Adam Smith was much more critical of capitalism than he is given credit for. For example, Adam Smith was critical of rent seeking and landlords. It would be somewhat accurate to replace Orangutan with Adam Smith in this meme.
Yes Capitalism is supposed to be pro-worker/anti-rich
Hence my comment about people still paying to live before adoption of capitalism
Capitalism is pro-worker.
Capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. It is defined by the so-called “free market”, which is word for “a situation in which nobody cooperates economically without their own consent”.
And that's the problem, because everyone is coerced to do that if they want to survive. And those, who own the means of production, the capital, the companies, are those who have the power to exploit those who don't. And they do.
Supposed by whom? The rent-seeking behavior that Smith criticized was largely brought about by enclosure; the process of enclosure was foundational to capitalism.
This is ahistorical, before enclosure the peasantry had substantial rights to live freely on the common land.
I suppose it does depend on what is meant by ‘pay to live on this earth’. If you just mean that people have to work to take care of themselves then, sure. But that’s not really what this meme is referring to. If it was then the orangutan would be ‘paying to live on this earth’ as well.
Adam Smith is the inventor of capitalism specifically his criticisms that you cite are about the systems we had prior
Are you just wrong for the sake of it?
He wasn’t criticizing a system that was built based on his writings because it hadn’t happened yet
Adam Smith did not ‘invent’ capitalism. No single person can invent an economic system. He made some early observations and normative assertions about a set of economic relations that were forming independent of him.
So the economic system we had prior to capitalism was feudalism. The common lands that I mentioned were apart of the feudal system. The system of landlords and rent-seeking were and are apart of capitalism. You can just look around… we still have these things. You do understand that right? Unless you’re saying our current system isn’t capitalist.
Yes, true capitalism has never been tested
But it doesn’t matter because the lesson to take away is that in any system the people with power will modify it to what we have now
For socialism
Was the system that the peasantry lived under in the commons the same as what we have now?
Ok?
The quote you just gave is from famous socialist George Orwell from his book Animal Fram. Which is critical of the structures the Soviet Union created.
But your comment is actually in direct contradiction to Orwell’s actual more nuanced point. His point was not that every system devolves into capitalism… he was himself a socialist who fought along side communists in the Spanish civil war after all. His point is that we need to think critically about the structures we’re creating to ensure they’re serving egalitarian ends. Something I agree with Orwell on.
The original reason why I commented was because it didn’t seem you were engaging in the same project of critically examining economic structures in the way Orwell was and the way Smith was. Though I would love to be proven wrong.
I think you should think more critically about what people tell you about Adam Smith and George Orwell.
Globally…if you are living better than that then you’re in the high earners tier
Yes, glad you can keep up…now try to use a small amount of critical thinking and question why that was?
Did socialism not work because of capitalism? Did capitalism not work because of capitalism? Did feudalism not work because of capitalism? Did mercantilism not work because of capitalism?
Of course not, you would have to be an idiot to argue that…or that Adam Smith argued against capitalism
It’s because of the bourgeoisie class that will always change the system to their benefit. And replacing the people in that class with new ones doesn’t change that