Leftism

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Why People Say Capitalism is Violent (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The argument presented here is based on complete ignorance of the history of the human race.

Reason #1

The concept of property ownership is not a product of capitalism. This idea is literally as old as the oldest known civilization to keep written records, Mesopotamia.

Concern with property, its preservation, and its use shaped not only the Mesopotamian legal tradition but also economic and social practice, notably the ability to sell and to buy land and to transfer property through marriage and inheritance.

In Mesopotamian culture, property was owned by the state, by the temple, and by private families. Records show a distinction between movable property (material goods) and immovable property (land), and the selling, trading, repossessing, inheriting and transfer of all types of property.

Here is an example of a cuneiform tablet recording an agreement about the division of property.

There is even an equivalent of eminent domain:

When Hammurabi asked, “When is a permanent property ever taken away?” he was referring to the established customary legal principle that land was the permanent property of a family.

Hammurabi was not a capitalist. Babylon was not a capitalist nation.

Capitalism did not "invent legal privileges around property".

Reason #2

Conquest of territory happened long before capitalism ever existed. Colonialism was hardly a new concept.

Genghis Khan was not a capitalist. Alexander the Great was not a capitalist. Julius Caesar was not a capitalist. Napoleon Bonaparte was not a capitalist.

If you require citations for this part of my argument, I suggest you find a basic text on world history at your local library.

Conclusion

I'm not going to address the other "reasons" as they are faulty conclusions drawn from the previously addressed faulty premises.

I am not arguing that these things are right and good. I am arguing that linking them specifically to capitalism represents a desperately uneducated understanding of human society and history. This is such a bad take, it reeks of teenage anarchist and "money is the root of all evil" oversimplification.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a bit disingenuous arguing that capitalism is somehow a new concept, and colonialism isn't.

I mean the terms capitalism and colonialism are both coined way after the practice of those systems. I think you could argue that capitalism even entered the human world before even currency was a thing.

Colonialism is the same, as you seem to intuit, considering other people and subduing them didn't need a philosophical framework in order for it to be enacted.

In most civilizations wealth tends to accumulate at the top of the societal pyramid, which is capitalism. The pharaohs and sumerian kings alike are capitalists. They profit of the labour of others.

There's a reason you're unwilling to entertain other arguments, because you're moving the goalposts and are afraid they will fall off the field.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

This is such a weird take... how far removed from reality are you to actually believe that authoritarian feudalism is a form of capitalism?

Wealth accumulation is not capitalism. Capitalism enables wealth accumulation, but the opposite isn't true in the slightest.

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.