This is the clearest analysis of terms I had been taking for granted - and of my own fairly naive criticism of the misuse of the derogatory term “capitalism.” I would say the first half of the essay gives the most food for rethinking all of that. The usual definitions leave the state out, yet the word still lets people treat the state as a mere reflection of private commerce, which is how the state itself gets romanticised. Even the term “capitalism,” and the implicit “capitalist state” that is thrown around all the time - if this were mathematics - would be thrown out as badly defined axioms.
I’ll have to read it a couple more times to make sure I got it - to counter decades of reading all kinds of discourses that appeared meaningful until Lorenzo questioned them.
Way back in 1993 during my university days in Brazil I was taking an evening class in ECONOMICS OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR, where the text being used was Lenin's "The State and Revolution". That class had some of THE HOTEST girls you could possibly imagine.
This is one of the most useful treatments of the term's pathologies I have encountered, and the central diagnosis is surely correct: defining the economic system with the state elided romanticises the state, and the Marxist definition smuggles its verdict into the definiens, "exploitation of wage labour" being a conclusion dressed as a description.
I would resist only the eliminativist ending, and from a position that I think already answers your concern. I have argued at length that capitalism is not an ideology at all but a coordination mechanism, twofold in character: an information mechanism, prices aggregating dispersed, tacit, local knowledge that cannot be fully centralised without significant loss, and a reward mechanism aligning the system's incentives with the operators we actually are. On that account the term names a functional arrangement, not a creed, and the question of whether to keep the word becomes the question of whether the referent does analytical work. It does, and indispensably: Kornai's demand-constrained versus supply-constrained systems, the paired experiments of the two Germanys and the two Koreas, and the divergence between the marketised and planned segments of any hybrid economy all require a name for the price-coordinated side of the ledger. Retire the word and the comparative question, which class of failure does each system generate when its constraints bind, manageable or terminal, loses its subject. That would principally comfort the side that fails terminally. Your own line, "suppress commerce and you elevate the state," is the distinction reinstated in seven words.
Nor does keeping the term require the state's elision you rightly condemn. The mechanism account prices the state in from the start: the pathologies charged to "capitalism," capture, moral hazard, socialised losses, are on inspection recurrently pathologies of the state overriding the mechanism, 2008 being the canonical case, and the accountability asymmetry you describe is one I have pressed in nearly identical terms, BP's tens of billions in Deepwater liability against the precisely zero anyone paid for the Aral Sea. The same account refuses the opposite romanticisation: mistaking the mechanism for a moral framework, as the Objectivists do, is the mirror error of mistaking it for an ideology, as its abusers do. Demotion, not abolition: strip the word of ideological standing in both directions and the state re-enters the analysis exactly where you insist it belongs, as the perennial site of capture, whilst the mechanism-versus-mechanism comparison proceeds with the state's role priced in rather than elided. On the remainder, the insulation of the credentialed from consequence, the welfare apparatus colonising its own pathologies, Communism as the state pattern perfected rather than escaped, we are rowing the same boat.
Well said Lorenzo I have got the same objection to the casual use of the left to right spectrum to specify ideological orientation. It is worse than useless and a free kick to the left, yes there is a central tendency among groups on the left but the same does not apply to the non-left.
After many years, I have given up trying to get my message through. I took a different turn to simply look at five pillars of peace, freedom and prosperity.
This is the clearest analysis of terms I had been taking for granted - and of my own fairly naive criticism of the misuse of the derogatory term “capitalism.” I would say the first half of the essay gives the most food for rethinking all of that. The usual definitions leave the state out, yet the word still lets people treat the state as a mere reflection of private commerce, which is how the state itself gets romanticised. Even the term “capitalism,” and the implicit “capitalist state” that is thrown around all the time - if this were mathematics - would be thrown out as badly defined axioms.
I’ll have to read it a couple more times to make sure I got it - to counter decades of reading all kinds of discourses that appeared meaningful until Lorenzo questioned them.
Way back in 1993 during my university days in Brazil I was taking an evening class in ECONOMICS OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR, where the text being used was Lenin's "The State and Revolution". That class had some of THE HOTEST girls you could possibly imagine.
This is one of the most useful treatments of the term's pathologies I have encountered, and the central diagnosis is surely correct: defining the economic system with the state elided romanticises the state, and the Marxist definition smuggles its verdict into the definiens, "exploitation of wage labour" being a conclusion dressed as a description.
I would resist only the eliminativist ending, and from a position that I think already answers your concern. I have argued at length that capitalism is not an ideology at all but a coordination mechanism, twofold in character: an information mechanism, prices aggregating dispersed, tacit, local knowledge that cannot be fully centralised without significant loss, and a reward mechanism aligning the system's incentives with the operators we actually are. On that account the term names a functional arrangement, not a creed, and the question of whether to keep the word becomes the question of whether the referent does analytical work. It does, and indispensably: Kornai's demand-constrained versus supply-constrained systems, the paired experiments of the two Germanys and the two Koreas, and the divergence between the marketised and planned segments of any hybrid economy all require a name for the price-coordinated side of the ledger. Retire the word and the comparative question, which class of failure does each system generate when its constraints bind, manageable or terminal, loses its subject. That would principally comfort the side that fails terminally. Your own line, "suppress commerce and you elevate the state," is the distinction reinstated in seven words.
Nor does keeping the term require the state's elision you rightly condemn. The mechanism account prices the state in from the start: the pathologies charged to "capitalism," capture, moral hazard, socialised losses, are on inspection recurrently pathologies of the state overriding the mechanism, 2008 being the canonical case, and the accountability asymmetry you describe is one I have pressed in nearly identical terms, BP's tens of billions in Deepwater liability against the precisely zero anyone paid for the Aral Sea. The same account refuses the opposite romanticisation: mistaking the mechanism for a moral framework, as the Objectivists do, is the mirror error of mistaking it for an ideology, as its abusers do. Demotion, not abolition: strip the word of ideological standing in both directions and the state re-enters the analysis exactly where you insist it belongs, as the perennial site of capture, whilst the mechanism-versus-mechanism comparison proceeds with the state's role priced in rather than elided. On the remainder, the insulation of the credentialed from consequence, the welfare apparatus colonising its own pathologies, Communism as the state pattern perfected rather than escaped, we are rowing the same boat.
Well said Lorenzo I have got the same objection to the casual use of the left to right spectrum to specify ideological orientation. It is worse than useless and a free kick to the left, yes there is a central tendency among groups on the left but the same does not apply to the non-left.
After many years, I have given up trying to get my message through. I took a different turn to simply look at five pillars of peace, freedom and prosperity.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/rebadging-the-liberals
Succinct and persuasive. Thanks