David B. Shemano wrote:
> I have two intellectual diversions during the day: this list and a Leo
> Strauss list. Both have topics that periodically come up and gender a lot of
> repetitive heat. <
oooh, Straussians. I knew a few in college. They seem to have a
mystical approach to books by famous people (Machievelli, etc.),
always finding a message that other people can't see. Usually the
authors had this kind of hidden message in order to avoid persecution.
One of the Straussian tenets is that they should keep their own
message secret, too. If the unwashed masses knew what the Straussians
believe, the story goes, they'd face the fate of Socrates... Thus,
they have a reputation for secretive plotting (as part of the broader
neoconservative movement), as during the build-up to the US conquest
of Iraq in 2003.
> On the Strauss list, one of the topics is whether Nazi Germany was
> "capitalist." Ultimately, I come down that it was not capitalist, because
> "capitalism," to the extent it has any substantive meaning, means ... an
> ideology that liberates the greed impulse and advocates accumulation for no
> purpose other than accumulation (what Strauss called the "joyless quest for
> joy"). <
Of course, there are no standardized definitions of any complex
concept. People can use this kind of idealist definition if they want
to ("capitalism means ... an ideology"). But as a student of society
and history, I know that ideologies go nowhere (i.e., have no effect
on human action) unless the social conditions are ripe. For capitalism
as an ideology to bloom, therefore, in practice we need capitalism
defined as as a type of social system to be present.
An example on the individual level: if you're a slave, in practice it
doesn't matter if you have capitalist ideology or not. You won't be
able to act on it. In fact, it's likely that being a slave will
actively discourage you from thinking like a capitalist. In fact, that
ideology will be beaten out of you.
>Capitalism cannot be confused with a social system based upon private property
>relations, because that would mean every country with private property
>relations would be "capitalist," and even Marxists don't believe that... <
In the Marxian view, capitalism as a social system is _not_ one "based
on private property relations." Rather, it's one based on
individual[*] property rights in the means of production (factories,
land, etc.) It cannot be a complete social system without
proletarianized labor (i.e. a mass of workers who don't own the means
of production and are not owned as property themselves).
Capitalism as a social system encourages the persistence of capitalism
as an ideology, for example because those sociopaths who best embody
the capitalist mentality are rewarded so well. To the extent that
capitalism engenders this kind of ideology, it prospers as a system
(though the vast majority of people may not prosper). Of course,
during an economic and social crisis, narrow-minded greed may not be
engendered, so that people move to more collectivist visions, such as
fascism, (most) religions, or socialism. Only the last has the
potential to undermine capitalism as a system.
Nazi Germany fit this conception of capitalism, except to the extent
that it used slave labor. No system is _purely_ capitalist (though the
MLs love and the neoliberals tried to establish that utopia). The Nazi
economic system was dominated by its capitalist core, but it had slave
aspects. In fact it was capitalist organizations -- corporations --
that got a big share of the benefits of the use of slave labor.
Nazi capitalism was one case where the boundary between the state and
"civil society" (that part of society outside of the state sector) was
relatively fluid. The state was involved in production and the big
capitalists were strongly represented in government. One might call
that economy an amalgam between private capitalism (e.g., liberal
capitalism of 19th century England) and state capitalism (e.g.,
Algeria). But it was capitalism in the sense that the main means of
production were privately owned and there was a proletariat.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
[*] because "private property" in the means of production has a huge
social impact, it isn't really private.
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