Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Brian Peacock]

it's all about choice ....

https://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/pau ... rowth.html

Wages have stagnated against costs over the last 40 years, with wage growth falling to levels not seen since the Napoleonic wars. Household income has effectively flatlined since the end of the 1970s despite the increasing participation of women in the workplace, while household debt has increased seven-fold. Over the same period in economies embracing the globalising neoliberal model public services and social support programs have been subject to systematic disinvestment, social safeguards such as employment laws and directives on working conditions, and worker representation have been progressively deregulated away, and the tax burden has been shifted from the most to the least comfortably off.

As your article highlights, the power to make choices and effect change that impact what a Marxist would call the 'material conditions' of ordinary people does not lie with ordinary people themselves, and never has since economies began transitioning out of the feudal model with the rise of the European nation state from the 1600s onwards - despite the brief democratising shift in those power relations which organised labour movements brought about between the two great wars of the early 20C.

If this is, as you suggest, a matter of personal choice then we must look to those who are in a position to choose; to those who have the power and authority to effect real change, and then examine what changes they have and are bringing about.

So, who is making choices about the things impacting the actual material conditions of ordinary people, and how do you think that's working out?

[Scot Dutchy]

Brian that is a very Anglo-Saxon POV. We never had a feudal state which is why today we dont have rampant capitalism. What amazes me is the way the USA is always taken as the example of present day society which is what Macdoc does the whole time. Luckily most of the free world does not have to labour under a US system. There are many alternatives but at present we have to deal with global US companies that have the arrogance to think they rule the world. I agree governments have been slow to react but the wheels are always turning ever so slowly but turn they will.

[Brian Peacock]

That's not a POV about the shift from feudal to capitalist economic models allied to the rise of the European nation state. It's historical fact I'm afraid. The Nation is a relatively new concept, historically speaking.

[Scot Dutchy]

We never had a feudal state so dont incorporate us in those models which is a very Anglo-Saxon POV. Almost all Northern European Social Democratic states did not come from feudal states.

[Hermit]

We never had a feudal state so dont incorporate us in those models which is a very Anglo-Saxon POV. Almost all Northern European Social Democratic states did not come from feudal states.

Capitalism did not arise from feudalism. It it destroyed it.

First two sentences from the Wikipedia's article titled History of capitalism

The history of capitalism is diverse. The concept of capitalism has many debated roots, but fully fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars to have emerged in Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries.

See also the article titled Economic history of the Netherlands (1500–1815) It's a summary of a book with the same title by Jan de Vries, a Dutch economic historian and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. From that article:

At the dawn of modern capitalism, wherever Dutch capital went, urban features were developed, economic activities expanded, new industries established, new jobs created, trading companies operated, swamps drained, mines opened, forests exploited, canals constructed, mills turned, and ships were built. In the early modern period, the Dutch were pioneering capitalists who raised the commercial and industrial potential of underdeveloped or undeveloped lands whose resources they exploited, whether for better or worse. For example, the native economies of pre-VOC-era Taiwan and South Africa were virtually undeveloped or were in almost primitive states. In other words, the recorded economic history of South Africa and Taiwan both began with the VOC period. It was VOC people who established and developed first urban areas in the history of Taiwan (Tainan) and South Africa (Cape Town and Stellenbosch). In Werner Sombart's words (1902), "in all probability the United Provinces were the land in which the capitalist spirit for the first time attained its fullest maturity; where this maturity related to all its aspects, which were equally developed; and where this development had never been done comprehensive before. Moreover, in the Netherlands an entire people became imbued with the capitalist spirit; so much so, that in the 17th century Holland was universally regarded as the land of capitalism par excellence; it was envied by all other nations, who put forth their keenest endeavours in their desire to emulate it..."

(My emphasis)

[pErvinalia]

Yes, but Dutch capitalism is the best capitalism.

[Svartalf]

We never had a feudal state so dont incorporate us in those models which is a very Anglo-Saxon POV. Almost all Northern European Social Democratic states did not come from feudal states.

Oh yeah? remind me how come the Kings of France were suzerains to the Count of Flanders shortly before the 100 year war?

[Brian Peacock]

We never had a feudal state so dont incorporate us in those models which is a very Anglo-Saxon POV. Almost all Northern European Social Democratic states did not come from feudal states.

* my bold


The 'State', or the 'Nation state' as I called it, did not exist as we know it under the feudal system of fiefdoms, kingdoms, and principalities etc. 'Social Democratic states' therefore did not arise from 'feudal states'. I think you're confusing feudalism with mercantilism. The development of a regional mercantile economy was only made possible under the auspices of a state that could impose, regulate, maintain and enforce laws on things like property and contracts and settle disputes, by force if necessary, between nobles and between the land-owning classes and the peasantry. One might say that mercantilism is the bridge between the feudalist and capitalist models of socio-economic organisation.

Today what Mark Fisher called Capitalist Realism appears so all-pervasive and encompassing that not only do people have difficulty in imagining an alternative set of social, political, economic and personal relations, but they also apparently have difficulty in imagining a time before Capitalism. There was such a time - even in the NL.

Though interesting, discussion on how-or-when European nations were formed or how-or-when they transitioned their economies from feudal to capital models has little to no bearing on my broader point to macdoc here.

[Scot Dutchy]

We did not have nobles. It is still a very Anglo-Saxon perspective. We had no feudal system here. We did not have a land owning class like the UK. We did not have peasantry.

[Hermit]

We did not have nobles. It is still a very Anglo-Saxon perspective. We had no feudal system here. We did not have a land owning class like the UK. We did not have peasantry.

Whatever, but the Netherlands were a pioneer of capitalism.

[Brian Peacock]

A monarchy but no aristocracy eh?

[Scot Dutchy]

A monarchy but no aristocracy eh?

Yep exactly. Our king or queen is appointed by parliament not by some sky fairy as Lizzie believe. There is no coronation only an inauguration and his pledge is to parliament not to some sky fairy. There is no royal court of hangers on either. The same is true of most Northern European Monarchies. In Sweden he/she signs a contract where they can be called upon for official duties. This is route we are going and if Amélia becomes queen I think it will be the same. All the palaces they use are owned by the state.

[Brian Peacock]

A monarchy but no aristocracy eh?

Yep exactly. Our king or queen is appointed by parliament not by some sky fairy as Lizzie believe. There is no coronation only an inauguration and his pledge is to parliament not to some sky fairy. There is no royal court of hangers on either. The same is true of most Northern European Monarchies. In Sweden he/she signs a contract where they can be called upon for official duties. This is route we are going and if Amélia becomes queen I think it will be the same. All the palaces they use are owned by the state.

Erm, I was talking historically. You claimed there have never been any nobles in the NL despite it having been a monarchy. I'd encourage to expand your thinking to the time before the formation of the modern state if the Netherlands.

Are we to take it that Dutch feudal lords were the best feudal lords, and how much longer are you going to keep this irrelevant side show going?

[Hermit]

A monarchy but no aristocracy eh?

Yes. After the Dutch got rid of the Spanish Habsburgs they formed republics of sorts, but not democracies as we understand democracy today. Also, the Stadhouders', while theoretically subordinate to the states, wielded near-supreme power, especially in 1619–50, 1672–1702, and 1747–95. They were de facto monarchs. After the election of Prince William IV to all of the stadtholderates in 1747, the offices were made hereditary, so any pretence of not being a monarchy was academic. The Dutch were only governed without a Stadhouder between 1650–72 and 1702–47. William V, prince of Orange and Nassau and general hereditary stadtholder of the Dutch Republic from 1751 until 1795. For much of the period since the Habsburgs were thrown out, the members of the basically self-electing Dutch parliaments were hardly distinguishable from the nobility in the UK.

Then there was William V's eldest son, who reigned as William I, King of the Netherlands, from 1815 to 1840. Formally, the Netherlands have remained a kingdom ever since, although, like the monarchs in the UK, the Dutch Kings and Queens have increasingly become ceremonial figureheads.

You probably knew all that already. I just felt like typing something to test how my right arm copes with the Bill Gates jab #1. It's been a bit tender for a couple of days.

[JimC]

The nanobots probably made you type that...