It's the Economy, stupid - Languishing & Lingering after the Great Recession

What is the basis for your comment?

Here is what is happening, which formed the basis of my question.

Disney pulls out of Bangladesh: Will that make workers safer? - Yahoo! News

I would suggest your response was intended to be juvenile. Why do this?

Yes, but I won't.

If I believed you are being serious, I would elaborate. I don't believe you are being serious.
--- merged: May 6, 2013 at 4:06 PM ---

I think he is conflating economic systems with political systems. An economic system, such as capitalism, attempts to describe the rational behaviors and interactions of individuals and agents in a market. Political systems attempt to perform a similar function from a legal point of view. A third type of system, which some would like to ignore, religious systems, attempt to perform this function from a morality point of view. There is overlap, but conflating the two or three leads to conclusions that are often in error.

 

i am confused, rogue. it's not as though the entire social form lumped together as "capitalism"---which i write to distinguish the type of economic organization in its particularities and socio-political correlates from the goofy american usage of the term to designate all forms of exchange for all of time--which is stupid empirically and ideologically a problem, but no matter---it's not as if the fate of this social form hinges on stuff that one says on a messageboard, so why bother to act as though the contrary is the case? ("throwing the baby out with the bathwater" what?)

and being critical of capitalist activities, both in the narrowly economic sense and as they can play out across political activities, is more than a matter of "not liking capitalism" in the way that one might not like white socks or brussel sprouts. there are systemic problems with capitalist organization and rationality that, while they're not insurmountable, are nonetheless real problems---things like what they call in "business ethics" the effects of bounded rationalities....given that there's no reason to bother with market metaphysics and its tendency to replace all of reality with stupid little models based on stupid ideal-typical "firms" that bounce around on a sea of market hydraulics, then there's no reason to pretend that actually existing capitalist firms operate with specific kinds of problems both at the level of rationality (how they're organized, how information operates, how people conform to such situations) and ideology (which is a very bad thing when it prevents actors from even starting to make accurate assessments of the world around them, etc)....

and i find it more than passing strange that you seem so determined to defend the "dignity" of this frail and largely imaginary rickety capitalist thing that you like in the way you like your preferred color of socks from insult by people you imagine motivated by something no more interesting than "not liking" it that you're willing to ignore repeated posts that operate against this "broad brush" nonsense that you complain of. so "capitalism is not fascism"---fine---but no-one said that. so "capitalism is not to blame for fascism"---which is stupid, really, since it is, in a sense, to blame for it under conditions that have been indicated above, but which you decide to blow off...etc etc.

 

The first question was the topical question. The second question was clearly rhetorical. You want me to believe you did not know this?

 

but rogue, like it or not, outside a capitalist context there has never been fascism.
it's not that hard. it is a product, among others, of social and political relations shaped by capitalism in general (to the extent that the nation-state is coterminous with the consolidation of what they call monopoly capitalism...colonialism and all that...) and of the conjunction of radical conservative nationalist political movements, capitalist crisis and paralysis of the conventional political system. it's not really a matter of opinion. it doesn't matter if you like it or not. it's simply historically the case.

these conditions are present in the united states right now. all of them. this does not mean that a fascist-style outcome is inevitable, but it does mean that it's possible.

speaking for myself---and i think the edito from al jazeera a bit simplistic in part because it is a pretty standard-issue marxian critique, particularly in its move toward "everything is fucked barring the revolutionary intervention of the working class"---i think that the implosion of the hold of conservative discourse on the mainstream infotainment system like what you saw in the reactionary afterglow of the 9/11/2001 attacks for example is significant and a good thing---but the persistence of this political paralysis at the federal level is very much not a good thing, particularly not in a situation of on-going economic crisis.

at the same time, i don't see the right as operating in anything like a coherent manner at the moment. nor do i see a more tightly organized more-or-less military style party splitting off from the mainstream conservative morass that would be in a position to play the classical fascist power game. the tea party is a slowly collapsing form of poujadisme, an incoherent astroturf movement from jump, part of the problem facing the right if coherence and longer-term survival is important to the folk pulling the strings there.

but i would be quite concerned were something like a more compact, organized and well-funded organization to split from the right, given that there are, like it or not, conditions in place and on-going that traditionally have enabled this sort of organization from the far right to get power---and to have the support of the more right-wing segments of the dominant economic order in doing it. this, too, has been the case historically.

 

Perhaps to you. I would bet most reasonable people understood the inherent conflict presented in the issue in question. One one hand we have the issue of corporate responsibility in terms of enforcement of a sovereign nation's law, on the other we have the opportunity presented by corporations using labor where there are needs for employment. Disney's response was the easy and convenient response. I don't believe Disney believed they had any other reasonable option, especially when people like roach begin to comment on the issue. These are some very meaty issues. Issues that will not get discussed here because we can't get passed trivial b.s.

I asked my topical question, and the words that followed illustrated where my thoughts are leading. I have not reached any conclusions at this point. I have no interest in discussion on my writing style and all I want to understand now is why you would want to derail the potential discussion. As a 10 year-old I know would say, you were being "snarky" in my opinion - and you persist with it. You think my question was clumsy, so what!

 

If you support a version of the Buffet rule where most loopholes and deductions are eliminated for the top taxpayers and instead they pay an effective tax rate of 20-25%, then we have no disagreement (Romney and Buffet paid in the 12% range, Obama in the 18% range).

The top taxpayers are paying nearly the lowest effective rate in 50 years— some are paying just half of the federal income tax that top taxpayers paid in 1960...while the average effective tax rate for middle class families has remained virtually the same during that same period (the middle 20 percent of households paid 14 percent of their incomes in 1960, and 16 percent in 2010).

Corporate taxes are a different issue....dont mix the two.

 

well, there's two problems with that article, i think. first, manufacturing remains stagnant as a sector in terms of employment numbers and orders. on the former:

US jobs report eases economy fears - FT.com

and second is the rather odd status of the brand "made in america"....this is a little older, and not awesome (nbs news and not awesome are more or less the same) but it gives a little overview:

‘Made in America’ rules are confusing - Business - US business - Made in America | NBC News

what enabled the globalization of production on the order pointed to in that kinda strange piece (much of which is based on a boston consulting group survey) is the rationalization of transnational transport. i wonder if this is playing a role:

The shipping industry: Sinking under a big green wave | The Economist

because i doubt seriously any of the companies polled by boston consulting give a fuck about the social implications of their choices concerning the location of production---but saying that they do is good p.r....

 

As a man who just lost his job in the defense industry as a result of the intransigent Congress, I'm getting a kick out of this argument.

*not really

 

What I find confusing in your posts as it relates to capitalism is not knowing the basis of your view of what capitalism is.

Is capitalism a system? I would argue it is more accurate to say capitalism is what results when there is a lack of a system, where people and their agents are free to respond as they choose. On the other-hand when I say capitalism is an economic system I do so in a similar context where I would say a natural Eco-system is a system.

Is capitalism a political system? Some would say it is only an economic system some would say it is both. I say capitalism is apolitical. Capitalism or forms of capitalism can exist within any political system and is only concerned with market behaviors and responses to market behaviors. Again I would say capitalism as a system is no more or less political than an eco-system.

Is capitalism a morality system? I say capitalism is amoral. Morality is defined by religious systems. Capitalism will not try to address morality questions it will only respond to market behaviors.

So, when political and morality attributes are assigned to capitalism in my view it a convenient why to blame capitalism for the political or moral failings of choice. If capitalism is to address "fairness" and doesn't capitalism fails even-though capitalism is not concerned with "fairness". If capitalism is to address instances of genocide and doesn't capitalism fails even-though it is not concerned with the irrational/immoral choices of evil people. Political systems through the law, religious systems through morality are concerned with these types of issues.

Capitalism doesn't care about borders or "made in America". Why do you think it should?

 

against my better judgment....

capitalism is a system of ownership and a type of organization of production. in the former, it is predicated on the separation of ownership of the means of production from production itself---of ownership from management.

as a system of production, it is predicated on long production runs of standardized goods. so the assembly line in its older form was the most adequate expression.

from the latter, two main features: on the one hand, the technological organization of mass production has basically changed since the 1970s...if you like, you can see this as the result of a series of processes that centered on the fragmentation of the factory...for example, to take an earlier example, machining was among the later sectors within mass production to be rationalized/standardized...it really took until the later 1950s to do it, partly through the introduction of numerical machine tools and partly as a function of the development of things like the modern highway system...this enabled machining to be split off from the factories in which it has previously been located (in a heavy-industrial context) and made into a discrete sector amenable to rationalization of tasks. a side-effect of this was the elimination from modern factories of the most traditionally militant sector of the trade union movement. one might wonder about such things....anyway from another angle, mass production has been basically transformed by the type of technology design innovations from that toyota introduced across the 1970s, which enabled very rapid changes from one type of series production to another (compare with the duration it took ford to move from the model t to the model a in the 1920s i think), and as a function of the various introductions of computerization into production.

from this, it's pretty easy: capitalism is predicated on tendencies like the separation of social strata and the standardization/fragmentation of tasks.
so it's a combination of economic and organizational forms.
you can't separate the two.
capitalism is co-terminous with both alienation at the level of production itself (fragmentation of tasks, deskilling of work, etc.) and bureaucratization (if you know anything about the rise of management as a social sector across the 1920s, you'd know about this). these levels are similar in their fragmentation of information, in their reliance on top-down managerial approaches, etc.. fragmentation of information is of a piece with routinization of tasks which is of a piece with deskilling of work which is of a piece with driving down the cost of labor which is of a piece with the tendency to separate labor from the human beings that enable it and reduce them to either extensions of the machine or to the role of petty functionaries.

capitalism is co-terminous with the development of the modern state (they're not identical)...the modern state is an unintended consequence of the french revolution via the formation of a standing military and centralization of taxation that it entailed. thank bonaparte for putting the core of it into motion. but, like everything else, the creation of the modern state has been a long-term process. capitalism is also a collection of processes. so it's a category that designates a riot of phenomena which have in common certain structural features.

the consolidation of capitalism as the dominant organization of production---never the exclusive form---but dominant, particularly in class terms---was in place by the start of the 20th century. world war 1 was among the more delightful gifts that brought us. and o what a fine thing that was. but some of the stuff we associate with capitalism proper--particularly the assembly line---was perfected in automobile production by about 1912 and was introduced to europe not long afterward....it did not, btw, spring full-blown from the head of henry ford. versions of it were in place well before in the production of things like bicycles (a pure capitalist undertaking in organizational terms, if not always in terms of ownership)...

and capitalism has not been the dominant form of economic organization in many places, really, in terms of how people actually carried on their work because, until the united states of the past20-30 years, the agricultural sector has not been fully integrated into it.

and even here, its far from complete. a small-to-medium scale farmer who maintains a system of crop rotation and largely works his or her own acreage is not a capitalist. neither is a small businessman. the service sector is a bit more complex insofar as distribution systems like those of, say, walmart or amazon involve quite miserable forms of capitalist-style labor relations...but they move things around, and are not producers of anything. so the fit is strange, even as there is a separation of ownership from management...artisinal production is not capitalist because of the relationship to skill.

capitalism is a type of economic relation (based on commodity production), a pattern of ownership (which is particular and not at all commensurate with all profit-seeking activities) and is rooted in a particular approach to organization. bureaucracy is fundamental to it---which is funny, given american conservative blah blah blah about it---but they only bitch about the public sector. they say nothing, at all, about the organization of capitalist firms in the actually existing world.

there's more to any of these points, but just to finish this off...

once capitalism becomes the dominant form in class terms, and a major player in employment (this also has a history, which is really pretty unpleasant), there also arises the need to reproduce the labor pool. capitalism is co-terminous with the rise of public education....in france, for example, public education was created in the early 1870s via the ferry law...interesting to think about, that is. so--and this is general---if a central role of public education is as much stratification of kids with an eye to reproducing the capitalist labor pool as it is "education" in any conventionally normative sense (class war, anyone?) and if that same educational system also produces political subjects by creating the baseline comportments that political participation relies on, then it's kinda hard to figure out where capitalism as a type of production and capitalism as a mode of production stop and start.

given that wealth tends to equate with power, it's not surprising to find that the dominant capitalist class tends to have a quite significant role in the political life of the spaces in which this form of accumulation is dominant, yes? but from here, it's probably obvious what will be said about the relation between class domination and things like public life and the "free" press and all that.

there are other ways to approach this sort of broad question---you could, for example, see in capitalism an assumption of the unlimited extension of rational mastery, or see in it a compartmentalization of information that has debilitating effects on almost every aspect of it, or see in it a particular, long form of class warfare, or see in it a bureaucratic system that, in the states, operates with a strange ideology that would have actors believe the opposite is the case....you can see in it any number of reactionary, stupid ideologies as well. it's not one thing, despite the fact that there's a noun that tends to entail an idea of a singular phenomenon being designated by it.

writing this fast, so not sure about clarity at every point. mea culpa...

 

I believe capitalism can and does exist outside, or above (perhaps a better way of looking at it) political and moral environments. In capitalism I can participate in market exchanges with others and not share or even care about their politics or their morality. In my market activities this is actually my preference. Given your past statement on the separation of religion from politics why do you see morality issues within capitalism? What type of test do you apply to this? Personally I avoid seeking information on anther's politics and morality in market transactions. How I vote, how I choose my friends, how I participate in charity, the formation of my political ideology, etc. are all different matters.