Last week, a popular New Age author, Marianne Williamson addressed Occupy LA.  Normally, I ignore New Agers, but this one is trying to establish a Department of Peace.  That was enough to get me to watch her video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZPna2RfXzE

Part way through, though, I was starting to get irritated. She didn't hone in on the point, and just seemed to be talking a lot without saying anything.  Then at the end, she said that capitalism is morally and ethically neutral.  I blew my top.

I happen to belive that capitalism is amoral and encourages greed.  I don't think it's ethically neutral either.

Then she said that a fruit stand is capitalism.  That was the last straw.  That's why you're reading this now.

The definition of capitalism from dictionary.com is:


This is a good definition of capitalism.  Let's break it apart:


In a capitalist system, the means of production are land, factories, offices, tools, computers, etc.  They're privately or corporate owned, meaning that they belong to individuals or to corporations. A corporation is a specific type of  organization that operates a business.  The key point is that the businesses are private property.

The businesses don't belong to the state, and they don't belong to the workers.

Second, the definition states:


This isn't quite right.  The word "free" should be removed, because all capitalist markets are regulated, and there are some people who would say these markets aren't really "free".  But, within a typically regulated market in the US, it's pretty "free" - the rules are the same for everyone, and barriers to entry aren't too rigged.

In a capitalist market, development is related to accumulating and reinvesting profits.  This is the main quality of a capitalist system, as distinguished from other systems -- it's that money is invested into businesses, profits are taken, and then the money is re-invested into businesses.

More importantly, the amount of money you can get affects the amount of business you can conduct, and the amount of profit you can gain.  So people with more money are better able to succeed economically in a capitalist system.

To illustrate this, consider two businesses: a fruit stand, and a supermarket.

Starting a fruit stand requires very little money up-front.  Even a laborer could save the money required to open a fruit stand. 

A supermarket requires a lot of money, and would  require a bank loan, investors, or an extremely wealthy owner.

A fruit stand can be operated by one person when it opens.  It may take a while for business to get going, but the ongoing expense is only one person, the owner.

A supermarket requires a large staff.  It may take a long time for business to start making money.  During this time, the expenses are high.  Staffers need to get paid.  A lot of food can go to waste if the power bill isn't paid.  Then there's the mortgage on the half-city-block worth of land.

When a business lacks enough cash to operate at a loss for a while, it's said to be undercapitalized.  An undercapitalized business will fail for lack of cash.

It's possible is that the fruit stand, if successful, will find competition from a new supermarket nearby.  In this situation, the fruit stand can be crushed - and the banks won't help keep the business afloat, because the supermarket is likely to permanently harm the fruit stand's profits.  Investors may even give loans to the supermarket, in the hope that the fruit stand is crushed and the supermarket can have a monopoly on selling fruit.

In a capitalist system, the amount of capital you can amass matters.  So, in a capitalist system, you need credit, banks, bankers, and investors.  These banks and bankers become extremely important because they become experts at investing in businesses.

Capitalism is not "neutral" as Williamson asserted.  Indeed, it's not only biased, but it virtually requires banks and capital to seek to invest in capital-intensive firms that can compete with, take over, or destroy undercapitalized small businesses.

There's more to capitalism than what's described above, but they're beyond the scope of this argument.

You paraphrased the Dictionary.com definition you pretend to quote to make it conveniently suit your viewpoint more than the real definition on the website. It ACTUALLY says "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth." I copied, cut and pasted. No editing pr paraphrasing here, It is not insignificant that you omitted the word "individuals". A fruit stand most certainly IS often owned by an individual. That is what Marianne was referring to.

Marianne is a student of A Course in Miracles. So am I. You are free to dismiss it with a catchy phrase like "New Agers" but your judgment in no way diminishes the truth nor the relevance of what WIlliamson said, nor of A Course in Miracles itself. The course states that EVERYTHING in the physical world is neutral depending on how it is used, We give everything every bit of meaning that it has for us (or we let others tell us what it means.) Marianne is trying to point out that capitalism, like anything, can be used for either good or bad. It is up to us. For me, Occupy Wall St is about telling the corporations they cannot misuse captialism on our watch. Marianne WIlliamson calls for a constitutional amendment stripping corporations of their personhood and exclusive public financing of all campaigns. Business must also be held accountable for any tax breaks it receives under the guise of creating jobs. If a company posts a profit or pays dividends to stockholders but lays ANYONE off, they lose their tax break.

We can waste time arguing about the definitions of words all day, or we can focus on what is actually being conveyed. You say yourself that you are focusing on a portion of WIlliamson's entire speech. Taking things out of context is always dangerous. Her message is powerful and important.

I agree that capitalism can be used for good... but only if we are willing to constrain it. So I don't have a quarrel with that. What I don't like is the defense of capitalism.

Also, I didn't paraphrase - I copied and pasted the definition from a web page (how else would I do it?). I've searched for that exact phrase, and it's all over the web. I probably copied it from another page that credited it to dictionary.com, and it's changed in the meantime.

It's all moot - the inclusion of individuals is meaningless. Under Communism (as well as Fascism, and Democratic Socialism, and laissez-faire) there are small individually-operated businesses. Merchants exist everywhere, and the governments generally can't crack down on them too hard because they are popular.

That popularity is the problem: the popularity of small merchants is always used to justify the continued existence of capitalism, by conflating the small merchants with capitalists.

Saying that capitalism has gone bad, and that there's a good capitalism, and the good kind is like that merchant... it's a problem. It alludes to the popular story of a small merchant growing a business into a large one. Sure, this happens, but it's not "growing" as much as it's being transformed from a small business into a capitalist enterprise through the introduction of large amounts of capital, via incorporation, and selling of stock. Through this process, a small business is incorporated into the capitalist system.

The big corporations aren't "misusing" capitalism - the big capitalists invented capitalism. Before capitalism, during the feudal period, there were merchants and tradespeople, particularly unlanded serfs who ended up working in villages. They weren't "capitalists" - they would sell, barter, issue credit, all at small scale.

Capitalism emerged with transnational companies chartered to carry out colonization in places like India and the Americas. That's why the USA exists - we were a mercantilist capitalist colony. Remember the Boston Tea Party. The colonists were fed up with taxation without representation. They attacked the British East India Company, the transnational company (owned by stockholders and chartered by the crown), destroying the tea so that the taxes on it couldn't be collected. It was vandalism used for political protest, destroying capital.

This early capitalist society was not one of small merchants amidst an emergent "big bad capitalism". It was the opposite - we were colonies founded to conduct the business of the East India Company and other big mercantalist capitalists, with a wealthy merchant class (who eventually became the American revolutionaries), and a labor force of indentured servants and slaves alongside "free men". The merchants existed because of mercantile capitalism. Mercantile capitalism existed because of governments (monarchs mainly) forming a business partnership with wealthy elites and citydwellers. (Look up the Wikipedia article about the East India Company: founded by knights, aldermen, and burgesses. Essentially, this is the modern corporation: an alliance of royals and politicians with the emergent city merchants.)

The idea that there's a "nice" or "pure" smaller-scale version of capitalism is wishful thinking. It's a nice story that makes small merchants seem nicer: independent, personal, humane. Moreover, it justifies the existence of capitalism. The idea that the big-bad-capitalism can be tamed or broken into these nice small-scale capitalists... it's a nice idea, but is it even possible?

I don't think so. We need to think bigger, and understand history, not base our dreams on some nice capitalist mythology.

Also, I just want people to recognize that not only aren't small merchants not "capitalists", but that they are almost like the "working class" (the Marxian definition of it). Occupy LA shouldn't be messing up the Farmers Market vendors' business. They're only losing allies.

what?
"The idea that the big-bad-capitalism can be tamed or broken into these nice small-scale capitalists... it's a nice idea, but is it even possible?
I don't think so. We need to think bigger, and understand history, not base our dreams on some nice capitalist mythology. "

that's just great because you haven't provided a workable substitute beyond a total restructure.
you haven't mentioned a better oversight approach after negating the 'personhood of corporations' fantasy and instituting a public window for corporate scrutiny and avenues for relief through an open legal system. Why not demand them to open their books to the interested public?
that alone would hobble these vultures while letting the honest inventive, clever and hardworking achieve due their lawful effort.
It's the crooks we need to hang not the workers and builders
My solution is a rational solution with real goals towards a real structure.
Yours go somewhere, sometime somehow.
that goes nowhere.

I'm not a major policy wonk, so I can't come up with concrete solutions that are politically viable.

Chipping away at corporate rights is one way to attack the system. Likewise, trying to adjust the relationship between peoples' rights and private property rights is another.

Right now, we're really far, far behind in terms of fighting for things like the right to healthcare, the right to an education, the right to shelter, and the right to fair employment. It seems so hopeless sometimes to even discuss this, particularly when anyone who dares to question the conventional ideas about private property, capitalism, business, and "the system" are branded as fringe.

I particularly attack New Age or similar ideas because, often, they are a salve for the wounds caused by the system... but they don't fight back against the system. Williamson, to her credit, is fighting, but she is still recanting the stories the system uses to justify its existence. (Note that I watched her video specifically because she started this "department of peace" idea, and I think that's a good idea. So I'm not unsympathetic, just very critical.)

When you have masses of people believing these stories about capitalism, these people become an impediment to change. We need a better understanding of what capitalism is and is not.

I could go on about this, but it'd be repetitive.

I'm not a wonk or any other pejorative.
And this is a criminal enterprise, not capitalism.
Fix the problem [ knowing them well, by now.. ] instead of making new ones that go either nowhere or directly into a chaos of uncertainty. Or worse.
There are many simple solutions to each and every conflict of interest and that's naked disclosure in the full light of day.
but I repeat myself.

I usually just follow when it comes to major policy. Crafting it is difficult and requires expertise. So here are a handful of things that can be done - and I mean really can be done, unlike pushing to repeal corporate personhood through a constitutional amendment, which is a pipe dream right now. I support the idea, but it won't pass today or in the next few years.

First thing to support is single payer health insurance in CA and other states. This can be won, and it can be done.

Second, various kinds of electoral reform can be won, and done. The redistricting commission happened, and it worked a lot better than people thought it would. They use instant runoff voting in San Francisco, and that's another kind of reform. Maybe these ideas can be spread, along with other reforms. Transparency seems to be a potent idea.

Third, we're in the midst of education reform. The teachers unions have failed to keep up with the flux, but the research and stats coming out about charter schools isn't good. This sets the stage for political drama and possibly an opening for a new ideas.

Fourth, this housing/foreclosure crisis is being turned into an opportunity to challenge the ideas about home ownership, housing, debt, and too-big-to-fail banks. People are open to new ideas, but judging from the various things I've read at Occupy LA, there are a lot of shitty ideas out there. So, again, opportunity.

we have the masses mobilized.
what they need is to discard 'limits' and such talk "which is a pipe dream right now." and push for critical change.
You stat with the most radical Demands.
You institute pressures [ like mass bank actions as withdrawing funds to either keep under your own control or transfer ] until they squeal in desperation. That is your lever.
Then you allow the parasite overclass to make equally radical concessions. Ones that are not under their dictate.
We have now the numbers to strike while the movement is still hot.