Capitalism
 | This article covers a topic that, by its very nature, is a magnet for flamewars. Try not to get too assmad at what you're about to read. | |
"Capitalism has socialized production. It has brought thousands of people together in the factory and involved them in new social relationships."
- – C. L. R. James
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
- – Attributed to Yakov Smirnov
"Capitalism is the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds"
- – John Maynard Keynes
Capitalism is an economic system in which industry and trade are controlled by private owners in a bid to make as much profit as possible. Key to the idea of capitalism is the idea of investment, spending money to finance an operation like a sea voyage or a factory to gain more money later on in a cut of the future profits. This sort of approach to gaining wealth was used by some merchants and nobles to some degree since the invention of money, but it really came into its own Western Europe between 1500 to 1800. Capitalism can be considered the polar opposite of Communism, whose tenets center around abolishing currency and ownership rights.
Overview
Capitalism with the emergence of agrarian capitalism and mercantilism in the early Renaissance Italy though it can be argued that the system has existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities and occasionally as small-scale industry with some wage labor. However, the economic foundations of the feudal agricultural system began to shift substantially in 16th-century England as the manorial system had broken down and land began to become concentrated in the hands of fewer landlords with increasingly large estates. Instead of a serf-based system of labor, workers were increasingly employed as part of a broader and expanding money-based economy.
The economic doctrine that developed form this in 16th to the 18th centuries was mercantilism, a kind of beta-version of capitalism. The Age of Discovery, was associated with the geographic exploration of foreign lands by merchant traders, especially from England and the Low Countries. Mercantilism was a system of trade for profit, although commodities were still largely produced by non-capitalist methods.
Then in the mid-18th century a group of economic theorists, led by David Hume (1711.–1776.) and Adam Smith (1723.–1790.), challenged fundamental mercantilist doctrines—such as the belief that the world's wealth remained constant and that a state could only increase its wealth at the expense of another state. Another, arguably even greater evolutionary impetus for the nascent capitalism was a little ol thing called the Industrial Revolution which replaced merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system and ushered in the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds and journeymen.
During the Industrial Revolution, industrialists replaced merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system and effected the decline of the traditional handicraft skills of artisans, guilds and journeymen. The era marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routine of work tasks; and eventually established the domination of the capitalist mode of production.
After The World Wars the process of globalization carried capitalism across the world and after capitalism overcame the challenge set by the alternate centrally-planned economies it became the encompassing system worldwide, with the mixed economy as its dominant form in the industrialized Western world and elsewhere.
The concept of Capitalism has had an impact on /tg/ like many political systems have, as they are perfect to create races/settings/empires from. Many human and other civilised nations in other settings use capitalist trade and economic ideas in their settings, and often national relations between races depend on existing trade agreements (busty elf maidens need to get paid somehow!).
It also helps that concepts of capitalism are the reason we have the internet to view and write all this today. Short version; the internet was first invented as a communication system for the U.S military, then shared with the public when its commercial potential was realized and soon went global from there. Capitalism also led to several of the technological advancements that gave society increasingly advanced computers and smartphones (which you're most likely using to read this right now).
Issues
Of course, the proven failures of communism do not mean that particular implementations of capitalism, in either the 1860s or today, are without flaws, or that the basic ideas behind socialism/communism are defective in themselves. However, other analyses of these flaws, and solutions for them, have been proposed by people who have adjusted for circumstances that Marx could never have foreseen, were more willing to take a gradualist approach, or believed that Marx didn't go far enough.
The most notable is probably Henry George, who identified private ownership of land and other natural resources, rather than private ownership of capital in general, as one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated against humanity, and proposed fixing it with a tax on the unimproved value of land rather than with a global revolution. Needless to say, if the Bolsheviks had read his book Progress and Poverty instead of Das Kapital, history might have gone very differently. Then again, taxes are a lot less sexy and appealing to philosophy majors (whosoever wrote this has likely never even seen a university; John Rawls, especially his work "A Theory of Justice", is the complete hotness in contemporary political philosophy - and it's highly socialistic, with a hardcore stance for wealth-redistribution ((It's also been torn a new set of assholes by Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, among others)) and disgruntled workers than violent revolution and radical reorganization of society and the Bolsheviks' interpretation of Marxism was considered quite unorthodox to begin with in its own time.
One major gripe against capitalism is it's Darwinian/meritocratic nature of chasing ever increasing profit and competing with others with the usual outcome being an oligarchy/monopoly with all the rest subsumed or destroyed. This is usually countered with pointing out historical examples of new techs and industries uprooting the old ones along with Fortune 500 top 10 companies on the list being very different every decade, however more often than not these disruptions are subverted by outright buying up the competition or lowering your prices short-term and bankrupting the new rival company AND THEN buying them out for peanuts. Also, this can even lead to social-darwinism whereupon the success in a capitalist system is attributed to "fitness" and any attempt to reform the system is labeled as a rebellion of the unfit against the "just natural order" which in turn is made more and more rigid by design to prevent upsetting the status quo.
Additionally, for all of its lauded efficiency and "economic calculus", capitalism produces enormous amounts of waste and unused products. Just take a look at your local supermarket dumpster, if you can even get past the secured fence they are in (no dumpster-diving freeloaders allowed!). In the recent megacorp-era this has gotten so bad that Amazon, the world's largest shipping and retail company, routinely destroys thousands of unsold items ranging from electronics to books. This is not to mention the sheer irrationalities it encourages when it comes to the environment, polluting and destroying nature for short-term gain and thus proverbially shitting and pissing all over the only house you have while not cleaning any of it since it detracts from the pleasure of (increasing) eating and drinking. It doesn't help that capitalism is based around the prospect of infinite growth, which only works in a scenario where you have equally infinite resources (which was never the case and is becoming increasingly less so due to said wastefulness)- as soon as there's nowhere left for it to grow, it's going to collapse under its own weight.
Furthermore, Capitalism has a troubling tendency of interfering with the democratic process and tends to seep into public domain sphere. Lobby groups and political kickbacks if not outright bribery see unelected corporate officials influence the workings of the country to benefit themselves, often at the expense of the general population. Privatization of education, healthcare, law enforcement and prison system can often lead to decline in quality as profit takes over quality as the main motivator.
Oh and the whole "meritocracy" aspect falls flat immediately with the second generation inheriting their parents' wealth and thus getting an inordinate head-start in life regardless of how well they were raised or how motivated they may be personally. Also, as families such as Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Windsors show, capitalism can create long-lasting pseudo-noble dynasties just as any other economic system based on wealth accumulation. More hilariously, the wealthiest families of Florence (Italy) remained wealthy over the period of 600+ years, being unaffected by political, sanitary and technological turmoils. Such families also tend to rear their children with 0 tolerance for nonsense or wastefulness so the families rarely if ever loose much of their wealth while continually multiplying it.
Lastly, a worrying feature of what our colleagues on the other side call "Late Stage Capitalism" is commodification - transformation of as many segments of society into objects of trade or commodities, examples of which are goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, interpersonal relations, people or animals. This opens up virtually all spheres of our existence to purely economic modes of comprehension which as detailed above can cause huge problems. For example, if humans are just another commodity, why not bring back slavery for those who are willing to sell themselves into it? And if such things as prostitution, Dubai or sweatshops came to your mind - ring-a-ding, you are paying attention.
Moreover, the overtaking of the social sphere by the capitalist mode of thought causes a side-effect called "Capitalist Realism" which is the idea that neoliberal free-market capitalism is the best and only socio-economic model of human society to be viable, which is demonstratively false as we went through at least three prior systems (primitive communism, agrarian slave economy, and feudalism). This prevents us from even thinking about some other system though granted, new modes of economic production were often result of social and technological evolution and not deliberate planning so leaving capitalism to run its course may be a viable option...but given that there's an alarmingly high chance that said course might lead to the irreversible destruction of the planet's ability to support anything that could be called "civilization", is that really a risk worth taking?
Grim Dark Capitalism For All Your Role-Playing And Warning Needs
Because capitalism is the boring dominant ideology of today, dystopian societies in works enjoyed by /tg/ tend to either be monarchies, theocracies, fascist or communist. However, the extremes of capitalism are explored in works that show what happens when the free market is not restrained by some force. These societies will have the wealth accumulated by 1% of the population who reenact the pre-fall Eldar by partying and doing other decadent shit while their slaves get scraps despite doing the heavy lifting. While these evil corporations may justify the state of things, that's easy to do from your comfortable position.
Cyberpunk as a whole is a representation of where capitalism could lead us. Those wanting to create a cyberpunk role-playing scenario will notice that the established works will feature not only the previously mentioned class divide, but a lot of pollution and privately owned mercenary groups or corrupt police murdering the fuck out of dissenters they also spy on with the latest hardware. Oh gee, that sounds like real life, only with fancier toys. *BLAM* Nothing to see citizen, keep on shopping.
Another dystopian capitalist society may be a blatant analogy of old-school colonialism where certain empires invade random skubs for resources because corporate said so.
Finally, the heresy known as Monopoly was designed to show us all how bad capitalism is with the most tedious and depressing board game you will ever play. Unfortunately, it is a best selling board game so either this was Just As Planned or the makers were the perfect Troll. Actually only the original version, titled the landlord’s game, was meant to bash Capitalism. But then Parker Brothers changed the rules to make the long drawn out affair we all know and loathe today.
The Card Game
Capitalism is also the name of a card game (also known as Rich Man, Poor Man, Presidents or The Great Dalmuti). Players are dealt cards, and try to discard their hands as quickly as possible. Each trick is set by whoever leads -- for instance, a player can lead with two threes (the card value order runs from three up to two, as opposed to the usual two up to ace), and the next player must play a pair of fours (or fives, or whatever) or pass, and so on. Whoever plays the highest cards in a trick wins it and gets to lead the next, and whoever is out of cards the first becomes the "rich man" (or "president" or "first" or some other title), and so on, until the last player with cards becomes the "poor man". Some variants of the game have twos usable as "bombs" to win a trick (even if the trick is something other than a single card), but players who use a two as their last card immediately become poor man.
Cards are dealt again for the next round, but before play begins, the poor players must trade their highest-value cards to the rich ones (who may give whatever cards they please). For example, in an eight-player game (usually played with two decks of cards), #8 trades three cards with #1, #7 trades 2 with #2, and #6 trades 1 with #3. Hence the name: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. The only consolation to the poor is that the poor man leads the first trick.
Capitalist-inspired Games, Factions and Settings
- Cyberpunk
- The Ferengi Alliance from Star Trek
- Monopoli
- Oddworld, especially the Magog Cartel
- Druuge from Star Control
- Hansa games
- Kharadron Overlords