Capitalism and Community

[andrewducker]

Elsewhere zarabee said:

Being a leftie, I'd like to say it's all the fault of capitalism privileging profit over community, but I know that's my personal political bias.

And she's right, it is, and wrong, it isn't.

That is, it _is_ her personal bias and it _isn't_ the fault of capitalism privileging profit over community.

Because capitalism doesn't privelige profit over community.  Instead it completely ignores community, effectively saying "If you want community, do it yourself."

So there's no reason why people under a capitalist system can't form a communist arrangement - and indeed, some people have.  There's no reason why they can't form tightly knit communities - and, indeed some people have.

What you can't do under capitalism is _force_ people to do those things.  So if people decide to _personally_ privilege profit over community, then it won't stop them doing so.  And many people choose to do so  - the vast majority of us.  Every time you choose to buy something made cheaply through mass production, rather than expensively through personal craftsmanship, you're choosing cheapness over community and the connection of people to production.

And of course, people choose that all the time, because they want a satisfactory job for themselves, but don't care about the people providing them with a service.  It's easier to go to a supermarket and pick up all your groceries at once, for less money, with swift service, than it is to go to a decent butcher/farmer's market/local grocery store.

And this isn't intrinsically a bad thing.  It's just a choice about what kind of society you want to live in.  A cheap, efficient one, where you get impersonal but reasonable service.  Or a personal, but expensive one, where people really care about the work they do.

Comments

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

And of course, people choose that all the time, because they want a satisfactory job for themselves, but don't care about the people providing them with a service.

For some of us, I think that is a choice. Certainly for me, I can choose where to do my shopping and have both the information and the means to make that choice. It is difficult, if for some reason I can't shop on a Saturday, to do the rounds of small shops / farmers markets.

For others though, I'm not sure how much choice they've got: the people who actually work in the low-paid service sector probably have very little beyond choosing the cheapest products possible. Given the number of people in the UK who are in this position, it makes their situation to some extent self-perpetuating.

We're very fortunate in Edinburgh, that given time and money, we can make a choice. For people in smaller communities, choice is sadly often crowded out when the supermarket opens just outside town.

Should we choose small stores / local produce? I have heard it argued many times that a bunch of middle-class lefties attempting to make ethical choices in consumption achieves very little but to make us feel better about ourselves. I can see their point, but ultimately I still do try to avoid the supermarket as much as possible. I go to the farmers' market and shop in small stores. I don't think it will change the world, but I do think it can help retain some kind of local community.

Ultimately, however, I can make a selfish argument about choosing small, decent producers:
- It's a much more pleasant shopping experience;
- The produce I buy is on the whole, better;
- There's generally a lot more information about production itself.
This is key for me, because ultimately, if local / organic food was crap, I wouldn't buy it.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Instead it completely ignores community

No, it doesn't. Capitalism has extensive means of making sure that it is the only system that operates and other ways of doing things are disadvantaged or obliterated, ranging from the direct - eg the activities of the World Trade Association to the insidious - eg advertising.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

And the ownership of land, which is seldom communally owned (any more).

[andrewducker]

No reason it couldn't be. There are communes about, and people can get together to buy it up.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

True. But I'm thinking of communally owned in the sense of a community that's owned land for generations, and may not even remember when it wasn't their land.

That kind of ownership has been under attack since civilization began. There's Babylonian tablets from four thousand years or so ago describing how people were losing their land to what we'd call loan sharks.

There's many variations of that approach to depriving peoples of their land, and it's only possible because it's been decreed that land is a commodity that can be bought and sold. And once someone doesn't have any land they need capital to rent somewhere to live and to feed and clothe themselves. Which usually means working for someone else - who most probably is a land-owner.

[drplokta]

The WTO doesn't generally require anyone to operate in the framework of capitalism, it just requires that that choice be made available to them. And when it is, nearly everyone chooses it, but that's not the WTO's fault.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I suspect there may be a lot of semantics around choice here.

[andrewducker]

I don't see how either of those things stop people from forming communities and working in any way they wish - should they so wish.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

The dispute about GM foods at the WTO is a case in point. If a community, whether that be a group of countries or a supermarket or concerned consumers wish to avoid GM foods as far as possible, why shouldn't that option be avalable to them? Yet if the US, Canada and Argentina win their case it seems likely that in the long term it will be impossible to avoid exposure to GM foods, whether by their extensive use in processed foods or cross-contamination.

[andrewducker]

Nobody has to eat GM foods. You can always make the decision to buy from local or organic growers, or from brands who label themselves as GM free (as, for instance, Iceland does). Most people, to be honest, seem to not give a damn.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Yes, at the moment, But the point is that moves are afoot that will prevent people exercising choice in the future. Because of capitalism.

[andrewducker]

Can you point me at the change which is going to prevent people from labelling things?

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Community also has its downside, in terms of being defined negatively - who we aren't. Think of small town Southern USA in the 1920s or whatever - probably not much fun if you weren't part of the WASP populace and you had the KKK enforcing their version of community.

By saying it's all about money, capitalism tries at least as far as consumption goes to be neutral about people: The supermarket will serve you regardless of who you are and all that matters is whether you can pay for the goods, as least in an ideal situation.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Arguing against a position someone doesn't actually hold is usually called a straw man. I don't believe anything is the fault of capitalism.

Perhaps I should have added a winkie after that comment, but I thought it was clearly meant as a humourous aside which deliberately mischaracterised the political views of lefties for comedic intent?

In other words, not only don't I believe anything is the fault of capitalism, I don't think lefties believe it either.

If you'd like to know what I do believe, I'd be happy to expand further. In general I'm a believer in multivariate analysis. I'm not an economist, however, so, you know, I'm really reluctant to say anything in a public forum on a topic which I know little about.

But what the hey, I'll be a little bit provocative. You say above that "Capitalism doesn't say anything about community". Since it *does* says something about profit, I think that could be said to be privileging it.

Lets consider an example to show what I mean by that: in the US, at least,corporations are accountable only to shareholders, not to stakeholders. I would consider that an example of privileging profit over community. In other words, it doesn't prevent development of community, doesn't hinder development of community, but makes it conveniently easy to forget about or ignore it. Have you seen The Corporation? It has a really facinating interview with a CEO who talks about the difficulty and immense amount of time it took to position his carpet-making business as a sustainable one. In other words, to factor community into the profit-making. It gave me some insight into how not saying anything about community can actively work against community interests. There's no incentive for CEOs to consider community, whereas there's considerable incentive to consider profit.

Now, again, because I feel like I should massively disclaimer this, I don't think this is the fault of capitalism. I think it's a flaw in the way US corporations law was set up, and it's obviously changable. And it's only intended as an illustrative example.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

(and when I say "no incentive", I clearly mean "less incentive". Sheesh.)

[andrewducker]

but I thought it was clearly meant as a humourous aside which deliberately mischaracterised the political views of lefties for comedic intent?

Madam _clearly_ knows different lefties to me. Seriously, I know people who believe exactly that.

You say above that "Capitalism doesn't say anything about community". Since it *does* says something about profit, I think that could be said to be privileging it.

Not necessarily. It is just considered outside of its scope. It doesn't talk about CPU speeds either, but that doesn't mean that they are affected negatively by it.

in the US, at least,corporations are accountable only to shareholders, not to stakeholders.

Actually, that's only kinda true. They are considered accountable _inside certain limits_ to their shareholders only. Those limits include such things as health and safety, minimum wage laws, competition laws, etc. all of which affect how they treat all of their stakeholders.

There's no incentive for CEOs to consider community, whereas there's considerable incentive to consider profit.

But large transnational companies are, almost by definition, antithetical to communities - to function efficiently they have to be the same (or very similar) everywhere, whereas communities are local things.

Capitalism (in its purest form, which I am very glad I don't live under) doesn't tell people to do anything, except not actively hurt one another. The point I was making was it doesn't tell anyone they can't help each other - it just doesn't force them to. People can make the choice to help each other, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. I'm very glad, for instance, that the average person in my country of residence has decided that a nationalised health system is worth paying for. I, personally, think that a citizen's pension is also a worthwhile use of money - but I don't think the average person agrees, and I don't think that they _ought_ to agree, it's up to them.

As a thought experiment - if the guy running one company found it that hard to do things in a sustainable way, would it even be possible to create a centralised system that did this on a much larger scale? Or are we better setting in place more generalised limits on behaviour, and leaving it to individual people/companies to decide how best to comply with them (with policing, of course).

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

"Because capitalism doesn't privelige profit over community. Instead it completely ignores community" is a paraphrase of "capitalism privileges profit over community"

It puts focus on one and ignores the other. It privileges one and ignores the other.

[andrewducker]

It also ignores chickens. And supernovas. And computers. Doesn't mean that capitalism is priveliged over them - they're all just outside of its scope.

There's nothing in capitalism stopping people from forming community - they don't seem to choose to do so, in groups larger than about 20.