I would agree that systems adapt themselves to national or religious cultures. Japanese employers take over a whole range of responsibilities for their employees, which the anglo saxon model would mostly ignore. They mostly consider it their responsibility to find other employment for any worker who becomes redundant, as well as taking over other functions such as housing for their workers, paying for their marriages, funerals etc. They even sometimes publically humiliate themselves in front of the workforce if they have made a mistake. Can this still be regarded as a 'capitalist' way of working ? Maybe we need to define capitalism.
or be less inflexible when discussing it. I think we all agree that Japan has its own model of capitalism. Oh the beauties of a flexible, ever changing, ever developing model of how to run society - free from the dirigiste commands of an autocratic communarchy
What I am saying is that where political power and economic power move too close to each other then there can be a democratic deficit, because the one is subject to democratic processes whereas the other isn't. Of course Maersk are subject to Danish and International law, the question is whether, as a result of their power, they have disproportionate influence in also making those laws. The other point is one of transparency - if the Danes are going to vote for what is in the interests of Moller Maersk then they should know what he is doing, in the same way they would know what their government is doing. Did the majority of Danes know that Maersk transported so much military equipment - did you ? I only knew this because I was working for P&O Nedlloyd at the time of their takeover by Maersk. Do the Danes also know that through the chaos which resulted in Iraq that Maersk also took over control of port facilities there. Big business is not subject to either democratic processes, or to effective transparency - so if people are voting on the basis you suggest then we have a big democratic problem.
If you think political and economic power have ever been far apart in any society - including so called communist ones then I would like to know which they are. Democracy means people get to vote - if they vote stupidly in someone's opinion - tough luck. The democratic process works fine in Denmark it seems. Again - you just are biased against big corporations because you don't like them - not because of a rational reason that you have shown here. I don't give a stuff who Maersk rent ships to - why should I? If you stand on the rooftops and tell people that Maersk owned Iraq - do you thing they would care? Danes do not vote for the interests of Moller Maersk - they vote for themselves - their jobs, their shareholdings, their society. Big business is not a democracy - a country is. Big business is subject to national and international law. Can you support your argument that business is not subject to transparency?
Just a quick note on your last sentence Arturo - I live in Germany. This is an important point because there is no country with as much data protection as here. The reason is obvious - firms like to hide their transactions from public view, and, they like to hide their history. Try finding out the 'activities' of firms during the NS period in Germany, between 1933 and 1945 - you can't do it. A friend of mine who worked for Kühne+Nagel, had emigrated from Moscow to Germany, and was of Jewish extraction - wanted to research on the history of K+N to find out. There is just a blank period of 12 years - although the firm was established in 1908 and had been active in Germany for the whole period. This is no isolated case - and it is not just a historical one. How many western based firms have also produced and exported equipment used for torture in other countries - without of course informing their own population that they were doing this. The list could go on and on.
Can you describe any country as either Capitalist or Socialist Arturo ? Practically every country on this planet is a mixture of both. Even the USA, with a culture which celebrates laissez-faire capitalism, has often had a different practice. During the 20th Century the Americans nationalized railways, coalmines and steelmills and even took a controlling interest in banks when it was in the national interest to do so. In times of war or national emergency Washington has never hesitated to nationalize - they just don't call it that, because it doesn't sound good to American ears - they have called it government investment programmes. At any time around 20% of the American economy is in state hands. The same is true in most other countries - without Socialist thinking, you would have no NHS in Britain. At the other end of the scale there has never been a country which collectivized everything - even the USSR allowed some private enterprise. Actually, in terms of the amount of land and industry owned by the state (or other forms of public ownership) one of the highest, Worldwide, is Israel - but nobody calls them a Socialist state, why is that ? I agree that states which have called themselves Socialist in the past, have often been lacking in flexibility - which is a shame, because a great deal of flexibility is possible. The expression 'Collective ownership of the means of production' is a very pretty phrase, but it does not get us very far. Does it mean the state owns everything, or the workers themselves, or the community - or all 3 ? Does it mean everything, or just the means of production - or just those means of production which are essential to the state. Does it mean the state dissolves itself and delegates all power downwards ? And, most importantly how is such a state to be achieved ? By taking over the state itself (USSR), by democratic means, or from below - hoping that your 'community project' will expand to a network, and that change will come gradually from below. Does it mean that all relationships in society will become lateral ones, with the democratic principle anchored into every area ? Lastly - must a form of socialism be internationalist ? Or can it be closed and isolationist. Subsequent to 1945 socialists Worldwide have opted for the first in an attempt to distance themselves from the militarized 'Community of the Folk' of Hitler's dreams. Real imagination is needed to create a socialism which can work for everyone and can answer all the question I have raised, and nobody has ever written a book which answered it - how can I create Communism with a human touch ? The closest was Antonio Gramsci, because Marx spent 99% of his time talking about how Capitalism would fall and close to nothing about how Communism would operate - and he wasn't talking about Russia anyway ! I prefer to start small - because all those experiments which started big went tits up. You see we have communism already - within the family. How many things within the family are 'communal ownership' ? All we need to do is expand this to larger groups of people.
I think that to use an example from a very exceptional era is interesting but is hardly something that can be considered normal I do not know - and doubt many do - the rank order of countries with data protection. I am sure though that most companies that operate internationally nowadays are subject to intense scrutiny. I looked a Maersk briefly and came across this on their website : A.P. Moller - Maersk is committed to ensuring that our business practices are safe, responsible and transparent, in accordance with our Core Values and the principles of the UN Global Compact on human rights, labour rights, environment and anti-corruption, and contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We define corporate sustainability as working systematically to reduce negative and enhance positive impacts on people, society and environment. We further aim to unlock growth for society and our company by leveraging the core strengths of our businesses to address global challenges through innovation, investment and collaboration. Sorry if that does not look to you like a company very well aware of its need to be responsible.
I doubt there is an example of a capitalist state that has pure capitalism. There again capitalism unlike communism does not seek to create a state. It is just that where it can an enterprise will establish itself and grow without need to form a political society. Capitalism simply requires itself to be allowed to exist. I have no problem with mixed economies - if something is state owned and run well - good. (I think a lot of people do regard Israel as a bit socialist by the way - many remember kibbutz living. I think it is not the economic aspect of Israel that is most contentious though) I will be interest if and when anyone ever achieves it. Until then pretending there is an alternative to capitalism that works is a bit like finding a unicorn. Good luck then. I hope your small start is successful and even that it is so successful that it could become a model for society as a whole in the future. It sounds nice. I have never doubted that - I have doubted that it works - but who knows - someone could succeed. Families are not communism - many are dictatorships and few even employ democracy. What Dad and Mum decide goes. Nothing in a family is "communal owned". The norm is parents own everything other than children's personal items.
I believe you could not be more wrong on one point Arturo. Capitalism cannot exist without the existence of the state - the state establishes the legal framework whereby private property and capital can flourish. It is true that capitalism does not rely on force, and dictatorship to maintain it's control - it needs an ideological justification which is believed by the majority of the population. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagates its own values and norms so that they become the ''common sense'' values of all, and thus maintain the status quo. To challenge the state, or to overturn the conditions of production, is not enough - and, in isolation can only lead to the replacement of one elite with another. It is necessary to create a counter culture to challenge the control which capitalism has over our media, our schools and our intellectual processes. The system wants us to believe that there is no alternative to capitalism - this is one of those myths, which has the same justification as the divine right of Kings in the past - people believed it and so it came to pass. The continuance of capitalism is conditional upon being able to discredit all alternatives as being 'irrational', or 'utopian romance' or nonsensical.
I would question whether capitalism or culture can "do" anything. They are both convenient terms which help us, among other things, to identify how humans set about organising themselves. It's a fine distinction, I know, but an important one. People decide; ideologies don't.
Your last sentence would imply that people have completely free will and that socialization plays no role in their eventual ideas and attitudes Theo.
No it doesn't. It implies that things, sets of ideas, institutions are not thinking entities which make decisions. I think reification is the term usually used to describe this. There are all sorts of reasons why people make decisions, but it is people who make them not things.
Every person is brought up into some kind of culture Theo. This may have been man made by many people, but for the individual growing up in it it is preset and is going to influence me often without my knowledge. Our ideas are not our own - maybe the mix is ours, but the range of ideas isn't. If you are brought up in a Christian culture without any information about Hinduism whatsoever, can you be expected to become a Hindu ? How much information have we absorbed without ever testing that info. for ourselves ? If enough people around you say that something is true - so much so that you are looked on as an oddity if you don't accept it, then there is a good chance that you will accept it as well.
People are brought up. They are surrounded by ideas. Some they take on board; others they don't. The ideas we encounter may well have been formulated by someone else, but that someone else is a person not a thing. In other words the ideas we are influenced by do not have a life of their own. They are constructed by other people thinking them up. It is not an -ism which is deciding to influence us, but the mind or minds of the originators of those principles.
Many of the ideas we have are subconscious Theo - we are often not sure which we have taken on board and which we haven't. I agree that ideas do not have a life of their own - until they have been formed, and then........ perhaps, after a time, they give rise to their own dynamic. The people who formed those ideas, those things with ism at the end did not pluck them from a vacuum, so who was actually the originator of them ? A person such as Charles Darwin was a creature of his age - who could only have come from England in the 19th Century. Just like all people he helped to shape the World around him but he was also shaped by it.
Not much point in pursuing this. Ideas are not subconscious and they don't have their own dynamic. A person picks them up and runs with them. Of course no-one picks ideas from a vacuum...that's not what I'm saying. Charles Darwin may have been influenced by what other people thought but there was not an abstract ism actively doing something to make his mind up. That is the only thing I have been unsuccessfully truing to get across. I shall return to watching the football
Charles Darwin may well have been influenced both by other people's writings, but also by the prevailing culture - the latter may have been subconscious. I am not necessarily talking about ideas but rather a general culture which has permeated our ways of thinking about many things. An 'idea' can very definitely pick up it's own dynamic - particularly when in the hands of the wrong people.
I like the society we live in for the most part. There are lots of things wrong that could be improved but I doubt any society is going to be perfect. If I had two or three things I would change it would be educate people to realise that you get nothing for nothing. Another would be to encourage people not to be jealous of others. A third would be to encourage people to look for more fairness. The world is how it is thanks to capitalism. Without it we would be living in a largely agrarian society without most of the comforts of modern living. Capitalism relies on people striving to achieve more - in my eyes the healthy aspect of competition. As others have pointed out communes and communal living go back centuries if not thousands of years - but no real advances were ever made. Living was always essentially subsistence living. The poor were really poor - although that state applied to almost everybody. Famine and disease accounted for a far higher proportion of deaths than even modern warfare - including nuclear weapons has achieved. Our modern industrial society has enabled us to live for goals we can choose instead of only living to exist. The greatest threat to modern society though is if those people who have most are unwilling to take responsibility to share what they have with others who have not been able to move above a floor level. I happen to think that in many modern societies we have and are developing a greater sense of the responsibility everyone has for each other - and for the planet and everything else on it too. To me the future should be a progression from where we are with an emphasis on social and planetary responsibility.
I actually agree with some of this Arturo. However, there is one blind spot in there - namely the presumption that the creature comforts we enjoy are purely the result of Capitalism. Do you think the people in the USSR were living in caves, or bashing flint to get fire ? The industrial revolution was not the direct result of capitalism - it was incidental to it. The German industrial revolution was a much more centrally planned affair (as in Belgium) and had overtaken the Laissez Faire model of Britain by about 1900. Similarly the fastest rate of growth in the pre war years was in the USSR - had that not been the case the Red Army would have had to fight Hitler with spears. The problem in the USSR was one of priorities - they thought that Sputniks were more important than tractors. The technology was there it was just channeled in the wrong way. You appear to presume that without the 'benefits' of capitalism we would all be toiling away on a field somewhere - there are millions of ways to organize production other than this.
Not time to answer fully - will do that later - but I see the USSR copied everything from the capitalists. Russia - like Japan - and China were mired in centuries old societies. They were forced to industrialise and copy the West - mostly the UK and US in order to totally redevleop their nations.. I will not get drawn into your esoteric argument about central planning and Laissez Faire. We all know that the capitalism that most people sneer at developed from the 18th century and had various forms. You can argue whether Rowntrees and so on were the nasty capitalist so many love to decry - after all they were nice to their employees and that does not fit with the attack capitalism model. I do presume that without the development of capital - especially the banking system which again many like to sneer at factories were not going to spring up unaided. It was capitalism which fuelled the industrial revolution and our entire lives of today. No communist or other society ever got past a feudal state. Arabs, Indians and many others were highly civilised and built great empires - but they did not develop modern industry.
