Yeah, there seems to be a definition problem here. In the context of marxism, 'capitalism' is defined as any system in which a non-laboring class controls the distribution of the products of labor.
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
(So, both the USSR & the US are capitalist, & a system can be capitalist without markets, under this definition. And, under that framework, it's not surprising that you'd see creeping integration.)
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
However, right-libertarians tend to use 'capitalism' to refer to any system by which markets are used in the distribution and exchange of resources. Under this model, integrated structures are not capitalist, and politics is not a valid capitalist mechanism of control.
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
Under that model, it's shocking that corporations tend to grow and create monopolies. (After all, when we have a name for a situation, we tend to assume that situation is both relatively permanent and relatively well-defined.)
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
Both these models have domains where the analysis they enable is predictive, & the use of the same term to describe very different (yet often-overlapping) things is the ultimate problem in trying to apply both analyses in conjunction with each other.
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
(This is probably also part of the reason right-libertarians tend to strongly associate communism with large, highly-integrated states: they see capitalism as emblematic of atomized market-mediated individual association, so they figure anti-capitalism must be the opposite.)
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
(That & the basically failed leninist project to create an integrated capitalist state to bootstrap underdeveloped countries into industrialized societies ready for communism.)
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
To a marxist, the essential feature of capitalism is 'exploitation' (a fairly loaded term for 'the separation of management and labor'), so heavy integration and the inflation of middle-management is a purer form of capitalism.
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Replying to @enkiv2 @chaosprime
To a right-libertarian, the essential feature of capitalism is the use of a market, so the exact same tendency appears to them to be making it less pure, for basically the exact same reason. Maybe we ought to come up with new terms, for when we're talking across the aisle.
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Replying to @enkiv2
yeah, there's a bunch of cards that are constantly being palmed, that to my thinking boil down to: 1) who determines what a given person is going to spend their time doing 2) who determines what will be done with a given resource hm. i could make a stupid fucking quad
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i have no commitments to marx or von mises, and my take is that the defining feature of "capitalism" is that it answers 1) that person 2) its owner, where "socialism" answers 1) society but really central planners 2) society but really central planners
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