What the World Would Be Like Without Capitalism
Some people say that the search for profit is abusive, heartless, evil, and so on. I’m not particularly in love with profit for its own sake (and I certainly don’t think it justifies abuse), but a reflexive condemnation of profit is deeply ignorant.
The truth is, “profit” killed the ancient abomination of human slavery. To eliminate the ability of people to profit would draw slavery back into the world. And we obviously don’t want that.
Here’s why:
Slavery Was an Economic System
What is not understood is that slavery was the foundation of economics in the old world – such as in Greece and Rome.
Slavery was almost entirely about surplus. (Surrounded by creative justifications, of course.) It was a type of enforced thrift.
An undeveloped man, left to himself, will spend almost all of what he earns. If he does earn some surplus, he’ll likely spend it on luxuries, frivolities, or worse. Until he develops a strong character, little of his surplus will remain for other uses.
A slave, on the other hand, never holds his earnings in his hands and therefore cannot spend them. All surplus is transferred to his or her owner. It was precisely this kind of surplus that made Rome rich.
But then Christian Europe came about. Prior to that, I cannot point to a single ancient culture that forbade the practice; it was seen as normal. So, for Europe to expel the slavery it inherited from Rome was a monumental change.
Europeans replaced slavery – slowly and because of their Christian principles, not because of a conscious plan – by doing these things:
- Developing personal thrift. This required a strong focus on building up virtues like temperance (self-control) and patience.
- Replacing the enforced surplus of slavery with profit. That is, by mixing creativity in with their commerce: innovating, inventing, and adapting to get more surplus out of commerce.
Under a new system that was eventually tagged capitalism, thrift and creativity generated surplus, and no human beings had to be enslaved.
A World Without Profit
On the other hand, we have recent examples of what happens when a culture forbids profit: the “socialist paradises” of Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, and the enslaved states of Eastern Europe. (Among others.)
These examples are bleak indeed, featuring the enslavement of everyone to a ruling party.
Profit provides an incentive to work, and when it is gone, not only does work suffer, but those who want to get ahead have no honest way to do it. And that drives them either to despair or to crime.
If you eliminate profit – innovative, rewarding commerce – you get slavery. The form of that slavery may vary from one case to another, but it will be slavery of some type.
This result is the same, by the way, whether the elimination of profit occurs via communism (make a profit, we shoot you) or fascism (all profit-making is taken over by friends of the state).
The core issue is surplus:
- If surplus can be gathered by average people via honest means, slavery can be eliminated.
- If average people are not allowed to create and hold their own surplus (surplus being skimmed off to the state and/or state partners), slavery of one sort or another will be the result.
Profit is simply a tool – a way of generating surplus without the enforced thrift of slavery.
You cannot get rid of both slavery and profit. You can eliminate whichever one you wish, but you’ll be stuck with the other.
Profit Rests on Virtues
To live in a civilization that prospers by profit, we need to move beyond gorilla-level instincts like envy. We need to develop self-control, patience, and a focus on more than just material possessions.
It’s a shame that the West has turned away from traditional virtues over recent centuries. If the Church that previously taught these virtues was found to be wanting, we should have replaced it with something better, rather than casting everything aside and pretending that virtues were nothing but superstition.
If we ever lose enough of our virtues, profit will lose its protections, and the ancient way of slavery will return.
What we do matters.
Paul Rosenberg
[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]
5PM
“The early Christians didn’t say in dismay, ‘Look what the world has come to,’ but in delight, ‘Look what has come to the world.’” E.S. Jones, Abundant Living
Drivel. Pure drivel. Articles like this are what happens when people with a tenuous grasp of history try to use history to justify their outlook. I mean, this mess of a screed is so jumbled I don’t even know where to fucking start to dismantle it.
First, Rosenberg fails to distinguish between Athenian/Roman slavery and the race-based slavery that drove the colonization of the Western World by Western Europe.
Second, he cites “Christian Europe” as the example of a society that excised slavery from its midst, when in fact the rise of Europe from the 16th century onward would not have happened if it were not for the prodigious use of slave labor in growing plantation commodities (sugar, rice, tobacco, and later cotton).
Third, he equates the values of Puritan Protestant Christianity with ALL of Christianity — when they were not the same thing. Has he ever read “The Puritan Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber? I’d guess no.
Fourth, the ONLY time in human history where surplus has not been expropriated by the few at the expense of the many is before the rise of agricultural civilizations (i.e. hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies). Either he’s wishing for something like the workers’ paradise that will follow the dictatorship of the proletariat (something that never did and never will exist), or he’s projecting his own misguided views onto the arc of history, and insisting something is true when it never has been. Either way, he couldn’t be further from reality.
I could probably go on for another few thousand words tearing this mindless babble apart, but then I’d be wasting even more time on this pap than I already have.
Christian thought freed the slave to choose his own path of rightfulness and prosperity.If that freeman then chose to trade his new found liberty over for security via debt issued by the company store for safe keeping, there still was a choice,something not afforded to the slave.
The long journey always begins with a few steps….even baby ones.
Flash, I didn’t think that I could read anything more convoluted and nonsensical than the original article. Then I came upon your post about how Christian thought freed the slave. And all I can do is think, “What the fuck is he even talking about here?” I mean, I feel like I dropped 5 IQ points from just reading that rubbish.
We have slavery–112 million people dependent on the government
We haven’t had capitalism for several decades, and now we have overt socialism. It will run it’s course until they run out of other people’s money and can’t tax or print or borrow another dime.
Dud , Capitalism has nothing to do with the slavery of self-inflected ignorance, but regardless, there is hope ,even for a whiny snot sucking dullard such as yourself…just repeat after me…I think I can.I think I can..
On those 5 IQ points you claim you lost…. It’s more likely they were never yours.
Having just visited Rome, I can tell you my opinion was that Rome was built by slaves. Rome was mighty, and ran around gobbling up slaves. When the would be slaves became stronger and less able to be gobbled up, Rome lost its great empire. That was my take. The PHD in archeology said that my hypothesis was generically true – that the Romans relied on an endless supply of slaves to undertake their massive works. No slaves = no massive Roman works. Go figure.
Capitalism is so impoverishly passe’..Potlatch is the new path to universal prosperity.
People were not unshackled from slavery by the free market. If anything, they were enslaved by the market running without regard for basic human rights. Societies and their governments recognized the rights of all people and enacted laws that brought slaves to equal footing with the rest of society. This removed slaves from the category of property or an economic means of production that’s no different from a windmill, cotton gin, or anything else to be owned of economic value. These laws to abolish slavery, in effect, regulated the free market by outlawing one of its means of production (i.e., slavery) for the betterment of society. So in closing, I’ll say that the economic analysis of this article is confused pseudoscience and its conclusions are deplorable blather. What’s funny to me is this dumbass author doesn’t even realize that in attempting to praise the free market he actually advocates its regulation.
@ Patrick – I’m not completely certain that laws abolishing slavery were done for the betterment of society as much as chattel slavery came to be seen as an anachronistic means of production with the tapping of fossil fuels as an energy source. Actual slaves were replaced by coal, then oil slaves. And the best thing about the latter is that you never have to feed, clothe, or house them — and they work for you 24/7/365.
Of course, it’s not like slavery went away when officially “abolished”. Just look at the convict lease and debt peonage systems that remained in the American South through the beginning of the 20th century. The paradox was that this more industrial-oriented slavery was much more brutal than the plantation slavery prior to the Civil War.
The only thing enslaving humanity is ignorance and stupidity.
I’ll say one thing for slavery, at least everyone was gainfully employed.
And, to say slavery was solely responsible for the Roman Empire , while other competitive cultures which also utilized the labor of slaves slid off into obscurity is argument enough against the bullshit that the slaves built Rome.
Rome was built by philosophers, statesmen, soldiers, planters and engineers all working together.Slavery was just one aspect of Roman culture and a small one at that. The driving force behind the expansion of the Roman Empire was the supreme culture of Rome as designed by the Roman intellect.
The only slavery at work in Western culture today is self-imposed ignorance.The people have the power to change the system and always have.
Capitalism is not a problem.The problem is a mass of lazy assholes who prefer others to dictate and regulate their lives and commerce to the point that they have to accept no responsibility for any critical decision ever.
When I hear booger eating ,bed wetting sniveling milksops like Dud Abides and Puss Patrick babbling on about how we’re all slave to da’ man and have no choice in our lives it make me want to heave my coffee.
And these two babbling buffoons are two reasons enough not to get involved with defeatists and dullards in the event of a collapse.
They will only drag you down, risk your security and eat your food while incessantly whining on about the how the man kept them down .
We can never rise to the prosperous levels of the great Potlatch societies as long as we allow the markets to pick and winners and losers, they’ll say , but offer no recourse for any alternate system of commerce other than mumbles of inane bullshit.
Fuktards….sheesh. . who needs ’em.
Dud, if you want to talk about injustice in the American South, you should begin with the murder of hundred of thousands of Southerns first by shot and steel, then by fire ,starvation and disease brought on by Yankee induced deprivation.
You don’t know shit about the southern history or culture , you bloviating little Marxist bitch.
It’s easy to a criticize an essay one disagrees with via ad hominem attacks in a comment section, but another to write an essay countering the points made in that essay with facts and figures.
Well Patrick ,Dude…what the hell are you waiting on?
I’m sure admin would be much obliged to post anything you care to write on the subject of the greatest system of self-governance and market the world has ever known.
And ,please don’t claim it’s anarchy or a volunteer society that fits US best ,because it’s already an evident that the mass of people are too stupid to vote, so it stands to reason that they would also be too stupid to manage their everyday needs on a contractual basis.
I be waiting…put up of shut up.
If Sir Puss and the Dud would just go into the Section 8 neighborhoods and show the poor and oppressed the way back from the horrors of capitalism and lead them into the Kumbaya light of glad tidings and potlatch , great waves of enlightenment would take root and overwhelm the embattled gangstas with rainbows leading to overflowing pots of chittlins’ , unicorns roasting over open coals and gold grills for every tribe member..A great leap forward fer’ shure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/us/in-neighborhoods-like-north-st-louis-gunfire-still-rules-the-night.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0
In Places Like North St. Louis, Gunfire Still Rules the Night
He had seen it play out too many times before: the blast of gunfire, the blood, the body. In Mr. Wayne’s neighborhood and others on the North Side of St. Louis, drugs, poverty and struggle go hand in hand with gun violence. He barely knows his father. His mother died when he was 14, around the time he started selling drugs. His list of dead friends grows each year.
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the sound of crickets…no surprise here…..puss-n-butt-licker strike again.
However, the current controversy has drawn in a lot of attention. That indicates there are much larger issues than that of football players not getting along. The Martin controversy is just one scene in a much bigger drama which attempts to undermine and destroy the results-oriented, achievement-driven nature of all competition, of capitalism itself, and ultimately to attack and subjugate the men who are considered evil for creating that construct.