The Father of Capitalism
It looks like I am still in culture war mode.
Decades ago I began researching economic history. One day I asked myself an interesting question: Who is the father of capitalism?
The question isn't that bizarre. Most named ideologies have a distinct founder.
I thought for years that Adam Smith was the father of capitalism. But Adam Smith was a moralist who contemplated the social effects of a free society and concluded that there might be economic benefits to a freedom.
After several months of research, the answer dawned on me: Years before I had read a dense tome by a man named Karl Marx called "Das Kapital."
This dense tome called "Das Kapital" is the founding document of Capitalism. The moment I realized this, modern history suddenly made sense.
"How could Marx be the father of capitalism when he hated capitalism?" you ask.
The answer is obvious to people who've read Hegel.
After the American Revolution, the ruling elite of Europe wanted to create a counter revolution that would restore the centralized state (aka the Monarchy).
Hegel created a paradox riddled philosophy of history claiming that societies develop through conflict.
Marx built on Hegel and studied revolution history. Marx wanted to engineer a revolution in which the people united with the ruling class united to overthrow the merchant and manufacturing class.
So, Marx wrote a massive tome called "Das Kapital" in which he detailed all of the nasty things that businesses could do to consolidate their markets. He then wrote a pamphlet called "The Manifesto" to raise people in rebellion against "Das Kapital."
The process is easy to understand. A person wanting to take command of a government can project all of the evils of society onto a segment of the population then raise the masses in revolution against the society.
Please think on this problem. Karl Marx is the father of capitalism. Marx created "capitalism" with the goal of creating a top heavy economic order that the people would rebel against.
Things get worse.
I've mention in several posts so far that the Tories changed their name to the Conservative Party in the 1830s.
The goal of the Tories was to conserve the Peerage (you know, the knighted Lords and Ladies in the House of Lords). The Tories had created corrupt centralized exchanges that would give the upper class an upper hand in financial dealings.
It turns out that Karl Marx's Das Kapital presents a perfect model for creating the class structure that the Tories were trying to conserve.
Have I mentioned yet that the ideology called "Conservatism" was created by the Tories. The Tories are the people who fought against the US Founders in the Revolutionary War.
Scholars have found that "Das Kapital" numbers among the most cited works in academic history.
The left/right split which is tearing our society apart has the Tories who are defending Marx's "Das Kapital" on the Right and we have the radical left was activated by the wild rantings of Marx against his own work on the left.
It seems to me that the first step to defending liberty is to wake people up in the GOP and remind them that the ideology called "conservatism" was created by the Tories and the ideology called "capitalism" was created by Karl Marx.
I think that that this can be done simply by comparing the ideals of the Tories against the ideals of the Founding Fathers. And can be re-inforced by comparing the ideals of a free market to the corrupt financial system called "capitalism."
I haven't had any luck with this path.
Very interesting. Of course, industrialism, which was the somewhat immediate result of Baconian ethics and Cartesian epistemology, was something that I think Locke saw coming, and which Marx was at liberty to interpret. In a way, industrialism was a phenomenon which both Locke and Marx remarked upon, but neither could be said to have created. Now, the interesting thing about Descartes in particular is that, in retrospect, you see how both sides of this conflict come out of his ideas - particularly in the Discourse on the Method, where elements of both individual freedom and top down tyranny take root in the modern mind. In that way, the "synthesis" of Descartes can be said to lead to a fresh thesis and antithesis in Locke and Marx.
Actually, we are on the verge of a new synthesis, but it isn't the synthesis the powerful have been hoping for. Marx's end goal was for the means of creating value to be in the hands of the individual, whereas the emphasis of Locke was that the means of production have to be built and fostered, and cannot be subject to the egalitarian impulse. But we are approaching a reality where the lockean ideal is giving rise to a situation whereby the individual will own the means of production through radical prosperity. POW Crypto currency, microinvesting, microlending, the ability to publish proffesional level media, 3d printing, among many other things, all point to this. As India and China and Africa join the first world, we will see an era of such overwhelming plenty and technological advancement that the individual will have means of producing value that tycoons of the past never could have dreamed of for themselves.
Posted using Partiko Android
I probably should have emphasized that I was talking about the "ideology of capitalism." Das Kapital is quite clearly the source of this ideology. The ideology of capitalism is based on the Marxian concept of ideology.
I agree with you that there are thousands of wonderful things, like cryptocurrency, that could positively affect the future.
But before the positive things to happen one has to prepare to defend the future from stupid ideas of the past.
This entrenched left/right split is a stupid idea. Both sides of the split end up in totalitarian systems.
Hatred of "liberalism" is a stupid idea because people have given the term contradictory meanings.
I agree that Marx had some potent observations about economics. However, the overall goal of his work was to create a revolution.
There are great things about cryptocurrencies. The problem the crypto market faces is that are powerful entities in the world that are skilled at debasing currencies.
There are many ways to debase currencies. Pump and dump schemes can destroy trust in the currency. The wild swings in crypto prices this last week show that crypto still has a stability problem.
One can very well find smart contracts leading people astray. The people who study the blockchain might find weaknesses and ways to manipulate the smart contracts.
Anyway, what I've been trying to do with my culture war posts is to create arguments that can break people out of their culture war mindset.
So, I think the observation that the ideology of Conservatism was created by the Tories and that the ideology of Capitalism was created by Marx might help people sunk in the culture war mindset to wake up and realize that the philosophical challenges we face are deeper than this absurd left/right split.
What Marx really did was help describe the industrial age which arose within the Lockean societies. The ideology that is now called capitalism preceded and gave birth to industrial capitalism. So, in a sense, that's right, because the post Lockean industrial era is not something that is fully addressed by the ideologies that preceded it, and no one was really there who had the wherewithal to mount a defense against Marx's criticisms of it until well after Marx described it. But Marx's description of capitalism falls far short of the modern ideology that goes by that name, because most capitalists don't accept Marx's theory of value or his materialist, anti-rationalist premises. I would also argue that Marx's goal was not a top down economy. He saw a top down economy as a means to an end: empowering the common man with control over the means of production. His end goal I think is inevitably going to come about, which is something he predicted. However, the way in which it is presently coming about is entirely different from what he predicted; rather it is coming about through Lockean means. The reason for his error is precisely that his characterisation of the industrial era was completely wrong due to incorrect premises.
Posted using Partiko Android
I am not so sure that Marx created capitalism, but I can say that Marx created communism and socialism based on capitalism, which is why these systems and ideologies share the same principles. I wrote about it here: A critique on modern ideologies (Communism/Socialism/Capitalism)
Thanks for sharing, not many make an observation on this topic. Regards!
Your article is very nice. For that matter, I used to believe precisely what you said. I thought capitalism and the free market were synonyms.
However, when I reread "Das Kapital" with the understanding that Marx's goal was to raise a revolution, I realized that Marx was creating a top heavy perversion of the free market specifically to raise people in rebellion against his straw man.
Business leaders who follow Marx's suggestion will end up creating an inequitable financial system.
But I really want to use this comment to point out something that will blow your mind.
You stated in your wonderful reply that "Marx created communism."
This next observation should blow your mind.
Marx never defined communism.
All he did was elude to a paradise where the state took from each person according to his ability and gave to each according to his need.
Marx wrote three dense tomes to create a top heavy economic order called "capitalism." He wrote a manifesto to raise people in revolution against his enemy. But he never actually told anyone how this "communism" was supposed to work.
Marx was actually a historicist. He felt he was on the planet to create revolution.
Marx believed that after the revolution occurred, there would be a change in the nature of man and that a new Utopian society will emerge.
The big problem that defenders of liberty face is that we have allowed key elements of our financial system to be defined by the enemies of freedom. To save our liberties we need to figure out how to undo the damage done by these rogues.