The anti-capitalistic mentality

[bordsilver]

1. THE SOVEREIGN CONSUMER
The characteristic feature of modern capitalism is mass production of goods destined for consumption by the masses. The result is a tendency towards a continuous improvement in the average standard of living, a progressing enrichment of the many. Capitalism deproletarianizes the "common man" and elevates him to the rank of a "bourgeois."

On the market of a capitalistic society the common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Those shops and plants which cater exclusively or predominantly to the wealthier citizens' demand for refined luxuries play merely a subordinate role in the economic setting of the market economy. They never attain the size of big business. Big business always servesdirectly or indirectlythe masses.

It is this ascension of the multitude in which the radical social change brought about by the Industrial Revolution consists. Those underlings who in all the preceding ages of history had formed the herds of slaves and serfs, of paupers and beggars, became the buying public, for whose favor the businessmen canvass. They are the customers who are "always right," the patrons who have the power to make poor suppliers rich and rich suppliers poor.

There are in the fabric of a market economy not sabotaged by the nostrums of governments and politicians no grandees and squires keeping the populace in submission, collecting tributes and imposts, and gaudily feasting while the villeins must put up with the crumbs. The profit system makes those men prosper who have succeeded in filling the wants of the people in the best possible and cheapest way. Wealth can be acquired only by serving the consumers. The capitalists lose their funds as soon as they fail to invest them in those lines in which they satisfy best the demands of the public. In a daily repeated plebiscite in which every penny gives a right to vote the consumers determine who should own and run the plants, shops and farms. The control of the material means of production is a social function, subject to the confirmation or revocation by the sovereign consumers.

This is what the modern concept of freedom means. Every adult is free to fashion his life according to his own plans. He is not forced to live according to the plan of a planning authority enforcing its unique plan by the police, i.e., the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. What restricts the individual's freedom is not other people's violence or threat of violence, but the physiological structure of his body and the inescapable nature-given scarcity of the factors of production. It is obvious that man's discretion to shape his fate can never trespass the limits drawn by what are called the laws of nature.

 

[bordsilver]

2. STATUS IN SOCIETY
What the capitalistic democracy of the market brings about is not rewarding people according to their "true" merits, inherent worth and moral eminence. What makes a man more or less prosperous is not the evaluation of his contribution from any "absolute" principle of justice, but evaluation on the part of his fellowmen who exclusively apply the yardstick of their own personal wants, desires and ends. It is precisely this that the democratic system of the market means. The consumers are supremei.e., sovereign. They want to be satisfied.

Millions of people like to drink Pinkapinka, a beverage prepared by the world-embracing Pinkapinka Company. Millions like detective stories, mystery pictures, tabloid newspapers, bull fights, boxing, whiskey, cigarettes, chewing gum. Millions vote for governments eager to arm and to wage war. Thus, the entrepreneurs who provide in the best and cheapest way all the things required for the satisfaction of these wants succeed in getting rich. What counts in the frame of the market economy is not academic judgments of value, but the valuations actually manifested by people in buying or not buying.

To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better. Try to supersede Pinkapinka by mixing another beverage. Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. It isin a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictionsexclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion.

But if you prefer to the riches you may perhaps acquire in engaging in the garment trade or in professional boxing the satisfaction you may derive from writing poetry or philosophy, you are free to do so. Then, of course, you will not make as much money as those who serve the majority. For such is the law of the economic democracy of the market. Those who satisfy the wants of a smaller number of people only collect fewer votesdollarsthan those who satisfy the wants of more people. In money-making the movie star outstrips the philosopher; the manufacturers of Pinkapinka outstrip the composer of symphonies.

 

[bordsilver]

3. THE RESENTMENT OF FRUSTRATED AMBITION
In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control. He is a slave because the superhuman powers that determine all becoming had assigned him this rank. It is not his doing, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed of his humbleness.

It is quite another thing under capitalism. Here everybody's station in life depends on his own doing. Everybody whose ambitions have not been fully gratified knows very well that he has missed chances, that he has been tried and found wanting by his fellowman. If his wife upbraids him: "Why do you make only eighty dollars a week? If you were as smart as your former pal, Paul, you would be a foreman and I would enjoy a better life," he becomes conscious of his own inferiority and feels humiliated.

The much talked about sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen. The sway of the principle, to each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings. Everybody knows very well that there are people like himself who succeeded where he himself failed. Everybody knows that many of those whom he envies are self-made men who started from the same point from which he himself started. And, much worse, he knows that all other people know it too. He reads in the eyes of his wife and his children the silent reproach: "Why have you not been smarter?" He sees how people admire those who have been more successful than he and look with contempt or with pity on his failure.

What makes many feel unhappy under capitalism is the fact that capitalism grants to each the opportunity to attain the most desirable positions which, of course, can only be attained by a few. Whatever a man may have gained for himself, it is mostly a mere fraction of what his ambition has impelled him to win. There are always before his eyes people who have succeeded where he failed. There are fellows who have outstripped him and against whom he nurtures, in his subconsciousness, inferiority complexes. Such is the attitude of the tramp against the man with a regular job, the factory hand against the foreman, the executive against the vice-president, the vice-president against the company's president, the man who is worth three hundred thousand dollars against the millionaire and so on. Everybody's self-reliance and moral equilibrium are undermined by the spectacle of those who have given proof of greater abilities and capacities. Everybody is aware of his own defeat and insufficiency.

 

[bordsilver]

4. JEALOUSLY, ENVY AND SELF-LOATHING
As human nature is, everybody is prone to overrate his own worth and deserts. If a man's station in life is conditioned by factors other than his inherent excellence, those who remain at the bottom of the ladder can acquiesce in this out-come and, knowing their own worth, still preserve their dignity and self-respect. But it is different if merit alone decides. Then the unsuccessful feel themselves insulted and humiliated. Hate and enmity against all those who superseded them must result.

In order to console himself and to restore his self-assertion, such a man is in search of a scapegoat. He tries to persuade him-self that he failed through no fault of his own. He is at least as brilliant, efficient and industrious as those who outshine him. Unfortunately, this nefarious social order of ours does not accord the prizes to the most meritorious men; it crowns the dishonest, unscrupulous scoundrel, the swindler, the exploiter, the "rugged individualist." What made himself fail was his honesty. He was too decent to resort to the base tricks to which his successful rivals owe their ascendancy. As conditions are under capitalism, a man is forced to choose between virtue and poverty on the one hand, and vice and riches on the other. He, himself, thank God, chose the former alternative and rejected the latter.

This search for a scapegoat is an attitude of people living under the social order which treats everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen and where thus everybody is the founder of his own fortune. In such a society each member whose ambitions have not been fully satisfied resents the fortune of all those who succeeded better. The fool releases these feelings in slander and defamation. The more sophisticated do not indulge in personal calumny. They sublimate their hatred into a philosophy, the philosophy of anti-capitalism, in order to render inaudible the inner voice that tells them that their failure is entirely their own fault. Their fanaticism in defending their critique of capitalism is precisely due to the fact that they are fighting their own awareness of its falsity.

The suffering from frustrated ambition is peculiar to people living in a society of equality under the law. It is not caused by equality under the law, but by the fact that in a society of equality under the law the inequality of men with regard to intellectual abilities, will power and application becomes visible. The gulf between what a man is and achieves and what he thinks of his own abilities and achievements is pitilessly revealed. Day-dreams of a "fair" world which would treat him according to his "real worth" are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge.

 

[bordsilver]

Snippets from Chapter 1 of L.V. Mises (1954) The Anticapitalistic Mentality. Available free here.

 

[wrcmad]

4. JEALOUSLY, ENVY AND SELF-LOATHING 4. BITTERNESS OF THE PERMABULL EXPLAINED:
As human nature is, everybody is prone to overrate his own worth and deserts. If a man's station in life is conditioned by factors other than his inherent excellence, those who remain at the bottom of the ladder can acquiesce in this out-come and, knowing their own worth, still preserve their dignity and self-respect. But it is different if merit alone decides. Then the unsuccessful feel themselves insulted and humiliated. Hate and enmity against all those who superseded them must result.

In order to console himself and to restore his self-assertion, such a man is in search of a scapegoat. He tries to persuade him-self that he failed through no fault of his own. He is at least as brilliant, efficient and industrious as those who outshine him. Unfortunately, this nefarious social order of ours does not accord the prizes to the most meritorious men; it crowns the dishonest, unscrupulous scoundrel, the swindler, the exploiter, the "rugged individualist." What made himself fail was his honesty. He was too decent to resort to the base tricks to which his successful rivals owe their ascendancy. As conditions are under capitalism, a man is forced to choose between virtue and poverty on the one hand, and vice and riches on the other. He, himself, thank God, chose the former alternative and rejected the latter.

This search for a scapegoat is an attitude of people living under the social order which treats everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen and where thus everybody is the founder of his own fortune. In such a society each member whose ambitions have not been fully satisfied resents the fortune of all those who succeeded better. The fool releases these feelings in slander and defamation. The more sophisticated do not indulge in personal calumny. They sublimate their hatred into a philosophy, the philosophy of anti-capitalism, in order to render inaudible the inner voice that tells them that their failure is entirely their own fault. Their fanaticism in defending their critique of capitalism is precisely due to the fact that they are fighting their own awareness of its falsity.

The suffering from frustrated ambition is peculiar to people living in a society of equality under the law. It is not caused by equality under the law, but by the fact that in a society of equality under the law the inequality of men with regard to intellectual abilities, will power and application becomes visible. The gulf between what a man is and achieves and what he thinks of his own abilities and achievements is pitilessly revealed. Day-dreams of a "fair" world which would treat him according to his "real worth" are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge.

Fixed

 

[mmm....shiney!]

On the topic of capitalism, this looks like a worthy subscription:

http://capitalism.hk/subscribe/australia-nz-subscriptions/

"Capitalism HK"

Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of Capitalism.HK, which is both the name of the print journal and the domain name of its website.

Capitalism.HK will defend Hong Kong, the capital of capitalism, against the "peer" pressure of the less free Western world, which immature Hong Kong politicians are already succumbing to; and then bite back and pressure big-government Western countries, like the United States and Australia, into following Hong Kong's success.

Published in Hong Kong, Capitalism.HK has international columnists and readership, same as The Economist and Time Magazine, but without their political populism and dumbed down economics.

We aim to be the Hong Kong of magazines. A haven where we are safe from the jillions of jingoistic journalists who see democracy as the solution to all problems; whereas we see it as the philosophy of the pack hunt, the lynch mob and the gang rape.

That free-market advocates have an uphill climb and Capitalism.HK will have much to do is evident from the treatment of two of the most tangible examples of capitalism: the Hong Kong economy and the Australian mining industry. Both create something that customers value from resources customers clearly valued far less prior to entrepreneurs risking their capital investing in that area. Yet the Australian mining industry is under constant attack and the Hong Kong non-interventionist economy is rarely lauded as the guiding light to the world that it ought to be. Even the political forces within Hong Kong are constantly bowing to "peer" pressure, like school children, arguing that since other governments get bigger chunks of their economies, then they should too. It makes one think that most Hong Kong bureaucrats have never even heard of the Austrian school of economics, and the likes of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek.

...

 

[bordsilver]

CAPITALISM AS IT IS AND AS IT IS SEEN BY THE COMMON MAN
The most amazing thing concerning the unprecedented change in earthly conditions brought about by capitalism is the fact that it was accomplished by a small number of authors and a hardly greater number of statesmen who had assimilated their teachings. Not only the sluggish masses but also most of the businessmen who, by their trading, made the laissez-faire principles effective failed to comprehend the essential features of their operation. Even in the heyday of liberalism only a few people had a full grasp of the functioning of the market economy. Western civilization adopted capitalism upon recommendation on the part of a small lite.
:
The characteristic feature of the market economy is the fact that it allots the greater part of the improvements brought about by the endeavors of the three progressive classesthose saving, those investing the capital goods, and those elaborating new methods for the employment of capital goodsto the nonprogressive majority of people. Capital accumulation exceeding the increase in population raises, on the one hand, the marginal productivity of labor and, on the other hand, cheapens the products. The market process provides the common man with the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of other peoples' achievements. It forces the three progressive classes to serve the nonprogressive majority in the best possible way.

Everybody is free to join the ranks of the three progressive classes of a capitalist society. These classes are not closed castes. Membership in them is not a privilege conferred on the individual by a higher authority or inherited from one's ancestors. These classes are not clubs, and the "ins" have no power to keep out any newcomer. What is needed to become a capitalist, an entrepreneur, or a deviser of new technological methods is brains and will power. The heir of a wealthy man enjoys a certain advantage as he starts under more favorable conditions than others. But his task in the rivalry of the market is not easier, but sometimes even more wearisome and less remunerative than that of a newcomer. He has to reorganize his inheritance in order to adjust it to the changes in market conditions. Thus, for instance, the problems that the heir of a railroad "empire" had to face were, in the last decades, certainly knottier than those encountered by the man who started from scratch in trucking or in air transportation.

The popular philosophy of the common man misrepresents all these facts in the most lamentable way. As John Doe sees it, all those new industries that are supplying him with amenities unknown to his father came into being by some mythical agency called progress. Capital accumulation, entrepreneurship and technological ingenuity did not contribute anything to the spontaneous generation of prosperity. If any man has to be credited with what John Doe considers as the rise in the productivity of labor, then it is the man on the assembly line.

They fail to realize that the characteristic mark of big business is mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. Under capitalism the workers themselves, directly or indirectly, are the main consumers of all those things that the factories are turning out.

In the early days of capitalism there was still a considerable time lag between the emergence of an innovation and its becoming accessible to the masses. About sixty years ago Gabriel Tarde was right in pointing out that an industrial innovation is the fancy of a minority before it becomes the need of everybody; what was considered first as an extravagance turns later into a customary requisite of all and sundry. This statement was still correct with regard to the popularization of the automobile. But big-scale production by big business has shortened and almost eliminated this time lag. Modern innovations can only be produced profitably according to the methods of mass production and hence become accessible to the many at the very moment of their practical inauguration. There was, for instance, in the United States no sensible period in which the enjoyment of such innovations as television, nylon stockings or canned baby food was reserved to a minority of the well-to-do. Big business tends, in fact, toward a standardization of the peoples' ways of consumption and enjoyment.

Nobody is needy in the market economy because of the fact that some people are rich. The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody. The process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples' want satisfaction. The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologies prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

 

[bordsilver]

On the topic of capitalism, this looks like a worthy subscription:

http://capitalism.hk/subscribe/australia-nz-subscriptions/

Cool. I bought a hard copy of one of the issues at a conference a while ago but didn't realise that there was an on-line site as well.

 

[Roswell Crash Survivor]

Snippets from Chapter 1 of L.V. Mises (1954) The Anticapitalistic Mentality. Available free here.

Oh the irony...this work being distributed without a profit motive. :lol:

 

[bordsilver]

Snippets from Chapter 1 of L.V. Mises (1954) The Anticapitalistic Mentality. Available free here.

Oh the irony...this work being distributed without a profit motive. :lol:

That's because intellectual property is a socialist construct (encouraged by tired business people who have gained from capitalism in the past to allow them to rest on their laurels and not have to deal with fresh innovation/competition).

 

[Old Codger]

DAMN!


Now I have to read 122 pages of Ludwig von Mises.

I will enjoy it!


OC

 

[mmm....shiney!]

The heir of a wealthy man enjoys a certain advantage as he starts under more favorable conditions than others. But his task in the rivalry of the market is not easier, but sometimes even more wearisome and less remunerative than that of a newcomer. He has to reorganize his inheritance in order to adjust it to the changes in market conditions. Thus, for instance, the problems that the heir of a railroad "empire" had to face were, in the last decades, certainly knottier than those encountered by the man who started from scratch in trucking or in air transportation.

@Trew, so spending the kids inheritance may be easier on your heirs after all.

 

[Shaddam IV]

Snippets from Chapter 1 of L.V. Mises (1954) The Anticapitalistic Mentality. Available free here.

Oh the irony...this work being distributed without a profit motive. :lol:

That's because intellectual property is a socialist construct (encouraged by tired business people who have gained from capitalism in the past to allow them to rest on their laurels and not have to deal with fresh innovation/competition).

Innovation (and particularly the financing of innovation) depends upon intellectual copyright. No-one will build a lab for a scientist if they know that discoveries made there will not allow them to profit from those discoveries. Lack of intellectual copyright kills innovation because it encourages laziness and copying instead of creativity.

 

[errol43]

Nothing about Corporations or derivatives? Of course, gambling is the latest skill required to play the former capitalistic game.

Join the big corporations, gamble all day, no jail time if you go too far..What a racket.

Capitalism is long gone, the Corporate world is now in play..Best of luck if you are a small businessman. Of course you can always point out an exception, a George Soros, a Bill Gates or an Andrew Forrest but the odds of taking on a Corporation in competition and getting a foot in the door are 10,000 to 1 or more.

Regards Errol 43

 

[Shaddam IV]

Nothing about Corporations or derivatives? Of course, gambling is the latest skill required to play the former capitalistic game.

Join the big corporations, gamble all day, no jail time if you go too far..What a racket.

Capitalism is long gone, the Corporate world is now in play..Best of luck if you are a small businessman. Of course you can always point out an exception, a George Soros, a Bill Gates or an Andrew Forrest but the odds of taking on a Corporation in competition and getting a foot in the door are 10,000 to 1 or more.

Regards Errol 43

I agree Errol, what we have now is not capitalism.

 

[bordsilver]

Innovation (and particularly the financing of innovation) depends upon intellectual copyright. No-one will build a lab for a scientist if they know that discoveries made there will not allow them to profit from those discoveries. Lack of intellectual copyright kills innovation because it encourages laziness and copying instead of creativity.

Really? Then please explain why we have a thriving fashion, perfume, furniture, magic tricks, open source software, comedy, hairdressing, tattooing, automobile and food recipe industries which continually innovate and are continuously able to obtain billions in financing year after year even though they cannot obtain copyright for their structural or creative designs/recipes etc?

Or, if you wish, please explain why 65.8% of Australian businesses active in innovation did not employ any intellectual property methods at all with the vast majority of those that did not using any government IP law and instead simply resorting to confidentiality agreements and secrecy (21%) or Complexity of product design (5.8%)? (See ABS 8158.0 )

Remember also, a system of intellectual monopoly may well increase the amount of money that an innovator can make by selling their idea but it also raises the cost of producing that idea. The innovator must pay all the other monopolists more to use their ideas in creating his own. The system also creates a variety of other costs innovators must engage in costly patent searches to make sure they are not infringing existing patents and the substantial legal and court fees earned by lawyers are all part of the cost of operating a system of intellectual monopoly. Because of all these costs, a system of intellectual monopoly may well lead to less innovation than a competitive system.

The answer is simply that - as proven many times in many situations in the past and still today - in the absence of IP laws people will continue to innovate and create and, where necessary, find other ways of funding ideas. First mover advantage and complementary sales are simple examples while companies like Kllenex, Tupperware, Red Hat, Band Aid, Firefox, Tylenol, Bayer, Hershey have enjoyed long success by engaging in relentless innovation in design and by out-competing the competition. The competition is fierce. How do they deal with it? The model is always the same. Get there first. Stay on top through marketing. Count on brand loyalty. Innovate. Explain your superiority. Never rest on your laurels. Move forward and watch the competition carefully.

As I said, IP laws are encouraged by businesses tired of having to continually improve to protect their place in the market.

 

[bordsilver]

Nothing about Corporations or derivatives? Of course, gambling is the latest skill required to play the former capitalistic game.

Join the big corporations, gamble all day, no jail time if you go too far..What a racket.

Capitalism is long gone, the Corporate world is now in play..Best of luck if you are a small businessman. Of course you can always point out an exception, a George Soros, a Bill Gates or an Andrew Forrest but the odds of taking on a Corporation in competition and getting a foot in the door are 10,000 to 1 or more.

Regards Errol 43

Bagging crony-capitalism is not really the point of this thread.

 

[Newtosilver]

Oh the irony...this work being distributed without a profit motive. :lol:

That's because intellectual property is a socialist construct (encouraged by tired business people who have gained from capitalism in the past to allow them to rest on their laurels and not have to deal with fresh innovation/competition).

Innovation (and particularly the financing of innovation) depends upon intellectual copyright. No-one will build a lab for a scientist if they know that discoveries made there will not allow them to profit from those discoveries. Lack of intellectual copyright kills innovation because it encourages laziness and copying instead of creativity.

That makes perfect sense and is what would happen practically but it does not go with the theory that is written in one of boardsilver's book so therefore you are wrong (sarcasm)

 

[worldbubble]

Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy.[1][2] Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets and wage labor.[3] In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.[4]


Corporate capitalism is a term used in social science and economics to describe a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations.