Comment on Why do companies always need to grow?

• hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  1. Because you’re leaning on Marx for definitions, who was famously out of touch with reality as well, 2) because ALL small business owners need inputs, and labor of only one of them, so inventing the vendor as now a farmer to attempt a workaround is disingenuous, 3) you also had made the tomato vendor into a farmer in hopes of having a point that fits into a poorly crafted 19th century framework, and don’t know enough about how farms anywhere on earth to realize how blatantly wrong you are, 4) your definition of capitalist is factually incorrect, 5) read my edited comment above, which I edited while you wrote this, 6) a farmer is no different, functionally in a minimalist sense, from a person making jam as a cottage industry, who buys fruit and processes it at home, making a farmer’s field not magic but simply a location where work is done, 7) I said tomato seller, which is someone that spends their labor time buying tomatoes from farms as a risk and selling them in the market. They own means of logistics, which for anyone not stuck in 1862, would consider essentially a means of production as well, as it takes an input and renders is viable to trade for a medium of exchange. Does a fisherman owning a boat mean she owns the means of production when it’s fish spawning grounds that make fish? It’s a stupid argument to cling to one you’ve already written your first PoliSci paper about it and get it.

  Look, everything is connected, and there is no terminal point of anything from which anarcho-socialist magic can magically arise and flow down to make some post-consumption utopia. It’s a circle with no beginning and no end. You can’t force economic change to change human behavior, and Marx’s ideas have famously failed hard. Over and over. Spectacularly.

  You’re taking about a 30 generation cultural change that you won’t ever see.

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  • einkorn@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It would certainly help a lot if you could tone down your condescending attitude a little.

    I fail to see where anything you write is an actual argument against my distinction between different forms of working with the means to produce something. Yes, I’ve misread your vendor as a farmer, but that’s not a reason to go ad hominem.

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    • hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Marx’s definition of “the means of production” is both not in tune with how anything has ever worked, and ignores that Marx basically used real estate as the definition because he was closer to European feudalism than us. Marx grew up and spent his uni years as a subject of the Prussian Kingdom, and industrialization and land ownership were entirely different in his time.

      Context matters. And apologies for being condescending, but it pisses me off to no end when people wax poetic about some pastrolaist socialist agrarian sunshine butterfly state when if you’ve never experienced it, actually sucked and everyone hated it who was in it, even in the modern era.

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  • Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Bro what?

    1) Because you’re leaning on Marx for definitions, who was famously out of touch with reality as well,

    Are we just supposed to believe what you’re saying? Because I have easy counter-argument. You’re out of touch with what Marx wrote and if say-so if enough proof then this statement is proven and you’re wrong. Now, unless you can actually prove this statement we can argue this point.

    2) because ALL small business owners need inputs, and labor is only one of them, so inventing the vendor as now a farmer to attempt a workaround is disingenuous,

    This literally does not change the original argument. Do you think farmers do not need an input? What disqualifies a farmer from being a small business owner?

    3) you also had made the tomato vendor into a farmer in hopes of having a point that fits into a poorly crafted 19th century framework, and don’t know enough about how farms anywhere on earth to realize how blatantly wrong you are,

    Do you think they didn’t have food vendors in the 19th century? Do you think a tomato vendor is a 20th or 21st century concept that invalidates this supposed 19th century argument?

    4) your definition of capitalist is factually incorrect,

    I guess this is another “we just have to believe you” points. Just because you don’t understand Marx’s definition of capitalism doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

    5) read my edited comment above, which I edited while you wrote this,

    Why is this even a point?

    6) a farmer is no different, functionally in a minimalist sense, from a person making jam as a cottage industry, who buys fruit and processes it at home, making a farmer’s field not magic but simply a location where work is done,

    I’m not 100% sure what you’re even trying to say here but if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, Marx would agree with you here.

    7) I said tomato seller, which is someone that spends their labor time buying tomatoes from farms as a risk and selling them in the market. They own means of logistics, which for anyone not stuck in 1862, would consider essentially a means of production as well, as it takes an input and renders is viable to trade for a medium of exchange. Does a fisherman owning a boat mean she owns the means of production when it’s fish spawning grounds that make fish? It’s a stupid argument to cling to one you’ve already written your first PoliSci paper about it and get it.

    I guess you also don’t believe logistics existed before 1863. Also your logistics argument doesn’t contradict Marx. And a fisherman owning a fishing boat would mean they own the means of production because the boat is A TOOL to catch fish. The fish don’t magically jump into the fishermans hands. They need to be caught, which requires labor and to ease that labor tools are used. Fish existing doesn’t make a fisherman a fisherman, otherwise I’d be a lumberjack simply because there’s a forest near my home.

    I suggest you actually try to understand Marx before you start mindlessly criticizing something.

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    • hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I understand Marx fine. He was an academic who grew up the privileged son of a lawyer, and never spent a day of his life worrying about how he was going to feed his family by working on a farm or in a factory.

      His ideas about land alone being enough to be considered “means of production” are informed by 19th century feudalist-cum-post-feudaliast Europe, and the transition point between the Prussian Kingdom and a unified and nascent German state as it industrialized.

      His view of industrialization is like that of Upston Sinclair: “Holy shit, WTF? This is terrible.” Trauma and secondary trauma informed by other people. But as an academic his understanding of how the economy works at the level of what was a rapidly changing factory scene. 21st century economics don’t fit 19th century ideals.

      And you as a lumberjack is the perfect example. You might own a saw and live near a forest. Cut all the trees you want. Who will buy them without access? So now you need a road. But your 19th century horse cart can’t drag a 400kg log anywhere to sell it, so you now need to buy a truck and loading system. Only now too you have an actual logging setup that gets your product of raw timber to a mill for sale. Marx calls all these things the means of production, which is cute, but he assumes that the social whole is different.

      The road needs to be graded and maintained, your saw oiled and sharpened, your truck maintained. Which all also needs labor to happen. As was the cries of trucking unions when the Teamsters formed, you are just part of the machine. Which means that when you get down to it and nitpick, everything and everyone is a part of the means of production of something else. There are no gaps and no bourgeoisie locking up every critical aspect of the social whole, and small businesses as the largest employer in the US mean that Marx’s theory doesn’t stand up to reality anymore. The end user and end consumer provides demand, which is as necessary as the road and truck and mill for you as a faux lumberjack. Demand is a human non-labor aspect of the social whole we all have, which is more important than the means of production. Just ask the bourgeoisie board of Blockbuster Video, or a small local newspaper.

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      • Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Right. There’s so much wrong here that I won’t even bother correcting you on everything. You start off not by addressing his points but by trying to character assassinate so you wouldn’t have to address his points. Absolutely disingenuous.

        Then between your ramblings you make statements that Marx would disagree with (like land alone being enough to be the means of production) or you try to disprove Marx by stating something Marx himself used as a foundation for the criticism of capitalism (like everything and everyone being a part of the means of production of something else). And finally you make apparently clear you have not read even a summary of his biggest works, Das Kapital, because you say stupid shit like this:

        There are no gaps and no bourgeoisie locking up every critical aspect of the social whole, and small businesses as the largest employer in the US mean that Marx’s theory doesn’t stand up to reality anymore.

        Das Kapital goes into great lengths specifically to prove those “non-existent” gaps exist. They existed 2 centuries ago and they still exist. And the fact that you think his criticism does not apply to small businesses is just another example of how little you actually understand what Marx wrote.

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