Capital always gets what it wants. And what it wants is whatever will advance its principal goal: to keep growing, expanding, accumulating. What you want or I want or what is fair does not concern it. If we see any limits successfully placed on the free run of capital by human beings, we need to realize that the capital only allowed this to happen because that was useful for it at this particular point in time.
(Example: the “wild capitalism” of the Industrial Revolution era was substituted by the more “humane” capitalism of the welfare sate in the XXth century. Make no mistake, though: this was a development that was useful to capital, and that’s the only reason why it occurred. The ragged and starving factory workers of the XIXth century did not consume as actively as the orderly, well-fed, healthy and eager to purchase employees at Ford’s conveyor belts.)
I know that none of this flatters the sense of omnipotence that human beings so love but it’s simply what it is. It’s like climate change. If we shut out eyes really tight and pretend there is no climate change, will it go away? Obviously not. And neither will the power of capital.
Clarissa's Blog 
So what happens when capitals needs meet climate change? Is it best for capital to save or consume the world? The evidence I see so far is that capital will quite happily consume the world and then rent us the means to eek out an existence on the remains of our once abundant planet.
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In all honesty, climate change is not my subject, I’m neither knowledgeable nor interesting in this field. I will be taking the analysis of capital to the area of women’s rights. And somebody who is better equipped should tackle climate change.
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The interplay between capital and women’s rights is going to be a complex. I look forward to hearing what perspectives others have on it.
If climate change happens on the scale some predict then women’s (as part of any human) rights will probably be a thing of the past anyway.
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And this is why avoid all discussions of climate change: people get all apocalyptic and I feel like we are all talking about something completely unrelated to climate change. Discussions of climate change are, almost invariably, conducted under the banner of “come look at my negative mother complex.”
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Just like discussions of police in the US are never about police but about people’s individual father complexes.
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I can’t think of a mother complex that is positive. Can you? Perhaps using the word “negative” is redundant in all such cases?
Climate change could be a problem regardless of the number of people currently nuturing a mother complex.
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A positive mother complex is that low-anxiety state of mind that makes some people roll thier eyes and walk away whenever they hear anybody develop apocalyptic scenarios or explain how everything gets worse all the time. 🙂
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I don’t think I will bother trying to build any sort of mother complex, positive or otherwise. Particularly as this positive state you describe would be called Ostrich Syndrome if the apolcalyptic scenarios at which the eye rolling occurs are actually happening.
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Unless you are under the age of one, it’s all built for you. 🙂
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At that time, “humane capitalism” was useful, because most companies depended on intra-national consumers, to maintain growth.
Now, with world-wide trade, intra-national consumers aren’t as necessary, because companies can depend on international consumers to pick-up any slack, and still maintain, or increase, growth.
Hence, they feel free to screw their workers.
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Exactly. Capital is unfettered these days, not tied to territory. Hence the institutions that are tied to territory are of no use to it.
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Are you sure you are not infusing a word with mystical properties? 🙂
“If we see any limits successfully placed on the free run of capital by human beings(…)” – as if human beings and capital were ever something apart?
Capital can’t want or do anything because it’s not an agent. It can refer to several connected-ish things – a factor in production, in addition to labour and rent or whatever, the social class/elite who have the most of it at their disposal, and the fairly recent human discovery of optimizing positive feedback loops (make money to better make even more money).
I’ll happily cede the point about the powerful of the world getting what they want (that’s almost a tautology), and I don’t really know anything about economics to discuss it in those terms… But I think my last bit, which roughly corresponds to your claim that capital wants to grow, expand, accumulate, is interesting to further discuss, though.
There are a few reasons to think that this tendency is not necessarily inevitable. First off is a reasonable one – there are good reasons to limit, reformulate or redirect growth, so they will (eventually, imperfectly, just as our growth optimization is eventual and imperfect) be taken into account. There is no point in humans continuing a process that is self-terminating. Imagine a spark that starts an explosion – sure, it grows increasingly fast, but the explosion removes the conditions of its being able to sustain itself as it grows, and peters out just as quickly. If we are currently at that stage (in terms of the environment or such), then the reasonable thing to do is to scale down, and it is precisely the political units that manage to do this that will be able to outgun and outsupply those that do not.
The second reason is cultural. I would wager good money that one of the reasons you see a force for growth/expansion/development as inevitable is that you see it as valuable, perhaps to the extent that a scenario where it no longer operates is not even worth considering. There is no reason to believe that particular cultural tenet is universal – there were plenty of societies that were quite happy to continue being in almost complete political, cultural and economic stasis for hundreds, even thousands of years. There are particular reasons to believe that that can no longer happen, but I personally believe that no one should underappreciate humanity’s great capacity for sloth and dull-mindedness.
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The total is bigger than the sum of its parts.
The theory of das Kapital was not, of course, developed by me. The idea that capital needs to grow originates with Adam Smith and was then developed by Marx and everybody else who came after.
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Yes, I’ve read the buggers. 🙂
Adam Smith certainly did not invest capital with world-historical significance, and Marx saw it as a simultaneously laudatory and loathsome, but ultimately transient development.
I know my essay is long and winding, but nowhere in it did I argue that capital did not have a tendency to grow. I was arguing against what I saw as an argument for the inevitability of capital. I will happily rescind the part where I make assumptions about what biases you may have, it ultimately contributes very little as to its point.
Also (and I know I’m being unbearably smug already) – “the whole is more than the some of its parts” is an Aristotelian conception, one that was part of an ontology that certainly had no concept of capital, so I don’t know what bearing it has on the current discussion (I could guess, but my track record with that is poor so far); and is philosophically problematic the second you begin questioning it – in what sense is it more? Strictly speaking, does something then remain when all parts are removed? If not, how is it more?
The niggle above is necessary to show that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen or even analyzed that statement, so as to give some weight to this – I do not know what “The total is bigger than the sum of its parts” means in this context.
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You always warn readers against assigning motives and intentions to non-people but here you do it yourself. 🙂 (I know it’s metaphorical.)
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I’ll second that. It’s not a law of nature, like gravity or speed of light. It’s a human-made concept.
I assume by capitalism you mean ‘capitalism with a shitload of regulations and oversight’. Unfettered capitalism doesn’t give a shit; it’s perfectly compatible with institutions such as slavery, child labor and so on. So, I’m not sure capitalism advances the cause of women.
Human rights, women’s rights, anti-discrimination, climate change, labor rights, etc. are at best necessary evils that capitalism tolerates (when it can’t get around those pesky issues by installing favorable political institutions).
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/01/shrimp-and-slavery
I’m with you. At this point I don’t see an economic system better than capitalism (with regulations), but let’s not go overboard here!
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When I was a kid just out of law school in 1966, I went to work at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Don Turner was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Division and, unlike most of his successors, had a lively interest in enforcing the antitrust laws. He asked me to spend my few months available before leaving for military duty to some research on the “ethical” (prescription) drug industry. I did, and after I left four months later to serve four years as an Army JAG officer, some further work was done by a small section at the division. I seem to recall that a few antitrust actions were filed based on our work.
When I returned after my military service, Turner was gone and it soon became clear to me that antitrust enforcement was moribund. I resigned rather quickly and took a position with a private law firm specializing in communications law. Several antitrust attorneys in private practice I had got to know also moved to other fields.
At the communications law firm, the trial work was quite enjoyable and I did well at it. It paid well, particularly after I had become a partner.
Did I do any good? No, it did not matter (except to our clients, to the law firm and to me) who got a permit to construct and operate a valuable FM radio station or whether TV station X in market Y got to operate from a taller tower at higher power to intrude on market Z.
If we had been enforcing the nation’s antitrust laws for the past more than half a century, the monolithic corporations which now seem to control government would not have been permitted to gain the size, power and hence control they now have.
I doubt that there is now any stomach in either party for strong antitrust enforcement, and things have got so out of hand that it probably would do little if any good even if tried.
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