Capitalism, Human Nature and Community

KJ

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Capitalism has nothing to do with human nature. People can be greedy, or cooperative, depending on the incentive structure and ideology of the socioeconomic system they live in, which is usually out of their control. For the vast majority of human history, small groups of people survived by foraging, growing, or hunting for food as a community, in a mode of life termed primitive communism. Communal sharing was essential to the survival of the group.

Markets likewise were rare, since communities tended to be self-sufficient. Rituals, harvest festivals, a group of elders deciding fair distribution, or communal decision-making accomplished what markets do today. Private property (and male-dominated societies) came into existence with the growth of large-scale agriculture and animal domestication (A historically male-dominated activity). These tended to be passed on to male descendants (which in turn required strict female sexual control, isolation, and increasing objectification), aggregating into fewer and fewer land-owners, and creating class antagonisms between an owning, and a working class.

In the modern day, there is the communism of the family, in which family members share freely with one another. There are community welfare organizations, food banks, as well as thousands of undocumented and unpublicized acts of kindness which show that cooperation endures even in spite of the individualism of the current dominant economic system. Popular phrases like, "Money is the root of all evil", hint at our societal dislike of selfishness, and persist alongside the capitalist myths of the "self-made man", and, "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" (which shows the power of capitalist indoctrination: in a nonsensical world, the impossible becomes possible).

Capitalism evolved historically out of feudalism and slave societies, all three being examples of class society, with a dominant ruling class receiving the surplus of a subordinate class.

Socialism as a diverse philosophy arose out of a criticism after the French revolution, in which a capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) seemed to merely replace feudal lords to become the new ruling class. At the same time, the exploited serfs were moved off the land (enclosure) and forced into the cities to become wage-workers.

Marxism is a socialist tradition, which places emphasis on the means of production, your relation to them, and the inherent class struggles involved between those who control the productive forces and those who don't, as the primary force driving economic and social relations.
 
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