Quote from: Biomech on June 07, 2013, 01:26:42 PM

Quote from: ktttn on June 07, 2013, 01:01:07 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on June 07, 2013, 05:59:13 AM

Quote from: ktttn on June 07, 2013, 05:23:37 AM

Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

Well, of course not, but at least it's a start. What you seem to be railing against could be either corporatism (i.e. fascism) or merchantilism, or both; but it's certainly not capitalism in it's natural form. Both of those could be considered corrupted versions of capitalism, so I can see the confusion, but one should be willing to start with first principles.

The first principle is this...

Who owns you? Is there anyone who has a greater claim upon your body, thus your life, then yourself? If we cannot agree that I own myself and that you own yourself, as nominally free adults, then we can't proceed.

My body is an object, it is owned by me. The systemic, unidealized process of selling my labor for a wage or other price is not dissimilar to slavery. I cannot sell my labor for a fair price, because my labor cannot be returned to me. I can be coerced into selling my labor by circumstances beyond my control, namely the stigma of joblessness, the risk of homelessness and starvation, the boot of the cop, the irs agent and the soldier.
Who has a claim on my labor? Every living person has a fraction of a claim as long as they don't put me on their books as an employee.
Mutual aid, not greed or euphamisms for it drive the evolution of the world. Capitalism is dying.
Ive read and studied The Wealth of Nations. These ideologies are not new to me.
I prefer Murray Bookchin. Yall ought not patronize so hard.

haven't read Bookchin, and will remedy it. Didn't intend to be patronizing. Sorry if I came off that way. I'm a pedant

I shouldn't have said y'all..
Mainly talking about MoonShadow with the whatever happened one lesson stuff.
As far as I can tell the only big difference between you and I, is a semantic one. You see utlility in communicating using what I consider to be a total misnomer, capitalism.
Bookchin mainly summarizes other anarchist writers. I couldn't reccomend his works more.
Here's a nugget:

Quote

Captalism devours us. At the molecular level of everday life, it changes us for the worse, and it compels people to make extremely unsavoury rationalisations for why they believe things they know -or at least they once knew -are false and for doing things that are trivialising and dehumanising.