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 |  Subject: Jim Arnold on Capitalism  Sun Nov 06, 2022 9:25 pm | |
| Time to discuss the nature of capitalism, because fake Nazis on Gab are spouting Marxist history, economics, and theory:
The Marxist sees bread on the supermarket shelf, and thinks this a manifestation of a central plan. He thinks we already live in a socialist economy, with big capitalists giving marching orders to little capitalists.
And that is why they refuse to acknowledge that Musk is the great rocket scientist of our day, as Wernher von Braun was the great rocket scientist of his day.
The man who favors equality hates better men and hates great men more, and wants to tear down and destroy what they create, for he is envious of the excellence of anyone superior to himself.
They will not acknowledge that entrepreneurs create value and capital. If suddenly the world has a whole lot more lift to orbit capability, supposedly it must be because Harvard assigned the rocket technology to Musk, and the Rothschilds allocated the necessary resources and commanded it to exist. Supposedly that technology was granted to Musk by Harvard. “Where is Musk’s degree in rocketry?” they sneer. If Musk owns Starlink and two thirds of civilizations lift to orbit capability, he must have stolen it somehow from someone.
All the technology of industrialization was created by entrepreneurs like Musk.
The Marxist who calls himself a Marxist names the center from which the central plan comes as “wall street”. The Marxist who lyingly calls himself a fascist says “Rothschilds” (Before 1930, the Rothschilds had a great deal of wealth and power, which they used for evil purposes, but in 1930, they lost most of it, and anyone still saying “Rothschilds” in this day and age is usually a Soros shill. Everyone whose last name is Rothschild dropped off the bottom of the Forbes 400 long, long ago, usually with creditors hunting him and his assets.)
These guys who call themselves fascists and Nazis while spouting Marxist theory and Marxist economics are enemy entryists. If any of the original Nazis were fans of Marxist economics and Marxist theory, Hitler took care of that lot in the night of the long knives.
The Marxist thinks that all the wealth and value of the modern world was stolen, that value is not created, merely distributed. When the fake Nazis praise Hitler’s socialism, they imply that they will distribute all this value back to proletariat, but they are Soros shills (we know they are working for Soros because strangely unable to notice what Soros is up to), and Soros thinks that all this wealth and value was stolen, not from the the disturbingly white proletariat, but from the brave and stunning warrior women of subsaharan Africa, and plans to ship it all back to Africa to be buried in the fertile African soil, from which it will supposedly sprout anew.
(Why you might ask would Soros and Zelenksy fund and protect third positionist national socialists? Well in the Ukraine, they are fighting for a globalist Jew installed in power by Soros and Victoria Nuland, and are the only force that Zelensky can rely on to shoot conscripts who attempt to run away from the front.)
It logically follows from Marxism that all wealth is stolen, so it logically follows from Marxism that if you are better off than fly blown maggot infested half starved subsaharan Africans who are eating each other, you must be oppressing them, and need to be punished. That punishing you makes the Marxist holy, and punishing you more makes him even holier.
The huge increase in lift capability to orbit that Musk created is a demonstration and reminder that science, technology, industry, and wealth is created by entrepreneurs. Thus Marxists want us stuck on earth forever. They think we are all kulaks.
Industrialization and Tech
We have had three hundred and eighty years of corporate tech innovation, starting with the canal and water power companies that appeared under Charles the second, and tech innovation is always performed by a tech CEO, and the innovation always spreads via engineers whom that CEO trained. Corporate tech innovation always depends on a techie in power. Always has, always will. He is soon replaced by bean counters, lawyers, and suchlike, as Jim Clarke frequently and loudly complained – and then tech innovation by that company ends. As Jim Clarke frequently and loudly complained
You can buy existing tech by hiring an engineer who has trained under someone who was implementing that tech, but new tech always needs power, authority, and status for it to be created in the first place. This corporate formula is centuries old.
When Wernher von Braun was a prisoner of Nasa, with war crimes charges pending for bombing London and employing slave labor, he told them how to build rockets, but they could not build them. To build them, had to put him in charge and compel everyone to treat him with respect. To build them, had to give him power and status.
It is just not practical to develop significant new tech unless you are the CEO: Bessemer and steel, Shockley and transistors.
Bessemer tried to teach other steelmakers his method of making steel, but they were unable to learn, while engineers under his command were able to learn. Shockley wrote the book on how to build transistors, but every transistor everywhere is built by an engineer who trained under an engineer … who trained under Shockley. The book just did not work, just as Bessemer’s licenses and patents did not work. Knowledge needs power to be implemented.
Smart guys, knowledgeable guys, are not enough. You need a really smart and knowledgeable man in charge, and the people implementing his vision have to treat him respect, or else stuff just fails to work.
Academia bears the same relationship to technology and industry as niggers bear to civilization. Someone builds a civilization and niggers say “We build dat. We waz Kangs” and proceed to smash it up. Someone builds a technology, and academics say “we taught you how to do that”, then they meet behind closed doors and establish an official scientific consensus on the basis of secret evidence that they will not show anyone, a consensus that makes the technology stupid, impractical, expensive, and dangerous. Academia inherently and naturally applies the theological method, which is great for establishing consensus on matters of faith and morals, but disastrous for matters of material and effective causation, for which we need the scientific method. The inherent nature of academia makes it very difficult to apply the scientific method if the university is signing your paycheck. This has always been the way that it was, and it will always be the way that it will be. It is just the wrong form of social organization for addressing matters of material and effective causation. Academia just cannot do it, any more than you can hammer nails with a screwdriver. Wrong tool for the job. It is stupid to attempt to train techies in academia, though today HR forces us to only hire those with “good” degrees. Trying to do science and tech through universities is like trying to innovate technology in a company with a bean counter or a lawyer as CEO.
Until Musk, all American rockets, including the moon rocket, were the same basic design as Wernher von Braun built at the rocket club.
After Wernher von Braun built those rockets at the rocket club, he then went to university and got a degree in rocketry, the very first degree in rocketry, as if there was some professor who knew more about rockets than he did. And then he got kidnapped by the Nazis to build rockets to hit London, then kidnapped by the Americans.
After Wernher von Braun retired, American rockets went steadily downhill, implementing that same basic design, but less and less well.
Then Musk decided we need better rockets if the human race and technological civilization is going to survive. So he hired an existing rocket scientist who had trained under someone who had trained under Wernher von Braun, who had some sketchy recollections on how to build rockets. Then Musk built a few Wernher von Braun type rockets, then proceeded to rapidly improve the art of rocketry.
Definition of Capitalism
A Marxist will never define capitalism. So, we get to define it.
The word “capital” is derived from “head” as in “head of cattle”. If you want to count a herd of cattle, easiest to count their heads, so “head” is a synonym for how many cattle you have.
Capital is a generalization of how much cattle you own. Cattle produce milk and calves, and it is a generalization from counting up cattle to counting up assets that you use to produce value, milk and calves among that value.
Cattle being the original form of wealth, wealth that produces milk and produces more cattle, if wisely and competently husbanded. So “capital” is wealth that is like that, wealth that can produce more wealth, if wisely managed. So capitalism is doing that. The primary original form of capital, back in the days when Aryans conquered the world, was cattle. And cattle are still to this day a significant and important form of capital.
Capital is well managed cattle, also mines, oil fields, trucks, factories, ships, and so forth. That is capital, using it well is capitalism, and a capitalist is someone who uses it well and uses it to create more capital.
The capitalist creates capital and applies it wisely and productively:
Proverbs Chapter 31
13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
14 She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.
18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.
19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.
The capital that she creates in part is her savings from spinning, in part that she “considereth” the field – meaning she invests her savings wisely, so the field is more capital than her original savings, for it embodies not just the work of spinning, but the work, ability, skill of judgment, and in part that she directly creates capital, by planting vines.
She is was little capitalist, a kulak. A commie talks about Rothschilds, Wall Street and such and such but if you scratch a commie you will find it is really the kulaks he hates, because we feel the status competition with people close to us, not far from us. He really hates the man who owns a pizza shop, and the small family farm. He explains that by killing the cows of the peasant with two cows, you are actually striking a blow at the Rothschilds and doing a big favor to the peasant with two cows.
But the merchant who wisely applies capital is apt, in time, to wind up with a lot of it, so will hire other people to work it. The good wife Solomon spoke of is likely to eventually find her family owns a bigger vineyard than they can harvest.
Mathew 20:
2 And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,
4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.
And eventually his assets become so great that he needs other men to manage them and invest them wisely for him:
Mathew 25:
15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.
17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.
So the lord was a bigger capitalist. Where do big capitalists come from? They come from little capitalists, kulaks.
So a capitalist is someone who owns a lot of value that he uses competently and effectively to produce more value. Not quite the same meaning as entrepreneur. He might be a speculator or an investor, but an entrepreneur is the archetype.
Capitalism is what such people do, and to ask whether a society is capitalist is to be distracted by Marxist flim flam. Those people are capitalists, and what they are doing is capitalism.
Those who rule do not produce wealth and value directly, so in this sense no “society” has ever been or ever will be capitalist, but those who rule have to produce a social order that permits such people, or they will be conquered by rulers who do have an adequate supply of such people and thus have the logistics, provided by capitalists, that enable them fund and equip armies and to move those armies over distance.
A society is capitalist to the extent that those who rule attempt to foster capitalists and succeed, but to ask if a society is capitalist is to ask the wrong question. Soviet Russia depended on capitalists as much as every other society. It thus had to tolerate the mafias, and invite in foreign businessmen, so capitalism was illegal, but widely practiced and quietly tolerated. If you want to argue Soviet Russia was capitalist, look at the mafias, international investment, and the private plots. If you want to argue it was socialist, look at laws, enforcement and official documents, but both arguments are irrelevant and unimportant, distracting you with what is irrelevant to capitalism and capitalists. All societies are capitalist, or else they are starving and about to collapse and/or be overrun by foreign enemies. No societies are capitalist, because capitalists never rule, never can rule, never will rule. Thus it is always stupid to ask if a society is capitalist. A government can be, and often is, anti capitalist. But after Lenin hung the capitalists with the rope he purchased from the capitalists, Lenin and Stalin found that they still needed rope.
Marxist (and fake Nazi) history
Marxists and fake Nazis sneak in an implicit definition of capitalism by Marxist history. Which implicit definition is too obviously stupid for them ever to say it outright. Instead they tell a story about our past that implicitly presupposes that everyone already accepts that Marxism is true by definition and completely uncontroversial, much like the troofers arguing from the assumption that everyone knows and agrees that building seven fell straight down like a demolition, that there was no airliner sized and shaped hole in the Pentagon and that molten steel was pouring out of the Trade towers.
Marxists will never ever tell you their definition of capitalism, because if said plainly, their argument would sink like a stone. Instead they ramble around saying stuff that assumes that everyone already agrees with their definition.
Thus the point and purpose of Marxist history is nothing to do with history. It is to sneak in a definition of capitalism that no one would buy if proposed explicitly and overtly. They do not give a dam about history. They actually want you to accept as the universally accepted and uncontroversial definition of capitalism, a definition that nobody in fact believes – not even Marxists, for if they genuinely believed it, they would be willing to actually state their definition.
Marxist history is that capitalism is new – that previously there was feudalism, then the capitalists took power from the lords. Which implicitly defines capitalism as a system of government, which is transparently silly and which no one believes for a moment.
So, a little discussion of what feudalism was.
Feudalism and knighthood is exemplified by life and career of William the Marshal, who is the type specimen of knighthood and feudalism.
Feudalism was a very direct form of warrior rule, in a time when highly trained warriors when with extremely expensive equipment mattered, and hordes of peasant conscripts mattered not at all, when one or two highly trained expensively equipped warriors could slaughter a mob of peasants like sheep.
Any knight could make another man a knight, which is to say, any man with the right to keep and bear arms could give another man the right to keep and bear arms, though they only cared about expensive arms involving a great deal of training. Possession of land was power and nobility, and since it was power and nobility, could not ordinarily be bought or sold. In unstable times, generally acquired at sword point. In stable times, inherited through primogeniture.
Typically this was by the granting of fiefs. The possessor of a fiefdom would grant a portion of his fiefdom to a knight, in return for fealty, in a contract binding on the parties, and also binding on their descendants by primogeniture in the male line. Kings and great lords tended to be generous in unsettled times in granting fiefdoms to land that they did not in fact possess, to men that they suspected were capable of taking possession of it at swordpoint, but in more settled times, it led to a quieter life if one only granted fiefdoms to land that one did in fact possess, about which they were apt to be more tightfisted.
Not much point in making a man a knight, unless you could give him armor and a warhorse capable of carrying a man in armor. And there were two ways of acquiring armor and warhorses. One was by taking them off another knight at swordpoint, which William the Marshal did quite a bit of in his younger days, and the other was by buying them from people who produced such things, which he did quite bit of in his older days.
(In principle you could also take them at swordpoint from people who produced such things, but such people tended to be hard to find if they were at risk of losing their stuff at swordpoint)
Land was nobility, but it was not warhorses and armor. William the Marshal acquired quite a lot of land at sword point, but land does not in itself produce warhorses and armor. For that, you need wealth and a market economy that can generate elaborately transformed goods. And if there is nothing on your land but a rather small number of half starved peasants, which was the condition of much of the land William the Marshal acquired, not going to produce much in the way of wealth. So, William the Marshal, aging warrior, went into the real estate business. To persuade productive people to settle on his land, and thus to subject themselves to his power and his taxes, he had to grant them security – that no one else would shake them down, and that he would only shake them down within certain predictable limits. Which deal makes capitalists and capitalism possible. In going into the real estate business, in developing his land, he became a capitalist, and created the conditions that made it possible for people who were not knights and not noble to become wealthy capitalists.
The power of the lords was ownership of land, which depended on ownership of war horses and armor. They did not own the means to produce warhorses and armor. Which meant that those who could produce advanced goods, armor being among those advanced goods, tended to wind up owning some substantial amount of land after there had been peace for a while, and nobility flowed from that peacefully acquired land.
To the extent that lords were able to convert swordpoint ownership of land into money ownership of warhorses and armor, feudalism was capitalist. To the extent that lords were unable to convert swordpoint ownership of land into money ownership of warhorses and armor, not capitalist and not very feudal either, since the life expectancy of lords was apt to be short. If goods are always transferred at swordpoint, no one is going to produce warhorses and armor. The methods that William the Marshal applied in his youth to acquire warhorses and armor led to a rather chancy life for the nobility.
Land was never the primary means of production, because no one cared all that much about land, but about obtaining warhorses and armor, which land does not spontaneously bring forth. They had to acquire warhorses and armor, advanced goods, through the capitalist economy.
Land was the measure of nobility, and land ownership predominantly acquired at swordpoint. We are always ruled by priests or warriors, and usually something of both. Capitalists did not rule then and they do not rule now. Those who owned land ruled, but they had to provide the necessary conditions for capitalism, or die.
And to the extent that they failed to maintain the necessary conditions for capitalism, they frequently did die.
Land was power. But it was not wealth. And wealth provided the means for power and land. So when feudalism was less chaotic and violent that it frequently was, we saw both wealth and nobility. Wealthy men who were short on nobility would marry their sons and daughters to nobles who were short on wealth.
Capitalists have never ruled, never will rule, never can rule. Any time capitalists have ruled, they have been warrior capitalists, like the pirates of Hong Kong, or the pirates of the Venetian Republic, or the bandits of the East India company. Clive of India was an armed and dangerous corporate accountant arranging corporate mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers between businesses with armed and dangerous boards and armed and dangerous CEOs. His primary skillset was bookkeeping and accounting, though another important skill was keeping gunpowder dry.
If you look at who rules and who fights when discussing capitalism, you are not looking at capitalism. Which is the Marxist sleight of hand when they deny that feudalism was capitalist. They “define” capitalism by telling you “look at this shiny thing over there”. Don’t look at the shiny thing. Look at capitalism.
Wealth got you warhorses and armor. Land was not the measure of wealth, but of nobility and authority. But to keep land, nobility, and authority, needed warhorses and armor. So had to obtain wealth. In stable times there were a lot of people who were wealthy, but lacked land and nobility, and lot of people with land, nobility, power, and authority, who were mighty hard up for wealth, though mighty good with a sword and a horse. Nobility short of wealth tended to marry wealth, and wealth short of nobility tended to marry nobility.
Feudalism is a form of warrior rule, the most naked, direct, and simple form of warrior rule. Rule is irrelevant to whether a society is capitalist or not. What matters is security of property rights, and thus the opportunity to use capital to create more capital. Property rights were not very secure during feudalism, but to the extent that they were insecure it was a problem that the lords had no choice but to attempt to fix, that William the Marshal, the defining exemplar of feudalism and knighthood, did fix. To the extent that property rights were insecure, not only did capitalists not dare become to wealthy, but nobles were short of warhorses and armor, and thus the sons of nobles were unlikely to inherit land and nobility.
Feudalism was warrior rule by warriors with expensive elite equipment. Expensive elite equipment is elaborately transformed goods, and you do not get elaborately transformed goods without capitalism. A suit of armor, a warhorse, and a swordarm like lighting got William the Marshal land, but warhorses and armor failed to spring spontaneously from that land. In order to obtain armor and warhorses without the rather dangerous activity of chopping up other knights, had to foster capitalism on that land.
.https://blog.reaction.la/economics/capitalism |
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