Im going to presume, for the sake of being concise, that you dont consider there to be a difference between a free market and true capitalism. A market is an entire category of economic function; capitalism is a particular set of market relationships. A market economy is simply any economy where the flow of resources is determined through individuated decision making, aka voluntary transactions. Capitalism is a relationship of private ownership of capital goods for the purpose of capital accumulation, capitals power to leverage wealth efficiently and the requisite growth of the entire economy of a given state. Hence Adam Smiths book being called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of *Nations* and not *Individuals* or *Humanity*. The Doctrine of Capitalism: The market exists to serve the needs of the greatest accumulators of resources (because accumulation is conflated with efficiency [and efficiency with worth]). The problem with this, and where it violates any sense of a free market, is in the fact that voluntary actors may not agree with this premise, so capitalism requires a State/Government to secure the rights of the accumulators by law. The law in this case is called *private property* and it exists to ensure the rights of accumulators to the means of production -- which can only be created through the democratic effort of a collective, so must be forcibly stripped from the vast majority who took part in its creation in the name of the Accummulators, in the name of the Greatest Efficiency, and at the expense of both Liberty AND Mutuality. Capitalism must, by its very nature, violate the rights of a the greater majority for the benefit of a relative few, and do it all under the insidious banner of serving Unity and Autonomy.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 07:17:40 +0000