Can capitalism exist without slavery?

a reply to: Sremmos80

Back when people worked for themselves. When everyone had trade skills, and everyone mostly bartered for everything.

a reply to: Bleeeeep

So when was that?
What year range.

originally posted by: onequestion
well can it?

Ok, so, This line of thinking is based upon an assumption.

In order for me to make money I have to pay you less than the actual value of your labor or I will break even on you as an employee rather than make more money.

So is it possible for capitalism to exist with slaves?

What is the value of one's labor? What is breaking even? Both seem very simple terms to me.

I need to ask you a few questions....

1. Is everyone's value of labor equal? Is the guy that dumps the trash have equal labor value to the guy that is responsible to the success of the XXXX number of employees too.

2. If the company wants a 10% growth per year and a 10% increase in new products is this expense counted into the break even number?

3. If people invest in the company is that pay back of investment a part of break even also?

Lastly, isn't everyone a slave to something in your terms?

a reply to: Sremmos80

1700s - 1800s, and maybe even still to this day in some communities. I don't think Amish screw each other over - they all kind of work together.

originally posted by: Bleeeeep

originally posted by: Teikiatsu
In order for you to make money, you must produce a good or service that people want to pay for, and it must be more payment than is required to produce the good/service.

That is not correct. You are making the profit by producing the thing, not in the sell of the thing.

It is your working of the produce that creates profit - not your working over of other parties.


You guys confuse profiting with profiteering.

Inventory is not equivalent to profit.

Ask the guys who make 8-tracks, carbon paper, land line rotary phones and manual typewriters how profits are doing.

originally posted by: Bleeeeep
a reply to: Sremmos80

Back when people worked for themselves. When everyone had trade skills, and everyone mostly bartered for everything.

Back when you worked 16 hours a day to live...no thank you.

a reply to: Teikiatsu

No you're trying to make it about the sell of a service, instead of the service of a sell. Can you not see the distinction?

If I sell you something, it should be profitable to you, as well as to me.

The working of a material or the work of a service for another, so long as it is beneficial, is the profitable thing.

You're making it out like profit only comes byway of greater fools (greater fool theory).

a reply to: Xtrozero

You're just throwing out arbitrary numbers. Back then people worked by the daylight, so 16 is way too many hours.

Today, however, there are people who really do work two jobs, people who really do work 16 hours a day.

One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.

These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind.

source of quote

a reply to: Bleeeeep

So during our expansion and exploitation of both natives here in the states and latin america while corporate interest like Standard, and United Fruit went wild??
News flash, LOTS of that progress was done on the back of slaves.

a reply to: xuenchen

We do not have high native poverty. But we have the highest number of refugees per inhabitant in the world that we take care off that the constant need for war that the "US/UK/Saudi Arabian" greed culture caused that is even hard on our system.

Anyone native who is homeless in Sweden is homeless because he/she refuses to go into program for cleaning up/learning a skill. We do have a lot of other homeless people that comes here since they get better treatment as homeless in Sweden than living in their own native country.

originally posted by: Bleeeeep
a reply to: Xtrozero

You're just throwing out arbitrary numbers. Back then people worked by the daylight, so 16 is way too many hours.

Today, however, there are people who really do work two jobs, people who really do work 16 hours a day.

Ok, worked the fields sun up to sun down, then do chores. I would like a choice, under your scenario not much choice. Some people do work a lot of hours, most work 40ish.

a reply to: Sremmos80

Only rich folk had slaves.

And your original question was:

When would you all say capitalism in america was most successful?

The height of its success, as I would measure it, would be when free markets were used by nearly everyone for the benefit of everyone. Back when people tried to actually do right by each other and tried to fill roles instead of their pockets. Before profit became the greed it is today.

If you don't like my answer, tough.

a reply to: Bleeeeep

Didn't say that wasn't the case, just saying who did alot of the labor that made America so successful during those times. I am just asking for when it was the most successful. You ate right I don't like your " it was the best when it was the best" answer. I want to know when we were using all those truly free markets. Do monopolies count as free markets?

Oh and if you think greed hasn't been a driving source of the states anytime after 1800 and arguably before think you need a refresher.

I think that trying to understand this in a modern technological sense can be very confusing. Way to many distractions.... Try looking at it in an early eighteen hundred time frame first ! Generally pre industrialization anyway. We had to either live rural or town. What would the range of livelihoods then compared to now. The are the same I say, a clerk is still a clerk, a mechanic is still a mechanic(millwright, machinist, technician), doctor, farmer, carpenter etc......

How has this model changed ? I think I see more money handlers and government employees and common laborers today than in the time frame illustrated above. Are the three occupations just described the ingredients for slavery as you see it ?

I'll leave those two questions on the table for a while.

a reply to: onequestion
I would agree that exploitation of labour is inherent within capitalism. I would not necessarily say that makes peoples slaves although depending on the circumstances and degree of exploitation people can find them selves so exploited and with so little option that they are effectively slaves.
Capitalism (as the name suggests) is a system that favours ownership over work. Whether people think that is a good or a bad thing is entirely subjective.

a reply to: onequestion

Quite simply, "NO!".

Capitalism can not exist without a class system of have's and have not's.

What is needed is a hybrid system that stands between Capitalism and Socialism as either extreme system is actually bad in practice.

Such a system did exist? in the UK and in France, In Holland and Sweden, In denmark and Norway.

So what happened to it, the system is a closed sytem in which tax raised from high earners and workers is redirected into a wealth redistribuition system and this then provides a welfare state as each of these country's once enjoyed.

However I did say a closed system which is that it is not a global or international system and was based within the culture and economy of each nation that had this system in place but such systems always have enemy's and in a system were the Have's are forced by taxation to give back a portion of what they reap from an economy they will seek way's out of paying there fair share and ways to undo the welfare system, they are also powerful above there own democratic weight in that they own assets and can by money control people and to a certain degree economy's.

The banking and immigrant crisis were a gift to these enemy's as they gave them the mean's by which they could dismantle the state's wealth redistribution system's as well as a fertile anger they could redirect to there own hateful agenda and so remove the restraints upon there capitalist idiology therefore moving the system of these nations over time back toward a bad (actually quite, quite evil) agenda of unbridled capitalism.

The poor are and always will be the workforce of the capitalist system which of course outlines the whole greed is good mentality.

Unbridled capitalism is worse than evil in that it does not just enslave it murder's the very poorest but also total socialism is also not good in that it takes away the motive for generating wealth.

Only a hybrid Welfare redistributing and capitalist economy is actually good but as I say there are and will be enemy's of such to both sides of the centre and correct ground.

The best example of such a nation WAS Sweden about twenty five years ago prior to there suffering the terror of mass economic immigration by immigrants not looking for work but to live on there state handout's, it was a system that like many was not envisaged or designed for this and indeed this corruption of the welfare state into an incentive for immigration has made it truly unsustainable, it was instead meant to help member's of Sweden's own indiginous society as were indeed all european welfare states, prior to this the pay rate in sweden made work a highly desirable experience while for those whom did not work through illness or other causes the benefit system allowed them to live as comfortable if poorer members of society.

Welfare systems also support an entire system of work and consumerism.

The poor have to eat, if they recieve government money in the form of this wealth redistribution it then is unlikely to be saved up or sit idly and indeed goes streight back into the retail industry in the form of food and utility payment's, this drives production supporting job's and also then end's up eventually back in the hand's of the state to be once again cycled around as an economy even if it stagnates has to move around like a wheel.

This is sustainable capitalism, a BRIDLED capitalists system with a taxation based wealth redistribution system that then ensures the poorest do not fall below a certain level.

Ethical Welfare payment level's ensure that wages are also higher to provide an incentive and drive the retail sector as the poor whom are on welfare can ill afford to save and even what they do save is regarded as short term saving's that end up going back into the retail system eventually.

You know you are poor if you can not afford to save and if you are working hard and still can not you know you are a slave in an unbridled capitalist system that is driven by short term greed motivated interests of an elite minority.

" Can capitalism exist without slavery?" nope...slavery is the fundation of capitalisme !
to hide it they invented "democraty " meaning no-one can be held responseble for the bad side effects... a reply to: onequestion

A worthy question, for sure!

I would argue that Capitalism and Slavery are actually two totally different economic systems, and pure Capitalism can't exist, at least not on any meaningful scale, in an economic system where the only reward for labor is the chance to live another day.

But I sense that's not really what you are asking.

I know we call the workaday world 'wage slavery', but it is far and away different than Slavery. I will never walk into my living space to find my boss's boss has sold my daughter to some other company where I will never see her again. I can't think of any legitimate business in America where I would need to fear that.

Slavery is where the laborer has no choice. In reality, it is totally my choice to whom I sell my time and skills and under what terms. I always have the option of starting my own business and being the one responsible for everything. So far, I have chosen not to do that...

ETA: There are pockets of Capitalism here in America, but there are also expanding pockets of Feudalism. One person at the top receives the benefits from the labor of everyone below. Also known as a Ponzi Scheme!

a reply to: LABTECH767
Bingo!! 100 stars for LABTECH767!!! Seriously, your post, LABTECH767, is 100% on the money IMHO. It’s exactly what I think to be the case, but couldn’t have expressed in such an intelligent, thoughtful way as you have. Thanks!

The chasm between the super rich and the rest is growing. For starters, capital -- such as stocks or property -- accrues value at a much faster rate than the actual economy grows, according to the French economist Thomas Piketty. The wealth of the rich multiplies faster than wages increase, and the working class can never even catch up.

In my view Plutocracy is the inevitable consequence of unbridled Capitalism. As LABTECH767 put it so well, “a hybrid system that stands between Capitalism and Socialism” is the way to go.

Thank you LABTECH767, I'll be thinking that one over all day. I even emailed it to myself so I can reread it.......