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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

I am endlessly amused by people pointing to features that the socialists who came up with the word "capitalism" to name the system they were criticizing criticized capitalism for and saying "this isn't capitalism".

But, no, the features that are being complained about as "growthism" -- the idea of being "willing to sacrifice everything for more growth" -- is exactly a feature of capitalism that those 19th Century socialists who coined the term "capitalism" were criticizing.

See, inter alia, Karl Marx. "Effect of Capitalist Competition on the Capitalist Class[,] the Middle Class[,] and the Working Class", in Wage Labour and Capital at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/...

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It's like the quote by Henry Spencer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer) that "those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly": Those who do not understand Marx are condemned to rewrite him, poorly.

One could make the argument that free marketism inevitably brings about capitalism which inevitably turns into growthism. Much like Benjamin Tucker's argument that Marxism inevitably ends in Stalinism (he made this argument as a contemporary of Marx, so this wasn't hindsight). I happen to actually believe Schumpeter's model better (that capitalism turns to gas and water socialism turns to growthism).

It is, however, telling, that there are plenty of free-marketers who espouse essentially the same argument as Mr. Haque, for example the Austrian school of economics (which is full of kooks for other reasons). Chris Martenson (who called the 2008 crash) is another.

> One could make the argument that free marketism inevitably brings about capitalism which inevitably turns into growthism.

I wouldn't make the first part of that argument, because I'm not convinced that "free marketism" is even a real thing, much less a precursor of capitalism. It seems to be position presented as a rhetorical defense of capitalism, but doesn't seem to exist independently.

But what this article calls "growthism" is one of the core features of capitalism called out by the people who named it. Capitalism doesn't inevitably turn into growthism, it is (or, at least, includes as an essential feature) growthism.

> Much like Benjamin Tucker's argument that Marxism inevitably ends in Stalinism (he made this argument as a contemporary of Marx, so this wasn't hindsight).

Stalinism -- or, more to the point, Leninism -- requires both Marxism and an environment that is unlike the ones described by the descriptive elements of Marxism in a particular way into which one attempts to translate the prescriptive elements. Given those ingredients, I'd agree that its pretty much inevitable that something like Leninism will at least be attempted.

Marxism itself doesn't inevitably become Leninism/Stalinism, but its existence makes the existence of such a system quite likely.

> I happen to actually believe Schumpeter's model better (that capitalism turns to gas and water socialism turns to growthism).

I would argue more that the empirical evidence is that capitalism plus the existence of socialist ideas leads fairly usually (even if not inevitably) to a variety of mixed systems that feature a basically capitalist structure with socialist elements (including growthism), of which "gas and water socialism" is an example.

Again, Tucker made his argument from first principles, in a non-hindsight fashion (he was writing when Lenin was a teen). So it would be hard to argue that it's not inevitable, because it was empirically shown and in a prior fashion mechanistically predicted (this is the minimum bar for creating a law in the physical sciences), unless you can point out exactly what needs to happen differently from how Tucker envisioned it.

> Again, Tucker made his argument from first principles, in a non-hindsight fashion (he was writing when Lenin was a teen). So it would be hard to argue that it's not inevitable

The conclusion does not follow from the premise. That an argument was made "from first principles" doesn't make it hard to argue against.

> because it was empirically shown

I would disagree with the claim that what Tucker actually predicted was empirically shown, but this whole discussion is widely afield from the point.

>It seems to be position presented as a rhetorical defense of capitalism, but doesn't seem to exist independently.

It definitely does. This may be a relatively modern development, but a simple google search of "capitalism is not free markets" will demonstrate swaths of people who make a clear (if subtle) distinction between the two. It's even in the wikipedia page for free markets.

> This may be a relatively modern development, but a simple google search of "capitalism is not free markets" will demonstrate swaths of people who make a clear (if subtle) distinction between the two.

There's a clear distinction between capitalism and free markets -- largely, IME, drawn by people, often socialists, who are pointing out the inaccuracy of the "free market" rhetorical defense of capitalism -- but I don't see as much evidence that free marketism is a significant ideological viewpoint outside of its use as a rhetorical defense of capitalism, and certainly not a precursor to capitalism.

did you do the google search?

The top hits include:

"center for a stateless society" "foundation for economic education" "ReasonTV"

Hardly socialistic enterprises. The clear distinction between the two is mostly a self-identification that tends to emanate from libertarian and anarcho-capitalist groups.

No one who understands what capitalism and free markets are about would suggest that they focus on the idea that one should sacrifice everything for more growth. The idea of growth as it's being talked about in the article - in the macro sense - is of no concern to capitalists because it's individualistic.

Imagine you're in high school and you want to get A's: do you want A's because you want to school to look good and improve, or to boost your transcript and have more opportunity? If you are fine with C's or F's then that's fine too - it's whatever each person wants to do (obvious caveat about natural ability, access, etc. whatever it's an imperfect analogy).

Similarly, no capitalist is greatly concerned about economics at the macro level, because they're simply focused on their own success, however they define it. This macro-level growth obsession is an invention of the government's attempt to control the economy by influencing certain metrics. This is where crony-capitalism comes in, since they are obviously incented to influence how the government manipulates the economy, but that is not a fault of capitalism but rather government intervention into markets and the subsequent incentives it creates. People often mistake that for capitalism when it's not.

> Similarly, no capitalist is greatly concerned about economics at the macro level, because they're simply focused on their own success, however they define it.

And if they run a company whose equity is traded in the public markets, they quickly discover that those markets define success as... growth.

Obviously...what's your point? Of course they're concerned with the growth of their own company. They don't care if other markets are shrinking though. That's why I specified macro level.

My point was that there's no need to assume any kind of "macro-level" direction at all. If the logic of the system drives individual "micro-level" actors inevitably toward growth, you'll get a macro-level orientation toward growth just from the aggregation of all those individual decisions.

Except growth doesn't just happen at the will of a company. Companies grow because people buy their products and use their services, which means they wouldn't grow unless people wanted them to. So how is growth a bad thing when it's what people want?

I had difficulty parsing your first sentence, even though I was pretty sure I got its meaning. Perhaps some punctuation helps:

I am endlessly amused by people pointing to features that the socialists - who came up with the word "capitalism" to name the system they were criticizing - criticized capitalism for and saying "this isn't capitalism".

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