New Polity Good Money: The Invention of Capitalism
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Nov 9, 2022 Exploring the choices between slavery and the market, the impact of possessing new technology, the concept of being a 'god' with access to new technologies, the role of primitive accumulation in the development of capitalism, the contradictory portrayal of work in history, the concept of idleness and its impact on the feudal period, the economic analysis of Adam Smith and the power of the state, the influence of capitalism on work and leisure, the origins of game laws and the impact of land enclosure on society, the definition of socialism as state capitalism, and the concept of scarcity and its influence on the value of goods.
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Capitalism and Primitive Accumulation
- Capitalism necessitates removing people from subsistence living to wage labor by creating scarcity.
- This was a deliberate process involving enclosure and suppression of the peasantry, not natural evolution.
Work Redefined as Wage Labor
- The definition of work changed to mean only wage labor, equating subsistence and self-sufficient work with idleness.
- This ideological shift vilified traditional, self-sustaining subsistence lifestyles.
Capitalism Suppressed Holidays
- Medieval societies had many more holidays, which were vital community and religious celebrations.
- Capitalism suppressed these holidays, framing time off as lost productivity rather than religious fulfillment.