capitalism

Transclude of productive-forces#^82406a

Capitalism and competition are antonyms. A capitalist is someone in the business of accumulating capital. A world of perfect competition is a world where all the profits are competed away. - Peter Thiel

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Building Blocks of capitalism

1. commodity production (explore this note recursively from here on out to discover the rest of marxist economics, lol)
2. private property
3. nation state

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Capitalism means war.

Markets and opportunities for investments have been shrinking since 2008 - capitalism outgrew itself and is now suffocating under the constraints of the nation state/national markets and private property.
The relative decline of US-imperialism accelerates this process. It is no longer able to prevent its competitors from gaining influence on a regional level - and its allies also understood that they can now only rely on their own military power to defend their interests, which is why we have seen a massive rise in military spending in Europe and the pacific.

Intro from: What is capitalism? An introduction to Marxist Economics

Marxism does not view capitalism from a moralistic viewpoint (it came to being dripping with blood from all pores, but we look at it from a scientific standpoint).

Capitalism had greater achievements than the great pyramids & co (centralization of production → incredible efficiency).

Society is not just an amalgamation of individuals (greater than the sum of its parts)
→ it is a system that produces forces and tendencies that impose themselves onto society, which operate blindly and anarchically, upon individual economic agents, despite anyones wills or intentions
→ these features are an inherent part of the system. they cannot be reformed away → revolutionary conclusions.

Classical Economists: Adam Smith & David Ricardo:

• they see capitalism as something eternal, unnatural
• base themselves on abstract thought experiments e.g.: two people trading directly with eachother on a desert island … and want to scale what’s rational to these traders to a whole society. “Robinson Crusoe Method”
• “vulgar economists”, because they tried to analyse the economy scientifically, but failed and defaulted to just defending capitalism

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Capitalism and Science

Capitalism does not make halt before the cultural or scientific world - It tries to put a common mindset into the masses, which is aligned to the establishment. Captial has an interest to cannibalise the will of the lower classes into supporting capitalism, which is reflected also in the scientific / academic community.
The profit economy transforms every research institute into a factory with its publish or perish mentality.
→ Loads and loads of pointless papers. The same work over and over again without any innovation.

Transclude of reason-in-revolt#^79e056

People in the scientific community are extremely overworked, and forced to sell their labour power for really cheap, … The work for an endeavor of new knowledge turns into a work for survival, as academia is turned into a factory.
In an attempt to survive, the try to abide by the system’s rules. Try to follow what other researchers or companies push (see e.g. LLM craze, Quantum (without any actual breakthroughs), …).
Companies decide what research to pursue. Science, education, art, … are not free under capitalism.