[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Kevin Carson]

On 6/7/09, Chris Watkins <chriswaterguy at appropedia.org> wrote:
> Capitalism is very widely used to mean something similar to a free market
> economy. I'm aware there are different meanings given to the word, but a
> more precise term would be useful.

OTOH "free market" is very widely used to mean something like actually
existing corporate capitalism.  That's why you commonly see
Congressmen standing up to defend IP on Big Pharma's drugs or on Bill
Gates' software, or to defend bans on reimportation of Canadian drugs,
as "the way our free market system works."  That's why you see that
Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota who was lampooned on last
night's Olbermann show for saying American prosperity until recently
was created by "free market economists" [sic], and that we're seeing
"the deconstruction of free market economists" [sic] before our very
eyes.

Defenders of actually existing corporate capitalism have claimed the
term "free market" for their own, in the same way that Stalin claimed
the language and symbolism of the classical socialist movement for his
own:  as legitimizing symbols for a fundamentally statist system of
power.

I think it's useful to distinguish between capitalism and the free
market.  The former is a system characterized by privilege and
artificial scarcity, in which capitalists control the state and allow
the market to operate freely only to the extent that it serves their
interests.  Capitalists occupy the same state-privileged and
state-controlling position under capitalism that the landlords did
under the Old Regime.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html