[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Chris Watkins]

 Dmytri Kleiner wrote (re the term "capitalism"):

The term originates in Socialist critiques of the emerging social
> relations of the industrial revolution.
>

It doesn't look like that's true. Wikipedia again:
Arthur Young <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Young_%28writer%29>[45]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-OED-44>first
used the term
*capitalist* in his work *Travels in France*
(1792).[46]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-45>
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge>,[45]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-OED-44>an
English
poet <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poet>, used *capitalist* in his work *Table
Talk* (1823).[47]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-46> Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon> used *
capitalist* in his first work *What is
Property?<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_Property%3F>
* (1840) to refer to the owners of capital. Benjamin
Disraeli<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli>
[45] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-OED-44> used *
capitalist* in the 1845 work
*Sybil<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_%28novel%29>
*. Karl Marx <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx> and Friedrich
Engels<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels>also used
*capitalist* (*Kapitalist*) as a private owner of capital in *The Communist
Manifesto <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto>* (1848).

Also, I'm not sure how well Marx's description of the economy applies now,
161 years after he wrote, even ignoring any issues with Marx's own writings.
And I don't see why the socialist definition of Marxism should be normative
any more than a capitalist definition of socialism should be.)

Anyway, even where terms are distorted by popular use, it's not always
helpful to cling to one's own preferred definition (just as Hayek
reluctantly gave up what he thought was the best use of the word "liberal").

I'd see a lot of value in a non-partisan economics wiki, but I'm not aware
of any active ones apart from Wikipedia. Googling didn't yield anything
much; neither did a look through WikiIndex. economics.wikia.com and
www.teralaser.net/economics/w are the most promising that I found.

Obviously p2pfoundation.net and Wikipedia have a lot of info, but
p2pfoundation is from a certain angle, not aiming to be all about economics;
Wikipedia is the wiki with the broadest collection of economics info I know
of, and its resistance to particular POV (insofar as it succeeds) is both
its greatest strength and a guarantee to annoy many with a strong POV. Its
main drawbacks are that it doesn't allow for analysis and non-"notable"
views (notable under Wikipedia's definition). (These are both important to
Wikipedia, but there's room for a more ambitious economics wiki. I'm not
sure how the analysis would work without becoming unconstructive, but the
wiki would have to find its own equivalent guidelines..)

-- 
Chris Watkins

Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

identi.ca/appropedia / twitter.com/appropedia
blogs.appropedia.org

I like this: five.sentenc.es
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