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How does the profit motive under Capitalism come to exist? (feddit.de)

submitted 2 years ago by hamborgr@feddit.de to c/socialism@lemmy.ml

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We all know the argument that profit motive is part of human nature is false. Yet I'm still not sure why capital owners pursue profits. Is it the difference of self-interest vs collective interest? If so then wouldn't that enforce the argument on human nature? Or am I missing a crucial aspect of the Capitalist system? I'm genuinely wondering.

Edit: Sorry for not being able to answer all of the comments, the blocklist of my instance sadly won't let me see all of the comments.

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[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Then we are talking at cross purposes.

I'm not sure what fascism, geography, the environment, or sociology have to do with it.

I agree that humans produce society. But if humans have produced societies that do not involve commodity production, then they have lived without profit and without a profit motive. This was the case for the majority of human existence, perhaps some 300,000 years.

If human societies have lived without a profit motive, then the profit motive cannot be part of human nature—it arises only when humans produce commodities (i.e. rather than because humans are involved).

To accept that the profit motive is part of human nature, one must also accept that it existed in all human societies. It did not. Something (e.g. the profit motive) cannot be part of human nature if it has only been an organising force in human society for 200–500 years.

[–] altair222@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Im very confused by your definition for the human nature, you're distinguishing between positive traits of humans and negative traits in humans, or primitive traits in humans and evolutionary traits in humans and choosing one of them to represent the human nature while declining the other's association with it, when in a conversation like all it does is deny the existence of empirical evidence and puts forward a virtuous proposition without studying the existing nature of human economy.

The grography, the environmrnt and sociology is precisely the deterministic factors that need to be taken into consideration while concersing on human nature, just as much as the consideration of nature of individual and isolated (if that is even possible) human agency is needed. Given that environmental factors inspire human instincts, and human instincts inspire social phenomenons.

Moral propositions are great to have but using them as an essentialist force to describe humans falls into a purist line of thinking that dissociates one's self from the reality of the human condition. That reality which can be figured out through empirical and scientific study of the geneology of a particular human trait.

If there is something a human does or expresses, no matter where it came from, it is part of the human nature. There is no essence of human nature in the way that you propose, i dont see any evidence for such.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm not making any moral claims nor claiming that any trait is positive or negative. I am not proposing that there is an essence of human nature.

I'm saying that the profit motive is unique to commodity production. If there is no commodity production, there is no profit motive. I am also claiming that within a system of commodity production, only a small fraction of the people within that system seek profit. And in a system of commodity production, it is only the owners of the means of production who seek profit.

I am then claiming, which to me seems to follow logically, that if very few humans throughout history have sought profit, then seeking profit cannot be part of human nature.

[–] altair222@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To that i want to express that the "few" people that we are talking about that pursue profit could literally be any of us, for any number of variables affecting us. These arent some different subspecies of humans we are talking about, theyre just humans whose will was to seek profit, a desire that could have been inspired for any number of reasons.

The same reasons that could have inspired it in you or me, In any socialist, anarchist or a communist if we were born in a certain environment. The said environment doesnt need to be capitalistic in its existence for it to inspire profit motive. One has to ask, what inspired the first capitalist to seek profit. A lot of questions arise from this very question: what is a capitalist, is there a "first" capitalist? does capitalistic endeavour exist in a spectrum?.

This is pan-determinism im referring to. And if a human like you and me can be put in an environment with variables that may inspire capitalistic pursuit in us (even if that environment's economy doesnt rely on capitalism), albeit to a much lower degree (which may or may not escalate with time), how can we not call this pursuit as a part, or for a better word: an element, of human nature.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not just anyone. Only capitalists. Or, rather, only those who own the means of production within a commodity producing society. In capitalism, those owners are organised as a class. The profit motive is what drives that class, not humans in general.

I must reiterate that we're talking at cross purposes. I'm saying that profit only exists where there is commodity production. If we cannot agree on that, we won't agree about much else. Before commodity production, there was no concept of profit, and there could be no concept of a profit motive, hence humans could not be motivated by profit before they began to produce commodities.

As for your questions relating to the 'first' capitalist, you may want to read:

Marx, Capital, vol I, Part 8 'So-Called Primitive Accumulation';
Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View;
Cedric J Robinson, An Anthropology of Marxism; and
Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism.

You will find some support for some of the ideas that you're talking about in these works, relating to the difficulty of pointing to a precise date at which humans began to be motivated by profit (which is impossible to pinpoint). You will also find a rejection of the argument that the profit motive is part of human nature and why. Mainly, this rejection lies in the claim that everything is historically contingent—which follows logically from an historical materialist world outlook. That will support some of your ideas but it will also challenge your main argument about what human nature is and about how we know what we know about capitalism.

For analyses on why and how profit is related to commodity production, try:

Marx, 'Wages, Price and Profit' (short and sweet); and
Capital, vol I, chapters 1–3 (comprising 'Part One: Commodities and Money'—well-known as the driest part of Capital but it's perhaps the most crucial part, too).

[–] altair222@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I believe i require more nuanced study into the subject. I genuinely appreciate this conversation, thank you for your patience and the proper guidance towards the resources.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You’re very welcome, and I’m glad you’ve taken my comments in the spirit in which I wrote them. I wasn’t trying to be awkward and you are making some good points. I’m happy to keep talking if want to discuss the sources I suggested.

You might also really enjoy David Harvey’s Rebel Cities. He’s a geographer, so he engages with some of your ideas directly. He’s not arguing about human nature, but he takes this notion of profit and commodities and runs with it to see how it shapes cities and how cities shape capitalism.

The book introduces many concepts of historical materialism. It’s dialectical, but Harvey does not use much jargon. Okay, he uses some jargon, but he is good at explaining his terms and using examples. You can see this in the example quote below (at the end of this comment).

One aspect of the book you might like is his criticism of Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation. Harvey argues that a better term is ‘appropriation by dispossession’, which is an ongoing process. This has implications for how we understand modern capitalism, its origins, and its effects on human behaviour.

I read Harvey before any of the other texts cited in my previous comment, and although those other texts are complex, they were easier to read because I could fit the new ideas into the imagery that Harvey provides (he’s good at painting the picture). I also watched the first few videos in his lecture series on Capital, vol I before reading the text myself. These are on YouTube and were very helpful for me.

A quote that may pique your interest, from Harvey, Rebel Cities, p.5:

From their very inception, cities have arisen through the geographical and social concentration of a surplus product. Urbanization has always been, therefore, a class phenomenon of some sort, since surpluses have been extracted from somewhere and from somebody, while control over the use of the surplus typically lies in the hands of a few (such as a religious oligarchy, or a warrior poet with imperial ambitions). This general situation persists under capitalism, of course, but in this case there is a rather different dynamic at work. Capitalism rests, as Marx tells us, upon the perpetual search for surplus value (profit). But to produce surplus value capitalists have to produce a surplus product. This means that capitalism is perpetually producing the surplus product that urbanization requires. The reverse relation also holds. Capitalism needs urbanization to absorb the surplus products it perpetually produces. In this way an inner connection emerges between the development of capitalism and urbanization. …

Let us look more closely at what capitalists do. They begin the day with a certain amount of money and end the day with more of it (as profit). The next day they have to decide what to do with the surplus money they gained the day before. They face a Faustian dilemma: reinvest to get even more money or consume their surplus away in pleasures. The coercive laws of competition force them to reinvest, because if one does not reinvest then another surely will. For a capitalist to remain a capitalist, some surplus must be reinvested to make even more surplus. Successful capitalists usually make more than enough both to reinvest in expansion and satisfy their lust for pleasure. But the result of perpetual reinvestment is the expansion of surplus production. Even more important, it entails expansion at a compound rate—hence all the logistical growth curves (money, capital, output, and population) that attach to the history of capital accumulation.

The politics of capitalism are affected by the perpetual need to find profitable terrains for capital surplus production and absorption. …

[–] altair222@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

Harvey seems like a good starting point for me! Your exposition is thorough and insightful, thank you!