How does the profit motive under Capitalism come to exist? : socialism

[–] altair222@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I do think that motive towards profit is indeed part of human nature. Denying so dehumanizes capitalists and hence alienates them, which isnt very productive in the study of capitalism given that they are just humans. Shitty humans most of the time, but humans nonetheless.

That is also to say that even with an element of profit motive as part of human nature, its existence as such (in the form of a desire) doesnt justify its constant exercise and normalization on a grand societal, collective scale.

To your second question, Yes, I do believe that capitalistic pursuits are purely from selfish and self-preservative motive, with a skrewed perception of the idea of "survival of the fittest", it is a desire to build a small empire of your own self. The only reason a capitalist may grow their scope of the share of capital is because they need people to collaborate with them in their pursuit of acquiring capital, and people wont collaborate without their own self interest being met. In that sense, a capitalist, however empathatic they may be, "tolerates" their workers to atleast some degree and will never be able to see them as their equals. The workers are just that, workers. A part of the capitalist's machine that is expendable at will.

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Semi-related, this fantastic talk (mainly about racism) makes a great point on how systems we participate in (often not being able to not participate in them!) can make certain characteristics of our psyche more pronounced than they would otherwise be.

tl;dr when playing Monopoly, it's very easy to be greedy, as that's what the system of the game promotes.

Same with capitalism.

[–] altair222@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

Thanks a lot for sharing the resource! I've been looking for conversations on such a topic!

[–] hamborgr@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So profit motive is a part of our nature but the Capitalist system tends to bring forth and immensely intensify this characteristic beyond any sort of reason? Perhaps greed shouldn't be confused with the pursuit of profit here. Thanks for explaining, I think I have a better understanding of it now!

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

A business might need profit for its sustainability and expansion, but a problem with that comes about when we question: to what extent is the expansion justifiable and ethical?

[–] hamborgr@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For me, there is no way ethical justification other than to avoid to collapse of the business so that the workers don't lose their jobs. However, profits in a Capitalist system may be well justified by the capital owners as they are often used to stay competitive. But then again the whole system is entirely unethical and unjustifiable.

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

yes, and profits arent entirely unethical if we take other types of business politics in consideration. Let's say its a co-op business and they provide their service so well that more parts of society demands service. in that sense that may desire profit to pay for such an expansion while still being more ethical than its capitalist counterpart

[–] strwbrryJen@mastodon.lol 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@altair222 @hamborgr um it seems that youve got the socialist definition of profits a bit mixed up. profits are the extracted surplus value of labor to benefit the capitalist. the earnings of a cooperative no longer counts as profit by a socialist definition

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

maybe but in my exposition i believe i was trying to make the same kind of distinction

[–] hamborgr@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

I agree completely, but as it stands co-ops are currently a very small minority in a market immensely dominated by private capital owners.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

The thing to understand is that there is a feedback loop between social structures and the way people behave within a particular society. Capitalism creates pressures that select for particular types of behaviours. Then people who become successful under this system ensure that it continues working in their favor.

The mistake is to extrapolate that behaviours people exhibit within the capitalist system are intrinsic to human nature. It's akin to assuming that juggling is a natural elephant behaviour based on seeing a juggling elephant in a circus.

This is an excellent essay on the subject incidentally https://www.jamesherod.info/Getting_Free.pdf

[–] m532@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

The capital parasites get told that they win when they get profits. It's propaganda. The goal of propaganda is manipulating the human mind. Normally, humans hate being a parasite, so they have to be manipulated.

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

Before I type out a reply: can you see this comment?

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

yes

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

To my knowledge, profit only exists in systems that produce commodities to be sold in markets. While markets predate capitalism, they were largely optional. In capitalism, there is no choice but to participate in markets and commodity production.

If a society does not produce commodities, there is no profit. If there is no profit, there can be no profit motive. The profit motive cannot be a part of human nature because it was absent from almost every human society that ever existed.

The profit motive may not be a part of human society once it develops beyond capitalism, either. Even in the transitional Soviet Union and China, which had/has a form of state capitalism (depending on who you ask and how they define it), their planned economies undermine commodity production and made/make inroads into profit. In these two examples, the profit motive did/does not drive the state.

Even in capitalism proper, it is only the capitalists who seek profit. By definition, profit is what remains after paying wages and overheads. Some workers benefit from profit. These are labour aristocrats and petit bourgeois. But on the whole, workers are not motivated by profit.

There is no way that the profit motive is part of human nature if: most human societies were not driven by profit; the vast majority of workers living within a system driven by profit do not seek profit; and states that move away from commodity production in a world governed by profit try to live according to other motivations.

If you were asking about why capitalists, specifically, are profit seekers, I'm happy to go into that.

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

When we make a statement like "profit motive isnt a part of human nature", I think we need to distinguish between human instincts that are a product of isolated individual academic instincts and introspecions vs the kind of instincts and motive that are inspired in an individual by a system that takes a grand scale.

I say that because it is quite obvious by empirical means that a profit motive does exist in the human occupational pursuit, whatever the source of its existence may be, and hence i believe that its existence and its association to capitalism and other forms of economic system need to be considered and realized as an axiom before developing a dialogue on the issue.

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

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. But profit is a result of producing commodities. No commodities, no profit. No profit, no profit motive.

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

Im speaking from a psychological perspective, even if a motive is a result of a sociological condition, it still exists and has a legitimate psychological base for its existence. Which directly implies that its part of the human nature and nothing alien to it.

We can make an argument that it is an immoral part of the human nature, but denying its very existence and association serves no purpose.

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

Then I'm afraid we're talking at cross purposes. I was talking about profit as a political economic category. I wasn't making and moral claims when I said that the profit (and so the profit motive) only exists where commodities are produced.

I thought the OP was also asking about profit as a political economic category, because this is the sense in which the word would be used when asking, to paraphrase, 'why do capitalists seek profit if the profit motive is not part of human nature?'

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

The issue begins when bringing in the "Human Nature" in the field and use it as a starting point to study capitalism. How do we assess the human nature if not psychologically? Whether it is philosophical or scientific psychology.

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

Do you agree that if something is part of human nature, then it will be present in some form in all human societies?

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

isnt an agreement to that exactly what im trying to represent?

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

I'm not sure. Possibly. But you also seem to be disagreeing with me, which suggests not.

I'm not starting an analysis of capitalism with human nature. Capitalism is the name of a particular political economy / mode of production that is based on producing commodities.

If capitalism has unique implications, which by definition only arise in capitalism, it stands to reason that those implications (being unique) do not arise in all human societies. If something only arises in specific era, and not in all human societies, it is specific to that era, and not part of human nature.

Edit: To add for clarity: within capitalism, seeking profit is a political economic necessity for capitalists. I'm not making any moral, psychological, or philosophical claims here.

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

Human beings produce society, and human beings are influenced by society, so it is all human beings that get into consideration.

for example, Patterns of fascism can be found everywhere around the world, even parts that had no significant itellectual interaction of sorts with each other, ideologies and its exercise such as that of fascism are also found throughout history, without two points in history to have been directly influenced by each other.

My point is that east, west: doesnt matter. If there exists a system inspired by people in one geography, it doesnt matter the geography per se, it can exist everywhere else upon the existence of similar environmental conditions that arent strictly and intentfully sociological.

The first line to my reply to the original post is an explicit evidence on where i stand.

[–] 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!

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