Capitalism Flashcards
Capitalism is an economic/political system in which …
- the means of production of goods or services are privately owned and operated for a profit
- a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state
Characteristics central to capitalism:
- private property
- capital accumulation
- wage labour
- voluntary exchange
- a price system
- competitive markets
Is Canada a capitalist nation? Why?
- yes
- the Canadian government has divested itself of some crown corporations (Air Canada, Petro, Atomic Energy of Canada)
The individual capitalist will very accurately figure out how much ____ _____ and _____ are needed and how many ____ to ____ in order to have so much end _____, but they have no general plan for meeting the ____ of society. Their only goals are ____ and ____.
- raw material
- machinery
- workers
- exploit
- product
- profit
- survival
Capital is not a thing, it is a ….
process in which money is perpetually sent in search of more money
Acceleration:
the faster the flow of capital, the higher the profits so there is always incentive to speed up circulation
Why is continuity of flow crucial?
an interruption to flow of capital lost revenues + extra expenses = reduced profits
How is capital flow spatial?
- money is assembled from somewhere and brought to a particular place to utilize labour resources that come from somewhere else
- trend towards general reduction of spatial barriers and speed-up
The capitalist can accumulate capital only because…
labour generates more capital than wages consume
Extra capital gained is immediately ploughed into…
production to generate more capital for growth/expansion
Capitalism operates through constructs known as ____ which act as ____ ____.
- markets
- pricing mechanisms
Interactions between actors in the market gives _____ their monetary value.
commodities
Value of commodities based on ____.
roi
Commodity:
- a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type
- an article produced for market exchange rather than for its own immediate consumption
Commodities are often used as ….
inputs in the production of other goods or services
The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially ____ across producers.
uniform
THere is little _____ between a commodity coming from one producer and the same commodity from another producer.
- differentiation
- a barrel of oil is basically the same product, regardless of the producer
Some traditional examples of commodities include…
- grains
- gold
- beef
- oil
- copper
- natural gas
Commodification:
- producing sellable things from historically unsellable things
- given sufficient amounts of cleverness, anything can be turned into a commodity
Once transformed into a commodity, the use value of something is ….
translated into an exchange value
Use value:
the want satisfying power of a good or service
The exchange value of the commodity is expressed in _____ terms.
monetary
Examples of commodification:
- labour
- land
- money
Labour is commodified when employers see little difference between…
workers with a particular skill set
Labour commodification prevents labour from commanding a ___ ____ or having much ____ over their employer to demand better ____ ____.
- high salary
- influence
- working conditions
Labour that is commoditized is often referred to as ___ _____.
human capital
Labour that isn’t commoditized can be described as ____.
talent
Under capitalism we have a fetishized relationship with ______.
commodities
Commodity fetishism:
- fetishizes the products of labour and the relations between the commodities at the expense of the labour itself and the relations between the humans involved
- gives commodities a mystified status that can be religious
- abstracts them from the human meaning they have
The word fetish refers to…
any object that people fixate on or are fascinated by and that keeps them from seeing the truth
According to Marx, when people try to understand the world in which they live, they fixate on ____ or _____.
- money
- commodities
Marx believed that _____ and _____ are fetishes that prevent people from seeing the truth about ____ and ____; that one class of people is _____ another.
- commodities
- money
- economics
- society
- exploiting
In capitalism, the production of commodities is based on an _____ economic relationship between ….
- exploitative
- owners of factories
- workers who produce the commodities
In everyday life, we only think of the ____ value of commodity (aka ____).
- market
- price
Marx argues that commodity fetishism allows capitalists to…
carry on with day-to-day affairs of a capitalist mode of production without having to confront the real implications of the system of exploitation on which they depend
Relations of production:
- the relationship between those who own the means of production and those who do not
- often characterized by class
____ are one example of wealthy owners.
oligopolies
Means of production:
- factories
- facilities
- machines
- raw materials
- labour
- organization of labour force
Labour is central to a human being’s ____ ____ and sense of ____ ____.
- self-conception
- well-being
Alienation:
by working on and transforming objective matter into sustenance and objects of use-value, human beings meet the needs of existence and come to see themselves externalized in the world
Labour is as much an act of ____ ____ and a projection of one’s _____ as it is a ….
- personal creation
- identity
- means of survival
With alienation, workers approach work only as a means of ____ and derives none of the other personal _____ of work because …
- survival
- satisfactions
- the products of their labour do not belong to them
- products are used by capitalists and sold for profit
Regimes of accumulation:
a pattern of production and consumption which is reproducible over time by which capital accumulation is ensured
Fordist:
- single site mass production
- replaced cottage industries
- single company owns all aspects of production
- specialized labour force
- large inventory of products
- all tasks done by corporation
- leads to urbanization
Post-fordist:
- production dispersed and accelerated
- replaced fordist
- just in time delivery
- global division of labour
- time space compression
- outsourced and offshore
- avoid government regulations
- high tech manufacturing and R&D left in core
First inherent contradiction within capitalism:
the capital-labour relation
Wage-labour tension:
- tension between the desire to increase profits and the need to have consumers with enough money to purchase the increased production
- should consumers be unable to absorb all the production = overproduction
- prices need to drop = profit margins are low
Fixes for wage-labour tension:
- pay workers more so they can absorb the production, but increased wages erode profit
- enter new markets where new consumers can absorb the excess production
- produce commodities more efficiently, thus lowering costs
- secure loans to invest in new technologies and/or markets with the expectation of greater future returns on investment
The fixes for wage-labour tension are….
- spatial: moving to new markets
- temporal: speeding up production
- spatio-temporal: loans shift production into the future and into new markets
- temporary
Second contradiction of capitalism:
environmental contradiction
Environmental contradiction:
- we live in a finite planet with limited ecological and natural resources that has to be preserved for sustainability purposes
- carrying capacity of the world cannot sustain endless consumption and production
Issues with Fordism:
- barrier to capital accumulation
- accumulation strategy was capital intensive, requiring the construction of factories and infrastructure
- relatively fixed turnover times from investment to returns, because of limits within the production process
Current regime of accumulation:
financialization
Financialization:
pattern of accumulation in which profit making occurs increasingly through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production
Financialization is characterized by …
- a move away from the production of commodities toward speculation
- growing importance of financial instruments and crisis
With financialization, capital has become highly ____ and can also displace itself further into the ____ than ever before.
- mobile
- future
Externalities:
a positive or negative consequence of an economic activity experienced by unrelated third parties
Example of negative externality:
Pollution emitted by a factory that spoils the surrounding environment and affects the health of nearby residents
Example of positive externality:
The effect of a well-educated labor force on the productivity of a company
