Living outside capitalism

[tangerinedream]

They exist as part of a capitalist economy and you are utilising them, making you also part of it, not outside of it.

Yes but not to engage with it in a sense that the capitalist economy understands or encourages. There is no transactions taking place, hence the action is not capitalist in it's nature. We could do this all night!

If you want to be literally outside of it, then you'd have to go to Antarctica, Australian interior, Russian wilderness, the Amazon basin or somewhere like that, because everywhere I can think of is tainted by the hand of capitalism in some way or other. Problem is, you wouldn't have the skills to survive in those places.

Hmmm.

 

[tangerinedream]

The original question wasn't about gains though, it was about living outside the capitalist system.

No but Hollis' was, I don't have to answer the OP in every post do I? - Doesn't make for much fluid free moving discussion does it?

 

[Hollis]

But you wouldn't be making any gains, only fulfilling basic requirements. You wouldn't have any profits to redistribute. Cartainly no capital gains.

Yes - but you'd be still disproportionatly appropriating gains based on past labour value.

Look at it this way - if you discover a machine built by sweated labour in China, and then use the machine to make shed loads of thing, d'you then not feel an obligation to split the value of what's been produced by the machine with the original sweated labour?

 

[Blagsta]

Yes but not to engage with it in a sense that the capitalist economy understands or encourages. There is no transactions taking place, hence the action is not capitalist in it's nature. We could do this all night!

If you want to be literally outside of it, then you'd have to go to Antarctica, Australian interior, Russian wilderness, the Amazon basin or somewhere like that, because everywhere I can think of is tainted by the hand of capitalism in some way or other. Problem is, you wouldn't have the skills to survive in those places.

Hmmm.

The point is that you can't be outside of it as you're always going to be utilising something that is a product of capitalism.

 

[tangerinedream]

Yes - but you'd be still disproportionatly appropriating gains based on past labour value.

Look at it this way - if you discover a machine built by sweated labour in China, and then use the machine to make shed loads of thing, d'you then not feel an obligation to split the value of what's been produced by the machine with the original sweated labour?

Yes, but I'm saying you wouldn't make shed loads of things would you, because you would be living outside of capitalism and those shed load of things would have no value, beyond that which you could ascribe to them yourself. Once you'd made one thing, you'd take the machine back to the communal pool and swap it for something else.

I do see what you mean though. I suppose if you had an excess of things, shelter, food or energy then you could use them to compensate the original workers. I'm not sure how you would split the value of things without creating an excess, because to do otherwise would be ludicrous.

 

[tangerinedream]

The point is that you can't be outside of it as you're always going to be utilising something that is a product of capitalism.

Yes I know, but I think that is an incredably literal reading of the original posters question. As I say, we could do this all night.

You could easily read outside as "not controlled by" which I would suggest is a more interesting discussion. I don't see why you need to keep repeating the same point that I obviously understand.

 

[tangerinedream]

sorry, got a bit narky then...

How about

A: "Can I live outside of capitalism"*
B: "Why, yes, but not as long as you can live inside it"

 

[xenon]

I can't live outside the capitalist system. Frankly I don't want to. Where would I grow my food, in a window box? I can't sew. So no new clothes. Where would I buy my solar pannels from?

The system's done me quite well. Wouldn't be here typing this in with out it. I'd be hungry board, and ill.

 

[kyser_soze]

It's possible to live outside consumerism to a greater or lesser degree, using the means described in the thread (grow your own, only use recycled clothing, self generation) but living 'outside capitalism' isn't possible - certainly not in the UK unless you know of some entirely self sufficient communities who have NO economic interactions with wider society.

 

[xenon]

And if you never want to visit a hospital built with tax's extracted from workers. Never need the Police, Fire service, vet, etc, etc. And living in such a comune is only really possible because the majority don't do it. With out industrial scale farming and the distribution of resources that capitlism brings, this country could not support the amount of peple here.

Consumerism is quite a depressing facet of capitilism. If the majority of peple only bought what they needed and not desired, it would surely trigger a ressession.

 

[bluestreak]

that's kind of how i approach it, however much in denial i may be. i can't escape capitalism, but i don't have to subscribe to rampant consumerism.

 

[Thora]

Why would you want to try to live outside capitalism? What would be the point? Fair enough if it makes you feel better I guess, but it seems like some kind of weird ascetic lifestylism to me.

 

[xenon]

Because in short it's a system that's seen to have fucked a lot of people over, given peple false idols and expectations, an directly or indirectly lead to environmental strife.

I think capitalism has to be restrained by interventionist policies, not wiped out. That's a bit hard to quantify but grand idioligies have failed to often. Got to tinker with the machine so it serves the people and not the other way round.

 

[kyser_soze]

Why would you want to try to live outside capitalism? What would be the point? Fair enough if it makes you feel better I guess, but it seems like some kind of weird ascetic lifestylism to me.

Heh...yeah - the lefty equivalent of attending the gym in place of wearing a hair shirt and suchlike.

There was a great piece about this in the Economist about 4 years ago comparing various 'denial' lifestyles (anti-consumerist, militant vegan, gym-junkies) that reckoned if the same people had been alive 500 years ago they'd have been ascetic religious types (it also made the point that it's also a path to the moral high ground but that way lyeth nasty insults).

 

[Thora]

Heh...yeah - the lefty equivalent of attending the gym in place of wearing a hair shirt and suchlike.

There was a great piece about this in the Economist about 4 years ago comparing various 'denial' lifestyles (anti-consumerist, militant vegan, gym-junkies) that reckoned if the same people had been alive 500 years ago they'd have been ascetic religious types (it also made the point that it's also a path to the moral high ground but that way lyeth nasty insults).

I think all those lifestyle choices are fine - so long as they aren't elevated to 'politics'. Living in a teepee in Wales does not make you politically purer than the worker who loves his iPod. Squatting, skipping food etc are survival mechanisms under capitalism, they do not challenge capitalism. They are all perfectly reasonable activities, but they don't make the person engaging in them any better than the sheeple spending their weekends trailing round Ikea.

 

[bluestreak]

Why would you want to try to live outside capitalism? What would be the point? Fair enough if it makes you feel better I guess, but it seems like some kind of weird ascetic lifestylism to me.

because much of capitalism is fundamentally environmentally and socially damaging and living at the expense of those less fortunate then yourself?

because capitalism is inherantly a system that values money over people?

lots of reasons i think.

but just cos you don't have capitalism doesn't mean you have to live in caves and die of diarrhoa before yu're 20. unless of course you want to.

 

[bluestreak]

I think all those lifestyle choices are fine - so long as they aren't elevated to 'politics'. Living in a teepee in Wales does not make you politically purer than the worker who loves his iPod. Squatting, skipping food etc are survival mechanisms under capitalism, they do not challenge capitalism. They are all perfectly reasonable activities, but they don't make the person engaging in them any better than the sheeple spending their weekends trailing round Ikea.

but what does challenge capitalism though? and how does on measure political purity? we have to invoke value judgements according to our own morality - and while some people think that not being a nazi makes you better than being a nazi, others think not being an ikea consumerist sheep makes you better than etc...

 

[Thora]

because much of capitalism is fundamentally environmentally and socially damaging and living at the expense of those less fortunate then yourself?

because capitalism is inherantly a system that values money over people?

lots of reasons i think.

but just cos you don't have capitalism doesn't mean you have to live in caves and die of diarrhoa before yu're 20. unless of course you want to.

There's a difference between trying to end capitalism and replace it with something better, and making individual lifestyle choices to somehow exist untainted by it - the first is of course eminently sensible, the second I don't really understand the point of.

 

[bluestreak]

no, i'm good on that, i get what you're saying, but considering how difficult it's been shown to be to bring the entire global edifice of capitalism to its knees so far, perhaps leading by example on the fringes of capitalist society isn't such a crime. being in denial about the effectiveness of sucha lifestyle on the other hand... i guess what i'm saying is that you can't live outside it, and you can't always fight it, so what can you do. [inserts "wrings hands" symbol here]

and i dunno, i find it really disenfranchising when i find people who spend their time ranting about capitalism buy into it when it suits them because "you can't escape it, and beside you won't get ipods under anarchism".

 

[bluestreak]

actually what i think pisses me off more is political naivety, hypocrisy, and double-standards more than anything.

and hand-wringing.


*wrings hands*

 

[ice-is-forming]

i attempt to limit my consumerism and dependence on capatalism mainly because i don't like the idea of being dependent on such a fragile system.
i like to know that if the electric, water, transport whatever...got knocked out, i could still manage safely.
i try to live, and teach my kids how to live, without being dependent on outside services.
obviously this is not possible all the time, but i follow this way of life as much as possible and it makes me happy.
and also because i dislike greed, and greed and consumerism seem to go hand in hand

i don't feel moraly better than others but i must admit to being bored by the whole idea of buying new, bigger and better stuff..and i think that people who are into this are missing the point a bit.

and of course there is the 'ecological footprint' .

 

[Thora]

and i dunno, i find it really disenfranchising when i find people who spend their time ranting about capitalism buy into it when it suits them because "you can't escape it, and beside you won't get ipods under anarchism".

Rubbish! Why shouldn't we make the most of what little the current system offers us, since whether you buy an iPod or live in a teepee has no effect on capitalism whatsoever. It's ridiculous to deny yourself something out of a misplaced sense of anarchist purity.

 

[bluestreak]

thing is, IMO you will get ipods under anarchism. which is my issue. well, actually my issue is that under capitalism i can't afford an ipod.

 

[ice-is-forming]

whats an ipod?

did you need one before they were invented?

 

[bluestreak]

anyway, denial is what being a good anarchist is all about. how else do you get to sneer at all the other anarchists with their shiny consumer baubles when you've got a hand-built steam driven computer made out of things you found in hedges? denial is teh b0mb0r

 

[bluestreak]

whats an ipod?

did you need one before they were invented?

an ipod is like a really small band. it's a bit like a gramophone.

 

[ice-is-forming]

i,m just an old punk rocker who never sold out

 

[BettyButterfly]

If you are going to throw a petrol bomb at capitalism, does it make you a hypocrit if you use a coca cola bottle?

I love this analogy!

 

[radiohead]

i,m just an old punk rocker who never sold out

i've tried for years to live outside of it. it's impossible.

the only way is to get on the dole and deal with being skint.

that, or trade in illegal goods.

all you got, really.

or sleeping rough all yer life.



i hate money - i don't like it or want it or appreciate it - but it's increasingly becoming the only language people understand.

it's a loadabollocks; i'll find a way around it eventually.

 

[kyser_soze]

the only way is to get on the dole and deal with being skint.

that, or trade in illegal goods.

Both of which are innately tied to capitalism - without it you get no dole, and trading in illegal goods is just capaitalism without legal sanction. Sleeping rough is the only non-dependent, but even that is 'compromised' by having to gain exchange to pay for goods and services, and being dependent on cap to provide those goods and services.