It's well-known that every time you write in the passive voice, or misplace an apostrophe, a kitten dies. Someone should tell this author that every time you actually write down LOL in an ostensibly serious article, an entire flock of particularly fluffy kittens are thrown off a cliff into a sea of hungry sharks.
Seriously, don't do it. It makes you look like the worst kind of idiot.
Anyway, as with the article on fascism, many interesting thoughts here :
The worker, a shop owner, the shop owner, the owner of a chain. Even, maybe, in the small way of “owning” a home — which is to say, paying back its debt all his life — or buying a stock or a bond, and so on: the point is to amass capital. So capitalism is something like a pyramid, which we’re all climbing, worker to manager, prole to bourgeois, and at the apex is the capitalist. But what is the capitalist trying to become?
The capitalist, ironically enough, is trying to earn his freedom from capitalism — just like everyone else. The only difference is that he’s a step closer. Let me prove it, with a simple and extreme example, that of a plantation, and slave, owner — the truest capitalist of all, not so long ago. What is he really after? He’s trying to earn is freedom from labour — not having to do work, hence the slaves. He’s also trying to win freedom from exploitation — he holds the whip, but is above the moral law. And from control, punishment, hierarchy — he has no boss to answer to. Perhaps he devotes his life to more “gentlemanly” pursuits — art, literature, discovery, exploration: but what’s the point of these? These, too, are a freedom from capitalism — from its bruising stress, pressure, anxiety, competition — now he is free to really be himself.
I suppose my minor caveat would be that not everyone is trying to escape it. You don't have to climb the ladder if you don't want to. You might still be "escaping" in the sense that you only work to finance the things you really enjoy, but what if you enjoy your work anyway ? So long as your financial situation is adequate to your needs and desires, the system basically works. The system breaks when it demands financial advancement for its own sake when none is really required, or when it demands undesirable work when preferably options are available.
You can see it in stark, comic terms. What are Bezos and Musk doing? Trying to flee to Mars. What’s Gates doing? Recommending you books to read, and trying to save the world with charity. These are different forms of freedom from capitalism. Maybe on Mars, we can build a better world. Maybe through ideas and philanthropy, we can solve the problems that corporations can’t. All the capitalists I see are trying to win freedom from capitalism, in one way or another. Aren’t they?
These three things, technology, finance, and public goods, have finally matured and developed to a degree that freedom from capitalism isn’t just possible. It’s becoming inevitable. What’s really happening as these three forces intersect? Society’s surplus is being reinvested back in precisely the very things we are really after — instead of being skimmed off by predatory elites. Freedom from exploitation, freedom from control, freedom to find, realize, and develop ourselves. We haven’t had the means, mechanisms, or tools, in the long history of humankind, to ever really achieve those on a mass scale yet. But we have them now.
https://eand.co/if-the-point-of-capitalism-is-to-escape-capitalism-then-whats-the-point-of-capitalism-bedd1b2447d
Though it is true, continuous use of the passive voice makes for terrible prose, the reverse is also true. The passive voice is always a better choice when something's being done to something, or there's a containing clause:
ReplyDeleteAlligators are found in wet parts of the American South and have taken up residence in some retirement homes in Illinois
Nobody knows what happened to him. One day he was just fine, then last Tuesday he was bundled off to a rehab clinic in Tucson.
Indeed, the passive voice has its uses, and is much more suitable for factual descriptions of events and suchlike where they are known. Personally I think the active voice should be used to introduce more subjective statements. Thereafter the passive voice can be used for a few sentences or so and it will be understood that following statements are also the author's opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhere I really detest the passive voice is in scientific review papers - it's little more than manipulation. Saying, "it is well-known that..." should never be used to replace "in our view...".
In my view the problem is two-fold:
ReplyDelete1) People think capitalism is a good model for economy guidance, where it isn't a model for economy guidance
2) People don't understand that tax is rent, and the rich should be very happy indeed to pay the "please don't bring out the guillotines" fees.
We have Strunk and White's little treatise to thank for our present hatred of the passive voice:
ReplyDeleteRobertson Davies said of Strunk & White: "This is a wonderful book, if you want to write like a White or a Strunk. But do you? I should hate to read a novel written in Strunkese. As for Mr. White, his style is a perfect instrument for what he has to say, but for my taste that sounds too often like a few wise, weary words written by a man who is on the point of retiring to bed with a heavy cold."
I think he also said somewhere that the book enables you competently construct the prose equivalent of a hen house, but that many people want to construct something a bit more elaborate.
"Are thrown off a cliff" is passive. Sorry about the kittens.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism works well because it does not presume that human nature is perfectible or changeable. Humans are flawed, and all attempts to remedy that have failed.
ReplyDeleteSo, yeah, of course capitalists are trying to escape from capitalism. What would anyone expect?
We are not trapped in capitalism. We are trapped in our human nature.