Thank you. This is an important conversation that we are not having. I am not sure that we know how to have it. Some of what you write sounds like socialism, yet I fear that this is an old concept. We have bits and pieces of “socialism” operating in our environment, for example, cooperatives, some social businesses, a few small cities experimenting with participatory budgets etc. However, there is little coordination and, perhaps more importantly, little cultural education on this topic. How do we have conversations about this (at scale) in the present polarized political environment…I don’t know.
I believe the concepts of the commons and public interest predate Capitalism (with Marxism, Socialism, etc being responses to that thinking).
Concepts of a commons exist (or existed, as colonialism has been devastating) outside of Western/European worldviews, where Capitslism/etc emerged.
What came to my mind was a breaking away from individualism, itself a largely western (Western Asia, Western Europe, Mediterranean -- and spread via colonialism) concept.
May I suggest that both socialism and capitalism have been with us since (at least) the advent of agriculture and the consequent earliest phases of civilization? When the first band of hunter-gatherers decided to settle and "produce" their own food, it required new forms of cooperation (shared labor to produce shared wealth--i.e., food) and gave rise to new forms of competition (accumulation of wealth based on the labor of others).
What's new is what's always new: technological innovation. New tech disrupts old forms that were designed with, for, and by antiquating forms. Communication technologies democratize information, while enabling the owners and developers of new tech to accumulate information and turn it into a new form of currency.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions created kings who required a public to do their bidding in exchange for security and capitalists who required a public to both produce and consume their goods and services. The informational revolution creates its own class of autocrats and oligarchs.
What's different, it seems to me in the moment, is the large-scale replacement of human labor with machine labor. That's where I think Jesse may be onto something in terms of the disappearance of "the public" as an effective (cooperative-socialist) counterweight to autocratic (competitive-capitalist) impulses.
If we intend to maintain something like the current (and, so far, recurring) balance between cooperative-socialist and competitive-capitalist tendencies, we need to think in terms of creating new structures (perhaps in collaboration with artificial intelligence) for how information is both shared and hoarded.
"May I suggest that both socialism and capitalism have been with us since (at least) the advent of agriculture and the consequent earliest phases of civilization?"
You can suggest it, but then I'd have to disagree 😊 .
(Hopefully I can disagree without being seen as disagreeable, as I know many people take on specific worldviews as part of their personal identity.)
These are terms to reference concepts that grew out of the very unique history of Western Europe, and were not strictly related to the advent of agriculture in different parts of the world. We know this as many other peoples used agriculture and didn't form economic theories at all resembling what formed in Western Europe.
German Karl Marx was very clear that he was offering minor critiques of Capitalism as articulated by Scottish/British Adam Smith. Socialism is an enhancement of Adam Smith's work making use of the writings of Karl Marx, partly but not entirely as part of the changes that the French Revolution brought.
Once you take those terms out of that historical (time and place) context, the terms lose meaning and other more accurate terms need to be used for what is being referenced.
I can’t help but feel this conversaion relates to how Westerners (like myself growing up under the Dominion of Canada, educated in state-run institutions in Ontario) are taught: as if the history of Western Europe is the history of the World.
I had to do my own learning about some of the history of the continent I was born on and the peoples here, as nothing was taught by the Canadian settler-colonial state.
At this point in my learning I even question how many indoctrinated in narrow Western/European worldviews use the word "civilization" to only refer to the specific historical path that Western Europe took.
Even the idea that there is a linear movement from “hunter-gatherer” to “agriculture” is a Western notion, while other older civilizations (like we see on this continent) recognize it as tied to human population densities and resource abundance-vs-scarcities. This hast meant that "hunter-gatherer" vs "agriculture" is cyclic and changes back and forth over time.
Here is something I wrote early in my anti-racism deep dives:
While I was claimed as Canadian at birth, I never quite fit in for various reasons (Being Autistic with the hacker ethic only being part) and don't have Canadian or any national Identity as part of my personal identity.
I am glad that my use of the term "socialism" has sparked this discussion. In truth, I used the term loosely. Your argument aligns with the idea that human societies historically functioned with communal principles before the rise of capitalist structures. I believe that this is historically correct for smaller communities. Many socialists would emphasize that capitalism isn't just an economic system, but a historical disruption—a departure from collective resource management toward privatized accumulation and exploitation.
They might argue that individualism, as promoted by capitalist ideology, isn't an inherent human trait but rather a constructed value that serves economic elites. By breaking communal bonds and fostering competition, capitalism ensures resources flow toward those with power rather than being equitably distributed. The destruction of commons—whether through colonialism, privatization, or enclosure—represents a fundamental loss of social and economic democracy.
Perhaps when I responded (while still in bed) to the original piece I was thinking about collectivism. The resurgence of collectivist principles isn’t just nostalgic; it’s a necessary restructuring in response to modern crises like climate change, wealth inequality, and exploitation. Rather than simply reclaiming past models, we might see the current moment as an opportunity to evolve collective governance in new ways—adapting historical communal systems while integrating modern understandings of sustainability, equity, and democratic control. Unfortunately I do not see much general discussion of this, nor much fundamental education about alternatives.
"Unfortunately I do not see much general discussion of this, nor much fundamental education about alternatives."
It all depends on where each of us look.
I didn't find it when I hung around regular Canadian political parties, or when I was at school (including at Carleton University).
But once I (as an Autistic person) started a deeper dive into international trade agreements (MAI/etc) in the late 1990's, and then even more with anti-racism and anti-colonialism since COVID, I am seeing quite a bit.
It isn't mainstream Canadian discussions, but then again we shouldn't expect to be hearing as much within a culture that is trying to maintain cohesion as a foreign imposed settler-colonial construct.
I lived in Coop Voisins for part of the late 1990's and early 2000's. I went in with such high-hopes of living within a cooperative community, only to be extremely disappointed. The reality that hit me hard was it is extremely hard to build cooperative culture within the context of Canadian society.
(What you say in the Bio attached to your profile suggests you may know that even more than I have experienced).
I have been very excited to find some engagement on these topics in forums such as this.
(I'm trying to be careful. I am aware of how certain worldviews are incorporated into personal identities by some people. I'm trying to discuss ideas within a Systems Theory context as I am a systems person with a hacker ethic, and not trying to trigger emotions about personal identities).
Not disagreeable at all. I appreciate your perspective and your shining a light on the shadier aspects of my own, which as you correctly point out is steeped in Western modernism. I'll cop to diluting the meaning of the terms "socialism" and "capitalism" and perhaps to misapplying them to cultures that have followed different historical paths than mine.
But there's an And coming...
Smith and Marx responded to specific developments in their Western European contexts, but Smith did not invent competition and Marx did not invent cooperation. They both witnessed these (as nearly as I can tell--your mileage may vary) universal human tendencies expressed in culture-specific ways, and each man idealized his preferred tendency. We are not stuck with their theories, but we are stuck (for the present, at least) with the contradictory human tendencies that gave rise to their theories and that have been documented throughout recorded history on every continent.
Of course Smith and Marx did not invent these things.
But I believe it is best we talk about these things without using the specific words that have become extremely tied to their writings. The more we use those words out of context, the more confused people will become.
When someone says they are anti-Capitalist, that doesn't mean they are anti-competition, and those who are anti-Communist are not necessarily anti-cooperation.
Those concepts are both more than cooperation and competition, and less than. Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was far less extreme on competition within Capitalism than what that term has come to mean, especially in the North American context. Smith even warned against oligarchies. (We can see the warning was ignored here: Musk in USA, Resource Extraction companies in Alberta and Canada, etc)
As to the cross-continental history, you might find this interesting.
Given the Dominion of Canada government (as it was called in my youth) still dishonours treaties with the Haudenosaunee, and is still stealing and putting settlers on Haudenosaunee land, this is not only the past but the present. Canada even arrests journalists for trying to report on its activities.
BTW: While I've lived on the lands of Anishinabe peoples my entire life, I have other recent settler ancestors born on lands of the Haudenosaunee and try to learn as much as I can about both leagues of Nations under the Dish With One Spoon treaty.
Also, the term settler isn’t about individuals or some impugning of someone’s personal identity, but a recognition of the settler-colonial nature of Canada. I am aware many people incorporate these ideas into their personal identity, but I don’t mean for anyone to feel personally insulted by the language.
Thank you. This is an important conversation that we are not having. I am not sure that we know how to have it. Some of what you write sounds like socialism, yet I fear that this is an old concept. We have bits and pieces of “socialism” operating in our environment, for example, cooperatives, some social businesses, a few small cities experimenting with participatory budgets etc. However, there is little coordination and, perhaps more importantly, little cultural education on this topic. How do we have conversations about this (at scale) in the present polarized political environment…I don’t know.
Curious (not a challenge).
What made you think of socialism?
I believe the concepts of the commons and public interest predate Capitalism (with Marxism, Socialism, etc being responses to that thinking).
Concepts of a commons exist (or existed, as colonialism has been devastating) outside of Western/European worldviews, where Capitslism/etc emerged.
What came to my mind was a breaking away from individualism, itself a largely western (Western Asia, Western Europe, Mediterranean -- and spread via colonialism) concept.
I agree. When I hear "the public," I picture Hyde Park in London and how important that was at the time
May I suggest that both socialism and capitalism have been with us since (at least) the advent of agriculture and the consequent earliest phases of civilization? When the first band of hunter-gatherers decided to settle and "produce" their own food, it required new forms of cooperation (shared labor to produce shared wealth--i.e., food) and gave rise to new forms of competition (accumulation of wealth based on the labor of others).
What's new is what's always new: technological innovation. New tech disrupts old forms that were designed with, for, and by antiquating forms. Communication technologies democratize information, while enabling the owners and developers of new tech to accumulate information and turn it into a new form of currency.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions created kings who required a public to do their bidding in exchange for security and capitalists who required a public to both produce and consume their goods and services. The informational revolution creates its own class of autocrats and oligarchs.
What's different, it seems to me in the moment, is the large-scale replacement of human labor with machine labor. That's where I think Jesse may be onto something in terms of the disappearance of "the public" as an effective (cooperative-socialist) counterweight to autocratic (competitive-capitalist) impulses.
If we intend to maintain something like the current (and, so far, recurring) balance between cooperative-socialist and competitive-capitalist tendencies, we need to think in terms of creating new structures (perhaps in collaboration with artificial intelligence) for how information is both shared and hoarded.
"May I suggest that both socialism and capitalism have been with us since (at least) the advent of agriculture and the consequent earliest phases of civilization?"
You can suggest it, but then I'd have to disagree 😊 .
(Hopefully I can disagree without being seen as disagreeable, as I know many people take on specific worldviews as part of their personal identity.)
These are terms to reference concepts that grew out of the very unique history of Western Europe, and were not strictly related to the advent of agriculture in different parts of the world. We know this as many other peoples used agriculture and didn't form economic theories at all resembling what formed in Western Europe.
German Karl Marx was very clear that he was offering minor critiques of Capitalism as articulated by Scottish/British Adam Smith. Socialism is an enhancement of Adam Smith's work making use of the writings of Karl Marx, partly but not entirely as part of the changes that the French Revolution brought.
Once you take those terms out of that historical (time and place) context, the terms lose meaning and other more accurate terms need to be used for what is being referenced.
I can’t help but feel this conversaion relates to how Westerners (like myself growing up under the Dominion of Canada, educated in state-run institutions in Ontario) are taught: as if the history of Western Europe is the history of the World.
I had to do my own learning about some of the history of the continent I was born on and the peoples here, as nothing was taught by the Canadian settler-colonial state.
At this point in my learning I even question how many indoctrinated in narrow Western/European worldviews use the word "civilization" to only refer to the specific historical path that Western Europe took.
Even the idea that there is a linear movement from “hunter-gatherer” to “agriculture” is a Western notion, while other older civilizations (like we see on this continent) recognize it as tied to human population densities and resource abundance-vs-scarcities. This hast meant that "hunter-gatherer" vs "agriculture" is cyclic and changes back and forth over time.
Here is something I wrote early in my anti-racism deep dives:
https://r.flora.ca/p/ecocapitalism-ecosocialism-decolonization
While I was claimed as Canadian at birth, I never quite fit in for various reasons (Being Autistic with the hacker ethic only being part) and don't have Canadian or any national Identity as part of my personal identity.
https://r.flora.ca/p/canadian-heritage
I am glad that my use of the term "socialism" has sparked this discussion. In truth, I used the term loosely. Your argument aligns with the idea that human societies historically functioned with communal principles before the rise of capitalist structures. I believe that this is historically correct for smaller communities. Many socialists would emphasize that capitalism isn't just an economic system, but a historical disruption—a departure from collective resource management toward privatized accumulation and exploitation.
They might argue that individualism, as promoted by capitalist ideology, isn't an inherent human trait but rather a constructed value that serves economic elites. By breaking communal bonds and fostering competition, capitalism ensures resources flow toward those with power rather than being equitably distributed. The destruction of commons—whether through colonialism, privatization, or enclosure—represents a fundamental loss of social and economic democracy.
Perhaps when I responded (while still in bed) to the original piece I was thinking about collectivism. The resurgence of collectivist principles isn’t just nostalgic; it’s a necessary restructuring in response to modern crises like climate change, wealth inequality, and exploitation. Rather than simply reclaiming past models, we might see the current moment as an opportunity to evolve collective governance in new ways—adapting historical communal systems while integrating modern understandings of sustainability, equity, and democratic control. Unfortunately I do not see much general discussion of this, nor much fundamental education about alternatives.
"Unfortunately I do not see much general discussion of this, nor much fundamental education about alternatives."
It all depends on where each of us look.
I didn't find it when I hung around regular Canadian political parties, or when I was at school (including at Carleton University).
But once I (as an Autistic person) started a deeper dive into international trade agreements (MAI/etc) in the late 1990's, and then even more with anti-racism and anti-colonialism since COVID, I am seeing quite a bit.
It isn't mainstream Canadian discussions, but then again we shouldn't expect to be hearing as much within a culture that is trying to maintain cohesion as a foreign imposed settler-colonial construct.
https://r.flora.ca/p/canadian-heritage
I lived in Coop Voisins for part of the late 1990's and early 2000's. I went in with such high-hopes of living within a cooperative community, only to be extremely disappointed. The reality that hit me hard was it is extremely hard to build cooperative culture within the context of Canadian society.
(What you say in the Bio attached to your profile suggests you may know that even more than I have experienced).
I have been very excited to find some engagement on these topics in forums such as this.
(I'm trying to be careful. I am aware of how certain worldviews are incorporated into personal identities by some people. I'm trying to discuss ideas within a Systems Theory context as I am a systems person with a hacker ethic, and not trying to trigger emotions about personal identities).
Not disagreeable at all. I appreciate your perspective and your shining a light on the shadier aspects of my own, which as you correctly point out is steeped in Western modernism. I'll cop to diluting the meaning of the terms "socialism" and "capitalism" and perhaps to misapplying them to cultures that have followed different historical paths than mine.
But there's an And coming...
Smith and Marx responded to specific developments in their Western European contexts, but Smith did not invent competition and Marx did not invent cooperation. They both witnessed these (as nearly as I can tell--your mileage may vary) universal human tendencies expressed in culture-specific ways, and each man idealized his preferred tendency. We are not stuck with their theories, but we are stuck (for the present, at least) with the contradictory human tendencies that gave rise to their theories and that have been documented throughout recorded history on every continent.
Of course Smith and Marx did not invent these things.
But I believe it is best we talk about these things without using the specific words that have become extremely tied to their writings. The more we use those words out of context, the more confused people will become.
When someone says they are anti-Capitalist, that doesn't mean they are anti-competition, and those who are anti-Communist are not necessarily anti-cooperation.
Those concepts are both more than cooperation and competition, and less than. Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was far less extreme on competition within Capitalism than what that term has come to mean, especially in the North American context. Smith even warned against oligarchies. (We can see the warning was ignored here: Musk in USA, Resource Extraction companies in Alberta and Canada, etc)
As to the cross-continental history, you might find this interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFvxkvpi2w
Given the Dominion of Canada government (as it was called in my youth) still dishonours treaties with the Haudenosaunee, and is still stealing and putting settlers on Haudenosaunee land, this is not only the past but the present. Canada even arrests journalists for trying to report on its activities.
https://r.flora.ca/p/undrip-uyghurs
BTW: While I've lived on the lands of Anishinabe peoples my entire life, I have other recent settler ancestors born on lands of the Haudenosaunee and try to learn as much as I can about both leagues of Nations under the Dish With One Spoon treaty.
Also, the term settler isn’t about individuals or some impugning of someone’s personal identity, but a recognition of the settler-colonial nature of Canada. I am aware many people incorporate these ideas into their personal identity, but I don’t mean for anyone to feel personally insulted by the language.
I am so impressed woth your work Jesse.
With
I am so impressed with your work Jesse.
if this was the speech at the end of the movie I'd be standing up and clapping!!!