Whole Foods' Co-Founder John Mackey: "Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism"

[King Kreole]

"Pure communism" Communism is a stateless, classless society. Stalinism isn't communism, it isn't even socialism. Maoist China wasn't communist, you could argue it had some socialist aspects... Communism is something that exists on the horizon of socialism (worker ownership and management of the means of production). This isn't a matter of separating theory and implementation; if you're referring to societies that did not even have worker ownership and management of the means of production, how can they be socialist? It isn't a matter of "pure this" and "pure that."

The difference between "crony capitalism" and the sort advocated by right-wing "libertarians" is the difference between the interests of small/medium-sized business owners and big business owners. It's a struggle within the bourgeoisie for power over capital. But the smaller business owners switch it up real quick when that enterprise becomes bigger

Please show where communism is genocidal or racist

Just because a political party or regime says it is something, does not make it so. Rachel Dolezal has a stronger claim to being Black than Stalin did to being a socialist or communist. Is Dolezal Black?

When I refer to "pure communism" i'm referring to ideology, not practice. It's reasonable to believe that the Soviet Union and China never achieved "true" communism, my question is why that is? My hypothesis is that it's not possible because of certain, endemic factors in humanity. I think it's better to work with those factors to create a society that is as progressive and prosperous. To keep pining for this hypothetical eden is foolish, especially when we've tried it and it's almost always ending in total disaster. Also, the Soviet Union didn't have worker ownership and management of production? This is the first time i've heard someone claim that the Soviet Collectivization process is a myth.

Of course the battle over crony capitalism is between small business owners/purists and big business owners/bureaucrats. The small business owners have more to gain from a competitive marketplace than big business guys. It's up to the government to enforce the fair play rules. Naturally, when the small business owners become big business owners, they will flip and try to rig the market for their own interest. Yet again, a strong system is needed to enforce the rules. This is all acknowledged and built into capitalistic theory.

It's not so much Communism that is genocidal/racist, it's the regimes that attempt to implement it that invariably become so. Can you name one medium-to-large scale historical civilization or society that you would consider truly on the way to communism, or is this something that is going to be perpetually out of reach? And if it's the latter, perhaps we should think about why it is so.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

It isn't hyperbole. Slavery is a class system with definite relations of production and contending classes. It isn't simply something that is morally wrong... it is a system, a mode of production, just as capitalism is. Capitalism also has definite relations of production and contending classes. And the ruling class in each system uses almost identical talking points

Not to mention, bosses and slaveholders were closely intertwined or the same for 100 years of this country's existence It isn't even a thought experiment to see how they related to each other, just study history

You seem to have a problem with the stratification of labor though. Thats what I'm saying

You make it sound like bosses are to fault for poverty.

Again, moderation is something lacking in your talking points

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

"Humans are naturally selfish" - capitalism tries to hammer this idea home at every turn so people internalize it and believe it as a justification for capitalism... and despite this gargantuan effort, there are still countless people who fight for and favor solidarity and cooperation every single day.

You could say heterosexual men are naturally almost always horny but does that justify rape? (I'm sure we have some far right-wingers on here who believe it does )

There is no single, fixed "human nature," especially not one independent of material and social circumstances

Why does solidarity get to determine what businesses pay its employees to the absolute degree?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

It was a good system for slaveholders, right?

Enslaved people had shelter, food, and clothes, right? That was prosperity compared to how a lot of people around the world were living, right?

"The defenders of slavery rightly identified the links between abolitionism and socialism."

You're trolling with these straw men.

No one is talking about slavery here fam.

But working for $15 and hour, which will end up being $20-ish for most people and still struggling doesn't mean life i supposed to be that much easier for oyu

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

"Reasonable levels of exploitation"

I am not okay with that. Oppressed people always have the right to resist their oppression. No one has the right to oppress other people.

It is okay for you to think that - if you're an oppressor, I don't care what you think. If you're the member of an oppressed group and think that, you're a fool and a tool but you can think what you want... just don't get in the way of people fighting for their freedom

Freedom fighting? What?

Fam, do you ever just turn that shyt off?

What are you talking about?

Working at Whole Foods isn't oppression fam.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I did not call you names, i told you to shut up because you are talking out of your ass and don't deserve a true critical response

show me the argument in the post you responded to in this thread that made those claims or apologize fallacious straw man claims

because here are examples of the common way in which I refer to the paradigm
http://www.thecoli.com/posts/13522835/

http://www.thecoli.com/posts/7595568/

http://www.thecoli.com/posts/6409370/

I never said I supported "runaway capitalism"

Now tell me why socialism gets the benefit of the doubt from you more times than not

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Yeah, because that shyt is just patently false ("humans are naturally selfish and always have been like they are today") when you look at the totality of human history, from hunter-gatherer society to the present-day. It is an unnuanced and juvenile reading of human nature... and how convenient that people parrot it when it serves the definite material interests of those in power

For the working class, the fight for socialism isn't necessarily about some communal ideal. The class is fighting for more compared to the scraps it is given under capitalism. Socialism is self-interested from a class perspective.

If anything, the working class is being very selfless under capitalism, allowing bosses to live extravagant lifestyles from workers' toil and blood, sweat, and tears . Selfless to the point where its almost suicidal.

Hold up...now you're saying bosses have to work as much as those who are employed at lower levels?

You want to talk about entitlement but not the entitlement of those who took the risks to create opportunities and raise capital?

I mean what are you talking about here?

Just because you work at Whole Foods doesn't mean you get a condo with full amenities

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

When were laborers in control of the means of production in the USSR or Maoist China? Bureaucrats aren't workers. State social capitalism is still capitalism.

The communism I'm sympathetic to isn't about selflessness. It's about justice. Whens the last time that whole foods owner picked an orange or stacked a shelf? When's the last time he swept the floors or drove the trucks? If he isn't doing all the work why is he entitled to use profits as he sees fit?.

This has to be one of the most disingenuous arguments I've ever seen.

Are you kidding me?

its HIS company.

We can argue how much the state says he should pay them and what benefits he should offer, but we're talking about the Co-Founder driving trucks and stacking pallets now?

Fam, its HIS company.

WTF?

He mentions that their payroll is 7-8 times larger than their profits. Anybody think a 12.5% universal bonus is peanuts?

You can't just toss out numbers and list them as targets for every industry. Commerce (especially groceries) is fiercely competitive and Whole Foods luckily has a niche of goods marketed to a group of people willing to pay for them.

Side note-Fascism and communism are not comparable morally.

and they're not the same thing either.

Fascism is at its core a racist and warmongering ideology that would inevitably lead to genocide or the next thing to it. Communism can and has been hijacked into tolitarianism, but there is little equivalency between an ideology that stresses equality, justice, and peace and one advocating supremacy, nationalism, and domination

You can't have nation-states without some degree of nationalism and domination.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

His point was very simple. "Intellectuals" don't like capitalism because they believe it rewards people's greed and promotes self-interest, which they believe to be a negative learned trait. They believe man isn't naturally greedy and social/economic factors make him so. Ergo, removing these social/economic factors will allow him to realize his true altruistic state. They want less capitalism, not more.

I'll simplify even more, all he's saying is:

"Those who can't do, teach"

And thats probably why he feels such...disdain, if not ...aversion to perceived "highfalutin intellectualism"

 

[Tate]

Yeah exactly, this is what John Mackey was doing. Separating the theory from the implementation. Just as he said crony capitalism isn't pure capitalism, you're saying Stalinist/Maoist communist isn't pure communism. It's disingenuous to claim your right to adapt to historical occurrences that harm your position while denying someone else's.

As for your other points, John Mackey isn't being paid to pick oranges or stack shelves. He has his role and the other workers at the company have theirs. Specialization has been a sine qua non of the greatest period of prosperity the world has ever known. If your problem is that he is being compensated at a rate incommensurate to the value he provides, I would ask how you're determining value. Because the skill set needed for an individual truck driver or floor sweeper doesn't seem to be equal to whatever skills Mackey employs at CEO of the 4 billion dollar company overseeing 58,000 truck drivers and floor sweepers. Those people are easily replaceable because they have a low skillset.

Also, I agree that "pure" Communism's ideology isn't inherently genocidal or racist, the point is that it almost always inevitably becomes so. We have to look at why this ideology is so susceptible to being hijacked, and my hypothesis is that it's because it doesn't acknowledge basic factors that are imbedded in human psychology. Communism is something that is wonderful on an individual scale but completely disintegrates on a national scale because it fails to incorporate the whole range of human behaviours and psyches. It's telling that it's usually the leaders of these communist regimes that display the behaviours and beliefs that end up counteracting its ideology.

Crony capitalism is pure capitalism. That's what capital does, it expands, it seeks control. It'll create a government in its image, with no exception. Stalinism and Maoism are doctrines that are theoretically for transitionary periods. They aren't meant to be communism in the actual sense. That's what The Great Leap Forward was about, trying to get to communism.

Regardless, they don't operate under a socialist means of ownership. The people who work the factories don't own the factories. The men who plow the fields don't own the fields. It's theoretically public ownership but state ownership usually doesn't work that way.

I don't care about his compensation, I care about the idea that someone can "own" a company. He who works the fields owns the fields.

Communism has a habit of ending up in tolitarianism for a couple reasons. The first being Lenin's idea of a vanguard party. The most important being Stalin's hijacking of the party's machinery and making it into a rubber stamp congress. The final being the western and Soviet worlds propaganda of this being true communism.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Social democracy and Stalinism have really muddled what communism means

Doesn't really matter though.

I'm all for mixed economies, but promoting this idea of unified equality is outright nonsense to me.

I don't think everyone deserves the same outcomes, but I do believe that we can push for the same opportunities as much as possible.

I look at the world as infinitely imperfect and we can make measures to address certain things, but there will always, some inherent inequity

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

actually no, he doesn't say that. but let's say he had articulated that
no intellectual hates capitalism because it does not let man realize his altruistic state and if they did the are irrelevant arguments to me, besides being petty.
the intellectuals I follow from Chomsky to Zinn have issues with runaway capitalism because of the suffering it causes and they desire more restraints on capitalism.
The general idea that any restraint is anti-free market is bullshyt

You can have laws that create fair play for everyone in the market and laws that prevent fair play in the market.

SOME restraints are anti-free market. This is the problem with you. Its all or nothing and its frankly so insultingly childish I don't know how you managed to convince anyone you're a functional adult at times. I mean come on man...I thought you were reasonable on here.

See, ya'll are quick to shoot down nationalism and patriotism and all of these concepts of identity, but when REAL free-market capitalists come along and take those jobs south of the border or elsewhere, you all are quick to proclaim how evil capitalism is.

Well we still live in a world with borders and countries with self interest so you can't universally have this idea that the world is all equal yet complain when others get the the same jobs for less money due to competition for labor elsewhere AND SIMULTANEOUSLY complain about how the government isn't doing enough to keep companies in the USA.

Companies have to have incentives in a globalized economy to help their own countrymen...and being anti-USA and anti-capitalism isn't going to fix that.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Right-wingers lament sacrifice, focusing on the greater good, etc., until it comes to the military or police Then it is amazing, noble, and encouraged

Protection of capitalism and economic interests isn't the same as creating and sustaining those interests.

Stop trolling man.

You're being lazy in here.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Crony capitalism is pure capitalism. That's what capital does, it expands, it seeks control. It'll create a government in its image, with no exception. Stalinism and Maoism are doctrines that are theoretically for transitionary periods. They aren't meant to be communism in the actual sense. That's what The Great Leap Forward was about, trying to get to communism.

Regardless, they don't operate under a socialist means of ownership. The people who work the factories don't own the factories. The men who plow the fields don't own the fields. It's theoretically public ownership but state ownership usually doesn't work that way.

I don't care about his compensation, I care about the idea that someone can "own" a company. He who works the fields owns the fields.

Communism has a habit of ending up in tolitarianism for a couple reasons. The first being Lenin's idea of a vanguard party. The most important being Stalin's hijacking of the party's machinery and making it into a rubber stamp congress. The final being the western and Soviet worlds propaganda of this being true communism.

No.

Just.

No.



Specialization of labor GAVE some of these fieldworkers jobs. NEVER forget that.

 

[Tate]

This has to be one of the most disingenuous arguments I've ever seen.

Are you kidding me?

its HIS company.

We can argue how much the state says he should pay them and what benefits he should offer, but we're talking about the Co-Founder driving trucks and stacking pallets now?

Fam, its HIS company.

WTF?

You can't just toss out numbers and list them as targets for every industry. Commerce (especially groceries) is fiercely competitive and Whole Foods luckily has a niche of goods marketed to a group of people willing to pay for them.

and they're not the same thing either.

You can't have nation-states without some degree of nationalism and domination.

I don't believe in private property.

I'm not saying how he should spend his money. I'm saying he has no right to own others work. I'm saying that's not his money.

I'm using his numbers.

Nationalism and nation states are directly responsible for countless deaths and will be responsible for many, many more. How are they good or desirable?