Capitalism: Is it Working?

[Something completely different]

The 'force' was, though it was still a pittance, the pay was more than workers could get in agriculture. People didn't flock to factories because back on the farm was better. They weren't dragged from their homes and forced to toil in factories. They showed up looking for work. It's a shame that they couldn't do better, but the first step up from extreme poverty is still pretty damn impoverished and desperate.

not true.

19th century society wasnt the kind of place where you could simply move from one place to another. Most of the land was still owned by nobles and landlords, who drove the people who lived on it of the land to make profit through breeding sheep.
Most famous example being the clearance of the highlands in Scotland.
The only country which avoided this was France, where the nobility had been recently made literaly headless - hence industrialisation in France took mainly place through the state, which avoided the mass poverty each other European country had, but is partialy responsible for creating the blobbed up buerocratic state owned industrial mess France suffers under today.

I agree, the process of capitalism increases efficiency whether your goals are benign, selfish, or evil. It's a system of economics, not a system of ethics. It is measured against other economic systems by how well it works. The ethics have to be supplied by the participants, just as in any other economic system.

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Please further elaborate.
By my definition of words, a participant in tha capitalist system is a capitalist - but you stated that capitalism doesnt provide ethics - are you contradicting yourself or did I miss something?

Why by "participants"????

Since when is capitalism the central theme which defines a society????

And by that time, the wealth and security they wanted actually existed, thanks to decades of strong economic growth. The same movements in the infancy of the industrial revolution would have shut down the factories.

Not true. Wealth inequality stayed widespread well up to the 1950s
The factors contributing to the social standerds becomeing more equal are numerous - but in my opinion the most importent was neither the free market nore workers movements - but the reform of the political arena which allowed everyone to participate in it - thereby making social concerns importent for catching votes.

It is a blind assertion to state that the early movements would have shut down the factories. Are you an expert in creating accurate alternative history models???? Remember - the most importent concern of the earliest workers rights movements werent even wages nore the right to form unions - but the basic right to vote - which was only given to people who owned land.

If you think I am against workers movements, or for miserable working conditions, you are misunderstanding me. I'm merely being realistic. In an environment where extreme poverty is the norm, you can't magically skip the part of development where pay is low and conditions are poor. You CAN shorten that part with investment from already-developed countries and you CAN mitigate violation of rights with good laws, transparency and economic incentives. I'm not for sweat shops, but the way to get rid of them isn't to close them down and put their employees out of work. It's to make them obsolete as fast as possible, and that takes more effort than being picky about where you buy your t-shirts.

Wrong, our economic system depends on sweatshops and cheap labor - which is why companies in Bangladesh and China have an interest in the politics of labor there. It is the bigger profit that counts in economics and not social change. Proof of which can be seen all throughout the third world: It was Reagan and Tatcher who proposed the idea that through economic liberties will come social liberties - and see today - the same countries which opened to the free market then are still not offering social liberties.
Some of which, such as China are even moving away from the sweatshop lable and participating in the free market by producing products they developed themselves - do in the end: capitalism does not bring democracy - if anything it brings stability to regimes since it legitemises them as trading partners and gives them a chance to legitemise themselves amongst their own people by producing wealth.

Given how the government then had its cheeks spread for the land barons, I would say it was a better example of soft fascism. The government in the 19th century apparently saw its role as giving away land and other special privileges to the companies headed by those most adept at bribery. Not so different from today. Libertarians tend not to be big fans of consumerism or corporatism or crony capitalism; all of which are detrimental to a free market. As long as politicians are in a position to grant corporations special favors, corporations will find a way to get away with influencing the tax code and having a hand in writing the regulations that govern them to the detriment of their less well-connected competitors.

The biggest magnates werent barons, but successfull people who managed to create a buisness through enterprneurship. After gaining their wealth the goverments disinterest for social disorder greatly benefited them since equal rights for workers werent given. Non of them were nobles. Other than that, I do not see evidence of the goverment doing any other favores to early industrial magnates and giants other than towards the arms industry. The east India company was actualy even nationalised and so were several companies in imperial Russia.
General goverment policie then was one of non goverment intervention - which is also what caused the great Irish and Indian famines.

I always wondered what that word meant:

Corporatism, also known as corporativism has more than one meaning. It may refer to political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.[1] Corporatism is theoretically based upon the interpretation of a community as an organic body

Are you seriously suggesting that the 19th century and verious other societies of tooday live with a medieval social structure?

I find this idea of a goverment which is seperated from a nations economics will somehow create allout wealth to be very similar to marxism in a way: In that it is a prophecy which cannot be proven to be succesfull when applied.
Other than that, it seems to simply be the same kind of word which communists would use when confronted with the horrors of the eastern block, only that you will use it for when confronted with the negatives of capitalism: "Oh but that isnt real capitalism"