Talk:Capitalism

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Recently added Defence section: self-promotion?

The editor 于星 (Xing Yu) has recently added a Defence section to this article. In its current state, it only provides one argument for capitalism, and the only citation is to his own book (A Treatise on the Capitalist Society). At least as I see it, this section is not ready to be included in the full article due to including only the editor's own argument and nothing else. What are your thoughts? Mayhair (talk) 12:44, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree and support removal; that was a really strange addition and I didn't know quite what to make of it. Unless something is well-sourced mainstream, than we shouldn't have it in this article, because if we included every lone scholar's ideas on this subject, the article would be 1000x the size it is now. ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:37, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Is criticism warranted?

I raised this issue some time ago but little has changed in the criticism section (although the sources have been updated at least). I think there is a real issue here of whether this section violates the rules of the encyclopedia. A couple of points to consider:

• This article is listed as part of a series on "economics". The rules for editing economics articles are no different than any other subject: content, including criticism, must come from experts in the field, not outside sources. If we are treating this subject no different than others, then the opinions of philosophers, political commentators and scholars who aren't economists don't belong in the article.

• A separate article on "criticism of capitalism" already exists and covers everything in this section and more. This can be linked in the article without any need for a criticism section.

Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

There's nothing of great value in the section, so it should be removed.

Typically, criticism should be put into articles in relevant sections, not put into a separate one. Also, what one person sees as a criticism, someone else might see as a plus or at least acceptable or something that can be fixed. For example, inequality caused by capitalism can be seen as a desirable outcome, necessary, or fixable, without being anti-capitalist. TFD (talk) 02:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree and support removal. ---Avatar317^(talk) 02:30, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

The basis of your argument is derived from a fantastically narrow understanding of political economy; capitalism is not merely an economic system and even the works of Adam Smith would tell you that. Regardless, which site policies are you referencing? Your first bullet point seems to be a vague gesture at some uniform rule on content, but obviously a topic related to economics and politics should not be treated the same as a topic related to the sciences, otherwise there would be no need for consensus-building.

Further, what critiques are you expecting from pure economists? Economists' jobs are primarily to analyse trends in economies at the micro and macro levels; they aren't concerned with offering critiques of the system (i.e. global capitalism) they've spent their entire lives living under and accepting as gospel. There's no such thing as a critique from an economist who isn't political.

I am also unconvinced by the arguments that the section should be removed because there's already a main article for the topic and that some self-proclaimed capitalists actually support inequality under capitalism, so it can't really be generalised as a criticism. Pol Pot was fine with genociding his own countrymen through mass starvation, so I guess the critique of communist policies causing mass deaths through an inadequate accumulation of resources is not really a critique then, just an observation.

If the section should be removed, it ought to be because it's a rubbish section with no specifics and a lack of references to expert opinions, not because we should gatekeep critiques to economists, because there's already more coverage elsewhere on this WikiProject, or because one could argue that every critique is not really a critique because somebody could theoretically agree with it wholeheartedly. Yue🌙 03:16, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

The section serves as a summary of the linked criticism off capitalism article. And it is a relatively small section at that, so this is WP:DUE by my estimation. In fact, this was the consensus when the section was radically trimmed years back with large swaths of material being moved to the other article. Now I'm not saying the section can't be improved, but outright deletion is not justified by any of the arguments I see above. And the notion that only "economists" should be cited in the section while ignoring scholars in other fields including history, political science, anthropology, philosophy etc is just absolute nonsense, as Yue points out above.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:31, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I support removal of the section and would like to make notes in two areas regarding that.

• It's with good reason that separate criticism sections are concerned. The mere presence of one becomes a coatrack / magnet, distorting decisions on what criticism merits inclusion.
• Technically capitalism has a specific narrow definition (in the first sentence of the article) and probably ~95% of the world has that as one of the many components of their systems. But vaguer meanings of capitalism could include pretty much anything related to economic, ownership, business, economic interests in that ~95% of the world and thus anything bad or undesirable in the world that is related to economics, ownership, business, economic interests. As a result of this the current criticism section is mostly complaints about pretty much everything that is wrong or undesirable in the world and thus not really useful content.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:01, 17 May 2024 (UTC)