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Why do companies always need to grow?
(piefed.social)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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A farmer selling their produce is not necessarily a capitalist. A farmer toiling on their own field sells the fruit of their own labor, so to speak. One step up are what Marx calls "Little Masters": They own and work their means of production, but sometimes have employees such as farmhands or apprentices (Think companies where the owner still works in the workshop). Actual capitalists are detached from the production process: They no longer work, but simply own the so-called means of production and exploit others by buying their labor force for less than their produced result is worth.
If we are going by the original definition of the word, it is. The farmer here is growing produce to sell it in exchange for money; they are not sharing it with their community, bartering with it, growing it to eat themselves, or giving it to their liege lord.
I'm not sure why people always insist if money is involved that it's capitalism. Money is an abstract form of trade. No one is suggesting that trade will cease to exists in a world without capitalism.
It's not about money, it's about private ownership of capital. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism
Well, if you assume the farmer excludes others from using the means of production i.e. the fields, then yes you can argue that they are acting as capitalist. But you have to make the distinction between private and personal ownership: Private ownership of the land and personal ownership of the produce. The former is what communists reject. The latter is fine in their books.
Well, I'd say that the definition of capitalism changes depending on if you're talking about capitalism as opposed to feudalism (original/historical definition) vs capitalism as opposed to communism (modern definition).
What resources would you recommend to someone wanting to learn about this?
If you want to nitpick, I never said farmer. Also, farmers have inputs, so your comparison is wholly removed from reality.
Edit: also, Marx? JFC, Thoreau is a better example of 19th century philosophy about labor, as he actually did real work in life which is why he manged to influence Tolstoy, who the eurdite Soviets tried to retcon into being a socialist because they were arrogant tools who didn't understand his work well enough to realize that his critiques were often of people just like them. And just like Marx who also had very little contact with real life.
Marx can suck a fuck at the tomato stand, my friend.
What does a farmer having inputs have to do with my argument being removed from reality?
Because you're leaning on Marx for definitions, who was famously out of touch with reality as well,
because ALL small business owners need inputs, and labor is only one of them, so inventing the vendor as now a farmer to attempt a workaround is disingenuous,
you also had made the tomato vendor into a farmer in hopes of having a point that fits into a poorly crafted 19th century framework, and don't know enough about how farms anywhere on earth to realize how blatantly wrong you are,
your definition of capitalist is factually incorrect,
read my edited comment above, which I edited while you wrote this,
a farmer is no different, functionally in a minimalist sense, from a person making jam as a cottage industry, who buys fruit and processes it at home, making a farmer's field not magic but simply a location where work is done,
I said tomato seller, which is someone that spends their labor time buying tomatoes from farms as a risk and selling them in the market. They own means of logistics, which for anyone not stuck in 1862, would consider essentially a means of production as well, as it takes an input and renders is viable to trade for a medium of exchange. Does a fisherman owning a boat mean she owns the means of production when it's fish spawning grounds that make fish? It's a stupid argument to cling to one you've already written your first PoliSci paper about it and get it.
Look, everything is connected, and there is no terminal point of anything from which anarcho-socialist magic can magically arise and flow down to make some post-consumption utopia. It's a circle with no beginning and no end. You can't force economic change to change human behavior, and Marx's ideas have famously failed hard. Over and over. Spectacularly.
You're taking about a 30 generation cultural change that you won't ever see.
It would certainly help a lot if you could tone down your condescending attitude a little.
I fail to see where anything you write is an actual argument against my distinction between different forms of working with the means to produce something. Yes, I've misread your vendor as a farmer, but that's not a reason to go ad hominem.
Marx's definition of "the means of production" is both not in tune with how anything has ever worked, and ignores that Marx basically used real estate as the definition because he was closer to European feudalism than us. Marx grew up and spent his uni years as a subject of the Prussian Kingdom, and industrialization and land ownership were entirely different in his time.
Context matters. And apologies for being condescending, but it pisses me off to no end when people wax poetic about some pastrolaist socialist agrarian sunshine butterfly state when if you've never experienced it, actually sucked and everyone hated it who was in it, even in the modern era.
Bro what?
Are we just supposed to believe what you're saying? Because I have easy counter-argument. You're out of touch with what Marx wrote and if say-so if enough proof then this statement is proven and you're wrong. Now, unless you can actually prove this statement we can argue this point.
This literally does not change the original argument. Do you think farmers do not need an input? What disqualifies a farmer from being a small business owner?
Do you think they didn't have food vendors in the 19th century? Do you think a tomato vendor is a 20th or 21st century concept that invalidates this supposed 19th century argument?
I guess this is another "we just have to believe you" points. Just because you don't understand Marx's definition of capitalism doesn't mean it's wrong.
Why is this even a point?
I'm not 100% sure what you're even trying to say here but if you're saying what I think you're saying, Marx would agree with you here.
I guess you also don't believe logistics existed before 1863. Also your logistics argument doesn't contradict Marx. And a fisherman owning a fishing boat would mean they own the means of production because the boat is A TOOL to catch fish. The fish don't magically jump into the fishermans hands. They need to be caught, which requires labor and to ease that labor tools are used. Fish existing doesn't make a fisherman a fisherman, otherwise I'd be a lumberjack simply because there's a forest near my home.
I suggest you actually try to understand Marx before you start mindlessly criticizing something.