Under capitalism, it seems companies always need to grow bigger. Why can’t they just say, okay, we have 100 employees and produce a nice product for a specific market and that’s fine?
Or is this only a US megacorp thing where they need to grow to satisfy their shareholders?
Let’s ignore that most of the times the small companies get bought by the large ones.
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?