> It's worth noting that a critique doesn't need to have a positive element to be a valid critique, nor does a critique necessarily prescribe a particular method of action; the critique of capitalism has inspired various ideas for post-capitalist society, each stemming from the exact nature of the critique itself.

That is literally true of course, but in order to be actionable it's got to have plausible alternatives. A critique without an alternative can be interesting, but isn't very useful on its own.

> I do not think that a post-capitalist society would be capable of producing with the efficiency of the capitalist system, but I also don't think that such a level of production is necessary or even desirable if we must also balance efficiency and productivity with a happy society. In particular, it's up to us to decide which are false needs and which are true needs. Marcuse critiqued the nature of technology in capitalism as using the worker (i.e the worker is merely an appendage of the machine) rather than being used by the worker, and the fact that the benefits time-wise are captured by those who own the machines, not those who are replaced by them.

I agree with this in principle, but it raises the question: When is that time? The thing about production is that when more stuff gets made, people get lifted out of poverty. When food gets mass produced and cheap, hunger starts to disappear, for instance.

For instance, suppose we were to freeze growth in the present instant. Hold world GDP constant for the rest of time. If we take all 80 trillion dollars of that and spread it evenly over the current human population, that's about $11,000 per year per person. Certainly, an enormous step up for many, or even most, people. But do we really want to stop there? Is that 'enough' material well-being for everyone to be content with?

> On the other hand, technology is continually improving, and a post-capitalist society must necessarily be placed (if it is to exist at all) at a later point than capitalist society, and capitalist society carries with it a great many inefficiencies, such as the multiple reproduction of research due to firms holding trade secrets, Bitcoin mining, cycles of overproduction etc.

Indeed there are major inefficiencies in decentralized systems. This is why 'firms' form even inside of capitalist economies. A firm is a command-and-control micro-economy inside of a market economy. They form because of the transaction costs of markets. Unfortunately, for large scale coordination, most other systems haven't seemed to work very well.

> I also don't think it's merely an issue of equitable distribution; the critique of capitalism isn't focused on what's "fair", since as Marx pointed out, doesn't the capitalist or liberal say that the current distribution is fair? The issue seems to be much more with ownership of productive capacity in society and the qualitative nature of the production process, in particular concerning abstract labour.

I'm not personally too concerned with 'fairness' either. I think it's a concept that can be massaged into saying almost whatever the person proposing it would like. What I do see though is the growth produced by capitalism lifting a very large number of very real people out of poverty, even though it may be unfair that a small number of people are made hyper-wealthy in the process, that doesn't negate the fact that a very large number of people are, in absolute terms, better off than they were before.

It seems to me that many critiques of capitalism are arguing over the relative size of the pie slices, while ignoring the fact that in absolute terms, everyone has a bigger slice than they would under other systems. And while there are quasi-reasonable arguments for pure concern with inequality (e.g. that people derive their sense of self-worth from their relative position), i'm not sure I buy them as governing principles of a large scale polity.

> As such, I think I'd go with (b), but there are elements of (a) and (c) is worthy of consideration because perhaps "wealth" in the terms we'd think of as comparable with capitalism (ownership of money, individual ownership of capital) would not be good measures of "wealth" in a future society, especially given the current crisis of [capitalist] wealth at the cost of ecological damage.

Just to clarify, the definition of 'wealth' i'm using is more in the sense of purchasing power. In other words, when walmart cuts the price you have to pay for a chair in half, that increases your wealth, even if the number in your bank account is unchanged.

The standard capitalist answer to issues like ecological damage is externality pricing. That is, you should treat the environment as a public good and charge people money commensurate with the damage they do to it. Is there a reason you think that isn't a viable solution?