“What will come after capitalism is uncertain. But what is certain is that there is more than enough wealth in the world to provide basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter to all people. A United Nations study estimated that to end global poverty, provide basic healthcare and education, combat diseases like HIV and malaria, create environmental stability, improve maternal health, address the gap in gender equality and reduce child mortality, developed nations would have to contribute just 0.7 percent of their gross national income over a ten-year period. For the United States, that would cost just $90 billion per year. That amounts to just 8.7 percent of our current military budget.”
“A new, populist, explicitly anti-capitalist party must emerge and start organizing at the grassroots level to build power over time. And this new political party must be led by and represent the young, the unemployed, underemployed and misemployed, people of color, people in debt, and everyone else who has been victimized by capitalism.”
Anti-capitalist march in New York City. (photo: Workers Vanguard)
Let’s Make Capitalism a Dirty Word
March 5, 2014
by Carl Gibson
“Americans have literally becomes slaves to capitalism.”
mmediately upon entering adulthood, Americans are forced to compete for increasingly-scarce employment. The purpose of most employment isn’t to create value for society or future generations, but to create profits for a scant few executives and shareholders. In order to be competitive enough to gain employment, Americans are expected to take on so much debt for a higher education that most of the income gained in their adult years will be spent paying off that debt.
In return for all their hard work, Americans who aren’t executives or shareholders are paid just enough to meet basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Under the capitalist system, the majority of life for today’s average American before retirement is spent pursuing profits that will never be shared with them. And because capitalists like Pete Peterson and the Koch Brothers are so determined to weaken Social Security in the pursuit of ever-increasing profits, even retirement is unstable.
As a system predicated on the need to grow endlessly and never stagnate, capitalism is doomed to fail. I’ve written previously on this site about how capitalism is currently in its endgame, similar to the endgame of Monopoly, where one player has accumulated nearly all of the property and money, and all the other players are afraid to make any moves at all, lest they land on the wrong square and are destroyed by debt.
Capitalism is succeeding exactly like it’s supposed to — all the resources and wealth are concentrating into fewer and fewer hands and corporate profits are hitting record highs every quarter. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 are doing better than they’ve ever done in decades. Worker productivity and Gross Domestic Product has increased at a rapid pace, yet wages are stagnant.
As a direct result of the rise of corporate dominance of government, the profit motive has become the primary motive of operation not just for private businesses, but for government institutions. One example is the Department of Education booking $41.3 billion in profits off of student loans, even though the student loan bubble has surpassed the $1 trillion mark.
Groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council allow capitalists to write laws behind closed doors, then wine and dine state lawmakers to pass those laws in exchange for future campaign contributions from capitalists. Election laws are now set up to benefit capitalists who can anonymously donate millions of dollars to a Super PAC and dominate public airwaves with false advertising, while grassroots candidates without millions on their side are shut out of the public conversation.
Capitalists like General Electric, Citigroup and Monsanto can write legislation with members of Congress that stacks the deck in their favor while overseeing that legislation’s passage. Capitalists who own mercenary companies can get paid billions of dollars in defense contracts while pay and benefits for veterans are cut from the budget.
Capitalists like the Koch Brothers can escape accountability through foreign subsidiaries despiteviolating U.S trade laws, and banks like JPMorgan Chase can escape jail time despite frauding millions of homeowners. But homeless people like Gregory Taylor are sentenced to 25 years in jail for stealing bread.
During the Cold War era, if people didn’t openly embrace capitalism, they ran the risk of being called a Communist sympathizer and intimidated out of their job. But the tables are turning on capitalism as more and more people become aware of the consequences of capitalism.
In November of 2011, during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement, conservative messaging specialist Frank Luntz had a meeting with the Republican Governors’ Association to teach them how to address the growing populist energy sweeping the country.
“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” Luntz said. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
Luntz’s first suggestion to the Republican governors was to stop saying the word “capitalism,” as it was believed by many in the country to be “immoral,” according to Luntz.
“The Occupy movement was seen as a failure because it focused too heavily on critiquing capitalism rather than uniting around a proposed alternative to capitalism or creating viable solutions. But ironically, the nationally-coordinated crackdown on the Occupy movement was one of the best things to happen to the movement — it dispersed thousands of newly-trained radical organizers from city parks into cities.”
Fast food worker strikes have been organized in over 100 cities. Occupy Wall Street’s “Strike Debt” project abolished $14.7 million in distressed medical debt and outpaced FEMA in disaster relief during Hurricane Sandy. The Occupy movement has gone from occupying city parks to building homes for the homeless, occupying foreclosed homes, and occupying city halls – not as protesters, but as elected officials. Rather than merely critiquing capitalism, the movement is actively contradicting and creating alternatives to it.
What will come after capitalism is uncertain. But what is certain is that there is more than enough wealth in the world to provide basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter to all people. A United Nations study estimated that to end global poverty, provide basic healthcare and education, combat diseases like HIV and malaria, create environmental stability, improve maternal health, address the gap in gender equality and reduce child mortality, developed nations would have to contribute just 0.7 percent of their gross national income over a ten-year period. For the United States, that would cost just $90 billion per year. That amounts to just 8.7 percent of our current military budget.
Despite such an obvious and easy solution, we all know we currently don’t have the political leadership to accomplish this, and likely won’t anytime soon if we depend solely on the Democratic and Republican parties. A new, populist, explicitly anti-capitalist party must emerge and start organizing at the grassroots level to build power over time. And this new political party must be led by and represent the young, the unemployed, underemployed and misemployed, people of color, people in debt, and everyone else who has been victimized by capitalism.
Capitalism is dead. Long live its replacement.
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary “We’re Not Broke,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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William Boardman, Reader Supported News
04 March 2014
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Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
05 March 2014
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Robert Parry, Consortium News
04 March 2014
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Steven Hsieh, The Nation
04 March 2014
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Robert Parry, Consortium News
05 March 2014
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Lindsay Abrams, Salon
06 March 2014
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Brian Beutler, Salon
05 March 2014
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Gawker
05 March 2014
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Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
04 March 2014
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Comments
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It is not in the dreams of the young people, their dreams are not in endless useless riches but in an Environment and We the People system…of earth and economic justice.
Great article. About time!
Let’s get real, let’s get serious, let’s start talking -REVOLUTION NOW!
As for revolution, what type are you supporting and encouraging?
Did you lose your dreams to Capitalism?
I am sorry. I never did.If we don’t save the Environment, and soon, there will be no survival left to dream, for anyone, ever.
Try online search Socialist Alternative.
This is the organization of the Socialist woman, Sawant, who recently
won a seat on the Seattle City Council with One Hundred Thousand votes.
Change is coming.
Are your children prepared to live in a bartering society? Will they make a living off the land solely? What is the alternative to capitalism that is realistic in the U.S. I am not an advocate of capitalism. Not at all. But we must live in a realistic scene.
What is your suggestion for realistic living and thriving today? I admit to being a bit cynical, but one person in a seat on the Seattle Council will not eliminate the entire system in the U.S., which is corrupt and heavily controlled by total capitalists.
Everyone can do something to trade.But One Hundred Thousand Votes IS a big deal. It shows the potential is there.
Check out the site. Check out the list of goals under About SA.
I am not saying this is the only answer.
I am saying this is a good start.
The majority of people live in urban areas and would be hard pressed to barter and such. Certainly there are some who could do that, but working full time and commuting eliminates much that could be contributed.
There is potential, yes, but the odds are against it, within the present U.S. system.
“Crony Capitalism” is redundant. When has capitalism not been “crony”?
But the basic truth is that “Capitalism” is already a dirty word, particularly the predatory capitalism presently in vogue worldwide.
What we are witnessing here is a seemingly inexorable growth of domestic fascism – i.e., the “merger of corporate and state powers”. (B. Mussolini, circa 1936)
When has capitalism functioned in any other way? Capitalism began by throwing the peasants of the land and then “enclosing” it so that people could not be self-sufficient without become wage-laborers.
The first industries in the US (e.g., the railroads) only developed because of state i.e., gov’t intervention and subsidy (free or cheap land and tax breaks). This has always been the way that capitalism has worked not just here in the US but across the globe. American Capitalism is very much capitalism.
In the long run and over the long term there is no “kinder” “gentler” capitalism.
History proves capitalism’s momentum is always toward ever-more-vicio us tyranny. Marx and Engels noted this truth years before the term “fascism” existed. Since then, the capitalists have imposed a technologically omnipotent global empire. Its savagery makes it ever more obvious the only sustainable alternative is global socialism. With Marxism as a starting point, we may yet evolve a democratic, environmentally centered socialism adequate to achieve our humanitarian potential. But without class solidarity and ideological discipline, we are doomed.
As to the economic realities of the Weimar Republic — “mass unemployment… hyperinflation. ..women (selling) themselves to feed their kids” — that much of your assertion is true. But those conditions were an early manifestation of capitalist shock-doctrine, imposed by the Treaty of Versailles specifically to destroy the progressive German parties (Communists, other real socialists), and thereby clear the way for the emergence of a fascist state. The Big Lie “socialism” of the NSDAP — the “National Socialist German Workers Party” — was no more worker-empoweri ng than a concentration camp and no more socialist than the USian Tea Party.
But the ignorance and confusion the capitalists (deliberately) created by the “National Socialist” name persists to this day, especially in the historically illiterate U.S., where socialism and fascism are moronically believed to be ideological kindred rather than the antitheticals they truly are.
Those who jeer our “arrogance and ignorance” reveal in their haughty dismissal of our grievances those same qualities – qualities that defined the aristocracies of France and Russia before they were swept away by tsunamis of history called revolutions.
Apropos “nonsensical drivel,” that is a superb description of the lies and disinformation about the alleged superiority of capitalism most of us in the USian Homeland are force-fed from birth onward but are now at last transcending.
As to blaming capitalist evil on “how it is done” rather than its core precepts, that is like claiming the Holocaust was not due to fascism. The analogy is apt because fascism is the fulfillment of the capitalist ethos.
As for killing our Great Mother. Have you so little faith in her power. She will survive, long after we have exterminated outselves.
I first came to the US at a time (the 1970’s) when a strong flavor of the 60’s was still palpable, and felt immediately that there was much hope here and a sense of anything being possible -then along came ol’ Ronnie R’ and his phalanx of thugs who re-established an Evil empire with Thatcher in the UK and it’s been downhill for the grassroots ever since, especially the working classes who actually made stuff and the environment -and a steep uphill escalator for the entrenched wealth few ever since, sadly, many of the middle and working classes going along with Mr “Aw shucks'” bad acting, who told them that he’s been poor once but anybody could make it in America, whilst working to re-establish the opposite.
I describe myself as a “Small business Socialist” to anybody who will listen but most Americans just don’t get it. They can’t separate the concept of making a decent living or small profit from one’s own independent creativity or enterprise from the inherent exploitative top-heavy, trickle-down, anti-social and ultimately unbalanced nature of true Capitalism.
The only reason “big money” invested in the US was because capital was not yet truly mobile (i.e., global) and becuase there were social movements that scared the shit out of “big money” such that the “enlightened” wing of capital (think FDR’s New Deal) believed that if they didn’t “make a deal” with the working class (or at least it’s organized “representative ” i.e., organized labor) that it could lose everything. But as soon as that deal was no longer needed (as of the early 1970s in the US) capital returned to it’s “normal” modus operandi which is to screw and squeeze as much out of those at the bottom as it can.
What capitalism is has been defined by those who actually studied capitalist society to understand the relationship and mechanisms of which it is composed. The most important of those economists were, Adam Smith who was the first, because capitalism had developed sufficiently, to be able to study and write about the early, more-or-less competitive phase of capitalism. Then came Ricardo who could begin discerning the oligopolistic or monopolist phase of capitalist development. Then of course cam Mark who was able to provide the greatest understanding of capitalism as a system, where it came from and where it was going. But the understanding was still incomplete and had to wait for Lenin’s work “Imperialism” to finish the job. Since that time, economics has been about disguising the nature of capitalism in order to protect it from the population.
So you can say that capitalism is whatever you personally wish it to be, but that is nonsense and will not help us make the real changes that can result in a decent society for the majority and not just for the few.
If truth be known, it is likely that – in 2014, as in the year 1928 – the “average” Board member sits on two or more boards, thus creating an economically dangerous, incestuous situation in which “they” win and the rest of us – including stockholders -lose.
The vast majority of the planet own no shares in anything so even if corporation’s were responsible to their shareholders this would not change in any way the basic nature of capitalism i.e., that it is a system based on the exploitation of the vast majority for the benefit of the few.
Also “Capitalism Hits the fan” by Dr Richard Wolff -the people’s economist.
It is a system based on wage-slavery (and thus the expropriation of the land e.g., the enclosure in England were needed as well as other mechanisms to ensure that people could not be self-sufficient and live off of “the commons” and live communally in general in order to force people to become wage-laborers.
There was never (and still isn’t) anything “progressive” about capitalism (one of the things i think Marx got wrong in that as much as he hated capitalism he saw it as “progress” over what came before).
Those who point to the “kinder” “gentler” forms of capitalism e.g., Sweden or Norway etc., fail to understand that in the long run of capitalist development these were short-term exceptions and not “the rule” (and thus the welfare state along with wages are now under attack not just here in the US but all across Europe).
(continued)
Capitalism developed long before the US won its war of national independence from England. In fact, England was the dominant capitalist power until more-or-less the end of WWII when the US took over.
Capitalism was an advance over feudalism, not in the sense of a kinder society, of which it definitely is not, but in the fact that it allowed resources to be accumulate (the first being workers freed from any other chance of earning a living other than become wage laborers) so that the production of the necessities (and luxuries) of life could be produced with much more efficiency. Rather than everyone being required to spend their lives tilling the fields and harvesting the crops, a few could do that while others produced all of the other goods that made for a better life. All of the bad things that have resulted in out life time, global warming, the destruction of the rest of the environment, poverty, war, etc., are not the result of industrialization but as a result who makes the decisions, which under capitalism is the capitalists, under slavery it was the slave owners, under feudalism it was the kings, queens, czars, etc., under tribal society, which humans lived in for most of our history, it was all adults.
I agree completely that capitalism developed long before the US won its independence. Capitalism is clearly developing by the late 15th/early 16th centuries.
I disagree that capitalism was an “advance” over feudalism in the sense that prior to capitalism (and i am by no means here romanticizing feudalism) communal forms of living were still practiced by “the masses” in numerous ways and there was a long tradition of “the commons” i.e., people’s “rights” to the use of common land/resources which capital needed to destroy in order to force people to become wage-slaves (the British Levellers would not include wage-workers in their calls for the franchise because they did not consider wage-laborers “free”). People resisted their removal from the land, the enclosing of the commons, and the destruction of other forms of communal life. They resisted becoming wage-laborers and did not see this as “progress” over being “free peasants” after the collapse of the feudal peasant relations.
I agree that it is a question of who makes the decisions and this is precisely why i believe that capitalism was not in this sense an advance over the way people lived prior to its rise where far more of the decision-making was made communally/coll ectively.
(continued)
Capitalism was based on exploitation from day one; the impoverishment of the many for the “advancement” of the few. And, in many respects people lost freedoms that had been won as people struggled against their oppression under feudalism. Capitalism was the counter-revolut ion to those struggles and the result perhaps a 100 million killed (between the colonization of the America’s and the African slave trade just to name two of capitalism’s more heinous crimes) and the (re) enslavement of the rest of the people through wage labor.
The fact that we are spending $90 billion a year “saving the poor” should tell you that capitalim’s goal is not to “save” the poor at all but rather to “manage” them and make them better servants of capitalism.
from Voice of America:
“The U.S. State Department will be working with $46.2 billion in funding next year under President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2015, a slight decrease from this year. The proposal includes cuts to foreign aid.”
FromDylan Matthews Wonkblog- WaPo:
“The latest poll that my colleague Ezra Klein cites finds that the average American thinks the United States spends 28 percent of the federal budget on aid to foreign governments — more than the country spends on Social Security or Medicare or defense.
In reality, we spend only 1 percent on foreign aid.”
All species compete. All social species organize. No social species organizes to kill its members for competitive purposes.
All species communicate. So far it’s only rare, perhaps incidental, certainly not organized for competitive purposes that organisms communicate falsely for competitive purposes. In our species it’s called lying.
All species have something that transposes its needs to action. In vertebrates it’s called the brain. The purpose of the human brain is to gain flexibility over our weaknesses – we cant fly, move at high speeds, live under water, and we break pretty easily.
So we we develop marvels like fire and wheels and airplanes and submarines – you get the picture. That plus the development of the mirror we can stare into with admiration develops the ego.
All living things reproduce. You know how we do it. To encourage reproduction, the element of pleasure was added. Nothing in existent brings more pleasure than a great orgasm. With the development of sports, theater, song, dance, oration, pleasure was found in many activities. With the advent of communication via devices, “Take me out to the ball game.” became let’s sit in front of the tube and watch the Steelers or Blackhawks.
It may be unchangeable or not.
Exactly. Notice that we had 90% tax rates through at least the 1960s: and better public services all around.
But I think there was a different ethos at work: one which was not as selfish.
CEOs “only” made 40x as much as their employees. They offered their employees good pensions, health benefits for their FAMILIES, etc. CEOs really did try to “spread the wealth,” rather than squandering it on compensation for themselves, their board of directors, etc.
If I’m not wrong, I think this era also witnessed the highest rates of stock ownership amongst the working classes.
But perhaps more importantly, the classes were still pretty mingled in their living arrangements. There were smaller houses nestled between larger ones: you can see this in a lot of older cities and suburbs (pre-1950). Today, the upper middles and uppers are increasingly secluding themselves in private enclaves, so they have even less knowledge of the problems faced by the middles and lower middles. After all, when everyone around is shopping at Whole Foods and spending $300 a week on groceries or driving $70,000 SUVs, everything’s hunky dory, right?
Selfishness did not suddenly spring up out of the clear blue sky. It has always been entrenched among the segment of humanity that considers itself entitled to exploit everyone and everything on earth for their own benefit. This is always their objective and they only step back when forced. Periodically, such people manage to collectively gain control of the rules and strip away any obstacles to their depredations. The rest of us are always caught off balance by this instead of being aware and vigilant that this behavior is inevitable. The upper classes are insulated by their own preference and could care less about the problems faced by those who don’t have anything.
It didn’t help that the mass media colluded–and the Dems had no real answer to the Repugs’ definition of America. They could have skillfully turned the word “liberal” into a positive one by reclaiming it as our national legacy, but they shrank back. In fact, we saw this very much at work in 2004 when Kerry protested that he was no a liberal during a debate; it was GWB because he was spending like mad.
Occupy has begun to redefine terms of discourse in the media. Notice that even Wall Street is grudgingly beginning to understand what we are saying. It won’t be a fast or easy process, but we have to remain persistent. But then again, revolutions are hardly made in a day.
We continue with business-as-usu al at our own peril while the true ‘long emergency’ of climate chaos” slowly unfolds.
I for one believe that, providing our population doesn’t explode even more, we now have the technological capability capability to sustain everyone on Earth to a reasonable standard of living (as far as providing food and shelter) and that’s without requiring us all to bust a gut working like slaves. What then for our free time? How would one earn extra ‘income’ in order to contribute something to society aside from the provision of mind and labor? (Every endeavor has an underlying cost in resources.)
Of course it’s unlikely that common agreement would be reached in which case, should our current system collapse, then anarchy will be inevitable – not pretty!
We live in a society where the right connections procure everything, just like in 18thc. Europe. Back then, it was all about aristoCRAP spawn attending Oxbridge prior to embarking on their grand tour of Europe. Today, they attend our overrated, overpriced universities prior to a stint at Oxbridge, law school, etc.(Helps to be a son of an alum or have Daddy’s powerful friends on admissions to get in, of course). Back then, it was aristocraps and monarchs marrying one another or into the families of very wealthy tradesmen and financiers with their spawn entering Parliament or the National Assembly. Today, it’s all about politicians, CEOs, literati, etc. marrying one another with their spawn landing the best jobs by virtue of connection (e.g., Bushes and Chelsea on MSNBC or whatever.) Many will undoubtedly run for public office: there are already rumblings from another Bush and Chelsea. Although as Obama told us in his MLK speech, we shouldn’t feel perturbed if “some doors are opened wider for a few.”
Let’s not forget that at least in the 18th century, capitalists like Smith, Bentham, Price, Priestley etc. knew that talent was necessary for capitalism to work. Knowledge mattered. Experience mattered. Government was not going to bail out your sorry ass if your ship went under.
Today, it’s not about talent rising to the top. It’s about connections: CEOs becoming CEOs at other firms or corporons regardless of how well or poorly suited they are for the job–more the latter: e.g., A CEO of a packaged food company becoming CEO of a videogame co. (Electronic Arts); hedge-funder turned CEO of Sears; Apple marketing turned JC Penney CEO, etc. A world where the bulk of profits are made largely through cost-cutting (layoffs), not innovation or quality. And if you’re lucky, you get bailed out–like GM in 2008.
I would argue that the best phase of American capitalism was that in the 1950s-1970s. There were still opportunities for the working classes to advance–or at least much more so than today: colleges were affordable, taxes on the wealthier were higher, hence better public services as in libraries, schools etc. Accountants and bankers did not earn so much more than a trucker. And incidentally, the son of a truck driver did have a much better chance to become an accountant or banker than his counterpart today.
At the end of the day, capitalism–or its abuse–is only part of the problem. I’d say the real problem is that of entitlement amongst the 5%–not just 1%: and perhaps even worse, our underlying cultural narcissism.
To get back to this system (closer to what we had in the 50s and 60s, for example) requires that our political system be modified to ensure corporate and individual wealthy individuals hold no more power than normal citizens. This should be the target that every progressive should be working towards.
* With a liberal does of Socialistic public services where it serves the public good, of course
“Luntz’s first suggestion to the Republican governors was to stop saying the word “capitalism,” as it was believed by many in the country to be “immoral,” according to Luntz.”
You may notice that there is a shift occurring right now to referring to support for “the free market” rather than for “capitalism.” The “free market” sounds so much better, doesn’t it? But basically it means the “freedom” to exploit, rob, abuse, and dominate- which isn’t “freedom” at all but the opposite, “oppression.”
The workers in Russia faced a great many trials in building the first successful country where the ruling class was the majority of the population rather than the minority as is the case in feudalism, slavery and capitalism. The Russian working class not had to win the revolution against the feudal and capitalist forces, but then win two wars (the war of intervention 1918-1921 and WWII) against the combined armies of the capitalist world.
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