Question Everything

Capitalism is not merely the exchange of goods & services, that is what markets are. Capitalism is an economic system based on wage-labor. Under capitalism the majority of the population has to sell their labor in order to make enough money to survive. The means of production (factories, mines, land, etc.) are monopolized by the capitalist class (who own them), everyone else sells their labor to this class of people. We have to sell our labor because the capitalists own the means of production, we are denied access to them. Capitalism is hierarchical - you have bosses telling wage-laborers what to do. It is also highly centralized - look at any corporation, it's a miniature centrally planned economy. Capitalism is one form of class system. Class is economic hierarchy, a social relation in which some have power over others with regard to economics. Other forms of class society include feudalism, in which serfs work the land and give a portion of what they produce, and/or unpaid labor, to the nobles and slavery, in which the master class controls the slaves, whom they own. Markets have existed in many economic systems, not just capitalism. In class systems the ruling class (those on top of the hierarchy) use their power to exploit those on the bottom and gain extra priviledges and wealth. Under capitalism this works like this:



It takes labor to produce things. If we all sat on our asses and did nothing we would not have any food or clothing or anything. "The market" doesn't change that. In order to produce things, including the basic necessities of life, labor must be performed to produce them. In order to create usefull things (food or whatever) one or more people must do labor to create them. Under capitalism, the worker labors to produce stuff. In exchange the worker gets paid a certain amount. The capitalist sells what the worker has produced and makes money off of it. If the commodity sells for $20, the raw material cost $1 and he paid his worker $5 then he makes $14. That money the capitalist gets he gets without doing any producitve labor, without producing anything. The money, however, can be traded for usefull things. Those things require labor to produce. Thus the capitalist is a parasite - he does no productive labor (he produces nothing) yet he gets a large share of what is produced. Other people produce things, he lives off what they produce. That is exploitation.

The existence of social mobility does not justify any social system. In colonial Brazil it was theoretically possible for a slave to become free and become a slave owner, and there are documented cases of this happening. It's rare, but it happened. But this does not justify slavery. The same is true of capitalism.

According to the UN on average 24,000 people starve to death everyday, primarily in the "third world." According to the same source, there is more than enough food produced to feed everyone and we currently have the tecnhnology to produce enough people to feed 30 billion people if we had to. That thousands starve to death every day is the direct result of the exploitation inherent in capitalism. Billions are not taken care of under the current system. Reforms have been done repeatedly, they have failed to fix this problem. And even if capitalism didn't cause massive death, a master who feeds his slaves well is still a master.

Capitalism cannot exist without a state because it requires a state in order to enforce property rights, maintaining the capitalists' monopoly (or near-monopoly) over the means of production. That monopoly was brought about by state violence and is maintained by state violence. Big business and big government are in bed with each other.

Instead of capitalism, worker self-management should be implemented. Workplaces should be run by worker assemblies using direct democracy and/or consensus. At present over 100 workplaces in Argentina are run by the workers and there have been many times throughout history when workers have taken over the means of production such as the Spanish Revolution, proving that self-management works. State ownership is no solution, that just replaces one set of exploiters with another, instead of corporate exploiters it creates state exploiters. Death to Capitalism and the State!

For a more detailed critique of capitalism, see my essays Tyranny of the Invisible Hand & Market Capitalism and Elite Rule

Based on posts made to here and here.