Time to Go

There’s an elephant in the room.  We all know it.  But we need the audacity to proclaim it openly.  The litany of urgent problems grows ever longer: endless war; executive assassinations; climate change; savage economic inequality; racial, gender, religious and national discrimination; poverty; unequal justice; shredded civil liberties; unemployment; lower pay and more harsh conditions for those lucky enough to have jobs; poisoned food, air and water; attacks on public education, Social Security and Medicare; a deadly, dysfunctional, profit-driven healthcare system; crumbling infrastructure; and the oft-forgotten but ever-present nuclear threat.

All of these problems have one, common, overarching cause: an economic system that puts profits before people; a system that rewards the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, by any and all means, regardless of the consequences.  The system has a name.  It is capitalism.

Capitalism has got to go.  Deep down, we all know it.  Capitalism—the economic arrangement that prioritizes private profits over human needs—is the primary obstacle to addressing so many of our most pressing problems.  In each case, putting profits before people prevents any real progress towards a solution.

So let’s agree on what we know we must do—replace capitalism with a more democratic, just and functional arrangement—and devote our energy and intellect to the question of how to do it.  Let’s not waste another instant pretending that we don’t know that moving on from capitalism is, at the very least, a necessary first step if we are to seriously address any of society’s most intractable problems.

Opinions may differ when it comes to the question of how.  There are differing views regarding how best to go about replacing capitalism, and exactly what to replace it with.  So what?  That’s all the more reason to shift our emphasis to that part of the problem now.  It’s time to stop spinning our wheels pretending we don’t know what has to be done, and begin the real work of doing it!

What it is

To help frame the discussion, let’s review exactly what capitalism is and isn’t.  Capitalism means:

• Private ownership of the banks, key industries and national resources by a tiny minority of the population, and management of those entities so as to maximize profits for the owners.
  
• The overwhelming majority of the population does not own or control any of the national treasure, but works for those who do.  Workers are paid a wage or a salary that only partially compensates them for the value they produce.  The rest is kept by the boss as “profit”.
  
• Neither individual workplaces nor the economy as a whole are run democratically by majority rule.  Rather, the few who own the banks, industries and resources call the shots economically and politically.

When we talk about capitalism, we’re talking about the essence of the economy, the big stuff.  We’re not talking about:

• Your favorite restaurant, or the corner mom and pop grocery store.
  
• Your personal property: your CD collection, your car, your iPhone, etc.

More than anything, replacing capitalism with something better means democratizing the economy.  Industries, banks and national resources would all be held in public trust and managed for the public good.  Work places would be run democratically, with managers elected by the workers, from among their own ranks.  Government would be more democratic too, with representatives elected by work place and industry, as well as by region.  The economy as a whole would be planned and managed by elected representatives.  Questions of whether to devote our collective wealth and resources to this or that project would be debated and discussed openly, as opposed to the current practice of letting a few unelected titans of industry decide these things in back rooms.

Tired Myths 

And let’s not let hackneyed propaganda ploys to trip us up.  Defenders of the status quo will tell you that capitalism and democracy are two words for the same thing.  To eliminate capitalism, they say, would be tantamount to outlawing freedom.  Nonsense!  Leave aside the fact that the selling of our economy and government to the highest bidder for the past 200+ years has been anything but democratic, apologists for capitalism would like you to forget that Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Pinochet’s Chile, Suharto’s Indonesia and—the list goes on ad nauseum—are all examples of capitalist countries.

But what about the even scarier argument that guardians of the current elites can always be counted on to promote: “If you eliminate capitalism,” they caution, “you inevitably end up with Stalinism!  Just look at the Soviet Union and China!”  Here they get extra mileage by mixing a grand deception with a grain of truth.  The revolutions in the Soviet Union and China did go astray.  They did not, in the end, live up to the democratic promise that so many had hoped.  The key question is “why?”  To this, the capitalist apologist fumes, “Why?  What a silly question! It was inevitable.  If you leave the safe harbor of capitalism, you must always end up with totalitarianism.  The one always leads to the other, just like Tuesday always follows Monday.”  Of course this response assumes the listener has neither access to nor interest in history.  In fact, the world’s imperial powers pulled out all the stops to crush the aforementioned and other insipient revolutions, continuing for years to inflict military and economic blows that greatly contributed to the very crippling conditions that lovers of capitalism could then point to with distain as the logical and inevitable consequence of challenging the system.  But if you lay siege to someone’s home, cut off the utilities, inhibit the coming and going of people and supplies, you don’t have any moral authority to condemn those you’ve besieged for living in squalid conditions and being poor housekeepers.  Even less has an aggressor any right to insist that unsavory characteristics, which were nurtured and promoted by their aggression, be attributed instead to the victim’s own flawed nature.

A defender of capitalism today insisting that replacing capitalism must inevitably lead to Stalinism makes as much sense as King George III lecturing the American colonists that revolting against the monarchy would inevitably lead to Nazism.  Any parent knows that a child falls down many times in the process of learning to walk.  But the capitalist proponent would like you to believe that those initial falls prove the child was never meant to walk.

Still, knowing that capitalism must go while also knowing that historical attempts to bring this about have not always gone as planned means that we have much to work out as regards the measures we should take to prevent unhappy outcomes in the future.  So let’s get to it!

There is another myth with which one has to contend when contemplating trading the “right” of a few to dispose of the world’s resources in the way that profits themselves most for the right all humanity to a safe, secure, just and healthy planet: the claim that people are basically lazy.  Without capitalism’s profit-based system, we are told, no one will be motivated and no work will get done.  Again we are treated to misanthropic sophistry.  The notion that monetary profit is the only motivator is ridiculous on its face, for if true, no parent would ever care for a child; no neighbor would ever help a neighbor in need; no one would ever work as a teacher or nurse.  Ah, you say, but those are mere exceptions to the rule, or examples of people acting when they are directly affected.  Touché…almost.  Work under capitalism is so alienating—the work itself being so devoid of democratic input by those doing  it, while the disposition of what is produced is so divorced from those who produce it—it’s no wonder that, under such a system, artificial motivation (including fear, deprivation and yes, money) must be used to get things done.  The obvious conclusion is not that we must tough it out forever under capitalism since people, molded by the system, are too broken to rise above it, but that we must listen to our gut and get rid of this system which is poisoning our souls and holding us back.

If it’s This Broke, You Can’t Fix It

While there is plenty of room for discussion and debate about how to get rid of capitalism, whether it must go should no longer be in question.  But the discussion of “how” should not include strategies for “fixing” or “humanizing” capitalism.  Why?  Because the defining principles of the system are the very things that feed and nurture the laundry list of social problems we want to address.  Because large scale production for private profit requires exploitation, war, racism, poverty and destruction of the environment.   Capitalism can’t be fixed.

Capitalism is defined by the ceaseless drive to maximize profits.   Any capitalist who fails to do this will be trounced by the competition.  Automation and the latest technology must be quickly incorporated, lest an industrialist fall behind his/her more efficient competitors.  In the face of this onslaught, there are only a few ways to for capitalists to maintain and increase their return: externalize costs, drive down wages and increase sales.  Unions must be resisted.  Workers’ solidarity and ability to fight back must be undermined by pitting one group against another.  Salaries and benefits must be slashed to the bone.  The cost of healthcare and other social benefits, as well as the cost for environmental destruction and resource depletion, must be shifted onto the backs of working people.  Meanwhile, more and more widgets must be sold!  If the natural demand is too low, they will use advertising and other means to convince us to buy more than we need.  If the market is still too small, they must use force and arms to capture and control other markets.

By its very nature, capitalist competition leads to poverty, unemployment, exploitation, racism unsustainable growth, overproduction, waste and war.  To free the world from these and many other ills, production for private profit must be jettisoned.  But production for private profit is part and parcel of capitalism; to eliminate the one is to eliminate the other.  Any hope of eliminating capitalism’s worst side effects through incremental reform is as misplaced as believing you could turn a dog into a cat through a series of surgical adjustments.  In both cases, the operation would prove fatal to the patient. While there’s no guarantee that eliminating capitalism will solve all of the big problems we face, it is dead certain that none of them can possibly be solved while capitalism persists.

A Fair Trade

So let’s agree that to protect the environment, address injustice, end war, abolish exploitation, and create meaningful, productive employment for all, we first have to let go of a couple of sacred cows:

• The right of private individuals to own banks, key industries, resources and infrastructure.
  
• The right of lucky individuals to accumulate a massively disproportionate share of the worlds’ wealth and resources.

We know this is the only way forward, so it’s long past time we turn our attention to how to bring it about.  Agreeing that capitalism must go is the easy part!  Reaching a consensus about how to do it is the tough part.  In discussing the best, most effective road from here to there, reasonable people may disagree.  All the more reason to get to it!