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*Why* Capitalism is Evil
Your One-Stop Shop to Learn
How Capitalism Destroys People and Cultures
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"Capitalism is evil!"
Perhaps you've heard people use that phrase.
Perhaps you're troubed by the loss of confidence in capitalism by so many people nowadays, especially younger people.
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Perhaps you can't understand why anybody, young or old, would ever want to denigrate the "greatest economic system the world has ever seen"... a system which has produced so much "freedom", "innovation", and "prosperity".
Especially given that all other systems have "failed", or led to "horrific outcomes".
You just can't understand how anyone could be against capitalism.
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Why would they say this?
Why would anyone say this?
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Well, search no more. We are going to explain it!
From start to finish. You won't have to wonder about it anymore!
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Chapter 1:
What Capitalism Isn't
First things first! Let's define capitalism.
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How would you define it?
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"Well that's easy. It's the opposite of communism. If you're not communist (or socialist, or Marxist), then you're a capitalist. Right?"
No, not exactly. If you're defining capitalism in terms of what it isn't, then you're not really defining it.
Communism/socialism are newer than capitalism. They were invented in response to capitalism. Marx, Engels, and the communist writers were active in the mid-1800's, and Adam Smith lived in the 1600's.
Marxism is a critique of capitalism. Capitalism existed first.
If capitalism is merely the absence of communism, then what was capitalism before communism existed? What was capitalism before the Russian Revolution? And before Marx and Engels? What was capitalism back then?
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Clearly, capitalism can't be defined as simply a lack of the thing that arose in response to it.
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"OK then. Capitalism is FREEDOM! The free market. Freedom to buy, freedom to sell, freedom to live your life without government interference. How could anyone be against freedom?"
Nope. Capitalism is not freedom.
Freedom and capitalism are two different things entirely.
Freedom has been around forever. It's as old as Life.
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But capitalism has not been around forever. It began during the Age of Colonization - the 1500's.
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There was freedom long before there was capitalism.
Freedom is an absence of things. Things like oppression, tyranny, despotism, authoritarianism, rules, restrictions, constraints, obligations, and burdens. Freedom is the condition of being without these things.
But capitalism is not an absence - capitalism is a presence. A presence of something.
It's not the human condition. It's something added on to the human condition..
Capitalism is an economic system.
A system that consists of beliefs, values, priorities, assumptions, expectations, institutions, legislation...
...and armed agencies backing it all up with force.
Some of the components of capitalism are:
- Corporate personhood
- Commodification of living beings
- Intellectual property
- Interest-based banking (usury)
- Private non-residential land ownership
- Fractional reserve lending
- Belief in original sin (humans are inherently selfish)
- The belief that all competition is healthy
- The belief that cooperation doesn't work
- The belief that greed and selfishness are good
- The assumption that transactional relationships are superior to traditional ones
- The assumption that it's possible to have endless growth in a finite medium
...and more.
And none of these components are the human default. None of these are a "given." None of these are the natural condition in which humanity evolved (or was created).
They are not what sits at the base of our minds, once everything else is removed. They are things in themselves, which have been added to our minds, on top of what was naturally there.
Every society has a choice in whether to adopt these beliefs and institutions. Not every society would, if actually allowed to choose.
Let's use some examples. Starting with corporations:
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Whose idea was it to create artificial intelligences, with no soul, and then give them the singular objective of growing as much as possible, and accumulating as much power as possible, unconstrained by any empathy or morals? Whose idea was it to use them as excuses to exempt human beings from accountability for their actions?
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The very idea of a corporation is evil. Its entire purpose is to absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions. That's the corporation's defining characteristic. It's an abolition of personal responsibility. That's what it is.
And why is that a good thing? Why would that EVER be positive for society?
And why are the loudest advocates of "personal responsibility" also the most vocal defenders of corporate personhood , given that the whole purpose of a corporation is to abolish the concept of personal responsibility?
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Corporation?
It's a psychopath
"The Corporation" documentary
We are creating a huge psychopath to control every aspect of our lives and then handing it the keys and locking ourselves out.
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The idea of corporations, and corporate personhood, is very WEIRD. It's not logical at all, and NOT the default state of humanity.
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That's just one example. We're going to explore all of them, throughout this page.
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Chapter 2:
Private Commercial Land Ownership
Is Not Natural
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If you go back in human history, there hasn't always been private commercial land ownership. For most of history, land was managed collectively by the local people in and around it. Decisions were made by consensus.
A village would gather together, have a meeting and discussion, and decide collectively how to utilize the land they had available to them. Labor was shared, and decided by consensus. The fruits of the land were shared too. No singular person laid claim to any singular piece of land (unless it was their home - their personal private space).
A quick clarification:
When you see the term "private land ownership", we are not talking about personal land, like homes and residences. We're talking about land used for economic purposes - like farmland, or industrial facilities.
There has always been privacy. There have always been specific dwellings for specific people. There's always been privacy in residences. That's as old as Life, too.
But economic land, on the other hand, was always managed collectively, by the community in and around it. Up until recently, that is.
So please distinguish between:
- personal property (ownership of one's home and personal belongings)
versus...
- private property (ownership of non-personal land and items used in economic production vital to societal infrastructure).
Got it? OK.
The concept of private ownership of economic land only arose in the past few hundred years in most of the world, and in no part of the world further back than a few thousand. This, in a species that's hundreds of thousands of years old.
Most of our adaptation and evolution took place in societies that had collective local management of land, and did not have the concept of private land ownership. This is a relatively new belief system.
The question is...
...is it a good one?
Chapter 3
Private Business IS Government
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Now your most likely objection to the previous chapter is probably something like:
"But that's collectivism! And that sounds like big government! That sounds like people making decisions for other people and imposing their will on other people. It sounds like more rules, less freedom, and more government!"
And this is a prime example of the pattern of capitalism projecting its own flaws onto other systems. In reality, everything you fear about non-capitalist systems is actually capitalism... projecting onto those systems.
Capitalism IS big government. It relies on armed force to uphold its belief structures and institutions.
Imagine the following scenario:
You're a person who has decided to work, and not be lazy. You've decided to produce your own sustenance - to "live by the sweat of your brow." You're going to plant food in the ground, and tend it, and harvest it. You'll use it to feed yourself and your family, through your own hard work.
This describes a paragon of virtue, right?
This describes a good person!
Well, suppose you go and begin this life, and you plant some seeds in the ground. You build yourself a dwelling. Small and modest. And you tend your garden, awaiting your first harvest.
What will happen next?
Here's what will happen:
Armed men will show up at your dwelling. They will tell you that you are doing something called "trespassing", and that the land you're on is "private property", and that you have a short amount of time (48 hours in most places) to "vacate the premises." Once you're gone, they will destroy your garden and tear down your dwelling. And if you refuse to leave - or if you leave and then come back - they will physically attack you, with violence.
That, friends... is big government.
The people performing this violence are government agents, working for the capitalist system.
Now you might object, and say:
"Yes, but they're only working on behalf of the private owner of the land. The government may be the one "doing" it, but it's at the behest of a private entity. It's not the government. It's a private individual or private business."
So? This "private" entity still governed you, didn't they? They used physical violence - or the threat of it - to compel you into doing something. Something stupid, no less. They sabotaged your ability to live independently and to feed yourself and your family.
Capitalism controls the government, and uses it to initiate violence against innocent people in the name of upholding its concept and pillars. Capitalism relies on force.
And who cares whether the force is coming from a "private" person or a "public" person? It's still force. When someone forces you into something, they are governing you. It's just as real, whether it's coming from a private or public entity.
Defenders of capitalism will say:
"Participation with business is inherently voluntary. Participation with government is inherently coercive."
When the McMansion developers cut down the forest next to your house, was that "inherently voluntary" for you?
When a mining company declares that all the minerals under a certain area of land belong to them, and anybody else who wants to mine those minerals had better get their permission and pay them a cut, or else *violence* will be used against them, that's not "inherently coercive"?
If you found an abandoned piece of farmland and tried to grow vegetables to feed yourself, and a guy came out and told you that you'd be "arrested for trespassing" if you continued, because the land was still under the title of some holding company, you're saying that that guy didn't just GOVERN you?
"Well yea, because it's their land! They own it! It's their private property! If you want to plant crops and have a garden and a cabin, go buy some land of your own!"
But the whole point here is that this notion - of private property - shouldn't exist in the first place. We know that it exists - but we're saying it shouldn't.
"OK so you just want anyone to just walk in and take over anyone's land they see fit? How about if I come into YOUR house, and break open the floor, and start planting potatoes in your bedroom! Would you like that?"
Nice try, but remember, we're talking about private ownership of economic land - not residences.
"But what difference does that make? If someone paid good money for the land, who cares whether they're living on it or not? Who cares if they live 100 miles away? Or 1000? It's not yours! It's theirs!"
And here you're making the assumption that it's normal and natural for someone to control land that they don't even live on. Land, mind you - the sustenance of life - the very thing that human beings (and all creatures) need, in order to survive.
Why should one person control a whole bunch of it - way beyond anything that would be reasonable as their residence?
Why should one person be able to dictate whether other people can feed themselves?
"Because they paid for it!"
But why is that even a thing? Why can land be bought and sold, and accumulated, in the first place?
"Because that's the system we're using!"
You mean capitalism?
"Yes!"
And the purpose of this page is to explain why that's a bad thing.
"OK, then how about you explain why "private commercial land ownership" is a "bad thing." Go on!"
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We just explained it. It gives one person power over other people. The power of life or death. The power to dominate, and rule others.
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And all that power doesn't just stay as it is. It expands. Power begets more power.
And eventually, it leads to the breakdown of democracy, and the re-emergence of oligarchy and aristocratic tyranny.
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Here's how:
Chapter 4:
Capitalism Siphons
The Fruits Of Your Labor
And now your next objection is probably something like:
"If you want to support yourself, why don't you just get a JOB? If you like farming, why don't you just get a job as a farmer? Then you can farm til your heart's content! Then we don't have to worry about this private property stuff - just get a job!"
Let's say you do that. You approach the "land owner" and ask him for permission to work "his" land - in the form of "being his employee."
You fill out an application, and he hires you.
Congratulations!
But wait. There are some major problems with this.
First of all, you had to ask someone's permission to work and feed yourself. That's not very consistent with the ideals of "freedom and liberty", is it?
Second of all, and even more importantly, he's going to charge you a rent.
"A rent? But I'm not renting the land - I'm just working on it!"
The rent is not openly declared. Not like an apartment or something. It's disguised. It takes the form of your wage.
Think about it. Under capitalism, you have to surrender everything you produce, to your boss. If you produce X amount of corn, X amount of blueberries, X amount of widgets in a day - whatever product it is - you have to surrender it over to the "landowner." You own none of what you produced. It's all his.
(Kind of like what capitalism *tells us* communism is...)
Then, he gives it back to you.
Well, SOME of it back to you. In the form of a wage. And your wage is always, always, ALWAYS LESS than the true value of your work.
It HAS to be less, for if it were equal to the value you create, then the "landowner"/"business owner" would not make a "profit".
If he makes "profits", then he is, by definition, paying you less than your labor is worth.
So you're producing something, then surrendering it, then getting paid back a PORTION of its value. And the difference - between the value of your output and the value of your wage - that difference is the rent, in disguise.
So he's charging you rent... for the privilege... of working.
He is siphoning the fruits of your labor.
Isn't this system starting to seem a little less "free" than you assumed?
"But it's HIS land! Shouldn't he have the right to do whatever he wants with it? Including charging rent for someone else to use it?"
Remember, no one is disputing the fact that the current (capitalist) system considers the land to be his private property. What we're disputing is whether that's a good thing or not.
"But it's his! He bought it! Fair and square! He gave up something - his money - and in exchange, he got the land!"
What money did he use, exactly? How did he obtain that money?
In most cases, he obtained it by performing the above-mentioned siphoning on a previous group of workers, at a previous farm or factory!
In other words, he siphoned off the fruits of their labor, through this rent process - i.e. forcing them to surrender their production, and take a wage that's less than the value of their production - and he accumulated money this way. Then, he used that money to buy another farm or factory!
He goes around siphoning off the value of the labor of one group of workers, and using that wealth to purchase the rights to siphon off the value of the labor of ANOTHER group of workers!
He goes around accumulating land and property this way, getting richer and richer, and more and more powerful.
In reality, shouldn't the new farm belong to the workers of the old farm? After all, the money with which the new farm was purchased was siphoned off of their labor. Shouldn't it belong to them, and not to this one guy? Especially considering the fact that he probably never touched the soil, or the assembly line, with his own hands?
Why is it that the one guy who didn't actually do the work, is the one guy who gets to own the whole outfit, and all subsequent outfits purchased from the fruits of that work?
According to capitalism, it's natural, and good, and desirable, for him to accumulate wealth and property this way.
Eventually, you might wind up with something called a billionaire, which, when you actually take the time to think about it, is another word for epic leech.
Let's use Bezos as an example.
What did Bezos come up with? What "brilliant idea"?
"Selling Things On The Internet".
Oh... Wow.... What a genius it took to come up with that.
Sarcasm off now.
He came up with that idea, but he didn't build the business. Not by himself. Hundreds of people helped him. Then thousands. Then millions. THEY did the work. 99.999% of it.
He had a good idea. It's worth a million. Maybe 2 or 3 million. But not 160 billion. You don't "earn" 160 billion. You *siphon* it. Off the labor of millions of others.
Bezos is the bum. Bezos is the freeloader. He's the leech.
And he owes us back what he stole.
100 years of propaganda have convinced people that everything that's wrong with capitalism is actually "socialism." They'll tell you that in socialism, people get to "leech" off of your work. Yet, in reality, that's exaclty what Bezos, and every other billionaire (and every business owner) is doing to their workers.
And this is what capitalism does. It's a system for facilitating the *upward* transfer of wealth, from 99.99% of us to 0.01% of us, and the consolidation of power into fewer and fewer hands.
And it's imperative that we take this money back, and soon, because all that money isn't just luxury - it's power. These super-wealthy oligarchs are amassing power, and they're using it to buy and control our elections.
They're also using it to build a dystopian mass-surveillance system and mass-mind-manipulation system through their big tech giants, like Facebook and Google. The more power we let them accumulate, the less chance we have of ever breaking out.
Everything that we've been taught to fear about marxist philosophies, like socialism and communism, is actually a characteristic of capitalism, and has come true under capitalism.
For instance, we're taught that socialism amounts to having lazy people "leech" off the hard work of others.
But what are capitalists, if not leeches? They burn and poison our planet for money. They invent problems just to make money by selling solutions to them. They reach inside the minds of happy people and manipulate us into feeling empty so that we'll fill the hole with whatever they're selling. They brazenly stoke the most extreme selfish impulses of humanity, and proclaim that greed is "good."
Marx may have lived off his parents, but capitalists live off of collecting rent for things they never made, while the people who actually made them are the ones paying to use them.
Workers build factories - but they don't own them. The guy who owns them is the one guy in the whole equation who never touched a brick.
The workers build the factory, but a non-worker owns it. And then, to add insult to injury, the things the workers make IN the factory don't belong to them either. The one guy who never touches the assembly line is the one guy who gets to own every single thing that comes off of it.
And when it comes to agriculture, there isn't even a factory to build - nobody builds anything - no man ever built land - but for some strange reason, everyone who works the land and grows food by the sweat of their brow has to pay rent for the privilege of working the land and living by the sweat of their brow, to some random guy who only gets to collect that rent because either (A) his great great great (and so on) grandfather impressed a king or pope, or (B)
and who, in either case, never touches any implement, seed, plant, or grain of soil, any in many cases never even sets foot on the land.
Despite this, he owns every single product that comes from it, while the people who actually produced the products, don't.
Then, after collecting (confiscating?) the fruits of the labor of all the workers, the capitalist then uses this siphoned wealth to buy another farm or factory. And "buying" really just means acquiring the power to charge rent to the workers there - rent which he will then use to buy yet another farm or factory, to siphon off the fruits of yet another set of workers - and on and on he goes, expanding his empire.
It's like some kind of fungus, that spreads and spreads, and the capitalist value system teaches us that it's a good thing, and everyone should become a fungus, and there should be as many funguses as possible, all cannibalizing eachother and their ecosystem all at the same time.
And somehow, we're taught, this won't have any negative consequences, and our society will remain completely stable and sustainable. This is utter madness. The fact that anyone can believe in this nonsense indicates not only a faulty educational system, but a real virus in the human mind.
Chapter 4
Capitalism Is Power Accumulation
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When an individual person (or business) owns economic land as their private property, and charges the previously described rent to anyone who wants to work on it, he/it accumulates power through this process.
He extorts the output of workers, and then uses the profits of that extortion to "buy" the rights to extort a new set of workers at a new place. He goes around accumulating power.
And capitalism treats this as a good thing. Its success. This guy is succeeding. Hes doing what you're supposed to do. Accumulating power over others is the point.
And this accumulation of wealth has an effect. On society. It means power. It gives these people - this class - power over everyone else. It tilts the power in society toward them. And the longer they're able to accumulate, the more powerful they become. And the longer "private land ownership" continues, the longer they will continue this accumulation.
Private land ownership thus leads directly to power accumulation, by the capital class, and their ability to buy politicians and purchase government. And once the wealthy elite own the government, it's tyranny for everyone else.
As long as the means of production is owned privately, by one person, or business, and no one else gets to use it without his permission, the owning class will always charge the working class a free/rent for working. As long as there continues to be an owning class, siphoning off all this wealth from workers, there will continue to be an accumulation of power. Wealth is power, so as the owning class gains wealth, it also gains power.
This is inevitable... as long as you have private land ownership. You have to abolish private ownership of the means of production, if you want to stop the power accumulation of the oligarchs, and give the average worker back the power to control his own life, and live free.
So given this process, it's fair to say that "Private Commercial Land Ownership" is not a concept to accept blindly, and not something to automatically assume as a component of a healthy, normal society.
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1. Capitalism is dangerous, cruel, and destructive, and we need to evolve beyond it.
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2. Socialism, however, is not the right replacement in the long term.
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3. The right replacement is a system of Traditional Economics. We have a plan to create these, which you can read here.
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4. Since it will take time to transition to the new economy, and people have pressing needs right now (in food, shelter, and medicine), we strongly support the use of social safety-net policies to keep everyone alive and healthy in the mean-time. This includes food assistance, housing assistance, and the funding of public health services to treat everyone, without concern for ability to pay - i.e. "Medicare-for-All." These policies will be immediately implemented. Then, later, they will be gradually phased out, once the new, benign economies mature enough to take their place.
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Question
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"Why is capitalism dangerous, cruel, and destructive?"
For five main reasons:
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1. Capitalism Inverts Morality
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2. Capitalism Incentivizes Spiritual Decay
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3. Capitalism Encourages Social Breakdown
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4. Capitalism Is Theft
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5. Capitalism Threatens the Continuity of Life on Earth
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Let's go through them, one by one.
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Starting with...
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1. Capitalism Inverts Morality
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"OK smartypants, why don't YOU tell me what capitalism is?"
Capitalism is a value system. It rearranges the values of society to produce a resultant change in behaviors.
Every society has a set of values that it instills and encourages (and sometimes demands) in its people.
While it varies from culture to culture, the core usually remains the same:
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+Be a good person,
+Treat others well,
+Take good care of those under your care,
+Contribute to your community,
+And do what you can to make the world (or at least your corner of it) a better place than it was when you found it.
Those are the values that have, more or less, guided all human societies since the beginning of Time, with very few exceptions. And wherever you find exceptions, you find societal collapse and chaos not far behind.
"So what's that got to do with capitalism?"
Capitalism is a radical new idea, which reorders the social value system. It brings the value of selfishness to the forefront of the human endeavor, supplanting all of those other values.
Instead of the ideal goal in life being "do good for others and the world", it becomes "amass more money for yourself."
It teaches individuals that by succumbing to the temptation of selfishness, they will actually be doing good for society. It takes the vice of greed, and changes it into a virtue, and assures the population that this is a good thing, because it will make society and the world better.
For someone being a "good capitalist", the goal is not "to make society a better place" - his goal is to gain more power (as capitalism tells him that by gaining more power, he IS making society a better place).
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Capitalism is a form of devil-worship.
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Devil-worship is moral inversion. It takes virtues, like compassion, and calls them weakness - meanwhile taking vices, like selfishness, and redefining them as virtues.
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And that's exactly what capitalism does. It makes selfishness the pinnacle of achievement for a human being. It teaches us that when we stop caring about others, and only care about ourselves, it makes society better.
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Both devilry and capitalism are centered around the notion that the best thing an individual can do is to amass power for himself at the expense of others. Devilry teaches that amassing power over others is OK because others shouldn't matter in the first place - while capitalism teaches that amassing power over others is OK because it actually helps others. Capitalism is, in a way, even more insidious than devil-worship.
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In any case, the end results are the same. Misery, emptiness, and societal breakdown.
"Wait a minute. Capitalism isn't greed! Greed existed long before capitalism!"
Sure, there have always been greedy individuals who acted this way since the dawn of man, but it was always considered a shortcoming. Society looked on this attitude as a moral failing - a character flaw.
But capitalism redefines it as a virtue.
Whereas greed used to be shamed and discouraged by society, capitalism praises and encourages it. Instead of wanting less greed, it wants more.
Capitalism tells people that it's perfectly alright to enrich oneself through the sabotage and destruction of others.
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Which brings us to Reason #2:
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2. Capitalism Incentivizes Spiritual Decay
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If we look rationally at capitalism, we can see that it incentivizes the decay of the human spirit.
Capitalism can't function when people are happy and fulfilled. It only thrives when people are unhappy.
Why?
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Because happy people don't buy things. People who are whole, satisfied, fulfilled, self-actualized, "right with God" - whatever terminology you prefer to use - are content in themselves, and do not have a need for external "things" to make them happy. They're not empty inside. They do not have a mental/emotional/spiritual hole that needs filling.
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Without such a void, capitalism has no angle from which to sell its pointless toys, status symbols, and assorted consumeristic garbage.
If someone isn't hungry, you can't sell them a meal.
If someone is healthy, you can't sell them medicine.
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If someone is complete, you can't sell them pointless consumer products by promising that the product will make them complete - because they already are complete.
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Get it?
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So, when people are happy and fulfilled, the capitalist economy shrinks. It can only post growth when people are unhappy and empty. If everyone were happy, the whole system would fall apart!
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Therefore, a capitalist economy has a built-in incentive to sabotage human happiness, in order to create space for more demand for products.
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Capitalism incentivizes the creation of emotional pain and spiritual voids in people - on purpose - because that's the only way to sell its products.
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If we are whole, it profits if it breaks us.
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If we are healthy, it profits if we become sick.
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Business leaders know this - they aren't stupid. They know they have an incentive to cause misery and spiritual decay.
You don't think they act on this incentive?
Especially considering that capitalism tells them to (since anything that makes money is the right way to go)?
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"But how would they go about doing that? How can a businessman make you or me unhappy? We are supposed to be in charge of our own lives, including our own emotional well-being. If you're letting someone else make you unhappy, then you need better personal boundaries! How is some businessman somewhere making you unhappy?"
The most obvious way is through advertising propaganda. Every commercial you watch has the same message: "You are not good enough as you are." You need something else to make you good enough. We have it - buy it from us. You are not good enough."
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That's the message you see all around you in capitalist society.
If it wasn't working, why would they keep sending it?
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Why would they spend so much money on these advertisements if they had no effect?
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"Maybe that message works on some people, but not on me."
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Do you think it's really a good idea to have a society filled with self-hating, disordered, spiritually broken, miserable people? You can't think of any way that that might come back around to bite you?
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"I can still rise above it. People who can't are weak."
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If you have an extremely strong meditation practice, martial arts discipline, or some other impenetrable self-esteem bulwark that most other people don't have, then yes, maybe there's a chance you're immune to ubiquitous mass-propaganda. Maybe.
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But no matter how strong you are on a personal level, you're still a member of a society - and if that society is broken, there's nothing you can do about that, and it will affect you.
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You still depend on a healthy and stable society for nourishment, both of the body and of the mind and spirit. And if the society around you ceases to function, and loses the ability to fulfill your needs, then there's little or nothing you can do, on an individual level, to fix that.
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And this brings us to the next item:
3. Capitalism Encourages the Breakdown of Society
The most powerful way to ruin the individual is to ruin his society - to undermine the social systems and relationships upon which he relies.
Friends, family, neighbors, and community provide relationships that are indispensable for the wholeness of the individual. We are not islands - we need others.
And if those relationships are sabotaged on a society-wide scale, there's nothing the individual can do.
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Capitalism does this by converting natural social relationships into transactional ones.
This process is called transactionalization.
Capitalism profits when free relationships - which are based on tradition, group kinship, natural instincts, and trust - which require no money - are undermined and eliminated, and replaced with transactional relationships in which each act and service is quantified and compensated with money.
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A transaction is a type of interaction in which a service is performed only on the condition of a compensation, and that compensation is:
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Direct:
furnished by the same person to whom the service was performed
Immediate:
furnished at the same point in time as the service
Quantifiable:
able to be expressed as a numerical value
Verifiable:
provided in the form of a physical asset or certified symbolic token.
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The "token", of course, is money. By transactionalizing social interactions and services, capitalism makes these relationships dependent upon money.
If the interaction/service/relationship can't take place without money, then it depends on money, and money becomes more indispensable to the basic operations of society. This dependence on money empowers the people who control the creation of money - the bankers. This is covered in more detail on our page Banks, Bankers, and the Financial System.
And it also destroys the natural foundations of society. It takes tradition, trust, and the goodwill between neighbors and kinfolk, and erodes and eliminates them.
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Righties, you know that whole thing about "society breaking down", which conservatives are always sounding the alarm about?
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Capitalism is doing it. Capitalism is the cause of it.
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"I'm not sure I'm following. I understand the difference between a natural social relationship and a transactional one... but I don't get how capitalism is causing that. Can you give some examples?"
Sure.
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Here are some examples that both Lefties and Righties can resonate with.
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Example #1: The elimination of public gathering spaces.
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Have you noticed that, where you live, there is no place for the community to gather?
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There is no town square... no village green... no bonfire circle... not even a simple field where the community can gather together. There's nothing.
Many towns have what they cleverly call a "town center", but it's actually just a shopping mall, plagiarizing the terminology of the ancient gathering place. It exists solely for business, and if you're there, you're expected to be buying something, or at least searching to buy something. If you're not explicitly engaged in monetary transactions (or shopping around with the clear intent of making such transactions), you're not allowed to be there. You're not allowed to just be there and relax. In fact, they have a name for that. They call it loitering. They consider it a crime, and they'll actually arrest you - they'll physically attack you if you show up just to relax and socialize without the intention of buying anything. Suffice it to say that shopping malls (and "town centers") do not provide fulfillment of the fundamental human need for community gathering space.
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"What about parks? What about the square in the middle of town, where the fountains and benches are?"
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If there's a town square or a park, it's heavily controlled, with almost all forms of social activity forbidden. Singing, dancing, and playing music are explicitly forbidden. The area is "closed" after sundown (and sometimes even earlier). Any form of social gathering is prohibited without a "permit", and those need to be procured weeks or months in advance, and only for"approved" types of activities. All spontaneous gatherings are impossible.
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"How is capitalism responsible for that?"
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Because capitalism is what closed the parks. Business leaders got together and pressured the municipal government to institute those rules. They made up some codswallop about parks being "dangerous" as an excuse to close them at night, and apply crushing sets of restrictions during the day.
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"But parks are dangerous at night. Criminals gather there."
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If that were true, it would be a perfect reason to keep them open. You'd have all the town criminals gathering in one place, and the police could just sit there like spiders waiting for flies to hit the web. It would be a perfect opportunity to catch up on all the outstanding warrants.
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But they don't take that opportunity, because it isn't real. Parks are not gathering places for criminals. Parks are our public spaces - they are for We the People to gather and conduct the ancient, natural social gatherings that are fundamental to our psychological and spiritual well-being, which we have been robbed of by capitalism.
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"But why would capitalism be against parks? What is there to gain from this kind of social sabotage?"
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Gathering in the park to play music, dance, and enjoy the company of your community, is free. It requires no money.
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If you can't do that, then you have to go to a bar, club, concert, or some other business venue, if you want to hear music and socialize. And those venues involve money.
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A natural relationship, based on tradition, instinct, and group kinship, has thus been transactionalized.
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And bankers are happy, because it's their money, which they have a monopoly over the creation of, which is required for it.
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But the rest of us are not happy, because our fundamental needs have been undermined. Society becomes more grim, more selfish, more alienated, less functional.
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Capitalism has incentivized the breakdown of society.
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Example #2: The elimination of motherhood.
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Motherhood is a natural social relationship. It requires no money. The baby doesn't pay the mother for her milk or nurturing.
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Day care centers, on the other hand, are businesses, and they rely on money. Bottled milk is a business, and it relies on money.
Under capitalism, there is economic growth when women give up motherhood and toss their babies into day-care, and economists will report this as good news.
And if women were to rediscover motherhood and embrace it, and stop using day-care centers, the economy would shrink, and it would be reported as bad news by economists.
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So capitalism pushes women into the monetary workforce, even when many would be happier staying home with their children and caring for them.
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Capitalism incentivizes the application of social pressure upon women to choose life paths that benefit capitalism - regardless of what the woman actually wants and feels most comfortable with.
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(If this argument sounds anti-feminist, you can read our page on Feminism).
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Example #3: The prohibition of hitchhiking and ride-sharing.
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In some places, hitchhiking is banned. Ever wonder why?
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It's because sharing is a natural social relationship, requiring no money.
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Taxis, buses, and owning a car of your own are all transactional relationships.
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Capitalism eliminates the natural one, in order to force us to use the transactional one.
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Example #4: Elimination of basic survival skills and life skills.
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Ever wonder why the kids these days can't do anything for themselves? Why they can't cook? Why they can't plan financially? Why they can't time-manage? Why they can't find joy and entertainment in simple, natural things anymore?
These are all services that have been taken over by businesses. Restaurants, money managers, Google, Youtube, Netflix, headphone manufacturers, video-game makers - these all require money. They're transactional.
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When kids don't know their a**es from holes in the ground, they patronize all of those businesses, and the economy grows.
If they were to rediscover self-reliance and the natural world, all of those businesses would lose customers, and the economy would shrink.
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Example #5: Banning of permaculture.
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Ever wonder why, in some states, it's illegal to collect rainwater from your roof?
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Ever wonder why it's illegal to plant gardens in some housing developments?
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Every wonder why it's illegal to dry your clothes in the Sun, including in places like Florida and California - places with abundant sunshine, where it really ought to be the other way around?
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Ever wonder why it's illegal to build a house that's not connected to the main electricity grid?
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Ever wonder why tiny houses are illegal?
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Because all of these activities require no (or less) money and transactions.
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"But those kind of rules aren't everywhere. They're only in a minority of places."
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But the fact that anyone could have ever come up with them at all - even in a single place - is an abomination. The fact that they exist anywhere is simply grotesque. Any economic system that allows this - that incentivizes this - is a sick and wicked system.
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Capitalism is wickedness applied to economics.
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It recognizes that it needs misery and unfulfillment in order to create customers for its pointless products. And the most efficient way to do this is to sabotage the functioning of society.
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It needs to prevent us from fulfilling or needs naturally and locally. It has to actively insert obstacles between us and satisfaction.
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It needs to ruin our self-esteem and make us insecure, so that we'll buy products to make other people appreciate us.
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It needs to ruin our relationships and communities, so that they can no longer be a source of comfort for us, so that we'll buy products to obtain that comfort.
It needs to ruin our local economies, so that we'll become dependent on the larger, centralized, industrial economy.
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It has to sabotage all of the natural systems of our existence, and create a spiritual void within us - for only people with inner voids seek external products to fill those voids.
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Capitalism depends on problems in order to sell products to "solve" them. The system is incentivized to create new problems, convince us that problems exist where they don't, exacerbate problems that do already exist, and prevent us from truly solving any of them.
Its very existence depends on problems, and it cannot afford a world without problems. Without problems, without misery, without conflict and despair, capitalism would collapse, as it would have little to nothing to sell us.
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Sickness and unhappiness are good for capitalism; they are the lifeblood of capitalism, and capitalism knows this.
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And so, ever since capitalism was invented, it has been taking a pick-axe to our societies, traditions, and even our own minds and spirits.
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Considering that we live under capitalism, is it any surprise that more and more people are becoming sick and unhappy?
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Capitalism destroys family and community. It takes things which used to be free, sabotages our ability to attain them ourselves, and then sells them back to us. It poisons our water, and then sells us its own water. It passes ordinances that prohibit us from gathering in parks and public squares - OUR parks and squares - prohibiting us from playing music, singing, and dancing - and then sells us its own music and entertainment, to fill the gap that it created in the first place.
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The formula goes like this:
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1. Invent some useless consumer crap nobody needs
2. Create an advertising campaign to convince them to need it
3. Sabotage the natural and traditional means of fulfillment, so that people have nowhere else to turn except to the useless crap you just convinced them, through propagandistic advertising, to need.
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How can anyone think this is a viable system?
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How can anyone think this leads to ultimate good for society?
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And how can the people who bemoan the vanishing of family, community, and tradition, not realize that their very own economic system is not only destroying those very things, but is designed to destroy them - indeed, that its very existence is utterly dependent on destroying them - that it can't exist without destroying them?
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Capitalism builds residential landscapes in which houses are so far apart, that people can't socialize without driving. We've become alienated and depressed - and capitalism is happy to sell our happiness back to us in the form of anti-depressant pills.
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Then, just in case we decide to utilize those gigantic lawns to grow food, to reclaim a little bit of independence, capitalism stands ready with anti-gardening ordinances and compulsory lawn-mowing ordinances, to prevent us from planting anything, so that it can once again sell our sustenance back to us in commercial grocery stores.
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Capitalism took everything central to Life, and made it harder to acquire, and all we got in return were cars. Our civilization traded away the pillars of Life... for cars.
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4. Capitalism is Theft
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"Hey wait a minute! There's nothing selfish or 'flawed' about working hard and enjoying the fruits I've earned from all my hard work!"
Hard work and capitalism are not the same thing. Just like "freedom", we have two unrelated concepts that have become conflated. And just as freedom existed long before capitalism, so did hard work. People have been working hard since long before capitalism.
When you work, you should enjoy the fruits of your own labor. But that is not what capitalists do. Capitalists siphon off the fruits of other people's labor. When you work for a capitalist employer, he or she gets the profits of your work.
When a farmer gets up at 6:00 AM instead of 7:00 AM because he wants to have a fuller harvest, he's not being a capitalist - he's just being hardworking.
Hard work is the accumulation of prosperity.
Capitalism is the transfer of other people's prosperity. The capitalist convinces others to give their labor over to him.
"But the capitalist doesn't just get the labor for free- he pays a wage for it! He's compensating the worker!"
And he is, by definition, not compensating them for the true value of their work. He's paying them less than the labor is truly worth. And we know this because he's making a profit. That's what profit is, by definition. If he's making a profit, then, by definition, some of the value of the other person's labor is going to him, and not to the person who did the labor. He's skimming off the top.
That profit rightfully belongs to the people who actually did the work - but it goes to the capitalist instead.
"Yes, because they're using his means of production! His equipment! His factory! He bought it! They're using his stuff, so they owe him a kind of 'fee' for the use of it, and that fee is the extra value they give him - the profit."
But why does he own the equipment in the first place? Why does the factory belong to him, rather than to the people who actually do the work in it?
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"Because he bought it! With his own hard-earned money!"
You mean with money he gained by skimming off the labor of a previous set of workers at a previous factory. And he bought THAT factory with money he siphoned off the value of the labor of another set of workers at another factory.
That whole process is nothing more than a series of leechings, with each leeching providing the money to make the next purchase necessary to justify the next round of leechings. It's a scam. A capitalist is a scam artist who convinces other people to give him the fruits of their labor, and then uses those fruits to accumulate more power with which to justify taking more fruits from the labor of more people.
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5. Capitalism Threatens the Continuity of Life on Earth
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Capitalism makes water undrinkable, air unbreathable, soil unplantable, stars invisible, and silence impossible. It's remarkable when you think about it: At no other point in human history have we been unable to drink from streams, unable to see the stars. At no point in history could air make you sick. Until capitalism.
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True independence can only be achieved through Local Self-Sufficiency, in which everything you need for survival is controlled by you - or at the very least, by people whom you know and trust - your neighbors.
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When everything you need is within walking distance from where you sleep, then it no longer matters what the government's policies are - you'll have food on your table either way. You'll no longer have to beg the government for permission to do things, because if they say no, you still have everything you need. You can give them the finger. You can wait them out.
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Our current civilization was designed to make us dependent on it, by taking away our ability to support ourselves without it, so that we might be perpetually under the control of it. Our communities have even been laid out in such a way as to keep us separated from our sources of food and energy, so that "THE ECONOMY" might insert itself between us and our sustenance, and thereby control who eats and who doesn't.
Ordinarily, if a worker is being abused by his boss, he could just tell the boss to buzz off. He could go home, grow his own food, and regroup his life. But he can't do that - not in this system, because the land has been re-purposed in such a way that there is no space for him to grow food. Where would the crops go?
Food has been consolidated into areas far away from where people actually live. And so, to get from farm to table, it must be transported across long distances. And that journey involves:
*Energy (fossil fuels), which can only be provided by corporations (controlled by the banks)
*Vehicles, also supplied by corporations
*Infrastructure (roads, bridges), which are claimed by government, and require its assent (in the form of licenses) to use, on pain of force
Thus, access to food becomes dependent on "THE ECONOMY", and anyone wishing to eat must submit to it, in the form of a boss, who is controlled by it through the hierarchical distribution of money.
This system exists to take power away from you, and put it in the hands of specific people (the elite clique who control the money-printing machine), and is utterly unnecessary for the fulfillment of needs. Every need you have - water, food, energy, and everything else - can be produced in abundance without this system, without "THE ECONOMY."
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"But capitalism is constrained by law. If something is truly bad, dangerous, evil, or wrong, the society can simply legislate against it, pass a law against it, and the capitalist will be forced to respect it."
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But at the same time, capitalism claims to have the right to make those very laws, and decide what they are and aren't. So if capitalist doesn't like a law (because it prevents him from expanding his money and power collection), he can simply change the law. All he has to do is convince enough people to go along with him. And his capital can be directly used for achieving that. The more capital he has, the more people he can persuade.
If it makes more money to destroy a river, then capitalism says to destroy it.
And if it's illegal, capitalism says to bribe the politicians to make it legal.
And as long as the price of bribing the politicians to make it legal to destroy the river is lower than the price of not destroying the river, then capitalism says to bribe them and destroy it.
But mankind can't make the laws. The mighty capitalist is powerless to change the fundamental nature of how the universe operates. All the money in the world can't change a single law of nature. It can't even budge them. The parameters that the biosphere requires for balance remain the parameters, no matter how many titans of industry, no matter how much elbow grease, no matter how much ingenuity, no matter how many "Yea" votes in the Congress or legislature. No person, no persons, and no group has the ability to change the true law.
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Capitalism launches a full-scale assault on the natural systems that keep our world in balance. It is fundamentally opposed to the idea of sacredness - the idea that It denies all sacredness, and declares itself a god over all of Existence, consuming all in its path with no regard for any consequence. It brings out - deliberately - the evil potentialities in the human psyche, and declares them virtues. It sabotages - deliberately - the well-being and happiness of individuals, in order to create a misery void for its dumb products to fill. And it expects the society it exists in to hold together, despite all of this.
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Technocracy
It goes against sacredness... it extracts power from everything in the natural world and everything in the social world, even if doing so corrupts them. Nothing is sacred to capitalism - everything is a target for exploitation and re-routing to absorb it into the market. It seeks to expand the market into every aspect and facet of human life. It wants everything to become a transaction - nothing working organically anymore, but everything transactional, involving money.
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ultimately to control those things. just as the internet of things seeks to control all electronics (and eventually biology as well), capitalism was an earlier stage, a kind of preliminary internet of things, where every human action becomes controlled, not by a computer mainframe, but by money, and more importantly by the insitutions that control money - i.e. the "central banks" that print and create money.
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the goal is to give these institutions power and influence over an ever expanding portion of human life, interactions, and relationships. the more of our lives and affairs that are dependent on money to operate, the more the institutions that control money control our lives and affairs. capitalism is a strategy for financial tyranny. capitalism seeks out every facet of human life, and looks for a way to sabotage that facet's ability to function without the use of money. It takes things that never required money - they were just done - based on instinct, tradition, and trust between people, - and restructures them to become transactional, based on buying and selling services, which require money. it does this for control. if you can't perform a task or relationship without money being involved, then you depend on money and it's controllers for that task or relationship.
ultimately a step towards technocracy
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But it brings jobs to poor ppl in 3rd world
True, but they didnt need those jobs before capitalism arrived. Capitalism is the only reason they need those jobs in the first place.
Before capitalism, they lived in traditional, natural economies. Their ecosystem provided everything they needed. They had no money, but were perhaps richer than all of us.
Calitalism comes in, cuts down their forest and poisons their river, and now they no longer have a food source. So now the only place to obtain food is from the world capitalist economy, and for that they need money, and for that they need jobs.
These cultures have supported themselves for ten thousand years without capitalism. Capitalism comes in, destroys their ecosystem, the source of their sustenance - just erases it off the face of the planet - leaving them eviscersted and foundationless - and then has the arrogance to pat itself on the back for supplying them with "jobs" that they didnt even need until capitalism came along, to fill in the void that capitalism created in the first place.
This is just madness.
A capitalist
is a monotheist
who got the idea
that the best way
to honor the Creator
is by profaning Creation.
Capitalism takes the dazzling complexity and genius of the Creator, as expressed through His beautiful, unmatchable Creation, and reduces it to a "natural resource", a monetary quantity - a number in a bank account. That is profaning Creation.
Capitalism says that the land - the mother of Life, the consort of the Creator, whose body is the canvas upon which He paints - is property to be owned by businessmen, and bought, sold, and traded like beads in a marketplace. That is profaning Creation, and thus the Creator.
Capitalism equals the square root of the ratio of one over negative morality.
But its not really profit, because it doesnt actually increase wellbeing, it doesnt bring happiness. Capitalists are all miserable inside. They dont show it publocly, but in private their lives are devoid of anything but fleeting surface-level pleasures floating on a sea of existential angst and self-hatred. Every capitalist who reads this knows its true.
So it's not profit - it's power. Capitalists amass money from others, but the money doesnt bring true profit (happiness) - it merely brings power. Power over others.
And power is not a concrete thing in itself - it's a ratio. It's always over someone. Power can only exist in relation to someone who hasnt got power. So there are inherently winners and losers in the capitalist game. If there arent losers, then it doesnt work. Theres no point in gathering power If everyones a winner, it defeats the whole purpose of amassing power in the first place.
X cant be greater than Y AND Y be greater than X.
Everyone cant amass power. Some are going to have to lose it. If no one loses it, then no one is gaining it - and if no one is gaining power, then capital8sm isnt performing the function it wae intended for, because its intended functiok is to give sociopaths the excuse to act on their sociopathy and amass power over others (via amassing money).
So it has the need for losers built into it. There are losers because there have tovbe - because if there arent, then it defeats the whole intdnrion of capitalism. Capitalism necessitates loserrs. If youre a capitalist, you need losers. They exust because you need them.. you want them there.
Capitalism teaches that the way to fix society is for every X to be greatsr than every y and vice verda. For every letter of the alphabet to be greater than every other - which is mathematically impossible. It cant lead to prosperity for all - it can only lead ti it for some.
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Question from Left:
"How to dismantle capitalism, if not comm or soc?"
In order to dismantle capitalism, you dont need to seize and redistribute money and resources - all you need to do is discard the concept of land ownership. The core of capitalism - the ability of an "owner" to extract (leech, siphon off) the products of other people's work - rests upon the idea of that person "owning" the land upon which the workers worked. Whether it's a farm or a factory, either way, the capitalist feels entitled to the fruits of other people's work because he considers the land, on which the work took place, his property. Discard that concept of him owning the land, and there's no longer a justification for his ownership of the fruits/products produced there.
To learn more about the higher-consciousness view of land and property in the New Paradigm, visit:
Law:
Property
Three ideas have to go:
Owning ppl
Owning animals
Owning land
And this idea doesnt go against anything fumdamental - on the contrary, it aligns perfectly with nature and truth. Land is not property. The very idea of a member of an ecosystem owning the ecosystem of which he is a member, is nonsense. It would be like one tiny flake of skin on your arm claiming to own your entire body.
If a finger cannot own the hand,
Then a person cannot own the land.
For those who prefer religious language, land ownership reduces the miracle of Creation to a piece of property that can be bought, sold, and traded. It's profanity.
Land ownership is profanity.
Land ownership is a relic of barbarism, alongside owning animals and owning people. For thousands of years, it was considered normal and obvious that one person could own another. Now, that idea is downright offensive, to Lefties and Righties alike, and we view that ideas historical supporters as savages. The same will be the memory of the people who support animal ownership and land ownership today. Get yourself on the correct side of history!
"No land ownership? So we all become nomads, or homeless, or wards of the state?"
Nope. Don't jump to conclusions.
The land ownership system will be replaced by a system of specific rights - 8 of them, to be precise.
List:
Binary vs. Scaled
Instead of one person owning the company and dictating everything like a monarch, the company will instead be owned collectively by the people who work in it, and decisions will be made democratically, by voting. Democratization of workplaces.
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