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Make Capitalism History * by Sterneck
Capitalism is really very easy to understand. It teaches that the only goal of any economic transaction or decision is to increase the capital of the participant. Capital is profit, which at its most basic form is paying less for something than you sell it for, no matter what that something is. Buy low, sell high. The more profit you make the more capital you have, and the faster you accumulate capital the better.
That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. The only freedom that capitalism endorses is the freedom of capitalists to accrue more capital, as efficiently and as quickly as possible. Freedom of the consumer to choose from different products and services is irrelevant. Freedom to vote is irrelevant. Freedom of religion or freedom to keep and bear arms or freedom to marry who you want is also irrelevant.
So where do Jesus and Darwin come in? Jesus taught that people should love their neighbors as they did themselves, to give to the poor, to basically live by the Golden Rule. You know, be nice to other people no matter what simply because that is the best way to live. After all, when people treat others decently, it is better for the community and the society as a whole.
This way of thinking is completely antithetical to capitalism. The best capitalists care nothing for the welfare of their fellow human beings, for the earth, or for the greater good of society. The only thing that matters to them is more and more profits, and they are rewarded for the making of those profits. In fact, if a CEO or Board of Directors of a corporation don’t do everything they can to maximize profit, the shareholders will throw them out precisely because they didn’t.
In fact, the best capitalists are those who are dominated by one of the Seven Deadly Sins–Greed–and those who care nothing for how their actions affect others–sociopaths. This means that greedy sociopaths are those who are most likely to reap the benefits of capitalism. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Jesus of Nazareth would find this behavior tantamount to the worship of Mammon, and thus condemn it.
As for Darwin, old Charles figured out that the goal of every species, be it animal or vegetable, is to survive. This is accomplished by the survival of at least some of the young of every species long enough to be able to successfully reproduce the next generation. According to Darwin, any species that cannot adapt to changing conditions, be it climactic or otherwise, may be doomed to extinction. Furthermore, any species that destroys its environment to the extent that its young cannot grow up to reproduce will eventually kill itself off. Only successful traits will survive to evolve because the unsuccessful ones will die out because they don’t work. That is the essence of the theory of evolution.
Capitalism, by its very definition of success, accrues more and more capital and benefits faster and faster to a smaller group of people. It allows the destruction of the environment that is necessary for the sustainability of human life. It encourages fighting and wars in order to obtain the materials, be they mineral(ie oil) or human(ie cheap labor) that can be used by the capitalists to make more profits faster. It even encourages totally fictitious and illusory things such as credit-default swaps and speculation as to what business will succeed or fail in order to manufacture profits out of thin air!
Capitalism, IOW, has nothing against selling total illusions so long as there is a market for it. Buddha must be laughing at that one.
Which brings me, no doubt at long last, to my reason that Darwin and Buddha do not approve of capitalism: Capital is not REAL. Capital itself is nothing but a bunch of figures on a balance sheet in a bank or a stock portfolio. It exists only in the minds of human beings. Capital itself has nothing to do with evolution because it does not really exist, though the pursuit of this imaginary goal by members of the human species has very real, and very destructive, impacts on the survival of the species as a whole.
In Buddhist terms, capital and profit are illusions, the pursuit of which invariably causes suffering and prevents enlightenment. Jesus might say they were demons who lure people off of the path laid down by God and prevent the Peace that Passeth All Understanding.
People are real. Labor is real. Work is real. Our neighbors and our children are real. The effects of capitalism are very real. But capital itself isn’t real. It does not exist.
Happy Labor Day!
22 Comments
This is a great rant. I am currently listening to a Teaching Company course called “From Jesus To Constantine: A History Of Early Christianity,” taught by Professor Bart D. Ehrman, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I am noticing a fantastic irony in the persecution lecture #13: Christians were violently persecuted because they were seen as a threat to society for refusing to worship the state gods. The irony, as I see it anyway is today’s opposite trend to marginalize people in the name of a type of Christianity that has, as near as I can tell, nothing to do with the reported teachings of Jesus, a pauper who gave away everything he had.
I am floored that some people claim that capitalism, or stealing, or ripping off the poor because you can, is somehow twisted into a sick form of spiritual enlightenment and acceptable value system.
Seems to me that at the very least, Jesus would be offended. Moses and Paul: furious.
So no. Capital is not real. The truth is real though, and so is love, and so is common decency and respect.
No secret here: economics, politics: not my major. But here is what I do know. We have a pre-pay Visa logo ‘Visa’ card. Every time we use it to access our own fucking money, they take, wait for it: two dollars. That’s capitalism.
Rambling, sorry, recc’d.
No apology necessary, Crane-Station. But $2 per transaction? That’s theft, pure and simple. Are there no credit unions near you that will give you a free debit card? That’s what I switched to for similar reasons. Maybe I’m just lucky.
Which brings us to something else that Jesus, Buddha, and Darwin have in common: Capitalists routinely ignore everything they had to say.
I know. Amazing, isn’t it?
Lovely post, OhioGringo. I have long believed that the dictate to maximize the bottom line as the only Capitalist Commandment, was a license to rape, pillage and steal. And now with the Supreme Court endorsing the personhood of corporations, we have, in effect, let loose this race of Frankenstein’s Monsters whose wealth surpasses that of all the world’s sovereign nations, and who are now free to roar about the world until their destructive rampages finally kill off our fragile planet.
Unless we stop them.
Excellent Post!
I could sit here and type for days on this topic. However, I will simply state that Capitalism doesn’t ever see an opportunity to give one of their extra coats to the neighbor without one!
While forcing myself to watch C-Span’s Washington Journal this morning (don’t ask why) the host read a head line from Rev. Moon’s
right-wing rage (Washington Times) that said, “Labor Day, Leisure day
nothing to do with Unions”.
http://www.coats-for-kids.org/
http://www.onewarmcoat.org/
http://claremoreprogress.com/local/x1221297760/Cherokee-casinos-donate-coats-to-local-organizations
http://www.chieftain.com/news/local/youngsters-donate-coats-to-the-needy/article_11678264-3345-11e0-aeae-001cc4c03286.html
http://www.clothingdonations.org/
http://www.amherstburgecho.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2901580&archive=true
http://www.dressforsuccess.org/affiliate.aspx?sisid=107&pageid=1
http://www.wlwt.com/r/21337206/detail.html
http://www2.illinois.gov/KeepWarm/Pages/Kidsafe.aspx
http://serve.mt.gov/?page_id=2970
Little blue lines with no text. What’s your point? Since I wrote the original diary entry, I think I have the right to ask. Or should I simply flag this as spam?
This is terrific. I hope it gets on the front page. The only authentic wealth is a man’s/woman’s labor.
Hey OG,
Interesting stuff to ponder.
Here’s a good link to a 19min lecture about why societies fail to act in their own best inerests, then fail, then disappear.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse.html
Rec’d.
1 + 1 = 2
This is a lot more than a rant. Thanks for helping to rescue Jesus, Darwin, and Buddha from the hands of the capitalists.
And the capitalists (i.e., those with most of the money and wealth) control our government by buying our government representatives, who pass laws in their favor.
For capitalism to work equitably, if that is possible, then all of the wealth cannot be concentrated in the hands of the few. Over the last three decades in our country, we have witnessed the greatest transfer of wealth to the upper 1% of our society. The middle class is disappearing.
When I was growing up, the highest marginal tax rate was 91%, not 35%. And there was not a ridiculous 15% capital gains tax on all those security transactions of the wealthy.
Since Ronald Reagan (who said “greed is good” and the majority of Americans, except for me, loved him), those tax rates declined significantly creating massive deficits, which are hidden taxes now being passed onto the middle class.
President Barack Obama is a capitalist. I will never vote for that SOB again.
laals30
Flagged as Spam!
Along with “capital” and “profit”, we are about to discover the illusory nature of the “Social Security Trust Fund”. Strangely, it wasn’t the Buddha who revealed that Truth, it was George W. Bush.
Just great, OG!
I love the simplicity of:
“Capitalism is really very easy to understand. It teaches that the only goal of any economic transaction or decision is to increase the capital of the participant.”
No need for complicated economic theory. Capitalism puts on its blinders and says, simply, make money; all other factors by which we weigh basic right and wrong be damned. Who used to argue this? What was that guy’s name? Oh, yeah, I remember. Could it be Satan?
Ask yourself this: how is capitalism sold to the masses?
We are told that it is able to produce more wealth than any other system. We are told that it is the most efficient way to direct the flow of capital to the most productive resources. We are told that it will produce a rising tide that lifts all boats.
The victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans know a little something about what rising tides do to the poor. So do those living in Vermont who heard capitalist cheerleaders speak of aiding them only if offsetting budget cuts, presumably those intended to help others in need, could be found.
Poor people have no boats; rising tides drive them from their homes and drown them.
Capitalism rarely speaks about people drowning. Capitalism keeps score by counting the boats; not by counting those gasping for breath in the water.
We are told that capitalism is the greatest wealth-producing engine mankind has ever created. What we’re not told, at least not by capitalism’s proponents, is that any wealth capitalism produces is always centralized wealth because, by definition, capitalism has no social conscience. Some defend this by noting that capitalism is amoral (i.e. neither moral nor immoral); to have no social conscience, however, is immoral.
And capitalism does not go about its business in a “give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” kind of way. It doesn’t just conduct itself within its given industry. It uses the wealth it concentrates in the hands of a narrow few to poison the political process for its own ends. It doesn’t operate in a “let the chips fall where they may; all are free to compete on a level playing field for the gold” kind of way.
It buys the political class. It buys the judges. It makes the rules to sustain itself at the expense of the commons. It promotes militarism purely for profit. It fights to deregulate itself so that it can prosper while society’s rules are gutted and defunded. It destroys the environment. It shreds the social safety net. It deprives the rest of us of our humanity and turns us into labor slaves to serve the twisted feeding of its own greed.
Capitalism’s sole virtue is that it has sewn the seeds of its own destruction deep into the DNA of its cells. It won’t be much longer now before the cancer that is capitalism destroys itself. RIP you sick bastards.
Ironically, FDR and labor unions saved capitalism from eating itself by humanizing and regulating it to create and maintain a reasonably fair competitive environment.
The odd thing about the free market is that it requires independent regulatory oversight to protect and preserve it.
As I said in another comment on another blog, if left to their own devices, the capitalists will eat each other until only one is left standing and then he will eat his own legs.
Capitalism = rape
What the hell?
Do you not realize that all those programs depend on individuals?
There is no Corporation or CEO taking money out of their own pockets to purchase coats!
I’ve been in charge/Project Manager for one of those programs through the company I worked for. You have to have your head in the sand if you think the COMPANY paid for a damn thing!
That is exactly why I no longer wish to be ruled or participate in Capitalism. They don’t want to hire Americans without treating us as hostages in order to take more of our tax dollars and blood.
At the risk of sounding picky, OhioGringo, but in service to the conversation you elicit with your post, I would take exception to the inclusion of Darwin in your trio, much as he may deserve to be there on a personal level.
I think you rightly describe what capitalism is, but I also think that Darwin’s explanation of the survival of species would make sense from a capitalist’s perspective. The sustainability of the capitalist species seems to be selfevident; they indeed have survived, and in our day flourished. Now, many species do this, and do wipe out the very sustenance on which they depend. But they do not thereby vanish, though they go through the boom and bust cycles we see with capitalism at its free market worst. Somehow, they make do during the ‘lean’ years, biding their time in limited numbers or dormant, but then come forth once more to flourish when the conditions are ripe.
I think capitalism IS Darwinian, and we need to understand that it is. Here’s a bit from an author of the previous century:
“[The]…transformation of the laws of nature into moral principles, the elevation of biological necessity to the status of ethical fundamentals, denotes the essential difference between the animal and human worlds – and the comparison is not in favor of man.
“Among animals, the perfection of deadly weapons bespeaks merely an absence of spiritual life: these weapons are gifts of nature, independent of their consciousness and will. In the human world they are, on the contrary, inventions of the mind. We can see entire nations concentrating on one primary aim – to create big mandibles for themselves with which to crush and devour other nations. The subjugation of the human spirit to gross material interests is shown most clearly by the power of this single aim over our lives – an inescapable power, for the pursuit of this aim becomes mandatory: as soon as one aggressor appears on the scene, one nation wholly devoted to perfecting the techniques of destruction other nations must follow suit since a lag in armaments could mean their undoing.” – Eugene N. Trubetskoi
Substitute in our present day the term ‘corporation’ for Trubetskoi’s ‘nation’ and you have the picture entirely. It is a Darwinian confusion which goes right back to the aggressive tendencies of warmaking, and that is also why after the first release of drones by Obama I knew I could never vote for him again.
This doesn’t mean that we won’t see a ‘bust’ in the capitalism cycle soon. I sure hope we do.
What does my heads location have to do with anything?
http://www.salvationarmy.ca/2009/12/09/popular-clothing-company-donates-1000-new-coats-to-the-salvation-army/
“Aeropostale, a New York-based clothing company that produces a popular teen line, donated 1,000 new coats worth an estimated $69,000 to The Salvation Army in Midland, Ont.
“This donation is a tremendous boost to our efforts to help the less fortunate in our area,” says Peter Thomas, director of community and family services for The Salvation Army. Thomas noted many families cannot afford to purchase winter coats, especially if there are several teenagers in the family.”
http://about.good360.org/AboutUs/Our_Mission
“We believe you can win ‘em all
At Good360, our mission is to fulfill the needs of nonprofits with corporate product donations. We are driven by a vision that demands constant innovation, leveraging the latest technological and social networking developments to create new and engaging online solutions that strengthen nonprofits and expand corporate citizenship.
By:
• Providing product resources that help nonprofits meet their mission
• Helping companies give back to the communities where they live and work
• Helping individuals increase the impact of cash contributions that help ship donated products to qualified charities
• Creating corporate, nonprofit and environmental “win-win” outcomes for unsold products and excess inventory
• Keeping products from going to landfills and instead, getting a second life with those who need”
Never say never. I am not saying that Corporations are good, far from it. But if we are going to take them to task, then stick with the facts. You only said “Capitalism” you did not mention Corporations, CEO’s or companies in your original post. You did mention neighbors, I do not consider anyone that you just mentioned as neighbors. The links I provided showed that people within the current economic system were able to donate coats despite Capitalism. But do not take that as an endorsement of Capitalism. It is just what it is.