Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Myth: "We Don't Have Capitalism"

We do have a capitalist system. Capitalism is the private or corporate ownership and control of property for the profit of the owner, it's a system of top down centralized control by private investors.

This system by it's very nature centralizes control of assessable wealth into fewer and fewer hands, there is an inherent systemic instability in the accumulation of capital that can only be resolved either through a collapses in which property owners lose their wealth, through the redistribution of wealth, or through the abolishment of the capitalist system.

There are a variety of alternatives, one is the worker cooperative model, one in which I am employed. That is when workers share equal equity in the institution (workers own the workplace) and make decisions democratically (or by a democratically established system).

Let's contrast shall we?

In the right hand you have a system of centralized control of power and wealth, in which the business owners and investors profit from the labor of the workers.

In the left hand you have a democratic system in which the workers are also the owners. The difference is comparative to the difference between democracy and feudal aristocracy, a more than justified comparison.

There are many other alternative systems, but these two are comparatively simple.

The Capitalist system starves people in cage beds in Hong Kong and makes them pay for the privilege. It forces parents to choose between sacrificing their health and suffering the pain of hunger and exhaustion on the one hand, and watching their children starve on the other. It claims voluntary anything poverty can force a person to agree to.

Capitalism is a system of violence and of force, both economic and physical for the centralized control over social property (workplaces) is ultimately enforced by violence.

And the "We Don't Have Capitalism" argument speaks to free market illusions conjured by the high priests of wealth and privilege, who have stolen the language of liberty and twisted it to defend the vicious domination of a ruling aristocracy, that calls the worker violent for forming a picket line then calls the violent suppression of the worker by state thugs and corporate mercenaries self defense.

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