Anti-Capitalism
In
Five Minutes Or Less
By Robert Jensen
09 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
We
know that capitalism is not just the most sensible way to organize an
economy but is now the only possible way to organize an economy. We
know that dissenters to this conventional wisdom can, and should, be
ignored. There’s no longer even any need to persecute such heretics;
they are obviously irrelevant.
How do we know all this?
Because we are told so, relentlessly — typically by those who
have the most to gain from such a claim, most notably those in the business
world and their functionaries and apologists in the schools, universities,
mass media, and mainstream politics. Capitalism is not a choice, but
rather simply is, like a state of nature. Maybe not like a state of
nature, but the state of nature. To contest capitalism these days is
like arguing against the air that we breathe. Arguing against capitalism,
we’re told, is simply crazy.
We are told, over and over,
that capitalism is not just the system we have, but the only system
we can ever have. Yet for many, something nags at us about such a claim.
Could this really be the only option? We’re told we shouldn’t
even think about such things. But we can’t help thinking —
is this really the “end of history,” in the sense that big
thinkers have used that phrase to signal the final victory of global
capitalism? If this is the end of history in that sense, we wonder,
can the actual end of the planet far behind?
We wonder, we fret, and these
thoughts nag at us — for good reason. Capitalism — or, more
accurately, the predatory corporate capitalism that defines and dominates
our lives — will be our death if we don’t escape it. Crucial
to progressive politics is finding the language to articulate that reality,
not in outdated dogma that alienates but in plain language that resonates
with people. We should be searching for ways to explain to co-workers
in water-cooler conversations — radical politics in five minutes
or less — why we must abandon predatory corporate capitalism.
If we don’t, we may well be facing the end times, and such an
end will bring rupture not rapture.
Here’s my shot at the
language for this argument.
Capitalism is admittedly
an incredibly productive system that has created a flood of goods unlike
anything the world has ever seen. It also is a system that is fundamentally
(1) inhuman, (2) anti-democratic, and (3) unsustainable. Capitalism
has given those of us in the First World lots of stuff (most of it of
marginal or questionable value) in exchange for our souls, our hope
for progressive politics, and the possibility of a decent future for
children.
In short, either we change
or we die — spiritually, politically, literally.
1. Capitalism is
inhuman
There is a theory behind
contemporary capitalism. We’re told that because we are greedy,
self-interested animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested
behavior if we are to thrive economically.
Are we greedy and self-interested?
Of course. At least I am, sometimes. But we also just as obviously are
capable of compassion and selflessness. We certainly can act competitively
and aggressively, but we also have the capacity for solidarity and cooperation.
In short, human nature is wide-ranging. Our actions are certainly rooted
in our nature, but all we really know about that nature is that it is
widely variable. In situations where compassion and solidarity are the
norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and
aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.
Why is it that we must choose
an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature
and strengthens the most inhuman? Because, we’re told, that’s
just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around,
we’re told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed
and the pursuit of self-interest. So, the proof that these greedy, self-interested
aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system
that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that
way. Doesn’t that seem just a bit circular?
2. Capitalism is
anti-democratic
This one is easy. Capitalism
is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society,
you concentrate power. Is there any historical example to the contrary?
For all the trappings of
formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands
that the wealthy dictates the basic outlines of the public policies
that are acceptable to the vast majority of elected officials. People
can and do resist, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but
such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist win victories,
some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to
dominate. Is this any way to run a democracy?
If we understand democracy
as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate
in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying
decisions made by the powerful, then it’s clear that capitalism
and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Let’s make this concrete.
In our system, we believe that regular elections with the one-person/one-vote
rule, along with protections for freedom of speech and association,
guarantee political equality. When I go to the polls, I have one vote.
When Bill Gates goes the polls, he has one vote. Bill and I both can
speak freely and associate with others for political purposes. Therefore,
as equal citizens in our fine democracy, Bill and I have equal opportunities
for political power. Right?
3. Capitalism is
unsustainable
This one is even easier.
Capitalism is a system based on the idea of unlimited growth. The last
time I checked, this is a finite planet. There are only two ways out
of this one. Perhaps we will be hopping to a new planet soon. Or perhaps,
because we need to figure out ways to cope with these physical limits,
we will invent ever-more complex technologies to transcend those limits.
Both those positions are
equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they
don’t solve problems. They tend, in fact, to cause more problems.
Those problems seem to be piling up.
Capitalism is not, of course,
the only unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the
most obviously unsustainable system, and it’s the one in which
we are stuck. It’s the one that we are told is inevitable and
natural, like the air.
A tale of two acronyms:
TGIF and TINA
Former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher’s famous response to a question about challenges
to capitalism was TINA — There Is No Alternative. If there is
no alternative, anyone who questions capitalism is crazy.
Here’s another, more
common, acronym about life under a predatory corporate capitalism: TGIF
— Thank God It’s Friday. It’s a phrase that communicates
a sad reality for many working in this economy — the jobs we do
are not rewarding, not enjoyable, and fundamentally not worth doing.
We do them to survive. Then on Friday we go out and get drunk to forget
about that reality, hoping we can find something during the weekend
that makes it possible on Monday to, in the words of one songwriter,
“get up and do it again.”
Remember, an economic system
doesn’t just produce goods. It produces people as well. Our experience
of work shapes us. Our experience of consuming those goods shapes us.
Increasingly, we are a nation of unhappy people consuming miles of aisles
of cheap consumer goods, hoping to dull the pain of unfulfilling work.
Is this who we want to be?
We’re told TINA in
a TGIF world. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange? Is there really
no alternative to such a world? Of course there is. Anything that is
the product of human choices can be chosen differently. We don’t
need to spell out a new system in all its specifics to realize there
always are alternatives. We can encourage the existing institutions
that provide a site of resistance (such as labor unions) while we experiment
with new forms (such as local cooperatives). But the first step is calling
out the system for what it is, without guarantees of what’s to
come.
Home and abroad
In the First World, we struggle
with this alienation and fear. We often don’t like the values
of the world around us; we often don’t like the people we’ve
become; we often are afraid of what’s to come of us. But in the
First World, most of us eat regularly. That’s not the case everywhere.
Let’s focus not only on the conditions we face within a predatory
corporate capitalist system, living in the most affluent country in
the history of the world, but also put this in a global context.
Half the world’s population
lives on less than $2 a day. That’s more than 3 billion people.
Just over half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives on less
than $1 a day. That’s more than 300 million people.
How about one more statistic:
About 500 children in Africa die from poverty-related diseases, and
the majority of those deaths could be averted with simple medicines
or insecticide-treated nets. That’s 500 children — not every
year, or every month or every week. That’s not 500 children every
day. Poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 children an hour
in Africa.
When we try to hold onto
our humanity, statistics like that can make us crazy. But don’t
get any crazy ideas about changing this system. Remember TINA: There
is no alternative to predatory corporate capitalism.
TGILS: Thank God
It’s Last Sunday
We have been gathering on
Last Sunday precisely to be crazy together. We’ve come together
to give voice to things that we know and feel, even when the dominant
culture tells us that to believe and feel such things is crazy. Maybe
everyone here is a little crazy. So, let’s make sure we’re
being realistic. It’s important to be realistic.
One of the common responses
I hear when I critique capitalism is, “Well, that may all be true,
but we have to be realistic and do what’s possible.” By
that logic, to be realistic is to accept a system that is inhuman, anti-democratic,
and unsustainable. To be realistic we are told we must capitulate to
a system that steals our souls, enslaves us to concentrated power, and
will someday destroy the planet.
But rejecting and resisting
a predatory corporate capitalism is not crazy. It is an eminently sane
position. Holding onto our humanity is not crazy. Defending democracy
is not crazy. And struggling for a sustainable future is not crazy.
What is truly crazy is falling
for the con that an inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable system
— one that leaves half the world’s people in abject poverty
— is all that there is, all that there ever can be, all that there
ever will be.
If that were true, then soon
there will be nothing left, for anyone.
I do not believe it is realistic
to accept such a fate. If that’s being realistic, I’ll take
crazy any day of the week, every Sunday of the month.
Robert Jensen
is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board
member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center http://thirdcoastactivist.org
. His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity
(South End Press, 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness:
Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle
to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent:
Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang).
He can be reached at [email protected].
His articles can be found online at
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Click
here to comment
on this article