CHAPTER XXVI.
CAPITALISM, AN IMPEDIMENT TO FURTHER PROGRESS.
********
Capitalism has long ago reached the limits of its natural development. No matter how glittering and powerful it may look in appearance today, it has no substance, no real purpose, and it holds no definite prospects for the future.
Its natural economic laws and mechanism cannot rationally function in the new environment which it has helped to create. Therefore it is evolving in an increasing irrational and dangerous way.
Space and opportunity for further capitalist development are decreasing fast, and the limits of Human tolerance have been reached. Humanity is on the verge of madness.
Capitalism has become an impediment to further Human progress. It is forcing the Human race backwards, and, consequently, it has lost the right to impose itself to the world.
These are the reasons.
Capitalism's economic laws, which were naturally tuned to overcome an environment of emptiness and scarcity, cannot function in a new environment of saturation and plenty.
Capitalist economy is a machine devised to produce 'plenty', but for Capitalism plenty becomes a curse.
What is plentiful and free, like the Sun, the Air, Seawater are not private property, are not for sale (yet) therefore they have no value and are not calculated in capitalist economic terms.
What is simple and easy has little market value therefore Capitalism has a vested interest in 'complexity'.
The capitalist merchant will have to solve the problem of making what is simple, easy, plentiful and free, his private property or subject to his control so as to be able to make it marketable.
It would be interesting to know how many times, so far, simple solutions to our social and economic problems have been overlooked or even suppressed in favour of more complex and more ineffective ones, only because these were more profitable to the vested interests of the capitalist establishment. How many inventions may have been bought out and stored away because, by eliminating the waste of labour and resources, they would have threatened capitalist economy.
'Permanency and conservation' will diminish market turnover, therefore, Capitalism has a vested interest in 'waste and destruction'. Waste and destruction may follow the logic of capitalist economy, but they are irrational and criminal in the context of Human survival.
Is there any definite border between irrationality and madness? The real question is how far we have already gone in that direction and whether we still have left enough common sense and the capacity to judge what is rational and what is not. Will the new generations, born in a madhouse social and ecological environment, recognise the wrongs and the damage that we have done to ourselves and our planet? Are they accepting the madhouse situation as normality?
Capitalism depends on 'unemployment and want' to fight inflation and to raise profits. Therefore, it will never completely solve the problems of unemployment and poverty. Instead it produces the greatest wealth for some and the most abject physical and spiritual misery for others.
Educated poor and educated unemployed people are a threat to the existence of an obsolete and corrupt society. Therefore, Capitalism has a vested interest in 'ignorance and misinformation'. It prefers to deal with ignorant unemployed people and moronic criminals rather than with educated revolutionaries.
What will happen to a society where the establishment is ignorant because it does not want to know, and the rest are ignorant because they are not supposed to know? Is there any border between ignorance, prejudice and hate? Humanities, history and social sciences are being discouraged in capitalist education because they are considered to be unproductive; commercial technology, marketing and advertising are promoted; what kind of society will develop if we take Humanity out of the Human beings?
Capitalism upholds the virtue of 'selfishness' and personal gain, but this is what puts the capitalist businessman and the criminal in the same category. Is there any clear border between legitimate business and organised crime? Or is it only determined by the degree of cunning and power of establishment who make and administer the law?
Is it more criminal to bash a man to rob him of his wallet than to make millions of children miserable through advertising, unhappy with what they have, to get at the wallets of their parents, and make them unhappy as well?
Labour is a troublesome commodity for the capitalists in the process of production; Therefore, Capitalism has a vested interest in 'machines'. Technology is gradually replacing the workforce, but every person out of work is one less consumer on the market. This means that the capitalist must consume more himself. Therefore, there is a trend in the economy to produce more extravagant luxury goods and services than essential commodities, as it is more profitable to produce luxuries for those who have money to spare than to produce essential goods for those who have not. So the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.
More people, to find employment, are being attracted to the personal service of the rich and their entourage. While a few years ago domestic servants were hard to find, now more and more people must throw themselves at the chance of servile employment; 'servile and parasitic' activities are the only growing occupations in the economy, and a proud Nation tends to become a Nation of servants.
As the capitalist establishment's lifestyle becomes more extravagant in contrast with the needs of the majority, so its need for security increases. This is another growth industry.
At the other end, as technology is making the labour force redundant, poverty increases and social services, always considered a burden by the capitalist, become inadequate. A growing number of people will have to forego the right to work, the right to basic necessities that were considered inalienable only a few years ago.
With no prospect of work, the future of entire sections of society is subjected to the logic of an obsolete and perverted economy. The wealth of the country and the livelihood of its people are in the hands of gamblers in the stock and futures markets: they are at the mercy of the private personal interests of secretive international financiers and bankers who are not elected but have power over the elected governments of the Nations.
The promotion of individual selfishness plus ignorance and poverty is a mixture that produces frustration, vandalism and insensitivity. Lack of purpose and lack of ideals breeds escapism and drug addiction amongst the young generations, poor and rich; and organised crime is taking advantage of this situation.
Long ago 'organised crime' had gained unofficial acceptance as a provider of services, and today it has become an accepted part of the capitalist establishment, with its own capital invested in legitimate and illegitimate business. It shares with its blood relations, the capitalists proper, the office blocks, the luxury hotels, the holiday resorts, the glamour of the media, and the technology of capitalist production.
Organized criminals are amongst the staunchest supporters of the capitalist system because crime is the quintessence of blind personal self interest and free enterprise without the restrictions of ethics or morals which, in any case, are very thin in capitalist economy today.
There is evidence of a natural alliance between big business interests, extreme right wing associations, organised crime and powerful government enforcement agencies in the defence of Capitalism and what they call "freedom and democracy". They seem to surface together everywhere in the world in support of the most oppressive capitalist dictatorships.
There is another negative and regressive feature in capitalist economy today. While in the early stages planning may not have been possible or necessary for capitalist expansion, today, in the present saturated world situation, planning and guarantees of employment are becoming essential for any future progress. But the nature of the capitalist system of production precludes any rational planning and, even more, any guarantees of employment, as we have seen earlier.
There is no long term rational plan of production and use of resources.
There is no guarantee of security of employment, nor provisions for alternative occupations when an industry becomes obnoxious, obsolete or has reached the limits of its growth; for example, to prevent unemployment in the timber industry we are compelled to continue cutting our forests until there are no more left.
Every individual, therefore, for the sake of his immediate survival, must strive to keep alive the industry or organism of which he is a part. This applies to all organisms within capitalist economy, whether they are good or destructive. It seems to be evident that most people who have vested interests in, or whose livelihood depends on any dangerous or obnoxious industries, are the most strong apologists, or even violent supporters of such industries.
Another feature of capitalist society, deriving from the lack of rational planning and guarantees of employment, is the unconscious perversion of social and personal interests. The instinctive natural interest of every organism, and every individual within it, is the perpetuation of the environment that promotes its growth, and which is the reason for its existence. Therefore, generally speaking, in a situation when there is little opportunity for alternative employment, health workers, preoccupied about the source of their incomes, would have an involuntary vested interest in the existence of sickness; policemen would have a vested in the existence of general crime; people who make a living by working for charity organisations would have a vested interest in the existence of poverty and misery; union officials would have vested interest in the existence of industrial turmoil, and so on.
These instinctive unconscious interests can be very strong because they are related to the instinct of immediate survival. Therefore, they can exert a great restraining influence on otherwise genuine attempts to solve our problems once and for all.
This general rule and this pressure apply even more when great gain or great loss of wealth and power are involved. We do not have to look far to see the evidence of these regressive features in the present stage of evolution.
Faced with the prospect of losing their employment, as we have said before, working people in many countries are forced to accept cuts in wages and living standards.
As we have already seen, a worldwide trade war is going on in which the workers of different countries are battling to throw each other out of work. But this absurd battle, by cutting the buying power of wages, can only further decrease market demand.
The following paragraphs are a 1980’s description of the Hayek – Friedman Monetary Free Market philosophy that we have seen lately debunked.
Finally, the most evident sign of regression are the economic and social policies of our present conservative world leaders. To save capitalist economy they are attempting to bring about economic and social conditions that were relevant two centuries ago and could not possibly improve the present situation.
It seems to be evident that, towards the decline of any obsolete and corrupt socioeconomic system in our history, we find at the top leadership either persons who are intelligent but corrupted, or persons who are honest but not intelligent either intelligent crooks or honest dunces.
The simple reason is that if a person was honest and intelligent at the same time, he would have nothing to do with an obsolete and corrupt system, he would just try to change it and, therefore, he would not be allowed to reach the top. If such a person would try to patch up such a system, he would eventually end up either becoming corrupted himself, or being broken like a fool. This would only confirm the general rule that he was either corrupted or a fool, pushed to the top for a brief moment, towards the end of an Era.
If we look at our capitalist and political leaders today, they seem to be a sorry sight as far as wisdom goes. They seem to represent the worst features of the merchant philosophy, plus a narrow minded perception of the present world problems, and a rock hard presumption that God is on their side (this was written in the 1980s but there is not much difference now). It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous combination of attributes in people who have the power to blow the world apart. But it is their economic programs that are the most definite signs of regression.
They seem to realize that capitalism has come against some insuperable problems, and it cannot go much further.
Not knowing what to do, and not wishing to give up, they seem to have acquired the strange notion that capitalist economy could continue to expand for ever if they could recreate the conditions that had been favourable to its birth and early development.
In other words, they have the nostalgic assumption that, if they cannot go forward and the present is full of troubles, all could be fine if they could turn the clock backward, to the good old times when Capitalism seemed to work so well.
They want to revive Capitalism by trying to re impose those features which they believe were prevalent at the beginning and during the Industrial Revolution. Their main argument is that today wages are too high, and that the capitalists are too much restricted by governments, unions, social and ecological considerations, etc. Therefore, by eliminating all these restrictions, capital could be free to expand further and the capitalist socioeconomic organism could survive.
In short, their aim is to put 'capital above all', and make the need for profitable capital investment the overriding and overruling consideration above everything else.
Today, this has become more or less the main economic object of all the main political parties in the capitalist and also socialist countries. Whether Liberal or Labour, Republican or Democratic or even Socialist, their main cure for our national economic and social problems is to undercut the opposition in the international world markets. To this effect they urge the workforce to make capital investment more profitable for the capitalists, that is, to increase the productivity of labour.
By now we should know what this means, and how hopeless it is in the saturated world market, where over a hundred countries are already sacrificing their populations trying to do the same!
These regressive features are real and are not exaggerations. They are the logical results of keeping artificially alive a system that is already rotting. It should be evident that Capitalism, from a progressive force, has become an impediment to any further Human progress.
The positive features that Capitalism may have had in the past are now turning into destructive trends.
Capitalism has become a spoiler; as it continues to evolve it produces continuous changes and technological improvements, but these changes, instead of becoming beneficial, they turn into nightmares. For example, years ago some wise people recognised the impact that technology, overproduction, saturation would have on society. They advocated some rational solutions like shortening working hours, lowering the retirement age, paying more attention to the quality of life.
The capitalists resisted, they derided and belittled such advice: nothing was done. One of their apologists (Alvin Toffler's Future Shock) could only suggest that society could only accept and try to adjust to the rapid changes!
Now technology has overtaken us, and fewer hours are being worked overall anyway; but, while older people are being flogged to work until they are “eighty five percent incapacitated” and pension age is being extended, young generations are rotting in idleness and despair. Therefore, the goodies that capitalism produces turn into poison for society.
Adam Smith pointed out two centuries ago, unfortunately to no avail, that we should beware of the advice of merchants and manufacturers; he was speaking of monopolists in particular, but it applies to all capitalists when their vested interests are threatened:
". . like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose number and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to dwarth them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.."
Today it is done through the Media.
In conclusion, in its terminal stages, Capitalism can be compared to a dangerous cancerous growth an uncontrolled growth of living cells which destroys healthy tissues and organs, eventually killing the body organism in which they have developed.
Greedy cells that grow in an irrational uncontrollable way at the expense of the rest; such has become Capitalism, to the letter. It must keep on growing even when it has reached its natural limits. Therefore, this growth, instead of being progressive, becomes unnatural and destructive. When it stops and eventually it starts to shrink, the immediate livelihood of every individual inside the organism is at stake. Consequently, motivated by the natural instinct for immediate survival, every individual will strive to keep the rotting organism alive, even when it should be obvious that without a radical change it will cause the degeneration and destruction of all.
Are not our modern cities come to resemble very accurately a cancerous growth? They are emitting smelly and sickening fumes, mountains of rubbish and stinking effluent, like pus, is flowing out of them, and they hot up in an increasing paroxysm of movement and activity within the bitumen and concrete crusts of their rising and sprawling buildings.
Have we Humans become the obnoxious and dangerous viruses that produce these sores?
Have we Humans become the virus which is destroying this once beautiful and healthy living cell: our Mother Earth?