let it all collapse, the icon for the www.punkerslut.com website
Home Articles Critiques Books Video
About Graphics CopyLeft Links Music

The Inherent
Evil of Capitalism

By Punkerslut

From RadicalGraphics.org
Image: From "Industry" Gallery

Start Date: October 4, 2009
Finish Date: October 4, 2009

"...Life cries to live, and Property denies its freedom to live; and Life will not submit."
          --Voltairine de Cleyre, 1912
          "Direct Action"

     Every boss, CEO, investor, and business manager lives off of profits, and each of them are sustained by the laborers. From railroads to automobile engines to machinery, the ideas of industrialists have always come from the workers. And their wealth, too, has been the product of nothing but the labor of workers. The next question is natural: if bosses can live off possession, wouldn't the workers be better off to live where possession was equal? Not possession of individual property, but possession of wealth that is not consumed but builds -- capital, or the means of production.

     If this the industries were managed according to the laborers, with an equal voice for each, wouldn't society be better? Wouldn't people be more satisfied with their labor and pay, since they had a copy of the budget and voice in determining wages? Wouldn't common workers be more likely to donate to charity, to end to poverty, to build employment, to provide for all? If the average worker had a right to control their own situation of labor, wouldn't they have greater freedom? Wouldn't they have a stronger responsibility to their workplace, a thoughtful and considerate attitude?

     Where the wealthy see profits in cutting down rain forests, the poor see their grandchildren choking on smog. Where the Capitalists see cost reduction layoffs, the poor see their families starving in the streets. One will burn food during famine to increase the price; the other will give each person a right to work and benefit from the land. One threatens you with starvation if you do not give away the majority of your production to some idle vassal. The other threatens you with starvation only if you do not work. Capitalism chains you to your place of employment, Socialism breaks the shackles and makes you responsible to it. Private ownership has always hounded, exploited, and abused the employee; but self-ownership has always brought responsibility. And self-ownership in a mass-production economy is only possible through cooperative ownership.

     If the average individual is too stupid to be responsible for their own standard of living, then why are they smart enough to choose a governor? If the average worker is too ignorant of their own business, why are they suddenly smart enough to choose the organizer of an entire economy? That is to say... consider that the arguments for Democracy succeed, where the individual has a right to decision-making process of their social environment. If this is true in terms of politics, how could it possibly fail in terms of economy? It cannot! Humans are social beings, and they are not social at one point, and then anti-social at another. This description of human nature comes from those who benefit off of profit, dividends, and rent -- and not those who have genuinely tried to know the human consciousness.

     In engaging this discussion, we must recognize that Socialism is really the new Humanism. It is the focus on the relationship that determines the happiness of the average person, that is to say, the relationship between an individual and the source of their sustenance. It gives its attention solely to that which makes up the primary substance of the peoples' lives. In Capitalism, it is the individual and their employment relationship. Socialism seeks to understand and, as necessary, change or destroy this relationship, not according to abstract and obscure principles -- but according to the real needs and ambitions of the human mind.

     The first Humanism that swept through Europe gave people the philosophy that man should be worried with his life and not his afterlife. The humanism of Socialism extends this -- it teaches each person to fully analyze and understand the source of suffering and happiness in their existence. And there are few whose misery is not produced by a failing social order. Humanism brings the mind from focusing on the afterlife to understanding the present life. Socialism brings the mind from abstract concepts of property to what is necessary to bring liberty, happiness, and bread. It does not demand that you believe in what you don't understand; it only asks that you try to understand why you suffer.

     So much discussion about something as "trivial" as wealth. To the capitalist, wealth represents a new yacht or mansion. But to the poor, it can mean a university education or a treatment for cancer for a loved one. It defines the limit of luxury, the boundaries of expression, the borders of development. This is what every worker must limit, where they labor to create a profit for a Capitalist -- where they are not the masters of the means of production. To one, profit would mean another night of blowing $30,000 a night at gambling and indulgences. To the many, it means feeding their children.

Punkerslut,


Punkerslut
join the punkerslut.com
mailing list!

Punkerslut
copyleft notice and
responsibility disclaimer