The Danger of Rejecting Capitalism
Written by Winter Trabex
In response to mounting income inequality, an increased number of poor people with a decrease in the number of government services to look after those who are down on their luck, a new trend in America has emerged. It is now fashionable to blame capitalism for all the ills of society. Capitalism, it is said, is the author of humankind’s misery. Capitalism is a system that enables the rich to become richer while the poor to become poorer. It is a system in which the few exploit the many. So it is said.
The problem, of course, is that government restrains capitalism every chance it gets. With its imperious not-to-be-questioned authority, governments all over the world are helping corporations entrench themselves in marketplaces, thus making it more difficult for competing businesses to do well. The best example of this is the American tax code, written largely by rich people for the benefit of rich people with law degrees and lawyers-for-hire.
The average American citizen is overburdened with any number of taxes, many of which are unnecessary, some of which are downright foolish. There is the sales tax, the income tax, the estate tax, the inheritance tax, the death tax, the hunting tax, the accounts receivable tax, the building permit tax, the gasoline tax, the cigarette tax, the liquor tax, the marriage license tax, the septic permit tax, utility taxes and vehicle sales tax….just to name a few.
Meanwhile, some of the world’s largest corporations not only rig the law in their favor so they don’t have to pay taxes- many of them get tax subsidies instead. Boeing, General Electric and Verizon were among those who did not pay any federal income taxes from 2008 to 2012. This does not mean that they did not pay local or state taxes, or one-time only tax fees. It merely means that the biggest eater of money, the federal government, got nothing from those companies- along with 23 others.
Accordingly then, those who want to do away with the influence corporations have upon the government only see the result, not the cause. Those who wish to want to shut down wall street and shutter the doors of all the country’s corporations for good will not necessarily create an equitable society. A utopia of peace, love and happiness does not await at the end of a road which begins with the abolition of entrepreneurship.
The social experiment known as the Occupy movement can attest to this. In trying to create a world in which everyone was equal and no one wanted for anything, people were only stripped of their incentives to improve themselves. The creative energies of individuals, freed from the need to work for a living, were supposed to be turned towards the common good- enriching the lives of everyone around them. Instead, the Occupy movement only attracted homeless people without offering them any real solution on how to improve their lives.
A world in which corporations are abolished might look exactly like an Occupy encampment: people sleeping in tents, riding exercise bikes to generate energy, sharing books and food with another while bathing is optional. Such a world does not even come close to achieving anything resembling social equality; for the government is still there, still ready to conduct a pre-dawn raid upon an encampment, still ready to haul people off to court for imaginary crimes. Or, even worse, ready to ship people off to gulags out west where people deemed expendable criminals by the government must work to cleanse the Nevada desert of all its radiation.
Such a world would not have currency. An inefficient barter system will have taken the place of money. Gold and silver might not even mean anything anymore. In a world without corporations, nuclear, hydroelectric and solar power might be a thing of the past. Electricity might be hard to come by. Certainly, a world without corporations would mean an elimination of all medical advances, thrusting humanity back into the age where a black boil on the skin has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands. Automobiles and jets will be gone, replaced by horses, some of whom will likely be eaten as billions of people go hungry. There would be no grocery stores.
All of this is the end result of a rejection of the capitalist system, a system which hasn’t ever really been let loose in this world, free to do as it pleases. There has always been the guiding hand of government, always presuming that it knows best, always deciding what is best for other people, always presuming to hold the ultimate moral authority by reason of its existence. There has always been the police officer kicking a woman in the face, or the army soldier torturing a prisoner, or the petty bureaucrat taking his revenge on the world by drowning everyone in a mountain of paperwork. There has always been the tax collector, demanding his due in ever increasing amounts until the taxed finally have enough, breaking loose in a torrent of violence that consumes everyone around them.
If anything resembling an equitable, fair society is to be created, these are the things which must eliminated. It is government, not business, that is the enemy of progress, peace and justice. To presume otherwise is to invite danger not only upon oneself, but upon everyone who enjoys the certainty of regular pay and the comforts of planned investment. A world without capitalism is an uncertain world in which the only winners are those who steal the most. That is the world that today’s fashionable activists seek to create.
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Corporation are an evil and not really related to capitalism, as they have the rights of a person without the responsibilities. They are in fact an outgrowth of government, as that is what created them, which enables them to avoid responsibility for harm they cause.
Capitalism is a good, however corporations and corporatism are not capitalism
Tell me again how corporate capitalism is equated to freedom? This post is drivel. The history of corporations in this nation has been hidden and rewritten. We fought a revolution to rid ourselves of the king’s private banks and corporations. ie Corporate capitalism and the all-powerful central state it needs to enforce its exploitation on humanity. If you want to appreciate what the U.S. founding economic principles were, read List’s National Economy.
How exactly is freedom associated with subjugating yourself economically to people of title and class? CEO, CFO and president is no different than duke, viceroy and king. Neither represent any type of democratic economics. Corporations are creatures of the state. And, as such, corporate capitalism forces humanity to compete against each other for economic survival. And it is the state that enforces this violence. All while state actors walk off with all of the rent extraction or surplus value it creates. This is just another manifestation of forced state violence just like communism and socialism.
Free yourself from the role of useful idiot for your captures. You are on the wrong side of truth and the wrong side of history.
I’m not opposed to corporations per se. Your argument suggests that the state is at fault in every instance. The state creates the corporation. The state enforces the rules and collects stolen funds. Though the corporation itself doesn’t differ from the state in stressing obedience over creativity, it nevertheless must answer to consumers, rather than collecting taxes through a revenue service.
Were you to remove the government from the equation, the strongest corporation would fall within five years if it continued to behave as though its costumers were only marks to be relieved of their money.
Tell me again how corporate capitalism is equated to freedom? This post is drivel. The history of corporations in this nation has been hidden and rewritten. We fought a revolution to rid ourselves of the king’s private banks and corporations. ie Corporate capitalism and the all-powerful central state it needs to enforce its exploitation on humanity. If you want to appreciate what the U.S. founding economic principles were, read List’s National Economy.
How exactly is freedom associated with subjugating yourself economically to people of title and class? CEO, CFO and president is no different than duke, viceroy and king. Neither represent any type of democratic economics. Corporations are creatures of the state. And, as such, corporate capitalism forces humanity to compete against each other for economic survival. And it is the state that enforces this violence. All while state actors walk off with all of the rent extraction or surplus value it creates. This is just another manifestation of forced state violence just like communism and socialism.
Did you actually read the book from which you lifted the name for this blog? Do you appreciate what an anarchistic society and self-rule really are? How exactly in a world without state violence does corporate capitalism fill its factories and offices with wage slaves? You do understand how this happened in the first place? How factories were filled? Renter capitalists forced people off of public land and into factories under land reform acts in England. The state steals from humanity what God grants us freely. That is enough land and resources for everyone. Then they force you to pay state actors to access those resources granted to us naturally. And the only way to survive is to then work as a wage slave for corporate capitalism. Don’t tell me corporate capitalism is not corporatism. That is an ignorant joke. Free yourself from the role of useful idiot for your captures. You are on the wrong side of truth and the wrong side of history.