Reasons to Hate Capitalism

Capitalism means every individual's hand raised against all others; its motto is: “One man's misfortune is another man's opportunity". For few to live in luxury many more must live in penury and die in poverty. The conditions imposed by capitalism lowers man to the level of the brute. Never in our history have workers been asked to do so much for so little.

Capitalism encourages greed, anti-social behavior, diminished empathy and lack of remorse which is good for capitalists and richly rewarding for share-holders. But for the average  normal person like you and me  it destroys our communities, which rely on altruism, compassion and concern for others. Capitalism is a system of minority privilege and class rule based on the private ownership of means of livelihood. This gives a few rich people the power to buy and sell jobs, which means they can build or destroy entire communities that depend on those jobs.

Capitalism proclaims the virtue of naked self-interest, but self-interest without regard for morality, ecology or common sense leads to environmental degradation, destruction of indigenous communities, colonialism, war and other forms of mass destruction. Self-interest leads capitalists to seek profit absolutely everywhere, regardless of the damage done to other people and the health of the planet’s ecosystem. Self-interest leads capitalists to destroy any rival economic system or way of thinking (such as indigenous communal land use and respect for nature) that can be a barrier to their endless quest for profit.

Capitalists praise freedom and individualism, but discourages freedom and individualism for everyone but themselves. The vast majority of us who work for a living are daily asked to uncritically follow orders, to act as if we are machines, and limit our creativity to what profits our bosses. Capitalists denigrate cooperation and collectivism, but create mass production processes that rely on both from workers. Their system requires us to be cogs in a giant profit-making machine, but because they fear the power this gives us we are told working together for our own interests is illegitimate and bad. Thus capitalists undermine unions and other organizations that encourage workers to cooperate with each other and act collectively.

Capitalism requires the largest propaganda system the world has ever known to convince us it is the only system possible. It turns people into consumers through advertising, marketing, entertainment and even so-called news. Millions around the world are employed to use their creativity to twist our feelings of love, desire, human solidarity and fairness into tools of manipulation, so that ever more profits can flow into the hands of a tiny minority.

 Capitalism is not a friend to democracy but ultimately its enemy. When pushed, capitalists choose capitalism over democracy. If people use democracy to weaken the power of capitalists the rich and powerful turn to various forms of fascism in order to keep their privileges. Capitalism is a system in which the principle of one dollar, one vote, dominates that of one person, one vote. Those who own the most shares (bought with their dollars) control giant corporations, many of which are more powerful than all but a few governments. Rich people also use their money to dominate the elections that are supposed to give us all one, equal vote. Under capitalism those with the most money are entitled to the most goods and services as well as the most say in directing our governments and our economy.

Capitalism is a cancer taking over our planet. Capitalists make profits from global warming, from destroying our oceans, from pumping ever more chemicals into the atmosphere and from patenting everything they can, including life itself. Only by getting rid of capitalism can we rescue our environment. It rests with us to make an end of this.

 Capitalists have attacked you with every weapon at their command. they have battered down your wages to subsistence  levels. They have cast you on the scrap-heap of unemployment in millions. They have gagged your every protest. Working men and women! To hell with their capitalist politics! We must stand together against them. The only struggle for us is the struggle of the workers against their exploiters. Despite the attempts of the capitalists, their government, politicians, courts,and their henchmen to divide, derail and smash the workers’ movement, it continues to go forward and through many battles to grow. The working class faces the situation where the capitalist rulers whose system is once again in deep crisis, are stepping up their drive to wring even more profit from the workers under the fine-sounding name of “productivity,” and hand in hand with it, wage cuts, massive layoffs, and forced overtime–these are the main forms of attack on the working class today. And in the life and death battle against these attacks the movement of the working class is growing and gaining in strength and solidarity. All over the world the struggle is raging.

Capitalists try to present their rule and their system of exploitation as eternal.

Today millions of workers continue to fight back, in many forms, against the attempts of the capitalists to squeeze more profit from the labour of the workers and to grind the great majority of society into the dirt to keep their profit-seeking system going. Millions of people have come to realise that something is basically rotten with the whole society and begin to search out more deeply the connections between various struggles in society, the cause of the abuses and outrages they were fighting against and the solution to them.

Throughout society the capitalists are mounting their attacks, cutting back on funds for education, health, housing and other vital needs of the people, which are sacrificed more and more for the capitalists’ need for profit. And along with all this they practice and promote prejudice and try to divert the anger of people against each other–and away from the capitalists themselves.  The working class has no interest in competition in its ranks – it is the rule of capital that forces workers to compete for jobs and for survival. To demonstrate our strength and our unity we must stand together. No worker must stand against a worker to the advantage of the capitalists.

There is only one way that all the suffering caused by capitalism can be finally ended – by wiping out its source, capitalism. And there is only one force in society that can bring this about – the working class, uniting against the capitalists all those who suffer under their rule. This is why the aim of the working class, through all its daily battles against the capitalists, must not only be to win whatever concessions. can be wrung from them today, but to build the strength and unity of the working class and build for the day when it will be able to overthrow the capitalists altogether.

No political party can represent both capitalist and worker, for the capitalist lives by exploiting the worker and the worker lives for the day he can end this exploitation. The capitalists usually have more than one party, because of their need to compete with each other and to deceive people. But they all stand upon the backs of the workers, and differ on only over their share of the plunder. We warn the workers against believing in politicians’ promises. The class that does all the  thinking and sweating, that produces all the wealth, and without which the world could not survive, that is the class that deserves to enjoy life. Capitalism deserves to die.

Adapted from Gary Engler on this website