By Alachua County Democratic Socialists of America
What is capitalism?
A seemingly simple question, but it is a question that has puzzled radicals and conservatives, academics and working people alike, for centuries now. Adam Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment thinker who provided much of the intellectual foundation for modern capitalism, saw its defining force as one of economic rationalization, efficiency, and the blooming of human potential and wealth through increased production and free trade.
From his perspective in the eighteenth century, maybe he was right. But from our vantage point in the twenty-first century, when big business has overwhelmed and overtaken democratic processes, driven imperialist adventurism from Venezuela to the Strait of Hormuz and beyond, and fueled racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry, that rationality is hard to see.
Advocates for capitalism like Margaret Thatcher have argued that there is no alternative, that capitalism is natural, an outgrowth of intrinsic human behaviors. But is that true?
In order to answer the question, we must understand what capitalism actually is, and more importantly, how it works. From an understanding of its internal processes, its logical and illogical developments, and the relationships it constructs between those who have and those who have not, we see why the liberation and efficiency promised by people like Smith, Thatcher, and the current American administration curdles over and over again into exploitation, criminality, and the violent repression of dissenting views.
For Karl Marx, the great intellectual forebear of the socialist movements of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, the reason for this was obvious. For him, capitalism was not a theoretical conception of human behavior. It was a social structure built by human beings, a historical product of choices made across centuries, and ultimately a source of immense social, cultural, and political power, one reserved only for those with the resources to own and exploit the immense productive powers of capital and labor alike.
From basic first principles, Marx and others who followed him sought to dissect capitalism from its origins to its noxious endpoints. They saw in capitalism the division of society itself into those who possess property and those who possess nothing but their own labor.
They also realized that capitalism was internally contradictory. In order to make use of their immense holdings of capital – the factories and machines that gave industrial capitalism its astounding productivity – capitalists needed more and more workers, brought together to share the same labor, the same exploitation, and the same resentments.
As the working classes grew, they became increasingly radicalized by the realization that while the workers themselves lived on the knife’s edge, paid nothing more than the wages needed to stay alive, and sometimes not even that, their labor was the key to the profits that the capitalist class used to build opulent mansions, to expand production around the world, and to ensure that the political class was wrapped around their finger. Through organization and radicalization, the workers developed their own forms of resistance and power, a force that could challenge capitalists’ claims to economic and social dominance. As Marx argued, capitalism had created its own gravediggers.
This analysis has undergirded revolutionary movements, working-class radicals, and oppressed peoples who saw in the vision of an alternative genuine liberation and a future for humanity defined by freedom and equality.
To learn more, join Alachua County Democratic Socialists of America on Aug. 13 for our upcoming “What is Capitalism” event at Bazaar47 (60 SW 2nd St, Gainesville). Our Political Education Committee will describe the material and intellectual origins of capitalist thought, the historical twists and turns it has taken as it has stretched across the planet, and realities of capitalism in our own present, where financialization, technological development, and raw greed have created the conditions that define our current struggle.
We are also hosting a movie screening of “Seeds for Liberation” at Bazaar47 on August 27. This documentary examines the long struggle for freedom in Palestine, told through the voices of Palestinians. It serves as a reminder that imperialism, racism, and capitalism are interwoven, and that in order to defeat one, we must defeat them all.
Things are dark right now. The world order promised by Trump and his minions is one of unending hatred, exploitation, and bloodshed. Their vision is apocalyptic. But they are not all-powerful. Working together, we can reject the horrors they promise. Working together, a better future is possible.