Capitalism: A Modern Critique.

Chapter 4: The Capitalist Dystopia.

Since we have criticised the key points of the Capitalist idea, we will now go over the Capitalist world, namely its society, its government, and its economy.

Now what does the Capitalist society look like? Firstly, the most obvious thing to notice is the class distinctions; in all, there are 6, and are listed as follows:

Upper Class;

New Money;

Middle Class;

Working Class;

Working Poor, and;

Poverty Level.

These class distinctions, naturally, define people according to their income, and, as a result, divide the people by classifying them as being “betters” or “lessers”, “masters” or “servants”, “leaders” or “followers”. This social inequality is, for some reason, the status quo of the Capitalist society. Regardless of how hard one works, if the person makes a certain amount a year, then they are put in the “appropriate social class”. Even the middle class, itself, is divided up between rich and poor; the rich side can work daily and get through the whole month or year without any financial complications, whereas the poor side has to work and is, sometimes, lucky enough to get by without too many financial complications. We now ask: how can there be equality in a society where one class is above the other? The answer is that there is no equality in such a society, as one class is placed at the top and the other class at the bottom.  In “The Fight For Socialism”, Max Schachtman sums up the ultimate flaw in class distinctions:

“Capitalist society, like all class societies, is divided into unequals. So long as one class continues to own the means of production, and another class owns nothing but its ability to do work, which it is compelled to sell to the other class in order to live - the best government in the world, composed of the best men and adopting the best laws, cannot possibly establish equality between the two classes. If one class owns, it will always exploit and rule the class that does not own. What, then, is the government for?”. (pp.6-7, online edition, 1998)

In light of this statement, we must now ask, once again: how can there be equality in a society where one class, i.e., the Upper, New Money and Petty-Bourgeois (Upper Middle) Classes, all of whom own the means of production, i.e., that which produces the wealth, has more power than the other class? If one class owns, then they obviously possess more power than the class that does not own, thereby making the class that owns the “masters”, and the class that does not own automatically becomes the “servants”. This concept of class distinctions doesn’t just make a huge contradiction to the idea of equality, but it also shows a sense of hypocrisy within the Capitalist society; all are “free and equal”, yes, but not when it comes to ownership of the means of production.

Onto government; what, exactly, is the function of the government in Capitalist society? Once again, we shall use “The Fight For Socialism” to explain:

“Government arose only with the development of private property, which means only the development of the first division into classes. The first form of private property was human slaves. In order to capture them, keep them at work, and prevent them from rebelling or running away, a special group developed out of the old communal society, and occupied a special place in it. It was composed of the men with arms. Their chiefs became the chiefs of the community. They maintained the institution of slavery by force.  Gradually, they supplemented this force by public laws and regulations, which guaranteed the rights of the slaveowners [sic] and set forth the conditions under which the slaves continued in servitude.

"Government, then, originally was, and still is, a product of the division of society into classes. It exists in order to maintain this division. To do so, the government must function in the interests of the class that has the greater economic power, that is, the owners of property. Thereby, the government maintains their social rule, that is, their domination of society. Under slavery, the government maintained the rule of the slaveowners. Under feudalism, the government maintained the rule of the feudal lords and the nobility over the serfs. Under capitalism, the government maintains the rule of private property, of the capitalists”. (pp.8-9, online edition)