What's So Bad About Capitalism? (Page 2)
"But doesn't competition lead to productivity?"
Yes - that's the problem. The competitive "free market" economy not only encourages productivity at all costs, it enforces it: for those who do not stay ahead of the competition are trodden under it. And what costs, exactly, are we talking about here? For one thing, there are the long hours we spend at work: forty, fifty, sometimes even sixty hours a week, at the beck and call of bosses and/or customers, working until we're well past exhausted in the race to "get ahead." On top of this, there are the low wages we're paid: most of us aren't paid nearly enough to afford a share of all the things our society has to offer, even though it is our labor that makes them possible. This is because in the competitive market, workers aren't paid what they "deserve" for their labor - they're paid the smallest amount their employer can pay without them leaving to look for better wages. That's the "law" of supply and demand. The employer has to do this, because he needs to save as much extra capital as he can for advertising, corporate expansion, and other ways to try to keep ahead of the competition. Otherwise, he might not be an employer for long, and his employees will end up working for a more "competitive" master.
There's a word for those long hours and unfair wages: exploitation. But that's not the only cost of the "productivity" our competitive system encourages. Employers have to cut corners in a thousand other ways, too: that's why our work environments are often unsafe, for example. And if it takes doing things that are ecologically destructive to make money and stay productive, an economic system that rewards productivity above all else gives corporations no reason to resist trampling over wildlife and wilderness to make a buck. That's where our forests went, that's where the ozone layer went, that's where hundreds of species of wild animals went: they were burned up in our rat race. In place of forests, we now have shopping malls and gas stations, not to mention air pollution, because it's more important to have places to buy and sell than it is to preserve environments of peace and beauty. In place of buffalo and bald eagles, we have animals locked in factory farms, turned into milk and meat machines . . . and singing cartoon animals in Disney movies, the closest thing to wild animals some of us ever see. Our competitive economic system forces us to replace everything free and beautiful with the efficient, the uniform, the profitable.
This isn't limited to our own countries and cultures, of course. Capitalism and its values have spread across the world like a disease. Competing companies have to keep increasing their markets to keep up with each other, whether by persuasion or by force; that's why you can buy a Coke in Egypt and eat at McDonalds in Thailand. Throughout history we can see examples of how capitalist corporations have forced their way into one country after another, not hesitating to use violence where they deemed it necessary. Today, human beings in almost every corner of the world sell their labor to multinational corporations, often for less than a dollar an hour, in return for the chance to chase the images of wealth and status those corporations use to tantalize them. The wealth that their labor creates is sucked out of their communities into the pockets of these companies, and in return their unique cultures are replaced by the standard-issue monoculture of Western consumerism. By the same token, people in these countries can hardly afford not to seek to be competitive and "productive" themselves in the same ways that those exploiting them are. Consequently, the whole world is being standardized under one system, the capitalist system . . . and it is getting hard for people to imagine any other way of doing things.
So - what kind of productivity does competition encourage? It encourages material productivity alone - that is, profit at any expense. We don't get higher quality products, for it is in the manufacturers' best interest that we return to buy from them again when our cars and stereos break down after a few years. We don't get the products that are most relevant to our lives and pursuit of happiness, either: we get the products that are easiest and most profitable to sell. We get credit card companies, telemarketers, junk mail, cigarettes carefully designed to contain eight different addictive chemicals. In order that one company may outsell its competitors, we end up spending our lives working to develop, mass-produce, and purchase things like garbage disposal units, conveniences that raise our standard of survival without actually improving our quality of life. Much more than better blenders or video games or potato chips, we need more meaning and pleasure in our lives, but we're all so busy competing that we don't even have time to think about it.
Competition means that we don't get to come together and decide what would best for ourselves and the world as a group; nor do we get to decide those things as individuals. Instead, the projects our species undertakes and the changes we make in the world are decided by the laws of competition, by whatever SELLS the most.
Surely in a less competitive society, we could still produce all the things we need, without being forced to produce all the frivolous extra stuff that is presently filling up our landfills. And maybe then we could concentrate our efforts on learning how to produce the most important thing of all: human happiness.
Don't tell me life would be better and more free in a system like the Soviet Union had!
No, of course not. The Soviet Union's economy was no more democratic than the United States' economy is. In the United States, most capital is controlled by corporations, which, in turn, are able to exert control over the lives of their employees (and, to some extent, their customers and everyone else). In the Soviet Union, most capital was controlled by only one force, the government, which put everyone else at its mercy. And although there was no internal competition of the sort that drives Western corporations to such extremes of ruthlessness, the Soviet government still sought to compete against other nations in economic power and productivity. This drove them to the same extremes of ecological devastation and worker exploitation that are common in the West. In both systems you can see the disastrous results of putting most wealth in the hands of a few people. What we need to try now is a system in which we can all have a share of the wealth of our society and a say in how we live and work.
So . . . who exactly is it that gets power under capitalism?
In a system where people compete for wealth and the power that comes with it, the ones who are the most ruthless in their pursuit are the ones who end up with the most of both, of course. Thus the capitalist system encourages deceit, exploitation, and cutthroat competition, and rewards those who go to those lengths by giving them the most power and the greatest say in what goes on in society.
The corporations who do the best job of convincing us that we need their products, whether we do or not, are the most successful. That's how a company like Coca-Cola, which makes one of the most practically useless products on the market, was able to attain such a position of wealth and power: they were the most successful not at offering something of value to society, but at promoting their product. Coke is not the best tasting beverage the world has ever tasted - it is simply the most mercilessly marketed. The ones who are most successful at creating an environment that keeps us buying from them, whether that means manipulating us with ad campaigns or using more devious means, are the ones who get the most resources to keep doing what they are doing; and thus, they are the ones who get the most power over the environments we live in. That's why our cities are filled with billboards and corporate skyscrapers, rather than artwork, public gardens, or bathhouses. That's why our newspapers and television programs are filled with slanted perspectives and outright lies: the producers are at the mercy of their advertisers, and the advertisers they depend on most are the ones who have the most money: the ones who are willing to do anything, even twist facts and spread falsehoods, to get and keep that money. (Do a little research and you'll see just how often this happens.) Capitalism virtually guarantees that the ones who control what goes on in society are the greediest, the cruelest, the most heartless.
And since everyone else is at their mercy, and no one wants to end up on the losing side, everyone is encouraged to be greedy, cruel, and heartless. Of course, no one is selfish or hard-hearted all the time. Very few people want to be, or get much pleasure out of it, and whenever they can avoid it they do. But the average work environment is set up to make people cold and impersonal to each other. If somebody comes into a bagel shop starving and penniless, company policy usually requires the employees to send him away empty handed rather than letting anyone have anything without paying - even if the bagel shop throws away dozens of bagels at the end of each day, as most do. The poor employees come to regard the starving people as a nuisance, and the starving people blame the employees for not helping them, when really it is just capitalism pitting them against each other. And, sadly enough, it is probably the employee who enforces ridiculous rules like this the most strictly who will advance to manager.
Those who dare to spend their lives doing things that are not profitable generally get neither security nor status for their efforts. They may be doing things of great value to society, such as making art or music or doing social work. But if they can't turn a profit from these activities, they will have a hard time surviving, let alone gathering the resources to expand their projects; and, since power comes first and foremost from wealth, they will have little control over what goes on in their society, as well. Thus, corporations that have no goals other than gathering more wealth and power for themselves always end up with more power over what goes on in a capitalist society than artists or social activists do. And at the same time, few people can afford to spend much time doing things that are worthwhile but not lucrative. You can imagine what sort of effects this has.
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