It seems so odd the hate a vampiric system of economics that treats everything as a commodity to extract any value it can for a class of people who have the armies paid for their protection and use all the institutions to extort as much human resources for their own purposes.
So I approach these topics a little more coldly than most. I assume that my comment will not sit well with many, but I am who I am.
While Hatred toward Capitalism is both Understandable and Warranted, I would argue that it is only useful insofar as it motivates action be taken to resist or dismantle capitalism. Which suggests that we should not let hate fester, but transform it in the moments when we feel it. Allowing firm action to be the outlet of the hatred, rather than holding it in and mulling it over.
There is actually strong neuroscientific backing for the idea that sustained hatred causes a reduction in activity and capacity for activity in the parts of the brain we use for empathy.
So hate capitalism, but do it briefly, and do something about it.
Capitalism is hateful, so it's okay to hate it. It's founded in imperialism, whereby, with force of arms, a resource can be commanded that does not belong to the invader. I.e. capitalism is based on theft. When the resource has been exhausted, the capitalist moves on to the next resource, and leaves behind him destruction and waste in his wake. Time, and time, and time and time again.
The US is a fundamentally capitalist society because theft was the basic precept on which it was founded. The Americans not only stole from the indigenous populations, but they moved in and occupied the land they stole and the resources they stole and marginalised the original peoples into a form of apartheid. It is one thing - a bad thing - to colonise and rape the land (as the Portuguese did with the very first capitalist economy on the island of Madeira, for its wood, which is what madeira means in English), it is quite another, as in Rhodesia, South Africa and the US, to invade en masse, appropriate the resources and then simply evict the native population to fruitless land and bare-existence farming.
It is the sentiment of "entitlement" that the capitalist who acts thus exudes, by drilling for oil without regard to the lives of polar bears or the need for ancient woodlands or the Amazonian lung of the world, that entitles us to hate them.
And, because the hermetic seal between raw exploitation and a decent 9 to 5 job masks our own involvement, we adopt the privilege of not hating ourselves, and we should think more about that.
I have written extensively on these themes, for those who are interested. They are some of the themes about which I am passionate, and it comforts me to know that the Peaceful Revolutionary shares these sentiments. I might recommend this piece as a starter: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/we-want-freedom-and-fear-slavery
The first industrialists, in England, like Abraham Darby, exploited minerals that they discovered on their OWN land. Wood, which was ingeniously turned into charcoal (which burns with a higher temperature than ordinary coal), or coal itself, and iron ore, by which the first iron bridge was built over the River Severn. Railways negotiated their passage through the land of the titled, albeit they displaced the poor, such as the slums cleared to make King's Cross Station. These ventures were in some measure capitalist: slum clearance is like a form of colonialism. But buying rights to cross aristocratic land, such as at Shugborough near Lichfield, is freely contracted.
Capitalism's true sins come when the ores, oils, woods, and people, in the form of slavery, are acquired either by force or for a pittance and then devoured until they are no more, or are dead in the case of the slaves. It is the "inherent right" assumed by capitalists to exploit whatever they set their sights on that renders them subhuman, like Morlocks in Wells's Time Machine. And it is our indolence and ignorance of their exploits that renders us the Eloi in that same story.
By no means am I defending capitalism, but I think it is a symptom, not a cause.
Capitalism is a symptom of the ability to hoard.
Don't "hate" the symptom; attack the underlying cause.
Prior to the advent of grain agriculture, trophic energy (food) could not be stored for longer than a turn of the seasons. Early civilizations prior to the "grain revolution" of about 7,000 years ago were egalitarian, because there was nothing that could be "held over" other people.
Daniel Quinn explains this quite well in his "Ishael" books: "[Ishmael] There's only one way you can force people to accept an intolerable lifestyle. [Julie] Yea. You have to lock up the food." (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781502356154/page/181)
The late ecologist Howard Odum had things figured out better. He described and codified a "Maximum Power Principle", (MPP) which says that an organism strives to dissipate the maximum amount of power (not energy, which is a time derivative of power) that it possibly can.
With "panarchy", Gunderson and Holling extended this concept to all autonomous entities, from sub-atomic particles to galaxy clusters; they all "strive" to dissipate the most power that they possibly can.
The ability to "hoard" trophic energy means that one could leverage that stored resource to cause and amplify the dissipation of power by others.
With the advent of grain agriculture, which arose nearly simultaneously in a number of cultures around the globe, the ability to hoard and control food was established. This created social stratification, hierarchy, slavery, the super-rich, and even representative democracy. Granary receipts were arguably the first form of money. Capitalism arose as a way of distributing hoarded food. (continued)
As a counter-example, a civilization based on the humble hazelnut was established in what is now British Columbia, centred around present-day Hazelton. Here are found a huge variety of hazelnuts that are endemic to locations from hundreds of kilometres away. There's evidence that this culture thrived for perhaps several thousand years, and that it was egalitarian.
That's because hazelnuts go rancid, and can't be stored for more than a year (without refrigeration).
Don't hate the tool; figure out how to make it unnecessary. Otherwise, another tool (large, centralized socialism comes to mind) will take its place.
Oh, I disagree, it is very much the "cause". It is driven by the prospect of "something for nothing". Nothing tempts more than that. Why do you imagine that Las Vegas is such a popular holiday destination. Why are drugs such a scourge of our modern society. Retail trade is our familiar face of capitalism and it is benign. Shop workers generally command a fair wage and reasonable conditions. If you don't think so, then look at the conditions of those workers who are up the chain in manufacturing. The conditions become the worst when we look at those who win the resources, and the very worst when we look at those whose lives are destroyed by the winning of resources. There is a civilising effect the closer the product gets to its ultimate purchaser
The assistant who sells you your smartphone is well paid and comfortable. The assembly worker who puts it together in the Far East, less so. And the African scavenger who mines the cobalt that makes the device work hourly risks his life for a meagre wage. Mining interests (mostly Chinese) allow native Congolese to mine the cobalt and sell it to them because the Congolese miners work for less money than the Chinese could pay slaves, and it saves them the "embarrassment". How convenient.
I agree that the ability to hoard ultimately helped enable Capitalism. It also helped enable hierarchy, patriarchy, ‘organised’ religion and private (commercial) property, at least in a way in which it could control access to needs and therefore the incentive for obedience (and the threat of starvation for non-compliance).
I also agree that a system which wants to avoid the concentration of power and domination (an anti-hierarchy) should be organised so that such hoarding and concentration of power under one or a few people is impractical if not impossible. Such a society is entirely possible and has happened several times throughout history. This is (one of the reasons) why I am against State Socialism, or any hierarchal system.
I've tried to illustrate these links myself through this simple story -
And yet, you seem to chalk it all up to "a few bad apples".
Robert Sapolsky affirms that, at least in the aggregate, we have no free will. Humans behave in a predictable manner in larger groups.
It's not a matter of "good" versus "evil".
The lion who catches and eats the gazelle is not evil.
Humans are simply doing (in the aggregate) what any species does: we strive to gather and dissipate the maximum amount of power possible.
I don't think things are going to change until the lack of available energy reduces our numbers to the point that traditional elder-led consent in groups of under 150 or so is how we do things. At that time, we may have ox-carts. We won't have solar panels.
I've seen the future, and it is powered by current photosynthesis. I'm just not sure I see any humans there.
I agree with you that humanity - or at least the group of it with the power to destroy the rest of us - may very well bring us back to the Stone Age, if it doesn't destroy us completely. However, I don't believe that we were always inevitably destined to do this.
People have been around a quarter of a million years and most of that time lived relatively co-operatively, or we would not be around now to debate this online on a collaborative platform (on the freely created Web, built on community organised open source software).
When it comes to the question of 'a few bad apples' which spoil it for the rest of us my question is - Does everyone inevitably seek power over others - or only a few out of a group? (such as narcissists and sociopaths). If it is only a few then they are truly bad apples that are potentially dangerous to the rest of the group, if that group doesn't minimise or remove their power.
We know it is possible for societies of millions of people to exist for hundreds of years without allowing themselves to be ruled over. It takes different cultural norms and customs, but history shows us it is something humanity is capable of. (See The Dawn Of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.)
Now, there is a moral dimension to this. I believe hierarchy, coercion and exploitation (and thus Capitalism) to be fundamentally immoral. We have the ability to not act on primal instincts and to overcome even our worst traits. Us humans do not to kill and eat each other to survive - people who kill and eat other people are evil. People who enslave others are too.
If there is no free will then it seems just as good a reason why we should change human conditions to change human outcomes. Maybe there will always be some who arise seeking power over others & when if they gain that power then they create a new condition that limit choices. But if there are ways to create conditions which are inhospitable to such people taking and abusing that power then this will lead to better outcomes.
I think hate is an extremely powerful feeling. Often so powerful that there is no choice but to act on it. It’s also a very personal experience almost always finding its way through expression in lived experience. There is a microcosm within it which it builds from.
I would definitely love to hear what that is/was for you. The personal experiences leading to the hate. The framework they were experienced through.
I always think Capitalism is inhumane and limiting but when I hate it, it’s usually because of how it creates blindness to suffering. I hate that capitalism places a filter on reality which depersonalizes the people in our lives. I hate that provides security through individualistic and hurtful means.
There’s a beautiful story in each of our reckoning with capitalism. Our journey of building hate. The personal ways it’s hurt us and those we love and ultimately prevented us from experiencing the human connection we all need for living and healing
So true! Thanks for sharing your thoughts - so much like my own. I'd like to write something more personal about my journey, although mine was an unusual one: I was in a very patriarchal hierarchal community, in which I saw the injustices of privileges and property, the blindness that comes with responsibility without accountability, and the corrupting influence of money on morality. But I also saw the benefits of co-operation and collectively working together even under these dysfunctional circumstances, and ultimately came back to the radical example of my grandad's wildcat strike days, and learnt about my great-grandad's challenges in Ireland due to imperialism. It took me a while to get to where I am now, but I got here in the end, although I'm still working on the healing part.
I hope you do write about it, especially if it feels it could be healing. Even if you don’t publish.
It sounds like a very intensely corrupt environment to be in. I can say with peace of mind that I hate that appointed or inherited responsibility without sensitivity, accountability, humanity or intelligent leadership. It’s not necessarily the people occupying those places (although may be) but the rigid dynamic that blindfolds the natural human relationships and unfolding of reality.
It’s one of the many things that inspires me about Palestinians. Their resistance is life. I hope everyone trapped in such a rigid patriarchal community can look to them for strength to disobey, speak up and resist.
I’d like to learn more about Irish history. It sounds like you have that fighter spirit in your heritage. I’m sure that gives you extra strength and purpose.
I feel that there’s a lot of healing in just being seen in your power. I know i’ve said it before but I and so many others see you.
The more we can see each other and ourselves in our strength against the blindfold trying to smother us into complicity, the more we will heal the past where we were helpless to it.
I appreciate your encouragement. The second half of this year I'm hoping to concentrate more on personal and 'solutions' articles. There may be a lot I won't write about because it's too personal or just not relevant, but I'd like share more.
The situation in Palestine is on my mind daily, I was speaking to some Palestinians living in Jordan about it a year ago, and it really opened my eyes hearing their personal stories.
America is going through its own traumas at the moment, it is awakening a lot of people to the dystopian situations which some marginalised people there and elsewhere throughout the world have always experienced. But at the end of the day we are all people with needs, wants, and hopes, who need help, friendship and kindness (like the kind you've shown me in your reply).
At the center of all versions of capitalism is the profit motive, which is for the owner class to accumulate maximum benefit with minimum effort or risk. Profit is privatizing gains while publicizing losses. It is parasitic. It is externalities. It is inherently unfair and unsustainable.
It seems so odd the hate a vampiric system of economics that treats everything as a commodity to extract any value it can for a class of people who have the armies paid for their protection and use all the institutions to extort as much human resources for their own purposes.
That sentence was quite a contorted pretzel.
So I approach these topics a little more coldly than most. I assume that my comment will not sit well with many, but I am who I am.
While Hatred toward Capitalism is both Understandable and Warranted, I would argue that it is only useful insofar as it motivates action be taken to resist or dismantle capitalism. Which suggests that we should not let hate fester, but transform it in the moments when we feel it. Allowing firm action to be the outlet of the hatred, rather than holding it in and mulling it over.
There is actually strong neuroscientific backing for the idea that sustained hatred causes a reduction in activity and capacity for activity in the parts of the brain we use for empathy.
So hate capitalism, but do it briefly, and do something about it.
Capitalism is hateful, so it's okay to hate it. It's founded in imperialism, whereby, with force of arms, a resource can be commanded that does not belong to the invader. I.e. capitalism is based on theft. When the resource has been exhausted, the capitalist moves on to the next resource, and leaves behind him destruction and waste in his wake. Time, and time, and time and time again.
The US is a fundamentally capitalist society because theft was the basic precept on which it was founded. The Americans not only stole from the indigenous populations, but they moved in and occupied the land they stole and the resources they stole and marginalised the original peoples into a form of apartheid. It is one thing - a bad thing - to colonise and rape the land (as the Portuguese did with the very first capitalist economy on the island of Madeira, for its wood, which is what madeira means in English), it is quite another, as in Rhodesia, South Africa and the US, to invade en masse, appropriate the resources and then simply evict the native population to fruitless land and bare-existence farming.
It is the sentiment of "entitlement" that the capitalist who acts thus exudes, by drilling for oil without regard to the lives of polar bears or the need for ancient woodlands or the Amazonian lung of the world, that entitles us to hate them.
And, because the hermetic seal between raw exploitation and a decent 9 to 5 job masks our own involvement, we adopt the privilege of not hating ourselves, and we should think more about that.
I have written extensively on these themes, for those who are interested. They are some of the themes about which I am passionate, and it comforts me to know that the Peaceful Revolutionary shares these sentiments. I might recommend this piece as a starter: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/we-want-freedom-and-fear-slavery
The first industrialists, in England, like Abraham Darby, exploited minerals that they discovered on their OWN land. Wood, which was ingeniously turned into charcoal (which burns with a higher temperature than ordinary coal), or coal itself, and iron ore, by which the first iron bridge was built over the River Severn. Railways negotiated their passage through the land of the titled, albeit they displaced the poor, such as the slums cleared to make King's Cross Station. These ventures were in some measure capitalist: slum clearance is like a form of colonialism. But buying rights to cross aristocratic land, such as at Shugborough near Lichfield, is freely contracted.
Capitalism's true sins come when the ores, oils, woods, and people, in the form of slavery, are acquired either by force or for a pittance and then devoured until they are no more, or are dead in the case of the slaves. It is the "inherent right" assumed by capitalists to exploit whatever they set their sights on that renders them subhuman, like Morlocks in Wells's Time Machine. And it is our indolence and ignorance of their exploits that renders us the Eloi in that same story.
By no means am I defending capitalism, but I think it is a symptom, not a cause.
Capitalism is a symptom of the ability to hoard.
Don't "hate" the symptom; attack the underlying cause.
Prior to the advent of grain agriculture, trophic energy (food) could not be stored for longer than a turn of the seasons. Early civilizations prior to the "grain revolution" of about 7,000 years ago were egalitarian, because there was nothing that could be "held over" other people.
Daniel Quinn explains this quite well in his "Ishael" books: "[Ishmael] There's only one way you can force people to accept an intolerable lifestyle. [Julie] Yea. You have to lock up the food." (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781502356154/page/181)
The late ecologist Howard Odum had things figured out better. He described and codified a "Maximum Power Principle", (MPP) which says that an organism strives to dissipate the maximum amount of power (not energy, which is a time derivative of power) that it possibly can.
With "panarchy", Gunderson and Holling extended this concept to all autonomous entities, from sub-atomic particles to galaxy clusters; they all "strive" to dissipate the most power that they possibly can.
The ability to "hoard" trophic energy means that one could leverage that stored resource to cause and amplify the dissipation of power by others.
With the advent of grain agriculture, which arose nearly simultaneously in a number of cultures around the globe, the ability to hoard and control food was established. This created social stratification, hierarchy, slavery, the super-rich, and even representative democracy. Granary receipts were arguably the first form of money. Capitalism arose as a way of distributing hoarded food. (continued)
As a counter-example, a civilization based on the humble hazelnut was established in what is now British Columbia, centred around present-day Hazelton. Here are found a huge variety of hazelnuts that are endemic to locations from hundreds of kilometres away. There's evidence that this culture thrived for perhaps several thousand years, and that it was egalitarian.
That's because hazelnuts go rancid, and can't be stored for more than a year (without refrigeration).
Don't hate the tool; figure out how to make it unnecessary. Otherwise, another tool (large, centralized socialism comes to mind) will take its place.
Oh, I disagree, it is very much the "cause". It is driven by the prospect of "something for nothing". Nothing tempts more than that. Why do you imagine that Las Vegas is such a popular holiday destination. Why are drugs such a scourge of our modern society. Retail trade is our familiar face of capitalism and it is benign. Shop workers generally command a fair wage and reasonable conditions. If you don't think so, then look at the conditions of those workers who are up the chain in manufacturing. The conditions become the worst when we look at those who win the resources, and the very worst when we look at those whose lives are destroyed by the winning of resources. There is a civilising effect the closer the product gets to its ultimate purchaser
The assistant who sells you your smartphone is well paid and comfortable. The assembly worker who puts it together in the Far East, less so. And the African scavenger who mines the cobalt that makes the device work hourly risks his life for a meagre wage. Mining interests (mostly Chinese) allow native Congolese to mine the cobalt and sell it to them because the Congolese miners work for less money than the Chinese could pay slaves, and it saves them the "embarrassment". How convenient.
I agree that the ability to hoard ultimately helped enable Capitalism. It also helped enable hierarchy, patriarchy, ‘organised’ religion and private (commercial) property, at least in a way in which it could control access to needs and therefore the incentive for obedience (and the threat of starvation for non-compliance).
I also agree that a system which wants to avoid the concentration of power and domination (an anti-hierarchy) should be organised so that such hoarding and concentration of power under one or a few people is impractical if not impossible. Such a society is entirely possible and has happened several times throughout history. This is (one of the reasons) why I am against State Socialism, or any hierarchal system.
I've tried to illustrate these links myself through this simple story -
https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/how-the-world-became-this-way
Nice.
And yet, you seem to chalk it all up to "a few bad apples".
Robert Sapolsky affirms that, at least in the aggregate, we have no free will. Humans behave in a predictable manner in larger groups.
It's not a matter of "good" versus "evil".
The lion who catches and eats the gazelle is not evil.
Humans are simply doing (in the aggregate) what any species does: we strive to gather and dissipate the maximum amount of power possible.
I don't think things are going to change until the lack of available energy reduces our numbers to the point that traditional elder-led consent in groups of under 150 or so is how we do things. At that time, we may have ox-carts. We won't have solar panels.
I've seen the future, and it is powered by current photosynthesis. I'm just not sure I see any humans there.
I agree with you that humanity - or at least the group of it with the power to destroy the rest of us - may very well bring us back to the Stone Age, if it doesn't destroy us completely. However, I don't believe that we were always inevitably destined to do this.
People have been around a quarter of a million years and most of that time lived relatively co-operatively, or we would not be around now to debate this online on a collaborative platform (on the freely created Web, built on community organised open source software).
When it comes to the question of 'a few bad apples' which spoil it for the rest of us my question is - Does everyone inevitably seek power over others - or only a few out of a group? (such as narcissists and sociopaths). If it is only a few then they are truly bad apples that are potentially dangerous to the rest of the group, if that group doesn't minimise or remove their power.
We know it is possible for societies of millions of people to exist for hundreds of years without allowing themselves to be ruled over. It takes different cultural norms and customs, but history shows us it is something humanity is capable of. (See The Dawn Of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.)
Now, there is a moral dimension to this. I believe hierarchy, coercion and exploitation (and thus Capitalism) to be fundamentally immoral. We have the ability to not act on primal instincts and to overcome even our worst traits. Us humans do not to kill and eat each other to survive - people who kill and eat other people are evil. People who enslave others are too.
If there is no free will then it seems just as good a reason why we should change human conditions to change human outcomes. Maybe there will always be some who arise seeking power over others & when if they gain that power then they create a new condition that limit choices. But if there are ways to create conditions which are inhospitable to such people taking and abusing that power then this will lead to better outcomes.
I've covered this in more detail here -
https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/were-we-born-evil-or-did-capitalism
Capitalism essentially values capital above humanity.
I think hate is an extremely powerful feeling. Often so powerful that there is no choice but to act on it. It’s also a very personal experience almost always finding its way through expression in lived experience. There is a microcosm within it which it builds from.
I would definitely love to hear what that is/was for you. The personal experiences leading to the hate. The framework they were experienced through.
I always think Capitalism is inhumane and limiting but when I hate it, it’s usually because of how it creates blindness to suffering. I hate that capitalism places a filter on reality which depersonalizes the people in our lives. I hate that provides security through individualistic and hurtful means.
There’s a beautiful story in each of our reckoning with capitalism. Our journey of building hate. The personal ways it’s hurt us and those we love and ultimately prevented us from experiencing the human connection we all need for living and healing
So true! Thanks for sharing your thoughts - so much like my own. I'd like to write something more personal about my journey, although mine was an unusual one: I was in a very patriarchal hierarchal community, in which I saw the injustices of privileges and property, the blindness that comes with responsibility without accountability, and the corrupting influence of money on morality. But I also saw the benefits of co-operation and collectively working together even under these dysfunctional circumstances, and ultimately came back to the radical example of my grandad's wildcat strike days, and learnt about my great-grandad's challenges in Ireland due to imperialism. It took me a while to get to where I am now, but I got here in the end, although I'm still working on the healing part.
I hope you do write about it, especially if it feels it could be healing. Even if you don’t publish.
It sounds like a very intensely corrupt environment to be in. I can say with peace of mind that I hate that appointed or inherited responsibility without sensitivity, accountability, humanity or intelligent leadership. It’s not necessarily the people occupying those places (although may be) but the rigid dynamic that blindfolds the natural human relationships and unfolding of reality.
It’s one of the many things that inspires me about Palestinians. Their resistance is life. I hope everyone trapped in such a rigid patriarchal community can look to them for strength to disobey, speak up and resist.
I’d like to learn more about Irish history. It sounds like you have that fighter spirit in your heritage. I’m sure that gives you extra strength and purpose.
I feel that there’s a lot of healing in just being seen in your power. I know i’ve said it before but I and so many others see you.
The more we can see each other and ourselves in our strength against the blindfold trying to smother us into complicity, the more we will heal the past where we were helpless to it.
🤗
I appreciate your encouragement. The second half of this year I'm hoping to concentrate more on personal and 'solutions' articles. There may be a lot I won't write about because it's too personal or just not relevant, but I'd like share more.
The situation in Palestine is on my mind daily, I was speaking to some Palestinians living in Jordan about it a year ago, and it really opened my eyes hearing their personal stories.
America is going through its own traumas at the moment, it is awakening a lot of people to the dystopian situations which some marginalised people there and elsewhere throughout the world have always experienced. But at the end of the day we are all people with needs, wants, and hopes, who need help, friendship and kindness (like the kind you've shown me in your reply).
At the center of all versions of capitalism is the profit motive, which is for the owner class to accumulate maximum benefit with minimum effort or risk. Profit is privatizing gains while publicizing losses. It is parasitic. It is externalities. It is inherently unfair and unsustainable.
Banger of a start! 🐸