What is Capitalism?
"1. an economic system characterized by freedom of the market with increasing concentration of private and corporate ownership of production and distribution means, proportionate to increasing accumulation and reinvestment of profits. 2. a political or social system regarded as being based on this. Compare socialism."
--American Heritage Dictionary
Still want more answers? To understand what capitalism is, step back and take a good look at America. Right now, right here in America, we are living in the belly of the world's nastiest capitalist nation. Here in America, the capitalist has serious power.
Now, who is the capitalist? The dictionary says: "Capitalist; 1. an investor of capital in business; especially, one having a major interest in an important enterprise. 2. any person of great wealth." What they don't say is that the capitalist owns and controls the banks, the factories, the fields and the markets. They control the politicians, the T.V., the radio and press. They use the cops to protect their private property. They use the army to protect their operations around the world. Remember the war for oil in the middle east and that joke excuse they used to start it?
In short, in a capitalist society like ours, the capitalists have the power, and they use this power to make bumping bankroll, major money, pumping profits; all for them, none for us.
By contrast, what do the rest of us have? Capitalist society has given the rest of us the freedom to choose between work or starvation. Working people, we who work for a living, we who can't live off the labor of others, must go to work for the bosses if they we are to live. We don't own the factories or the stores or the fields or the offices, so we have to sell our time to the capitalists. They buy our time to work for them and then they own the product of our labor. They pay us as little as they can get away with, but all the value we create on the job becomes the property of the capitalist. That is where his profit comes from. Profit is the extra wealth created by workers which is then turned into capital by the boss
What is capital?
Capital is wealth or money. But capital is not just any money. If you have crazy cash in a bag under your bed doing nothing, that's not capital. Capital is wealth on the move, it is money in power. Capital is the boss money being used to make more money for the boss.
In order to understand capital, we have to ask a more basic question. Where did capital come from? The most basic type of wealth is the land. On the American continents, the Europeans came over here and stole the land from the native people who cared for the land and lived on it for thousands of years. The Europeans (A.K.A. from Britain, Spain, France, etc.) had the power to kill off and drive out the native people of the American land and they did it in cold blood.
The land they stole became the colonies of Europe; the property of the Kings and Lords of Europe. Most of the European people who came over to live in the colonies were not the rich aristocrats and traders, but poor and working people. They had to work their asses off for many years to pay off their debt. Merchant, farming and manufacturing bosses alike would pay for workers' transit across the ocean in exchange for years of labor. So this way, profit was accumulated by the growing capitalists and trading companies and taxed by the King and Lords. These settlers perished and struggled to develop the colonies for the enrichment of the King and Lords and the infant capitalist class.
In the British colonies (later to be the original 13 states of the U.S) most of the hard work done to build cities and plant crops was done by slave labor. Millions of African people were kidnapped by European slave traders and stolen to America for use as beasts of burden on plantations in the south and elsewhere. The slave system was murderous and inhuman. And the plantation owners made wild profits off of slave labor. By forcing a whole people, based on skin color, into the subhuman status of property to be worked to death, the early American capitalist class was able to extract untold wealth.
What's the Origin of American Capital?
The nest egg of capital for the American capitalist class grew from the wealth of the land stolen from the natives, the wealth extorted from the labor of the colonial settlers, and the wealth whipped from the backs of toiling slaves. Also in the mix was hidden returns from the generations of unpaid labor of women in the home.
Later, after the early phase of capital accumulation, the stranglehold of the Kings of Europe was broken by a revolutionary war led by the capitalists (1776). This war "against tyranny," and for "no taxation without representation," to "give me liberty or give me death" brought the industrial capitalists and the plantation capitalists into power. At her birth, American democracy was reserved for property-owning white men. This revolution gave capitalists the "freedom" to develop the capitalist system unhindered.
Along with this system came the arrogant logic of American Capitalism. Manifest Destiny was the justification for taking the land from the native people and from Mexico clear across to the Pacific Ocean. The racist logic of white supremacy justified the enslavement and exploitation of millions of Africans. "The American Spirit," and "rugged individualism" lionized the robber barons who cheated and stole their way to fortune. Sexism kept women from the ballot box. Waves of immigrants were brutally exploited for cheap labor. "Free markets" and "Democracy" were made one.
The Working Class Organizes
As capital grew in power, huge changes were also under way in the working class. Although it was led by the capitalists, the revolutionary war was fought by workers. These "commoners" would not allow the cause of liberty to be sold out after King George was thrown off. There were fierce struggles that led to guarantees of individual rights (the bill of rights).
Workers found it necessary to unite into workingmen's organizations get a better deal out of the capitalist. German immigrants who had been influenced by Karl Marx and the Workingmen's International agitated for the formation of trade unions
Then, a second revolution had to be fought against slavery. The great working class revolutionary, Karl Marx wrote of American slavery that "labor in the white skin can never be free while labor in the black skin is branded." Workers in the north could never get a fair deal on the job while slave labor was exploited in the south. Labor, African-Americans and women formed the core alliance of abolitionists that broke the back of slavery.
At the end of the 1800's, working conditions for most were horrible. People had to work at least a 10-12 hour day with many working 14-16 hours. Depression tore at the economy. Child labor was widespread. Union organizing was totally illegal. Racism divided the working class and cut its ability to fight capital. Blacks in the south were kept down economically by the sharecropping system, and politically by grandfather clauses (which meant that people could vote only if their grandfathers could -- obviously locking out the freed slaves). But the workers fought back. They had to.
The capitalists didn't give up anything without a fight. The great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass wrote that "power cedes nothing without a struggle. It never has and it never will." It was working men and women of every color who fought, often losing, sometimes winning, often divided, sometimes united.
They fought a bloody fight and won the eight hour work day. They won anti-trust laws to soften the power of monopolies. They formed every kind of people's organization. They formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and suffragist organizations to win the right to vote for women, they formed the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, and may other fighting organizations.
Through the decades that followed, many movements grew and faded, many contributions were made by millions of workers. Important concessions were won from the ruling capitalists like the right to organize unions, the massive industrial union organizing drives, anti-lynching laws, child labor laws, social security, aid for dependent children, free public education through high school, civil rights laws, and a lot more.
The Struggle Against Capitalism Continues
We may win some battles for justice and our rights against the rich and powerful capitalists. But as long as they can dominate society in the workplace, control the politicians and the state security structure, and the airwaves, they will continue to exploit us and reap huge profits from the labor of workers. Every victory under capitalism is partial and temporary. The logic of greed of capitalism will always try to extract more from workers.
Battles won by workers yesterday have to be fought for again today. For example, civil rights laws won in the 60's are being overturned and reworked by the right-wing courts even though inequality and discrimination against non-whites is still a crisis for millions. The public education system is crumbling. Health care is not available to over 40 million Americans.
One look at the problems in capitalist America today tells us that capitalism has not been able to provide for the needs of our people. Huge layoffs, unemployment, homelessness, hunger are everywhere. The response to this huge social crisis by the capitalist government is to further make workers pay for capitalism's crisis. They blame the victims of the system and call our youth criminals.
Communists are revolutionaries who see the struggle of the working class against the capitalists as the engine which drives history forward. We see that all of the improvements and victories won under capitalism are just steps toward a decisive victory for the working class. The establishment of a truly just society for all can be made only after exploitation and capitalism is gone from the scene.
In the words of the monumental African-American revolutionary W.E.B. DuBois in his letter of application for membership in the Communist Party U.S.A in 1961, "Capitalism can not reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all."
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