Disclaimer: Reproduce this document all you like, but keep this disclaimer. This document is the intellectual property of QFish R. That being said, we have nationalised all intellectual property.  



Basic Essay on Capitalism
By QFish R.

 Capitalism, the great equivocation of our time. Capitalism has been the subject of many a discussion, from Adam Smith to John Keynes; and let us not forget Karl Marx, a man sometimes said to be capitalisms greatest student! Here we shall try to establish a basic conception of capitalism. We will try to explain it's relation to certain aspects of society, and it's good and bad affects.
   However, while capitalism may be better than it's predecessor (a debatable statement), fuedalism, it is still an opressive system. It is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the elite few. Therefore, capitalism is inherently bad as it pertains to the masses. We shall now analyze the relationship between capitalism and, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the state, war, and the overall class struggle inherent therein. But first, we must define what we mean by capitalism. Capitalism(bourgeois society) is the economic system of private ownership of the means of production, or capital, and a distribution of goods determined by a "free market."
   In order to discuss the relationship between the proletariat and capitalism, we must first establish a definition of what the proletariat is. The proletariat is simply the working class as a whole. Those who live entirely from the sale of their labour(manual and intellectual) and do not draw profit from any kind of capital, they are proletarians. The proletariat has also been referred to as a class of "wage-slaves", their master being that of want. Marx (and Engels) best defined the proletariat in this passage from The Communist Manifesto "In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce."(Chapt. 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians) Now that we have defined what the proletariat is, we can procede to discuss it's relationship with capitalism. Within the capitalist system, two things are always happening in relation to the proletariat: (1)the proletariat is ever growing, and therefore it is becoming more and more capable of and prone to revolution every day, and (2) the proletariat is being oppressed more and more every day, once again making it more prone to revolution. But sense the capitalist system is still being implemented, one would come to the conclusion that there is more to this relationship than that of those two factors. One of which, the bourgeoisie, we will discuss now.
   We will now discuss the bourgeoisie in relation to capitalism. The bourgeoisie, in capitalist society, is the elite ruling class of people who own the means of production as private property(capital). Because capitalism is merely bourgeois society, the bourgeoisie tend to be pro-capitalist (there have been exceptions, Mikhail Bakunin, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ulyanov are three well known examples) and against anything that would lead to their downfall as the ruling class. The bourgeoisie is constantly fighting a "propaganda war" in order to stay in power. The bourgeoisie wages this "war" through control of the state and control of the media. How does the bourgeoisie control the state, you ask? Through the so called "campaign contributions"(among other things) made by rich companies and individuals, which in reality are nothing more than bribes and loans. This "propaganda war" can be seen in nearly everything that is on television and in the newspapers, because what better way to fool the masses then by using "objective" journalism? While some sectors of the bourgeois class may be sympathetic to the proletariat, their ultimate goal is to stay in power and accumulate more capital. Two things are happening to the bourgeoisie constantly, (1) the bourgeoisie is, unlike the proletariat, always growing smaller, and (2) the bourgeoisie is becoming more rich and powerfull(oppressive) all the time. However, there is an exception to the latter statement. In the event of an economic depression, the bourgeoisie, while shrinking in size at a faster rate, will not become richer; in other words, they will lose capital or cease to accumulate capital at their former rate.
   Before discussing the states relation to capitalism, we must discuss what the state is. Vladimir Lenin quite succinctly defined the state thus "The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable." (The State and Revolution) In other words, the state is an institute of organised violence used by the ruling class (the bourgeoisie in the current, capitalist epoch) to maintain the conditions of its rule. The conditions being that of the proletariat as "wage-slaves". Some examples of the modern state as an institute of organised violence are as follows: the Haymarket massacres(Chicago) of May 3rd and 4rth, 1886, the US governments COINTELPRO (COunter INTELlegence PROgram) which officially ran from 1956 through 1971, and possibly the recently passed PATRIOT Act; but that is yet to be seen. Every so often those who run the state will make certain concessions in order to keep just enough of the proletariat pacified enough to avoid revolution. An example of one of these concessions is the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 which limited the power of federal courts to issue injunctions prohibiting unions from striking. However, these arise only when the state has grown desperate and the aforementioned methods have not yeilded the desired results. All of this is used in conjunction with the overall "propaganda war" waged by the bourgeoisie. Also, the "propaganda war" always becomes bigger and more effective (for the bourgeoisie and state, that is) during times of great crisis and war.
   For our discussion on war in relation to capitalism we shall only deal with post World War Two armed conflicts, with the exception of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR/CCCP. We are including the Cold War because it was the chief factor in almost all of the post WW2 armed conflicts involving major world powers. Because the state is the product of class antagonism and in the capitalist epoch, controlled by the bourgeoisie, war is not a result of political conflict but of economic conflict. So one can gather that the Cold War began, not because of Stalins holocaust perpetrated upon the peoples of the USSR, but because labour could not be exploited by foreign and domestic companies in the Soviet Bloc. During the Cold War, the reason given for most, if not all armed conflicts involving major capitalist powers was "to stop the spread of communism"(or to stop Soviet aggression). This reason was not far from the truth, the real reason was not to "stop the spread of communism" but to continue the spread of capitalism. One example of the major capitalist powers' armed conflicts to continue the spread of capitalism is August 19 1953, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh(nationalist) because the British owned oil wells in Iran were nationalized. After the overthrow of Mossodegh, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi became the absolute ruler of Iran and close US ally until the Islamic Revolution of 1979.  Armed conflicts which were fought to "stop the spread of communism" but not to stop Soviet aggression were: the Vietnam war- 1964-75, the overthrow and murder of democraticly elected president Salvador Allende in Chile("I don't see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible."-Henry Kissinger)- September 11th 1973, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion(Cuba)-April 19 1961, and numerous attempts by the CIA to assassinate President Fidel Castro of Cuba. The aggression towards Cuba and Chile both started when they nationalized land held by the United Fruit Company(American based), showing, once again, that war is not political but economical. 
   The class struggle, or class antagonism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, inherent in all capitalist society, is that of the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie and the constant uprisings of the proletariat, most of the time failing to achieve their goal. The proletariat organises and forms unions, and by means of the state(violence) or by means of media propaganda, the bourgeoisie breaks up the unions. Occasionally the proletariat will revolt against the bourgeoisie, like that of the Paris Commune of 1871, but still like the Paris Commune, these revolts are crushed. Marx concisely described the class struggle thusly "The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers."(The Communist Manifesto, Chapt. 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians ) The "propaganda war" is essential in the class struggle, the bourgeoisie use it to try to split the proletariat into different groups according race, gender, religion, political party, etc...while those fighting for the interests of the proletariat use it to try to unite the proletariat against the common enemy and root of many of their problems, the bourgeoisie. While the bourgeoisie may have the institutes of state violence and media propaganda, the proletariat is the masses. All they need to do is unite.
   Now we conclude our discussion of the capitalistic system. We have discussed how the proletariat is growing larger and being opressed more and more all the time, and how the bourgeoisie is growing ever smaller and powerfull all the time. We have discussed the class struggle and the role of war and the state therein. How and why the state is controlled by the bourgeoisie and how war is not political but economical. The "propaganda war" has been discussed and examples of state violence given. The conclusion is obvious.
   The capitalist system, while an improvement from the fuedalist mode of production, is not a beneficial system to the masses. Capitalism is that of a dictatorship of the "upper class", the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In ending, and to paraprase an optimistic outlook for the future of the capitalist sytem: the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. It has a world to win.