First off, let's agree on some terms. “Capitalism” refers to a system for allocating resources. The characteristics of this system of allocation are: centralized trade which gives rise to markets, modes of exchanging capital for risk and vice versa, and enforcement of private contracts by the State.
Imagine you need a new saddle for your horse. Suppose you have ten bushels of wheat you don't need or a hog you don't have a pen for. You could scour the earth to find someone who needs exactly ten bushels of wheat or one hog and has exactly one saddle and is willing to make the trade. Or you could go to a central location (a market). There you find people eager to barter for 5 or 8 of your bushels but have no saddles to trade, or who have a saddle but no need for a hog. But you also find a merchant: someone who – herself having no interest in either hogs, wheat, or saddles – is willing to give you a saddle in exchange for your hog plus 2 of your bushels. That's more than you were willing to give up but at least you don't have to wait around the market. And the merchant may not have a buyer for the hog lined up but she's willing to risk the hog going unsold in exchange for 2 bushels of wheat. So you make the trade and leave the market content, as does everyone else. As you walk away, you notice that throughout the marketplace, watching over the exchanges, are guards and watchmen, assayers and scribes, to make sure no one reneges or cheats or steals and people feel safe bringing their surplus to the market. You decide that this “market” thing is far superior.
That's it – that's capitalism.
Now, this fable may feel a little disconnected from the modern world and the reality of living under “capitalism” that we experience on the daily. Particularly, it doesn't address how we talk about capitalism, and how we feel about capitalism.
You may be of the belief that capitalism brings out the best in people, by stimulating innovation and rewarding hard work and constructive risk-taking. In our fable, your industry in harvesting extra wheat nets you a saddle you didn't have, and the merchant's taking the chance on having to feed and house the hog netted her 2 bushels of wheat. Everyone was free to participate in the exchange on their terms, and everyone benefitted, and the State didn't intervene unless things went bad.
Thus, Capitalism is Good. Capitalism is Right. Capitalism is Civically Virtuous.
I would argue that is one of capitalism's greatest achievements: the accumulation around itself of social and moral values that are completely independent of what capitalism actually *does*. Capitalism has succeeded in defining, and helping us internalize, a set of Capitalist Virtues (vigorous work, honest competition, entrepreneurship). So complete is this internalization of the traits that capitalism requires of us that critique of capitalism is de facto unvirtuous. The critics of capitalism are thus lazy, entitled, feckless, ungrateful, leeches, moochers, liars, thieves…
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Capitalism is not a single entity – there have been numerous strains of capitalism throughout history. Some permit this, some encourage that. Capitalism is not the same today as it was for the Sumerians in antiquity, or the Chinese in the Ming Dynasty, or the English in the days of East India Company.
The one trait that runs true in all forms of capitalism is this: Capitalism becomes more powerful to the degree to which more things can be bought and sold.
We're told that Native Americans did not believe in selling land. “As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals. We cannot sell this land,” Chief Crowfoot of the Blackfeet famously said, “It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us.” Yet we do believe in selling land, and our form of Capitalism is the norm, and the Blackfeet's is not.
We're told in Scripture that the Israelites did not believe in buying someone's future by holding them in eternal debt. “At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the Lord's release.” (Deut 15:1-2). Yet we do believe in eternal debt (student, medical, legal), and our form of Capitalism is the norm, and the Israelites' is not.
It is a stunning victory of Capitalism that we glorify the spirit of these and other similar ideas but do not recognize them for what they are: a condemnation of the inhumanity and viciousness of which modern Capitalism is capable of, and to which Capitalism has accustomed us to.
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Capitalism prospers the more it has to buy and sell.
Capitalism today sells us not just hogs and saddles and bushels of wheat. It sells us a sense of safety (as insurance policies), culture and community (as shared entertainment), a sense of intellectual and civic engagement (as news media). It sells us more things than we need and then makes us feel bad for having so much. It sells us stolen things and charges us more for *not* stealing them. Capitalism sells us things made by enslaved bodies and enslaved minds but gently makes us avert our gaze with the promise of “everyday low prices”.
Capitalism sells us more food than we can eat and then sells us diets and gyms and, failing that, insulin. Capitalism sells us “clean” versions of things that should have never been “dirty”: water, energy, food, air, fuel. Capitalism sells us “solutions” for our weak and vulnerable: for-profit prisons, for-profit health care, for-profit education.
Capitalism found a way to do these things, and thus it survived and prospered – forms of capitalism where these and other predations were unthinkable did not.
Capitalism monetizes, commoditizes, and sells us back our bodies, our emotions, our friendships and family ties, our interests (e.g. this awful site), our free time, our privacy. Capitalism sells you pleasure and pride but also shame and envy. Capitalism preys on our weakness, our boredom, our human needs and vulnerabilities.
But remember, Capitalism is Good. Capitalism is Freedom. Capitalism is Right. Capitalism is American.
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The only thing you, me, and almost everyone we know have that Capitalism wants is our labor.
Your labor, whatever form it takes, is the only thing you can sell to Capitalism. Your purpose, your effort, your focused intention. Your desire to perfect the world, to order it and know it, to make it beautiful and peaceful and just. Your drive to build things that last, to speak thoughts that glorify humanity, to make the human condition better for the next generation. Your will to work the earth and the sea and the sky and make it bear fruit under your careful husbandry. Your compassion and kindness, the generosity with which you care and minister to others, your willingness to sacrifice so that others may be uplifted.
These, the most sacred and amazing things about you… these are the only things you can sell to Capitalism in exchange for the things you need to live and thrive, and to earn a respite from Capitalism's own predation.
And if (under the gaze of Capitalism) Labor is the only thing we have, then Labor is the only thing we have in common.
Think about this.
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I believe that in there will soon come a time in which we will have to have a deep conversation about Capitalism and the role it plays in our lives. I also believe that the Powers that Be, i.e. the people Capitalism decides are the winners, will do their best to remind us that Capitalism is Good, Right, and American.
Let us remember today that capitalism is not virtuous. Capitalism is just a system for allocating resources. It is Labor that is virtuous, Labor that connects us and humanizes us, Labor that ennobles us and binds us to each others' futures. Thus it has always been, and will always be.
Happy International Workers Day.