The maintenance of capitalism: a political and philosophical analysis
Emilio Nunzi
When writing about capitalism, it is important that it is understood further than its practical definition. Isolated, the term refers to the private ownership of trade, property, and means of production, with profit as the essential motive. The key element is the unequal power dynamic between employee and employer. However, in context, we will come to understand that capitalism is simply the current survival strategy of power. Profit is increased capital, and capital is power. It is critical that we perceive the hoarding of wealth by the few as solidifying and increasing their power, because in a capitalist system, and to this extreme, wealth equates to power. Power is simply the amalgamation (or exploitation) of the abilities of the entire population, which inevitably causes poverty and pain. This system becomes a vicious cycle when those in power, with profit as the aim, dictate the rules that we live and work by. Billionaires could easily end poverty but doing so would overturn the capitalist system and therefore strip them of their wealth and therefore of their power. They depend on capitalism and capitalism depend s on them. The emergence of ‘them’ , however, is inevitable in a ‘free market’ . And once they have emerged, through their monopolies they have the ability and (legal) right to manipulate the availability of their product, manufacturing scarcity (of resources) to increase value. Scarcity, in practical terms, means poverty, which is why any philanthropic attempt by ‘them’ to remedy poverty is ultimately superficial (if not overt tax-evasion instead), as it is performed as a critical part of the maintenance of the very capitalism it claims to mitigate. Before discussing the tactics by which capitalism maintains itself, we must first clarify the fundamental assumptions of capitalism that are objectively false. There is a certain stability and consistency attributed to the laws of economics which mistakenly liken them to natural fact. Nick Hanauer, a billionaire venture capitalist and political activist, argues for the reinvention of the capitalist system. Despite having a questionable goal, his critique of economic theory proves useful here. The first assumption is that the capitalist market is an equilibrium system. 1 An example of this would be the idea that raising the minimum wage of restaurant workers would lead to a decrease in the number of jobs available. This fallacy, however, is used to excuse low wages and so maximize the profit of the capitalist, exemplifying how unfounded ‘laws’ of economics can be employed to exploit. Raising the minimum wage would mean employees could now afford to eat at restaurants themselves. The second assumption is that price is always reflective of value, which can be immediately deemed incorrect by noticing that the work of someone with a thirty-million-pound yearly wage is indisputably not one- thousand times higher in value than a thirty-thousand-pound yearly wage. Evidently, people are paid what they have the power to negotiate: it is the imbalance in power between capital and labour (that is, capitalism) that must itself be rethought. A free-market system, the idea of unrestricted and fair competition between businesses which capitalists cling to, even if it could exist, inherently leads to a more vicious competition – so the identities or ‘immorality’ of those in power is not the issue. In a free
1 For the analysis that follows, I am indebted to Hanauer 2019.
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