Capitalism - Blog Posts
Bill Moyers Question: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is a tough book. It’s not Dispatches from Disneyworld. It paints some very stark portraits of poverty, despair, destructive behaviour. What makes you think people want to read that sort of thing these days?
Chris Hedges Answer: That’s not a question that Joe Sacco and I ever asked. It is absolutely imperative that we begin to understand what unfettered, unregulated capitalism does – the violence of that system.
Painting by Paco Pomet in Banksy’s Dismaland.
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The Industrial Revolution of the 1800s saw a boom in manufacturing and technological achievement. Products as diverse as car parts to cleaning supplies were being assembled, built, woven, or otherwise created on a scale never before seen. But this renaissance required workers - lots of them. In capitalist countries in the West, business tycoons made profit off of the cheap labor of thousands of men, women and children. Most of them worked up to 16 hours a day, in insanely dangerous conditions. But where there is oppression there is resistance, and in the 1880s, worker’s unions across the United States began to fight for their rights.
Many members of the movement at this time were communists and anarchists, who believed that the capitalist system exploited members of the working class. They demonstrated for an 8-hour day, as well as better wages and working conditions.
In 1886, in the first days of May, thousands of Chicago’s working class went on strike. In Haymarket Square, a meeting of up to 3,000 radicals gathered to protest the conditions they worked in. When the Chicago police came to disperse the demonstrators, someone threw a bomb. At least 8 people died, and more than a hundred were wounded.
Three years later, in commemoration of what was called the Haymarket affair, the International Socialist Conference declared May first an international holiday for the world’s workers. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (now know as the American Federation of Labor) declared that “eight hours shall now constitute a legal day’s labor.”
But the US no longer celebrates Labor Day on May first, or May Day. During the Cold War, May first became associated with the socialist and communist movements that it had been born from. President Eisenhower signed a resolution renaming May Day as ‘Loyalty Day’, a holiday dedicated to American patriotism. We now celebrate Labor Day on September second.
But hey, in recognition of global celebrations and the industrious working class, here’s a shout out to May Day. Equality and vacation days for all!
Heartwarming story: Little girl doesn’t have to do anything to fund her dad’s surgery because his expenses are covered by his country’s universal healthcare.
Remember when Stephen Hawking was more worried about inequality under capitalism than artificial intelligence in a Reddit AMA and people started telling him to read an economics 101 book? Wild. Anyways rip Steve
Capitalism is so disgustingly goopy, sticking and amassing into deposits which never seem to release, creating increasingly larger gaps in equality.
How do you get a billionaire to care about anything when they’re coated in a mucous bubble of capital, sealed off from the real world?
"The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being."
badweird feelings
the US war of independence was more about the worldwide conflict between the french and british colonial empires than it was about Freedom or Liberty. the US civil war was more about the competition of northern merchant-industrial capital and southern landed-agricultural capital than it was about Rights or Equality. wars aren't fought over ideology. of course those sentiments were real and existed, and of course no troops were actually charging into the battlefield out of personal love for one or the other segment of the bourgeoisie, but the sentiments supposedly behind these wars had existed long before the wars themselves came about. it was only when the actual centres of power wanted these wars that those sentiments and ideologies were able to come to the forefront. ideologies do not start wars, they are used to justify them. any benefit towards those ideologies is only coincidental insofar as it aligns with the real, material factors that create and maintain war. the US did not care about slaves, that much is clear from their antebellum treatment of black americans - they cared about slavery's economic effects, they cared about slaveowners
What I really object to... is that there is a rhetoric out there of trying to convince people that they’re insufficient and that everything should be the private property of a small number of people for this reason when in fact, if it was really the case that those few people were so important, and great, and powerful, they wouldn’t need to have all this rhetoric to convince other people of it. People would just see it, they would get it. If there were really a few X-Men floating around, it would be manifest to everyone. In fact, those X-Men wouldn’t even need everyone else. They would do the Atlas Shrugged thing like go off, do whatever you want, and have no connection to the outside world. If you’re really that great, just do it, and stop bitching, and trying to convince everybody else that they’re inadequate, and stupid, and useless, and that you’re the elite. Fine. That doesn’t bother anyone if you want to go do that, but don’t take as private property all the stuff that was produced in this society that we created. Go off on your own with nothing into the forest and build this great Atlantis that you’re capable of doing, and that no one else can do. Great. Honestly, if there were a bunch of X-Men, they would do that. They wouldn’t bother with everyone else. They’d just go off into outer space and do their own thing. That’s not what’s actually going on. What’s actually going on is that there’s this elite of people who’s trying to use rhetoric to dominate others, and to take the collective work that others have done, and expropriate it to themselves. I think that’s nonsense.
Glen Weyl Radical Institutional Rerforms Podcast on 80,000 Hours
Glengarry Glen Ross is on Netflix, you should watch it a lot. The easy "critique of capitalism" is that "second prize is a set of steak knives" because that's how little it costs to motivate you to work harder for them, and if that doesn't work there's always "third prize is you're fired." But the real wisdom which is not about capitalism but which is about narcissism comes from understanding that first prize isn't a Cadillac Eldorado, you think Alec Baldwin needs a car? There is no first prize. Real closers don't want the prize, they want to be the best, that's why they will practice practice practice and don't play the lottery. The car is a temptation only for people who do not know their own value, the value of their own work, who won't lift a finger to advance themselves, who are motivated only by threats or by rewards, who would rather have the appearance of success than actual success. "I got an article in the Times!" celebrates the person whose brain is broken. "Alec Baldwin's character is a raging narcissist!" Jesus are you stupid, Alec's name is MacGuffin, that's why he's in Act I and never again yet propels the story forward. It is irrelevant whether Alec Baldwin has metal testicles or pathological grandiosity, what matters is that after years of C minus work, what finally gets those dummies fired up is First Prize or Third Prize, left to themselves they meander in mediocrity while deluding themselves that they are more than what they do. "I was number one in '87!" So was Alf.
The Last Psychiatrist
Any social entrepreneurs worth their (fair-trade, alder-smoked) sea salt will have an "our story" section on their website, explaining how a college trip to Guatemala or a grandmother's devotion to fresh produce inspired the company's current mission. "It's not just 'my candles are great', it's 'and then I went to Java and discovered this wax and this is a part of my journey, here's a picture,'" says Deresiewicz. "Goods now all have to be experiences.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown aka. "smoothie catharsis will solve your existential crisis"
I don't want to sound like a bitch Or end up dead in a ditch It's really not funny That college costs money So please—really, please—eat the rich - Mod E
Sign the Petition
Write to Congress
How The U.S. Stole the Middle East
Something to consider.
Friendly Fascism
You Will Be Okay. You Have No Choice.