I’m writing this article not because I am an expert on economics but because I hear far too many marginalized young people thinking that they are really talking about what capitalism is or isn’t but, in actuality, playing the game of self blame.
Capitalism is not a choice. You don’t choose to live in a capitalist economy and neither do you choose to become a capitalist.
Because capitalism is not a choice, it is also not a political identity. You can’t choose to not be a capitalist in the same way that you can’t choose to be a capitalist. You either live in a capitalist economy or not. Economy is not something that you can make for yourself because it is a consequence of shared space and relations. You can identify as a Marxist, socialist, or whatever you want idealistically but if you live within a capitalist economy then you are complicit in capitalism. This is not something that self correction can take care of.
Capitalism also has no values. You can’t have capitalist values because capitalism is anti-value. Most of the values being circulated within capitalism are imaginary. They’re futures that are traded in the present. Most of these futures are dependent upon the military industrial machine.
The reason capitalism has no values (and why you cannot have capitalist values) is because capitalism is a system of exploitation. Within capitalism, capitalists exploit the surplus value of their workers. This surplus value is not a tangible thing but an imagined thing that must be realized through the market. The problem with capitalism is that the amount of imagined values within an economy exceeds the economic power of the proletariat. Thus, for capitalists to realize surplus value, they must expand the market. This is why Lenin wrote that the final stage of capitalism is imperialism.
I’m sick of people telling BIPOC, femmes, and other oppressed people that, by selling their labor or a product that they created with their labor, they’re being a capitalist or selling out to capitalist values. Someone who is selling knitting lessons and charging a fee for that labor is not a capitalist, even though the money and other materials they are using is complicit within capitalism just like everyone else. That knitter is not able to expand their business without working harder because they’re not exploiting someone else’s surplus value. That knitter selling lessons, thus, is not going to expand their production into imperialism.
If you live in a capitalist economy, your complicity in capitalism is a certainty. Making money off of your very own labor is complicit with that system, just like eating a fruit (sourced from a plantation most likely and shipped to you through the burning of carbon fuels) is also complicit with that system. These are not choices you can make on your own. There is not ethical existence in capitalism. However, selling your labor doesn’t not make you a capitalist even if you work for yourself.
I hear a lot of people conflating labor with capitalism. Labor is not capitalist. Labor is exploited and distorted under capitalism. I have a spiritual relationship with labor. It’s through labor, sometimes emotional and sometimes physical, that I’ve found fulfillment. Labor is not essentially ableist. Labor is an extension of your self and the cultivation of the world around you. Labor is productive, collaborative, and creative. Often, labor is an act of love.
The idea that labor itself is capitalist was popularized by The Frankfurt School, which were a bunch of white dudes with a lot of money and no need to work. They were not working class. Their ideas were often elitist. Labor has been distorted within capitalism because higher paying jobs are nonproductive, productive ones are unpaid or exploited, and there is no consent around labor but the so called anti-capitalist hatred of labor in itself is something that comes from a school of elitism that is very popular today but almost absorbed within the self-care and wellness industry. For example, a critique of sex work as capitalist should not critique sex as work but the exploitation of sex as work.
The other thing that I see too much is when capitalism becomes a shorthand for oppression. Capitalism expands into imperialism and is the economy of most white supremacist and patriarchal societies. However, racism precedes capitalism. Sylvia Winter writes about this. I’m not sure about patriarchy. The feminist scholars I’ve read mostly talk about how patriarchy is a modern invention that coincided with capitalism but I haven’t read everything out there.
It is important that, when fighting capitalism, that we center racism. This is because racism seeks to describe people and capitalism seeks to describe economies. Capitalism has the unique ability to absorb anything revolutionary into itself so that revolution becomes another commodity. Even anti-capitalism sentiments become just another commodity on the market. This makes the question of “what comes after revolution?” hard to answer because all positive values under capitalism also become capitalist. The question of what economic systems should come after capitalism is a pointless one.
When we center people instead of economic theory, the question of “what comes after revolution?” comes alive and becomes easy. We want people to be able to live! Without being exploited! Without having to exploit others! We want to keep living and we want to love each other instead of being alienated to each other.
Fight capitalism but do it by centering people. Do not treat political education as a test of moral perfection. You will fail at that test because you are already complicit in capitalism. Do not beat yourself up for your own survival. Do not hide your complicity. Love yourself and other people anyway. Be clear by what you mean when you talk about capitalism so that you do not accidentally engage with anti-capitalism as commodity or aesthetic. Talk about racism. Talk about people and not theories.
