5 Times “SpongeBob SquarePants” Taught Us to Be Wary of Capitalism
Absorbent and yellow and Marxist is he?

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? A no-good dirty communist, that’s who. Sure, it may be hard to believe that a global icon that has generated $13B in merchandising revenue and is recognizable on a level with the likes of Bugs Bunny and Bart Simpson would have leftist leanings. However, I’m here to reassure and perhaps awaken you to the fact that pre-movie SBSP was on its commie-sympathizer bullshit. I mean, have you seen the way they characterize Mr. Krabs? Small business owners haven’t been treated this unfairly since Howard Roark couldn’t build that fucking skyscraper or whatever.
Wake up, America. Your children are watching.
1. Squid on Strike (Season 2, Episode 20a)
The quintessential piece of propaganda by the Sponge, this episode sees Squidward getting fed up with his boss Mr. Krabs’ exploitative practices. He convinces his co-worker SpongeBob to join him on a strike, where they demand better treatment and wages at a picket line outside of the Krusty Krab. The strike goes south quickly, however, largely due to SpongeBob’s complete ignorance for the need behind the strike (SB is every small business-owner’s wet dream, constantly sacrificing pay and free time purely out of his love of work) and the Bikini Bottom citizens’ lack of care for the strike. No one listens to poor Squid, and at one point he is flattened in classic cartoon style by a mob of hungry customers. He then invokes the ancient phrase:
Nobody gives a care about the fate of labor as long as they can get their instant gratification.
There’s a rumor floating around the Nickelodeon production office that Engels’ ghost visited Stephen Hillenburg and whispered that line into his ear.
2. Patty Hype (Season 2, Episode 5b)

When SpongeBob presents his rainbow-colored Krabby Patties to his co-worker and boss, they laugh at him and his idea. When the Pretty Patties start generating huge amounts of revenue, however, Krabs is quick to change his tune, and he takes over the business to do SpongeBob a “favor” (SpongeBob was having a hard time getting rid of all the money, despite trying to burn, bury, and simply give it away). This episode teaches kids the important lesson that, under capitalism, deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable. It also says something about toxic masculinity, I think?
3. Jellyfish Hunter (Season 2, Episode 19a)

In this classic episode, Mr. Krabs has SpongeBob drive the jellyfish of Bikini Bottom to near-extinction because — guess what — a customer at the KK says he’ll pay money for their jelly. Krabs has SB capture almost all of the jellyfish in Jellyfish Fields, and keeps them in a small, crowded space, akin to modern-day factory farming. In one of the rare instances of class-consciousness on his part, SpongeBob sees the space where the wild animals are being held and realizes what he’s been doing is wrong, so terribly, terribly, wrong, and that he’s been exploited. It’s too bad that status quo is God.
4. One Krabs Trash (Season 3, Episode 6b)

Okay, Mr. Krabs finds out the hat he sold SpongeBob at a yard sale is worth a million dollars, and so to get it back, Krabs tells SpongeBob that he has to dig up someone’s grave and return it, only for Krabs to return to the same grave and dig it back up. Krabs is then attacked by an army of various undead in the cemetery, and later finds out the hat is actually worthless. Does any more need to be said about this one?
5. Pickles (Season 1, Episode 6b)

This episode doesn’t warn against capitalism as a system so much as the environment it creates. SpongeBob is driven to near-insanity when a customer at the KK, Bubble Bass, claims he received the wrong order. Of, course, he didn’t receive the wrong order, this is just a typical customer-employee dynamic. Who knew a show about talking fish could be so realistic?
You might be thinking to yourself now: what can I do about this? How did this fly under the radar for so long? How do I shelter my small children and large adult sons from StalinBob GulagPants? Well, the good news is that present-day SpongeBob is just another children’s cartoon — nothing terribly dangerous besides the occasional gore scene or episode where Patrick acts like a full-on sociopath and practices animal abuse. Besides, even if your children manage to catch one of the episodes listed above, they probably won’t be able to pick up on any themes until they’re in their early 20's and zonked out of their gourd, and by then, it will be too late.
