Antisocialism
The Personality Disorder of the Economy
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods
“Radical simply means “grasping things at the root.”
— Angela Davis
Let us say that we want to change not just the superficial problems of the world, but to change the root systems that generate the problems all together. Maybe we have even identified a few different systems. What is the base problem system in which all those other systems interact?
Leftists call that foundational problem system Capitalism.
Let us be clear: Capitalism is not Commerce. Under Socialism, trade still exists. Transactions still happen. Phones still get made. The difference is that there is more input in every part of this process from the people doing the labor: workers.
There are different ways that this can look, and we Leftists will argue with each other about which one is best, and even whether some models actually are Socialism and not just a different model of Capitalism. I think the easiest model to understand is that of worker co-ops, or market Socialism. If the corporate model were abolished, and all commerce operated as worker co-ops, we would be living under (one model of) Socialism. Scary.
This brings up another point. Just as Capitalism is not Commerce, Socialism is not “anything the government does.” Government, in fact, can support Capitalism or Socialism. When the government takes power over the means of production from the private owners, but does not grant it to the workers, this is State Capitalism. The power still rests with owners; the owners just happen to be in government. This is what most people in the US think of when they think of Socialism. (The US expends a lot of energy to make us think that.)
Interestingly, Professor Richard Wolff describes governments choosing to support Capitalism as fascism. This makes sense. There already exists a power differential between bosses (owners) and workers. And when the government steps in to support owners, it increases that power difference. This itself is an abuse of power.
So if the government can step in to support the workers, and make things more equal, why do they do otherwise? The answer gets at why Capitalism is rotten at its core: Power runs away with itself, which is to say: exponentially. Pass a few laws to prevent the wealthy from abusing their power? Once they have hundreds of millions of dollars, they simply pay politicians and fund propaganda campaigns to repeal those laws. (See Merchants of Doubt for a fantastic documentary as this relates to Climate.)
This is why it is not enough to simply prevent the wealthy from abusing their power: We must prevent the accumulation of wealth itself.
Capitalism and Socialism are defined by who controls the means of production: the stuff used to create products and services of labor. Importantly, the means of production do not include personal property, like your toothbrush. It is only when you hire people to somehow use your toothbrush in order to make a profit that it becomes a means of production. (Do not do that; that is gross.)
Under Capitalism, the means are controlled by those who own them; under Socialism, the means are controlled by those who work with them. This is what it means to be in a Capitalist or Socialist economy. There are other differences associated with them, but most all those differences flow out of power over the Capital. This means that Capitalism and Socialism are always in tension with each other over power: workers and owners each vying for more. It is true that it is not a binary: there are varying degrees of control between those who work and those who own, and varying degrees of direct relationship workers can have with those means of production. (I predict one future move to secure Capitalist power will be CEOs re-branding themselves as “workers.”)
There is no clear line when an economy, as a whole, crosses over from one to the other, and there are multiple ways either general model can look specifically. But importantly, there is no transcending, or escaping, this tension. The decisions about the means will always be made by someone(s). Either those who decide will work with those means of production (workers), or they will not. And if they control but do not work with the means of production, they must own them. There is no economy that does not exist somewhere on the Capitalism-Socialism continuum. And every one of us is somewhere in this quadrant:
If commerce were your computer, Capitalism or Socialism would be different operating systems. Both use the same hardware: tools of economics, labor, capital, value, automation, and more. Both are, in theory, capable of producing the same outputs (when we neglect psychology). But the different operating systems prioritize input from different components of the hardware (the workers or the owners), and that means they make different outcomes more feasible, or even possible (when we integrate psychology).
Capitalism did not make phones. Labor made phones, and Capitalism, like Socialism, determines how the value/wealth created by that labor is distributed. People in power (under Capitalism: the owners) decide that the wealth gets distributed more heavily toward them. Surprise.
Does this mean under Socialism, everyone would get paid the same amount? No. That is only one proposed model of Socialism. To refer to the previous model, there are many worker co-ops in the world. I am not sure any of them decide to distribute the wealth completely equally.
Why does this matter? Because giving more power to workers, thereby incorporating their input, democratizes the workplace. The place where most of us spend a waking majority of our lives. The place most of us depend on to pay for shelter, food, and healthcare, and where many of us are injured. The place that occupies, or colonizes, our minds and bodies. In theory, we reject rule-without-representation in our governments. Why embrace rule-without-representation in our workplaces? Especially when they are the primary corrupting force of our governments?
I sometimes hear people ask: Can we take the good parts of Capitalism? This used to confuse me. I now understand those people are thinking of Capitalism as commerce. Of course we can take the good parts of commerce. But can we take the “good” parts of owners deciding what happens to the products of workers’ labor? I do not see any good part to take from that…
If workers decide they want to hire a consultant, and get advice, or maybe even hire a full-time supervisor, then they are free to do that. Some worker co-ops allow the workers to hire and fire their supervisors, rather than the other way around. When more people have more vote, that is what we praise as democracy.
Under Capitalism, the inevitable evolution is that more and bigger decisions are made by fewer people who own more and more. This necessarily means they are increasingly further removed from experiencing the consequences of their decisions. They are less invested, and less accountable for their actions.
This has led to Climate/Environmental Apartheid: an ecological collapse that is not directly experienced, and even denied, by the very people whose decisions are most responsible for it, because they most benefit from it. Meanwhile, those who are least responsible for it, which is to say that their decisions have done the least to bring about Climate Crisis or Ecological Collapse, have already begun to die as a result.
An inequitable distribution of economic power will always produce an inequitable distribution of political power.
Capitalism always produces an inequitable distribution of economic power. Therefore: Capitalism always produces an inequitable distribution of political power. It is in direct opposition to democracy.
People introduced to power make small decisions that only slightly benefit themselves at others’ expense — at first. After repeatedly making those small decisions, they get comfortable, and they make bigger decisions for greater benefit at greater expense. Importantly, this is not linear, but exponential: Power runs away with itself, even to the point of overthrowing democratically elected, foreign, sovereign governments in order to install profit-friendly governments of Capitalists’ choosing. Imperialism is the highest, inevitable stage of Capitalism.
Capitalism always produces an inequitable distribution of economic power. Therefore: Capitalism always produces an inequitable distribution of political power. It is in direct opposition to democracy.
This is why it is not enough to simply reform Capitalism. The wealthy will pay politicians, fund propaganda, and otherwise whatever they can do to accumulate more wealth and power. Capitalism must be foundationally up-heaved, lest it run away with whatever power it vests in the owning class. This is why we must be antiCapitalist, to resist its runaway, exponential growth. This is to say: We must oppose power funneling toward owners.
What is antiCapitalism? Capitalism’s opposite is Socialism, so named to distinguish itself from what it saw as Capitalism’s ideology: that of Individualism. Capitalism pushes this ideology. Whether we are poor or wealthy, it is our own fault how much we have. We call this “meritocracy,” though I would call it something else — we get to that at the end.
The wealthy have much less need for community, because we can secure many of our desires via transactions. A relational economy, on the other hand, relies on community to fulfill people’s needs. Just as Capitalists increasingly retreat into their selves, Socialism increasingly pushes people to lean into each other for support. This can be scary, and is also the process of emotional maturation.
Some time ago, I watched an interview with the director of Media Matters in which he explained, “The biggest pipeline into White Nationalism is not actually White Nationalism, but the Men’s Rights Movement,” (video not found; link to related article). The implications got me thinking, both how to disrupt White Nationalism’s pipeline, and also: What is the biggest pipeline for our movement toward Socialism and collective liberation, from Capitalism and White Supremacy?
I have come to believe our biggest pipeline is social-emotional learning, which I teach, and which was my own path toward intersectional Socialism. Rather than a focus on extracting profit from someone, it teaches us how to be in relationship with each other. In my most common talk at schools, I even demonstrate how once we apply a group analysis to social-emotional learning, we get social justice. To be pro-social, then, is to eventually develop a Socialist analysis.
Capitalism stands starkly against relational interaction, always asking, what can be extracted from others? In addition to being antidemocratic, it is antisocial, even rewarding our antisocial behavior if we can extract more wealth and power from the relationships we sacrifice.
It pushes us away from each other, dividing and conquering us collectively. This has enormous implications for community and individual health, especially when founding an entire economy on it. To allow this antisocial economy to birth an entire ideology, one based on retreating away from others into our own selves, we might call that Anti-Socialism. And it is killing us all.
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
― Solutionary Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
