Killing Capitalism in the Name of Self-Defense
Art by Stephanie McMillan
Global capitalism is killing the planet. It is turning the living world into dead commodities by exploiting the many for the profit of a few.
Ecocide is the most urgent and immediate problem we face. If we don’t solve it, nothing else will matter. Economic troubles (not to mention our personal issues) will seem trivial. The ability of the planet to sustain life of any kind is becoming increasingly threatened.
It may already be too late to avoid runaway global warming; and it’s certainly too late to avoid radioactive rain, shrimp without eyes in the Gulf of Mexico, and tap water that can be lit on fire. It’s too late to save 78 percent of the world’s old-growth forests or bring back the 200 species of plants and animals that went extinct today. The situation is extremely dire.
But we can’t give up – not without a fight. Precisely as the economic and ecological crises converge, the possibility of liberation and social transformation also opens up. But only if we organize to make that happen.
Ecocide is accelerating because of capitalism’s constant need to expand into new areas. Capitalists have entered a period of extreme extraction, even in areas that were previously off-limits geographically and politically. They’re now ripping up North America as wantonly as they’ve already wrecked other parts of the world, with fracking, oil from tar sands and deep-sea drilling, and mountaintop removal.
Because of competition between capitalists, which leads to a falling rate of profit, capitalism is structurally compelled to expand. It can never economically catch up with itself and must constantly break through its limits in a vain attempt to resolve its own inherent internal contradiction.
Feudalism and all forms of class society have also had internal contradictions that drove them to expand. But capitalism has taken this to a new level, because instead of just requiring more resources to continue existing (to feed an expanding agrarian population, for example), it requires the constant growth of production to expand for its own sake. The needs of the population aren’t the point, and commodities aren’t even the point – accumulating surplus value to expand capital itself is the entire point. This is what pushes it to exceed limits on a scale previously unimaginable.
But we live on a finite planet with physical limits, which are being reached. This is a difference from earlier economic crises. Capitalism is driven to consume everything external to itself, converting it to commodities, and it won’t stop doing so on its own until it kills all life on the planet. Capitalism is fundamentally in contradiction with life itself.
The system won’t stop unless we stop it.
The system has many methods of dealing with dissent. One is open repression.
Before they resort to that, they try everything else, including co-opting dissent. They draw it into dead ends created for this purpose. As long as we don’t threaten the actual relationship of power, we have many ineffective means of dissent that we’re permitted to exercise.
But capitalism can’t be reasoned with, escaped, reformed, redeemed, cajoled, abandoned, or rejected. It does not care what we want or how persuasively (or how nicely, or how rudely) we request it.
Elections won’t change this. “Less evil” politicians still serve and represent capitalist interests. It’s their job.
Personal lifestyle changes, though nice, will not make it stop. Protests and demonstrations won’t make it stop.
A better-regulated or reformed capitalism would still kill the planet. So-called “green” capitalism and technotopianism are lies to make us believe an expansionist economy could be sustainable. We can’t buy our way out of it.
If we are to liberate ourselves from this horror – if we are even to survive – we must work together to fight global capitalism and its crimes, toward the ultimate goal of bringing it down.
The system has been built on land theft, war, and slavery. It steals the means of subsistence from indigenous populations and small farmers, putting everyone in a situation of dependency, forced to sell our labor to get food and shelter.
A system based on the pursuit of profit and perpetual expansion can never be fair or sustainable. We need to study and analyze its mechanisms and motion, and identify its weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
We can attack it on many fronts, but at the center of it is the conversion of raw materials (life) into commodities through the capitalist exploitation of labor. The point is the creation of surplus value (profit) by the worker, which the capitalist appropriates – in other words, steals. There is no other reason for commodities to be produced.
To end this nightmare, workers will have to organize to liberate themselves. They are the only ones who can break the social relation of class domination, a relation that is at the core of a mode of production that requires the extraction of resources and the exploitation of workers, and results in the destruction of the environment.
In addition, we must build organizations of various types that bring to bear the energy and interests of all the popular classes and social groupings to weaken capitalism. As the crises become more acute and affect people more immediately, increasing numbers of people will come into motion to oppose it. We need to find ways of uniting all those who are antagonistic to capitalism, from various perspectives, and work together to defeat and dismantle it.
Movements for social liberation must ally with movements to defend the natural world, or we won’t be able to achieve either goal. We need a diverse, non-sectarian mass movement that can increase our chances for victory against our common enemy.
If we want to win, we must organize and align our efforts. Individually we’re weak and ineffective; together we are strong.
Let’s build a broad and autonomous movement to fight capitalism, before it destroys us!
– By Stephanie McMillan
Stephanie McMillan, a long-time activist and recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award for cartooning, will speak Saturday as part of the “Culture of Resistance Roadshow” at Florida International University. The event will include presentations from activists involved in the environmental and social justice organization Deep Green Resistance as well as members of South Florida collective One Struggle and Florida Green Party. Presentations begin at 2 p.m. at FIU’s Biscayne Bay campus (3000 N.E. 151 St., Miami) in room AC-194.
Capitalism at its core is good. What the US is doing is not capitalism at all. It’s fascism. There are too many dirty politicians who will sign anything to make a few bucks from any slime ball lobbyist pushing a certain agenda. That’s not how capitalism works.
Well yes actually, unfortunatly it is.
Good article!
@Bryan: Well, actually, that *is* what capitalism is all about! I’m so tired of capitalist apologists saying “capitalism is actually good for people and the planet! it just hasn’t had a fair run yet!” No. It is a system based on oppression & inequity and the bottom line is profit, whatever that looks like. So please do some research on capitalism before you call it ‘good.’
There’s nothing good about capitalism. It is a system predicated on the exploitation of the working class. Profit is impossible without “surplus value” – without the expropriation from the working class, of the wealth which they created and manifested.
It’s a system which necessarily requires ecocide, requires industrialization and city growth. It’s a corrupt philosophy through and through…and the working class people of the world who are convinced otherwise, are akin to prostitutes..in love with their pimps..too deluded, abused, or enculturated to acknowledge their abuse and name their abuser.
The sooner your pimp dies, the better off you’ll be. Even if you’re too brainwashed to know it yet
Let us not forget, capitalism functions on the inputs, land, labor and capital.
Surplus value is also generated from land, i.e. (our ecosystem). In capitalism, both land and labor are seen as raw resources for which wealth is to be generated. Capital can be thought of as the means of generating surplus value from land and labor. The only forward thinking in capitalism is in CAPITAL investment, or investment in the means of production.
If capitalism continues to grow, which it will less our intervention, then it will outstrip labor (reversion to slavery) and land (ecological devastation), at that point the only option left for capitalists will be to begin cannibalizing the means of production, exploiting and extracting value from the only input still viable . At this point capitalism will have killed itself, millions of species, and many of us in the process.
The silver lining is that capitalism is inherently destructive of its own interests, it is rife with internal contradictions and CANNOT survive on a finite planet. The obvious tragedy is that in order for this to happen, capitalism must be denied all of its fuel – - i.e. land, labor and capital – - these must all be exhausted before this happens.
In other words, we cannot wait for capitalism to fix its own inherent internal contradictions, we need to destroy it. Before it destroys us.
killing captliom is mater of saving the world from globel warming we have limterd recuces with ineqlty betwan the therd world the devlopd world the depshion of caplisom is geting worse we ned a revlicon to dstoy it befour it dostoys the world .
we ned socaliom it only way to kill the beast
I don’t think you’ll ever defeat it by confronting it. Like the articles says there are mechanism draw in dissent to dead ends. The only way is to approach it is by finding a new way to live. Somehow walking away but in order to do so people require something else instead of capitalism.
You are so right Nicholas! We do need a new way to live and people are working on it everywhere. We do not need a panacea but a diversity of ways of doing this. Thus we must embrace anarchy – don’t look for the answer outside but invent your system from the inside. Anarchy is a grown-up philosophy that we can take care of ourselves, that we can respect others, that we acknowledge we are all different and that is a strength, that sharing resources is useful, that we do not have to accumulate to make us feel safe but that we can look after ourselves and our friends/family, that war is exactly what we don’t need and that peace is what we require first and foremost. But we certainly have a challenge on our hands. The capitalist disease is rampant in our world. But that hasn’t stopped insightful people from trying, as you are. Continue to dream and strive for what is in most people’s hearts: peace, love and liberty!
Actually, the real problem is Industrialism, which uses capitalism as its most effective tool since central state planning (of the USSR variety) didn’t turn out to work quite as well. The other requirements for this paradigm to remain in control are dominator hierarchies, disconnection from nature and all that is naturally fulfilling, and a pathological sense of the other.
As Stephanie says, we need a mass movement, and this movement must not only clearly state what it is against and why, but what a realistic alternative might be, and steps we can take to implement it. We’re working on this through creating multi-issue coalitions based on non-hierarchical methods of organizing, communicating, sharing leadership, and democratic group decision making that are congruent with the natural systems principles from which sustainable ecosystems emerge.
If you’re interested, check out Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor at COMEweb.org
Capitalism is irrifutably socialy and enviromentaly unhygenic and at its root, what allows its putrid cancerous existence is a greivous case of mistaken identity, in that, it is impossible to expolit, opress, coerse or abuse in any way those that we identify with.
All societies are social relationships, so it must follow the the more we know about what we are relating with and who we are relating to, the more human, the more fuctional that relationship will be. The study of genetics has discovered that we all share the same origins, all share the same early ancestors. So that’s it, we are all of us, members of the one human family and if a family is to function as a real family, the ethic aknowleged is “from each according to ablity, to each accoding to need”. Taking this on board is it any wonder that society is as it is.
We need to create a society that recognises that the natural and industrial resources of “our ” planet are the common heritage of all humans, a society that has reached maturity, come of age, completed its historical right of passage and in doing so is true to itself.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb
Yours for freedom, a life without price.
Wow, there sure are some interesting comments here.
Someone said capitalism is “a system predicated on the exploitation of the working class”. According to my dictionary, capitalism is “an economic system in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are privately owned and operated for private profit.” Based on this definition, I can grow a vegetable garden in my back yard and either sell the vegetables to my neighbours or trade vegetables for other things they have that I need. Therefore, it sounds to me that the exploitation of the working class is caused by greed, not capitalism. Or, as someone else put it, it is caused by fascism.
Another comment I found interesting comes from the person who said that “Thus we must embrace anarchy – …a grown-up philosophy that we can take care of ourselves” Really? Again, my dictionary defines anarchy as “The absence of law and order; a general state of disorder and confusion.” So, we are to embrace a general state of disorder and confusion, and this is a ‘grown-up philosophy’ that will solve the ills of the world?