Reply #13: Start here [View All]

[Jcrowley]

The misconception you state is common. Trying to reform capitalism is like trying to reform The Mafia.

Capitalism is war and those of us who do not own capital suffer from it just as do civilian populations caught between opposing armies. Capitalism is the violent negation of democracy, for it is the interests of those who own capital that determine how we live: their jobs, products, services, manufactured culture, and propaganda shape our lives and our minds.

Under capitalism everything in nature and everything that human beings are and can do becomes an object: a resource for, or an obstacle, to the expansion of production, the development of technology, the growth of markets, and the circulation of money. For those who manage and live from capital, nothing has value of its own. Mountain streams, clean air, human lives -- all mean nothing in themselves, but are valuable only if they can be used to turn a profit. If capital looks at (not into) the human face, it sees there only eyes through which brand names and advertising can enter and mouths that can demand and consume food and drink. If human faces express needs, then either products can be manufactured to meet, or seem to meet, those needs, or else, if the needs are incompatible with the growth of capital, then the faces expressing them must be unrepresented or silenced.


For further reading:
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/bakunin/capstate.html